City Council and Authorities Concurrent - Regular Meeting

to order. Before I go to the city clerk. Also note

Thank you very much. So I'm going to go to the public. Does any member of the public want to say some words about closed session? Please come forward. Has there been cards filled out?

Yeah. It's just odd to see that up. Thank you. There. Now we can see you better.

Anyone's welcome regarding closed session only? Items on closed session. a legal case we have at the related company. Everything else that's on the agenda, the meeting starts at 7 o'clock. So if you came for a copy of the agenda, then now's the time to speak. If you came on, if you were here for those items. Public presentation. All grounds. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anyone else, City Clerk? All right.

We'll be in closed session and hopefully we will have fixed all of our issues so that.

Thank you, Mayor. We were having difficulty with our Zoom feed earlier. Thank you very much, City Manager. City Clerk, roll call.

Are you there? You need to unmute yourself, Raj.

This is pursuing the council is back in person and is conduct dissipation from your home or office. Members of the public can still joins. Please raise your hand on the zoom application or press star nine you to speak. As a friendly reminder, members of the public have two full lower your hand to ensure that members of the public are seeking suspicion city attorney. however there was no report um conference with the legal counsel regarding existing one b was not met on but maybe trailed uh session after if there's time before i'm sorry madam era that was that options reconsiderations does any

And support to the Ukrainian community, especially here in the Women's League, Branch 107.

Okay, for our next special order of business, the city is rec soccer park experienced disruptions in January and all impacts to field availability were also anticipated during the schedule. Football company LLC has awarded the city a one-time grant of these youth activity scholarship.

Yes, there has already been a process. I'd like to invite Emily Swide to the podium to say.

Well, thank you very much. Okay. Very good. Okay. Okay. Member Park, do I have to? Is there any member of the public? All of our votes this evening are going to be roll call.

All right. Next is the consent calendar. Council Member, staff member, or community member would like to pull a motion. Vice Mayor Gonzales. Motion to approve the entire consent calendar.

On a consent calendar? Yes, 3H. Okay, engineering master services agreements for SVP, Silicon Valley Power, and the Electric Utility Capital Fund.

Thank you. And if you wait about 30 seconds, we're going to pretty familiar. Okay. Nice to see you. Thank you. Welcome to Santa Clara. Last time. Thank you so much. Thanks. Okay. City clerk. It includes that, of course.

public presentations. And these are for items that are public here? Yes. Okay. Followed by Nicholas.

I have five requests. Each legislate may not know. Can't respond in any detail to what you're saying, it's public presentations, but I believe our staff has sent that.

We get that, yes. Calisse, please come forward, followed by Howard.

But I'm not sure I believe your jelly donut thing, but that's okay. That's all right. I'll go try my sleep.

Thank you very much. Okay, next we have Anthony Becker.

Thank you for the invitation. Thank you.

Thank you. As you're aware, we are not able to answer that. But staff heard loud and clear. And items pulled for discussion. And this item was pulled back in June of June 23rd, 2026. Action on the May 5th, 2026 special city council meeting minutes. And the May 26th, 2026 joint city council and authorities concurrent and Santa Clara State Authority board meeting.

Questions from May meetings that were approved in June, so I'm very confused about your comments, but City Manager, do you have a comment on these comments?

There is the video that is available by the next meeting. And since we only do action minutes, any member of the public that wants to know the details of how a decision was made, they pretty much have to go to the next meeting. But I do have a problem in general with minutes being late. You know, this council approves the minutes for the Parks and Rec Committee and for Cultural Committee. Often I read those minutes well after events that they had planned have passed. Sometimes those those minutes are four months. We could do better, but with respect to, you know, council meetings are almost ha

All right, motion and second to extend the debate. City Clerk, when you're ready.

No, so that fails. City Clerk, when you're ready, we have a motion by Council Member Hardy. Second.

I would, yes. Just for that good. It's not good.

