City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Let's call to order the special council meeting closed session of August 25, 2026 at 437 PM. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by the council. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule the speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of disagreement with the content of their s

Thank you very much. Members of the public will now have an opportunity to address Council on the closed session item. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial star 9 on a telephone to indicate you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. As there are no members of the public in the room, Mr. City Clerk, are there any members of the public online wishing to speak?

I'm going to close public comment. Council will now adjourn to close session. See you back here at 6 p.m. All right, let's call to order the special council meeting presentation of August 25, 2026 at 6 p.m. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. This Council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the Council can regulate the time, place and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by the Council. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule the speaker out of

Thank you very much. Moving on to item 26-0005 is their staff presentation.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I am actually going to ask a couple of questions first, and then we will move on in order of hands. And I think if my colleagues, if we do five minutes each, that should get us to 7 o'clock. I have two questions. The first is, can we get an update on when we expect recycled water production to begin again?

Okay. All right. Thank you. And are we, we're looking at doing a package plan to get, is that correct?

Thank you. The second question I have, and this might be for you or for Mr. Burke, um is obviously we have the legalization of design build going on the ballot as a charter amendment um can you talk a little bit about if that passes whether we'll be considering using that uh for the future contracting because we did see the slide in there about the contract bundling And also I'd like to hear if design build would have helped to avoid some of the problems that were called out in the presentation.

All right. I will defer to City Attorney Moon and we can just ask if that would be something that we would be considering if it passes for this project.

All right. Thank you very much. And I have no further questions at this time. So I will bring it to my colleagues. The 1st of whom is council member.

Thank you. I have a question for you on slide 7. uh we have uh I think you pointed out sea level rise protection under near flood uh can you talk about that uh because we also have a sea level protection uh which is led by Valley water yeah actually I'll turn that over to Ramona and then I have a finance question be ready

Okay. But sea level, this plant will be protected.

How about on the east side of the red color covers only portion of the plant. What happens to that?

That's the question I had. And then this is not for stormwater, right?

This plant will handle the wastewater, right? Not the stormwater.

Of course, there is a terminology, clean water and wastewater.

And then Vice Mayor asked about the water treatment, the purification. Valley Water has got a purification plant, which they are still working on. I asked them specifically to work with Sunnyvale, any technical know-how.

Okay. Sounds good. Next is revenue stream and then funding question. If I remember correctly, I think the loans we got for project financing, the loans are interest only for next 40 years, and then the principal will kick in. How does that work?

And then the second question is, you mentioned about the revenue source. uh that is the water rate increase we are seeing right we will be projecting for next few years many years is that correct yes what are we funding these uh servicing these debts or these loans yes the the those are eventually going to be repaid from from rate rate rate funds yes and then the last question is do we have any track record on what we projected till now to what is the actual number uh is there how much is the overrun of the project so far i know a lot of it's not it completed but the phases we have completed s

Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you. I beat five minutes.

Yes, you did. Thank you very much, Council Member Sweeney-Vos and Council Member Sell.

Okay. Hi. I had a question about the project management. So has Sunnyvale ever done anything of this magnitude? And if you haven't, what do we leverage? Other public works projects are other... What do we do? How do we keep this on project, on time, on budget? what gives you the confidence

So from the work you have done already at the water treatment plant, You mentioned there was some lessons learned. And so that will be applied to this. So has the past projects, even though they were smaller scale, have they been on budget and on time or if not understanding where we need to augment so that going forward, this larger project will be successful? Any thoughts on that? Like, what are some focus areas that you want to focus on lessons learned?

And you mentioned something about I just have one more minute about you having like good legal support. So I imagine that with such huge projects that something goes a little right, the contractor will want to you know, get their money back from somewhere, and then they might blame like Sunnyvale, because you know, this and that contractor, we had to wait for them, and you made us wait for them and all that. So any strategies for that?

okay thank you very much pleasure thank you very much council member cell council member cisneros yes thank you um many of my questions have been asked and answered so hopefully it won't be too much i want to circle back to sea level rise uh because members of the public have expressed concern i'm also a little concerned clearly about the whole shoreline how long do we have to address it before it becomes a very large inexpensive problem

Thank you for the proactive approach on that and also communicating with cities up and down the coast to be able to get that information to understand because it's urgent. Hopefully it's that long, but hopefully. So this is about the plant. I appreciate that we did a kind of an audit of all of our equipment to see, okay, what do we need to replace and whatnot? And some of these old pipes are still in good working order. I will assume that they're no longer under warranty. And so what is our plan for continually reassessing the the capabilities of these pipes and pieces of infrastructure over t

uh become smaller and smaller in terms of uh condition assessment and also in terms of redoing some of the things that are pretty old so great awesome i'll just want to keep an eye on those things go and before something happens and we're made aware of it made aware of that in a different more unpleasant way but it sounds like we were right on track to having that figured out um And then I just want to say I really appreciate the vigilant stewardship of taxpayer money and city resources in terms of our loan strategy and our financing strategy around this. how we're smoothing that out for resid

Well, it showed up here. We're looking at the maps. I didn't expect that one. But anyway, thank you for clarifying. And I think that's all I got. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Cisneros. And just to editorialize for a moment, any new summoning facilities in the city need to come to Council for approval. Thank you. Council Member Lay.

