City Council - Regular Meeting

We're going to call a special meeting to order. Michelle, if you would do the roll.

Mayor Turner?

Here.

Council Members Vega? Here. Liebers? Here. Ibanaga? Here. Martinez-Belfrante? Here.

Janelle, declare the posting of the agenda.

Tonight's meeting agenda was duly noticed and posted in accordance with Government Code 54954.2.

We'll now move to closed session. Elisa, will you please read the closed session into the record?

Yes, Mayor. The Council will be adjourning a closed session momentarily for a conference with legal counsel under Government Code Section 54956.9D4 to discuss potential initiation of litigation of one case.

Very good. Thank you. Is there any public comment?

No.

Seeing no public comment, we will now adjourn for closed session. All right, good evening, everyone. Welcome to the regular meeting. This evening, we would like to call this regular meeting to order. Before we move too far along, Elisa, would you like to report out on the closed session?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. The council met in closed session just before this meeting, starting at 530. The council authorized initiation of litigation in one action. The title of the action, the defendants and other information will be disclosed to any person upon inquiry after the lawsuit is filed pursuant to government code section 54957.1a2. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you. If you would, please stand with me as we do our silent invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. Amen. Now for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to public comment. Michelle, any public comments as we get started?

Yes, Dan Cloutier.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Turner and council members. 26 local city and county governments have joined the regional amicus brief opposing the ice detention facility in Gilroy. It has been over two months since you made a no reportable action decision on this critical issue that will have a profound negative impact on our community. You chose to do nothing. You refused to take a principled stand. You chose compliance. Your anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. We, the people, expect good governance and transparency from our elected officials. We are all still waiting for an explanation about your no reportable action decision.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else?

I have no other speakers, Mayor.

Very good. We'll close the public comment and we'll now move to the adoption of the agenda. Can I get a motion to adopt the agenda? Got a motion to approve and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? There being none, that passes unanimously. Now for the consent agenda here, we have one item. If no one is looking to pull that item, I'll look for a motion to approve. Move to approve. I have a motion to approve.

Second.

And a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? There being none, that passes unanimously. And now for other business, I'm going to turn that over to Christina.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this item before you under other business, we have Jennifer Carmen, Development Services Director, coming forward. This is an item as a result of last week's meeting where the council directed us to bring forward an interim urgency ordinance. And so that is what is agendized tonight for you to consider is whether or not the city should move forward with the adoption of an urgency ordinance. And so Jennifer is going to talk a little bit about the timing and we'll talk about what we'll do when we come back to provide you with an update. And just want to just reiterate that that is what's agendized tonight. Tonight, assuming the council moves forward with the urgency ordinance, we would be coming back after staff has had sufficient time to develop the standards for an ordinance. Tonight, it's whether or not to move forward with a temporary ordinance. And with that, I turn it over to Jennifer Carman.

You mean temporary moratorium?

Yes. Thank you.

Yep.

So the city of Morgan Hill does not have specific land use policies or standards in place to regulate the location and operation of data centers or battery energy storage system facilities within the city. These types of facilities may impose significant demands on public utilities and infrastructure and create unforeseen environmental and land use impacts. Regulations are necessary to protect the public interest, health, safety, and welfare of the city. As Christina mentioned, on August 19th, the City Council requested consideration of a temporary moratorium on both uses. It is staff's assessment that the proposed urgency ordinance is necessary in order to protect the City from potential negative impacts of these land uses. The proposed urgency ordinance would grant staff time to evaluate impacts, gather public input, and draft zoning regulations for consideration. Under the government code, an interim ordinance is only effective for an initial period of 45 days. Prior to its expiration, the City Council may extend the ordinance for up to 10 months and 15 days and a later extension of another year for a total maximum length of two years while regulations are developed. As also as required by the government code, a report will be provided 10 days before the expiration of the initial ordinance period, describing the next steps in the development of the new regulations. Got some activity behind me. And that's my report.

Very good. I appreciate that. We're going to come to questions. I actually have a couple of questions I wanted to start with. So with that 45 day, because you did recall In the last week's meeting, we were looking for something at least 90 days. So you're saying in the future, September 16th is probably likely that we would be able to then push the 45-day moratorium out further based on what we decide as a council, 90 days, 120 days, 10 months, whatever that looks like. Is that correct?

Correct. And we would come with a recommendation. It doesn't have to be 10 months and 15 days. A lot of cities automatically use that just to have the most time. But we will also have a general plan of how we intend to move forward with developing the regulations.

Okay. And so you would, with that recommendation, you would at least bring back something that helps us understand a length of time in order to kind of work through suggestions, policies, input, all that sort of thing. So whatever that is, we want to make sure to cover that length of time.

Just to note, with noticing and hearings, the average ordinance can take 90 days to get adopted and become effective. So that was also something built into that timeline.

Okay, very good. Outstanding. Appreciate that. Any other questions? Council Member Martinez-Beltran?

Okay, so does it... How many times can it be extended?

So it's up to two years. So I think if we didn't extend the 10 months and 15 days, let's say the council decided to only extend for four months. And then I'm not sure, I think you can continue to extend within that time period. I can help here.

There are a total of, or a maximum of two extensions. So the first can be up to 10 months and 15 days, and then the second can be up to one year, but there's only two extensions and those are the maximum time periods for each of the extensions under the code.

I'm just wondering, you know, what, we talked about 90 days when we were here last week. I saw that it was 45 days. Maybe you think it could be sooner. I'm not sure. I just wondered, was there a reason that we didn't do the 90 days? Or was this just something that was already kind of laid out?

Under the government code, an urgency ordinance has to start with 45 days. Okay. And during my presentation, I apologize for not having that date info because we hadn't quite prepped that far ahead. Didn't know that was going to come up.

Okay, well, excellent. I really appreciate that. And I think it's great that we give ourselves plenty of runway so that we can do the due diligence without being rushed or stopping rushed in order to do that. So I appreciate that. I also wanted to in my original proposal, I talked about data, data, combining the two data centers. also battery storage, but also non-residential facilities. And the reason I did that is because we never would have seen data years ago or the battery storage. And so the non-residential facilities encompasses things we don't know or what could be. And so I'd like to be sure that we include that so that we're covered rather than just being specific to data and battery storage.

For the purposes of the moratorium, the specific land uses need to be mentioned. And so I think during our development of regulations, we could go beyond what's called out in this moratorium, but you wouldn't want to just have a blanket non-residential uses. Why? Because it's not defined and it would stop development in the city.

Completely. Development that are not residential. Correct. Well, there were some other parameters to that. So it wouldn't be all commercial development. I think that at least for the 45 day, we can do that or so that we're not, I want us to be protected from things that we don't foresee.

And it's incredibly difficult to define what we don't know. Right.

So for 45 days, we would have that as we start to develop, then we might have stronger verbiage. I mean, I would have to go back and look at what I submitted, but the intent is not to stop all development. And like I said, there's some more prescriptive in there in the summary. Maybe the summary that I sent on that, it would be in there. Is that in the staff? report the original?

The original staff report included a proposal. I believe in my assessment of that proposal, it needs to be further defined in order to apply it in a land use context. And so for the purposes of what we were concerned about and making sure that we had regulations on, we limited it to freestanding data centers and grid scale battery storage for this particular moratorium. We can still develop those regulations relating to the issues that you have raised in your previous report. But for the moratorium, it's just limited to those two land uses.

I just don't want to be surprised in the 45 days. You know, the only kinds of surprises I like, again, are hotel rooms and flights to somewhere exotic. But other than that, I don't like surprises. So... If there's some way that you can expand that so that it does encompass anything that we wouldn't foresee, I'm trying for us to not be caught in a situation like some of our neighbors have been.

For the purposes of the moratorium, we need to make findings that there is a potential threat to the city with these land uses. And if we can't define them, we can't make those findings. But I would defer to our city attorney.

If you could reference the proposal that I put, that would really help me out.

I don't have the proposal in front of me, but just to... It's not in the packet. No, no. But just to reiterate what Ms. Carman was saying, for an ordinance under this section of the government codes, section 65858, An interim ordinance requires a finding of a current and immediate threat to the public health, welfare, or safety. So if we are considering some use that isn't defined and we're not sure what it is, I'm not sure how we go ahead and make those findings.

Question? I think she still has one.

Go ahead. I'm trying to pull up what I did.

Okay. It's a good question.

Quick question. Could we pass this today and then next week or whenever do another moratorium? I mean, are you allowed to have two?

Or add to it?

That's great. So long as we can make the findings for whatever other uses.

That's great. I could do that offline myself.

Yeah, so we could have a second one or even amend this one.

No? Yes? Yes. We could, yes, we could amend this one, but I don't know that that would get, you know, we wouldn't get more than the 45 days. It wouldn't, the 45 day or clock wouldn't restart.

I mean, I can find that. I'm also interested in hearing what the public has to say, but actually the intent, again, is not to limit any kind of development. It's just to be sure that, you know, we don't find ourselves in what some of our neighbors are in. That's all.

Very good. Thank you.

I'd also like to note that our code does regulate land use in general and does require buildings of certain sizes to go through a planning commission process. So there are already regulations in place that make or create a review process for those potential land uses. And if it is something in our code that is currently undefined, we don't allow it. And that is what brought us here today is we don't currently have data centers or battery storage in our code. Therefore, my interpretation is we don't allow those uses in the city. However, without strict regulation on those particular uses and interpretation could be challenged. And that was why we wanted to make sure that we are focused on moving forward with regulatory language development. That's right.

We say now we don't do battery storage and don't do data, but... Anybody can bring that forward and it comes to the city council for consideration. And so. It would be a zone change that there is a zoning text amendment, but we have to bring forward. Many changes. And so I just want to make sure that we're able to hold that so that we can get ourselves in order and be protected. But I appreciate it. Thank you.

Very good. Sorry. Council member Iwanaga. Yes.

Okay. Jennifer, are you hearing anything coming out of Sacramento that could potentially affect us with the moratorium? I mean, they tend to override us with our housing ordinances that we had before. What protections will we have going forward? I mean, I know we all want the moratorium, but what will we be able to hold on for protection after the 45 days?

So I have not heard of any new law that would... Change what we would be able to do under this temporary moratorium. I will say, in the case of battery storage, they do have the ability to go through the. To apply directly, but I think having our ordinance in place, once we have regulations for those. They may not, or the CPUC would look at our regulations within the city. The previous proposal across from the charter school on Monterey, they were planning to go through the CPUC for permitting instead of the county.

Okay. So it's, it's a potential loophole for them, but it's not always successful. Is that what I'm hearing? Okay. Thank you. And it's not at all like the housing loss.

Okay. Which is great. Anyone else?

It's 45 days. Sorry. It's 45 days enough for you guys, the staff, to have enough time to come up with something more permanent?

