City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining our city council meeting of September 14th, 2026. We hold meetings in a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation, and the city welcomes public comment on topics within the city's subject matter jurisdiction, and members of the public may provide comments as follows. In-person speakers will be called first. Speaker cards are located at the back table in the council chambers and must be turned in to the city clerk here at the dais. Please be sure to indicate the agenda item number you wish to speak on. Attendees who have joined us by Zoom will be called to speak after the in-person comments have been given. Detailed instructions for public comment will be provided on the screen when the time for public comment begins. And lastly, I'd like to remind everyone that comments should remain within the City's subject matter jurisdiction and relate to matters that are appropriately before the City Council. We welcome participation from the public and recognize that members of our community may have strongly held views and at times strong emotions about the issues before us. However, we ask that all speakers conduct themselves respectfully. The City of Redwood City does not condone hateful, derogatory, or discriminatory remarks directed at any individuals or groups. Comments that cross that line do not contribute to productive civic dialogue here at City Hall. We are committed to maintaining a public meeting where everyone has the opportunity to be heard, while also maintaining an environment that is respectful, orderly, and conductive to a meaningful community discussion. With that, I'll now turn it over to our city clerk to call the roll.

Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Chu. Council Member Chu, I see you've joined us online. Thank you. Council Member Gee. Council Member Howard. Here. Council Member Padilla. Present. Council Member Strachan. Here. Vice Mayor Akin. Mayor Martinez-Caballos.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. With that, we'll go into the Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Howard, could you lead us, please?

Please join me in honoring our flag and our country. for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Council Member Howard. And with that, we'll go to item number four. And we do have a council member who is participating in tonight's evening through this item. And I will pass things over to Council Member Chiu.

Sorry, I couldn't hear you there.

No, no worries. We're on item four. I'm just wondering if you could, yeah, share your thing.

Yeah, I am participating remotely due to travel for official city visits.

Thank you, Council Member Chu. Can you also confirm that you'll have audio and video on throughout the meeting? And also, please disclose if there are any individuals over the age of 18 present in your room and what their relation to you is.

There's no one here with me, and I will have audio and video on. Okay.

Wonderful. Thank you. And for the record, I will state that we do have at least a quorum of the other city council members present in the meeting tonight. And Council Member Chu has not used her Just Cause remote participation more than the allowed times per year. And also, I'm confirming that the city will be providing a two-way audio-visual platform so that the public can remotely hear and visually observe the meeting. That's it, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you, Council Member Chu, for joining us virtually. With that, I will move into item five, our presentations and acknowledgements. Our first recognition this evening is to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, a time that is near and dear to Redwood City to celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of those whose ancestors came from Mexico, Spain, the Caribbean, Central and South America. And I'll read a few excerpts from our proclamation. Whereas September 15th through October 15th is nationally recognized as National Hispanic Heritage Month and the City of Redwood City recognizes that Hispanic heritage is American heritage and we see that influence in almost every aspect of our lives. Whereas the people who identify as Hispanic or Latino represent over 35% of Redwood City's population, making it the second largest demographic in our community. whereas the Latino Community Council of Redwood City has organized an annual Fiestas Patrias events held on the third Sunday of September since 2008 to celebrate the independence of Mexico and other Latin American countries. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martinez-Abayos, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the people of Redwood City, do hereby proclaim September 15th, 2026, through October 15th, 2026, National Hispanic Heritage Month in honor of the rich culture that Hispanic Americans have brought to the Redwood City community and in recognition of the indelible footprints of Hispanic heritage in our daily lives. Be it further resolved that in recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the Mexican national flag was raised on September 13th, 2026 for the Fiestas Patria celebration and the national flags of Belize, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, where my dad is from, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, where my mom is from, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru will be displayed here in the council chambers at City Hall in celebration of the National Hispanic Heritage Month. I'd now like to welcome members of the Latino Community Council of Redwood City to the podium for their remarks and to share some highlights from yesterday's Fiestas Patrias event. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Martinez-Zavallos, City Council members and staff. Of course, as I'll go into yesterday for a little bit, you can see us walking up here very slowly. Our feet still hurt. Anyway, with that, my name is Arnoldo Arreola. I'm the chair for the Latino Community Council of Redwood City, also known as LCCRC. And on behalf of the Latino community, I want to sincerely thank you for proclaiming National Hispanic Heritage Month here in Redwood City. This recognition means so much to our community. It honors our culture, our traditions and the many contributions the Latinos have made and continue to make to this great city. Thank you for standing with us, for supporting our community and for recognizing that our diversity is one of the things that makes Redwood City so special. I've been in Redwood City since 1965 and I thank my dad every day for bringing me here. Thank you for standing with us, for supporting our community, and for recognizing that our diversity is one of the things that makes Redwood City so, so special. We are truly grateful for your leadership, your friendship, and your continued support. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, the entire city council and staff. I will now let Ernie and Connie come in and say a few words.

Thank you, Arnaldo. And yeah, just to echo exactly what Arnaldo had mentioned, you know, we do truly appreciate the council as well as community members who have come out in support of this event year out and year in or year in or year out. But you know what was really exciting is when you attend these events, Even if you're not Latino and you're able to see all these wonderful community members gather in the thousands and sing that national anthem and you see the tears in their eyes scrolling down because they're remembering having grown up in Mexico or there's something about their own country, you know, that they're reflecting about. That's huge. And when I woke up this morning, because I'm a TikToker. You couldn't help to notice all the phenomenal TikTok videos that were just being displayed all over the place and a lot of the comments saying, wow, this is what Redwood City is all about. I'm so proud of our city. So we're getting it right. You know, when we created our downtown precise plan so many years ago, we created that downtown plaza. You know what? This is what it's all about. Thank you.

Good evening. Sorry. Hi, everybody. My name is Connie Guerrero. I just wrote a couple things because I didn't want to forget, and I want to make sure I get some things out today. As we celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made yesterday's Fiestas Patrias event so memorable. Thank you to the city of Redwood City for its continued partnership, support, and commitment to celebrating the cultural diversity that makes our community so special. We deeply appreciate your dedication to bringing residents together to honor our heritage and strengthen our community's connections. I want to say a special thanks to the mayor for doing such a great job with El Grito yesterday. Your words were spot on. I'd also like to recognize our incredible volunteers. Fiestas Patrias is made possible by the many hours we devote to planning the volunteers, help in organizing, setting up, assisting vendors, coordinating sage programs, and cleaning up after the celebration. Thank you volunteers for your time and dedication. Also, a big thank you goes out to the local community groups that share their talents, their traditions, and passion with us. We are grateful for Mexico Vivo, Casa Circulo Cultural, and Colibri for helping preserve and showcase the beauty of our culture and heritage. Your participation enriched the celebration and created meaningful experience for everyone who attended. To our sponsors, vendors, performers, elected officials, Redwood City PD personnel, thank you for your support and collaboration. Your contribution helps make the event welcoming, safe, and vibrant for everyone. Finally, thank you to the families, friends, and community members who celebrated with us. Your presence brings Fiestas Patrias to life. Seeing generations come together to honor our heritage, enjoy our traditions, and celebrate our shared community is truly inspiring. Thank you everybody for making Fiestas Patrias a tremendous success. Next year marks our 20th year celebration, and we look forward to commemorating this milestone in a big way with special additions to the event. Thank you all.

Thank you all, and we have a city proclamation for you. Would love to take a photo, but thank you for making an event from 2008 become a regional phenomenon that everyone enjoys. It's amazing, not only putting Redwood City on the map, but taking people home, too. Thank you.

If I may mention one more thing. Please. I pride myself on leaving the square squeaky clean. Oh yeah. I honestly I pray to those people that all the people in attendance we need to clean up and it works. Believe me. I have pictures.

Thank you. Thank you all. Let's take a photo. Thank you, everyone, and thank you again to the Latino Community Council. With that, we'll move on to Item 5B. Next, we'll be proclaiming September 10th through 19th, 2026, as Welcoming Week in Redwood City. In 2017, Redwood City became a welcoming city and joined the Welcoming Cities and Counties Initiative. Since then, the city has committed to building a neighborly community that is inclusive, hospitable, and welcoming. I'll now read a few whereases from the proclamation. Whereas Redwood City has a diverse community in which at least 34% of residents have immigrated to the United States, and whereas the city of Redwood City is committed to building a welcoming and neighborly community, that is inclusive, hospitable and welcoming, where people, families and institutions thrive and the contributions of all are celebrated and valued. And whereas the City of Redwood City stands strongly in support of inclusivity for our diverse community, honouring and protecting every individual regardless of race, creed, colour, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, orientation or identity. And whereas the City of Redwood City seeks to join other communities around the state in recognizing Welcoming Week as an important step in bridging divisions as well as strengthening our communities and affirming the importance of welcoming and inclusive places in achieving collective prosperity. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Elmer Martinez-Abaez, Mayor of Redwood City, on behalf of the City Council and the residents of Redwood City, do hereby proclaim September 10th through 19th, 2026, as Welcoming Week. And before I welcome Revit City Together's Executive Director Rafael Avendaño to the podium, I also want to congratulate Talisha Brent from our Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department and Mason Locke from the Sheriff's Activity League upon receiving the Welcome Stars Award. And we had a wonderful lunch to celebrate that this afternoon. and the welcoming stars program recognizes community members and organizations that promote welcoming and inclusivity in our community so congratulations talisha and mason and i'll turn it over to rafael and the team to showcase some of the amazing work redwood city together has been up to

Quickly, I'm not Rafael, but I'm Elisa Chavez, and I work with Revit City together. Good evening, city council, city manager, staff, and our wonderful Revit City and North Brooks community. I am here representing the Welcoming River City Working Group, one of River City Together's working groups. Our focus is to build empathy, understanding, and supportive action across race, class, and documentation studies. Every year, we launch a week of local events to ensure everyone feels they're welcome here, proudly connecting our community to a powerful national movement. We kicked off Welcoming Week 2026 last week with the Global Coffee Tasting at the Sequoia YMCA. The celebration continues all week long and we invite you all to join us. Upcoming events include Welcoming Stories and Family Game Night at the Downtown Library, a resource fair hosted by Caron, and a Soccer and Arts Night at the Siena Youth Center. You can find the full schedule on the library's website under the Welcoming Week page. Joining me today to receive this proclamation is another of our working group partners, Kenyatta College, represented by outreach ambassador, Lucia. Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you. Great. We really appreciate all the great work you're doing, and it's too bad you scheduled salsa night for tonight. If not, I think the seven of us would have been there, but we've got a proclamation, and we'd love to take a photo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again, Elisa, for being here to represent Rowett City together and all the great work you're doing in the community. And our next recognition item this evening is to celebrate the newly graduated students from our career online high school program. I'd like to turn it over to our interim library director, Sarah LaTorra, who will introduce our graduates tonight.

Good evening. Sarah Latoura, Interim Library Director. It's my privilege tonight to present the recent graduates of the Career Online High School. This program is a fully accredited high school diploma that combines both coursework that the students completed as well as helping them to achieve a fully accredited diploma. The library's Project Reek works closely with students to ensure that the tools and support necessary to complete their degree is in place, whether it's helping them to get connected with a tutor or just cheering them on as they work through all of their courses. I also want to thank our library foundation, who for the past 10 years has provided support for this program. And this year, they're picking up the scholarships so that we can continue to send students to this program for free. And now let's talk a little bit about our five graduates. So we have reached the 10 year mark and now this is 22 people that have graduated through this program. And we'll start with Isabelle. Isabelle has participated with Project Read since 2011. Sure, you can come join me. and completed her diploma with one-on-one tutoring support. Her son also participated in Project Read, making the program part of their family's journey. Isabelle plans to attend community college and pursue cosmetology with the dream of eventually opening her own salon. So, Isabelle, after I'm done with all of this, then I'll have you speak. Our next student is Steve, who earned his high school diploma to qualify for better paying job opportunities. He is exploring college courses to continue to expand his knowledge and skills. Career Online High School was a second chance for Steve to complete something he had left incomplete in high school. Arturo, here comes Steve, we have two of our graduates here in the audience and then we have three that are unable to attend tonight. Arturo saw earning his diploma as an opportunity to move beyond past mistakes and feeling stuck. He wanted to prove himself that he could complete his education and make his family proud. Arturo plans to use his diploma to pursue employment and is interested in office machine repair. Christopher left high school at 17 and returned later in life after recognizing the importance of a diploma. He wants greater job opportunities and a better future for his children. Christopher plans to pursue community college and explore careers in plumbing or HVAC. And then finally, Javier earned his diploma to prove to himself and his children that hard work and determination can overcome challenges. Through this process he developed stronger time management, organization, confidence, and focus. Javier plans to complete security training and pursue a career as a security guard. For these students, the diploma wasn't the finish line. It opened the door to better jobs, future education, and new possibilities. And if you know someone who could benefit from this program, we hope you'll refer them to the library today. Applicants must live in Redwood City and be at least 19 years old. So please join me in celebrating our graduates. And Isabelle would like to say a few words. So come on up, Isabelle.

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for coming here. First off, I want to say thanks to everyone at Project READ, especially Cassandra, for always supporting and helping me with whatever I needed. I also want to thank my teacher, Lisa, for all her help. She put so much confidence and dedication into teaching me every time we met. I also want to thank my online teacher, Divina, for always checking up on me and offering her help They are the best teachers ever. I also want to thank my kids and my family for always being here and supporting me every day. While I am still learning English, I'm so proud that everyone put faith in me. Project READ and my teachers showed me that it's never too late to chase your dreams. And I'm forever thankful for them. Thank you.

And that ends our ceremony, and we'd love to take a picture with council. Thank you.

Great, thank you very much for that presentation, Sarah. The story of tonight's graduates have been very inspiring and we're grateful to have the opportunity to recognize their achievements tonight. I also want to thank the California State Library and the Redwood City Library Foundation for their support of this wonderful program over the years. I also really want to appreciate the work of our Project Read staff members in the library who make the Career Online High School program a success. Congratulations to all, thank you. And with that, we will move to item 5D. Our final acknowledgement this evening is to remember a beloved member of our community, Jerry Pierce. A true renaissance man of the modern era, Jerry was defined by his passion for the great outdoors, his technical expertise, and his keen eye for the beauty of the natural world. Jerry had three separate lives as a technologist, family man, and avid outdoor enthusiast, focusing on his photography and hiking. Jerry was born on May 8th, 1952 in Claremont, California. He spent his childhood in Claremont, moving to Joshua Tree with his parents during high school. He graduated from Yucca Valley High School and attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania where he met his beautiful wife and his best friend, his first year of college when she was looking for volunteers. After graduating from UC Berkeley and Stanford University, Jerry and Barbara eventually settled in Redwood City where they raised their two daughters, Andrea and Amanda, and his home life was spent surrounded by these women who loved him. His career spanned over four decades of rapid technological evolution, working on a range of technical issues at SRI and Universal Studios, where he helped with the standardization and launch of DVD and digital cinema. He brought out-of-the-box thinking, an ability to strategize a product approach, and to guide design of a product for industry acceptance. Jerry was an avid backpacker and world traveler who saw the world with his lens and a pair of hiking boots. His adventures took him across the globe accompanied by Barbara and other close friends. He was a true family man, spending his time with his daughters and grandchildren in Boise and Long Beach. He was generous with his time and skills, volunteering with his wife and rowing club, and hosting numerous websites for local organizations and candidates. jerry is survived by his wife former redwood city mayor barbara pierce his daughters andrea and amanda their spouses martin and melissa and his grandchildren miles annalise and waverly his sisters linda and janet and a global community of engineers Jerry is remembered by his family, friends, and the community of explorers he touched. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests taking a walk in nature or volunteering in your community in his honor. Barbara, we're deeply sorry for your loss, and on behalf of the City Council, please accept our heartfelt condolences. May you find comfort, strength, and moments of peace in the days ahead. Thank you, everyone. And we'll go on to item six now. Public comment on the consent calendar, matters of council interest and items not on tonight's agenda. Turning now to the public comment section, as well as, excuse me, we will now take public comment on the consent calendar matters of council interest, as well as items that are not listed on tonight's agenda. And we welcome speakers providing public comment. But again, please be advised, this is a limited public forum. As such, speakers must address matters within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city. If speakers do not, they'll be warned and if they continue to disregard city rules, their opportunity to speak will be limited. If you're attending in person, please fill out a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk here at the dais. And if you're attending virtually, feel free to raise your hand on Zoom at this time or press star nine if you've joined by phone. Once we've gathered all the speaker cards and raised hands and have begun public comment, no additional speakers will be allowed to queue up to speak. And I will now turn it over to our city clerk to facilitate public comment.

