Shoreline Regional Park Community - Regular Meeting

All right.

I'll call the meeting to order at 6.01. On my phone. I think that's all.

6.01. Wow. We're on time.

Yeah. First call to order. Okay. Joe Medwin. Suzy Merhar. Lacey Rathbun. Yeah.

Vice Chair Bryant. Yes. And your sickles. Yes. And then absent excuses to to Thompson and Stephanie space.

Yeah. Yep. So next on the visual arts committee music minutes of April 8. I second that. And then we do a roll call. All in favor.

All in favor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then next is oral communications from the public. We have two people.

Raising their hand online. There are four people online. Two are in the atrium conference. Two additional attendees.

And then five is upcoming agenda topics. So that's for us too. I was just wondering when we get the art coordinator, we should have that as a

We'll have an update at our update section later. Okay, nice.

And then go to point six, unfinished business. 6.1, capital improvement program, public art project updates. So then 6.2 is visual arts committee fiscal year 2026-27 work plan.

No, we'll go through the CIP project updates first.

Okay.

Okay, so just a few quick updates. So Evelyn Park and Bill Chiquita Park are both still going through review and planning and engineering review. So the artists are working closely with the public works project managers to get their art projects fit. And for the Shoreline Boathouse, the artist Stephen Galloway, he just went and visited Shoreline with the city's biologist and walked around and was able to talk about and learn about different animals and plants around Shoreline to get his rendering started and start submitting that to the city. Yeah. So you've already seen Fernanda Martinez's mural, so it looks beautiful. That was done in March. And then Harumo Seto, we're still finalizing her schedule, but it sounds like it will be fall of this year, potentially in September, but we'll date once that's official. And then the Train Depot public art project. So we all know this has been done, but we did have the celebration on June 11th and it went really well. It was really hot, though. 97 degrees outside, but I think at least 50 people showed up. So it was really great attendance. People were really excited about the project.

The artist was there. The mayor spoke. We had multiple counselors there.

BTA. It was, yeah, very fun and exciting. Just quick update on the lobby gallery exhibitions at the CPA. So right now, the Center for Performing Arts is kind of evaluating their public hours. And so kind of as a compromise to being able to allow people to go in and see the exhibits, kind of get some special time with the art that's up on the walls. We're going to do one Monday evening per exhibit. That's the the evenings that are most available at the Center. And so we had our first open gallery hours with Yixuan Wang on June 8th. We saw about 30 people come through for the three hours that it was open, and she had a ton of friends come and visit, which was really nice. They did a little photo shoot in front of her art. And then we'll have the next The next gallery exhibition or open gallery hours is going to be Monday, July 27th, 5 to 8 p.m. with John Whitmarsh. His art, when you just look at it from the windows, it's huge. It looks stunning.

Oh, yeah, he's already up. Yeah, it's good.

I've been in there. It's nice. So open gallery hours means the artist is there.

Yeah, so for, well, it may depend, it may vary on the artist, but I'm seeing Shane Wang was there, John Whitwarsh will be there. So we're scheduling with the other artists for the future slots, but... Yeah, we're hoping that they can come and be there and just a chance to kind of casually meet with the artist.

But it's not a speech by the artist?

No, it'll just be within the lobby. We are still working on plans for two additional pilot artist talks. So at the second stage, like we did with Don Hirschman, that'll be, I think, planning one for the fall and early next year.

How were you advertising these?

So the first one, we had kind of a short run to get it started. So we shared it out to our artist registry network, the public art strategy subscribers, to our social media. So a lot of it is online. We're asking the artists to share it with their network. We shared it with the visual arts committee to share with your network. For this, I'm starting to send out invitations to our local organizations, to artist organizations, and we'll share it with the Community School of Music and Arts, the Freestyle Academy, all the different groups.

Would it be an idea to bring posters and distribute them on Castro? Yeah. With the stores there? Yeah. Because people are walking up and down there anyways. Yeah. Something else to look at.

Yeah.

Like one of those signs, right?

The standalone signs. Or just, you know, sometimes they have like posts, little posters in their windows. Yeah.

A lot of the businesses will, I know BookSync and East and West, they have specific slots for flyers, community flyers. Yeah. Those are the project OKs that I have. So are there any other questions or any public comments? No answers online.

All right. Then we go to the Visual Arts Committee Fiscal Year 2027 to work. Okay. So we had a discussion about the work plan two months ago.

So this is bringing back We're saying for a second time, the official recommendation to bring to the city council for their approval this fall. I'm just noting here all the accomplishments that we had this fiscal year. So we launched the public strategy, a huge, huge effort and a huge effort by the visual arts committee. And so we're really excited to have started that process and We selected, the Visual Arts Committee selected 10 artist exhibits for the Mountain View Center for Brooklyn's Hobby. The Ring Store Park mural by Fernanda Martinez was completed. The VVC formed an ad hoc committee to support the selection of the Train Depot project. We got the bollards done, the bollard beautification project. There was the pilot artist reception with Don Hirschman in February. And we saw a 60% increase in exhibit applications for the lobby exhibits. And I think that was through all of our partnerships and increasing our reach through different local organizations. And then just digital growth. We've expanded our social media engagement and have really seen an increase in artist following on the economic development social media pages. So the work plan is the same as it was presented last year. The only addition highlighted is that we added the, to recommend public art for the Public Safety Building and for the Thompson Mini Park. So those projects will be introduced to the Visual Arts Committee this fall. I think the Public Safety Building should be coming to you in September. I'm anticipating selection of the art next spring with another specific project that's added to the 2627 work. And there are no other changes. Last is ongoing work items are recommending that you are That's for you center for. Promoting this exhibit unity providing city council recommendations on the selection of our. Project we have coming up are the public safety. On many parts, collaborating with other city advisory bodies shins are those businesses. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And just preparing the new work plan that i'm the fiscal year 2627 work item is finalizing and initiating implementation of our strategy. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Here for the key milestones we kept it pretty simple the city council needs to adopt the strategy before we can get into more specifics on. HAB-Masyn Moyer- What those key milestones look like, but we included reviewing and providing input on implementation plan so once that's about that you know we'll. Any questions?

I have some comments. This is really focused on the fifth class, just for 26 and 27. And we may have one question up here. But given the word of no is going to milestones like you have in the strategy plan, some short-term projects. So I would expect that in 2027, you have some deadlines or plans to deal with the committee or for yourselves to maybe loose and bare by fall of 2026. Some milestones along the way in 2027.

Until the city council adopts the strategy, we don't necessarily want to identify exactly what those milestones are because what we present to them, they may end up changing some of that, the order of operations of things. Once the strategy is adopted, then doesn't mean we can't start those projects right away. They will be started because once it's adopted, we'll be under that specific short, mid, long term timeline. But as far as the work plan goes, it's not an adopted document at this point. And so the work items for Visual Arts Committee are to initiate the implementation of the strategy. Once that's adopted, you're identifying opportunities to mark the strategy's completion viewing and providing input on the implementation plan and timeline. And so that includes looking at those specific short term action items that the council does adopt.

That's why you don't want to put down now something in 2027. Because it's not yeah, if you want to work into it. And this is just starting fall 2026.

So this will start in fall 2026 and carry us through to the end of the fiscal year.

Right. Okay.

So it's inclusive of 2027. Right.

It's just because there's no date for 2027. It seems like we have no plan going forward. Mark. Yeah, I hear what you're saying.

And I think, you know, a lot of these, I mean, maybe we could say fall 2026 to ongoing if that helps to kind of make it feel like it's stretching into 2027. But we're assuming that we will initiate the strategy implementation starting in fall 2026. And then implementation will continue through the work plan. Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

Yeah, we'll be ready and eager to jump into that.

Oh, I'm sure you are. The document shows that we have a plan to go forward.

Yeah, I think that's good feedback. And I think you can rest assured that from a staff perspective, this is we initiated in fall and we continue through the end of the work plan.

Yeah. So we can add ongoing to that. Yeah.

Yeah, fall 2026, spring 2027, if it feels like that will capture it better. I think we just want to be careful that nothing is starting until council adoption.

Yeah. Anyone thinking of a comment? Yeah. Any comments from the public? All right.

Then we move on to 6.3, review of draft public file studies.

lisa smith, Presentation packets. So the presentation package, the large lisa smith, Is it lisa smith, Think it goes up. Yeah, it's kind of awkward.

That's the end. Like, I think that's fine. Oh.

OK, so I'm just going to run through the presentation. Afterwards, we'll take questions, like clarifying questions, see if there's public comment. And then for a great representation, we can go around, I think, and maybe have each committee member provide individual feedback to start. And if there's more be back after that, too. If you have more thoughts, we can continue on. And then just a quick overview. This is going to be a long discussion. So we'll go over the public art strategy development and talk about just the label of contents, how the strategy is outlined, community outreach results, the public art strategy findings. vision, mission, goals, recommendations, and action. We'll talk through how to look at and read the implementation plan in our next steps. The strategy development. So we initiated the project starting in June of 2025. This included looking at all the city's existing artworks, policies, funding mechanisms, analyzing the arts community public art strategy that was started to develop. And we went into community outreach engagement starting in September through February 2016. So this included public outreach, we did online and paper surveys, community workshops, pop-up free labeling, and a few different events, and a few different focuses. And then we received input from staff. We talked to staffing development, public works, community services department. We worked closely with all these colleagues to help look at the strategy in a way that made sure it met all of our various requirements and planning documents and got some really lovely ones. And then, you know, we've been working on drafting the narrative since March, taking all of our community feedback, the arts committees, drafted strategy, and all of our internal staff feedback and what we received. So looking at the table of contents, so the purpose of kind of how we outlined everything is to basically introduce the public art program today. We outline the different programs that we have, whether it runs through Visual Arts Committee or it touches, comes from the Community Services Department, different student or adult classes and workshops throughout the year. We talk about the process to develop the strategy, best practices around public art, and the community engagement process and results. And all of that takes us into the findings, the vision, mission, and goals, and the recommendations and actions, which are really the meat of the document. But it really, you know, if someone picked up the document, they could look at it and say, okay, this is where the program was at today or at the time they adopted this, and then here's where we're going. And then the appendices contain all the foundational documents. It has our current policies, the public art inventory, the more details on the best practices, and the different cities that we look to to benchmark, and then our implementations. So I'll quickly run through engagement because we have we've all talked through these numbers before, but it is really fun to see. So we've got over 700 people to participate in this included all of our surveys, people who joined our workshops, who stopped at the booths, people with us through the focus groups. There was over 2800 vision board stickers, which was really fun. 306 surveys collected, 206 map pins, and then we did 10 total events. This is part of our survey question. So what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Mountain View? So culturally diverse was the biggest one. Vibrant downtown, which if you walked through downtown before you came here, you could see how busy it is. Innovation and technology. And then where would you like to see public art and cultural arts programs? So downtown Mountain View. A huge amount of people wanted to see more art there. And then parks and trails and trance and stuff just followed. And then what type of art would you like to see? So murals was a big one, then sculptures and functional art. So what do you think the role of public art in Mountain View should be? Providing opportunities for people to experience art that enriches their lives, bring a sense of whimsy and delight to everyday spaces.

and then support the growth of our visual arts community.