No. So what we'll be coming up with is a plan to move forward. And it's a required report within 10 days of the expiration of the 45 days that ratifies the decision, explains why we did it and what the next steps are. Okay. Okay.

Excellent. Council Member Martinez-Beltran.

Just to look back, I did find my proposal. Then looking back at what I said there, I referred to non-residential utility scale and specialized high impact land uses. Is there anything that you, is that not specific enough? It is not. Okay. So can we could do this offline? Is there anything particular that is not specific enough there that I can start thinking about? Nothing. Okay.

You know how many things? Nothing comes to mind. Okay. At this time. All right. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you. We'll now open public comment.

If I may, Ms. Carmen, can you just briefly describe kind of the environmental concerns with these uses?

So, in doing some initial research on these uses, we have seen reports from other communities about noise impacts, potential environmental impacts to water, other land impacts to habitat. And it's just generally. It's an unknown of what these facilities could impact the surrounding community. It's especially important in Morgan Hill because our industrial zones aren't necessarily separated from our residential areas by a significant distance. And so we're especially sensitive to any potential impact on our residents of any of these uses.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Now to public comment. Any comments on this item?

Two cards right now. Dan Cloutier.

Good evening again, City Council. It is imperative to oppose at least a 45 day, ideally two year more authority on data center applications, allowing our city to exercise due diligence and community engagement on this urgent issue. I think it's very important that you have direct public input on this. Maybe it's a working session or something. You have members of the community maybe working alongside with the facilitator to to really get comments, because I think it's something that people feel very strongly about based on experiences that are happening throughout our country and throughout our state. We just do not want to repeat Gilroy's tragic experience with data centers and the surprises to their community. A typical 100 megawatt data center will use two and a half to three times the amount of electricity than the entire city of Morgan Hill. What are the infrastructure and grid hardening upgrades needed and the increased costs for our community? What would a data center operator pay? What does the public, what are the utility rate residential users pay? Even for comparison today, a data center, 100 megawatt operating 24 hours, that's 2,400 megawatts per day. Morgan Hill, total use per day, 900 megawatt hours. Pretty significant numbers. Do we have the infrastructure? What would it take to achieve that for a data center? Then there's water. A typical... 100 megawatt data center increases Morgan Hill water demand by up to 33%. Morgan Hill uses 4.5 million gallons of water per day. Data center needs up to 1.5 million gallons per day. Now, that number can vary based upon different kinds of cooling technologies, but that is some of the data that is presently there. Half of our water from Morgan Hill, it's imported from the Delta. So what are the infrastructure and cost implications of this increased water use? Also, there's noise pollution, which is 24-7 from cooling fans. Backup fossil fuel generators also create air and noise pollution. Data centers are a poor way to generate city revenue, as many cities have done. It's basically a Faustian bargain. They are not good neighbors. They diminish our quality of life. So again, it's imperative. Let's impose this more playing so we can really do our due diligence and get community engagement. Thank you. Thank you.

The next speaker I have is Lauren Hausman.

Hello. Hi. I just wanted to personally thank Council Member Beltran for putting forth this issue because it affects our communities so much. And I really want to thank her and be gracious for her taking her role as a civil servant seriously and putting the people of Morgan Hill first.

Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Greg Felios.

we've seen what happened with Gilroy. And it seems like you've watched this and you've learned the lesson. So we're all learning our lesson what happened. And thank you so much for showing some integrity in addressing this issue and opening it up. Again, the more time, again, here's an opportunity for us to Stop what happened. Let us let us put the brakes on what happened in Gilroy and take a look at what on all the issues involved for the city of Morgan Hill. South County is working together for these things. You don't want – again, having this moratorium, here's an opportunity. Amazon and other places are looking, are watching. They saw what they went through, and they see what they're going through with Gilroy. And Morgan Hill, right next door, they say, oh, you know, we would like to prevent them from jumping in and trying to get something past you guys before – before the time limit is up. So luckily, you put a moratorium on there, here's an opportunity to look at and setting standards for anybody who wants to come in here. Here's the foundation. Here's the infrastructure of what is possible here in Morgan Hill. So thank you very much for looking at this. Please. And however long it takes. And it sounds like the staff is working hard on it, too, to get this information out. So however long it takes, you're doing the right thing. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Any other comments?

The last card I have is for Deborah Africa.

Good evening. I wanted to just reiterate my thanks to the City Council for actually considering the moratorium and even especially to the staff for the hard work that they've done to try to uncover more information about extending the moratorium because this is such a large issue that we cannot be short-sighted in this. And I really appreciate, again, the staff and the city council being able to look at this, and especially Yvonne Martinez-Beltran being able to bring this forth so that we can really try to preempt problems that other cities have had. So I hope that we can extend this moratorium beyond 45 days to really, truly look at it. And we've seen some opportunities now, thanks to the staff.

Thank you.

And with that, Mayor, no more speakers.

Very good. We'll close the public comment, bring it back for council discussion. There is no council discussion. Yeah, please go right ahead.

I want to go back and just, also I talked about in here, looking at thresholds of heavy utility operations, using any of our city resources. So is that something that we can look at as well? Like what is the highest threshold that we have of users now and establishing that as the cap for the 45 days?

No. Why? The moratorium says we won't accept any applications for specific uses. And in the 45 days, we will look at a work plan We're doing a future ordinance. What you're talking about is part of what we'll study in that and mention in that work plan, but not something that would be done for the 45 days.

Do you anticipate anything coming forward in the next 45 days that might fall into this gray area that I'm concerned about? No.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Very good. Thank you. There's no other comments. We'll entertain a motion. This is we'll do this in three parts. Item one to 2.1 would be a motion and a vote. Item two would be a motion and then we'll read the title and call the roll. And then items three and four will do a motion and a vote. So I'm looking for a motion on item 2.1. Item 2.1. I have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? There being none, that passes unanimously. Now for item two, I'm looking for a motion.

I'm looking for item two.

It's a 0.3. Just item two. All of item two. I'm sorry, 2.2, forgive me, 2.2.

2.2.

Yeah. So I've got item 2.2 of motion.

Second.

I have a second. Michelle, would you please read the title and call the roll?

An interim emergency ordinance of the City Council of the City of Morgan Hill imposing a 45-day temporary moratorium on the processing and approval of new land use applications for freestanding data centers and grid-scale battery energy storage systems best within the city limits during the city's review and adoption of regulations for such uses. Mayor Turner.

Yes.

Council Members Vega. Yes. Liebers. Yes. Iwanaga. Yes. Martinez-Beltran.

Yes.

Very good. Passes unanimously. And now for items three and four, items 2.3 and four, I will receive a motion for both those items.

Move 2.3 and 2.4.

Got a motion to approve.

Second.

And a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? There being none, that passes unanimously. Very good. We will be working then on that 45-day moratorium. I think we'll just take a quick break till we get set up for the rest of the discussion going on this evening. So we'll just take a five-minute break, everyone. Thank you all for being here and commenting. We are now going. Okay. And we are going to move on to the city council mid-year goal check-in. I'm going to turn it back over to our city manager, Christina Turner.

This evening marks our mid-year goal setting check-in. And so as you all remember.

Do you need some help?

Yeah.

Okay.

I have speaker cards.

I have a speaker card.

All right, very good. All right, we'll start over.

This evening marks our mid-year goal setting check-in. And so as the council and many of the community probably recall back in February, we had the goal setting session. And so this is our opportunity to check in to talk about where we're at. So as far as agenda for this evening goes, we have several items for you. The first is to review the Sustainable Morgan Hill document that has our priorities. And then we'll move into the department updates and work plan updates. And then we have three topical areas for you this evening. Economic development updates, housing update, as well as emergency preparedness. On the next slide is the sustainable Morgan Hill document, also on the wall outside here, that really shows our vision, our Choose Morgan Hill statement, our strategic priorities, in our ongoing priorities. And so this first slide here shows the ongoing priorities. So there were a few changes that council made back in February and years before. One that I always like to point out when we're doing presentations is the third bullet, maintaining and enhancing infrastructure. A few years ago, the council said it's great to maintain infrastructure, but we don't wanna just maintain it, we wanna enhance it. And so that was added. And then some of the priorities kind of moved around. And so added to this one is the promoting a healthy community. And so those mark our ongoing priorities. And then we have our strategic priorities. And so these are typically captured for two years. And so this council made some modifications. And so we have fiscal sustainability, public safety, affordable housing and homelessness, economic development and tourism, transportation and economic mobility. All right, so included in the packet are the department updates as we do every six months or so, but in February, as well as in this mid-year goal setting. And so what we did this year, they are department by department as usual, but what we did is we marked in blue font the departmental updates that are associated with our work plan. And so at this time, I'm happy to answer any questions that the council might have on any of the departmental updates or any questions or just wanted to delve in a little bit on any of them. So I'll just kind of open it up to you.

Very good. Thank you. Any questions or comments then by council members after your thorough review of the staff report?

No, I would just ask if you could go through and give some highlights on that.

Michelle will pull it up. And then, Michelle, am I able to go up and down from here? If not, I'll run over there. Yeah, so as mentioned, it is by department. And so we start with administrative services. And one of the first areas is SB 707, and that has to do with translation. And so we note that we've – let me see if I can – I don't think so. I'm going to come down there. Okay. Okay, so what you have here is the departmental updates. As mentioned in blue, we have the ones that are associated with our work plan. And so the first one is in relation to Senate Bill 707, having to do with audiovisual capabilities and translation of our agendas. You'll notice that on our agendas, we have some items translated into Spanish. And then we have new public agenda posting boards outside. Let's see. Going through here. and the finance category, of course, working on the budget. So that was a two year budget that the council just adopted. And so while the budget is adopted, as the council knows, it's an ongoing item. And then a couple other things to highlight. Develop programs for downtown short-term parking, business deliveries and valet. And then in the planning area.

Thank you, Michelle.