Thank you, Mayor. We do have three in-person speaker cards at this time. If anyone else in the audience would like to speak during public comment, please turn in a speaker card. And if you've joined us on Zoom, go ahead and raise your hand as we will close the speakers list once we begin public comment. Okay, so we will proceed with our three speakers in person, and we have six speakers on Zoom, ending with Alexandra Sieber. Kate Allison will be our first in-person speaker. The timer will begin when you start speaking. Thank you.

I'm sorry if you could hold off and start over.

Sorry, can I start over? Please. Okay. My name is Kate Allison and I live on Laurie Duncan Park. I've spent the last 18 months of my life trying to talk with leadership and filing public records requests about this project and here's what they show. The city calls this a pilot. It's not. It's a permanent decision dressed in language. designed to avoid the hearings, traffic studies, and environmental review a permanent closure legally requires on traffic. City records show only three accidents near this intersection in a decade, far fewer than any other intersections on Brewster. So why this one? on ownership. The city doesn't hold fee title, i.e. ownership, to the green spaces or to the Southgate Street. It only holds the right of way. Hundreds of homeowners hold easements over this land, and the city needs their approval to take it permanently. The city's own senior civil engineer confirmed the likelihood of quote, more complicated title actions. These spaces aren't legally a park and this pilot is itself classified as development. The city has known this from the start. On spending. Over $40,000 has been spent to a title company to confirm what is already suspected, and at least $20,000 with no disclosed ceiling to a traffic consultant brought in to sell residents on data that didn't capture the site's blind hill or visibility problems. While the city faces a $10.2 million deficit and higher priority capital projects waiting, this is highly inappropriate. On transparency, the public has been kept out of discussions. There is little public support. The title company was given a staff script to hide the reason for their survey from residents. Recreational equipment for this site was deliberately coded to general parks away from this project specifically so residents wouldn't, in the city words, get riled up while staff told the public no decisions or forward progress had been made. Government is supposed to work for the people who live here. On this project, at every step, staff, management, and this council have not cared what works for us. I'm asking you to read what we're submitting tonight.

Thank you, Kate.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Ed Connolly. Ed will be followed by Glen Babbitt.

ED CONNOLLY. Hear me okay? My name is Ed Connolly. I live at 114 Inner Circle, and I have for the last 35 years. Back in March of 2025, Southgate was closed due to traffic calming. And tonight I'm submitting 109 petitions from residents and owners in the general area to the park that are demanding that Southgate be reopened. I'll give this in PDF form to you through email. CLOSING SOUTH GATE WAS A MISTAKE. THE DATA THAT SUPPORTS THIS IS A TRAFFIC SUMMARY BY THE CITY THAT INDICATES NO ACCIDENTS DIRECTLY ON SOUTH GATE. THERE ARE 13 ACCIDENTS ON BROOSTER BETWEEN MERTLE AND HILL VIEW OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS. were cars that hit fixed objects or parked cars. Four of those were DUIs. Five involved another vehicle, and one involved a bicycle. Of the 13 accidents in that corridor, Four resulted in a total of six minor injuries. The two accidents closest to Duncan Park, that would be at Brewster in Nevada, were so minor that there were no reported injuries. But again, Southgate was closed. Why? In addition, there's a title report that the city conducted back in May of this year that indicates that the owners of the property That would be Lori Duncan Park and Southgate are the Redwood Highlands Company and the Anglo California Trust Company. I keep reading this report over and over again, looking for the mistake, looking for what I've misread, and I can't find it. I just wonder if the city council is aware of these facts, and I want to make sure they are. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Glen Babbitt. Thank you.

Good evening, city council members and members of the community. My name is Glenn Babbitt, and I'm a 30-year resident of Redwood City. I currently serve as vice chair of the Historic Resources Advisory Committee, but the thoughts I share tonight are my own, not an official committee position. I'm here to raise a concern about proposed changes to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Currently, certified local governments like Redwood City have a voice when federal projects could affect historic properties. Our voice is guaranteed under Section 106. That matters here because our downtown is a designated historic district. The proposed changes would make our input discretionary, left entirely to the project manager's judgment with no guarantee that our local knowledge or our local priorities will be heard. In practice, that means we could lose our say on future projects downtown, things like cell tower placement, housing developments, and flood control work. I'm asking the council to act now to preserve our community's voice in decisions that shape our historic downtown. The federal comment period on this rule hasn't opened yet, but it could open at any time. So acting now ensures our position is on record and ready to carry weight when it matters. Specifically, I recommend to the council direct the city manager to draft a letter to our congressional representatives opposing these changes and bring forward a council proclamation stating our opposition. I welcome anyone with questions to reach out to me directly. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. That concludes our in-person speakers. So we will now move to Our Zoom speakers and we will unmute you and you may begin your comments and the timer will begin as you start as you speak. Our first public speaker is Judy who will be followed by Amber Garza Washburn.

Yes, well, thank you. And I do appreciate your allowing free speech, especially since we were shut down on our public comments at most council meetings in 2023 when the Anti-Defamation League lobbied everybody to silence what they called was anti-Semitism. When people were just challenging the Jews' perspective on things, and we're allowed to do that So you can't cut us off for that. That's not hate. And honestly, the way you silence people for their perspective and call it white supremacy or Nazism, that's the real intolerance. And your hatred shows when you silence people. It's illegal to do that. So there are people in our community who definitely care about white rights and also feel threatened by certain Jewish privileges and powers that people misattribute to white supremacy. There are people out there who believe that there's a Jewish supremacy, and we're allowed to discuss it with our neighbors. This is alarming to us that we're going to war again for the Jews in Israel. This is a nuclear thing. Now the whole world's oil supply. This is the forum and the format for that kind of public discussion. And when your boards are pressured by the Anti-Defamation League to silence people's opinions as soon as anyone mentions the Jews, You guys are breaking the law. And there needs to be stiff penalties for jurisdictions who do that. People in our country should be alarmed by the level of Jewish supremacy that is allowed because of their control of the media and politics. Politicians cannot stay in if they're not funded by AIPAC. And there are no news channels that are owned by white supremacy. And there's not white supremacy sending us to war in the Middle East. It's not white supremacy that owns the foreign business. White supremacy doesn't own the banks. People got to wake up. They're bullying whites. They're calling us the problem. Everyone knows it's the Jews. It's time to wake up, people. Let's go.

Thank you.

Our next... City Clerk, before we go to the next comment, I'd like to take a moment to just let our audience know in Redwood City, we do not condone hate, violence, or any derogatory comments. We're going to respect the First Amendment right of everybody here, but... Just want to clarify that for anybody who may be joining our meeting for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. We'll move now to our next speaker, Amber Garza-Washburn, who will be followed by Jim Bridger.

Good evening all it's unfortunate I had to follow that ridiculous and ugly comment, but I am here as a part of safety over surveillance Redwood City. We recently submitted a letter. 28 of us submitted a letter expressing our concerns about the ALPR systems in Redwood City. One of the items that we highlighted was the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury Report of August 3rd. Now, the report found that the surveillance camera system in Redwood City lacked essential oversight protections and that it could not be established that the city surveillance system did not violate our safety, our privacy and the law. This is what the grand jury report said. Our own research showed that people searched Redwood City's surveillance system multiple times a month on behalf of federal agencies. We need more time to understand the report's conclusions and to work together to solve the problems that were identified. As far as we know, the Board of Supervisors is required to respond by early October, and the city may be required to respond by November 2nd. um just want to ask the council if they are aware of this timeline and also to inform us a little bit more about uh what the next processes are so far there's been no change to the current rfp which was issued prior to all this controversy, and that at the very least, like item 7E, I would like you to reject all of the bids that will come in so that we can restart the process and discuss this in a way that includes everybody's input. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Jim Bridger.

Yes, hello. My name is Jim Bridger. My great, great, great grandfather, Jim Bridger, was a famous frontiersman. And he was a fur trapper in the old Wild West, a mountain man, if you will. So being here today, I'm very thankful for those who paved the trail for us. And I would like to read a quote, but I would also firstly like to ask, being that this is the week of the September 11th attacks, the 25th anniversary, I would like the council to consider a resolution acknowledging whole entire week starting on Tuesday until the next Tuesday since 9-11 happened on a Tuesday of a week of remembrance for the September 11th attacks and as someone who has personally been out there petitioning and raising money for the first responders that were injured because they were told that the air was safe to breathe at Ground Zero they heroically saved many lives in their endeavor I would like to read a quote from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. This was in April 2001 that he said this. If the West doesn't wake up to the suicidal nature of militant Islam, the next thing you will see is that militant Islam is bringing down the World Trade Center. and then again afterwards in 2006 benjamin netanyahu said we are benefiting from one thing and that is the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon and the american struggle in iraq these events swung american public opinion in our favor now many might not know that 60 israelis that's your time thank you we'll go to the next commenter

Our next speaker is Bill Newell.

Thank you. First off, I'd like to thank the City Council for your recent decision to protect us and our loved ones when you ended the previous floxed fixed mount surveillance contract but we continue community continues to remain deeply concerned about city plans to award a new contract as cameras from any vendor we believe cause serious privacy and security issues therefore Many community members have stated that there's no such thing as a safe surveillance camera system. And we offer three steps that we would like the council to take now to restore community trust and protect us from the dangers of. automated license plate reports. Number one, pause the RFP or contract negotiations as has been previously noted. Two, review and respond to the civil grand jury's report concerning findings and recommendations as part of an open city council public hearing rather than as part of a city council consent calendar. And 3 offer detailed information about past problematic data sharing from the city surveillance program, answer questions about the existing proposed program and share police department and city manager research, comparing the many safeguards and other communities have implemented to improve transparency, oversight and accountability. Finally, host at least two town halls that are accessible to the communities so we can all ask our questions, voice our concerns, and share recommendations for the guardrails we need to feel safe in our community. As our city leaders, you have the power to protect our community. Please pause the contract process to give our community leaders and our community members time to collaborate on efforts to keep us all safe. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Carrie.

Hi. This is my first time speaking. So I noticed in this whole call, we have mostly been talking about Hispanics. You guys import Tex-Mex instead of actually putting the money back into the city. You constantly talk about loving your culture and where you came from, but you live in a world built by whites. Not that we blame you, but the kikes brought you over here.

I'm going to stop you right there. I'm going to stop you right there. Bring back your comments into the city's subject matter jurisdiction and the rules of decorum that we have here, or your ability to speak will be limited.

I apologize. I apologize. You guys have a welcoming week. Actually, like Jim Beaver or what Bridger said, we have a week welcoming immigrants that completely covers over 9-11 instead of a remembrance week. The Jews committed 9-11, but you guys are facilitating the cover-up of it. That's another point I had. All you boomers care about is the inclusion instead of the information from the people who actually built the town you live in. Instead of fixing the drug problems in your city, you spend the money on inclusion weeks and irrelevant, inclusive, let me use my voice a little better. You guys bring in niggers and wetbacks.

City Clerk, mute them.

Thank you, Mayor.

City Clerk, if I could have a moment. You all, I'm very sorry that this is just the really unfortunate side effect of being able to provide publicly remote comment. This isn't something that anybody at this day is... agrees with or condones. And I just need to say that in the strongest possible sense that this is not something that represents who we are as a community or who we are as a city, as an organization. So I just want to take that moment to say that before we move on to the next comment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. We have one final comment. Rich, go ahead and unmute yourself and you may begin your comments. Thank you.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I don't see that it's possible that I could outdo those previous callers. That was some wild stuff. But I'm here tonight because someone needs to inject some basic biological reality into these chambers. We spent years watching public institutions cater to a complete delusion, and it's time to call it out what it is, a mental health crisis affecting both the LGBT and the transgender communities. Let's be entirely clear. Biology is not a social construct. It is not fluid. There are two genders, male and female. This is established by science, chromosomes, and DNA, forcing society to validate transgender dilution.

Commenter, bring your comments back into the subject matter jurisdiction of the city or you will be muted.

Yeah, I'm sticking to the point. I'm not making slurs. I'm asking the city not to be putting money towards pride parades, not to be celebrating pride. It's a... It's a delusion and a mental illness. It's not anything to be celebrated. When you look at the stats of the LGBT community, you can see that there's an undeniable correlation between these identities and severe childhood instability, including abuse. Instead of offering real psychological help to heal that trauma, our culture and society celebrates the symptoms. Their behavior shouldn't be acceptable. We're talking about habits defined by extreme instability. where it's common to see individuals tracking hundreds or even thousands of sexual partners throughout their lifetimes, having higher rates of STDs.

City Clerk, mute them.

That concludes public comment, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. And again, I cannot reiterate enough how some of these comments we received tonight do not reflect the values of this city or this community. And I cannot say that in the strongest possible sense, but again, this is the unfortunate side effect of having remote public comments, and we will keep going. So with that, we will now move to our next item. And that is the, excuse me, that was our consent calendar. And items on our consent calendar are routine in nature and are approved by one motion. Are there any items that council members are recused from? Not seeing anything online or virtually. Are there any items on consent that council members would like to pull for discussion? Not seeing anything either. Is there a motion?

So moved.

I'll second.

Thank you. That was a motion from Council Member Howard, a second from Council Member Sterkin. And could we please get a roll call vote?

Council Member Chu. Council Member Howard. Yes. Council Member Padilla.

Yes.

Council Member Sterkin.

Yes.

Mayor Martinez-Caballos.

Yes.

Motion passes with five votes. Council Member Gee and Vice Mayor Aiken are absent. Thank you.

Thank you everybody for sticking with us here. We'll go to our staff reports. Up next we have an update on the downtown parking program and increases to downtown meter rates. Engineering and Transportation Director Tanisha Werner will introduce the item and Parking Demand Manager Christian Hammack will give us the presentation. Welcome both.

Thank you. Good evening, city council, members of the community. My name is Tanisha Werner. I am the director of engineering and transportation. And tonight, it's my privilege to introduce our downtown parking program update item. Redwood City's parking program has a wide variety of topics and they have been very important and very often discussed in our community. The parking program is very robust. It includes downtown parking, parking in residential areas with parking permits, parking policies related to our development projects, looking at minimums and maximums for our parking numbers. As well as our parking in lieu policy fund. There is a lot to cover in the parking program and to do it in one night would not be giving justice to each of the areas. And so tonight we're going to very specifically focus in on our downtown parking program. THE PROPOSAL THAT WE HAVE MOVING FORWARD IS TO COME BACK WITH STAFF ITEMS OR STUDY SESSIONS OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS TO GO OVER EACH OF THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS IN THE PARKING PROGRAM SO THAT WE HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO ADEQUATELY DISCUSS EACH ONE. AND WITH THAT, I'M HAPPY TO TRANSFER OUR PRESENTATION OVER TO OUR PARKING AND TRANSPORTATION DEMAND MANAGEMENT, CHRISTIAN HAMMICK. THANK YOU.