Thank you. And thank you to Council Member Cisneros for pointing that out. That is amazing. I want to thank everyone for their hard work on this. This is one of the biggest capital projects I think the city has had ever. And it's nice to see all this expertise and hard work. And as Council Member Cisneros said, the stewardship that's going into the preservation of public money being used to the best of our ability. I have a question about the interest rates on page 25 um we've talked to uh the interest rates are there and i'm curious about historically um have they maintained this in the for i

Are the interest rates variable, or are they locked in as they currently are? Okay. And so, for example, for the highest interest rate one, was that one that we have received the most recently? And if the rates fall in the future, is it possible to refinance that?

So the 2.1% one, it's a little bit of an outlier compared to the other ones. Is that the one that we received most recently? And if interest rates fall in the future, is it possible to refinance that?

Yeah, thank you. And I appreciate that, especially in context of this being a 15-year plus project. So historically, when did we get these loans? Did we get them when interest rates were low and now they're creeping back up?

Great. And I appreciate that. I like that we are smart with our money and able to get as much out of it as possible. And I think, too, could you correct me if I'm wrong? I believe that Representative Khanna was able to secure funding for us with this in the last budget cycle.

Okay, fantastic. Are we using that to pay down the loans, or are we using that in a different way?

Okay, great. Just a cash contribution, yeah. Great, thank you. That's all of my questions.

Thank you very much. And next up is Council Member Chang.

Thank you for the update and the presentation. And following up to that question, originally in 2025, it was supposed to be $5 million. So where would that have been applied to, or if we were able to get a larger amount of funding like that in the future?

Great. Thank you. And this is feedback on the project. I think it would be helpful in the future if we're able to have a timeline or to show milestones of which milestones we've met and how, where we are on the map. I went through the website and it looks, it's set up a little bit differently than our regular website. So I think it would be helpful to have a timeline for different project milestones, mostly because I did look for that and it's kind of buried on the third page of the brochure and the website. I do like the news articles, but it's, I guess if I just want to look at a zoomed-out

Thank you very much, Councilmember Chang. Mayor Klein.

Thank you. Thanks for the presentation and seeing kind of where this has gone on for almost my entire time on Council. But happy to see, you know, the WIFI loans and the other grants that we've had that have conceivably reduced costs for our rate payers and from a project standpoint. You mentioned forensic accountant. Is there any, let's say, lessons learned? And I understand this is a very specific project because of its size, but we have other Projects large, relatively large projects. Is there something to be learned here from from forensic accountant that we need to to look at from the cit

OK. And it's more, I'll say, trying to figure out what best practices are. and where this is ultimately applied because definitely we're looking at A lowest best bid and and we're all in from from a Council standpoint, we don't get a good vision into cost overruns or things of that nature, we do just contingency fees and and conceivably there's a lot of work behind the scenes from a staff standpoint, but but trying to make sure that we're using let's say best practices to. push back where need be to make sure that you know either change orders or. delays that are the result of the developer, t

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Seeing no further hands from my, wait a minute, Mr. City Manager.

Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager. I will now go ahead and open the public comment on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Use the raise hand feature now or dial star nine on a telephone to indicate you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. First up, we have Zach Kaye.

Thank you very much. Does anyone else want to speak on this item before we hear from remote speakers? Seeing and hearing no one. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

When we get to that, remote speakers are warned to limit their comments to the agenda item being considered. Speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. The title of the agenda item is the, well, it's the presentation on the clean water program. Now we can proceed.

Thank you very much, Mr. City Clerk. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak on this item? Thank you very much. I'm going to close public comment on this item. Do any of my colleagues have any final comments they would like to add before we adjourn? Seeing none. One last question I have for staff. There were a number of questions raised by public commenters. Would it be possible to get a written response for those questions as an information only item for the next council agenda or something like that? Or roll it in with council questions? Is that a feasible thing?

It's fine. All right. Thank you. With that, I'm going to adjourn this meeting at 7.01 p.m. And Mr. Mayor?

Let's go ahead and take a nine-minute break and come back at 7.10. Thank you.

Let's call toward the council meeting of August 25th, 2026 at 713 PM. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where our members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means that council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by Council for consent calendar or public hearing items. Speaker c

Thank you. Vice Mayor, may we please have the closed session report?