So this is another slide that you've seen before, just how this outlines how we put the strategy together again. So taking all the community feedback and values, incorporating it with the Visual Arts Committee, their vision that you created, and then thinking about the practical application of everything. and how, you know, just making sure that everything aligned with all of our requirements. Okay, so for best practices, so this is just a little snapshot from the best practices section of the public art strategy. There is a, and you'll see in the implementation plan, or sorry, in the appendix, there's a larger best practices appendix that has much more detail for more cities than this too. But it just helps show where we're at in comparison to our neighboring cities. So we have, you know, will have one full-time employee, one full-time staff member, and it seems like we're kind of in line with that with other cities. We do have a higher percent for art and public projects, but where we're lacking is that percent for art and private development, and we're losing those foundational policies for maintenance, a specific policy around gifts of art and deaccessioning. Okay, so for the findings, so this is where we really tried to outline all the feedback and summarize all the feedback that we received. So we broke it out into two sections and kind of broke it out based on the two goals, which we'll talk about in a few slides, but The first goal is really around expanding public art opportunities. So the different findings that we have, ones around public art collection. So right now there are 122 artworks. Most of those are on private property. This section really talks about going from incidental art placement, just part of our CIP projects to more proactive strategic selection. And then community priorities for location and typology. So in this section, we talk about how, you know, as you could see in the survey results, Downtown Mountain View was a really big contender for where people want to see art. And transit areas were too. But in other conversations we heard people want to see more like functional art in downtown. We can have artistic bike racks or benches. Shading structures and having more diverse cultural themes as well. And then the next finding is around supporting the local creative economy, so this is really focuses on technical training, and this is something we heard in our artists focus group was just providing more resources and support for the artists community. making sure that they are just helping them understand how they can work with the city, what's the permitting processes, if they want to do art on private property, those different things. And we also heard that there is more demand for private murals or murals on private property, but people have... told us that the permitting complexities stop them from moving forward with that. So providing some type of support with them. And then opportunities for downtown art activation. So it's similar to number two, but we specifically heard from the Downtown Business Association and from community members too, that there's interest in art in the alleyways and the mid-block through ways. So there's more opportunity for those like or in unexpected places kind of in downtown and creating more fun placemaking options like the Bullards provide. And then more proactive placemaking. So again, just going more towards that strategic art selection and curation. So the second batch of findings is more focused on administration, funding, and policy. So first, looking at policy and procedural modernization. So as you saw in the best practices, that table, and as we all know, we're missing some of those foundational documents that help support more mature art programs. So around maintenance, conservation, deaccessioning, art donations. So just being able to standardize those types of policies will help support and modernize our program. The second finding is around streamlining procurement processes. So for lower risk projects like murals or temporary art or the bollards, bollard beautification project, Thinking of ways that those projects could be done, not through the same type of permitting process that may be a sculpture that requires engineering review or something has to be done. So creating different levels of procurement processes for different types of projects and different types of, this would also include insurance requirements for different types of projects too. The third is around centralized funding. So this looks at or talks about shifting from more site-specific funding, which is our current process through the Council Policy K-5. All of the funding is for the specific project to more of a pool model. So creating a fund where You know, maybe there's a project where it doesn't make sense to include art, but it is eligible. And so it does get that 2% funding. You could pool it and use it somewhere else in the city. So looking at ways to do that. And then thinking of how. Oh, yeah. And just being able to use it, then we could use that pooled funding to place art in areas where there's more of a need or there isn't, there's a lack of art. The report finding is about the prioritization of long term stewardship. So again, you think about all these different policies and how we're looking at funding for the city, it's just helping support a more long term sustainable program. So the vision and mission. So I just want to note, the Visual Arts Committee vision was a little bit different than this, but I think there was in the Visual Arts Committee public art strategy, there was no mission. There was only one, so we took some of the same content from the Visual Arts Committee vision. We got some specific feedback from the city council at the study session that they held in October 2024. And so the vision and mission that you see, it tries to encompass both of those things. So the vision, Mountain View is an arts destination with public art that enriches the city's innovative and creative culture and enhances the vibrancy of our diverse community. So this is where we're going. The mission is to cultivate a public art ecosystem that enhances city livability, promotes community, and fosters a sense of belonging and placemaking that reflects our heritage and diverse. This is the how do we get there. Yeah, so I mean really both the VAC vision and what you see here, they just both share the belief that public art helps to enrich Mountain View's innovation and celebrate its community diversity. And then we have two goals. So I'll go to the first goal. So I'm not going to read the entire thing, but it's really to help. The VAC's goal, I think it was focused on, or there was one specific goal, so cultivating and growing public art at Mountain View, enhancing the city's livability, fostering placemaking. So you'll see that this is really all about expanding our diversity and artists and mediums, our programming, our branding. That's the focus of goal one. And we don't just touch on city art. We also talk about publicly accessible art on private property. And then the second goal is all about administration funding and policy. So this is where we'll talk about staffing, how are we paying for all of this, all of the collections policies, and just making sure that the program can be sustainable. Okay. So the recommendations and actions, so as you look through the document, you can see we have action opportunities and then guiding strategies. So the point of that is the action opportunities are supposed to be more discreet, kind of check the box action items. You know, as we look at creating a strategy, it's a 10-year strategy. You want some things to be done as you go through it. But a lot of the things that we included in this document are just going to be part of our everyday work as staff. And so these guiding strategies are things that we're going to have to consider. They will end up being something that's part of the ongoing effort, whether it's an everyday thing or just part of every call for artists. It won't be a check the box type of action item, but something that we'll continue to do. So just as you look at the as you look through the recommendations and actions, that's the kind of meaning for them. Okay, so these are, I included every single thing in these slides, so I apologize for the wordiness, but I just wanted to make sure, you know, As we're looking at this together, we just will get it all as one. So a few of the slides might be broken out by the action opportunities or guiding strategies, but for the most part, we just have each recommendations in one slide. So the first recommendation is around diversity, inclusivity, and equity. ACTION OPPORTUNITIES THESE ARE CHECK OFF THE CHECK THE BOX ITEMS SO ESTABLISHING NEW ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA TO HELP DIVERSIFY OUR COLLECTION WHETHER IT'S BASED ON AN ARTIST COMING IN AND THEY CAN ONLY APPLY FOR SO MANY PROJECTS OR WITHIN SO MANY YEARS OR I'M LOOKING AT SPECIFIC TYPES OF MEETING FOR DIFFERENT PROJECTS Then building a review framework for evaluating how proposed art can expand our overall collection. And developing a temporary functional art program, a toolkit with pre-approved locations. And then for guiding strategies for recommendation 1A, we look at focusing on activating high visibility sites, either with big gateway pieces or small functional art pieces. and integrating community and local historical organizations into the selection process. So one B, this is focused on kind of the natural environment or how art can play into the natural environment and our key locations that people want to see art. And so for action opportunities, you'll see first about the sidewalk studio program, where people can visit somebody's hostel, with a really big one that we've heard from community members. Creating a clear framework for volunteer-led projects. Mapping exact target sites for unexpected placemaking, so like the alleys or mid-block throughways or mini parks. to help resolve geographic disparities, commissioning local artist-led pilot projects focused on environmental preservation. And then guiding strategies, we look at blending functional art into city infrastructure, emphasizing eco-friendly fabrication standards into our commissions, and celebrating both the city's tech innovation as well as its natural heritage. So 1C, this is focused on empowering local artists and providing support to them. So launching a public art 101 professional development course or series. And we did talk with the Community School of Musical Arts about this type of opportunity and they were interested in supporting that. Producing clear and accessible application toolkits. or step-by-step instructions on how to get involved in city projects or how to apply performance for public art, expanding rotating art exhibits, looking for spaces in addition to the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts lobby, like in the City Hall Rotunda area, and then assessing the creation of a centralized artist space. And then for guiding strategies, so some of the guiding strategies include building direct mentor, mentee pipelines, and then looking at recruiting arts-focused or funding arts-focused enterprises that are expanding and supporting them in finding space in the city. Okay. One D, this is really focused on branding and storytelling, educating the community. Another thing we learned through our outreach is that people have seen public art in the city, but they don't know how it got there or don't know much else. And so some of the action opportunities are to launch a unique brand for the public art program. upgrading our digital map to make it more interactive or downloadable or creating individual PDFs for different sites in the city like North Bayshore or downtown to support people doing their own self-guided tours. And then creating more promotional items like stickers or coloring books. I think we have our guiding strategies on the next page for this one. So Some of the guiding strategies include embedding arts activities at city events. So I know the community services department does try to include art activities at events, but we can support it through inviting local artists to help lead those projects or, and having more of those educational materials at events too. And then focusing on using different city communication channels to help just Educate the community more on So now we're getting into Which is, so this is all focused on administration and policy and funding. So recommendation 2A talks about staffing and governance. So this includes formalizing a public art administrator position and differentiating artist selection criteria by project complexity and budget, piloting diversified artist selection panel model, centralizing all public art policies on the city website, for guiding strategies. This includes working with other city advisory bodies. So including them in that artist selection process, if you know, it's a downtown project and you invite a downtown community. So to be talks about innovative funding model models. So just how we get how we paying for public art. So our action opportunities include establishing a consolidated public art fund. So this is a pooling of resources using the council policy K-5 dollars or potentially private contributions down the line. And then for the guiding strategies, this talks about reviewing existing community benefit requirements, private developments, opportunities for that percent for art and private development requirement too. And pursuing regional partnerships. So I think our examples are Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, who supported the train depot project. Santa Clara County, Valley Water, SP Creates, and other agencies. Just looking at expanding our public. So to see this is on policies, and kind of focuses on some of those best practices. So action opportunities include developing an annual work plan. So this will help us support transparent tracking of funding milestones, and all of our art projects, updating the council policy K five, you support that citywide pool of funding. Right now, As the Council Policy K-5 says, we can only use it for specific projects that wouldn't be updated. And adjusting the Council Policy K-6, which talks generally about all of the gifts and policy or how the city can accept gifts. And art is one little word in there. So updating that, removing art from that, and creating a specific policy around accepting art as a gift. Adopting a comprehensive public art collection management policies. This would include, I'm talking about removal and deaccessioning, maintenance, all kind of those broader pieces, the gift policy. Then standardizing a maintenance plan template for all fabrications, for all new art projects. So we can more clearly track the maintenance of each individual art piece. Some of the other pieces are enforcing a two-stage design review checkpoint, so doing that RFQ request for qualifications, followed by the request for proposal process, where we might just invite a few people, pay them, compensate them to create designs before making a final selection. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And some others are amending the zoning ordinance to clearly define what a mural is and deviate that from our current general development permit process. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And there's lots more on policies so. HAB-Masyn Moyer- down to the next. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Okay. So looking at the guiding strategies around public policies. So this includes reviewing insurance. So this is gonna be just a constant thing that we'll have to kind of monitor and see how other cities are, how they enforce insurance requirements for our projects. And then facilitating closer collaboration between artists and capital improvement project managers and contractors.

Thank you.

So I'm just going to describe to you what the implementation plan looks like, how to read it. So every single one of those action opportunities and guiding strategies is listed in the implementation plan. And then for each item, we've identified what we envision the timeline to be for that thing, what the estimated cost could be, and potential community or even city department partners. So for timeline, we have short-term, which is one to two years, mid-term, three to five, long-term, five-plus years. I will say what you see in the appendix, We had to go through it once. You know, a lot of things seem like they could be short term, but then you have 50 short term items that you can't get all of those done in one to two years. So we had to be really strategic and thoughtful and had to go back and update all of them a few times to make sure that it was truly realistic and how we can get it done. And so, yeah. So if you see something and you're like, this can be done in a year, we hopefully thought about that and had to kind of reevaluate based on kind of some things we'll need to get done before we can do other things. So there's a little bit of kind of order of operations. And then the estimated cost. So $1 signs, I'm under 10 grand. Two is between 10 and 50. Three is over 50K or 50,000. This was another one where some projects, if it's a single bike rack, might cost under $10,000 potentially. But if the action item says we want to see a bike rack or a giant sculpture, then it could be anywhere from $10,000 to over $50,000. So some of these, you'll see a range. And it will really just depend on kind of we're able to get done and how we're able to get the funding for the projects. And then potential partners. I know we probably are not fully inclusive of all the list of groups and organizations that we could work with, but we really tried to focus on including all of our internal departments so that when they see this document, they know, you know, we've identified you as a partner. We will need your support on this. And so we'll also need to work closely with them to make sure that it can fit in their schedules as well. And then we tried to make sure we could include just different arts organizations, local organizations that we thought could be a good partner, but it doesn't mean that's the end-all be-all. We can add more people or it can be changed up as we move forward. And then this slide, so I just wanted to quickly note, The document that was attached to the agenda tonight is mostly just written narrative. So we are completing the design now. There will be lots of pretty pictures in there and really great examples. So we'll do kind of a healthy mix of local examples and statewide, nationwide, from all over the place. So we want to make sure we can point to things and kind of give examples of things. I know when we presented the draft narrative to some of our colleagues. They had questions on what's eco art? What does that look like? And so we'll be able to have those photos in there to show this is what it could be. It doesn't have to be this, but here's a good example. So this is just a little snapshot. So you got some of the appendix, the mostly final appendix pages and A little snapshot of the actual meat of the document as it's in progress.