Release the Morgan Hill annexation and urban service area amendment draft EIR. And that's for several projects. And so that's part of the council's work plan, staff's work plan and furtherance of the goals. And then the top item there for fire has to do with implementing the first due records management system to streamline incident reporting projects. and ensure full national emergency response information system compliance. On the police side, we've hired two multi-service officers and six police officers, and the department will be fully staffed and preparing for three retirements. We reinstated the traffic division and regional auto theft task force positions this summer. And we built our wellness and resiliency program by expanding the team and using therapy dogs as well as psychologists. And then also several months ago, the police officer standards and training study went to the council. And so we are working on the evaluation of those recommendations and figuring out how and when to implement them. In the area of public services, quite a bit is highlighted here as it relates to solid waste and stormwater. as well as trash capture devices and stormwater pollution prevention. On the engineering side, Valley Water Upper Yagas Creek Flood Protection Project, major milestone in 2025 with flood protection now occurring in the southern reaches and substantial completion of the project is anticipated in a few months, October, resulting in flood protection for thousands of residents. And then also we highlight the water reservoir on East Dunn. Also, the city wide solar project being operated at seven city locations reducing operational costs and supporting the city's climate action plan. And then the area of maintenance supported the final completion of our ADA transition plan and incorporating the installation upgrade of several new curb ramps in alignment with the plan. In the recreation area, very excited about our cost recovery. The preliminary estimate of cost recovery is at approximately 90%. And that is definitely in the spirit of fiscal sustainability. And then on the utility side, updated the urban water management plan and successfully submitted to the state of California, as well as commenced work on the water system master plan. Next, continue to coordinate partnership work with the City of Gilroy to complete the existing trunk sewer line repairs. This is a huge capital project. And that kind of concludes my walkthrough of the department work plan updates.

Very good. Thank you. Again, any questions or comments? Council Member Martinez-Beltran?

Thank you. First, I want to say I got to do a tour today from Valley Water of all of the upper Yagas improvements, enhancements. I mean, it was amazing. We stopped at three different locations and got to see everything, including Sildara Lake. And I really want to say thank you. to um chris and your team because you were often mentioned in the tour today and everything that's been going on apparently this project's been happening since 1954 and has really taken place since 2019 so but it was amazing to just see how they're all interlinked and how that touches our wetlands and repairing our wetlands over um all throughout severa lake So that was exciting and some of the opportunities that might be there for us. Looking at what they've done on Hale and I know many, including myself, were very frustrated with everything that was happening at Hale. It completely shut down, really placed a lot of burden on one of our shopping centers over there that the community uses often and they had just been really impacted. to see and understand the culverts and then how they're coming back and there'll be two more culverts. It was really impressive. And so hats off to all of you. And thank you to Valley Water for the support with this. I have seen many times the flooding that happens in downtown. And I'm super excited that, you know, people will be able to change their insurance one day. They said to let you all know they've already started that process. It won't. finish for at least another year. And it will probably take some time after that to get the certification so that you can reduce and lose that flood insurance. But it will come and know that they're working on it. And so I wanted to give proper credit to where that is due. I also wanted to ask on a few things. So you said about development. I have a couple of questions on development. One, could you talk a little bit? I know that there was some mobile home issues There was an issue that came before a commission that we had put together on that. Could you talk about mobile home rents and condominium conversion ordinance and where that's originating from, where that might be going?

Yes. Later in the presentation, we're going to have the housing updates and that's one of the components.

So maybe I'll run through all these and you can tell me if there's anything that's not in that. The other one is updating the transportation element of the general plan. So when we were looking at the sustainable... Morgan Hill. And we talk about in there, I think it's enhancing infrastructure is the piece of it. I would really like, and I don't know if I can do it, but I would like for us to include biking. I think it's high time for us to really, you know, double down on biking in this beautiful community that we have. So I would like to add that. to somewhere in our sustainable priorities and make sure that that's something we're really funding for getting grants. And I know we already are doing that, but I think once we put it into our priorities, it really signals that we're serious about it. So if you could comment on that, and then I also would like to see if you could talk, and I don't know if this is later, about the urban service area amendment and annexation how and what that will encompass as we're talking about the sports facility out at the outdoor complex and the Butterfield Sports Park. Mm-hmm.

Okay. So, um, so first, uh, the, you mentioned the bike biking. So, um, so we do have transportation as one of our strategic priorities and I'd have to go back and look, um, and maybe one of my teammates can assist, but we have definitions to our, uh, strategic priorities and I'm guessing biking is called out in that, but maybe we can just double check that.

No, I didn't see it.

Okay. And then, um, i'm going to look at Chris for a moment, we have coming up our recreation master plan, which includes bike why bike no doesn't include lights. yeah Okay, we do have our recreation master plan coming up, and so I was asking if that is going to scope in anything to do with bicycles and so he'll comment on that.

Just.

It won't be included in the parks and rec master plan update because we just did it in the update to the transportation master plan, which is basically filled with multimodal, especially biking plans. And I think Jennifer and Adam will use that as a base document on the update to the transportation element. But the transportation master plan really outlines basically every key bike route in the city that we'd envision building and improving. So we've done some of that base work over the last two years.

Yeah, so that's another reason why I think it should be a strategic priority, because we have invested so much and called it out in that plan.

So is that awesome? Do you want to step for her other question? Yeah, related to the USA and Butterfly.

Right. are we still able to add that to our strategic priority?

Yeah, so you've voiced it, and so we can get input from the council as council members provide their comments, yeah. The USA-related amendment.

Yeah, so there's two components within the USA amendment, which is the property we own adjacent to the sports center, which is like 13 additional acres that we've purchased, as well as the space next to the Butterfield Park, which had the intent for our future ball field site, which is about 19 acres. And those are in the annexation request. And those are outlined in our existing Parks and Rec master plan, as well as we have a specific master plan approved by council for the outdoor sports center site, which has some flexibility to it. But our focus is moving that through the process right now. And then in our CIP, we have some funding for the initial development of those areas, too, within the six-year CIP.

And could you just give a snapshot, too, for the public who are here, what annexing benefits we might enjoy from doing that at our Alcoa Sports Complex and the Butterfield?

Right now, we're limited on the uses we can do there, so then it would allow us to continue to build out additional sports fields, facilities, and those sorts of things in both of the areas.

Okay. Thank you. And then on public safety, you mentioned... strengthening police officer recruitment, onboarding, and retention strategies. Is there anything that you can share with us on that, as well as the technology systems? What exactly are we looking for? There's been lots of talk on the response. Is it the response time that we're looking for there, or what is it, the metric that we're trying to achieve? Okay, so first you asked about the first bullet here, the hiring of the office of safety for what is it that we're looking to strengthen the or what retention strategies on boarding and recruitment might we be looking at?

Got it. So for police, so basically what we need to focus in on is retention of the officers that we do have and then recruitment to make sure we stay fully staffed to the extent possible. And so just as you can see in many of these bullets, it's items that will help in those areas.

Are there any ideas that you can share with us that we've been looking at or discussing or talking about? Sure. I can ask Chief Palsgrove to come forward. And then, what was your other question is he's coming for the other one was on the performance metric and i'm wondering if that's for the response time or was there a different metric are you referring to fire fire okay got it.

Good evening Council shane Bowser we're going to please chief. Some of the retention and recruitment things that we are implementing is offering lateral police officers the same vacation accrual rate that they would receive for the amount of time that they've been a police officer, as well as allowing them to come in at a salary that's equivalent to their year served. And that's been effective recruiting tool, especially for the cities south of us, south of our county.

Okay, could you, would you expand a bit on that, Chief, for us?

What specifically?

So, for example, what are these other cities seeing that we don't have?

Santa Clara County pays more than the counties south of us, San Benito County, and so we're offering... a higher pay for better living conditions, although they do have commutes. We have a recruiting team that we put together as well that goes out and actively recruits at different police academies, colleges. They recruit friends, acquaintances, people that they meet through networks and other training classes.

Okay. And so when they're coming here, they're looking for... You're looking to have...

vacation at a certain level that they may already have or or beating that with vacation time is that what you're yes we get a certain amount of vacation accrual time based on years uh employed with the city of morgan hill okay and that's it sounds like different than in other locations each city has different recruiting uh tools that they use some offer signing bonuses uh Some offer other opportunities.

Okay. So maybe increasing the time, the amount of vacation that we're providing our officers is what one of the retention strategies you're looking to have or onboarding strategies.

Yes. Instead of a lateral police officer coming over to Morgan Hill and starting over from zero balances, they're offered an accrual rate that's equivalent to had they worked here for four years, they're getting that accrual rate.

And copying that. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

City Manager Turner, most of Council Member Martinez-Beltran's questions are for the work plan, which we haven't gotten into yet. That's why you weren't finding them when you were scrolling there.

Oh, got it. Okay.

Okay. So thank you. It's another tab up there if you do want to navigate.

Got it. So I assume this is what you're referring to. Yeah. Okay. So for FHIR, implement technology systems to accurately capture data for performance metrics. And so what we have on the department updates is related to items that are helping us get there. So the one that's highlighted has to do with a the two systems that help us track information. And so basically we've been talking about response times with fire. And so we have the Butterfield Fire Station. What we've talked about is that once that fire station has been operational for about a year, we'll look to establish some response times.

Okay. Okay, great. I appreciate that. That looks like all I had.

Very good, thank you. Any other questions or comments? Council Member Iwanaga?

Yeah, so I live right off of the August Creek Drive. And so I also wanted to thank Valley Water. I walked by all the work that they're doing. A lot of my neighbors, when the rains were very heavy, We got flooded out. So they've all expressed their joy and appreciation for what they see. And yes, it's been a hassle. The little school and church that I attend always got flooded. So they're also equally happy. So thank you to Chris and Valley Water for all the wonderful work they've done. I wanted to say that earlier. In terms of, correct me, Michelle, because you just said, yeah. Yeah. So not to ask too many questions on this whole department work plan, because I'm looking at these tabs. I don't want to ask you questions if you're going to.

No, no, it's fine on either one. So what I have pulled up here is the departmental updates. And so the ones that are highlighted are blue are ones that we've made accomplishments as far as the work plan goes. So either is fine to ask questions on right now.

It's just developmental services. If you if I'm I'm just kind of looking at the whole.

Where is it? Where is it? Sorry.

It's the whole ordinances to support economic mobility and affordable housing, including inclusionary housing, mobile home rents. Oh no, sorry, sorry.

That was someone.

Oh, no, develop and implement programs for downtown short-term parking. Sorry, business deliveries and valet parking. Where are we with that?

Yes, and I believe, Matt, we're going to cover some of that in the economic development update. So stay tuned.

Okay. All right. Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to read the wrong one. That was it for me.

Anyone else? I have a question. You had mentioned the solar panel program at the seven different sites reducing operational costs. By how much?

We anticipate about a half a million per year per year.

Excellent. Okay. Very good. Thank you. That's all I have. If you want to move on.

That's okay. I just wanted to comment on that as well. I would love for us to do some type of a campaign or, you know, putting out that we've done all of this work on the solar system project. And I know I've seen one post about it, but we've got seven different sites. That's something we should really be bragging about.

That's a good point, especially talking about the $500,000 savings.

Yeah.

Wouldn't be a bad post or two.

Our PIO is feverishly taking notes.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. So we will now switch gears a little bit here, and I'm going to pull up economic development. So if it's okay with council, we'll move on to our topical areas, and I'll ask Mr. Matt Mayhew to come forward and talk to us about economic development. We'll start with the key efforts. Okay.