Okay. Thank you, Council Member Chahal. We're trying to fix it. We're seeing if it's the mic. Try that one, Karen. I guess we have to turn them on. Oh, that one you have to turn on. Yeah, that one's different than the other.

Got one. Okay. That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Moving on. I did TN, which is transit neighborhood to R6, which is transit neighborhood residential continued from the July 14th city council meeting. So this is a public hearing and it is open.

Thank you. When I read through these, I was a little surprised when I saw under the policy changes that said requiring now, and you want to implement this because I can think of single family homes where the garage is turned for new or would this apply to everyone because I can think of existing that this would not be appropriate and also I was wondering right below it it says requiring automotive acquiring because I can think of many of our our service industry where that is you can see it from El Camino so I wanted to

Thank you, Leslie. I had a similar concern about the perpendicular residential parking because for residential leave, are you talking about just for single family? Because it only said residential. And then on slide six, we're talking about visibility clearance diagram. And of course, these diagrams are way out of scale because it's 12 homes to see whether their fences, how many fences are out of compliance. People always want to put a fence around their property to prevent dogs and kids, all kinds of things. But would that be covered or... I'd like you to really explain what the impacts are.

There's your questions. Do you need more time? Would you like me to go to the public anything?

I understand your answers. So if somebody is building new construction and they want to put a fence all around their property, it doesn't matter whether it's wrought iron or not. If it's more than three foot feet. And if they're replacing something that's existing, it has to be within. I see.

Not a bollard or anything. Right. Okay, thank you.

We're questions only, Council Member Park.

Thank you Yeah, I still wanted to drill down into the fences Is this driven by state law or by vision zero mandates or where did this rule come from and I It seems to me that wrought iron fences would be adequate as long as they had a certain spacing that allowed a certain opacity, transparency to them. Then I wanted to go to the definition of the secured bike. I think we added a definition of secured bike parking, which protects the entire bike and its components from theft, vandalism, or inclement weather. and includes bike lockers, rooms with key access. If somebody were to put a bike locke

That's it for the second round of questions.

Thank you. This is a public hearing, so I'm going to open this up for the public. Do we have anyone here in the audience that would like to make a public comment? If so, please come forward. All right. None here in the audience. Mark, you're online. Go ahead, Mark.

Thank you, Mark. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this? I don't see any.

All right. So I'm going to be looking for a motion to close the public hearing. Vice Mayor Gonzales.

Second. All right. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Gonzales, second by Council Member Hardy, to close the public hearing. Assistant City Clerk, when you're ready.

Yes. And that passes unanimously. I'm also wondering if we can add Mark Kelsey's comment into answers about the 10-acre parcels. And the relevance of that to this zoning code, does this give automatic approval to projects, or do the projects still have to come back to the council for approval? Just to clarify what the process is for that, when you're ready.

OK, how about a five? Oh, are they ready? Oh.

If I have a bike locker in the parking lot that's exposed to the rain, it's going to rust. And so I would like it to be protected from rain. Here you're saying includes bike lockers. If a developer wanted to put a bike locker in the parking lot, not covered. The bike lockers, they're porous. They're metal, porous metal. They have holes drilled in them. The chain is going to rust. The whole bike's going to rust.

I'm saying you're actually reducing the visibility because you're allowing them to put the fence closer to the corner.

That's what I wanted to get to. You're reducing the visibility. Correct. Okay, go ahead.

Okay, thank you. City Manager, do you want to respond to our public member's question?

All right, thank you. Did we get all those questions? Okay. Karen, Council Member Hardy, sorry.

Thank you. When I asked about the uncovered parking on residential parcels, it was not clear if that was only for new development. You didn't say specifically, and I thought about it as Council Member Jayne made the point, and I was thinking about slanted parking even in residential, especially if it is a one-way street, that is helpful instead of it being perpendicular. So I'm trying to, I understand what you're trying to not allow, but by just saying required to be perpendicular, I'm wondering if that is not allowing some other possibilities. Thank you.

Does that require an answer? I think so.