Thank you, Tanisha. Hello, Mayor, council members. I'm Christian Hammack. I'm the parking and transportation demand manager for Redwood City. Thank you for having me here tonight to share with you our downtown parking update and to present to you some policy options for your consideration. I'm going to go through a quick background on the program, the assets that are involved in the downtown parking program. We'll look at the current parking trends that we're seeing across the downtown. We'll also have a discussion on the past and current financials of the program. I'll share with you a parking review information that we conducted this year and some considerations that came from that. And then I'll share with you the policy options for your consideration, and we'll open up for discussion and questions. Next slide, please. So the policy options that we are going to show you tonight was developed with three goals in mind. Achieving sustainability of the program, establishing a clear roadmap for our projects and policies, and using data to guide our decisions. With these goals in mind, we have a few questions for you to consider as I go through this presentation. First, which type of parking program do you want to see implemented for the downtown parking program? Do you want to see a simplified program or a more moderate program where we do more regular kind of data analysis and updates for the program? Additionally, do you support staff looking into new technologies to improve the usability of our parking systems and provide efficiencies in administering our parking program? Also, are there in the policies that we're presenting to you for expenditures, are there any of these policies that we should look at further developing or additional policies for expenditures which we should consider? And similarly, for the revenue policies that we'll share with you, are there ones that we should further develop or additional ones we should consider? Next slide. And then finally we have an action item for you tonight to provide direction to the city manager on the timing for implementing the automatic rate increases for the downtown parking on street meter rates. We conducted a survey earlier this year, and we're hitting the thresholds for those rate increases. And so the code already authorizes the city manager to make those increases, but since we were going to be providing you this update tonight, we wanted to give council an opportunity to weigh in on these rate increases and provide feedback on that. Next slide. So our current parking program was first established in around 2005, 2006. At that time, it was done through the redevelopment agency in Redwood City. The framework for the program had three kind of overriding pillars for it, having sustainability, having visitor satisfaction, and managing the parking demand in the program. Through that, we identified that we wanted to use pricing as the chief mechanism for adjusting parking behavior and encourage parking turnover rather than strict time limits. This would provide flexibility for our parkers to allow them to right-size how long they stayed in the location. As long as they were paying the meter, they could park for as long as they want. But this means that we also have to price the rates at the appropriate rates to encourage the turnover that we're looking for. We also established an 85% target occupancy threshold. This is chosen because it equates to about approximately one in eight parking spaces, one space out of eight parking spaces being available. And so at that point, you have your systems well utilized, but with minimal effort, parkers can find available parking. So our current parking program is made up of two parking zones. The periphery parking zone, meter zone A, is the pink on the map you see here, which is kind of our outskirts of the downtown. And our meter zone B, which is our core parking zone, which is the blue area on the map you see. Additionally, across those two zones, we have about 1,100 on-street parking spaces. Also within the core meter zone, meter zone B, we have about seven off-street surface parking lots that have about 450 parking spaces between them, and two parking garages that have another 1,000 spaces between the two of them. Additionally, we have agreements with two other jurisdictions, Caltrain and San Mateo County, to provide an additional 1,000 spaces evening and weekends for the public's use. And finally, through our negotiations and development projects, we've set up shared parking agreements with several recent developments over the years. And this has added about an additional 2,500 parking spaces for public's use evenings and weekends. One thing to note is that we have a couple projects that are underway that will be potentially impacting the parking supply. The first is the downtown park project. This will be currently scheduled to be in library lot A and portion of library lot C. This will eliminate approximately 60 parking spaces in our supply. Additionally, we're also looking at a housing development for library lot B. Most of the alternatives are still being developed, and many of them have a replacement parking of some level or another. So it most likely wouldn't fully eliminate the parking from lot B. But if all was eliminated, that would be another 100 parking spaces eliminated. So the current parking trends that we're seeing across our parking program, we do periodic reviews. Our code requires us to review at least every other year. In the last few years, we've been doing it every year to kind of see where we are coming out of the pandemic. The table here shows the last few years where we've done reviews and a couple additional years, including pre-pandemic numbers. These surveys are done during our busiest months, which typically are July or December, and they pick two midweek days, typical days, so not when we have events and stuff like that going on. What we're seeing from the data that was collected this past July is that the parking during our peak hours are starting to get back up to the levels that we're seeing for our on-street and surface lots back to the pre-pandemic numbers. What you'll also see is that our garage parking is still depressed and still underutilized. um so based on these the the numbers that we observed here this does trigger our automatic rate increase threshold per the code and authorizes and authorizes the city manager to increase those meter rates Looking at the parking program's financials, one thing you'll see is that we've had a deficit for the program since it was established in that 2005-2006 timeframe. We did get close to closing that gap around 2019, but then, like many other things, the floor fell out and the gap rewidened. We've made good headway in recovering. We're at about 85% of our pre-pandemic revenues number. But with the inflationary pressures, the expenditures have increased at a much greater rate than our revenues. And so we're seeing about a $1.4 million deficit at this time. And it's one thing you'll notice in the staff report that we shared that this graph also shows the fiscal year 25-26. What you'll see is that there's like the gap, the deficit in that fiscal year was only about, it was a little over 300,000. This is largely due to unfilled vacancies in the police department and public works. With the current fiscal year, we're anticipating those positions being filled and the deficit to return back to about a 1.3 to 1.4 million amount. And while the inflationary pressures are getting lighter or gotten lighter, it's unlikely that just revenue, the continued growth in the revenue will close the gap on the current deficit without program changes. So with this in mind and our goals as stated before to achieve sustainability and having a clear roadmap and using data to make our decisions, we conducted a parking review earlier this year where we hired a transportation consultant, Farron Pierce, to do an overview of our program. They looked at our current program, and identified or looked through how we are currently set up and established our program. They also looked at best practices across the parking industry and then looked at and also looked at did comparisons of similar jurisdictions with similar parking programs. Copies of the best practice analysis and the comparisons as part of an attachment in your staff report for more details. One of the things that they did share with us is this scale that you see here on the screen showing the typical kind of program types that parking programs tend to fall under. You have a simple or moderate or sophisticated programs. Simple programs are typically programs with small staff overhead involved in the program with light additional support from other departments, minimal technology usage, and infrequent adjustments in data analysis for the programs. The moderate program is doing more frequent analysis, has additional staff to help with that data collection and analysis, utilizing technology solutions to help administer the program and collect some of that data. and looking at adjusting as the demand in the parking program exceeds the current uses. And then the sophisticated program is a program where there's a dedicated team of parking professionals doing specialized portions of the work towards the parking program and having a wide array of technology solutions and doing analysis on a block-by-block basis on a very frequent time scale. CURRENTLY, REBIT CITY DOESN'T HAVE THE PARKING DEMAND AND THE AMOUNT OF TRANSACTIONS THAT WOULD WARRANT HAVING THE SOPHISTICATED PROGRAM. AS YOU CAN SEE ON THE SCALE, REBIT CITY CURRENTLY FALLS WHERE THE STAR IS IN BETWEEN THE SIMPLE AND MODERATE PROGRAMS. One of the chief takeaways from our consultant was that Redwood City, before we can really kind of decide on what policy options to move forward with, we need to decide on what type of program do we want. Do we want to constrain our expenditures and scale back our current program to a more simplified program? Or do we want to grow it a little bit and leverage the investments that we've made in some of the technology and move to a more moderate program and look at using that data to kind of grow the program with as the downtown grows. So that's going back to that first question that we brought up to you is kind of identifying which program we want to look at and see moving forward for the downtown parking program. So as mentioned, parking programs utilize a different array of parking technology. Redwood City is no different in this. We've deployed several technology solutions to assist in staff administering the program since we have a very limited staff for the downtown parking program. Currently we have occupancy and digital way finding signs across the downtown providing information for our parkers. We utilize different types of sensors both in ground and on poles to help identify parking availability and utilization. We use smart meters to provide flexibility in the parking transactions to allow contactless payments and adding time to payments and remote payments. We do utilize some automated license plate readers for our downtown garages. Currently, we have a shared parking agreement with 885 Winslow. That's the garage that's connected to Jefferson Garage through a pass-through in the garage. As part of that agreement, we have a revenue share with them. WHERE THEY GET A PERCENTAGE OF THE TRANSACTIONS THAT OCCUR ON THEIR SIDE OF THE GARAGE. AND SO TO UNDERSTAND WHICH TRANSACTIONS ARE OCCURRING ON THAT SIDE OF THE GARAGE, WE USE LICENSE PLATE READERS TO IDENTIFY THOSE TRANSACTIONS. ADDITIONALLY, WE ARE UTILIZING THE LICENSE PLATE READERS. THEY'RE ALLOWING US TO MOVE TO A GATEWAY SOLUTION FOR OUR DOWNTOWN GARAGES. where the current parking system we're replacing in the garage is eliminating the gates that we have so that parkers will no longer have to wait at a gate and pull a ticket when they enter the garage or when they go to leave. They'll be conducting the transaction without needing that necessary anymore. We are exploring additional uses for the license plate readers, looking at monitoring for our parking permit program, both in downtown and in our residential areas to see who's credentialed with a parking permit. This would allow residents to not have to put a sticker on their vehicle and just register their license plate, which they already do through the previous sticker version. They had done that previously. Additionally, we're looking at for parking compliance, things such as like virtual chalking for our time-limited parking where previously officers had to go chalk a tire and then come back later to see if that vehicle moved. This allows them to not have to mark the vehicle to identify whether it's moved or not. And then also looking at additional payment options for our parkers, such as pay by plates. So this would eliminate our need for having parking stall numbers across the downtown. So parkers would just enter their license plate number when they do their transaction. And this would allow us, reduce the need to maintain those stall numbers and eliminate some of those complaints that we get about illegible stall numbers and people being able to identify what space they're in. And then finally we use mobile payments, mobile options for mobile transactions and parking availability currently. So now going to the policy options, again, it comes down to kind of which type of program you want to see. The current on the screen is for our revenue for our simplified program. We have options looking at extending our current hours from currently we go Monday through Saturday, adding Sunday as a meter hours. Additionally, we look at increasing our parking, our monthly permit rates. We haven't increased the rates since 2006 when they were established. They're at the rates that they were at that time. So we would look at doing that. looking at potential for a downtown residence permit for residents. This would mean we'd have to look at how this would also be kind of contingent on utilizing things like the LLPR to kind of identify those permits across the downtown. But we could look at doing something like that. Incorporating our electronic processing into our break structure. Right now, when the program first started in 2005 and 2006, we were going from predominantly cash only system. And now, the current system has about 80% of all transactions are credit card or mobile based. And with that, we have a large bank charges that contribute to our expenditures. So incorporating those fees, which weren't a thought of at that time when we first established those rates, could help offset some of those costs for the program. Additionally, looking at our peak hour rate in our downtown garages, currently it's at $2.50 an hour, looking at raising it to $3. The $2.50 an hour has been in place since 2006 also, and we haven't adjusted it since that time. Looking at bringing back a more consistent enforcement. I know PDs had since the pandemic had people trouble keeping people in the positions for the parking enforcement and had people out on leave. I believe they're back added to several people recently and we're looking to bring that back but having more consistent enforcement would improve our parking compliance and get people no longer feeling like they could just not pay the meters and get away with it. And then if we did raise the monthly permit rates, we would also look at establishing a low-income permit for the low-income workers in the downtown so that they could maintain the rates at the current rate and not be affected by the increased rates. Thanks. For the moderate program, we would be looking at all the options are the same except for the first one. We would look at establishing a new third zone compared to the two zones that we currently have for high demand areas. This would allow greater differentiation between our rates and we could dial in kind of the rates to the point where we could adjust where people are parking. This would most likely fall if we were going to establish a zone on the Broadway, Main Street, maybe like the Main Street parking lot and maybe the Winslow parking lot where we see consistently very high demand for parking in those areas. And this would be to encourage greater turnover in some of those areas so that people aren't monopolizing all that parking all day. On the expenditure side, as mentioned, for the simple program we would probably look at consolidating some of our contracts or eliminating some of them and then reducing some of the data collection that we currently are doing. This would save on expenditures about $300,000 annually. But we would still have many of the expenditures that we still have if we go that rate. But it would keep our growth in the expenditures down. If we want to grow the program to the moderate program, we'd be looking at adding some additional staffing to assist with the parking data collection and analysis, looking at doing that additional data collection, working with GIS to integrate and automate some of this data collection so we can do it in-house and maybe facilitate some of that work outside of some of the third-party contracts that we have. We'd be looking at some additional technologies for PD to help improve the efficiencies in their enforcement activities with regards to the parking program. And then we'd also be looking at modernizing some of our parking infrastructure meters and other hardware. And that would equate to about a 400,000 one time charge and about 300,000 additional annual expenditures. So going back to our questions, what type of program do you want to see implemented in the downtown? A simple program or moderate program? Do you support staff looking into new technologies to improve the efficiencies of the downtown program and improve the usability of the program? Are there any measures in the expenditures options that you want to see us further develop or additional ones to consider? And then similarly on the revenue side, are there any measures you want us to further develop? And then finally, we ask for you to provide direction to the city manager on the timing of the implementation of the on-street rate increases. Next slide. Thank you.

presentation. And before we bring it back to the council, we'll open up for public comment on this item.

Thank you, Mayor. We have one comment card, last call to the audience, and also last call to our folks on Zoom to be recognized for public comment on this item. Okay. One speaker in person, Dylan, and then we'll be followed by our two speakers on Zoom. Welcome, Dylan. Thank you.

Hello, Council. I'm just speaking for myself today. I'm in favor of the moderate program. This would allow the program to better serve residents and businesses and hopefully reduce the monetary losses. I like the current occupancy target because it makes spaces available for loading, for people in a hurry, and for people who don't know about our downtown garages. The higher turnover also allows more customers to use each spot and reduces cruising from people looking for spots. However, we are not achieving the occupancy target and the target is only measured on those midweek days. So I think that the occupancy is much closer to 100% on times like Friday nights. I think we need to change the pricing based on the time of day and the day of the week so that Friday nights could have a higher price. I would also be in favor of extending the meter hours to 10 p.m. and including Sundays. There's still high demand for parking during those times. As mentioned, the garages are also currently underutilized. The garages are less convenient than surface parking and so I think that they should be cheaper. Longer term parking should also be pushed towards the garage. Currently we do the opposite with the high hourly rate on garages after the first one and a half hours. First time visitors could find a curb spot, and then we should help repeat visitors learn that the garages are cheaper for longer stays. Garage permits should also be made cheaper than the surface lot permits. It's currently reversed. And finally, for logistical ease, I would be in favor of tying the surface lot rate to the curb rates and allowing staff to change the garage rates and permit prices based on the curb data that they get. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move now to our Zoom speakers. We'll call on Adina Levin from Seamless Bay Area, who will be followed by Rona Gundrum.

Hello. Good evening, Mayor, council members, and staff. Adina Levin with Seamless Bay Area. Wanted to echo what the previous speaker had said in terms of supporting moving a little bit up the ladder in terms of providing more capability with a goal. The goal isn't to provide a technology program. The goal is to improve convenience for people that are coming to Redwood City. And so there are, you know, it's not, doesn't seem like a burning down emergency, but it does seem like there are a number of opportunities to explore and make getting to Redwood City that just more convenient, where convenience is being able to find a spot. And so having, like the previous speaker said, differentiated pricing and signage and so on, to be able to find where you can come and also be able to park further away if you're staying for a longer period of time. in terms of other things to be looking into in the staff report it talked about potentially looking at a transportation management association and that model has been successful in palo alto focusing particularly on lower income commuters where it is helping people commute without driving have better retention for lower income service workers Another thing to look at in addition to Caltrain is the Bay Pass All Agency Transit Pass, which is something that is very popular where it is used, including in the Alameda TMA. And also the next agenda item is about supporting the regional transit ballot measure. Convenient access does include keeping transit running. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Rona Gundrum.

Hi, good evening. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, great. Thank you. So this is just kind of off the cuff just from listening to the presentation and the mention of removing the gates, for instance, at the Jefferson Garage. Sounds like a great idea, but then I'm wondering how some of the parking benefits, for instance, if you go to a movie, you get four free hours or one and a half hours free if you're going to restaurants or the museum or whatever. So I'd like to see something like that remain because it's so expensive, especially for families to go to movies or go out to eat, that I think if we make parking so expensive, it will just deter people from going out and coming to downtown. And I think don't think we particularly want to do that. So I'll just leave it there. And thank you so much.

Thank you, Rona. And that concludes public comment, Mayor.