Yes, we may. The City Council met in closed session earlier this evening, held pursuant to California Government Code Section 54957, Public Employee Performance Evaluation, title City Attorney, nothing to report. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next, we have a special order of the day. Let me come up to the lectern. Before we begin tonight's meeting, we have a special recognition in honor of Workforce Development Month. Joining us tonight are Leland Andrews, Employment Training Manager for NovaWorks, along with Co-Executive Director of Maker Nexus, Regina Sokols, and Kelly Yamanishi, and a NovaWorks Young Adult Intern, Kyle Yannis. Sorry, Kylo Yanis. Come on forward. Thank you all for being here. Would you like to say a few words? Go right ahead.

Thank you. In 2021, the US Senate passed a recognition, a resolution recognizing September as National Workforce Development Month. This recognition highlights the importance of equipping residents with the education, training, and skills necessary to advance their careers and grow our economy. It's also a time to reflect on the contributions of workforce makers. Here in Sunnyvale, we partner with seven other jurisdictions and the County of San Mateo, Cupertino, Los Altos, Milpitas Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara in support of NovaWorks. NovaWorks is a nonprofit, federally funded emp

I do. I have four announcements this evening. The first is the 2026 Sunnyvale State of the City. Celebrate Sunnyvale with us. We invite you to our annual State of the City event on Saturday, September 19th. The event is free and open to all members of the public and will be from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at City Hall. It will include an opening reception, the mayor's State of the City address, board and commission recognition, and community awards. For more information, visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and search State of the City. We hope that you can join us in recognizing all of the wonderful people an

Thank you, Councilmember. I'll be reading off two names. The first name, please come to the lectern. The second person be hopefully waiting nearby to speed over transitions. First up is Russ M followed by Mike C.

Thank you. Next up is Mike C followed by Pamela K.

So this section of the meeting is for public comment only? It's not a back and forth from that standpoint?

Um, there's America. Sorry. Thank you. Um, could I please ask the city attorney to clarify for the public, the, um, provisions in the Brown act that prohibit us from answering questions from the days at this time?

Thank you, Rebecca. I want to add that it is possible for us to answer questions at the end of a session, at the end of a meeting, and that is permissible under the Brown Act. But these questions that you asked are operational, and as the mayor said, please refer them to the city manager. Thank you.

Thank you. Pamela Kay, followed by Steve B.

Thank you. City Manager, would you care to comment on process and traffic calming?

Thank you. Eden M followed by Zach K. me and my brother ezra we love to play baseball out there and it's a lot of fun so please don't change the park thank you thank you oh sorry and next up is alan w

Thank you. That was my last speaker part of the room. Because the nature of remote communication speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. Therefore, speakers are warned to limit their comments to subject matters that fall within council's authority to decide or to take action. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak under oral communications?

Thank you. I'll go ahead and close oral communications. We'll move on to our consent calendar. I'll open up public comment on our consent calendar items. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. want to double check so zach is this one b or b oh sorry okay sorry okay thank you um i have no speaker cards in the room city clerk do we have any remote par

Thank you. I'll go ahead and close public comment and bring it back to council. Vice Mayor Bellinger. Move consent calendar minus 1C. Thank you. Councilmember Sweeney-Boston. Second. Thank you. City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

Thank you. Let's go ahead and take item 1C now. I'll go ahead and open up public comment on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial start on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on item 1C?

Thank you i'll go ahead and close public comment by smear mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Mr. City Manager, Mr. Clerk, could you describe our general practice in writing minutes and how we decide how public comments are summarized?

know if individuals are named those public comments or organizations are named whether those are included or not included thank you and is it fair to say that the minutes are intended to function as a summary of the meeting and that the full record of the meeting is available online via video

um multiple references to lowell wood elementary school and i believe that would be laurel wood uh and i am happy to have my colleagues correct me if i'm wrong on that uh thank you thank you vice mayor councilmember chang yes thank you i sent the whole wood in the monday morning questions that it's referenced twice could you also update serene to s-e-r-e-n-e yes we can make both of those uh corrections thank you when the minutes are published thank you uh councilmember chang vice vice mayor mellinger i move that we adopt the minutes with the corrections as described lowell wood to laurel wood

Thank you. City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

Thank you very much. With that, we'll move on to our general business. Our next item is item 26-0180, the update from the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, Caltrain Budget by Casey Frommsen, Caltrain Chief of Staff. Vice Mayor, you have a comment. Yes, I do. I want to refer to it after your comment.

Yes. I am recused due to a property, blah, blah, blah. due to real property interest from any discussion involving the Mary Avenue undercrossing. As such, I would like to ask that my colleagues please hold questions on that undercrossing till the end of this item so that I can leave the room for those questions. Thank you.