Good evening, Council, Mayor, City teammates, Matt Mayhood, City Economic Development Director. It's nice to be with you this evening. We have really good positive news from the Department of Economic Development and Development Services. I'm going to run through these slides pretty briefly, pretty quickly. But our work continues to be embedded in focusing on the economic blueprint, focusing on jobs and revenue, and then obviously protecting and improving the physical sustainability of the city and the quality of life for our residents. Um, big news. This is, um, things you've been already hearing about and reading about. Um, most recently that Cochran technology center is fully leased. Um, it's been in the news that that is Archer aviation. Um, I can neither confirm nor deny with you publicly, but a public announcement from Archer is coming, uh, shortly. Um, that is 300 engineering aerospace, um, high, um, level manufacturing jobs coming to Morgan Hill. So we're very excited to see Cochrane Technology Center filled over the course of the next 12 to 18 months. Second, most recently announced is Heron Power coming to 800, 850 Jarvis. That's the former Young's Market warehouse and distribution center, 258,000 square feet. The total job count that really relates to Morgan Hill is about 300 to 400 manufacturing jobs, some varying skills from low skill to high skill. And they build an electronic device that really supports the electrical grid and supports just, Smart energy and clean tech, really. And then last is Mirror Mosaic has purchased and closed escrow on one of the Butterfield 5 Technology Park buildings, 82,400 square feet, and they will be bringing 75 jobs to Morgan Hill later this year. So just great announcements recently, looking at the total job count and total number of square feet that have been, that will be filled. Coming soon, Poppy Ranch Retail Center, that project is now entitled. Last night, the Planning Commission, their sign program was approved. They are now going through their permitting process for grading and building permits and working closely with them. And we're working diligently to get them to a October ribbon cutting in 2027. 760 Jarvis is an industrial building that's under construction. It's 44,000 square feet moving along quite quickly. So it's great to see one of those Murcia investment buildings coming out of the ground. And then last, but certainly not least, Tractor Supply Company. This is a project that candidly was stalled. And we have a new developer that has come in, California Gold Development Corporation. has come in is in escrow with evergreen village to take over this project 24 000 square feet with an outdoor display shopping facility so we're uh you know looking at sales tax generation trying our best to get this project to come out of the ground next year Couple policy initiatives that we're working diligently on is a sidewalk vending and food truck ordinance based on the request from the city council to come back with a policy, update the regulations for both sidewalk vendors and mobile food trucks that operate in the public right away. We had a significant meeting today. I know we were initially targeting September 16th as the city council meeting. We may be pushing that out a little bit to continue our work uh to make sure that we get that right when we bring it forward to you downtown parking strategy implementation of short-term parking we're going to implement in october 2026 i'm going to get into a little bit more detail in a later slide so just pause on that for a second And then last in the policy initiatives is our hotel incentive policy. We're looking to make some updates, really update the program guidelines within that program to make it easier for hotels to engage in that process, to make an application, but also To make sure that the city has a really good review process of what improvements actually qualify for a hotel incentive plan. So we're working with an outside consultant to help us make those updates and we're targeting November to bring that back. Now, short term parking, this is something that's been in our work plan for quite some time. Our goal is really to improve parking turnover. So people are not sitting in parking spots for six, eight hours at a time. Really parking turnover actually increases accessibility to our businesses downtown. So we're looking to convert 18 high demand curbside spaces to 20 minute parking. These are on the side streets off of Monterey. The implementation will include signage and curb markings. We're launching a campaign working with an outside agency to help put together some nice marketing pieces, and it's called Closer Than You Think, which will direct many of our residents and our visitors to park at BTA, to the courthouse, and to our city parking lots. We're going to update our parking map, distribute new parking postcards to our community and to our visitors, and then doing very targeted outreach. So there's going to be a whole social campaign related to this new short-term parking approach. And then this will occur, the implementation, during October. November and December will be giving courtesy citations notices, letting people know that there is now time. There is times parking in downtown. Now there is two hour parking. So we're working with the police department to do a 30 day courtesy notice period and then citation based enforcement will follow probably in January one. And then a little update. We spent a lot of time in economic development working hand in hand with the downtown business improvement district. The downtown Gateway Arch has met its funding goals. Installation is still moving towards a December 2026 date. You know, the P bid has raised to date about $285,000 of private money. to support the downtown gateway arch project sidewalk saturdays will continue through november on the second saturday of the month there's been two twilight markets this summer very very successful twilight markets and then upcoming this fall is the mohai food and wine festival put together by frank leal and appalachian safe trick or treat and a pumpkin market and that's put together by the Downtown Association along with the PBID this year. They're partnering together. And then Mary Morgan Hill, November 28th through December 17th. So a lot of things still happening on the event side. And that's my brief update of what's happening in economic development.

Very good. Great presentation. And I do want to say thank you to the economic development team for all the work that you guys have been doing. Sometimes these things take years to come to fruition. And during that period of time, there's a lot of. nasty comments out there about what you are not doing. But I'll say without those, again, the foresight of those councils before us who have the ability to think about those buildings out there on the east side of 101, we wouldn't be filling them with Archer today. And so I think it's actually, this is great news, good information. Thank you to your team for all that you're doing. Keep up the good work. Appreciate that. So I'll open up for any questions or comments, Council Member Iwanaga.

Yeah, thank you for that presentation. A couple of things. Can you just elaborate a little bit on the hotel incentive policy? I know you're not coming at us until November. What is kind of the direction you're thinking?

Yeah, so in, make sure I, I'm not sure I'm going to get my date right, but I think it's 2022 we put together initial hotel incentive program to support new hotel development and reinvestment from our older hotels. Okay. And there's a very specific program that we put together of what they would qualify and how the city would share increased TOT revenue with a new hotel or a older hotel that's done renovations that would qualify. And what we have, nobody has taken advantage of that program really because the economics of hotels right now. They're not, their TOT is not, risen because of post-COVID hotel economics, right? But there are hotels that are looking at making improvements. So the very first thing we need to do is update the baseline TOT number that we would use. We used an old date and what we want to do is kind of make it evergreen. So we want to update the date that we would use for the baseline. We also want to detail out the very specifics of what would qualify under a hotel renovation or improvement that would qualify for potential rebate money and how that would be determined and how the city would evaluate that, as well as better define an application process for hotels to take advantage of it.

Okay, thanks, Matt. And then my other question. So you mentioned the 18 high demand curbside spaces. And, you know, we're kind of, I guess I'm kind of curious is where you're thinking, how's that going to affect residents of downtown, right? And the more high density that we put down, because we're going to keep probably having that, how's it going to affect them?

Well, hopefully it frees up those high-turnover parking spots to improve access to our businesses downtown. Okay. Because that's typically the complaints we get from businesses that, especially folks who may have accessibility issues or they're dropping off someone who needs to be dropped off near our businesses, or we have people DoorDash or Uber Eats parking in non-parking zones. We're trying to create places for those people to park for a 20-minute period and then move on. So we're hoping to increase the amount of turnover in those 18 spots, which are really located on the side streets from 1st Street to 4th Street.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. That was my next question. Where exactly are you thinking about the 18 spots? So really what you're trying to encourage also is for people that are visiting maybe to use the VTA parking lots more. Is that what I heard?

That is correct. Our approach really is this campaign called Closer Than You Think. And really, if you look at a map and you actually use just a standard walking speed, not my long legs, but just an average person, you can get pretty much anywhere in downtown in about seven to eight minutes, a very short walk. So the campaign is closer than you think.

Okay. Thanks.

Council Member Liebers.

Great report. Thank you. Thank you to the whole department. I know it's a group effort. I have one question. One of the things you were talking about is vendors. Okay. A sidewalk vendor. Okay. Tell me what that is because I know it's not the third street when we have the open vendors. Okay. What other vendors are on the sidewalks?

So the ordinance we're bringing back will deal with vendors who typically have push carts. They might be a flower vendor who sets up. It might be somebody who... selling any type of food on the sidewalk. The state allows this type of businesses to occur. And what the city council directed the city staff to come back with was we typically had guidelines that kind of told people how they could operate both sidewalk vendors and food trucks. And what we're coming back with is an ordinance that is more specific as to how and when they, how and where they can operate as it relates to health and safety.

Okay. Would that also include like, let's say a guy sets up a guitar and starts playing and just has, you know, a box to throw money in, you know, is that a vendor? I mean, he's not really, well, I guess he is selling his song, but it's more on a tip thing.

That's called busking. And we have nothing that prevents anybody from doing that.

Okay, good. All right. Thank you.

Marilyn has a guitar. She's going to break out. Let's do it.

And then a quick question on the parking. Do we know how much extra work this is going to add to our police department or?

We don't, and that will be part of the evaluation period. We have worked with Chief Palsgrove to develop a plan for initial enforcement. We've had lots of discussions about what that may look like, and we'll be evaluating what the enforcement effects are really longer term. I mean, if you go to other cities, such as Los Gatos, you know, they've invested in a license plate reading vehicle and, you know, officers, not officers, but dedicated, you know, staff that give out parking tickets. I don't think we're to that degree or parking enforcement, but we'll see how it goes initially.

And then my other one, again, about parking, I know that Giorgio's is closed on Monday when they lock off their parking. Have we approached them to see if maybe they would be open to letting us use that extra parking on Mondays?

Yeah, unfortunately, that's a private parking lot that's privately owned, so they can gate that off, and they have the right to do that.

Thank you. And by the way, you guys are doing a fantastic job. Thank you.

Thank you.

Matt, on the side streets where we're going to be, I mean, there's a lot of parking on side streets, and I think one of the challenges that our homeowners who live on those side streets face are the vehicles that they are trying to park in front of their house or at garbage nights. It becomes a real challenge. Is there a way of working with them on that and somehow providing opportunities for them?

Yeah, well, we're not doing any 20-minute parking zones in front of any residences. These are on the corners closest to Monterey. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you.

So the questions I have, Council Member Martinez-Beltran?

Thank you, Mayor. So it sounds like you had a great summer and just took the whole summer off. I'm kidding. You guys were very busy and congratulations. It looks like a lot of great things came through. I'm super excited about the manufacturing jobs. It looks like that will be something I'm hoping that you will be with the whole manufacturing that you do every year. I forget when that is, November or October.

October is typically manufacturing day, manufacturing week.

Okay, so hoping there'll be something really big about that happening from here on, I don't know that we ready to go for that, but that would be a really exciting thing to, you know, focus on them bringing all those jobs 300 to 400. Correct. Okay, so will that be included.

Will what be included?

With the manufacturing day, how do you foresee that Heron will be included in that?

So right now, the timeline for Heron is we're expecting just their tenant improvement applications to come in early October. We don't anticipate them to be in manufacturing mode until 2027.