I would like that answered as far as if it was only for new residential. And does that prohibit us from having slanted parking, especially on a one-way street?

Just would it be better to say prohibit parallel?

All right, thank you. All right, council. What do you want to do? Vice Mayor Gonzales.

We have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Well, let me just finish a sentence. A motion and a second for staff recommendation. Council Member Jane.

that we make the change that Councilmember Hardy had requested about the parallel parking and that we make the change that the bikes will be protected from rain.

Is that accepted, Vice Mayor Gonzales? Councilmember, no, Councilmember Cox, is that accepted by you?

Just Council Member Hardy's request. Okay, with Council Member... Accepted, yeah. Okay. Motion second. Okay, Council Member Park on the motion.

I don't see a reason for that, but Vice Mayor Gonzalez, do you want to strike that? All right, so there you go. Okay, City, Assistant City Clerk, when you're ready.

Council Member Hardy, would you like to repeat your amendment to that?

Instead of it, let me go back. Instead of it saying that all required uncovered parking and residential parcels be perpendicular to the street, it should say, parallel parking in residential areas, parallel parking to the street is prohibited.

Do you understand that, City Manager, City Attorney, to be added in there?

Or angled parking. I can shorthand that some way into this motion. As long as the staff and...

Yes, and that passes six to one. Thank you very much, staff. Thanks for the work on this. All right, our next item. Three 030s in a row. All right. Staff update and solicitation of council import or direction on a city council request. Council policy 030 to revise chapter 17.15 of the city code property developments related to required street improvements deferred from June 23rd. Must have been a long meeting on June 23rd. We have a lot of things deferred from that meeting. City Manager, do you take this? Yes. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much, Mike. Council Member Hardy.

Thank you. I read this very carefully and I still had a lot of thoughts. It talked about the other cities not having the trigger for this requirement But also it wasn't clear to me. Are they requiring this as well? That was not completely clear because we're talking about a DA and the Street you showed the driveway where it gave more I mean I can't think of anywhere in any of my close neighborhoods where a someone has been required to put more. I mean, it dips down when you get to someone's driveway, the sidewalk. And so I'm wondering, you mentioned this was mostly for new projects. So I wanna

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Jane.

Yeah, looking at slide nine, it really wasn't clear to me. Of course, we want to support all of the ADA requirements, but it doesn't seem like the other cities are doing as much as what we're proposing. And I'd like to understand for San Jose, what do they mean by the scope creates a clear nexus? Like if the city were to be redoing sidewalk anyway because of trees Would the city just do the driveway? Automatically that seems to me be we would just add a little bit to the scope to get this done When we're out there doing the other work Again, I think the reason why councilmember Chihal brought

Mike, I have a question, just a clarification, because it's the 800 square feet that triggers this requirement. And I think people that remodeled their homes, is this an expansion of an existing home, 800 square foot, or is it remodeling within an 800 square foot? already existing footprint of a home? Like what triggers the 800 square feet? Anybody that's remodeled their home knows that when they come to the city and if they're doing a major remodel, whatever's considered major, I don't know exactly what that is, that you have to bring certain components of your property up to today's code. I

I can go to the public if you want some extra time.

San Jose aren't they responsible for the sidewalk the residents unlike San Jose They're fully responsible for the side for the sidewalk. Unlike us.

I did ask the question in the process and I think you've already you mentioned it that the property owner is informed During the process about the requirement to bring, you know certain Elements of their development or the improvements up to up to current code.

And homeowners, I just wanted to say this as well because it happened to me as well, but homeowners that are remodeling or doing major remodeling, you end up doing improvements, bringing things up to code that had actually nothing to do with your remodeling, but you still have to bring everything up to code. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot, but it's part of, I mean, you're informed ahead of time, so.

Yeah. Thank you. All right. Did I go to the public? Already? Did I? All right. I'm going to go to the public now. Thank you. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this issue? Do we have anyone online? Council Member Chauhal, you brought this up. Hello.