Yes, I would just like to mention for the record, I do live within the recusal distance from the Sunnyvale Undercrossing. However, I am a renter. And two years ago when we first discussed that Undercrossing, we got a letter from the FPPC saying that it would still be appropriate for me to sit in and deliberate and make decisions about that due to I'm on the farther end and the exposure to train noise, there being a large apartment building between myself and that site. So I just wanted to clarify for folks, I do live within that distance, but it is okay. The MPPC ruling, nothing has changed. S

Thank you very much. Let's bring it to Council for questions. First up is Council Member Cisneros. Next is Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, and thank you very much for the presentation. First question I would like to ask, you mentioned TOD. In general, I believe that TOD is something that we should be pursuing. It is environmentally positive. It is good to have people living close to transit. I would say that, as I said, in general, I'm broadly supportive of TOD. What TOD opportunities is Caltrain exploring?

Okay. What I'm going to say looking at this presentation is I understand the importance of passing the transit measure in this fall to Caltrans Continued Operations. However, you all need to be working on a better plan B than what you have. One hour service, one hour weekday service amounts to suicide as an organization. Okay. I don't know how to phrase that. delicately, but that amounts to the end of Caltrain. You all need to be working on a plan B, something that can bridge you at least two years to get the chance to run another ballot measure should this one fail. I understand that, you kno

Thank you, Vice Mayor. One thing I think the transit measures of 50% pass, not 60, because it's citizen driven.

Yes, that is. And that is correct. Is that that is actually better news than I realized. I did not realize that it was a citizens initiative rather than an agency initiative that does help. But there is still a need for a plan B. Thank you.

Hi, thank you for this presentation. And I'm on the Air District Board, which has its board meeting in San Francisco. So I take Caltrains twice, twice a month. And it's really enjoyable. It's on time. I love it. So thank you. And people in Sunnyvale that used to hear the noise of the old trains, they love the quietness. So I really like the service. But you have financial challenges. I think I read an article or in this it says, well, you have the 75Million dollar deficit. And so even with this funding measure, it's for 15 years. And so if That measure passes, what will you be doing in those 1

And I also agree with Vice Mayor Millinger. TOD benefits our community, gets them close to the transit. And I'm on the VTA board representing Sunnyvale and VTA is investing a lot into TOD, you know, thousands of housing units will be built over the next few years, and that'll just help our community overall and help the transit system too. So hope you keep working on that. So thank you for coming to Sunnyvale today.

Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. a year loud and clear about the utility the ridership uh we need to increase the ridership what is the current ridership percentage wise ballpark number uh percentage-wise from what it was in 2019 yeah yeah it's roughly percent is the capacity of uh all the trains

Okay. I guess my question was slightly different. Let's say the trains operate at 100% capacity. will Caltrain be profitable?

There is $75 million deficit. I'm trying to understand, is the ridership the only criteria there? And then let's say ridership increases by whatever. Will there be still deficits?

i i totally agree with that advertisement is one of the things and then fiber all these things are in my opinion you can leverage right you are not solely dependent on ridership or grants or other things so asking another way was cal train profitable in 2019 before covid no no no okay what was the loss approximately what is the deficit then 25 we had to cover 25 percent not uh from the fare box okay okay and then You mentioned the electrification benefits, which I totally agree, environmental, all these things. And then the most importantly is the rider comfort of the rider. Rider comfort itse

Yes, thank you. I'm ready now for the questions. Is this a historic, historic crisis? Has Caltrain faced an existential threat like this before in its 160 years?

Yeah. Thank you for that. That is helpful because just thinking about where we are now and getting my bearings. As was mentioned, a lot of your plan B solutions would take time to implement, and you acknowledged it could take a couple years. So what about a couple more years? TOD, like development, that takes a long time. And so I have a couple questions around that. Who has land use authority over the property that you have in various cities and jurisdictions?

Right. Absolutely. So would you need to go before, like if you owned the property, would you need to go before that city council? Yes. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. I was just kind of checking to see if that a certain amount of resistance to the kind of development that you would want in certain cities would be a significant impediment to pursuing that.

Yeah, and these are super long processes. And one more question on the land use piece. Would you be doing a ground lease and maintaining ownership or whatever relationship you have and maintaining that asset, especially if you own it? Or would you be selling this property in any case?

Okay, okay. That's really helpful to know. And then when you're talking about ridership, I know that we're talking about fares and how important that is to, you know, contribute to more of the overall revenue, but is overall headcount important as well? Because I know that there are passes that are given to folks, subsidized opportunities, free transit. Does having just an increased headcount of people using the train help drive revenue for Caltrain or is it purely fair?

And I want, thank you. And I want to give you a little piece of feedback on that since you mentioned youth passes, um, I have a daughter and she got a youth pass and that was a number of years ago. So it may have changed since then and I haven't gone to it, but there was very limited places that you could go and present your ID in order to get one of those passes. And that was challenging because especially if you're a young person, you need help with your education, that provides an additional thing. So I would say to give feedback on that happening, The ability for people to present ID or ob

And that's awesome. I really appreciate that. I think that, wait, and that would just be for a ticket or you can get the whole pass?