That's kind of the way that the captions will look. We're going to continue to use the coloring that you see here on the right and the left and that kind of size of font. So keeping in mind both printed and screen readability.

And then I already talked about the appendix, but just reminding. So all of these documents are just kind of standing documents. The Vigil Arts Committee draft strategy is what was last presented to the committee. Council policy K-5s are our existing policies. The public art inventory shows what we have today. We would be sure to include the city council study session as we reference it early in the document.

We have the benchmarking cities.

This goes into a lot more detail on staffing, the level of percent or different requirements for percent for public and private development. And then there's a lot of details about different programs that cities have, too. Some different funding, right?

And then the community feedback.

So we do, we summarize a lot of the community feedback in the strategy narrative. This community feedback appendix just goes into a lot more detail. It includes every single written response in the survey. So we're making sure people see that they, you know, we've heard all of their feedback and making it known and being very transparent. And then we'll obviously have the implementation plan So just before we get into questions, just a quick look at next steps. So July through September after tonight, we'll finish finalizing the design of the public art strategy by October 1st. We intend to have the strategy posted on Collaborate MB for public comment and review. And then we'll take a draft to city council for review and feedback, hopefully adoption, October 27th. And then after, we'll get going. Good to work. So I did fly through that. we take public comment do are there any clarifying questions about process or just anything so the city council can then still change things or say we want this first or that first yeah yeah so they'll um i think it'll take well it'll be a new business item i think um anticipate discussion and they yeah, they can provide feedback on how things are worded or how things are organized, include any action items.

Are you planning a study session? Council?

Yeah, we have a lot of feedback in the from the study session in the fall. So you know, everyone's really eager for us to get to adoption. So it'll be but but as Kirsten said, you know, we are anticipating a robust discussion. There's a lot of interest.

Department directors reviewed. So, you know, high level staff definitely has reviewed. So to be able to communicate with, you know, inform.

And council will get the same document with all the appendixes.

And they'll have the full design.

With the full design.

The beautiful. And as Kirsten said, it's out currently for public feedback. So there will be a lot of time for people to absorb and provide public comment. And in a way, this is the first

It's public, right? Because if people are following our meeting tonight and download the package, they can see the answer.

Exactly. Yeah, we did share all of our public art strategy subscribers, which I think has gotten to over 600 people. That's great. That's a big step. Yeah, it is.

A lot of interested parties. Right?

Okay. So we sent out an email last week to all that subscription list, just letting them know we were talking about this tonight, give some of that high-level overview of the feedback again, and...

See if there's any further comment.

Question, like is there a timeline on my comment? Obviously, like it was like two minutes, three minutes, whatever.

Yeah, I think two minutes, if that's okay with our chair. Yeah.

Okay, well, fair enough. Like, yeah, that's why I wanted to kind of make sure the word, but first of all, I love what you guys do here, because honestly, congratulations on the 600 subscribers. Hopefully about 6,000 in another year. Because what you guys do here develops the soul and the heart of the community. And I love how not to be able to put a focus on that. On that note, though, I don't know if there could be something within you guys that's like a strategic art plan. to develop maybe a Mountain View Museum of Art, kind of like they have in San Jose. We have a San Jose Museum. I know that should help something be sparked out in the budget. That's a big undertaking project, but it's just an idea to put out there. And also, I know you guys have a lot of outreach projects for non-artists, like you have workshops, like the Open Studio Workshop, and then the thing that's been coming up, which is like, you know, that, when you invite other artists and you work through lots of nonprofits to spotlight folks who are professional artists, but what about outreach to folks who aren't conditionally artists? Like for example, folks who work in healthcare, folks who work as policemen or military and so on and so forth. But it'd be a good way to outreach to those professions and people to get them to entice a creative mindset and maybe contemplate that in your strategy. And finally, when you guys said the sidewalk studio, I immediately thought you guys meant individually sidewalk, not the public, like, you know, cubes. I think that would be a good idea for you guys to explore, kind of like how we have a lot of public art in some of the larger cities or less Hollywood, more like, you know, Brooklyn, where you actually have sidewalks that are painted that represent, you know, the community. where you have individual blocks on sidewalk where it's like, hey, this looks like a school, this looks like a park, and you can have a city build that. Or you can look at what you guys have with private-public partnerships where you actually work with companies or even just children, just like a long sidewalk, and it's just like an established art that's converted, and that's another drawing effect to the city. So just a couple thoughts.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thanks. Good insight.

You have one hand raised online too. Jessie.

Go ahead and say your comments. Hi, Jessie. Hey, Jessie. Hey, Jessie.

Hey, how you doing? What's up, BAC? So yeah, thanks for getting it to this stage. I just have a few additional comments. So I wanted to support removing barriers to public art, including permit fees and Just permits in general that seem to pop up unexpectedly. We've had opportunities in the past to have cool public art that were kind of derailed by permits or at least delayed. So for example, you're all aware of the additional structural engineering permit required by the cool tall butterfly sculpture going up at Evelyn Park, and that just seems kind of wrong for me to say, hey, congratulations, you're hired by the city. We're telling the artists, we're gonna pay you to do this sculpture. But first you have to pay us a bunch of money for this permit that you didn't know that you would need, that we made no mention of before. So I also support a percent for public art, for private development, that would be great. The public art fund that can carry over from year to year instead of, Vanishing at the end of the year would be really helpful to build up for those kind of big gateway pieces, those iconic pieces of art. We already discussed allowing the percent for art funding to be used in other parts of the city. So that's great. I think that's important. And pooling all the funding together would help. And I support pursuing additional funding through grants, maybe having some actual grant writing done by our new public art manager or city staff. because I think the only grant I can think of recently that has resulted in public art is through Anita Rosen doing all that work kind of on behalf of the city. And I think now there's lots of public money out there. We can write those grants too. So yeah, I'll talk again at the city council meeting, but thank you and good luck. And I hope this goes through.

Thank you. Thanks, Jesse.

No one else online.

Okay, so then we can start commenting. Where do you want to start commenting? Cliff suggested we just go around. Yeah, I think Jesse brought up a good point with the permits. You know, it's like, it's bureaucratic. You have to fill out the forms and then the costs. I think if we can maybe even waive the costs for art permits, that would be great. Just another subsidy maybe to the artist, but, you know, I mean, they get, you know, paid for the project and then they have to, they don't know how much the permits are, but building permits can be costly and pay a thousand dollars for, say, a structural permit.

I'm gonna want to respond to all of you things. I will say, I'll let you talk but on the murals, I will say we just got approved city council to create a mural specific permit that is $300. So it's covering staff time to review. doesn't conflict with any of our was on signage and advertisement. And so that's reducing it from, I think it was 1,100 down to 300. So we were able to do that. But it's fun to say that, but I'll let you all continue talking.

And just as a note, I mean, I think we want to hear from you about obviously any questions, but are the action items and the guiding strategies the right ones?

You know, that's a perfect example of one that's in the strategy, and we'll come back to BAC with recommendations as we go into implementation.

So we really want to make sure, though, that what's in the strategy reflects your goals and priorities and what you hope to see and make sure, are we missing things? Have we approached something in a different way than we should? Are there things that you feel should be prioritized. I think that kind of feedback will be really helpful. You know, part of creating this special meeting was to make sure we had plenty of time to take your feedback in and that we would have time to make modifications. We're totally on the same page and that all the better for us, but, you know, we really want to use this as a working meeting to make sure that we're getting, that we are aligned with the strategy that, yeah, so.

Just as a note. I also feel a little bit that the part of supporting artists in a way like studio space or gallery. It's a gallery here, like an exhibition, commercial exhibition space. We have this, the piece of the only outside set, but you know, like a real gallery.

There is a private one now.

Well, that's brand new.

Yeah, it's right next to that architect on the beginning of Castro.

Home is surprising. You know, it's a beautiful space. It's beautiful. Isn't there an artist that applied for an exhibit?

here and then he's in there now the owner or what's in there now no an artist yeah but that's going to be changing yeah they'll be rotating when it's in there yeah but it's a gallery yeah castro the i think it's like three hundred and they're gonna have an opening three six two corner it's like two down from limone she down from limone yeah like an article from ludwig's where this i don't know

I'm sorry, you have a question for Regina. Are you talking specifically... I'm just talking about prioritizing that more. It's in here. That's great. That's what I'm asking. City-sponsored space? City-sponsored space and connected to that maybe sort of... I'm seeing more like something like the Center for Creativity in Redwood City. So, you know, sort of studio slash... That's what I mean. Studio. Studio space. You know, like sort of an art hub or art space.

It's not gallery specific. No.

You're talking about like a full... You know, gallery, showroom, but then combined with studios, you know, like an art space. And then I have, can I piggyback on that?

Just why do we let Regina?

All right. I mean, this is in here and that's great. I just want to, you know, push that forward in the chain.

Yeah, I think so. So I, I, I completely want to jump on that and support that with that studio space. I mean, I've heard so much input from the downtown Mountain View. That's been the one main thing that I've heard over and over again, besides murals. And to bring up what was just shared, I was just in Slovenia and they had an exhibit that was art and health. And so health care workers were in doing art in the thread that comes through the connection of art and health. And so There were health workers in there. And it was like an incredible experience that could be in the studio space, bringing in like the police force, just like it brings in this subtle connection that we all have that's not really made available. And I think that could be something really cool. And that could be part of that if there was a studio space or a public space. And you can have kids come in. So there can be different drawing in from our community and integrating our community in addition to just artists, you know, that aren't, they don't have, you don't have to be an artist to be an artist, like to experience connection through art. And I watched what happened. It was, it was incredible. These people were like, a lot came up, a lot of connection through the staff. you know, that they don't get to have that connection. So to provide that ability to connect through art in our community to me would be a really super cool thing to do.

Where was the example?

I was in Slovenia. And they actually recruited an artist from the UK who's a textile artist. And she, there were a bunch of healthcare workers that came together and explored just, it was mostly intentional mending and how that, actually means like it creates a lot of healing and then they sort of stuff would come up and then they discuss it. And so, and then these people left like closer than when they came. Yeah, really was. And it's, this is not new. This is going on all over Europe, by the way.

We don't do a lot of it here, but it is non-negotiable in most of the world.

Oh boy. I guess I'll just quickly plus one more collaborative space. I just had a few, I don't know if I had anything like a boost or to the priority on, but maybe just had a few clarifications or things that are more clear to me at least reading, if that would be helpful. But I think a couple different places we, the document refers to maintenance as well as conservation. And I read it clearly enough to tell that conservation wasn't in the sustainability sense. So are those terms clear to everyone else? Because I guess it was just a little, I didn't understand why we're using one versus the other in certain contexts.

We can provide definition in there, just because it might, that you're right, that maybe that was just like a miss on our end in the sense of being public art, you know, It's over here. But typically, those definitions are in a policy. So when the policy is developed, or you can look at other cities' policies, it'll say the definition of public art, definition of what an artist is, definition of maintenance. So that would likely end up being in something developed down the line. But in regards to this specific narrative, perhaps we should... that. When we mention maintenance, this is what we're referring to.

Yeah, and again, I understand there's different technical lingo for the core policies versus the external communication. I would still agree about that.

Yeah, so maintenance would be like say, okay, so for example, if you go to downtown San Jose and you see the people with the groundworks and they have their trash can and if they see something on, like a stain on a statue, and they've already been communicated with the city person who works in public art, you can use this type of cloth and quick, that's maintenance, quick maintenance. Conservation is bringing in a conservationist to really review, say, an artwork that's part of the city's collection and understand the material that has been used. Is it still in good condition? what is the cost it was when it originally was installed and what is the cost now if it were needing to be, needing to be, you know, fixed in some way, right? And so they really determine, should this continue to still be part of the collection and give kind of a analysis on the artwork to the public art director and share, you know, I would recommend maybe or remove this from the collection because it may cost more. So it really is more in-depth. Yeah, more in-depth.