But I would imagine they would want to be included in this somehow, right?

We will begin those conversations. Again, we're in early stage development with these projects. I mean, the leases are signed, but we're still building relationships. And these are companies that are scaling up operations. So there's quite a bit of work to do, including the hiring of staff and tenant improvements and build outs.

Well, I think that'd be a great thing for us to offer, certainly to welcome. I also see with the parking, I wanted to ask if you could go in and really, I think this is gonna be something that many people are gonna be interested in the specifics on. So I'm gonna ask you to be specific on that. You said there was two hour parking and then there's 28 minute parking. Where specifically is the two hour parking? Where is the 20 minute parking? And then I tried to catch your dates, but I would like to get those again as far as when this parking courtesy occurs and then when the actual implemented fines will happen.

Yeah, so there is existing two-hour parking in downtown now, mostly along Monterey Road.

So this will not be additional?

This is not additional. This is existing two-hour parking. The 20-minute parking... It's designated 18 spaces. I've drafted a memo that I'll be sending to Christina probably tomorrow or Friday that details a little bit more about the timeline and the specifics of the downtown parking plan that we can include a map. that can show the city council where this is happening. But we can also come forward at a future city council meeting to detail out and share more information with you if that memo doesn't answer all your questions.

Can you share with the public where those 20-minute parking spaces are looking to be, those 18 spaces?

Again, it's going to be 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Street on the spots closest to Monterey Road. So no, there are no 20 minute parking spots on Monterey road. The reason is, is because you, there's a lot of traffic on Monterey. So you don't want to try to increase the pulling in and out.

Okay. Got it. And how far down the street does that go?

So you've got, it sounds like it's the first couple of parking spots, if not one, then two on both sides. Not necessarily, because there's restrictions on the way the city is built and the build-out that limits where you can potentially do this. We've worked with Public Works to identify the best spaces for the 18. Okay.

And is that both sides of Monterey?

Yes, there are both sides of Monterey.

All right. And can you tell us again, what is the timeline that you were looking to implement for that?

Signage and meeting mid to late October, communication strategy and outreach during November and December with courtesy citations in December and then enforcement beginning in January.

Okay. So if somebody gets a courtesy citation in December and then they get another one in January, that's really their first. They're not going to have to double up pay.

A courtesy notice is something you read and you look at it and go, oh, I think I shouldn't do this again. So, I mean, you can get a couple of courtesy notices, but once we start enforcement, enforcement starts. Yeah.

How much is the finance? Chief, do we know how much the finance is? Approximately $30 to $40.

Yeah. $43. $43. Okay.

And does that increase, let's say somebody has a first ticket or does that change?

I don't believe so.

What we should do is kind of hold off until we have the memo from Matt that I'll share with the council. And then if there's

um further questions we'll let you know we just we're not prepared with those details for you to see that's fine um the as far as the map i know i've been sharing it with us on friday not on friday no okay we anticipate that after it's vetted what's the estimated time our plan for rollout in october our plan to roll it out would be in october That'll be the first time that people will see the map.

That's when the parking will be laid out. Yes, that is correct.

And then when will the courtesy notice start right after that?

Shortly thereafter.

I would suggest that we share that maybe with the public sooner because I think we're going to feel quite a bit on the parking and it might be helpful for the public to know in advance so that we can actually do the courtesy notice and then move to the state.

All right, very good. Council Member Levers.

Just a quick question regarding parking. The businesses downtown along Monterey, for the most part, their employees are told not to park on Monterey. Is that correct? Is that the responsibility of the business to, I don't want to use the word enforce, but to make it mandatory they not park there. How do they handle it?

Yeah, I don't think you can make it mandatory. If there is improved enforcement on two-hour parking and on 20-minute parking, that will help. But part of our campaign is also educating employers and businesses downtown. to encourage their employees to park either in the downtown parking garage, a city parking lot, or the VTA or the courthouse parking lot. That's part of our campaign is to educate businesses as well.

Okay, just as long as they're in the loop, because I have actually seen employees of a certain restaurant coming to work for their shift, and they're in a parking spot for that restaurant. Yeah, so. you know, they're going to be there, what, six, eight hours, maybe? I don't know how long a shift is, but they're going to be there a long time. So, like I said, that responsibility falls on the merchant or restaurant, and they will be informed to, you know, remind their employees not to use that public parking.

Good. Thank you.

Please.

Thank you. On that note, was there a survey that was done with businesses, and if so, when, on parking specifically?

We've been working on short-term parking since the lane reduction conversations in late 2021 and 22. We surveyed businesses back then. I think we did an additional survey in 24. Yeah.

Okay, and do they know that this is coming in October?

We're starting our communication, our outreach. Again, we're working with a PR agency to put together a full campaign to make sure that we're communicating the where, how, what, and when.

And just to elaborate on that, in September, we'll start the campaign, everything from working with the downtown PBID to the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Association. We have our 411, our e-newsletter, plenty of education between September and when it's actually implemented.

I guess my question is more about are we informing them? My question is, are we reaching out to them and asking them feedback on their thoughts on short-term parking and parking challenges downtown.

We've had many businesses ask for short-term parking for folks with accessibility issues, for DoorDash or Uber Eats, for drop-off. We've had lots of requests for that.

Okay, but have you shared this plan with them?

We have not, other than we've communicated to the Chamber of Commerce, we've communicated to the Downtown Association, we've communicated to the PBID that we are working on a short-term parking plan. And we've been communicating that for 18 months to two years.

Right. In general. But not the details that we have now talked about.

That's what we're going to do in September.

Okay.

The other thing I wanted to look at was the hotel incentives. And the hotel incentive policy, this is going to be for existing hotels only?

The majority, well, the majority of the updates that we're looking at are for existing hotels, but within the plan, new hotels are within the incentive plan currently, yes.

Okay, so if somebody has a current incentive plan in place, are we looking to lower their TOT?

Nobody has an existing hotel incentive plan with this program in place.

Okay, so.

No one has taken advantage of the existing hotel incentive program currently.

Are we looking to lower the TOT requirement for the existing hotel incentive plans?

We are looking to change the baseline date that we would use in the hotel incentive plan to make sure it is evergreen. So it's the last 12 to 18 month period of TOT tax that's been collected. Currently, as it sits in the hotel incentive plan, it's a 2019, 2020 year. And when we got feedback from Kaiser Marston, When we asked them to review the hotel incentive plan, they said, you should change your baseline date and evergreen it. Make it the last 12 months, last 12 to 18 months. And the consultant we're currently working with told us the same exact thing.

Okay, so we are lowering the TOT rate.

No, I would not call it lowering. We are updating the baseline date years. That's not an accurate statement. No, it depends on it depends on it depends on the hotel performance.

You don't need to be defensive. I'm simply asking you if we are going to lower. The incentive rates or new hotels, because I have not spent the time that you have spent with this program and I'm trying to understand why. and what we are changing.

If I can jump in, please. So what you're hearing from Matt is a snapshot of some of the things that are coming forward in the future. And so one of them is the hotel incentive policy update. This isn't coming to the council until November. We just want you all to know that it's on the horizon. We have an existing hotel incentive policy in place.

That's correct.

As Matt articulated, the primary change is to change the baseline year by which we compare and uses the baseline for incentive agreements. We don't have any hotels that have said, yes, we want this hotel incentive plan. An existing hotel right now could come to us and ask for this policy to apply to them if they were to say no. do significant renovations. But right now we don't have any hotels that currently have a plan with us.

I got that. What I didn't understand is if we are going to lower the TOT requirement that we currently have. Sounds like that may be what we're doing. And that's all that I'm trying to understand.

If you're looking at- This isn't looking at changing any sort of TOT rates, no. The revisions that we're bringing forward have nothing to do with COT rates. I guess we take this offline.

Okay. Yeah, I would agree. Yep. Okay. Very good. Thank you. I think we're now moving on. Matt, thank you. You're welcome. For your time. We're going to move on to the housing update at this point.

All right, so now we have John Lang coming up. And John, just a couple slides for you. What we wanted to do, similar with some of the ED updates, is just to provide you with a look into the future, what's coming your way. And so with that, John.

Good evening, Mayor, members of Council, and the community of Morgan Hill, John Lang, Housing and Economic Mobility Director. As Christina mentioned, really the big focus is just to tee up the policy work that we will be bringing forward. But just as a friendly reminder, This is really focused on housing. However, I do want to remind both council and the community, the housing division is really three pillars. It's affordable housing, both ownership and rental. It's unhoused services and it's economic mobility. For the purposes of tonight, we're really focused on certain housing policies, but there's a tremendous amount of work our team is doing. Much like you heard Matt talk about the economic development team, there is a lot of lift that is going on. We have, just to daylight for you in the community, we have an affordable housing workshop starting September 1st in English. We'll have another one September 17th, all done in Spanish. To that end, we are also doing a tenant rights workshop with Project Sentinel in the month of September. I ALSO WANTED TO ALERT YOU ON THE UNHOUSED SIDE, OUR SAFE PARKING PROGRAM IS 100% FULL, COMPLETELY OCCUPIED. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN IN SOME TIME. AND THEN JUST ON A FUN NOTE, AN EXCITING NOTE, AND I HOPE COUNCIL CAN REALLY APPRECIATE THIS AND OUR COMMUNITY CAN APPRECIATE THIS, THE ECONOMIC MOBILITY PLAN, THE ELEVATE PLAN THAT THIS COUNCIL ADOPTED A COUPLE YEARS AGO We were invited to go to Washington DC last week to celebrate and share the work that is going on in the Elevate program in front of the Economic Mobility Conference. We held the plenary session so we were able to present in front of the whole whole conference the good work that's going on morgan hill so there's a lot of good work that's occurring in this community and everyone should be very proud of it with that said i did want to tee up several policy things that we're looking to bring back to council by the end of the year for your consideration i want to preface a lot of this is being driven by two things the first is As part of a grant agreement we got from ABAC-MTC, Association of Barrier Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, we received a grant associated with transit-orientated communities. This grant requires us to adopt or modify existing policies. Why this is important, this is the hook. We need to have certain policies in place to be compliant with transit-oriented communities. That compliance allows the city to then still have access to OBAG funding, which is transportation funding. So there is a hook to this. So what we're looking to do is bring back some policy changes within existing codes. So you will see on the slide, there are several sections where we're actually just updating our code. We have these codes in place. We're trying to bring them in compliance with the guidance of MTC and ABAG. which subsequently will allow us to continue to compete for transportation funds. So that's the background to this. So the first policy we're looking to bring back and we're looking to bring all of these back concurrently is modifications to our collusion area housing ordinance. This ordinance was adopted in 2018. It has been a very good tool for working towards affordable housing in our community and being able to provide a range of housing to our residents. We are looking to do some administrative cleanup. As this program continues to evolve, we find little hiccups, so we need to update our BMR guidelines. We're looking to get to a couple changes in the alternative section, which is how do projects align to the IHO, so we give them different alternatives that meet the compliance of the IHO. And then just a lot of cleanup items as we continue to implement these programs. The second one is a condominium conversion, and this is an update. So there is code currently, it's Title 1416, where we are looking to add more components about tenant relocation. So really what condominium conversion means is take an apartment building and converting it into ownership. But when you take an apartment building, you typically dislocate the residence. So we're looking to strengthen that and put tenant protections in there, including the first right to return. So for instance, if an apartment building was to go through this conversion process, someone that gets dislocated would have the opportunity to potentially buy. They would be given that first right. So it's trying to strengthen that. Once again, providing some tenant protection for members of our community. This is also trying to align to the ABAC MTC guidelines. Mobile home rents. I apologize. I just noticed it's title 5.36. So this is also existing code. We would be looking to update that. The big change here is really modifying the rent cap. Right now, mobile home park owners, under the code, you can increase the lot rent by by a percentage of CPI with a max. The MTC guidelines are suggesting a revision down in that slightly. So we need to do some outreach with our mobile home park community to be compliant. The other aspect of the mobile home rent modification is another issue where we effectively have rent control on mobile homes. but people can also sublease out their mobile homes. So even though the rent that they pay to the park owner is one, what they could rent their unit for is a completely different story. So these are the kinds of things we're looking to bring back and clean up in our code. Mobile home preservation policy, this is 17.38. Really the important one here is this is taking a mobile home park land and converting it into regular housing. So once again, if that were to happen, how do you have tenant protections where you may be dislocating many mobile home park coach owners? So those are some of the changes there. And then lastly, making some changes as it relates to the Surplus Lands Act. That is a California state law that we are subject to if we have public land and we choose to not use the public land for public services anymore. what is our process? And that is something that we're also trying to align with the guidance of the transit orientated communities. So how are we going to do this? We have been working on developing drafts of this into some of the questions that were to Matt about like, what is this process? None of this is in stone, but we do have to hit certain requirements to be compliant with with ABAC MTC. So we will begin to daylight this with our community and what are these proposals. We'll be doing community outreach in September. We'll start to go through planning commission and that process of review. And our goal is to come back mid-November to this body for adoption. That concludes my remarks. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, John. And congratulations to you and the team, Edith included with the Elevate program. program that we have in the presentation did in Washington, D.C. as you're doing great work. Thank you. Any questions? Councilmember Martinez Beltran.