Oh, okay. Okay. I think that it would be really helpful to communicate that to the public more. Like these, you can do this here. You don't have to go. all the way there, you can get on the train for your pass amount. Because it was like that for a long time. So letting people be aware. And then just the last thing I'll say is you mentioned that it was popular as babies in libraries. Those are very popular things. But voters often end up voting against babies' interests and libraries' interests at the ballot box for reasons I don't personally understand. But they do. And so... just encouraging

Thank you for the presentation and update. I know you mentioned you're going to talk about capital projects at a later meeting, but I did want to talk about the track safety you mentioned. Is there any way to fast track that? Just I'm thinking back about six months ago at Hendy Avenue, there was a collision with the train right on the tracks.

And on the topic of safety, I think the station has been really confusing to people when there are safety concerns. So if your car is broken into in the parking lot, it's under the jurisdiction of the city. If there's something suspicious or dangerous, you're supposed to report that to transit police. but it gets really difficult for people that get kind of hot potatoed back and forth and there's not i think enough communication between transit police so i guess it's more of a request if they can work with our department of public safety more there have been a lot of issues with dumping in the

Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Ley.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. It's good to see the progress that you've made and the, I won't say creative solutions that Caltrain is using to try to increase ridership. I think it's a little bit surprising for people who remember electrification and before electrification, I think we all expected it to go up to 2019 levels. Obviously, that isn't true. Do you know why that trend line is happening. It seems like that's true, not just for Caltrain, before other agencies as well. Is this still a combination of work from home policies, just people who have gotten

Yeah, thank you. I am on the LPMG and we'll be having a meeting Thursday, but we're talking at that meeting about events, I believe, and the Caltrain usage during events, which is good, but not, you know, we don't always have a BTS. We don't always have a World Cup, unfortunately. So those are good things. But as you say, the most reliable commuters hopefully will come back to the station. I just want to say that I personally really like the electrified Caltrain. I have a three-year-old who really likes trains. So we like to see it go by. We like to take the train down to Santa Clara. They hav

Yes, thank you. I would appreciate that. And especially in my experience, a lot of those were focused in the North Bay, like they were in the San Francisco area and around there. And I think it would be good to have those locations in the South Bay as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. I had a few comments. First, I'll second what Councilmember Chang talked about as far as safety improvements. You know, when I resigned from the Caltrain Citizen Advisory Commission in the beginning of 2024, it had already been talked about at that point that You know, these solar dot bot dots were going in and and all that and here we are several years later and. no progress and every time I you know every time I see a car especially at Mary and Sunnyvale Avenue that have turned onto the tracks and stopped and we've been lucky that no one has been injured but we've h

No, and I appreciate that, that You know, I think exactly and that's our, that's what you see in our downtown as far as transit oriented development is what I think you need to see up and down the peninsula to a large degree from from a density standpoint and a walkability standpoint. So, so that that to me is critical. And, um, yeah, that would like would like to get more of that information. So, thank you. Um, next up is vice mayor.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Now that I've gotten the existential dread out of my system, I have some more prosaic things I'd like to raise. The first is the sound wall along the Caltrain tracks in Sunnyvale. Some of the graffiti on that sound wall is old enough to go to school now. What would it take to get that sound wall, get a fresh coat of paint over that sound wall?

Wonderful. The second question I wanted to ask you. So we passed a Caltrain access improvement plan in January. And one of the things that I raised as part of that plan was finding something to do with that old ticket office at the Sunnyvale Caltrain station, which has been closed and empty as long as I've lived here. And I think that, you know, having a cafe or a snack shop or something like that in that ticket station would help to activate the station. You know, it would be a nice amenity for riders, and I suspect it would get a fair amount of business. What does it take to start exploring

Yeah. So let's dig in on that a little bit. First of all, how do we make sure that that doesn't get lost in the shuffle? How do we make sure that that keeps moving along? That might be a question for the city manager as well. Can we make sure that there is some kind of regular check-in or discussion on what can be done with that space?

OK, great. The second thing I wanted to ask is there is sort of a long space on the station behind the parking garage where the bike lockers used to be. That space is no longer really used for anything. It seems to have become an occasional encampment site. And so what I'm wondering is, you know, Are there any thoughts on what to do with that space? It's a very awkwardly shaped space. I'm not sure that you could really put a structure there of any sort, but are there any, do you all have any thoughts on that?

Yeah. So it is the space that is directly north of the parking garage on the southern platform. And if staff can get you my email address, I would love to hear back from you on that. Last thing I wanted to ask you about is do you have the weekday parking use usage rate for the Sunnyvale parking garage? The Sunnyvale Caltrain parking garage. Do you know if that typically fills up daily?