Like a short-term, long-term solution. Yeah. Cool. Well, today I learned. I thought it was, this is more just a comment, but I thought it was interesting that they were, depending on how you count it, like four or five items that were just about like setting different criteria for selection, which I don't know, I guess I like that. I think certainly I was thinking, you know, when we were voting on our 10 things that, and some sort of criteria would be nice. And I assume it's obviously more broad than that, but like it would best out to me a bit. And then there's one other minor comment. 1D.4, I think, was basically the one saying something along the lines of having people like colors or some such basically to promote taking people around to promote the arts and talk about it. I think the word framework is in there for like how that would work. But I think specifically it'd be great if there was, you know, like a script you could follow essentially, or like a resource for part of that being a resource people to just like know what to say about things. Cause that sounds really exciting, but I can't, I assume even, you know, us on the committee wouldn't know all the interesting tidbits about such things. Hi.

Well, this is huge, first of all. It's fast and I applaud so much of it. I love the pooling of the funding because I think that's been definitely a missing piece for a long time. I would definitely piggyback on the studio space and community arts center that could draw different groups and generations and backgrounds to an art collaborative activities in a studio slash community center slash gallery space like they're doing in Redwood City. One question I kind of have is, well, They're kind of related. I did notice that the community picked downtown as definitely a prime area for putting art, but I also understand that focus, Mountain View's focus is to be equitable with its placement of art. So I know you can't develop everything in this document right now, or maybe the one that you're developing will be more, have more steps, but like how, just a thought, and you don't have to answer this right now, like who and how are you going to come to terms with what the public wants, which seems to be, you know, downtown, parks, transit hubs, which I totally get, but also spreading the art out into different communities throughout Mountain View. Is there a mechanism for that decision-making? Secondly, kind of related, it's so, there's so much going on and I get that it's a 10 year timeline. Have you thought about, because I know you have included the public in so much of this and you would want to do that going forward. Have you thought about how will you measure your rate of success with all this and show that publicly? Because so much of what we do is about marketing ourselves and you know, showing that we are meeting what our promises are. So that's a question, you know, how do you share, is there an ongoing way to share your successes, your ongoing successes with the public? And... Because if you did that, then people would start to... I mean, you can't do everything all at once, right? And I know that Kirsten talked about that with the timeline. But even with the timeline, there are certain things that are going to get done before other things. And so it would be nice to be able to see that in real time. Like, you know, these are done. And we, you know, so just thoughts about how you're going to share that. And then... Yeah, I think that that's mostly the thoughts I had. I really, the pooling is so important. Are we expecting, so is city council going to go through and like say yes, yeah, like these discrete things? Are they, how are they going to, do we know?

I don't know. It's not clear to me exactly how they will discuss. I think it can.

Can they, can they like redline this, you know, like, can they like not 1D, you know, 0.4, but 1D 0.5 kind of thing. Can they be that specific?

They can be as specific as they would like to be, although they will be approving the document as a whole, but there could be, you know, we're approving the document with the modify modification to 1D as it might be. So we anticipate the discussion will be, could get into some great detail but you know the recommendation will be ideally having them recommend strategy with maybe some changes or modifications it is completely within the purview of the council to send it back to staff for further refinement with direction so you know they are empowered to approve or not approve or approve with direction or changes you know staff's recommendation will be approving of the document but council is within their power to take an alternate approach.

Take it all or take part or take the, yes.

Based on the study session that we had last fall, you know, this is, we had, we got a lot of great feedback from them at that time. So, you know, I think we're optimistic that the strategy will be, it will.

Be reflective of their comments. Thank you. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And I think as you get into it, like my guess is that some of it is going to be like, um, as you go, you might have to develop like, you know, subsets, sub steps to some of this stuff. And I assume that there'll be a mechanism for that.

Yeah. Yeah. And I can answer both your questions or give more context to it. So the sharing metrics, what we've done with economic vitality strategy, we have a similar implementation plan, but they were all built in as just check the box items. And we've realized that most of them have become ongoing work. And so that's kind of part of the decision and creating those differentiation in those action items. And so we've taken annual updates to the council. We just were on our year two update. So we'll do the same thing with the public art strategy. So there will be updates to the visual arts committee updates to the city council on our progress. So we'll, we'll let you know where where we've started to make progress, whether it's just, you know, we've made a little step, but we have begun to, we have begun this one action item, or we've already checked this off, or so we'll be giving. progress update. So that will all be public. And that's within the committee setting. Yeah.

And it's accessible to the public if they tune in.

Yeah. Yeah. And available online. And yeah. Yeah. And so that seems that we have that public art strategy subscription list too. And so we'll continue to use that for all public art updates. Um, and so we can use that same, um, Subscription list to it is already told us and hearing about public art updates.

get news and i'll just say you know one for the economic vitality strategy we do report out on in progress, so we have. You know something that may not be completed, but we note that we're working on it so there's different language and labels that we use to communicate. various ways that we're working on things. And then to your point, all the sub steps, we've tried to really roll these up into, you know, higher level points. But obviously when we jump into any of these action items, we're going to have to create a whole plan and subset. Like each of those will require a little mini work plan for each action item. And so we'll be, staff will be responsible for that. putting together a little mini work plan, soliciting feedback, engaging stakeholders. I mean, each of those will, will be a little project in their own.

And I mean, just like we have the capital improvement project, monthly updates, we can do, you know, we'll do similar things like that, whether it's bringing a full agenda item to the committee to talk through what, you know, creating a policy or whatever it is, or just providing updates on, you know, we've started looking into this and, And we're figuring out where to go from here. Here's our work moving forward on the different items. So you'll get updates along the way, but we'll also have a more robust annual update. And then you had the question on, I think it was balancing community interest for location and equitable distribution of art. So we have a few action items that talk about prioritizing areas in the city. A lot of where we put art depends on the funding that we have. So there's so many things that come into play. There are a lot of grants available for downtown because we're close to transit. There's a main street. There's more funding opportunity for downtown, which then would help answer community needs. But then there's the small parks that still need art that don't have it. When we have that pool of funding and start developing that resource pool, then we'll have more money to be able to work through that priority list and being able to create more distribution.

I was just going to mention there is educating the public through great marketing and development of the campaign of what this program is. And I think that's going to be big as well. Really get eyes from LinkedIn, from Instagram, Facebook, all of those as well as emails is going to be huge too to let them know the updates. Got it. The city has a great relationship with Silicon Valley Creates. I'm sure you guys know. Silicon Valley Creates has a content magazine underneath their belt and content really push out what's happening in different cities throughout the county. There are other ways to go about it.

Thanks.

First of all, thank you so much. This is amazing, amazing. I mean, Regina and I had the opportunity to see it a couple of weeks ago because we were engaged in the VAC strategy. And I think it reflects that really well. And there's so much more to it. And I think it's really, really great. It's so exciting that we're getting there. Um, I have three comments on the different action, uh, items. I mean, what I already said, thanks so much for already implementing some of the things we discussed. Um, but I saw it because I had mentioned one thing that I had mentioned, um, uh, that's one, the create a signature event because for Mount Newish, like something art related that it's us. because we had that in the original BAC strategy. And that's something I had mentioned. And now that everybody's saying, like, we're craving something, like we want an art space, we want something happening, a pop-up event, or like almost everybody said that so far. I just wanted to iterate that one more time. I think what we're all craving is maybe also to mark the art strategy implementation, like that we have something on our own. That could be a museum. I don't mean like a signature event that that that's exactly what we developed. It could be an event, could be a space, like a new space that we don't have yet, or a pop-up event that keeps coming that has art, like you said, collaborative art in mind. That we are the city who does something highly collaborative, for example, or make a maker event. Maybe we're more the makers, crafters, explorer, city, but just that we have an action item that maybe spells that out a little bit, that we're going to explore something we knew that part of City of Mountain Dew is art related. And then Lacey and I had a feedback from a community member and she said she read through the because it was public, right? She read through the strategy and she said she would like to see more integration with music, dance, theater, poetry, readings. And then I saw, and she said that in relation to AA, engage other city advisory bodies, because that related to us as an advisory body to collaborate with other advisory bodies. But when she said that, what made me think is, what maybe not enough reflected in the strategy yet is what the art coordinator's role is going to be. Because what she's kind of alluding to is maybe talk to Teresa, right, from the CPA. But that wouldn't be us, right? That would be the art coordinator might get together, has ongoing meetings with her. How can we... you know, how can visual art in mountain collaborate with performing arts? But that wouldn't be the advisory body. So what's here is correct, right? Like we would coordinate with other advisory bodies, but what's missing, because we don't have one yet or just have one yet, what's gonna be the role of the visual arts coordinator, right? That could be, because we had in our strategy a bit more spelled out, collaboration was a bit more spelled out because we had less so there was a whole block on just collaboration marketing and outreach and I thought maybe collaboration because that's that's what I'm hoping would be one of the big roles of the art coordinator could maybe already be baked in in the strategy because we can't do that there's a lot of things that one staff member who has a lot of other things to do and we as an advisory body can't do but maybe we should we should foresee already what the art coordinator can do, right? And have maybe some of the action items more also relate to that. Like what would that person do? Would that person have monthly meetings with the CPA or with another city, other city entities and things like that. And then the The other action item feedback I have, which I have mentioned already, is because we're saying on conduct a comprehensive review and update of city council policy K5 to transition to the dedicated fund. And I was hoping because we have that cap in the K5 right now, that the wording could a bit more also say, because it says review and update the K-5 policy, that's the right direction, but then it says to transition. And what I would actually would like to say, like, can we review the whole thing? Because maybe it is not appropriate for our art strategy anymore. I don't know if I can express that correctly, because it sounds like we only review and update it to transition it to an art fund. But to me, it feels, what I would want to say is, let's just review and update. Like, just we have the whole strategy now. Is what we have been doing so far, is that still? Thinking of the cap, for example. Like, just kind of saying, yes, we need to review and update. Review the K5 policy to see if it fits the strategy, not just to transition to that.

Any updates would come back to the Visual Arts Committee. So the modifications to the K-5 policy, we would get the DAC's feedback on before bringing it to City Council. So I think it doesn't have to be just transitioning to the fund when we have that discussion. Exactly. Funding cap. And I think as part of staff person role bringing that to the PC and council would be doing some analysis on what are our neighbors doing and so I think we might not want to include a number in there now but it can be part of that yeah I wouldn't want to spell it out at all but not just simply tie it to the transition to say we want to review it maybe it's just the strategies or just kind of

Going back to that specific item in the same. Reviewing K5 policy. We can look at ways to broaden the language. It just, yeah. Or say, or we keep the pulled in and just put in front of it, such as. Language. Transition.

Or so it's included or something. So it has been not limited to you. And then the only other comment I have is on the implementation. I quickly checked, like, is the, you know, is the explore expansion of public art opportunities in private development, what tag that has, and it says a long-term project. And I just want to give the feedback. Hopefully that's not a long-term project, mid-term or short-term. And maybe also, is that something that the community can weigh in? Like, I mean, this will all be public. You know, when, like what I just did, right? I'm hoping this might be more of a priority than in a long-term project. Are you seeking input from the community on that particular thing? What should be done first, right? Because part of why we wanted a closer look on the art strategy was to kind of see what are our priorities? We have only limited time. What are we going to do first? What is the most important thing to us? And I haven't really had time to look through all, like, is it short-term, mid-term, or long-term? But hopefully that's something we can all look at together, and then again, and maybe also get community feedback, that people tell us, oh my God, I want this first, I want this first, like, that we get a bit more of a sense of what

Something we've, I mean, with the economic vitality strategy, we've seen, you know, some things have come up sooner that have been a long-term item and it's, you know, we've been able to get it done sooner because of the other circumstances. For the person in private development, that is marked as long-term because we will need to bring on a consultant to do some sort of a nexus study um it's considered an impact fee and so adding a an additional fee uh to private developers we'll have to complete a study on that um we'll have to engage with developers and property owners and talk to them about what that actually looks like get their feedback um and so that it's money to hire a consultant, and it's going to be a big time commitment to so as part of that next study as part of the outreach, there will be opportunity for the public to engage with that. But there there are a number of steps that are required.