Thank you to folks who have joined to make public comment and did so in accordance with our city rules. Bring it back to our day is here for council conversation and We would like to get us started with any questions or comments. Council Member Serkan, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, the staff. Thank you, Director Werner. Thank you, Mr. Hammock. Really appreciate the comprehensive picture here at our downtown parking program and all the efficiencies that you have already achieved through the use of leveraging technologies to make our program what it is today. And I have a number of questions that I want to start with outreach. And I did, you know, go to the River City Improvement Association's meeting on Wednesday and they hadn't heard about this item. Or maybe they didn't say they did. So people have benefited outright. But what does our plan for outreach to downtown businesses look like regarding any changes we decide here?

Yeah, so it would, one, depend on what policy options we're looking at moving forward with. Definitely, I sit on the RCIA's parking committee, so we'll definitely have, we've had some discussions already about looking at some policy changes, but We'll further, as we get clarity on what those policy options are, we'll have further discussions with them and probably the full board of RCIA as part of that process and other groups such as the chamber and the board. Additionally, we would look at putting, if we were going to move forward with any rate changes and stuff like that, we would set up a website and definitely prepare a mailer to go out to the different businesses. And potentially, depending on the policy options, we would maybe set up a town hall for the businesses to participate in and share any feedback or questions that they have.

That is so great to hear, and thank you for reminding me that you were on the parking subcommittee. Thank you for representing the city there and keeping RCIA informed. I am very supportive of the mailer and the town hall ideas. I want to make sure that we are engaging, especially small businesses, in the block of Broadway between El Camino and Perry or California, depending on what side of the street you're on, right? And making sure that mailer is in multiple languages, which is probably standard, but just double checking. And moving on from outreach here, I will start by saying that I support the moderate approach. For a number of reasons, I am supportive of, under the list of revenue generating options, moving forward with more enforcement and issuing of citations to raise that estimated 600K to help. Because my ultimate goal here is to at least achieve neutrality. one of our neighbors has across the bay, I believe it was, no Walnut Creek, yes. And eventually achieve a positive net benefit to the city. And some other options you proposed, the downtown residential permit program. That is something I have heard from residents in downtown that they do want, specifically residents in the Habitat for Humanity project, the Jefferson project there. And I also support the discounted permit for low-income workers in downtown. Any way that we can incentivize workers in our downtown businesses to use our parking garages and free up surface lot and metered spaces for customers to make those grab and go trips would be a great benefit to the city and achieve some of the goals that we have heard so far tonight around increasing turnover and supporting and reducing cruising. And Also, would I support kind of flipping the pricing for the permits as well to, again, for the parking garages versus the surface lots to, again, incentivize folks to use the parking garages since we have such ample space in those garages for folks to park. And I do support increasing the meter charges This looks to be a modest increase, but I support it without knowing the... I support it conditionally. And I look forward to hearing from our local businesses how this might affect them before kind of making a final decision. And... I guess just a couple more questions. With the license plate readers, just for the benefit of the audience that we have and public comments we received earlier, this is completely different than what is part of the broader conversation nationally, locally about automated license plate readers, right?

Yeah, I mean, this is a completely isolated system that's only for parking services and the data is not shared with other systems outside the parking uses.

That's right. So any data collected through the license plate readers in our garages, like the Jefferson Garage, for example, stays within the city. It's not going anywhere. Correct. Thank you. Okay. And I'm intrigued by the idea of pricing parking differently during peak days, like Fridays and Saturdays. I would like to better understand kind of the costs and benefits associated with that and, again, hear from our local businesses about how that might affect their business. But as maybe another option for raising revenue that I'm not sure I saw on the list, but... Have you explored that, or do you have any thoughts on that?

We've looked at that as a possibility, and it's something we could look into further. The problem with that is it adds additional layers of complexity to the program. I think that there's been an intention to try to keep things as simple as possible for parkers. uh... so some parkers may park on monday and the rates a dollar per hour for in one to one area they come back on friday night and now all sudden they're getting charged two dollars or two fifty an hour because it's the high demand our or something like that idiot the messaging with that kind of system requires a little bit more and would require additional staff and time availability to kind of administer and kind of implement a program like that. And so that would be a potential option that we could look at if we are moving to the moderate program type. But I think that's something we could look at as we kind of go through that.

I understand, and I would appreciate staff looking at that if there's interest on the part of council. And of course, we can't do any of these things without more staff, like you mentioned. recommendations or options rather that you proposed was maybe hiring an additional 0.5 to one FTE. So that is something I would be interested in us looking at because we need human power to make that all happen. So I will pause there, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for getting the ball rolling. Council Member Stricken, who would like to go next? We'll go to Council Member Howard and then Council Member Chiu online.

I'd like to let Council Member Chiu speak first, seeing as she's, I'm hoping she stays with us for the whole meeting. So why don't we let her speak first?

So thank you so much for the presentation and your work on this. I wanted to echo several of the comments that Council Member Stricken made and Mr. Finch as well. So the first thing is, you know, if you think about the goals of the program, you know, sustainability and even the goals of our of our transportation program more broadly. So we have a goal of Vision Zero by 2030, which is in three and a half years. We have a goal of 50% of trips being non-driving by 2040. And then the goals specifically of this program are sustainability and to encourage, I didn't write down all of the goals, but so really wanting to structure this program in a way that that is aligned with the city's broader transportation goals. So one of the first things I think we need to do is make sure that garages are priced more attractively than curb spaces. I think something I hear from business owners a lot and even, you know, sort of people in the community is, oh, there's no parking downtown. And what they usually mean by that is the spot in front of the store is not available. And if we price parking in such a way that the spot in front of the store is half the price as the spot in the garage, then the natural, you know, sort of rational thing for people to do, employees, people who are, you know, working downtown, is to pick a nice spot on the curb or a surface lot and park there all day because it's half the price of a garage spot. Or, you know, somebody who's there, you know, long term is always going to choose a a certain spot because they're half the price and they're more convenient. So I think one of the first things we should do is make sure that The curbs are priced in such a way that encourages frequent turnover, keeping us at that 85% full rate. And I do agree with Mr. Finch that it is likely over that on busier days, probably much closer to 100%. And I think that that would probably require dynamic pricing. I mean, you know, Monday afternoon is going to be very different than a Friday night. And then I really... If our goal is to encourage people not to drive, subsidizing parking to the tune of one and a half to two million a year is not aligned with that goal. So I believe strongly that we should price parking in such a way that the program is self-sustaining. And some of the most valuable land in the world, there's no other use of land where you can get 300 square feet for parking. you know, $8 a day. Um, so, so I, I do think that even at a, at a, you know, at a sustainable price that, that parking still remains a good value. I think also we, um, you know, certainly we need to reach out to the business community, but it's really been interesting. I, you The shops are teeming with life. They're packed. And the reason they're packed is because there's so much foot traffic. And I think that there's frequently a belief that more parking will lead to more business. And I think it's really those spots right in front of the door that are the most important. And so I think helping... You know, just helping reiterate that pricing parking in such a way that those spots are always available is is the thing that's really going to help business. So, yeah, I would I would be supportive of immediately going to 150 an hour. I do agree that that should automatically trigger and not necessarily need to come to council. that we should just have a system where, you know, at the point that it's consistently at 85%, that that should be triggered. And I do think that we need to price, you know, the curb spots in such a way that the garages are a better value and that we really encourage people to go to the garage spot. Very supportive of new technologies. I think, you know, parking is something that Lends itself incredibly well to automated enforcement automated monitoring automated dynamic pricing all of those things are are off the shelf technologies that we can get. and I do think that we should be a lot more aggressive than $1.50 an hour for the most in-demand spots. I don't think that $1.50 is going to get us where we want to be, especially when the garages are half the price. So I'll leave it there. Yeah, and just for employees also. Anyway, I'll leave it there for now.

Thank you, Council Member Chu. Appreciate your comments, and we'll go to Council Member Howard.

Thank you. Thank you for a very thorough report. Both of you did a very good job, and I really appreciate all the research that's gone into this. It's a We didn't have this problem about 20 years ago. You could find any parking place you'd like, and now isn't it wonderful that we have this dilemma to deal with? I mean, I celebrate it myself. I will find solutions, but it's a nice problem to have. Yes, it is. I was looking up. I'm glad you made your goals very clear. You want to achieve financial sustainability. while doing this program as best we can, manage the parking demand, try to change the culture of the way people park, which is probably a bigger demand, and then also have customer satisfaction, which isn't always easy to do when you're making these changes, but it's nice to have it as a goal. So I didn't miss anything then. Those are the the goals you're trying to achieve with this program, I'm sure.

Yes, for sure. We definitely abide by those. That's what the framework was built on.

Well, I would support the moderate program because it does encourage us to use the better technology that is out there, which I'm hoping makes it simpler. Let's keep it simple. Sometimes technology can make it worse. Sometimes it makes it better, and I'm hoping we can choose to go the way that it makes it simple for people. I was encouraged to hear you looking at possible gateless solutions. I park downtown so frequently. I see how many times the gates get broken. I'm not sure how. If you have a better solution to that, and I know others do, then maybe we should be looking into that so you don't have the constant call to the maintenance crew, constant call to public works, anyone else that can help you if you're stuck behind a broken gate where the gate is jammed. Sorry, I interrupted you. Did you want to say something?

I was just going to clarify that we are actually already moving forward with the gateless solution. So that's in the process of being implemented.

And how does that work with validated tickets? I heard someone mention that, and I want to be sure we're not complicating it by adding this technology.

Yeah, parkers will still get up to four hours free at the theater, or all parkers will get the one and a half hours free in the new system.

And this will be at all of our lots, including Box and the underground parking lot?

This will not be at Box. Box has their own system at their private facility, and so they've chosen to go with a different parking system there. Their system will still provide the four hours of validation and the hour-and-a-half free parking for public parkers, but the gateless system is only at the city's parking facilities.

I see. And maybe we could also talk to our partners, such as Box, ask them to do better signage. I mean, I go to Box very, very frequently because I'm testing the system. And the other night, we couldn't even get in the building, and somebody just rammed the door open, jammed it open, because we couldn't, we were standing out there, the door was not able to be opened. And then the week before... I tried to park where you're supposed to, which is underground, and it was all barricaded. So they led me up to the top level. Where I had to pay, I didn't get the hour and a half. And then it's since been fixed, I believe, because last night I actually got my hour and a half. So I'm really testing that one because that should be a no-brainer for people since downtown Theatre Way is right there. It's so convenient and it's not. So maybe we can talk to them and see how they can become better partners in making this simpler for the person using the lot. We can definitely do that. Appreciate it. I'm glad it's there. You mentioned, let me see here, you're looking for turnover and you're also looking for people to use our off-street parking more. So how can we accomplish that? I think by raising prices on the on-street parking, that's to me like a no-brainer, but we need to educate the public about about what we're doing because if they only come once in a while and they don't notice it, it's not going to change behavior. I think we really have to do a better job of educating the public on why we're doing what we're doing and what we're doing so that we can get people into our parking structures. Friday night, Last night, Sunday, excuse me, last night, Sunday, I was at Fiesta's Patriots, and I went into the Marshall garage. It was half empty. I was shocked, because there were thousands of people in the square, and I said, my gosh, they must all be parking on the street. So how do we change that culture? First of all, we have to make our parking... safer our Marshall Street garage and others make it safer and cleaner make it inviting and making the walk out a lot more pleasant than looking at tipped-over dumpsters and things like that. And I know that you're working on that, Christian. No criticism. I know we have a lot to do in that regard. But that's another way we can get people in there if they feel it's a safe place to go and it's clean and safe coming out. So I'd like to see us work on that. And then give incentives to park in off-street parking, like not charging as much as the on-street parking. If we are going to raise off-street parking at some point, I think we need to raise the on-street parking. If you always have that difference, you may be able to change the culture. It'll take time, but if at some point it catches up, people may go back to the old way and not think, I'm not saving money by doing that, so why bother? So it's something to keep in mind. If we are going to have automatic triggers so you don't have to come back to council all the time, which I am in favor of, make sure that there's always a differential between the off street and the on street parking. Always the incentive there for people to park In our garages and the best garage of all is my gosh the county garage. I mean evenings and weekends Am I right?

It's totally free at the top Yes, it is free and it's typically I'm difference.

Yeah, I'm sorry one block difference between the Marshall Street and the county garage and And most people don't use it because maybe they don't want to walk that far. But if you can, it's one block and it's free, totally free.

Yes.

So maybe we need to also try to get the message out about that, that we've got places that are really not heavily utilized that should be, be the first to get up there and have free parking. And nobody has to know. I'd like to see more people utilize that. There was something I couldn't figure out, and that's the performance-based pricing. Could you explain to me about using zones and triggers that reflect how the parking demand actually varies downtown? These are new phrases to me, so would you mind explaining that to me?

Yeah, so at the heart of how the parking system is set up with that 85% target occupancy, it's somewhat a demand-based system. Not as frequent as like real-time adjustments in price, but we use basically the occupancy looking at how occupied the parking in a zone is utilized. And then based off of that, deciding to raise or lower rates. And so that's how, why it's kind of performance-based. And we look at the zones independently. So our core parking zone and our periphery parking zone, we look at them independently and how they're currently being utilized. And those triggers happen independently between those two zones.

Okay, so it's constant monitoring, isn't it?

Per our code, we have to do it at least every other year. We've been doing that more frequently than that, but typically at least yearly we've been looking at it. But if we move to a moderate program, we would probably start monitoring more on a quarterly basis and seeing how things are adjusting so we can... kind of make sure that the prices keep that range that you mentioned.

And I wanted to ask, the new, the parking electronic signs that we have that tell you the spaces in each garage, are they successful? Are you getting any feedback on those at all?

So the larger format signs are successful. They do share a good amount of information. The ones outside our garages definitely have helped in moving people. When we first put the sign in front of the Jefferson garage, parking utilization midweek during the day was, I think occupancy was around 30%. After we put in the sign, occupancy moved up to about 60%, 50, 60%. So we did have a sizable increase in use for the facility after we did put the signage. For the smaller signs, the little circular ones that you see around downtown, the numbers themselves on the sign, hasn't been quite as successful, but what we've found successful is the fact that they color code the numbers, and so when you're glancing up at the sign and you see that it's a green number, whatever that number may be, people realize, oh, there's probably a good chance I could find parking in that area. or if there's a red number, then it probably shouldn't go down into that lot because it's going to be already occupied. So the kind of color coding, that tends to work better than the numbers themselves. And then additionally, the data that's collected that feed those signs is also being fed into our mobile app that provides parking availability also. So looking at mobile solutions, and that seems to be more successful than just strictly the signs.

So maybe more education, letting people know what those signs mean, how do you interpret them, that might be helpful. I've heard people say, well, I don't even look at them. And I just wonder if maybe we just need to make people more aware of how valuable the information is.

Yeah, for sure. We can definitely look at doing more marketing and kind of education on our system.

And I wanted to know about the new technology. Would that include, if I parked on the street, that I can increase by my phone the number of hours without leaving wherever I might be at that moment. Is that something we'll be able to do once again? I know we were able to do it in the past.

Yeah, we still have arrangements with the app pay by phone. And so people can use that app to pay for parking. We've also implemented text to pay at our parking meters. So if you go at some of our pay kiosks around downtown, you may see a little yellow sign on the side that says text to pay. If you text that number, you can do a parking transaction from your phone and it will give you the opportunity to add time when your time's about to run out.

I think that would be... not that I'm encouraging people to park on the street, but that is a convenience so that people can be aware. It's so education once again. But we still want, the goal is to get people off the street and into the garages, which I feel are safer. I just, myself, I always try to park in the garages because of that. So we need to educate and price accordingly. As far as when to implement, I'm a little worried about implementing immediately without some kind of you know, real robust outreach message through whatever channels we can use to let people know that this is going to happen. I think that will be important. But as soon as we can, with the holidays coming and all the different things that will be coming up soon, we want to be sure that we're ahead of that in getting people to understand what the new rules are. And then I was also wondering, this will be my last question, when we have a holiday like Christmas or, well, just thinking about things that are not necessarily on a Sunday, could we consider possibly giving people a pass on When it comes to that, I'm guessing you're going to say not really without a lot of difficulty. But I just thought it would be a nice gesture if we were able to offer a holiday free pass, no charges today.