I would really like to see that because one of the things that could be done, potentially, if you're looking at leaseable space, is people have started to look at converting parts of parking garages into possibly commercial spaces, etc. And so if that parking garage is not getting full utilization, then it's worth considering whether that is currently the highest revenue generator for that site. All right. Thank you very much. And I'm going to turn my mic off now. Thank you.

Just quickly, I was just wondering if you've considered public-private partnerships. Like I've seen it where there's parking garages on the bottom floor and then above it there's housing. So I know even if you're able to pass this measure, there won't be a lot of extra money for investment. Is that correct? It's mostly just filling the gap.

And last thing, does the state legislation that allows more housing to be developed more easily closer to transit, will that help your outlook in the future of more transit-oriented development communities like in Sunnyvale?

Thank you. And finally, Councilmember Lay.

Thank you. Going back for a second round. To piggyback on the Vice Mayor's statement about the encampments, are you sending a representative to the Sunnyvale Unhoused Collaborative meeting that's put on by the County of Santa Clara? I feel like your presence there, Caltrain's presence there in general, would be appreciated. That's, I believe, the first Friday of the month, every month. Supervisor Lee's office would likely have more information about that. But if there are encampments routinely on Caltrain property, that's a space where local organizations have a scheduled get together to talk

yep absolutely i i would suggest that the general public just put a request into my sunnyville okay we can take it from there great it's even better thank you thank you i'll go ahead and thank you you can have a seat and we'll stick around we'll ask a few questions at the very end uh let me go ahead and open up public comment on this specific item please submit a speaker card to the city clerk raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone, indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers

Um, do you do? Did you refer to babies in Caltrain so you can serve? You should be directing your comments here.

The city passed the Lawrence Station area plan, which largely does what you're talking about in terms of mixed use development and housing near Lawrence Station many five, six years ago. Director Ryan, who is sitting right there, could get you some more information on that. And the other thing I wanted to tell you is that right currently we are slated to begin a general plan review in about a year next summer. That is all very tentative and far out. but if you are interested in the land use issues that you're talking about here you should follow along for updates on the general plan review tha

Yep. So you can always email us. The general plan will have extensive public outreach that you will be able to participate in. And I did also want to mention that we do have a teen advisory committee.

Well, there you go. And what was your other question?

Yes, you can email counsel whether you get a reply back from a given an individual council member depends on their time, email load, etc, etc. But yes, you can always email counsel at sunnyvale.ca.gov.

Council Member Lai, one second, one moment.

I just want to thank you for coming and giving public comment at your age. I know it's difficult and I see your parents are out there and proud of you. So thank you. And thank you so much for your civic participation at this young age. It's great to see young people engaged. I know the Vice Mayor already suggested our Teen Advisory Committee, but I would like to encourage you again to keep that in mind. Thank you.

Thank you. Mark Warren, Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item? Mark Warren, No, Mayor. Mark Warren, I'll go ahead and close public comment. First, from a Council standpoint, do you have any general questions before we talk specifically about grade separation? Mark Warren, Councilmember Lay?

Oh, I had, based on the young man's comment, I was curious if Caltrain would be interested in presenting to our teen advisory committee. We have a teen advisory, an all-ages and an accessibility committee, all of which are handled through staff. Yeah, absolutely. We'd be happy to. Great. Thank you.

I see no other general questions. I'll let the Vice Mayor exit the chambers and we'll get to just a few final questions on grade separation. Okay, do council members have any questions about grade separation? Council Member Sell.

grade separations are tending to be more and more expensive. Are there any thoughts that Caltrain has to try to reduce the costs or different models of developing the grade separation? Are there any insights that you're thinking of to help fund the grade separation in the future?

Okay, and then do you see cap and trade at the state level being able to fund grade separations? And if so, is that like the legislature that would advocate for that? Or is that Caltrans that would build a coalition to advocate to the legislature? Do you see cap and trade being a source for grade separation funding?

Okay, thank you. And then I understand you're going to come back.

I understand that horns need to blow for safety reasons. And actually, I can see the Caltrain tracks from my living room window, which is awesome. I have a small child. It's very popular. We're a very popular household for that reason. I see the trains all the time and increased frequency has only improved that. However, being so close and all my neighbors as well, I frequently hear questions about Can we get a quiet zone? Just because it's very loud, especially for folks who live in older properties that don't have the same kind of soundproofing as say a 2016 build where I live would have. It

Yeah, and I emphasize that all the time when asked that, like this is, if it's a safety issue, it's a safety issue first, and it's a comfort issue second, but not saying that comfort's not important, just people's lives are are very important. And then I guess we're not. Yeah, I had questions about the specifics of how we would go about pursuing that funding and prioritizing, but it sounds like we're not talking about specifics on that at this point.