Thank you. Congratulations to you. You did a phenomenal job. So I saw your posting and somebody else mentioned it to me from Cal City. So great job. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask you a little bit about this. The mobile home, as I had alluded to earlier, Could you educate me and tell me what came out of that meeting? There was some commission that was put together for the mobile homes that there was a question on what they were paying or the owner wanted to do, and how is that impacting what we're looking at now?

Thank you for the question. What you're referring to is mobile home park owners, the people that own the land, they have a right to petition for a hearing to increase rent above and beyond what is allowed in the code. But in order to do that, they need to demonstrate how their operational changes have occurred And the code requires this comparison that's done. So we did have a mobile home park petition for a hearing to increase rent. They had made some capital improvements in their mobile home park as a result of those capital improvements. were looking to adjust the rent up to reflect those capital improvements that all of the coach owners benefit from that does require hearing process we convene the planning members of the planning commission and the library arts and cultural committee to be the hearing panel and there's a process that goes through and much like a planning commission meeting the hearing body needs to make certain findings. Ultimately, what was decided was there were findings suggesting that those capital improvements do necessitate a rent increase above and beyond what the code would normally allow, and that was approved. So they approved a rent increase, and I apologize, I don't have the number off the top of my head of what it was, but it would be phased in over seven years.

Okay. And so does that impact what we're looking at here, 10.6 rents update and the rent cap?

So in the case of that particular example where a capital improvement is done, the modifications that we're proposing really don't address that. What it does address is any given year that Normally, a park owner could look at the consumer price index, and let's say the consumer price index went up 10%, just as a number. Our code basically says the maximum rent that they could increase under our code would be 7.5%. You couldn't increase it a total of 10%. which is what the CPI was, you can increase it by 7.5%. They're allowed to do that. No hearing, nothing like that. What this is suggesting is they could not increase that more than 5%. It gets capped. So that is one of the modifications that is being looked at. The other thing in terms of this cleanup and the hearing really led to this is This ordinance, this mobile home park ordinance has been in effect since the 80s and everything benchmarks back to the 1980s. Well, there have been successive hearings. We are missing some definitions in our code. that we have now got some history in terms of forgetting the right legal precedents. So we should add that information into the code so it's really memorialized, so it's not argued every time a hearing comes up of, well, we want to change this. So we have some cleanup items like that. That's what we're solving for.

As you're looking at that, is there any protection for citizens I mean, these are significant differences brands that you're looking at. So, and with a high proportion of senior, I mean, we've got some that are just senior.

The, it is. It is rent stabilization, but it is rent stabilization irrespective of a designation of senior or not. So this applies to all mobile home parks. So whether you're senior or not, the stabilization crosses all mobile home parks. So there is no difference or designation between whether you're senior or not.

And then moving to a 5% cap rate, will that increase rents for seniors? Are the residents there? I understand you're trying to keep them from having arbitrary rates, but will that increase their...

There's a balance here. One, a park owner has a legal right to get a fair return. They have a right to that. Our code actually says that. It does allow them to increase the rent every year should the consumer price index go up. But it's capped. We'd be looking at lowering that. So the amount of rent increase that they could do most likely will not be as much as they were able to do in the past. But they are allowed to increase the rent. And we need to kind of still keep that. That's been institutionalized. They are entitled to a fair return, as the code says. So it would just reduce the amount of increase that could actually occur.

Okay.

Go ahead. So in terms of mobile home parks, so what would stop, like say I owned a mobile home park and you come at me with this new policy, oh man, I can only raise it till whatever. What stops me as an owner of then saying, you know, when I'm done with this little mobile home park, I'd like to turn it over to high density housing. And could you, I mean, is that possible?

So you're now getting into the mobile home preservation policy. So we're talking about a change in the rent stabilization. That may cause someone to have a different opinion. The mobile home preservation policy, there are requirements in that today that don't allow for the immediate flipping of land. We're looking to strengthen that as well, which is to say if you're going to do that in flipping land, the new owner, if you will, would be required to pay tenant relocation. So that's a cost. That is a true cost to someone that would be taking on that. Sometimes that cost, if you're paying three months of future rent, over 100 units, that can be a very significant cost. And that might be a deterrent to flipping the property.

I didn't know that we had that. Thank you.

Councilmember Lieber, is there anything? No. All right. Very good, John. Thank you for your presentation.

I do have some other questions, but I want you to go right ahead. I want you to ask about the safe parking. You said that it was completely full, and I'm wondering what you think that that signals. Does that mean that there's more need for that, or what is happening? And I ask because we had, I think there was something that came through to all of us that it wasn't being used or something, then we got that corrected. And so that's what I'm trying to understand.

So the... It's a very good question. I wish I had a very eloquent answer for you, and I don't, which is I will tell you in the last couple months, myself and my colleague, Crystal, we have seen a large increase in the number of calls. One of the things that happened in July timeframe, and this happens every year, but it happened in July, the area meeting income numbers are published by hud then published by the state of california those numbers allow us to figure out what red caps are and based upon that that's when you start to see rents change and so many people are seeing rent increases because they am i changed that is all legal But those changes are occurring. So we've seen a lot of people getting rent notices saying we're increasing it by X dollars. I can't afford that. We also have a fairly significant senior population here. We are seeing more calls from our senior community where rents are going up. they can't go up double digits. There is a cap. But they're going up faster than changes in security benefits and things of that nature. And so there's this pinching effect that is happening. So we are seeing more inquiries of my rent is going up. I need to find... a more affordable solution. So we have seen an uptake. But the other thing with safe parking is we're also trying to solve people that are unhoused and getting them into some type of stable housing. So you have people that are being kind of pushed out with rent. but we're also trying to solve members of our community that don't have stable housing. And so there's kind of this rush to this asset, and right now it's full. It ebbs and flows, but it hasn't been full like this in quite some time.

Okay. Thank you for that. There's also, you talked about the Surplus Land Act, and I am wondering... What is our, what is the process with that? Or how do we, would we be forced to sell with that? What does that mean for us? And I've heard this talked about in bed as well. So I'm trying to figure out.

Sure. So surplus land, as I said, it's a, it's a state law and it's been around for some time. So one example of this would be, we have a campus here, we have city hall, we have council chambers and we have a library here. Let's just take, for example, we no longer need the parking lot behind or by the library. We decide there's no use for it anymore. We wanna do something else with it, but not do it as a public use. This body would have to make a declaration that we want to surplus this land. Under the Surplus Lands Act right now, this is one of those changes in state law associated with housing. You first have to make that property available for potential affordable housing. You go through a process You have to get it through that process. You set terms. And there's a whole process. This policy would be outlining exactly what we do and the process will follow for doing this. And you make a determination to say it's surplus. You go out to the market and say, it's an acre. This is what we'd want on the site. If someone meets our proposal, we have to negotiate in good faith over 60 days. If there's a proposal, we enter into agreement. However, if we go through that process, And we negotiate in good faith and it doesn't work out. The city then, if we chose to, and I'm being very absurd, we could say, let's build a hotel and we can make it a commercial use. But the first requirement is you have to make it available for affordable housing. But it takes an act of this body to deem we no longer need this parcel. So we have a whole inventory of all of our land. Most of our land is right away. It's roads. We do have some parcels. We have this parcel operates as city facilities. We have a police department. So, but we do have land. And some of these pieces of land, maybe we designate a surplus, but once again, that's a decision by the spot. So we, to be compliant. we basically say we'll follow surplus land and we will do these things to comply with surplus land. That is the policy we would be putting out.

At what point do we have to designate the surplus land?

It's when it's determined that the land is no longer being used for Bay City purpose.

Okay, so there's no requirement that... Do we have any that we need to look at?

We do have land. Right now it's all being used for a public purpose. So until we decide it's no longer a value or not, sorry, wrong term, it's no longer needed for any city purpose. That is a conversation we need to have with council.

Okay. And then just for ABAC and MTC grant funds, I appreciate that. And I'm glad that we've got some of that for specific plan and looking forward to learning how to leverage that more. So thank you very much.

Thank you, John. Appreciate that. We are now going to move on to emergency preparedness in the city of Morgan Hill.