Yes. Yeah, so currently for on street and in our surface lots, we do already do a meter holiday for all the recognized holidays that the city recognizes and also for some of our festivals that we have. So we do that also, like hometown holidays and things like that. That's for on-street and in the service lots. For the parking garages, we're contractually obligated to charge for parking, even on holidays. So we still do charge on holidays at our garage facilities.

And like I said, the difficulty of doing something like that, but certainly isn't going to help getting people off the street for parking. Did I answer all of your questions? I think I did.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Well, thank you for putting this. I just think this is wonderful. And The more information we can get out to people, the better. Maybe using our big electronic signs to make announcements around the town that this is coming. And if you have questions, contact whatever you, maybe you. No. No problem. But thank you very much. I really appreciate the report.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Howard. We'll go to Council Member Padilla next.

Christian, thank you for your report. I'll keep this brief. I agree with several of the comments already made, so I will not repeat them. But I do agree with the pricing seems a little bit backwards with the garage and the street, so I think that's already been said enough. Something that hasn't been said that I think is fundamental to whether we stick with whatever you coined it, simple or moderate, is enforcement. because that is one thing that is going to change behavior the reason now people know is that they're not going to get a ticket people will just not pay because they know that the odds are in their favor so i just want to say that i am fully supportive of us making sure we can have the enforcement because even if we're charging, we're making all these rules, if we don't have people to enforce these rules, it's moot, it doesn't matter. So I just, I haven't heard the word enforcement. And I think that that is critical and crucial to changing behavior. I also am a huge proponent of education and getting out to our small businesses, our community members. And I also think it would be prudent to reach out to all the organizations and groups inside of the library. We all use our parking spaces in different ways. I know that parking, if you're a caretaker, taking out strollers and unloading five kids, where you park, it may not be as easy to park at the county center to go to Project Read. So I just want to make sure we incorporate all of the stakeholders and acknowledge how important enforcement is with this. I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't know that we had the ability to text to pay now. So if we have some of these things already in place, if we could do some marketing and community outreach, because I did not know we had the ability to text to pay for parking in an extend time. I've been swiping my credit card and Finding change in my purse so that that's that's a great thing to know if we could get a campaign to Educate people about that that would be fantastic and then I was wondering where you talked about When you measured July to December Christian, can you elaborate on how how those months? how did you come to pick that time frame as for your measurements and

So it wasn't July to December. It was July and December. When we, per our code, we have to do our parking surveys during the, in one of two of the, in the busiest months, the top two months. And so July and December are typically our busiest months. Busy based on what? By number of transactions that occur over the course of the month. And so, through that information, we then look at, okay, July, we'll do a parking survey looking at the occupancy during two weekdays, midweekdays, during the peak hours, and for over a two hour period to kind of identify that occupancy.

Okay, are they always done during this? It's always based on just the transaction, so it changes based on the amount of transactions?

Historically, for the last 10 plus years, July and December have been our busiest months, with maybe the exception in the pandemic years, early pandemic years. But yeah, typically July and December have always been our busiest months.

Okay, thank you. And then could you speak a little bit more just so we know about, I think one of my colleagues already spoke to being able to use different garages like Box or the County Garage. Can you maybe mention where some of these are and when the public can access them, when they're available for them to use?

Yeah, so most of our shared parking agreements allow for parking evenings and weekends, so weekday evenings. Typically after 5 p.m., I think some might have it after 6. They should be signed accordingly for that. I believe there's seven private facilities that have that, plus... that have shared parking agreements and two facilities, the Caltrain lot on Perry Street and the San Mateo County garage. Not the new one on Veterans, but the one that's just in a little bit on Middlefield. That garage is open to the public evenings and weekends.

Okay, thank you. And I know that it's free to the public to park, but do we as a city, do we contribute, do we pay for using the parking at Caltrains or the county building?

We do not pay it for the Caltrain lot. For the San Mateo County agreement, we pay approximately $87,000 annually as part of that agreement.

For the after six and weekend use for the public?

Yeah, for that agreement, yes.

Okay, thank you. Oh, I just wanted to say that, yes, I would, moderate program, and I too, I'm not sure that the fees, the fees with this, it's still not even close to being sustainable, so I really think that we should focus a lot on education and enforcement. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Padilla, and we'll go to Council Member Howard.

There we go. I just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Padilla because, and say I support what you said, because I had enforcement in my notes, I didn't bring it up, and I thought, my gosh, I forgot a pretty important thing. Thank you very much for bringing that up.

Thank you both. And I see Councilmember Chu's hands raised, so we'll go to her online.

Yeah, I actually raised my hand to say the same thing. I really appreciated her bringing that up. And, you know, insofar as we can automated enforcement, like I think the certainty of a ticket for parking out of bounds is much more important than even the price of the ticket. I remember when I lived in Berkeley, if you didn't park legally, you were 100% guaranteed to get a ticket. And so people tended to be very careful. The other thing I was going to comment on is the education. One thing I would like to pursue is, you know, when I put in my route to downtown from my home, Google Maps gives me exactly how long it'll take to walk to the bus stop if my bus is running 30 to 60 seconds late. And once the bus drops me off, you know, it shows the bus stops and how long it'll take me to walk from my bus stop to my destination. When I pull up driving directions, it assumes I go door to door. And of course, that's almost never the case. So it sets up an expectation you're going to park right in front of the door. And so one of the things I would really love to see is a pilot of, you know, in the same way that the bus companies give, you know, Google and Apple Maps real time information on buses. bus routes. I think feeding real-time parking information would set up an expectation in people's minds like, oh, you know, there are three parking garages. These are the prices. One's a two-minute walk. One's a five-minute walk. One's a four-minute walk. And so that's something, you know, I realize that's, you know, a little orthogonal to this, but I think until the maps present that information as part of the trip, it's going to be hard to sort of get people to think about, you know, the time to park and walk as part of their journey. So I would be delighted to reach out to Google or Apple Maps and see if they wanted to do a pilot.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Chu. Not seeing anyone else's lights on. Thank you again, Christian and Tanisha, for the great presentation. To quickly answer some of these questions, I think I was in support, am in support of the city implementing the moderate program. I know the sophisticated program was something that staff looked at and I know that's a big investment. So I'd like for us to sort of go through with moderate and also keep an eye to what moving and transitioning to sophisticated and just keeping the planning for that sort of transition in the back of our minds as we build out what a moderate program looks like because I think it'll be a building block and a building step to the next thing. And something that just came into my mind too was if we make it easier for residents and visitors to locate and pay and then renew their parking spots i think we're going to see the transition transactions excuse me skyrocket and i think especially if we pair that with enforcement um i think the two of those things will make it so that we have more robust participation and people aren't parking and hoping for the best that they're not going to see a ticket when they come back from you know whatever shop right um and so i think you know Stemming from the technology options, really great to know and promote that we have the techs to park right now, but from personal experience, Having parked at one of our garages and having left my wallet at home, I've been trapped in our parking garage without the ability to Apple Pay or use some kind of app that way, right? And thankfully, I had some nice neighbors behind me who paid the dollar for me. But other times, I've had to run the bank to get some cash. But I think aside from that kind of technology, I know our neighboring cities have the ParkMobile app. that lets you do that from that application on your phone, pay by your plate, renew remotely, and I'm hoping that we can even do remote enforcement, right? Like so many of my colleagues have mentioned about wanting automated enforcement, right? I think I would be really interested in finding those kind of ways for us to do the enforcement without always having somebody on the ground to actually walk through a neighborhood or walk through the street. And then kind of building off something that... Councilmember Chiu had mentioned around kind of building it into Google Maps or Apple Maps. I wonder if we can integrate that sort of data into the My Redwood City app. And so when you are thinking about coming into downtown, you could just pull up your phone and be able to see what parking garages we have or what lots have, you know, availability for you right now. But I think finding ways to plug it in so people can plan in advance before they come downtown would be really helpful because... The parking signage that I see on Broadway sometimes, I know sometimes it goes down. Or sometimes people are rushing around and aren't going to take the second to look. So it could just be another way to prepare people and avoid the driving, you know, circling a block or something like that. Aside from that, for revenue generating ideas... I supported the explore the third parking zone. I think that makes a lot of sense. And like Council Member Padilla and my other colleagues have mentioned, the enforcement piece is everything to this, right? I know that having lived in Stanbaugh-Heller and just being a couple blocks away from the downtown, being in that periphery sort of border neighborhood... without parking enforcement, people will park all day and will take that risk and hope that nothing will happen, right? But I do know that having talked to neighbors at the Manzanita neighborhood, right, Christian? We've attended those meetings with our neighbors and when we first brought this idea up to them, they almost refused because they thought about enforcement and thought if there isn't that people power to back it up, it just makes it that much harder to really build that culture within the neighborhood, right? So aside from those things, you know, thinking about, you know, exploring an expansion of the metered hours, I'm in support of, you know, I like the idea of sort of dynamic pricing building to that, especially within a range. So to speak to, you know, Christian, you mentioned surprising neighbors who expect it to be $1.50, they come back and it's $2.50, giving people an expectation of where things will be. And so they're not... expecting $10 one day. But just giving the people that sort of parameters for what they can expect when they're downtown. Aside from that, I really want to maintain the local low-income monthly permit that we offer. I think coupling that with the Caltrain GO Pass is incredible to get folks who are going to be coming downtown every day into other spaces. But I also thought it make sense to me that same chance should be included in one of those alternatives if we have already bus lines coming from our neighborhoods into the downtown and intersecting that that could be an opportunity. Um, and then lastly, I'll just say the transportation management association I think would be a really valuable opportunity. I know we've got downtown partners who, um, who one, can help us with the marketing and outreach, but also I think could help us make sure we're building that culture of diverting folks into the garages, right? I think that's one of the ways that we can start increasing those numbers and that occupancy rate. And then just some last thoughts. I know this is a little different, but the residential parking permit program I mentioned, I think that's really intertwined with how we enforce the downtown parking and it will fluctuate with that in our ability to build that culture. So I want to make sure that we also find the time to bring that permit program back for a fuller discussion because it's been a couple of years since I think the council has a chance to update that policy and in building it out with the Manzanita neighborhood. it was obvious that there were some some challenges with even implementing that program. So I think that would be really valuable as other neighbors sort of think about that too. But the last thing I'll just say is with all the private parking garages, I also want us to think about how we bring them into the fold and create sort of a citywide strategy, right? So that they're helping us divert people into the garages. But, um, If we're doing this in a vacuum, I can only see them becoming very appealing to other folks. But I think we've all got to be working together and pulling from the same oar there. And I think those are all my thoughts. Let me just say my last, I don't think I even mentioned, I really want, I think I said it, but I want to emphasize moving people into the garages aside from the on-street parking. So having our meter rates reflect that, I think, is going to be really important. But I think that is all the questions. And Christian, is there anything else you didn't hear from us on?

DID WE GET ENOUGH FOR THE DIRECTION FOR CITY MANAGER ON THE ACTION?

THE ANSWER IS NO. YOU'LL NEED ACTION BY THE COUNCIL, SO THANK YOU FOR ASKING THAT QUESTION.

I WAS JUST GOING TO PREFACE A LITTLE BIT. FIRST, I REALLY DO WANT TO THANK STAFF. THANK YOU. I KNOW IT'S A LOT OF WORK. WE TALK PARKING A LOT BEHIND THE SCENES, SO COUNCIL, WE APPRECIATE. But I did hear some really good feedback tonight that's going to require a lot of outreach to businesses, to residents and whatnot. And so I just wanted to clarify before the council took action that I would, as city manager, prefer the table two on page, to increase the rates slightly, you know, as shown on table two, but then conduct outreach on everything else. Or if the council would prefer not to do any increases, could also do that. The reason why I say that is it might take six months for us to do BEFORE I COME BACK WITH A COMPREHENSIVE PACKAGE OF OTHER THINGS. AS YOUR CITY MANAGER, WITH THE DEFICIT, I'M ALWAYS LOOKING AT WAYS TO BECOME COST NEUTRAL IF POSSIBLE. MY PREFERENCE WOULD BE TO ADOPT THOSE MODEST CHANGES THAT ARE STILL BELOW MARKET IN MOST OF THE COMPARABLE JURISDICTIONS THAT WE LOOK AT. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, CITY MANAGER. I'LL JUST RESPOND TO THAT REALLY QUICKLY. I THINK THAT MAKES SENSE FOR US TO KEEP THIS MOVING TODAY AND TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THE LONG-TERM SORT OF PROJECT IS, RIGHT, ESPECIALLY AFTER WE GET SOME FEEDBACK FROM BUSINESSES AND OUR DOWNTIME NEIGHBORS. BUT I'LL OPEN IT UP TO MY COLLEAGUES IF ANYONE ELSE FEELS DIFFERENTLY.

I WOULD AGREE. I THINK, CHRISTIAN, DID YOU MENTION THAT THIS HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED SINCE 2005?

or sick. The on street rates have been updated a little more frequently the core rate was raised in 2014 2015. People still still been some time and yet in the periphery rate was in 2022.

I'm also in agreement. I think we we I paid for parking in neighboring cities and I think we are still well well below appreciate all your efforts. Thank you.

and is that a motion council member i just had some other comments oh okay sorry before we get there council member circuit please um i echo my colleagues i agree uh and it sounded like there was sufficient support for the moderate approach i think i counted one two um three and myself four okay so um and i wanted to echo and agree with uh the mayor's suggestion regarding the zone three i'm also open to that option too and agree that we do need a more robust discussion in the future on the residential parking permit program. And I also support the automated enforcement. I think the sensors that was mentioned, I think either by the mayor or Mr. Hammock, is very smart. I'm looking for my notes, apologies. Yes. But with that said, those are only effective, if I understand correctly, in the metered parking spaces in the downtown parking program area, right? So this is not something we would do in a residential parking permit program area outside downtown.

Well, there's technology solutions that we could look at for automating some of the processes in the residential neighborhoods also, so we would probably explore those.

Okay, great, because I know you had mentioned automation for permit programs in terms of pivoting to license plate reading to verify if someone has a permit, right? Yes. Okay, fantastic. But I think there's just nothing like boots on the ground, I think, to complement automated enforcement. That's all I'll say on that. Gosh, this is such a complex issue here. I just have so many notes. And I agree with the mayor regarding taking a citywide strategy approach, developing a citywide strategy with regards to partnering with privately owned, publicly accessible parking garages, just to make sure that there's standards across the entire city and that we are still benefiting from not only free parking for a duration, a limited amount of time, but even revenue in the future. I understand that we do have an arrangement with a local property owner to offer free spaces right in one of the garages, but maybe there's an opportunity to reevaluate that in the future and see if we can get some of that revenue back to the city. So that's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all. Appreciate the robust discussion on this, and I will move staff's recommendation. Council Member Chua, saw your hand go up.

Oh, I was going to make a motion, but second.

Great, thank you. And City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please?

Sure. I'll start with Council Member Howard. Yes. Council Member Padilla. Yes. Council Member Strickland.

I think the city manager understood it. I thought the motion was only going to be about the meter rates, but it seems like there was more in that motion than what we were seeking direction on. But I think you understood.

My apologies. That was about meter rates.

Thank you. I think if there was consensus on the moderate approach as well as additional outreach and all those, the word moderate approach would be super helpful because there's a lot in the staff report tied to that. So thank you.

Okay. To make my city attorney's life a little easier, I was proposing the staff recommended meter rates that we just discussed and a moderate program approach here. And just double-checking, Councilmember Chiu, is your second still okay? Yes. Great. Thank you. Can we get a roll call vote, please?

We'll start the vote over, if you don't mind. Councilmember Howard? Yes. Councilmember Padilla? Yes. Councilmember Sterkin? Yes. Councilmember Chiu?