Thank you. Next up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you. And a quick logistic question. I know you also mentioned funding is limited. How do you prioritize which crossing How do you determine that?

Okay. Just for my own knowledge, how big is this corridor is that Multiple cities? Yep.

Thank you. And thank you for working on the grade separation. Uh, that's the other big issue for, for us specifically. And, you know, it's been talked about as far as the funding concern, whether or not the cap and trade program, and, you know, ultimately, um, high speed rail success depends upon grade separation getting done. And they focused, I think on one station and help them, uh, do their grade separations, but hopefully, you know, the cost of that continues to go up and, you know, having that done. throughout the corridor to me makes sense, but we'll see whether or not they'll ever unst

Much appreciated. Thank you. With that, we will take, a nine minute recess and come back at 9.30. Thank you. let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to our next item item 26-0125 council strategic work plan year one update from staff it's your staff report okay

Thank you very much. Let's see what questions we have from Council. First up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you very, very much. This is very informative, really, really good information. A couple of questions. The link you provided on the slide, seem to be outdated. It takes you to Sunnyvale.ca.gov. Basically, it's not updated. Okay. We'll look at fixing that. That page needs to be updated. It still has a lot of old projects, which are not the representation of this presentation you just now gave. The presentation is very, very informational. Thank you very much. So I was trying to figure out some of the projects you have listed, like Monument Shelter Services and then Public Art, CEO Direct

Which items were you talking about? Council Member Srinivasan, sorry.

First of all, I was talking about the link. No, no, no. The items that you say. Oh, the CO-8, that is the public art repository. And then animal shelter services. I forgot to note down the number.

Very, very good progress. And then I can see the list of projects, not only the council priorities, but also the operational things, which are also very, very important. So my question is, we are just three months into the fiscal year, right?

Just over, just under two months. So already 40 projects are completed, right, of under 50 projects.

Okay. So the question I have is, remaining we have about 10 months give or take and then with that do we have capacity because march we will have the council priority workshop again so i know we will have three per council members that's 21 council projects like that so what do you use for ces the capacity

So maybe two per council members or maybe?

Exactly. We don't want to put more projects, which we know will may take many, many years. Those are my questions. Once again, excellent work. Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Sell.

So we had the study issues of study issues, and then you found bottlenecks, and then we found don't put so much work in the front end so we can have more time for everything else. Are there still any things that are on the horizon to make the process less If there's possible or efficiencies or anything like that, or is it as efficient as it can be, because I think in that process also was identified that there's certain departments, such as finance that has to help all of these projects of them, that is a limitation.

Okay. And then sometimes study issues have outreach meetings associated with them. And then sometimes like even me as a council member, I can't keep track of, like, even if I'm interested in a study issue, like when the outreach meetings happen or stuff like that, is there any thought to, I haven't visited the dashboard recently, but is there any thought to like, once you've decided, like, we're going to have an outreach meeting, like three months from now, or, you know, tentatively, like you have the tentative agenda for the council thing. I was just wondering if the dashboard could be like a

So one question. So are all of these projects, do they have their own mail list or not?

And it might be good on the dashboard to say, here's a link to this web page. That might be good. And then the other last thing is, if it goes to Commission or Council, and you know when it might, then the dashboard having a little notation, like three months from now, four months from now, tentatively. Yeah.

Thank you. Next up is council member Cisneros.

Thank you so much for updating us and to all of staff for all this fantastic work. And I'm so glad we have the opportunity to highlight it. on a regular basis and to just kind of talk about where we are generally without having to get into much detail to actual projects. Cause we do plenty of that around here. Um, my question is about on the slide when you, when you referenced that, you know, you continue as a, especially for the staff projects, like continuing post implementation support for the new CRM system and mobile app. or expanding engagement and cultural inclusion program in the libra

in that type of programming around the welcoming community goal and so we thought that it was of enough public interest and council interest that we wanted to elevate it to the work plan I see that makes total sense that you would have that as this is an elevated an elevated effort for a finite period of time on something we'll work on continually but for this period we're dedicating that as a project that we're tracking it makes a lot of sense to me um something that came up for me was thinking about opportunities to nest and combine projects. And as I was navigating around the dashboard, I n

That makes a lot of sense. And so on the dashboard itself, I think it might be helpful to have maybe some kind of asterisk or a little way to notate. Like you may see, cause when you, you can actually look what are all the projects and what is significantly delayed, what is delayed, what in all the categories and it's easy to navigate, but you see a number and then it's not quite the same and you're trying to figure that out. So maybe noting, like if it's been moved into another project, it counts and just giving a brief version of that explanation. I think, um, Because when people are looking

Thank you. Next up is Vice Mayor Millinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you very much for a great presentation. A couple of things. I saw that the Asian American update to the historic context statement to include the role of Asian Americans has been significantly delayed. Can you speak to a little bit about what the cause of that delay was and are we confident about getting through that this year?