Yes. Thank you, Michael, for presenting this thing. Yeah. The reason I brought this thing here was because it puts extra economical burden on a resident to fix the property or the public street with the responsibility of the city, basically. So if you look at the other cities, because I was talking to this thing with city manager, and I said no other cities. And that's what the residents were complaining, that no other city mandates this thing, whereas our city does. So we looked at the different cities. None of the other cities, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, or San Jose mandate this thi

Thank you. It was brought up and I had made a note also about an ADU. Thinking of someone putting an accessory dwelling unit on the back of their property and then being required to change out the driveway approach. If I'm understanding correctly, this is what we are requesting and requiring. Also, if someone's on a corner, is that requiring them to put in the ADA approach on the corner of the sidewalk if there isn't one already? And as I mentioned, the city is working on those and doing those in our, approach and doing as many as we can each year, but we don't have all of them. So this is wha

We need to get to that. Council Member Cox.

Your hand is up. I raised my hand to make a motion that I know I understand Council Member Cox's point that we should bring it back to Planning Commission. I think it is more time consuming when we go there. Basically, we have all the data what we need to be and its impact is on few number of residents and it's a drop in a bucket of improvements we are trying to do on the city where we have a 700 plus million dollar ADA and sidewalk improvements. So I would like to make an alternate motion that I would like that council amend the section 17.15 of the city code to eliminate existing requirement

City manager can could even if we wanted to do that. Could we do that tonight?

I think this hasn't been fully baked yet. I would like to get more input on this because the downside to this for the city is that it takes on a tremendous expense. You know the upside of course for residents is it's one less requirement when you're doing your major development And I'd like to see what it looks like if we increase the square footage or did something so it was more in line with trying to encourage people to Remodel their homes or build their ad use we want encouragement of that but we have to look at the consequence and the impact of the city, and I'm not sure we have that at t

Retroactivity is something that is going to be very problematic and it's not something we do when we change our policies, it's going forward, not backwards. I don't see any reason why we would do that. I also believe that there can be a change to this policy, but give us all the information so we can make our educated decisions on knowing full well what the impact would be on the city, which is important. in this sense, so. All right, we have a motion and a second. We have Council Member Park followed by Chihal.

Council member I am talking it is my time. So that's correct.

Assistant City Clerk, I'm sorry, I didn't see it earlier. You have something to report.

Thank you for that. I appreciate that. City attorney?

Madam Mayor. As mentioned by City Manager that it doesn't fall under the preview of Planning Commission. Correct me if I'm wrong. So I can make a motion that staff bring back As per the discussion today, staff can bring back this item back to revise amend the Section 1715 of the City Code to eliminate the existing requirement for residents, the requirement to street improvement retroactively and I know there are not many. I don't know out of those 25, 50, 60, how many have already complied with, how many have not complied with. When I say retroactive, if somebody has not complied with due to e

City attorney, we have a motion and a second already on the floor. Are you saying that motion that's on the floor is not applicable?

All right, thank you for that clarification. So we do have a motion and second on the floor, Councilmember Hardy.

I wanted to make a friendly amendment to the motion of, because being on Planning Commission, we were not allowed to consider the costs of things. And that was part of the requirement for the Planning Commission. So my thought was to refer this back to staff and get input from Planning Commission.

So both planning commission and staff input on costs and other things that the planning commission is not.

If the maker of the motion is amenable to that. Was it vice mayor?

Are you okay with that? Okay. All right. All right, so we have a new motion and second on the floor. Council Member Park, you've spoken a lot on this item.

Okay. Thank you, Assistant City Clerk. We have a motion and a second. Oh, City Manager?

Okay, Council Member Cox, please repeat the motion. Everyone pay attention, please. Please repeat the motion.

Council member Chahal, is your hand up from before? Do you have any new information? Thank you. Yes.