Yes.

And Mayor Martinez-Avallos? Yes. Thank you. Motion passes with five votes. Councilmember Gee and Vice Mayor Akin are absent.

Thank you, City Clerk, and thank you again, everybody, for the great discussion. Thank you, staff. We will move now to Item B, which is the consideration, adoption of a position on the Connect Bay Area Transit Initiative on the November 2026 ballot. And we have Assistant City Manager Derek Wolfgram who will be giving us a presentation. Welcome, Derek.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Derek Wolfgram, Assistant City Manager, filling in for my colleague, Assistant City Manager Michelle Flaherty, who wanted to be here tonight but was unable to be. So I will deliver this on her behalf. And can we go to the next slide, please? THE ITEM BEFORE THE COUNCIL TONIGHT IS CONSIDERATION OF WHETHER TO ADOPT A POSITION ON THE CONNECT BAY AREA TRANSIT INITIATIVE, A CITIZEN INITIATED REGIONAL SALES TAX MEASURE ON THE NOVEMBER 26TH GENERAL ELECTION BALLOT. AND SO THE QUESTION BEFORE YOU IS DO YOU WISH TO TAKE A POSITION ON IT? NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. THIS SLIDE OUTLINES SOME OF THE KEY REGULATORY AND PROCEDURAL STEPS THAT PRECEDED THIS ITEM FROM SB63'S CREATION OF THE DISTRICT THROUGH SAMTRANS' OPT-IN AND THE CERTIFICATION OF SIGNATURES. THE SAMTRANS BRIEFING SHEET PROVIDED AS ATTACHMENT AID TO THE STAFF REPORT INCLUDES ADDITIONAL DETAIL ON THE LOCAL INVESTMENT PLAN and outreach process. Staff is available to answer any technical questions that council may have about any of these materials. Next slide, please. The staff report summarizes the key elements of the measure, which are referenced here, including the tax rate, the revenue estimate, and the recipient transit agencies. And a review of the accountability provisions and other details is also outlined in the staff report. You'll notice that the SF Bay ferry is listed as one of the transit agencies to receive funds. Each county decides how to allocate their collected sales tax and the ferry was not one of the allocations made by San Mateo County for those expenditures. But the funding of priorities for San Mateo County will be listed on the next slide. So it shows here 50 million per year in return to source funding, which will be about 700 million over 14 years. with a prioritization that sends 24% of what's collected in San Mateo County to Caltrain, 27% to BART, 7% to Muni, and 37% to the Sam Trans local investment plan. And the local investment plan for Sam Trans shows within that 37% how they will break down the expenditures for their funding priorities of protect, enhance, expand, and fix. Next slide, please. So this targets fair programs including free and reduced cost transfers and expansion of the Clipper Start low income fair discount program, funds dedicated accessibility programs and transit priority initiatives, and the Sam Trans Local Investment Plan specifically commits to expanding affordable transit access for underserved communities including the coast and vulnerable populations. Next slide please. Adopting a position would create no direct impact on the Redwood City budget. The city may benefit from future funded projects. The revenue allocation and authorized uses vary by county as set forth in section 12 of the measure. SAMTRAN'S BOARD HAS COMMITTED TO A PUBLIC PROCESS TO PRIORITIZE COST CONTAINMENT REVENUE GENERATION AND EFFICIENCY WITH A GOAL OF FISCAL STABILITY BY THE END OF THE 14-YEAR TERM. REGULAR BOARD UPDATES ON THE TAX MEASURE REVENUES AND FUNDED PROJECTS. and a long-range financial plan for continued operations after the measure expires. One note here, the fund could be used for pavement on roads with fixed bus routes, which would help with some of our gaps in our pavement funding. Next slide, please. And so keeping it short and sweet, the question before you is whether to take a position on the Connect Bay Area Transit Initiative. If you have any questions, our engineering and transportation staff is most likely way more knowledgeable than me to help address those questions. And we do also have Michaela Petrick from Sam Trans available via Zoom for questions if there are any questions that would be appropriate to ask Sam Trans. So that's the end of my report. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Derek. And thank you for the great presentation. And before we bring it to the days here, we'll go to public comment. So I'll hand things over to the city clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. We have a couple of comments on this topic. Last call to the audience or our folks on Zoom to be recognized for public comment on this item. OK. We'll start with Dylan Finch, who we have in person, followed by Adina Levin on Zoom.

Hello Council. I just wanted to voice my support for the regional transit measure. Another sales tax is very unfortunate, especially when things are expensive. But I do think Caltrain is very important to our downtown, especially as we're talking about the high cost of parking. So yeah, just want to say I support it. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move to our one Zoom speaker, Adina Levin from Seamless Bay Area. You may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Yes, so, like the previous speaker would like to encourage the city council to support the connect Bay Area regional transit measure as the previous item having. a transit system that continues to run and improve is very important for Redwood City to be able to help people to commute, to be able to help people get to events in Redwood City, to be able to help Redwood City continue to Develop the downtown, including adding more housing, having the city reach its sustainability goals. All of these things, the public transit system is a very important. a piece to enable those things to happen and as well as keeping car congestion off of the roadways so would encourage the city council to support the ballot measure thanks thank you and that concludes public comment mayor

Thank you to both of our public commenters for speaking on this item. And before I bring it to my colleagues for comments, I just wanted to quickly say I thought it was important for us to consider taking a stance of support on this because our downtown is so intertwined with the health of the Caltrain Station, the Sam Tran Station in Redwood City, and this would offer such a valuable lifeline to the services that aren't just serving folks trying to get to San Francisco or San Jose, but the people who are using it to move around our community here in San Mateo County. So I will leave it there and invite comments or any questions from my colleagues. Council Member Howard.

Thank you. I just wanted to mention, after reading all the information, I saw that they had it outlined who was receiving what from for each county and so forth. And it was mentioned San Francisco Bay Ferry was mentioned as one of the recipients. And I wasn't familiar with that phrase. I'm familiar with the Water Emergency Transit Authority. But for whatever reason, San Francisco Bay Ferry was utilized. And I noticed that three counties gave a certain amount of money. It was certainly not significant. It was 1% or lower of the money that was being distributed to support, it was Contra Costa, Alameda, and San Francisco counties that voted to give money for the Bay Area ferry transit. So my question was, and my question was, why not Redwoods, San Mateo County? It seemed like kind of blaring, glaring a, information missing on why wouldn't San Mateo County be included in this. So I'm happy to report I spoke with Seamus Murphy, who is the executive director of the Water Emergency Transit Authority and he told me yes there's been confusion about that because I said we all know you as WIDA and you are the distributor of the funds for water transit. He goes that's correct. That's where the money will come to. It'll come to me as the executive director and it will be distributed appropriately. And he said that he did negotiate that there would be money that would go to the South San Francisco ferry service, which is an existing service. Now, the funds cannot be used to create a new service, so Redwood City would not be mentioned. And I understood that. But my concern was South San Francisco. So he said, no, we worked that out. That was part of the agreement. It really wasn't clearly stated. And so I felt I should state it, because I don't want anyone in our community thinking that we aren't always looking to create water transit for Redwood City that we're not working in a positive direction so that we can get it started. And I was happy to hear from Seamus that in 2027, Measure A funds will be going up for renewal. And Redwood City has been part of the Measure A funding and will continue to be part of the Measure A funding. And if renewed, will certainly help us continue our mission of having water transit in Redwood City. So I feel happy to report that, and I can support the measure. I was uncomfortable at first, but I got my questions answered, and I wanted to share it with you. I also wanted to share the good news that the EIR for water transit is going to be available for public comment very shortly, and the port is going to get the message out to the community, we want your input and feedback. So let's keep this project moving forward. So that was all I have to say. I just wanted to share that with everyone, and I'd be happy to support the measure.

Thank you, Council Member Howard, and thank you for adding that clarity to the mix, too. I know lots of people were interested with the return to source funding that was available to the county, so it's good to make sure that that's clear, too. Colleagues, who would like to go next? Councilmember Chiu will go to you online.

Great. I'll keep this brief. So, you know, I use Caltrain twice a week at least. And it is such an important part of our transportation system. I wish it wasn't necessary to do these sort of emergency measures constantly and that we had a more rational system to fund transit. But unfortunately, that's reality. And I will be supporting this measure. If we don't have good transit, particularly Caltrain, the traffic will be unbelievable. It will hurt everybody, drivers and transit riders alike, if this measure doesn't pass. And I think it's important that we take a position on it. So I'll also be supporting it.

Thank you, Council Member Chu. Appreciate your thoughts, and we'll bring it back to the base. Council Member Sterkin.

I happily support this resolution and the measure, and I appreciate it being brought forward. This measure's success is inextricably linked to our downtown success. And, you know, based on our previous conversation, parking is a guarantee, right? But transit isn't. And this measure helps us change that by shifting how we fund, how we think about people getting from A to B, to school, to work, to play. And I can't stress enough how important it is that we support this measure. So I support it. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Padilla.

Thank you. Derek, can you come back up here, please? Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. So the last time Sam Chance was here, I actually had a question. But maybe Derek, stand by too. I had asked about the ridership along El Camino. I had asked if they could share the ridership numbers on El Camino. So if that... Sam Tran's rep is on the line. I would love the opportunity to, if they have that information available now, about our ridership in Redwood City on El Camino. They had referenced it at our last meeting as their bread and butter, so I would just love to have the data.

Michaela, are you available to take that one?

No.

Michaela, we're having a little trouble hearing you.

Okay, I'll move on for now, but maybe as a follow-up later, if we could, that was something that I think is relevant and would be helpful. Derek, could you tell me what our current sales tax is in Redwood City?

I believe it's 9.78%, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I don't know if someone else has that answer at their fingertips.

That's okay. So my point here is I want to talk about sales tax. I hear we're all talking about how important... transit is, and yes, getting from A to B is very important, but so is sustainability and business model sustainability. And the pandemic has ended and ridership has changed. And what I'm still failing to reconcile is how asking the taxpayers... We have to ask, this is what this is, is this is asking the taxpayers... to fix a really big deficit. This is a very big ask of the taxpayers. And everyone can say, oh, it's half a cent here, it's one cent here. But as our city manager pointed to earlier, we don't have the best economic outlook and i i want people to think about when we there's certain things that i love our reports i like seeing what sells what's big i look at the cars i look at appliances and then i think of friends and family and i think about when they want to make those purchases big purchases taxes start to to add up to things whether you buy your appliance in redwood city or neighboring city who has a lower sales tax These things matter, and they influence people's purchasing decisions. So before we go, and as I always want to be a good community member and help our county and everyone, I'm also born and raised in Redwood City, and I know what our sales tax is, and I know how that is going to affect every family who has to feel that. Whether you use public transit or not, you will be paying for it. And I'm not saying, I want us to acknowledge that our sales tax will likely be over 10 cents. That's something that hasn't been said, but will change the way consumers purchase things. And if everyone has seen our revenues, we need to think about that. And I also, I struggle with these things because I don't know if it is my place to tell people how, I always feel it is our position to give people information. But I don't know if it is fair for us to encourage people in a certain way when I know that this bailout, even if we did this and it's $980 million, does this solve these issues for these transit agencies? Does this make it all go away for them, Derek?

I'm actually going to defer that question to Malahat Orang, our transportation manager, who is available on Zoom.

Great. Thank you.

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi. I believe Michaela, she fixed her headset. But I'm a transportation manager for the city. Yes. So based on the calculations, both Caldron and Sumtrans did on their operation deficit. The way they set up this and propose this sales tax, it is going to fix their problem in the next 15 years to close the gap they have in the operation with the projection they have for the service level they're going to have in the next 15 to 20 years. So the calculation of the sales tax was based on what they need to close the gap in their operation deficit.

So we could expect that in 15 years, these transit agencies will not come back to the taxpayers and ask for more money?

We don't know. So this is a new tax. But keep in mind, there is also Measure A and Measure W. Measure A was, I believe, 2008. It is ending. And sometimes already started working on outreach because they are going back to the community, I believe in 2028, to extend Measure A. A part of Measure A goes to transit agencies. A part of it you hear is competitive, it comes to the city, but a part of it goes to transit agencies. We also have Measure W, which was approved in 2018. And I believe that's a 30-year sales tax. So there are two other measures currently in the county that could help hopefully fill all the gaps. But again, they are expiring. So the taxpayers, if they vote for Senate Bill 63 in November, in two years, they have to pay taxes. they have to vote for measure A. So it's not, yes, they will come back to renew the measures because all local agencies and transit agencies, we are dependent to these measures. So the answer is no, they will come back.

Okay, thank you. So that leads me to, in a previous world, I... worked for a private company that had a board. And so when I'm thinking about these things, and then I have this responsibility for the public and the public's money, and I'm thinking, The nature of work has changed. And I feel like until it is acknowledged, it's like this elephant people don't want to address that people work from home now. The way people use the train is different. Yes, I wish we had Giants games every single day. Fantastic. Yes, I love how full the train cars are. But I guess as a person, if I was on a board, I would say, Before you go and ask the taxpayers for money, I know that some of these agencies own a lot of real property assets that have land value. I just think that before we go and ask working families, hardworking people to pay for something, we should have them explore the lots and lots of real assets and property that they have and could develop. I just don't know if it's fair to go to the people and constantly ask them to solve the problems that they are not working out themselves. So I actually do not think it is appropriate for us to support this as a council. I don't feel good about it. Given our financial states and where we are in our budget and our budget reporting, and given the looming rental ordinance, I just do not think it would be... responsible for us to participate in this. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Through the mayor, can we loop back to Michaela? It seems like Michaela has finished, fixed her audio issues. And so she can answer Council Member Padilla's question now.

I hope so. Can you all hear me? Okay.

Yes. Thank you.

Okay, great. Um, just a quick comment, um, on the financial sustainability piece. I just wanted to add that, um. You know, the agent Sam trans as an agency is taking steps right now to address our operational deficit. Some of the things that we're doing are having no new positions approved. We're reducing our consultant use. We're also making cuts across all discretionary spending areas, and we're looking into new revenue sources. advertising at our bus shelters, on our buses themselves, looking into partnerships, and doing a broad asset study. So we are taking steps to get creative and work internally to do the work so that we aren't reliant on this funding for years and years to come. And just quickly, because I know there was a question about the ridership information on El Camino Real. i don't have those numbers at my fingertips but i'm happy to follow up and send that information to you when i get it thank you would be appreciated thank you michaela for that response and i see council member chu's hand is up

Thank you, Mayor. So I just wanted to respond to Council Member Padilla's concerns. So she is absolutely correct that transit agencies need to be run efficiently, are accountable to the taxpayer, and that Um, you know, they should leverage, especially the land that they have, you know, and optimize it for the most economically productive land use available to them. That is that is absolutely true. But I think the thing we have to remember some things number one. Transit isn't a business, it's a service. It is a service supported by the government, and we don't expect highways or freeways to turn a profit, nor are they self-sustaining. Those are also subsidized. Local roads are subsidized by the general fund. And in virtually every state in the union, there is enormous subsidies for roads. That's just built into everything we do. There are parking mandates that parking minimums are worth trillions of dollars. So I think what we have is a situation where driving subsidies are embedded into everything we do. And guaranteed and driving is not expected to be a profitable or or. Sustainable or break even endeavor and transit is expected to to be run like a business, even though it's a government service. Um, and so, you know, I, I think it's a really uneven playing field. So certainly, yes, you know. Transit needs to adapt transit needs to be run excellently and efficiently and transit needs to better leverage the land. It has at its disposal. But the reason transit has to work so hard to be sustainable is because driving is so enormously subsidized. I did a back of the envelope calculation for on for, um. on street parking in Redwood City, and it works out to about $1,000 per driver per month. There is no subsidy that we give to transit walking or biking that even remotely approaches that. And so, you know, I would be in support of having all modes of transportation sort of pay What they cost, but we're, we're very far from that state of affairs. And so, until we can sort of rationalize how we price various modes of transportation. Transit agencies are going to have to do this sort of, you know, keep asking for money approach because they haven't been given. permanent funding. You know, we don't see highways having to do this ever, even though they're much more expensive per capita. And so, you know, although your points are well taken, I think we have to remember no other government agency is expected to turn a profit or even break even.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I appreciate that. So I I'm not going to get into the arguing about subsidies over what the government should or shouldn't subsidize. But it did remind me that one of my other big issues with supporting this as a council is the lack of oversight. And just as council member Howard talked about having to find out if something was really covered or if it wasn't. Derek, maybe you could talk a little bit about the boards that would oversee the monies allocated to our county and what that oversight really looks like.