Great. All right. Our next topic is emergency preparedness. Jennifer Ponce, Emergency Operations Coordinator, is coming forward. And so the purpose of this is to provide a presentation with an update on what our office is doing. And we'll kind of end with what council's role is in the event of an emergency. With that, Jennifer.

Good evening, council members, mayor, and my teammates and community members. As you can see from the Morgan Hill OES logo, there are four phases in emergency management. I'm going to touch lightly on what we're doing, just so that you're all aware of the efforts that myself, my team, your team, and the community members are have to minimize the effects of a large-scale emergency. So when you look at emergency management, you look in terms of preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation.

Let's see, I'm getting used to this here.

So preparedness is a citywide responsibility. All of us, all of our teammates, And not sure if you're aware, but when our full-time teammates start with the city of Morgan Hill, they become what's called a disaster service worker. They take an oath. We encourage them to make sure that their family and their neighbors are okay. But we do rely on them to help us in the event of a large-scale emergency. So each of our departments in the city has one or more teammates that are involved in our Emergency Operations Center team efforts. I'll talk a little bit about that. But I want to let you know that we follow what's called the Standardized Emergency Management System. And that came out of the 1991 Oakland Hills fires, for those of you that remember that. And that started the way that California coordinated its emergency response. Then, unfortunately, nationwide, we had 9-11. And from that, under President Bush's presidency, came the National Incident Management System. So we are following systems that are nationwide. We're not making this up as we go along. They're best practices. And they're also required for us to get reimbursement following what it requires in a large-scale emergency. So I'll talk about that a little bit. So, of course, we have field response. That's our everyday emergencies, what's going on in the field. And that's going to be our police, fire, community services, and other field-based organizations. We have what's called an emergency operations center. I'll talk a little bit more about that. But your city teammates and some volunteers train regularly. We know what we're doing. We work to a general set of objectives each emergency day. and we get to work. We do rely heavily on volunteer organizations. I'll talk a little bit about CERT in a moment and our amateur radio group. And then we partner with the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Management, our faith-based organizations here in Morgan Hill, the Morgan Hill School District, American Red Cross and outside resources as needed. We have really great partnerships with those in our community. Sorry about my little control here. So this is a lovely picture of Morgan Hill before a large scale event when things are calm and going well. And so how do we prepare our community? Yeah. You want to, we want to prepare upfront. We want to know what we're doing. We want to form relationships up front. So we're not wasting our time when the big one hits. Right. So you've heard me talk before about our community emergency response team training. We've trained, I was thinking today, it's probably close to about 500 community members. Now it's a free training. We run three to four trainings a year with our partners in Gilroy emergency management. It's free, it's 20 hours. It covers fire safety, life search and rescue, communications, damage assessment, disaster psychology, and medical operations higher than your standard type first aid. So these are our community members that are really getting a great solid training They get together at the very end over at our bus yard where we have a large cache of supplies and they practice their hands-on skills. And we do this in conjunction with the police department and the fire department. So it's a partner effort. We do have a program that's called Listos and that is designed to reach our Spanish-speaking residents. And it is a short presentation on disaster preparedness. It is on our city's YouTube channel. I hope that you're all familiar with that and what we have under Office of Emergency Services. And we also do lease dose presentations upon request. The Do One Thing program, which you can see on my slide, is a 12-month approach. We thought that we would offer something to the community to slow things down a little bit and let people watch a series of videos, one each month with their family members. And so by the end of the calendar year, With the idea being that they are ready and they have strengthened their readiness as a family and their resilience to whatever the large scale emergency will be. And then we do a lot of presentations as requested. So how is our community going to know? How are we going to interact with them? How are we going to tell them? what the emergency is, what they want, what we want them to do, what we need them to do. So in terms of emergency communications, the two big takeaways from this presentation are that every community member should register for Alert SCC, and that is by going to alertscc.org. That is a County of Santa Clara emergency alert system. When we, the team here, has an emergency, we want to get out to our community. They're going to receive it, if they're registered, by text, email, or phone call. And so folks go online and they register their emergency information. We do not overload them with things like grades coming up. We call them when they need to listen and they need to take action. And we also follow up with a conclusion to whatever that emergency is and whatever those recommendations are. Another wonderful way that we communicate during an emergency is our PIO team through our 411 weekly that we have a great audience of folks registered to receive those emails. And Michelle and I and her team during emergency activations have utilized that system quite a bit with quite a bit of success also. So two takeaways for our community members sort of make sure that they're engaged and signed up to receive those alerts. So we do have redundant emergency communications that you wouldn't be aware of here. My office and emergency operations center is over at the police department, and we do have some redundancy there. We have an EOC to EOC radio network that we practice every month, which with the other EOCs in the county. And we have a couple of satellite radios. And also we have a wonderful presence, as you know, on social media. And I want to remind the community to follow, you know, not only the city of Morgan Hill, but the police department's Facebook page, our community emergency response team has a Facebook page as just the fire department. So those are, you know, really important ways to be engaged during an emergency. We do have a wonderful group that I'm very proud of, of amateur radio operators. Back in the day, they were known as ham radio operators. And you used to have to know Morse code to get your license, but you don't anymore. And these folks, just as early as last Saturday, were practicing out in the field. Sometimes you see them, but it is a communication method that does not fail. And we have a team to be very proud of for sure. So let's see. I'm failing at this remote control. So let's talk about some of the facilities that we have in the city and how they become assets during a large-scale emergency. The CCC and the CRC have been approved by the American Red Cross to be opened as emergency shelters. We have teammates that have been trained to run emergency shelters. You may recall, some of you that have been here for a while, that years ago, the Red Cross has said to us, it is their intent to be here in open shelters, but if they are overwhelmed, it is up to us, the city. So our teammates, we have a great team that is trained, city teammates and CERT members. We also have eight faith-based organizations in Morgan Hill that are outfitted to set up as shelters, and they are engaged and meet quarterly with us. So it's a great network that we have there. We have a great... relationship with the Morgan Hill Library. You're probably all aware that when the temperatures get hot or cold, they help us out by opening their doors to community members to come in and seek shelter during inclement weather. This is always a funny one. You can see my bottom bullet there. We do have a dog park. And if we have a big event, people want to bring their pets with them. So we do have a plan, believe it or not, to use the dog park to house animals. The Red Cross does now allow pets to come into shelters, but we have this as a backup plan.

which is great.

So when you think of hazards in Morgan Hill, there's things that we are very, very aware of, and then there's hazards we cannot predict. We've got to plan for all of them. And so that emphasizes what I like to call an all hazards approach. We have to keep preparation in our community simple and straightforward so people aren't confused, right? So we know those four bullets on top. We know that we're at risk from wildfire, earthquakes, flooding, Power outage, communication outages early as last week, right? And so I've got some areas highlighted here that we plan for ongoing throughout the year. Let's see if I get the right bullet here. So when we have a large-scale event that overwhelms the first responders in the field, that means they need resources, they need support to succeed to a big event. We activate our Emergency Operations Center. And I want to let everyone know that we do have a backup plan in case we can't use that EOC. We have a backup plan that is out of the flood zone. So I will assure you of that. And our team goes and practices at that location. So when we activate our Emergency Operations Center, our city manager, as you can note in the Muni code, becomes what's called our Director of Emergency Services. Her backup is Chief Palsgrove, and they both lead the efforts in the EOC as we bring everyone together to coordinate the resources needed out in the field for what are always our objectives. minimize loss of life, loss of injury, loss of property damage, and get our vital services up and running. That never differs regardless of what the emergency is. That's always what we care about most. So, I thought it'd be interesting to talk to you about some recent EOC activations that we've had that you might not be aware we've come together to manage. The SCU lightning complex fire was in conjunction with our neighbors over in Santa Cruz. At the same time, we had quite a bit of activity going on. We had mandatory evacuations over here. We opened up temporary evacuation sites and tested quite frankly, most and all of our systems that we have in place. And I have a wonderful video of the folks up at Holiday Lakes and Jackson Oaks listening to the emergency alert when we said you need to evacuate. We have a video of them getting in their cars and driving down the hill and doing what they were told, which is really what I want to emphasize. We will only tell folks what they need to do when it's really, really important and life-saving. Of course, public safety power shutoffs we're aware of. and COVID-19 and several storm events we've experienced. So of course, there's a recovery phase in emergency management. The emergency's over. What are our goals? The goal is simple, not just to replace what's lost, but to rebuild better than before, hardening our target, and making our community stronger than before. So the last bullet mentions reimbursement costs from the federal government. We are following the systems I referenced before to a T so that we can ensure reimbursement for the extra costs that we incur during emergencies. The two of them that come to mind, our finance department is fantastic at this. In 2023, you might recall, we had some earlier than normal winter storms, and we were able to get $433,000 in reimbursement from those storms from our finance department's hard work and all the documentation practices in our emergency operations center. And then in the SE Lightning Complex fire, we got $200,000 back. So... It's very helpful to our restoration. What do you need to know? Here's what you need to know. You need to know that we have an all hazards approach. We are planning for anything and everything to come our way. Preparedness is built through planning. It's built through relationships, again, that we want to make before these emergencies and that resilience is a long-term effort. Whoops. So this is an important slide for all of you that, I think I have one more before then.

Sorry about that.

So in the event we activate our Emergency Operations Center, likely we are going to proclaim a local emergency early and often. It is to our benefit to proclaim early. And that would involve all of you coming together to ratify the proclamation and to review it every 14 days. So that's important for you to know. And to terminate that emergency at the earliest date. So there are others that we could put into place other than the local emergency that could be curfew, suspension of land use and zoning applications, things that we want to slow down or put in place to protect the community. And your Brown Act requirements do continue through an activation. So guess what? We really care about all of you, but we don't want you to come to the Emergency Operations Center during an activation. And this is because we are going to need your help getting our message out to the community. Your direct information is going to come right from the director of emergency services, legal or the PIO team. And you can bet that you are our responsibility to keep you up to date with the most current, accurate and verified information. So that's all I had to share with you tonight. I'm very proud of the volunteers in our EOC team. And I'm grateful that you are interested to listen to what we have in place. And thanks for being patient with me and this little arrows here.

No, you did a great job. Thank you for that presentation. And again, I think to you and your team, we appreciate all the work goes on behind the scenes preparing for a situation that we hope never occurs. But thank you for that. I'll open it up for any questions or comments.

Okay, first here.

Anybody, if not?

Just to clarify, so you mentioned two radio towers. We had a gentleman coming a few months ago from the Jackson Heights area. They were requesting things like a radio station. What is the difference between what, say, what they were bringing up to your radio towers? What is that communicating with?