Yeah, no, no, I totally understand. I'm sure you thought about it. I just felt like that might be a very valuable community feedback. Let us know what is really pressing for them.

And we certainly got a lot of feedback during the outreach strategy. I mean, in creating the implementation plan, we took in all the public, you know, all the public engagement, you know, what we heard from you in the draft strategy and that we've heard along the way, input from council during during the study session. And then we, as Kirsten said, there was a lot of internal discussion with staff as we really look, you know, for look at that Venn diagram, the practical application staff came in and provided, you know, realistically their feedback about how things could move forward. Because one of the things we have to be cognizant of is that every department has different strategies that they're moving forward and they've been assigned different priorities. I mean, our team of three has three strategies that we're moving forward. And so it is a bit of a balancing act as we try and move all of these pieces forward. So we are looking at the practical application and balancing out capacity and resources and community feedback. So all of that gets got sort of pulled into how we approach the implementation plan. Certainly, as part of the feedback we want from you all is are there things we should prioritize further? And we can look and see realistically how much we can move things up.

Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you so much. Thank you.

So overall, I found it a beautifully written document. Really clear. It's beautifully written. And I think it marks a beautiful... transition to a new paradigm. I think the documentary talks about we're in a reactive mode now, wanting to see art as an asset to the city that's managed in a proactive way. That's a dramatic shift And it's such a big change. I'm going to pick up a little bit on what Seth alluded to. The topic doesn't talk about how are you going to monitor success. Other major strategies that have come to council, like on the Parks and Rec or the Parks and Rec and the Biodiversity Plan, they've adopted a language called adaptive management. which was used on the salt pond restoration, where you're basically taking steps along the way and learn what works and what doesn't work and then revise. So you don't have to have everything perfect at the beginning, but you take steps along the way. You know you're going to take steps along the way to learn from them and change. rules based on what you've learned so you're able to step forward and you might I would add to the document how you're going to gauge success on implementing the strategy. Just describe a framework so that you can report back to the public that you've had success and this is what we now are going to be doing. Because it's such a big change. And we all want it to be successful. But it's okay to start going forward. We know we're going to start going forward. We know we're going to make this. We're going to learn something. Let's step forward. We're going to need to change. And if you change, we're going to report back. And I would in here that you're going to report back every year. And you mentioned it verbally to us, but I would put it in this document so people see it. I have a lot of I have a lot of feedback on my page. Some of it is minor, but some of it is more than substantial. If you have patience, bear with me. Okay, so on page three, you use the word modernize, and you use it 14 times a time. And I do not know what you mean by modern. Do you mean best practice? You can't define what it is. What does that mean?

I think I know what it means. Maybe make it a little bus.

You make it more like a forward-looking city. But modernize, modern, I don't know what it means. On page 13, we alluded to before you had the FT, um way is presenting the document it looks like we've had the fte but we don't and you might put in put in a note that the fte starts in

members, of course, or whenever.

It's something new. But we're comparing it to the other cities where the document states that it feels like we've had an FTE all over the law. And we haven't. It's a big change. But I would just note that it really has been. On page 17, you mentioned business owners. But really the, and you mentioned other parts of the document, it's the property owners that's sometimes a blocking issue. And I know that the city chamber went with downtown committee to contact them. property owners discovered that the property owners, one, don't live here, don't know even what Mountain View is because it's an investment for them. And their fear of doing changes to the property is to change the assessed value of the property, hence increasing their taxes. And so that gets a conflict between what the business owner wants and the property owner wants. But I would add in the property owner as an issue or as a topic too. On page 18, you mentioned that the examples have a thing of preference for light, which I was kind of surprised at, but you later in the document, you're talking about kinetic art, and there might be a better reading.

Use kinetic.

Yeah, kinetic. It sounded like it was kind of a cool factor for what was presented. I've seen that before. But it might have issues around light pollution and all that stuff. If you use the word kinetic, it might be better. On pages 19 and 20, We're utilizing art in the city. I would really recommend that you talk about using city buildings. The buildings are in the downtown, a big one, and outside city hall on Castle Street, on Mercy Street, huge walls that can be used for murals. use that as a campus for moving our heroes out through the city. So use the city's own buildings as a site for heroes and work. And I sent to, as you mentioned, on page 58, response wanted to see our new civic policy. So I believe that would activate the city property, city hall, as a place to our . 23 is the best national best practices. National best practices. Yeah, we talked about that. Bill 23, You mentioned innovative funding, and I don't know what innovative funding is. I look at innovative funding, and I think, you know, you're thinking bitcoins, cryptocurrency. What are you doing? So I would, I would clerk my vote. Well, 25, when you get into strategy 1A and G, again, this is using the facade. Because you can see what a wonderful way to show the city. So that would be good to add to strategy 1.8g. Um, you mentioned on page three, age 27, the Silicon Valley identity. And, um, so which is even more, I think we're into the tech world, but we're, um, you know, some multiple cultures and over a hundred years old, as we have on the train, but I would like to meet in the city of cultures discussion. Um, So you mentioned the attempt or wanting to align art into new developments, which is obvious because that's where the money is going to occur. But we have a problem with that then puts it into art in the rest of the city as it goes to pockets where there's going to be development with them. We have a new vision for you. Where are people in now when they get art into Ringstorf and Presta? developers are going to come in. Developers also come from the outside, and as we saw in San Antonio, they think they're coming from a great place, and so they name the street Innovation Way. It doesn't mean anything bad thing to us as residents, but we need to have a hard confidence where people live, not just where there's going to be future developments. That's around page 27. I would also then ask each neighborhood association to create an identity in Hartford's neighborhood. I would reach out to them, engage them, say, And identify your new. So that you're activating. Showing that we're reaching out. And the neighborhood associations. Work with presidents. And also I would work with school boards. Because school boards reach into young kids, and it gets into all sectors of the society. And sometimes those neighborhood associations aren't necessarily where some people live. Like, for instance, a neighborhood association working through the school board group. to the parents and certainly the kids. Also, it's a way to show, working with the school, that we had these issues in the past, conflict with the superintendent of the city at times. This opportunity, perhaps, to show collaboration with school boards, parents who may not readily associate You know, on 28 with action on C5, I would really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really like to see an event that's kind of unique, that celebrates Mountain View like a plein air event. invite people, artists to come out. There's a plein air painting in Shoreline for Roger's son at San Antonio. We have examples in Annapolis where they do this as a city event. That's a wonderful way to celebrate art and celebrate the beauty in this city. And it will be something that's marketable and it will attract folks and contribute to what's unique about the farm. On page 28, again, I would add in property owners, along with the business owners. On page 33, you talk about activating public trails and sidewalks and bordering corporate headquarters. And so that's basically puts it out to where there's more big shore where the big companies are at, as opposed to where residents live. So I would look to, is there a way to bring art, where residents live. And we have percentage of the street budget donated for art, for pedestrians work, where parents are walking their babies. So that not just focusing on the corporate world, and sidewalks where the workers work, but we're finding ways to bring art deeply in. And in order to do that, can we use part of the budget that already exists for street maintenance? There's an active transportation activities that goes on in the city. We'll piggyback on that in order It's a way to unify the trails for bicycles or for pedestrians and find out where the pockets will have the most impact. So basically, can we use some of the active transportation funds in order to add some weight to the neighborhoods? And we're, and also kind of emphasize, I think the document talks about this a bit, we're required to put people together. Obviously that's, that's who, what the effectiveness of the downtown community is, that's for sure. But it's also, into those areas as well. Now the implementation plan, we defined 17 short-term projects. And that's a lot. Is there a way for you to indicate in short-term budget, what are the, you break down this 17 into first priority, second priority, short, short, short, or what's the priority with the union? just so it sense that you can actually accomplish something. 17 is a lot. And in my mind, getting the work that you mentioned in 281, the pirating, boarding, the art coordinator, is going to be a real key to the success of the whole program. And that needs, that's, I think what rises now by a successful hire. Also, I saw some things were in which to do with midterm, but I think we're going to need them for public safety. So, 9, 2C10, 2C11. You have a smooth term. 1C1. 1C1, on page three. This is on page six and then 2A2. All its own. that she had back here, and it's the definitions of the book. I see it written in the document.

Yeah, this implementation plan is not the final version, so there will be a clear definition.

Yeah, I'm just giving you what I was looking for.

Yeah. It'll be on the bottom of each page, just so that as somebody's looking at it, they know through each page instead of just at the top.

So that's it. But overall, so these are more verifying students. But overall, it's a fantastic document. What a change. What a change from when we started seven years ago, where we were just kind of responding to a part coming on in, and thinking that we have to focus on this one little issue in no broad dialogue, shifting the mindset. Beautiful. Couldn't be happier. It goes to you all. And again, beautifully written document. Beautifully clear.

So congratulations. You made your team effort.

Really, really love that. So I'm hopeful that the city council will get behind it and deal with the funding issues. That's going to be obviously critical. But the fact that they supported hiring somebody midterm is fabulous. I've not seen that before. That's just tremendous. Hopefully you will have gotten somebody. All right.

Something came up. I didn't realize we were like going around just once. I just was piggybacking on her. I didn't even say what I was going to say, which is very short, but may I? So for, and you might've written this in there. I'm super brain dead right now. I apologize. And I just, I'm wondering if we did mention the putting in the built-in opportunities to collaborate and strategize with other committees, namely Performing Arts, just because even the downtown committee, like with the way the chairs are and the aesthetics, I've gotten so many comments from people and they think it's us. And I'm like, our decision. Because I mean, when you see something that's visually not appealing, your head goes to, oh, that's the art. That's the people. And I'm like, we don't have anything to say. But it'd be really nice to be in relationship with these committees, maybe biannually, quarterly. I don't know. But just so we can kind of, people don't think about things. It's like things are unconscious and they're not decided. These things aren't, they don't make an opinion and decision. They just don't think about them. So it's brought up, did you think about this? Or did you notice this in terms of an aesthetic? Or is this practical? And what can we do to integrate both? And I know we've discussed this in our past meetings, like, oh, that's a bench, that's that committee. Oh, but if we integrated it into both, like it could be aesthetic and a bench and serve both periods of purposes. And that's even written in the public. So I just think that that's important. I don't remember if it's written in there. I think it was brought up. That would be something that would be really helpful. And then it was mentioned to bring a project up that was specific to Mountain View. I second or whatever that. And I was just up in San Mateo. They have a mural that just went up. It was a pilot project. And so I met what's the equivalent of your position, the woman who she's like worker. Her name's Amy. She's in. Oh, she's new there. Yes. Yeah, I know. I spoke at length with her. So they had a pilot project. She's the new public art director. Yes. And then so she worked with basically all the committees came together and it wouldn't have happened otherwise. had the committees not come together. It was this huge project, and it was a pilot, so they can now learn from it, and they're going to continue it. And basically, artists were invited, their experience was irrelevant, to come and paint. I think they had some size, so there's a certain portion painting that was then going to be turned into a mural. And then the public was out watching it, and they chose the person. So what happened was this person was chosen, incredible artist. He'd never painted a mural before, like a huge wall. So someone stepped up and was his mentor. And we went to the ribbon cutting. And I know this artist, actually, he was the one that was in here earlier today as he came in. And he's phenomenal. So another teacher who's painted mirrors all over the world was his mentor. And he did most of it, but just in terms of the size. So what they decided was, and I think I heard this kind of pop up in these discussions tonight, that next time they're going to have a muralist. And then that muralist is going to agree to mentor the person that's selected. So it will be a lot smoother because in any way, again, it's integrating, you know, bringing in opportunity and community. And then people see that in it. spoke highly of like just San Mateo's philosophy and integrating diversity. So I just thought it was a really interesting pilot project in that what they've learned and how they're going to move forward.