Thank you for the question. I'm going to ask Malahat to take a shot at that one. Thank you.

So yes, sure. So this is very similar to other sales tax measures we have in the county. If it passes, the SAMTRANS is going to work with all agencies, and they have a technical group, and they have a local stakeholder group, probably from council members, to come up with an expenditure plan. So oversee is by the SAMTRANS and Caltrain board. and their board consists of council members from all over the county. We do have a rep, council member G at their board. So that's one example. So that's how they're going to oversee the expenditure, if that answers your question. I don't know if Michaela have.

I guess I have more of a comment. So as a resident, my comment, and this is from my own research, is that there would be four independent experts, four transit agency reps, the MTC chair. But when I looked at what you were given, it said like, oh, board updates. You know, we're talking about a lot of money. It's just a big pot of money to get an update from a board. It's just... It's really hard for me to give such a big pocket of money to four independent experts. How are these people picked? Who picks them? It's just a large bucket of money, and I just do not feel comfortable with the levels of oversight with this amount of money, of the people's money. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. And I think Michaela has her hand raised to respond.

Just an additional point of information. So for the Connect Bay Area measure overall, there is, like Malahat said before, there's a MTC public transit revenue measure district that has already conducted a phase one financial efficiency review and analysis leading up to the ballot measure of Where these agencies, the agencies that are receiving the most money have already worked to rein in their deficits. And I will say there is a 2nd. Phase of the analysis if voters do pass the ballot measure that this independent oversight committee will conduct. It's a multi year phase. It's a deep evaluation of cost structure strategies to get these agencies towards financial sustainability. So there's that process and then specific to the money that would be coming to San Mateo County through Sam trans. The SAMTRAN's board has committed to various financial accountability provisions, which would be every couple of years revisiting the structure that has been approved and making tweaks based on what we're seeing in the field and the reality at play. So there's kind of a two-part financial accountability component.

Thank you, Michaela, and thank you, Council Member Padilla. See you, Council Member Sterkin, and then we'll go to Council Member Howard.

Thank you. When I think about this measure, I think about working families in Redwood City. I do, both in terms of the costs to their wallets, their pocketbooks, right? But also the fact that transit is not an option for them, it's a necessity. And yeah, I still remember clients I supported in finding rooms to rent when I worked for HIP Housing, right? Who were commuting from Daly City. You know, this one client, she worked at the See's Candy, factory up there and actually it's in Millbury, one of those two. South City. Thank you. South City. Thank you. Don't tell the South City Council. And lived down here in Redwood City. And so she relied on ECR in order to get to and from work and did not have a car. And so those are residents uh who are who don't have a car who are working people who rely on sam trans on increasingly on cal train as we um heard from san trans before how their demographics of their um uh ridership has diversified and by income and otherwise and so i think of those residents and neighbors when i when I say that we should support this measure. Trying to think of what else I can say. I think we should be consistent too. If we take a position on other measures, we should be able to take a position on this measure. Yeah, I recognize that on a previous measure we did take a position on, I abstained, so I acknowledge that, right? But if we're gonna say that it's not fair to take a position, then we need to be consistent. And so, we have a decision before us, and I think we should take a position.

Councilmember Howard had her light on. Let me just double check. Councilmember, do you have anything else you want to add?

I just wanted to say that there's obviously a lot of interest on the council on wanting Sam Trans to be accountable. And we have a representative on that board Council Member Jeff Gee. So what we could do is ask Council Member Gee to keep us frequently informed. Are they really cutting costs? Are they really addressing their operational deficits? Are they really making that effort to keep salaries, especially at the very highest level, stable? I mean, that's a concern for me when I see what some people are making. if you're really in that much trouble maybe you need to all take a little pain and work on that so um after hearing all the conversation i think it would be reasonable to ask council member g and i'm sure he would bring back more regular uh information on are they actually doing what they said they would do when the measure came up for a vote and we all can have an opinion um I don't want to put pressure on any one of us. I mean, I appreciate your comments, Council Member Padilla. I really do. And I know I'm wrestling with it myself because I thought, how much can we keep asking the public to take? So there should be no problem if someone feels one way or the other. That's what we're here for. That's what we vote for. And so I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Council Member Howard. Council Member Padilla?

No, I was just going to point out there was a very helpful information in the staff report about a transportation survey that I think that it would be nice if we could share it with all council. I know I asked for it, but it would maybe shed a little... I mean, it's a small sample size, so I don't want to speak too much to it, but... Derek, if we could get that out to the full council, that would be great. Council Member Strickland, it compares city employees to a percentage of low-income workers located near transit and asks their use of public transit. And it actually shows that some of our most low-income people tend to be more tied to an automobile, whereas sometimes people who are more affluent and have flexibility with work are more able to use public transit. So I just think it would be interesting, given the conversation, for the entire council to be able to read that. Thank you.

I'll be happy to share that detailed report.

Thank you, Derek. Thank you, Councilmember. Not seeing anyone else's hands raised. I just, again, want to add my thoughts to this, especially after such a great discussion. You know, I was also born and raised here in Redwood City, and I've mentioned before that I frequently would take the 296 to get from Sequoia High School to different places around town. I would jump on Caltrain to visit friends and vice versa. I had friends who would commute to Sequoia using Caltrain. So I know it's not just for Giants fans. And I know ridership changed, especially during COVID. I feel... I feel a couple of things are happening right now. I do feel like it is bouncing back from COVID. Not everybody gets the luxury of working from home. And for those who are on their way back to the office, I think we're starting to see those numbers trickle back. I know this incredible first year at UC Law SF, who's now commuting every morning to get up to San Francisco. And she lets me know just how packed the trains are in the morning. So I know that there is a page turning here And just to quickly wrap up, I think what my colleagues mentioned around this being a public service and a public good is really what this is about because it's not just about moving folks who can afford to pay for the service, but it's also thinking about the, our neighbors, the working neighbors that we've talked about where they're using low income Caltrain go passes. They're taking advantage of ready wheels. If they can't drive themselves anymore and rabbit city, um, I'm not sure if McHale has this, but I have heard that Revit City has one of the biggest rates of riders when it comes to ready wheels and other sort of accessibility programs too. But I worry about our neighbors not having those services anymore and what these impacts, you know, this will obviously have an impact on our downtown's economic well-being, but it's going to have an obvious impact to our traffic corridors. And I worry about the health impacts for our neighbors who live in those neighborhoods that have major corridors like the Woodside 101 interchange or, you know, Jefferson or Veterans or, you know, these streets where we just, we have cars constantly on them. So I think about those impacts. And I know the Bay Area is so incredibly expensive. I worry about the other costs that will come from this if we started to see service decline, services be cut, more people on the road, less people being able to get through with their daily lives and their daily activities without Sam Trans, without Caltrain. So I agree, having our council member who represents us, Jeff Gee, keep us apprised of just what's happening and making sure that we can also speak up if we do see something that we're, we want to see change, right? So I think that path forward makes a lot of sense to me. And with that, not seeing anyone else's lights on, I will go ahead and make a motion that the, oh, one more. Sorry, got ahead of myself. Council Member Serkan. I apologize.

I just, I wanted to mention as well, youth and families are the top priority for this council, right? And we know The studies show that youth are driving less. They're not getting driver's licenses because owning a car, paying for car insurance is cost prohibitive. And to your point, Mayor, we don't have... we don't have yellow school buses so much anymore right and so kids going to redwood city schools are dependent upon sam trans service in order to get to school and if that goes away or is diminished in any way that's going to directly affect redwood city families and youth and and i will read that um that survey that you reminded us about Council Member Padilla. Thank you for sharing it. But to that point, and that's my final point, I do want to mention, and maybe Michaela, you can confirm for me if I'm correct, but the majority of Sam Trans riders are low income in this county, right? And they can't work from home. They're in positions that don't offer that flexibility.

Michaela, I see your hands raised.

Yeah, I can confirm 94% of our ridership is low income. 68% is extremely low income based on the San Mateo County affordable housing metrics. We also, yes, nearly 80% of our riders don't drive or own a car. And we do, excuse me, have... pretty high numbers for Redwood City as was referenced before for a ready wheels ridership um it looks like I have the numbers up here it's it looks like we're Redwood City based on 2026 data had the third highest in the county behind just behind Daly City and San Mateo in terms of ready wheels fighters

Thank you so much, Michaela, for offering those data points. It's really helpful. Council Member Sirkin, anything else? Council Member Padilla?

Okay, well, with that, I just... SOMEONE WHO SEES CHILDREN ON THE BUSES, AND I'M GOING TO PUT THIS OUT TO SAMTRANS. I KNOW SO MANY STUDENTS WHO WOULD LOVE TO SEE MORE DEDICATED BUSES AND BUS ROUTES FOR THEM. SO, IF WE WANT TO ENGAGE SOME YOUNG RIDERS, I KNOW A LOT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KIDS AND MIDDLE SCHOOL KIDS WHO WOULD LOVE TO GET perhaps a bus route that maybe connected them to programming at a rec center. I mean, these are just very simple things. So if there's going to be funding flowing, I would love to connect the children to programming. So if we could take the children from their schools and get them to some after-school programming on the bus, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Not seeing any other lights on. I will go ahead and move a position of support on the Connects Bay Area Transit Initiative for the November 2026 ballots. Second. And I heard a second from Councilmember Chiu. Could we please get a roll call vote?

We'll start with Councilmember Padilla. No. Council Member Sterkin.

Yes.

Council Member Chiu.

Yes.

Council Member Howard. Yes. Mayor Martinez-Zavallos.

Yes.

The motion passes with four votes. Council Member Padilla is opposed, and Council Member Gee and Vice Mayor Aiken are absent. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody, for that robust debate and discussion. And with that, we will move to item 8C. And we have our city manager, Patrick Heisinger, who will be providing a brief overview on the item before turning it over back to assistant city manager, Derek Wolfgram, who will introduce the item. And we have public works utility supervisor, Linda Chang, who will then give the presentation.