Okay, thank you. Follow-up question to that. You know, obviously some of the echoing council member sells comments, you know, bottleneck removal is important here. If are we analyzing root causes of delays so that we can identify patterns in areas where we can remove bottlenecks?

All right. That would be something that would be really exciting to hear about, you know, maybe at next year's priority project workshop and or next year's strategic plan update.

we have two meetings three meetings a month depending and we can only take so many agenda items each meeting so and that is a very well point uh taken point i for one do not want all of our council meetings going till two in the morning um that said um removing bottlenecks doesn't just increase capacity it also increases speed with project delivery which is in and of itself valuable um Okay, a couple other questions. I'm going to assume that this is intentional. Sidewalk maintenance is not on the work plan. I'm assuming that's just because it's just a budget level increase that's got a 13-year

That makes sense because I don't think it makes sense to have an item on the work plan that's going to hang around for 13 years. Right. That that doesn't strike me as a I guess my input on that would be when the necessary capital, any necessary capital equipment is purchased and any necessary plans are completed, then that would probably be when you then it's fully operational.

I'm delighted to hear that. Okay, a couple quick ones. Fair Oaks intersection study issue, I see that that is listed as on track for next summer. Is there an update, a slightly more detailed update on where we are with that?

when the last study issue finishes, is there gonna be a party? I'll leave that to the city manager's judgment. All right, thank you all.

Thank you. Next up is Council Member Chang.

Thank you for the presentation and the update and staff's flexibility in changing to this new process. I did wanna ask about tracking of the Just Do It projects. I think with the smoke shop one, it moved really fast and it's not really kind of reflected in this whole process. So it does affect staff workloads. I just wanted the just do it projects incorporated into it too.

yeah I could see some of them being pretty fast but some of them could evolve into something more complicated so that might come up and on similar to Councilmember Cisneros when it's considered significantly delayed but some of the you know it might be from our feedback that the scope changes a bit whether that's still considered significantly delayed or if it's a new scoper project in some form

Okay, thank you. I think it'll be helpful to also understand as we go into the workshop, if we're proposing new projects that might kind of build off current existing projects, how that might be impacted if it's considered significantly delayed in that sense, and how that might affect the timeline. Thank you.

um thank you i think my colleagues have covered most of my questions so thank you so much for that discussion and thank you to staff for the hard work on accomplishing all these goals that are important to the city and the projects that myself and my council colleagues have put forward i'm personally really happy about the safe routes to school revitalization that i put out this year the first meeting is tomorrow, I believe, at four for Sunnyvale School District. I have a small question about that, actually. I haven't gotten anything about as a parent about it. What communication channels are

Let me just go a little bit more on, I think the closed items are always a question for me. And the problem is, you know, and I think it's how you clarify the work plan. One of which is if for things that are delayed, you know, Council often, when we get to the study session, ask for a lot more than what was initially scoped. And I think being very clear that council forced staff to kind of reevaluate or gave new items to you, I think that's important. But from a complete standpoint, many of these, some of these are complete when the project is done. And some of these are complete at some, and

Okay. And I appreciate that. I think, you know, the work plan itself fantastic in capturing, getting a better idea and making it easier for residents to figure out what's happening. And not all of them have a website related to them, but with that being said, at least it kind of lays out where we'll be over a two-year period and how well we're meeting those targets. So I appreciate that. And definitely capital projects or something that residents normally point to or ask, I'll say, the most questions of. So I appreciate whatever we can do to figure out what the next entry in this table is or t

Thank you, Mr Kirby and thanks to all the directors who are online seeing if questions would come up in their area. So thank you. And I don't see any other additional questions for count from council. So thank you. I'm sure we'll have a great discussions when we get to the 2027 workshop. So thank you. Thank you for your time. Um, let us move on to council member reports on activities from intergovernmental committee assignments. I see none. Okay. Next are non-agenda items and comments. Council? Councilmember Cisneros?

Yes, thank you. I have a good news announcement to make. Yesterday, Governor Newsom signed into law AB 1421, also known as the Family Friendly City Councils Act. What this does is it makes it so that council or that the law that required or would make a council seat vacant if a council member was absent uh 60 consecutive days unless they request leave from the council and it's granted in the public hearing that removes that requirement for family leave and protects council members who may seek that for any reason under California state law to absolutely receive this leave. And this was very im

Thank you. City Manager, do you have any non-agenda items or comments?

thank you very much city manager thank you and please pass on our our um best wishes hopefully going forward to the families of colleagues in san jose so thank you um with that we will adjourn our meeting at 10 31 p.m thank you all thanks for everyone who was here tonight good night