Can I just add one real quick thing just to piggyback off Cliff? A particular word choice that just stood out to me on page 26. Recommendation 1b says, utilize public art to enhance the user experience. So I realize, or I assume, I gather the thrust of that is about the functional aspect, finding wayfinding and such. But I don't know. Maybe this is just me because I'm trained professionally, a user experience designer. And I feel like that word choice strikes me as not entirely correct. It just seems like, I don't know, something about how visitors are experiencing, how someone about the town is experiencing. Referring to the person as a user seems a little strange, even though I understand that they are interacting with these pieces of art in that context.

In that regard, maybe the difference between art and design because there's signage for wayfinding and things like that, which are not art, they're design. So I think we also have to just really be clear. I don't have a specific recommendation. We do it or we do it not or how that, but we need to be aware that there are two different things. And what is in our air and is somebody else in the city because that's what place is alluding a little bit to. Like is somebody else responsible for design, for the overall design and the branding? City pics that are more design items than art items. And one idea I had for this event was what we talked before was an artist residency or like have a city artist for a year. that would be the Mount New City artist and that person would put up events or would do something like a public mural for everybody or depending on the artist, this artist will do word art or reading for everybody. That it would be up to an artist that we invite things for us during that year. Because Palo Alto has the copper leaf probably art studios, and they make their artists do stuff, right, in return for subsidized rent. And they give classes, they do the open houses, they give talks. Like alongside that line, maybe we don't have studios to offer right away, but we could maybe invite one artist every year to do things like that.

And if funds were an issue, that could even be integrated with Performing arts, because we're, you know, it could be a visual, could be music, could be reading, could be, but if it's under the art umbrella and it was something that... Might not even be a visual artist. Yeah, I mean, just because that's what happens too with artists in residency. You could be an artist, you know, again, a performing artist, all those things, but that under the art umbrella and the richness and we have an interest in I was thinking along those lines, that you're all searching for something. Yeah. So that's why it might be nice to have a meeting with Performing Arts, you know, just to kind of percolate some things, so we're all working together a little bit. Because we're not separate, I mean, arts are.

Yeah, the Center for Performing Arts was mentioned a few times in time. I want to be mindful that they're, they're a rental facility. They don't plan their own events. They don't put on their own event series. So they operate solely as a rental facility. We do work with them quite a bit. Showcase every year, the exhibits consistently throughout the year. And, you know, we work on the done parchment artist talk.

Gallery, of course, and stuff.

They do have kind of limited capacity, as they are currently offering.

Yeah, limited scope. Yeah, that's true. But the current director is really, really great. And I think she would be open.

I noticed a couple of things that I had in.

You mentioned on . and our professionals. What is that? Who are they? Page six, 283. Page 32. Potential partners, arts professionals. Who is that? So that's not the question. Bring the definition. I don't know what that is. Do you want to speak to it?

Yeah, can you read the whole thing for me?

Oh, sure.

It's use a pilot program to evaluate diversified art selection process, which is fine. But then potential partners, public works department, MVP, and in the art department, advisory bodies, arts professionals community.

Oh, we could put like such as, you know, public art administrator.

Exactly.

So we can put like in parentheses.

I just didn't know what I don't have a reference to. Because we haven't had a public art administrator. How did they know who the art professional was? With the community members, Well, I guess my comments are with advisory bodies. I was going to add in the HRC use advisory, but I'll bring that up when we talk about safety building. I guess when you, as you have advisory bodies, that's basically everybody. Yeah.

And that's in the partnership column you're talking about? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And also in the 10. Again, on page four, this is one of the material activities for events. for engaging the uh in in the partner

It's still recording on there.

The two-hour battery.

Our laptops did not survive very long. Let's just pause for a second. I just want to make sure we're capturing.

I guess it was edited.

Oh, yeah, it has all the participants.

Okay.

Actually, I think we're okay. Jesse's still on and it says we're still recording. Okay. All right. Are there other comments or perhaps a motion? Yes.

A motion to... Do we motion?

What do you want us to motion about?

Do you need from us? We just had a bunch of...

So I think I would like a recommendation to move this forward to the City Council.

with the, after you've reviewed our comments and changes.

Can we just globally say that you're going to review our comments?

Just as you see appropriate.

Yeah. So recommendation to move Public Arts Strategy forward to City Council after reviewing EDC comments.

EDC and public comments. changes. Let's move forward. motion to to bring to recommend this feedback and comments as needed document and then bring that to the council. Second, On paper? Yes.

Oh, what a huge milestone. Congratulations.

It's beautiful to see. It's huge. It's beautiful.

Thanks for listening to all our many comments.

And, you know, I do want to send a special shout out to Kirsten, you know, who has really been behind the scenes moving this folder along. I mean, she's been... Really?

made this happen for our community, which is... Yeah, thank you all for your partnership.

It's also been really easy to work with as a consultant coming in, I just have to say that. That's a really big deal for us.

And I'm so glad you joined together.

Oh, thank you. Me too. We got so much more information this time around, so...

Yeah, thank you to ABC. They've been amazing partners.

Yeah, yeah. All right. One more item.

To serve a new business. The artist selection pilot procedure.

Okay, so we all just got the chance to go through the whole strategy and see that this is a big part of that. We have, I think we've identified creating some sort of artist selection panel in a few different spots in the document and talk about it as a best practice. We talk about including the RFQ and RFP, asking for qualifications and doing a short list of artists. proposals as part of the process. So this isn't the official update or presentation or introduction to the public safety building, but that will be coming in September. And before we do that formal introduction to the project, we want to ask your feedback and agreement to move forward with this artist selection panel. As a pilot, so we can test it out see how it works and and then, when we have this art administrator on we can get more feedback from them to and see you know how we can change things move forward. But just looking at what an artist selection panel is so it'd be project specific, so the selection panel for the public safety building will be different for a park will be different for downtown or. exhibitions. And the purpose is to help just bring the community in and create more education and awareness around public art, have buy-in on the types of art that's selected, more community feedback on that, and adding professional oversight, too. So the different... possibilities for an artist selection panel. So art professional. So that could be a public art administrator, an artist. It could be someone from Silicon Valley Creates, from Silicon Valley Open Studios. I think for this pilot, ideally we'd have another public art professional or administrator from a different municipality come in and give feedback, someone who has experience working through the selection process. So I think we can change it up for different projects too. We've already talked with the public safety teams with police and fire about having representation from their departments and inviting community stakeholders. So downtown committee because of the proximity to downtown or location in downtown or downtown business association members. So we couldn't have a variety of people. How this can go. So The artist selection panel would be invited to participate in the review of the for qualification responses. So it would be helping narrow down creating that short list of artists to then invite design proposals. So we could, for this first pilot, invite the artist selection panel to just attend visual arts committee meetings. So attend that introduction meeting in September and then follow alongside you as you all review the qualifications. So it would be The whole visual arts committee close this artist selection panel, reviewing qualifications and helping create that shortlist. And then they would be updated along the way, but that would essentially be their role is helping with that initial feedback and review. And then the visual arts committee would then provide the feedback and recommendation once you receive those from the shortlist and then make the recommendation to move forward to city council. I think that was a little bit of a change. We were going to talk about this last month, and I think in that memo I had written that the artist selection panel would just review the qualifications. I got some feedback from that, and it sounded like maybe there was some hesitancy around giving a different panel full capability to review that. we can just kind of keep it as it is and invite this other community group in to help review. Alternatively, we could create another ad hoc subcommittee and it could be one or two people from the visual arts committee participating in the artist selection panel so that not all of you have to go through that full review of all the qualifications initially. So like I said, I'd open it up to feedback on kind of those one or two options. And then if you have specific feedback on people to invite to participate in the artist selection panel, we'll be doing outreach in the coming months to make sure people can have the time to join the visual arts committee meeting, to take time to review the qualifications, knowing that we can get We can get 10, we can get 100. So it's hard to know. And we'll be doing the outreach and confirming with people. Any questions?

Can you remind me what RFQ is? An RFP?

Request for qualifications would be RFQ. So that would just be asking artists to tell us What work have you done? What's your experience? What is your experience with public art, particularly related to the call that we have and any criteria that we've set? And then the RFP, the request for proposals, that would be the artist asking the artist to create an actual rendering or something, a design proposal to bring forward to the committee.

So I don't think I've ever been here with one of, beginning of this kind of thing and so um it's not a general call it's not a call we we investigate people and ask them we typically so i think there's been maybe only one project correct me if i'm wrong because some of you have been here a lot longer than me

The RFQ is what you've done so far on the platform.

This is specifically for the public safety building, though, not just like 10.

The RFQ would be open to anyone who wants to apply. And so we would get a big, big potential. We get 50 people and then the panel would... narrow it down and say, we're bringing these five artists to create proposals. For this one project. For this one project. Okay, got it. It's sort of a two-stage process. For some projects we have asked people, we don't have a specific art medium yet. We have some locations.

Yeah, I think we'll come in September. Where is it?

It's on... Oh, but we're not sure what we're going to do with it.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It's on... Villa and between Franklin and Oak is the asbestos plate building where the police station is. And they're going to tear down the forest of redwoods there and put a new building in this place. They've been talking about it for years and now they're probably going to do it. It's a huge, huge, huge project. So we want to build a building, tear out all the redwoods, and then build a new building, and then turn the old building into a parking lot.

So you'll get in September an overview of the project and more information about where public art could go. Right now we're just talking about the procedure that we would apply to the project.

Is there any public comment? There's no one online. Does he still? So, yeah.

So, regarding outreach, which I think is great, really wonderful. I would add, though, this is public safety. I would add from the HRC, because the HRC deals with relationships, police and human relations. They deal with sensitivity towards public safety.

Especially when we had ice and all that.

I would also, since we are, I would also suggest to you, somebody from the advisory committee, because they're also have to be tamed. And so we have runs. Also, because of where it's located, I would also suggest you reach out to ONA, the Mountain View Neighborhood Association. Robert Cox is the current chair. Because it's located within the neighborhood of that neighborhood. It's located within ONA and reaching out to the residents, a way to engage folks who live by it. It answers my question about public art professionals. I'd like to, or I'd like to make, bring it back to September, since September. Have a definition from somebody. What is public safety? What is the theme of public safety? What do you, is that we can give some artists to portray? What is public safety? Is it a community, everybody holding hands, protecting each other? Is it an isolation, beating somebody down? Is it statute to a policeman? I mean, what does public safety mean to, what does the city want to, image that it wants to portray, portray public safety? With that theme, you can get that to artists and say, can you portray community protecting itself? How would you do that? And that'll kind of, use that to gauge how good the artists are.

Well, that would go into phase two, though. Right.

But first, but first, first, when I have that ready for the just as a because of the sensitivity and the expense of this thing. $400,000. I've never seen anything like that big. And because of public safety and the political times are in, we have to be conscious of what image we want to have, what we want to portray, etc. So if they can think about the city can think about that.

I think what you're saying is correct I think it'll be helpful for qualifications because they can say I'm a qualified artist because I've done work that actually responds to this type of thing and these are these are some of my examples so they send them the portfolio

We'll get serious artists.

That's usually what RFQs are.

You don't have to. And then we also can direct them. This is what we mean by public safety, not this. But again, because it's such a sensitive issue. No, I think that's good. And this is a big, big, big project.

And also, it would be difficult for the artist without some direction, right? Where do I go with this? I mean, it just clarifies and takes the stress out of the situation.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah, we'll bring a lot more information at the introduction. Really, tonight, it's talking about the selection panel process. But we'll have a lot of background in that.

This will be a slow project, though, right? I mean, this building, it's going to take five years to get it built, I think. It's not going to be next year or so.

We'll provide a tentative timeline in September.

But it's time to engage... safety people and reach out.

Well, yeah, we are working within a timeline. So I think as you saw in the work plan recommendation to city council and getting their approvals, we're scheduling that for next spring, spring of 2027. So that's the timeline that we need to work with. And so I think this timeline here is a little bit of a It's a little tentative, so like opening the RFQ fall 2026. We would like to open that after the visual arts committee project introduction. And then phase two, so inviting the shortlist of artists to prepare that design would be early, by early 2027, if not.