I don't remember saying radio towers, but we have an amateur radio group. We have an EOC to EOC radio network. We have satellite radios. And I know that the folks up in Jackson Oaks and Holiday Lakes were greatly impacted by the evacuations of the SCU lightning complex fires. And so they're very tuned into how important it is to get quick information. And There are radios or excuse me, the radios that you can get that the National Weather Service broadcasts across. They're very inexpensive. and they play weather alerts, which would be similar to if our emergency operations center were to say, this is the Morgan Hill Emergency Operations Center with an emergency message, the areas in Jackson Oaks that need to evacuate are. And so we give very brief messages. So I'm pretty sure that's what they were referring to. They've been very instrumental in getting awareness. up into their community.

Okay. And I apologize for mishearing the radio towers. So the other thing was the alert CC registration. So you're saying that when we go online, we can get registered, but the people who are not registered, how is that going to affect them? Can you just elaborate just a little bit more on that?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. One of the most unpopular things of my job is telling people that they are responsible for themselves when it comes to emergencies. Our fire law and EMS in big events is overwhelmed with priority calls and they're making very difficult situations. Those of us at home need to be ready. We need to take care of ourselves with emergency kits. We need to listen to alerts. If you're not getting those alerts, if you don't sign up, you're going to need to be proactive in ways that you do seek your information. Neighborhood, AM radio stations, creative other ways to get your messages. In the lightning complex fires, we actually went door to door in the police department and knocked on doors. So it comes down to neighbors helping neighbors. I hope that helps.

No, that does help. Thank you.

Okay, you're welcome.

Very good. If there's no further questions, we'll go to public comment. I think she did too. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, please go right ahead.

Thank you, Jennifer. That was great. Thank you. I love what you've done with CERT since seeing you come on. And I would just love to learn a little bit more about you talked about that you do a one thing 12 month approach. So this is something once a month. What is it that you guys do? I think I may have seen something where you You ask people like, you know, do you have a bag ready? Or I'm not sure, but what is the venue that you use?

Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm not sure. Well, if you go on the YouTube channel tonight, City of Morgan Hills YouTube channel under emergency services, you will see do one thing. And what we did is we took one topic each month, the first year that we implemented this. So each month has a different topic and they're short videos. I think the longest one might be 20 minutes. that family members can sit around the dinner table together and watch one episode a month, if you will, and then work on that preparedness effort together as a family with the idea being at the end of the year, they're more prepared.

So we talked, go ahead. No, we shared the do one thing in the 411, we rolled them out. And then in the PowerPoint, the do one thing is a hyperlink. And so you can actually hit that and then go to the videos.

So that's where I've seen it in the 411.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. But we do, I will just in closing, encourage everyone to visit ready.gov. That gives community members a list of what supplies they should have in their go bags. You should have a go bag in your car. You should have a go bag at home. Like me, I've got one under my desk at work. And being ready is really important personally for yourself personally.

and your family.

So the go bag is not like a softball bag or you want to know what you want to know what, guess what? One of my go bag in my car is my gym bag. So it can be, you know, pair of tennis shoes, you know, whatever those things are that you need to be comfortable to get through, um, a period of time.

Okay, well, that's awesome. Do you do anything with schools? I heard you talk about faith organizations, and thank you to those. Shout out to them who are doing that, the eight groups. But what about our schools? So many people find that as a safety place. And so I'm wondering, are any of those designated as shelter spaces? And then are we doing any of this, do one thing, like do you do presentations?

Oh, yeah, you bet. So to answer your question, During the lightning complex fires, we used sobrieto high school as an emergency evacuation point, not a shelter, but a point where people could go seek refuge, get more information. I don't know if you remember that. We have a wonderful. Relationship with the school district, the superintendent reports into our emergency operations center when we activate.

Yeah, she's great.

Yeah. The person who oversees the transportation at the bus yard has a seat in our emergency operations center as does their facility person. Occasionally I get asked to come speak, you know, it's a kindergarten. We've held a team serve before. So it's really on an as needed and as we're asked.

Did that answer? Yeah, that's fantastic. I love it. And then you talked about AlertSCC.org. You said by text, phone, or email, do they... So when you sign up, do they send it to all of those vendors? Do they just send it to one? How does that?

Great question. I love that question because they used to send it to all of it. Now, so you sign up with text, so your cell phone, your email, right? And home phone. How many people have a home phone anymore? Not many. So what the system does is whatever it pings first, whatever gets caught first, it only goes online. to that. I'm finding statistically it's going to sell the text first. The issues with texting is there's a limitation. So we do have a team on our emergency operations center. It's an emergency call center. So we do direct, we do activate that center and we direct the community members to a seven-digit phone number where they can call and get a live teammate who might say, you know, hello, and the community member can say, I live at 123 Main. Do I evacuate? I wasn't sure. And there's a little bit more time that can be spent with them other than overwhelming our 911 system.

Yes. Okay. Awesome. I'd also like to just understand a

Oh, great. So Listos came out of Cal OES, California Office of Emergency Services. So it is run through the state and it's a program that we have tapped into and we've implemented. So we use their program. Listos is aimed at Spanish speaking population, but we do also offer it in English because it's condensed and we have gone out to like Jasmine Square, a couple of different apartment complexes. It has a more, I'm trying to think of the word right now, but a more community feel where the whole family is invited. We might have cookies and coffee there and have giveaways like flashlights. And so it's a softer approach. So we have different type of approaches. We do also offer CERT in Spanish when requested. Okay. So, and we also have the interpretation services like Michelle's using here today on the screen.

So, the CERT program in Spanish, does there need to be like a baseline of people, a certain number of participants in order to do that?

You know, we never have, there's always an interest in CERT. I've never seen under, say, 25 people sign up.

Okay.

Less than that, but... To answer your question, I mean, I don't think if we had under 10, we would probably do something unique, maybe hybrid version.

Okay. We've done in the past also. And so the regular CERT program is a 20-hour program. That's correct. The least dose program as well.

It usually takes about two and a half hours. Okay. But all of these programs can be condensed to meet the needs of, you know, the consumer or the audience, if you will.

And I also wondered if that was folded into, I know that we now have the community for the police department. Yeah. Is listos part of that?

I failed to mention that part of our volunteer response is our volunteer and policing along with certain amateur radio. And we have offered the volunteer and policing program, which is our community academy in Spanish also. Awesome.

Okay. And finally, I just want to thank you for the work you've done. I have had people tell me that they've taken the CERT class. They feel that it has a lot of value to it. And I probably need to watch some of your videos.

Great. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Oh, sorry. One last question. Remind me for the 200,000 that we got back, was that federal or state? Federal.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Very good. Thank you for your presentation. I'll go to public comment.

Yes, Mayor. I have a speaker in person, Elizabeth.

Right over here, ma'am.

I do. Yeah. Once you start. So I'm freezing, so don't be distracted. My name is Elizabeth Stone. I started living in Morgan Hill a little over a year and a half ago. I moved up here because I got cancer and had heart disease and moved into the extended stay hotel and was able to have lunch every day at the senior center. And then I learned about the churches that Monday through Thursday also have free meals. So at that point it felt very welcoming and it was really great that there were a lot of support. I was not able to use safe parking because I had really radical surgery for my cancer and it was not that set up. There's no emergency set. There's no recuperative care throughout Santa Clara County. So this comment is not at all on this particular city. The entire county lacks medical respite or recuperative care services. So I was stuck becoming extremely debt-ridden living in hotels. And because I needed some sort of care, some safe place to be throughout the day, I could recuperate in a disabled bathroom. I was considered self-sufficient and also not eligible for assistance from any of the programs in the county. So I did learn a lot about people living in different motels because at a certain point I had to move out of there. The kind of commerce that happens in the Hobby Lobby, private parking lot in between Walmart and that hotel. I currently now live at the lodge and I'm really concerned about things that are going on there. really, really low morale, very antagonistic management, very low level of service. A lot of people, there's been two recent deaths. One was an accidental drug overdose that somebody knows about that nobody's coming forward and everybody knows who's dealing in the building. So that's disturbing. And, you know, behind HIPAA, a lot of information's not getting out. So, and now they're increasing our rent to the absolute maximum legally. They're allowed to, which of course is very difficult. It's all seniors living in the lodge. It's senior low-income housing tax credit building. So people are feeling not really seen, safe, supported. And I do want to say that your housing department's really on top of things, and I appreciate that. I really love the new newsletter. One of the things that I had heard about and I hope maybe kind of combines I'm looking at the time with the with the disaster thing is there's a lot of calls there. A lot of it's because people are using substances, but also because of the morale. But there's no way for first responders to like know who are the people that are going to get stuff if there's an emergency. So at one point, I remember hearing perhaps in a different county about some programs where they can track who is actually going to need to be carried out in an emergency. So I just really encourage that that's one of the things that you look into. And I'm very open to having further conversations up.

Elizabeth, thank you for that. I'm going to check. John, would you be able to do any follow-up with Elizabeth? You and I are talking. He's great.

He's great.

He is indeed.

I also would really just, like, I appreciate the questions and just bringing it, you know, when John maybe comes up with, like, oh, we need some support for this, like, there's people out there with lived experience that are like, please help us.

Oh, that's great. I appreciate that, Elizabeth. Thank you. Thanks for being here and commenting as well.

I have a speaker on Zoom, Mayor. They're calling. You should be able to unmute. There you go.

Good evening, City Council and staff. This is Doug Muirhead, Morgan Hill resident. I am very pleased that Madam Emergency was given the opportunity to provide this excellent overview. I have a small suggestion for the dog park as an animal shelter. This came as a surprise to me. Perhaps you'd like to put up a sign that says that would be its use during a large scale event. And you might also mention which animals you can accommodate and which you can't. County has a large animal care team. And I don't know if you have any relationship with them. My last comment has to do with identifying Morgan Hills hazards. As I said in my written comment, extreme heat and weather are not mentioned. It's not the rare occasional hazard like wildfire or drought or flood, but it is increasingly a dangerous situation for our residents. City's response to my written comment was we plan for all hazards, including extreme heat, weather, and those we cannot predict. I wish I could remember Yoko Taro's comment on predicting the future, but it slips my mind at the moment. But perhaps you could say a little bit about who has responsibility for the planning of the warming and cooling centers? Is that under Jennifer Ponce's department umbrella? Or is it provided someplace else? And maybe a little more about whether you're going to start working on more awareness about extreme heat. PSA County Public Health is running PSAs in the Morgan Hill Times. drink water, know the signs, all that. So the county and I are on board with extreme heat. And I'd kind of like to see the city be a little more. Again, congratulations, Jennifer. It was a great presentation. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Doug. And you got a thumbs up from Jennifer on some of your suggestions there. So yeah, thank you for those comments. Any other comments?

No, Mayor.

Very good. Well, that brings it back to the council. We appreciate the presentations by our staff and the updates on all of those departments. Thank you to the members of our community here to make comments and to listen in. That does it for our meeting tonight. We are now adjourned.