Yes. So when I said retroactively, I did not, I do not mean that city has to reimburse the people who already done with it. First of all, I do not mean that. I've only meant what city manager partially mentioned that if we issued a permit asking somebody to do this thing and they have not complied with it, they should not be made mandated to comply with it, retroactive. That's my only, if somebody has not done it, they should not be compliant with it. But I can support the planning commission, but this matter has been going on for more than almost six months, at least six months. And if we put

YES. IS THAT ALL RIGHT? MOTION MAKER AND MOTIONS.

All right. City Clerk, when you're ready.

Yes. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is... Action on a City Council Policy 030 request for information on public participation options and audiovisual AV and broadcasting requirements for potential off-site City Council meetings and direction to staff deferred from that June 23rd, 2026 meeting. Was it Vice Mayor? Do you want to talk on that or City Manager? Okay. Would you like the city manager? Go ahead, go ahead, and then boom.

Are you voting against your own 030? Yes Strange things happen in the city council chair. I'll second that.

All right. Because I know the cost with Bosco when we have to travel and be in different places. And when we are in the same place and are able to set up, it brings the cost down and it is more, we get more participation. So I second that.

All right, we have a motion and a second, but I think we should maybe city manager give a brief update on this and then let's go to the public and then. It's a little unusual, but yeah.

Okay, thank you. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak on this issue? All right, seeing none, we have a motion by Vice Mayor Gonzales, second by Councilmember Hardy to withdraw. Councilmember Cox?

Interesting. Okay. Assistant City Clerk, when you're ready. Please register. Sorry. I was going to. So tempting. So tempting. Council Member Hardy.

The thing on my screen says adopt. I'm not sure.

But I understand that. But it. What's written here on my screen says adopt, which is different than up there. It says maintain current practice.

Oh, okay. All right. So I'm voting for maintain current practice. Yes.

Yes. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Last item on the agenda. Action on a council written request, council policy 030 submitted by council member Jane to place an item on a future council agenda regarding a policy limiting the type and quality of water used by data centers. Council member Jane.

Yes, I'll read from the actual 030 that I proposed with some clarifications. The City of Santa Clara is home to 58 data centers, which is only limited by the lack of transmission to supply power for current and future data centers. SVP is investing heavily to expand the transmission and distribution to support almost double the data center load. Recently there has been a lot of opposition nationwide to building data centers, primarily because of climate impacts and water usage. There's currently about 180 moratoriums around the country. Santa Clara has benefited greatly financially from these

Council Member Hardy. I'd like to make a motion to put this on our future agenda as soon as staff is able to do so.

All right, we have a motion by Council Member Hardy, second by Council Member Jane. Council Member Park. Again, just to put it on the agenda.

Usually on 030s, it's exactly what they're asking for.

Mayor, I asked for consideration of the demand side grid support program as well as the water use.

When staff brings it back to us, I imagine that's what they normally do.

Yeah, great. I wanted that clarification. That's great. Councilmember Park, again? No, I— Okay, thank you. Councilmember Jane, your light's on? Okay. We have—let's go—we have a motion—we had a motion and a second, right? Okay. Let's go to the public. Is—would any member of the public like to speak on this issue? on whether or not we should put on the agenda. Edward, go ahead, Edward.

Among other things, Edward. Among other things.

Thank you for being up at this hour. Thank you. I don't see anyone else. Do you, staff? Okay. So we have a motion by Councilmember Hardy, second by Councilmember Jane to place this on a future agenda when staff is available to place it on. As soon as you can place this on.

Yes. What's on the screen there says only water, but we also talked about the demand side grid support program.

Thank you. Do we have any other reports of members of Did somebody say something? City manager?

Council member, any council member reports?

City Manager, we don't respond to public presentations because we'd be here all night. So we appreciate that, but there is no need to respond to that.

Okay, we appreciate that. All right. We are now going to adjourn back to closed session, right? So with that, Council Member Park.

You did not have any hand up. You did not.

You just turned it on, so don't blame other people.

So when I call for council reports, that's when you put your hand up. That did not happen. So please don't blame others for your mistake.

Do I adjourn the meeting now or or just wait till you all come?

All right This meetings adjourned to closed session. Thank you everyone. I