So you wanted guidance on how to formulate the selection committee with either the full visual arts committee plus the artist selection panel or an ad hoc small subset of this committee plus that artist selection panel. Is that what you?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that there's a preference to just invite the selection panel to join the committee meeting.

And if I would participate together. All the selection, the process was that you assembled all of the... the calls that came in and we got onto that website. I can't remember the name of right now.

Studio.

Yeah. Call for entry. And we rated things and then you pick the top like 10 and I thought it was a pretty straightforward process. Last time we did it actually not a lot of discussion. So the question is how does having more or fewer people benefit from that process. And I don't really know.

Yeah, that's a good question. How many people would be on the artist selection panel? Would we have like seven people? Potentially.

Yeah, it could be upwards of seven. If we're just using these three groups, maybe four. One police, one fire rep, downtown committee, and professionals. Yeah, plus the visual arts committee. And so, I mean, the... I guess your question is, you know, benefits.

To have more people or fewer people, I don't really know. I mean, there'd be, we didn't discuss that much last time. We looked at the top 10 and you might do top five this time or something. You know, the average.

There may be multiple locations for our, there's a little bit more to consider for these therapy projects.

I suppose guidance in how to rate The selections would be good. I think at least within this committee, I feel like everybody has a slightly different way that they rate. Some people do all or nothing, hoping that if they give everything to their top 10, then their top 10 will make it. Some other people do it slightly differently. I don't know if we should all have the same system or not.

For the introduction in September, I mean... Yeah, I think before the RFQ goes out and before the jurying happens, we can create that criteria.

Right.

Yeah. So it sounds like maybe for this first pilot, we just have the digital arts committee participate as you normally would, invite the artist selection panel to join in on that jurying for the first, for the request for qualifications and And they would be a part of that discussion, too.

So let me, we've had problems meeting this would Can this thing, can this move forward if we can't meet as a body? We can't get what we need. We need four people. We can't get four. Three people are available. Two people are available. Can these things still meet? Or do you need all of us?

It becomes a... whole body activity, then it has to be a formed Brown Act public meeting. And so I do, yeah, I think you're raising a good point. And I would also, you know, with the recommendations of the various committees, you may want on there to Kristen's point, the art selection panel could be seven people, you're also I mean, that means 14 people have to come together and do the reconciling of how you set it up. So it could potentially be challenging. To Kirsten's point, we are operating on a set timeline. So we don't have the flexibility to not be able to... I mean, so it's something for you to keep in mind is how do we... how do we continue to move this along? And an ad hoc committee could be a good middle ground because you have representation from your committee, gets direct exposure and input. And again, the final art will be decided by this body. This is really looking at qualifications. So this is the work to see, does the person have the expertise? Have they worked on projects like this before? Can they, you know, are they demonstrating that they can that they can effectively respond to the call. So this is not looking at art. This isn't the rating. You're essentially looking at a resume, more or less, of this is the work I've done. This is what I'm capable of. We'll not be looking at exact art proposals at this stage.

So they are not picking the five...

They will create a shortlist. They'll pick the artist to do it, and then those artists will render what they think. It's kind of like what we did with the transit center.

So they're looking at examples of the experience.

They look at the qualifications and the experience, because a lot of it has to do also with the ability to work with a budget like this. And so that's a huge issue. In all honesty, there's not very many artists in this area that can do that on their own. They usually have a team or they find a team, so then they have to pay them. So for some artists, that's a hard thing to do. They're local. When I say local, I mean regional. And for others, it's not. And I think the other thing, too, is do you want this whole committee to spend hours on looking at people's qualifications that are I mean, honestly, not qualified, but they're applying anyways, because that's what artists like to do. And, you know, when you can have this committee that's only going to be part of it for a very short amount of time, like all of you who are, you know, part of this visual arts committee to give, no, this person definitely does not fit these qualifications. Put them in that pile.

Yes, definitely. I'm wondering if the middle ground could be that, you know, that that the artists are a bit more vetted than usually, because we get usually just who clearly squarely doesn't qualify, and then we need to look at everybody. But I feel like only half the selection panel already narrowing down to only five people, and that's the first time we see those artists. That is a huge break, too. from what we've done so far. And we have a lot of experience with both RFQs and RFPs. And we are in contact with residents. We know what kind of art you already have. We have a lot to bring to the table as well, right? And so I feel like we should definitely be, maybe not the whole committee, but, and I don't even think it might need to be like particular people, could at least always be three of us.

Like in the selection panel or two of us.

Yeah, those are the two options.

So either we're good with the whole committee or having an ad hoc. That could be one thing. But the other one, what I wanted to refer to is maybe just narrow down much more than usually, but have the whole BAC still see maybe instead of just five artists that already developed an RFP, say we see 20 people. Or like get the input of the whole BAC at some point in between, right? Between phase one and two.

People have to talk further about that when we do the introduction, because at that time you'll see the different locations. We'll talk about kind of cost distribution, the value. We're paying the artists for design proposal will come out of the 400 K budget. And so, you know, if we're paying 20 artists, you know, how much are we saying?

And so that you, that you see that the RFQs, um, There's one phase in between, not 20 RFPs, that say like 100 people apply, you are like per normal criteria, you can only lead out like five because they're not in the area. But the selection panel would say, okay, from those 100 people, because we need to look at... diversity, we need to look at, can people do this really? Just like a bunch of criteria that panel has and says, now we're down to 20 or 50 or 30. And we want to bring this to the VAC, tell them these are the artists. And we're thinking of those five people we want to do an RFP, give us feedback, like, let us know what you think. because that will be the point where we come in with our experience, right? And also the art we know in Mountain View, the people tell us stuff that we could say, this is the narrowed down list out of these 30 people. We want to pick five feedback from you guys, but the panel would still pick the five, but like have like an extra kind of background. I mean, as a pilot, because it's such a huge break from, So far we've been trusted for good or for better or for worse to do the whole thing. I feel like what can we do to kind of harness both strengths, right? Because I think a selection panel is a very good idea and it's important to get other people in. And for the panel, I really hope it's very well balanced, that there is enough artist representation in there and not just stakeholders.

When we did this before with the murals in Brainstore, we had already selected, we did a similar process where we had chosen the artists, we asked them to go and talk to the people who would be most impacted, the BAC and the senior people, so that they could form the art based on feedback that they got from the BAC. That, but we'd already selected the artists. Here you're kind of reversing it. You're asking the public to select the artists, not what the artists are going to produce, not evaluate, but to see if the artist is qualified, which is, he's been going to know that.

And we would have visual arts committee representatives on there and we tend to invite a public art administrator who's been working in the field. And so, you know, and we'll have staff on board.

We'll have an architect. But the feedback from the police guy, the fire guy, or the HRC person, would they be most important in selecting the artist or what the artist is going to create? Do you rather the beast is quite a quick kind of question is, are they this three one. This process, it's the larger committee evaluating he says going to occur, the note. Or the only evaluating the artists.

They're narrowing down the, they're reviewing the qualifications.

So they're not giving feedback on, is this a good art piece? It's more, it's a good artist.

Yeah.

I'm a blind devil's advocate. It's a cop able to evaluate whether it's a good artist.

I participated in this very similar process in Sunnyvale for their community center. They had a number of different community members with little to no experience in public art, but have relationship with the community center or the neighborhood. a city organization or related organization. And what they provided was do they want to feel when they look at these examples of art you know how how does it make them feel when they're at the community center do they when they enjoy the community center do they want shade do they want this so they're they're seeing it from that sorry joe user experience but that was before you chose the artist that was as part of the qualification review so we saw um you know the artist's resume they provided um pictures their website um you know we were everyone did a deep dive just like you all do during the coming back together i'm just curious like do we all do is it like a big committee decision where you like present the website and everybody votes in the moment or

Or do people have a list of 30?

Yeah, everyone would vote at their own time. So you've experienced the voting for the exhibition. Yeah. It would be just like that. Everyone would see all the applications at their own time.

And then scores, everything, one out of seven or whatever. Okay, I understand now. But it seems to me like there's some things that are subjective about this, and there's some things that are very objective. Like, does this person, has this person ever dealt with a $400,000 budget?

Yeah, and we can create, Craig, so we can create, you know, look, how many years have they been, how many years of experience do they have in December? Like, does this meet the vision and mission of, like, does their work examples meet the vision and mission of the public safety policy? I'm just throwing things out there. The artist selection panel can... That would be helpful. Three things or something that they will get to help. We can't do that in CAFE then, but we can use a different system.

We need that for non-visual people. Be very, very clear on what criteria it is for them to evaluate the artist. So that's because Chris will...

Yeah, that's just like we're saying, people that aren't artists, they're not deciding on something they don't even know what to decide on. So it just has to be very clear. You have to explain it and not just assume.

And so I'd like to just sort of put you on the spot a little bit. So I think we're building this off of best practice and experience that Kirsten has had in other places. But Amanda, can you speak to, I mean, This is kind of building off of conversations we've had around recommendations around how other jurisdictions approach this. And we're testing out a concept based on best practices we're seeing. So this is not a new process that we're creating. We're basing it off of what we've seen done in other places.

Yeah, and I've been a part of them as well as Kristen's similar example. I've been a part of it for the city of San Jose for public art on a fire station. And we had a police person on the panel and a fire station, or fireman on the panel. And their comments were very much, I don't know art. I don't know art, but I'm here because I'm going to use this space. And we, you know, we came, each of us came with our... notes, um, based off of what we looked at on our own time. So just like what you said, use your own time, write your notes, why you scored that, um, the public art administrator went through each, each artwork and, um, kind of shared a little bit of who that artist was with us. And this was all through online. This is all not in person. Um, and, um, you know, what ended up happening was sometimes it was, oh, I changed my score now. And that was fine because that was part of the conversation in that group of eight people. Now we had, there was two people, there was one person from the city of San Jose does a different, they have a cultural, they have a, they have a arts commission and then a subcommittee public art subcommittee. And so they had one person from the arts commission, one person from their, from their public art subcommittee. And then they had myself, they had another, an artist. They had, like I said, the city department people, and I think a community member. So it really was this kind of, bigger conversation. Like you're saying, you have to spell it out because some know and some don't. And then I'm not knowing what the firefighters needs are. And so it's the same thing. And I experienced that for the city of San Jose, experienced that with the city of Palo Alto as well. I was on one of their panels. They do a very similar process. They spend a little bit more time that we came back twice to be a part of a online conversation as panel members to have a deeper conversation dive and agree to give it to the arts commission as a recommendation of these are the artists that we recommend to move forward. So it is, it is very much common practice and, um, not just in our state, but, um, simultaneously we worked on the Scottsdale public art plan, very, uh, very conservative community. Um, and yeah. And, um, so we were present for the selection. They let, they let us be present for the selection as a community member. And there was people on that panel did not work in the arts. And it was very important to the public art staff to have that representation. I think another thing that we haven't talked about is the importance of that artist knowing how to go into community that they've never been a part of before. And when you look at the qualifications that they provide, you can ask that of them. How have you worked in community to make sure that that community reflects the art that you've created, right? And so, for example, I did a project with the city of Newark worked with an artist who didn't really know anything about Newark, but what she did was she did her research. She went into community, talked to them, presented us with a proposal. She ended up getting selected. And a lot of things I believe was because of the research she did on her own to create artwork. So it's just,

I think based on all this, I think it could be an ad hoc group. I think 14 is too many. I really do. I think representatives would be fine, you know, for the stage.

The other thing, though, I would ask is when we come down to flexible art, I'd like to have the same people. buy into the art that's selected. So not just be part of the luminary, the artist, when the artist produces the, because they, the police guy is going to live with this piece. So he should be part of the maybe he comes back in at the very end or something not sitting through us all discussing well or or happy like approval so so he's like them on board for sure exactly and i think that that's huge that's more important than anything yeah that was part of the early conversations that myself and barbara had with amanda um

in regards to selection panels and kind of changing it up, because we brought that to the attention as a recommendation in the strategy. And a lot of it was the fact that I think it also came out of, we didn't have a lot of people at the community meeting. And so how do we make sure people are informed about what is happening here? Because it's not just this group that needs to know, it's the entire community, not just people who live here, but who work here. And having a diverse panel, depending on the project, is incredibly important for that reason as well.

So, and I would want to make it clear what the criteria is for the non artists participating, and I would ask that same members continue on through the process. When we come down to finalizing the art, they're there, they are to say, yeah, I can live with that. Because then it'll kind of complete circle. But to your other point, I would second what Stephanie says. I'd say from this, I wouldn't add at all.

I don't want to make a band up.

It's sad, right? The example. You don't want to have this forum here. Too much.

No, no. I mean, my feedback was really about, like, I think the BSE needs to still all along be involved, but that doesn't mean it needs to be the whole. We're just talking about the selection. I think even there as well, I think we need to be involved.

Sorry, where? We can provide some updates along the way. But I think, again, to Cliff's point earlier, it we would be relying on the whole committee getting together and not... No, no, no.

What I mean is, yeah, we should be involved, but we can be part of the selection panel, some of us.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

And that's what I mean, but from phase one on. As an advisory body, our role is really representing citizens. So it's good that we have different approaches to this process, right?

I think that shouldn't get lost. Is there a recommendation for anyone specific?

Just so I'm clear, what we're talking about is having a um sub um panel join this um selection panel selection panel the phase one phase one and then phase two is here is that what you're saying that's what i thought yeah i'm just clarifying that and then maybe maybe the vacs

together without the public because then we can all convene get an update and then at the final part we bring back in that

public public person for like okay this is the finalists or two finalists and we can discuss it with them but there's a committee can't have a non-public meeting so it would have to be yeah yeah and so the the artist selection panel plus an ad hoc committee of up to three visual arts committee members um we can have a separate meeting um to discuss the the rfq um and all the jurying and scoring. So we'll do that. And then, you know, we'll provide updates to the committee in between the issuing that RFP and inviting that shortlist of artists to give us proposals.

For just, we have an ad hoc committee of three people from the panel here. Does it have to be always the same three people? No, this would be project specific. Can it be, I'm sorry, for this project, does it always have to be the same three people or does it, can it, okay.

So there would only be one meeting where the three people would participate. So there wouldn't, and then it would come back to. I think there's going to have to because of the timeline. When is that meeting?

Do we have a, first of all, is there a date for it?

We won't be going back and forth. We're working on a, relatively tight timeline for a big project and so it's either you know coming to the visual arts committee meeting or holding this separate ad hoc and so we have the september 9th is our project introduction meeting yeah and then when you're saying fall would that one be in october or november or do we know yet you know we would intend to issue the rfp you know as soon as as we can after the introduction to the committee. So there's RFQ. Sorry.

So the RFP would go out with So the RP would be issued with qualifications and then the panel would meet once you evaluate.

So we would invite the panel to join that introduction meeting. So the whole VAC will get the introduction. It wouldn't just be the ad hoc committee. The whole visual arts committee will get that introduction in September. We'll invite the artist selection panel to that so they get the same information that everyone else is getting. We'll issue the request for proposals. Request for qualifications. Request for qualifications. And once that deadline hits, the artist selection panel, the visual arts committee, ad hoc committee, the up to three members, will review and jury. And then we'll have everyone's done jurying.

So that would be by October.

Probably, yeah. We'll need to work out the timeline a little bit still.

And then once the RFPs come back, then the whole visual arts committee sees that, including if we want to invite the selection committee.

So with the visual arts, then the final approval, let's say, so I understand what you're saying is that... the panel, including the three here, would need to evaluate the artists that have applied and select up to five artists to move forward with a separate art piece. In those five, would that come back to the full VAC to basically be notified these are the five people we're going to be and you all agreed this is the five?

No, I think they're going to come back with a proposal. We're going to come back and we'll see the proposal.

Yeah, so that short list, the people who are invited to create a proposal, if we're going with what we're talking about, the process that we're talking about now, the artist selection panel, including the VAC ad hoc, I would make that selection, give an update to the VAC at that point. And then you'd see the proposals once those are done and then make a recommendation based on those proposals.

The proposed art pieces. And we'll make a recommendation with the panel that was available to select the artists.

Yeah, they could be.

I think they should. Is the expectation that the selection panel makes a recommendation? Like they get five RFPs?

RFQs.

No, RFPs. And then there's five RFPs come to us, but do they come with a recommendation? The selection panel would like artist number three brought forward to the council.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- Know we would then evaluate. HAB-Jacques Juilland- The pieces that that have come. HAB-Jacques Juilland- For committee.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- jury the proposal.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- The final.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- And it'll only be five. So I think we're sticking on a number and not even sure.

It's not going to be 100.

It's going to be a short amount.

So I still want to bring it back. Would you guys see value in that we get an update before it's narrowed down to five people?

I think it's a timeline thing again, honestly.

We can provide that update, but getting the feedback.

November, December, and the RFP by invitation is early 27. So there would be a meeting that we have where the panel, for example, could say we're at this stage right now. We have narrowed it down to only this many people. Just give a report, and if we have feedback, we have feedback, and if we don't,

I mean, here's a question. I would assume that as soon as the RFQ is made, that you're going to send that back to those five or whatever artists, and they're going to get started on their RFPs. That's the hope. That's the hope. And then early 2027, we're going to see the final RFPs. It's not that the RFP is going to go... It's going to take them time to develop.

Yeah, it's going to take them time.

So I think ultimately, no, the final selection and... So let's just, I think we've looked at the timeline. This is what we have capacity for is a RFQ and time for is an RFQ process. And I agree you meet several times, but there will be, there needs to be time for during, there needs to be time for discussion. And then given the tight timeline, we need to jump to RFP process because artists are going to need time to develop a concept. So, so. I think the recommendation that staff is bringing forward is an RFQ process that either has a full committee or the ad hoc. And to Amanda's point, this sort of multi-phased RFQ process is not something we've seen done in other communities. And so staff has not had an opportunity to vet that as an option, given that we don't have good examples of anyone taking that approach. And so I would caution you to not send us into uncharted territory with such a tight timeline. But that would be staff's recommendation.

The artist selection panel is only meeting once, right? So the meeting once, looking through the artist selection. Which is the same process that the visual arts committee follows. And we select five people or however many. Five bitch. All done in one meeting.

They'll have homework. When I've done this, I don't know if that was for you, but like, there's somewhere I've done where I had to spend two separate days to review them because I, you know, like you're really going through the meeting by yourself. Yes. Yeah. Because it's like, yeah, it's, I had to review like 20, it's been 20, 30 cameras, exactly the exact number, but I know it was definitely at that point. And they're submitting there, you know, a couple of examples of, you have to read their statement, look at their qualifications, and then you're scoring them. So you're really spending quality time. But when you come back with your panel and the panels, you know, somebody has, say, I gave a score of five and this person gave a score of 10. And then the staff says, okay, do you want to explain why you gave the 10 and give us a little bit of your reasons? Because most people scored five. That can affect, you know, the final decision. Those are the kind of conversations that are important to have. That's why you don't want to do that middle one, because it'll really slow it down. That singular one, you're coming back with all that homework you did. I think that's incredibly important to take into consideration the amount of time that's going to be spent on a panelist's own time.

What I've heard say is we recommend at heart And then as you move forward, bring it back as we have our scheduled meetings and report what's the status.

Provide an update. In any case, it's our own people coming back from the selection panel. Just give a quick update.

I think an update is totally feasible. Bringing it back for further discussion and deliberation is not realistic.

Yeah, because you want to move. Yeah.

Yeah. But an update, absolutely. I mean, as Kirsten had said, we want to ensure along the way, as she does at every meeting, is she's providing updates on these CAP projects. So an update is reasonable. Further deliberation is not feasible. So do you want to nominate people to be on the committee?

Or is that what you're seeking, Kirsten, is nominations? I'll volunteer.

I'm on so many committees. I don't know if you guys do it.

I would do it, but I think it's also valuable.

I could be backup. I've got my mom who's ill. I can't tell if I'm going to be around. Joe, do you want to?

Sure. Okay. So do we want to do...

Oh, I guess let me just sorry, just to clarify one detail. It is in fall. Will this be during our normal meeting and this be a separate meeting? Okay, I'm just gonna be out for a week in October. But other than that, I'll be there.

I'm out. No, I'm not.

We can have two or three.

I'll be a backup. I'm gone from September. I'll go leaving after the VAC meeting in September. I'll be back October 8.

Yeah, I might not be around early September. That's a good point. Thank you, Lacey. But it's October, right?

I'm going to be out. Sounds like it's more October, November. I'm going to be out three weeks from the last of September to November.

When when is when is so we could have like alternate likely.

I don't know.

Yeah, I just say we do that. Then we can. I mean, can we decide finally on that September?

We issue the request for qualifications in mid-September. Say we issue it a week after the Visual Arts Committee meets.

And then about a month, right?

It would probably be late October.

The earliest mid-October is the earliest.

If you're going to be asking them to send their qualifications within a certain amount of time, then you have to gather all those and then you send them to everybody to review them. So you really wouldn't be meeting until a little bit. Maybe early November, but at the earliest late October.

In this process, I'm looking to you, overview ones that are clearly not appropriate. Yes, yeah.

Yeah, we will get them all first.

We're working really closely with the police and fire chiefs too. And so If there's any immediate concerns from them, you know, we'll be working with them.

I mean, because the RFP will have qualifications, have you worked on such and such and such. So when they apply and they clearly don't meet those, you'll just, it won't even come to the panel.

Yeah, exactly.

So you just pre-screening.

Yeah. Yeah. i'd like to do it as an alternate i mean i'd like to do it so if someone doesn't want to do it or isn't around then put me on yeah so it sounds like the three of us are the most likely you can do it but i super i can do it i can do it from here i just don't know kind of be somebody i am available so yeah i think that's good no no i haven't Do you want to just what I mean, I think you guys are good. So I'd like to do it.

Yeah, noting. So Susie, I'm as members and then we see Stephanie alternates is available.

Let's talk about Yeah, sounds good.

We establish the ad hoc committee and three people. Yes, the ad hoc may be additionally to the artist selection panel for the RFQ phase one. And we will provide three members from the visual arts committee. That's my motion. Second.

A little in favor. Okay.

We have another item.

No, okay.

Public art administrator. You know, the city's really been prioritizing the recruitment and we are in the recruitment process.

I'm hoping to have an update that we can bring to you at the beginning of the official news, but I can tell you, we've been, we, uh, Candidate pool, the application process closed, and we are moving forward with evaluating candidates. And good candidates. We received a lot of applications and really high-quality candidates. It was a really excellent application pool.

I'm sorry, just to clarify, that's the same person that we were just talking about in the plan, right?

Yes, the title is public art administrator. Oh, public art administrator, okay. Yeah. It is a position that we based off of sort of regional other, you know, other regional positions. That's how we look to our neighbors to build out the job description. And, you know, we had to kind of place it in the city organization since it's a brand new position. So it kind of.

You worked through the HR process. We did.

And the process and all of that.

We got a chance to look at it because it was a recommendation that should be done. And it was great. Like Amanda said, we're actually, yes. We're doing it.

Send us some of your thoughts.

Great, great, great.

So exciting. Any other comments or questions?

Oh, I have, because we talked about interesting art events. The Anderson Collection on Stanford campus, they had an artist in residence for a year and the artist got groups of two people together and they discussed what connects them and what bonding means. And while they did that, they formed a ceramic vessel. So they made a clay vessel. And it's a room when you come in. And they're all free, right? The Cantor Arts and the Anderson Collection. And it's a temporary exhibit. I think it closes in August. So it closes fairly soon. And the whole room is filled with small vessels and they all have a chip underneath so you can pick up the vessel that speaks to you, put it on a console and then you can hear the conversation those two people had when they made the vessel together. We also have interesting art things around here. So I wanted to maybe you want to experience that. Wow. You should go.

So that's at the Cantor.

The Anderson Collective is right next to the Cantor. It's their brand, like fairly new, still contemporary art. Okay.

All right. All right. Anything else? No. So we should do a meeting at low. Okay. Right here.