Great. Thank you, Mayor. Before I do turn it over to Derek, I just want to thank staff for working on this. This is a topic that really every department within the city is a part of. From our city attorney's office, definitely public works, police and fire. So we hope that comes out tonight. The reason why I reached out to the mayor and vice mayor to agendize this is Obviously, I'm not a scientist, but every day it seems like the science gets stronger and stronger that this year's El Nino might be the strongest on record. And, you know, I'm learning 50% of the time when there's a strong El Nino, there's very little happens, but there's the 50% of the time that it does. So what you'll hear is a lot of the work that we already typically do leading up to the winter season, just us doing it more in advance. We're really also trying to get the word out. We really want residents, I'm sure residents are hearing things in the news and whatnot, but maybe what we can do is get to those residents who might not be as engaged with the political process or if we have other ideas that the council may have for us tonight. So I don't think there'll be anything learned new tonight from the city council, maybe there will, but we really want to hear from you all, feedback. And then as the fall and winter proceed and information changes, we'll tweak and modify our plans from there. But a lot of gratitude for staff. We put this together pretty quickly. With that, I'll turn it over to Assistant City Manager Derek Wolf-Graham, and then the team will roll with it from there. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. Still Derek Wolfgram, still Assistant City Manager. Thanks for the opportunity to introduce this item. As Patrick said, a lot of this is summarizing work that our Redwood City departments have done on an annual basis for a long time. Given the pervasive nature of the news cycle about El Nino, we really wanted to make sure that you're aware of everything that the city does in preparation so that if constituents have questions, you're able to answer those. And also, as Patrick said, to make it more broadly available to the community to let them know what they... have in terms of services they can access from the city, what we're doing to help prepare the city for them, and also to share some information about what steps people can take with their own properties or their own residences where they live to make sure that they are prepared and able to know what's going on not only with the city, but also perhaps some information about other entities, what to do with regard to storms when it comes to PG&E or some of the other utilities or partners or neighbours that we work with ON THESE MATTERS. WHILE SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT, WE ARE GOING TO JUST HAVE LINDA CHANG, WHO IS THE ACTING PUBLIC WORKS SUPERINTENDENT FOR WASTEWATER, IS GOING TO DELIVER THE REPORT. And then she and myself and Public Works Director Adrienne Lee and folks from several other departments are here to answer questions if you have any. So from there, I will turn it over to Linda. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Martina Ceballos, members of city council, and members of the public. My name is Linda Chang, and I am the acting superintendent for wastewater at Public Works. I'm here today to present to you our winter readiness plans. I'll first discuss some of the weather predictions we are facing for this winter and go over our annual preparation plans for wet weather, which is a multi-discipline effort across multiple departments. I'll also discuss where stormwater runoff can be diverted to, as well as go over some community guidance we provide to residents and members of the community, including what to do during stormy weather. After the briefing, we would like to ask Council if there are any outstanding questions regarding the current services the City provides for winter readiness and if there are any additional or alternative services that the City should prioritize within existing resources. In the El Nino storm over New Year's Eve 2022, Redwood City received over four inches of rain, and you may have already heard that this winter is on track to also become a strong El Nino. NOAA's National Weather Service issued an advisory on August 13th that El Nino is strengthening with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2026-27. El Nino can produce periods of heavy rain rather than simply raining more often and can also cause short term regional increases in sea level. We also anticipate king tides, which are highly predictable, although their exact height can be influenced by weather and coastal conditions. According to the California Coastal Commission's King Tides Project, king tide events are expected around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays this year, as well as after Martin Luther King Day in January. This winter we may see a convergence of several factors, El Nino, king tides, elevated sea levels, atmospheric rivers and other inclement weather. Our focus will therefore be on preparedness, risk reduction and mitigating potential impacts of any resulting hazards. Our public works staff maintain over 30,000 street trees, over 100 miles of storm drain pipeline, over 2,500 inlets, catch basins, siphons, and manholes. We have over 600 trash capture devices which are inserted into existing inlets. or catch basins so that debris and trash don't flow out to the SF Bay. In addition to approximately four miles of concrete line creek, Public Works also oversees 18 pump stations which help to move water in lower lying areas of the city. Redwood City's Public Works handles many routine annual maintenance activities. And while these aren't new items, they serve as a reminder of the work we undertake earlier in the year before the wet weather season ever begins. Shortly after rains end in the spring, crews are already working towards the next wet weather season. We start with clearing debris, silt, and vegetative overgrowth in our creeks. And those locations include the concrete line channels that flow through residential neighborhoods to Redwood Creek, the culverts under city-maintained streets along Cordilleras Creek, and the Bayfront Canal channel that flows to Menlo Park. Our storm pump stations are very important as they move storm water out of areas where gravity alone cannot drain the area fast enough. Every year we service our storm pump stations to identify any pumps that need rebuilding. We also clean the station wet wells to ensure maximum storage capacity before storm water gets pumped downstream. Other routine maintenance items include clearing city maintained ditches and cleaning storm inlets, catch basins and trash racks. Trees are pruned year round and removals occur as needed. This helps to mitigate the number of limbs that could come down in a storm. We also collaborate and communicate with neighboring agencies. Our parks recreation and community services department have their own storm preparation. Their staff maintain clear and unobstructed inlets in and around the parks. They also oversee community centers which they prepare to activate as temporary evacuation points if needed. They also notify their human service providers in their network for resource locations. Redwood City's Fire Department oversees the Community Emergency Response Team, also known as CERT. This program educates volunteers about disaster preparedness and trains them in basic disaster response skills so they can offer immediate assistance to family members and neighbors while waiting for help. CERT focuses on preparing neighborhoods, having a plan with three to four days of supplies, creating go bags, assisting neighbors with mobility or functional needs. A second priority is protecting property, reminding residents to clear gutters and catch basins, obtain sandbags early, and protecting egress before heavy rains begin. CERT promotes staying connected, getting the word out about enrolling in SMC alerts, increasing evacuation zone awareness, and sharing trusted National Weather Service information before and during storms. Finally, CERT is there to support city response. By having better prepared and empowered residents, we reduce the response demand, allowing fire and police safety personnel and public works resources to remain focused on life safety events. Beyond the CERT program, the Redwood City Fire Department takes proactive steps for ensuring a coordinated approach to storm preparation and regional emergency response. For example, the fire chief meets monthly with the county fire chiefs to ensure standardized operations, interoperability, and communications, while deputy fire chiefs meet monthly to coordinate regional response plans, training, and operational readiness. These established relationships are critical during significant incidents that require multiple agencies to operate together effectively. The fire chief also meets regularly with the county emergency manager to coordinate evacuation planning, evacuation notification procedures, and early warning and public alerting systems. In addition, the fire department works with public safety communications to ensure seamless and interoperable communications are maintained between dispatch centers, field personnel, and responding agencies. To support early planning and situational awareness, the fire chief participates in national weather service briefings regarding upcoming weather conditions and potential impacts. Together these efforts ensure Redwood City is engaged at every level of regional preparedness from forecasting and early warning to communications, evacuation planning, mutual aid, and emergency response that coordination is established well before an emergency affects our community. During heavier storms, Public Works looks at increased rainfall periods or higher rainfall rates, both of which would affect how fast stormwater drains out to the SF Bay. Either of these scenarios would be exacerbated by high tides. In either of these occasions, we can divert stormwater to retention or detention ponds for temporary storage. The Redwood Shores Lagoon is the largest retention pond where stormwater eventually drains out to the slough and later the bay. Then we have the Bayfront Diversion Structure and the Ravenswood Pond Complex. In 2023, one shoreline, San Mateo County's Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, completed and unveiled this new underground structure, which was designed to redirect excess water coming from the Bayfront Canal and Atherton Channel into the managed detention ponds within the Ravenswood Pond Complex that is managed by US Fish and Wildlife Service. Since fiscal year 2425, our public works has provided maintenance to the diversion structure during the wet season October 15th through March 31st through an agreement between One Shoreline, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the City of Redwood City. Notably, this new infrastructure has helped to reduce flood risks for nearby communities like the mobile home parks along East Bayshore Boulevard. Here's a quick look at our readiness timeline. Public Works already began wet weather preparations in mid-May to ensure the city's stormwater infrastructure is ready for the upcoming rainy season. All annual maintenance is targeted for completion by end of October in preparation for the possibility of early season rainstorms. Beginning in mid-October, we will initiate active storm monitoring with staff available 24-7 to respond to storm related needs. Additional staff will also be scheduled on call during the holidays to ensure adequate coverage for emergency response. I wanted to highlight some of our community outreach and guidance we provide to the public. On the city's website, we host a storm page listing resources and tips, as well as a storm preparedness video series that the city's communications team has been creating over the last couple of years. The video series provides preparation tips like making sure the roof gutters are clear, avoiding flooded streets or downed power lines, how to pack and use sandbags, and ways to protect private property from stormwater. On the website, residents can access our Creekside Property Owner's Guide, which provides information on how to maintain and care for their private portion of the creek. We send out annual reminders as well each fall to properties that are near or adjacent to a natural creek. Before the first big rain, public works staff also do rounds at some of the mobile home parks along East Bayshore Boulevard, as some of these properties have been more vulnerable to flooding in the past. They check in with a property management individual or team on site, and we know that one or two of the mobile home parks have their own private pumps, so staff ensure that their property manager knows inclement weather is coming and that they are prepared to use their pumps. And as always, we want residents to know they can obtain free sandbags at our Public Works parking lot at 1400 Broadway. Free sand and bags are provided for residents to fill themselves. Shovels are limited, so a good tip is to bring your own in case you don't want to wait for one. And this year we have an additional self-service sandbag station, which will be located at the Fair Oaks Community Center parking lot off Middlefield Road. Next slide. During stormy weather, city staff can remotely monitor the tide levels, levels at our pump stations, and levels in some areas of our creeks and ponds. City staff are also out in the field during weather events, monitoring all of the areas I just mentioned, as well as storm inlets, catch basins, and trash racks. This allows us to identify and address blockages or other issues quickly to help ensure stormwater continues to flow as intended. Here are some things those in the community can do. They can first stay informed through SMC Alert. You can either sign up at their website at smcalert.info or you text your zip code to 888777. You can also find more info at www.redwoodcity.org slash residents slash emergency dash alert dash system. We also ask that each and every one of you be our eyes and ears. The city relies on the community to be our eyes and ears, helping us identify and report issues that our field staff may not encounter directly. We are rolling out a new adopted drain program, giving residents an opportunity to help keep their neighborhoods safe and storm ready. Residents can adopt a local storm inlet and check it every few weeks to make sure the street grate remains clear of leaves, debris, and other obstructions. If they notice an issue that may require public works to inspect or clean the catch basins below the grate, they can report it to us. Residents can also help by reporting downed trees or branches, blocked storm inlets, and localized flooding directly to Public Works Mean Line. And as always, for life-threatening issues like medical, fire, or downed power lines, residents should continue to call 911. Some resources during stormy weather. So during significant storms or extended power outages, the city may activate libraries and community centers as emergency resource locations, providing shelter, Wi-Fi access, and mobile device charging. During normal operating hours, these buildings are accessible to the public to keep warm when the weather is cold or keep cool when the weather is very hot. These areas may also be opened if needed for displaced residents during inclement weather after hours. In situations where the state or federal government declares a state of emergency, the county will step in to lead most regional efforts with the city supporting them. Redwood City can also activate its own Emergency Operations Center, EOC, where police, fire, public works, and our parks departments will work together to address any public safety issues. The county of San Mateo operates the inclement weather emergency shelter program, IWP, which is available to unhoused individuals or families and is accessible through the Fair Oaks Community Center. This county program helps to temporarily house people, including in hotels when appropriate. On nights where there is cold weather, high probability of rain or a significant weather system, emergency shelter beds are available and this program is operational November 15th through April 15th each year. Redwood City actively works with the county and our own outreach teams proactively reach members of the unhoused community when significant weather events approach. And this concludes my presentation on our winter preparation readiness. At this time, I invite council to ask questions on current services provided to the community, or if there are additional or alternative services you'd like staff to prioritize within our existing resources. I thank you very much for the opportunity of sharing this information to you, and I appreciate your time and attention. And with that, I'll turn it back to the mayor.

Linda, thank you for the great presentation. Derek and Patrick, thank you for keeping us up. And before we get to council conversation, let's have some public comment.

Thank you, Mayor. We have one speaker on this item, Cindy Bickerstaff. And if anyone else would like to give public comment on the item, please either raise your hand on Zoom or submit a speaker card.

Hello, council members. My name is Cindy Bickerstaff. I'm a chemical engineer by training and profession. I live near Brewster and Alameda de las Pulgas. This area flooded a foot deep until fences broke during the New Year's Eve 22 floods. During this winter's storms with predicted high rain rates, I'm asking that Public Works quantitatively document the same areas that have flooded repeatedly before 2022. These areas are defined in One Shoreline Project 10 as Bayfront Canal and Atherton Channel neighborhoods. One Shoreline and Redwood City collaborated to complete the $8.6 million Bayfront Canal and Atherton Channel flood protection project a.k.a. Project 10. There have been three post-performance reports issued by One Shoreline. The project has a specific target of preventing 250 homes from being flooded. All of the reports give the same progress of decreased draining times for those impacted areas. I ask that we continue the monitoring and specify if those 250 homes have avoided flooding. I ask for this monitoring because we can expect that no amount of money is going to solve the problem of flooding when spent only at the exit of the storm drain system. If atmospheric rivers hit this winter and homes flood in the target neighborhoods, I ask council to direct future efforts at reducing storm water entry into the system by allowing resident level curb cutting. A successful curb cutting program can be seen in the city of Tucson, Arizona in their Storm to Shade program. You can search on that. Storm, the number two, shade. The Tucson Storm to Shade program is thoroughly documented so extent of work to implement can be assessed. Those of us with property above and in the flats should be allowed to do curb cutting. curb cutting reduces the amount of stormwater that enters the storm drain system. This would be a green stormwater infrastructure program for individual residences throughout the Redwood City catchment. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. And seeing no other public comments, I will turn it back over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, City Clerk, and thank you to our public commenter this evening. Appreciate the City Manager bringing such a timely and sensitive item to us. Who has any questions or comments for staff? Council Member Howard.

Thank you. Very good report. I really appreciate it. I did want to ask, do you happen to have or will there be created a one-page frequently asked question sheet in English and Spanish that we can print off and hand to people and get the message out? Do you have something like that? We can certainly work on one. I'd really appreciate it because I know I see people all the time and I don't mind handing those things out, but this is so important. And I have some upcoming meetings that I'd love to have something, just a one-pager, anything more than that. I'm afraid people won't read it. But the important stuff, like the emergency hotline and where to look for information, things like that. Sounds like a great idea. and maybe on the other side, if we can do Spanish. So my second question is, last time we had really big difficulty with storms, and I'm blanking on the year, but it wasn't that long ago. I think it was like two, three years ago maybe, when the mobile home parks flooded. Not as bad as they had in the past, thanks to new pumps and things that we have in place, but they did flood, and we had to go out and help them, and The complaint was there weren't enough people who spoke Spanish to help the people. I'm just wondering, have we been able to do anything, maybe even create an information sheet in Spanish that if someone's going out and they don't speak Spanish, that they could hand to someone, at least get the conversation started? Have we done anything to prepare ourselves for the mobile home parks, whom I believe usually get impacted more than most?

Yes, they do. And since that large storm of 22, 23, we do have staff that go proactively before the storms. We work with them in person. We discuss with them, let them know what numbers to call. We want to make sure that if they do have pumps that they were serviced and they're out ready to be used. Some of the pumps are quite heavy. So one of the mobile home parks staff had in the past helped to haul it out of their, I guess like their temporary shed. So we do work with them to make sure that they're aware of upcoming weather and make sure that they know who to call. We definitely do this in-person collaboration because we want to put a face to Public Works and so they feel comfortable talking. or requesting help of us. And we do have a few Spanish speakers on our team who are routinely out, who not only look at the creeks, but also check in the mobile home parks as part of our creek route during a storm.

Are you also reaching out to the managers and owners of the mobile home parks?

We do, yes. We have all their contact information. But typically we work with the on-site property manager. They're the most effective at getting the information out to the people who live there.

And one thing I noticed from the last time, is that part of the problem was that people were doing quite a bit of storage underneath their their homes and that storage was causing more problems with the flooding and so maybe that's something that could be added to what they say for preventative measure don't be if you see a storm coming or feel the storms coming start moving things up and get them off the ground like that i saw gas cans and other things like that very dangerous so that kind of information ahead of time might be helpful in maybe helping them identify where they could in fact put those things that would be safer.

That would be a great idea.

And then are we including the port on these communications? I mean they're right by the water and there may be problems there, maybe not, but we probably should be in communication with them. And how is that done?

So the staff at the port, we are in routine contact with, mainly just to make sure that they have a few ditches out in that area and some storm infrastructure. As part of our annual maintenance, we actually have staff that go through. They're the ones that check to make sure that inlets aren't blocked. A little bit outside of the port area, there's the area on Seaport at Bloomquist that usually gets flooded because all it needs is a little bit of cleaning out. basically we can have our factors out and available in case of emergencies that crop up.

And I didn't see it in the report, but I believe you are out there trimming trees. Not you personally, but I see trucks out there by the dozens almost and they're Scanning the neighborhoods and looking for low hanging limbs and loose limbs and I think that's wonderful Maybe that could be put in the information that be aware that you may be inconvenienced and Diverted in your traffic pattern. However, this is why that we're actually out there trying to take care of possible hazards during a storm and

Yes, and I know after the large storm of 22, 23, I know Public Works had done a major push to take a look at the trees, especially in Redwood Shores, since a lot of those street trees had come down during that storm. It does look like the trees currently, after they have done the inspections, I personally feel better driving through. I have a lot of kid events out there in sports, and even I've noticed just the

the health of the trees look better. That's good to hear. Lastly, a member of the public talked about curb cuts. I'm not sure. I know what a curb cut is, I think, in Redwood City, but is this applying to something else that might be useful?

We'd have to look into that. I think that would partly be some work with engineering. I have a feeling this had dealt with some green infrastructure, which we do have curb cuts around the city, but it's usually part of private green infrastructure. We do have other green infrastructure around the city that either fall to public works or parks. depending on location or if it's irrigated. So those are definitely options we could look into and maybe work with engineering to implement for future uses. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you for getting us started, Council Member. Council Member Padilla.

Thank you for your presentation. I know that in my neighborhood, I always go out when I see the leaves come. I am one of those people who goes out, I bring my rake. So I was very excited to see that we could have a more formal program where we could adopt one. I think that that is a great way to build community and engage with your neighbors. I just think that's fantastic. And when it comes to CERT, I would love it if we could... I think I've read something where we did a CERT with a school, but if there's any way that we could do more partnerships with the schools in getting our youth involved with CERT, I think that that would be a fantastic opportunity. Along with that... I've gone and I've filled sandbags for neighbors, so I love that we have a new place. I think that is new Fair Oaks now, so that's fantastic. One thing is, is there a way we could encourage, I don't know, a sandbag filling day together? Because I know that I have filled so many bags for some of my neighbors who it's harder for. So I do know, I mean, it's really hard, whether it's wet or dry. I mean, it's a full workout. If there's any way... We could have a community day or event where we could ask other nonprofits or volunteer organizations, schools, if they want to come out and fill bags for their neighbors. I think that would be a fantastic thing we could do as a community. I've done that on my own, but if we could organize some efforts, that would be really great. Yeah, I just also want to echo any ways that we can connect our neighbors with getting access. You know, I know I'm on the SMC alerts. I don't think I got on there by texting this number. So whatever we can do that's easy to get someone hooked up to any important information, I'm all for it. So thank you.

And really quick, Mr. Mayor, Lynn, I think you might have skipped over it a little bit. We do have a community outreach event scheduled on October 10th?

We do, yes.

Not to highlight that you might have skipped over it. I don't know if we would fit. Could you just explain what we would do at the event? Because I think a line similar to what Council Member Padilla was getting at.

At this point, I think I will hand it over to our director to answer.

Thank you. Good evening, thank you. Adrian Lee, Public Works Services Director. Yes, so October 10th, that's the date we're proposing for the public outreach event. We're planning to host it at the Public Works yard. You know, at that event, we plan to kind of go over similar topics to what we presented tonight. So, you know, how to get onto SMC Alert, some of the preparedness things that you can do, you know, to make your household kind of storm-ready, so to speak. We'll also have, you know, information, you know, in various forms, whether it's a one pager or some of the existing information we have, like the Creek guides or things of that nature. But part of that, we were also planning to go out there and help demonstrate, hey, here's a sandbag station, here's how to use it. So maybe, you know, To your point, maybe it's something where we can invite some volunteers on that day and they maybe can help bag sand for folks. So, you know, it's kind of an event just to, you know, promote awareness, allow the community an opportunity to get information, you know, And at that time, we'll also be hopefully showcasing the rollout of the adopted drain. So, you know, we, and part of the, at least for this, we haven't just figured out the exact number, but for kind of the first initial batch of signups, signees, we do have like a kind of a kit for them that we're gonna, you know, So, you know, it's going to come with a vest and maybe a rake and some work gloves. And so, you know, that's something that we actively want to promote. And just, you know, it's an opportunity for them to continue to be our eyes and ears, help out, you know, with prevention. And also just to build that community and that kind of, you know, that pride in taking a little bit of ownership in your community. maybe your block or someone else's block. That's our plan for the event. We'll be there for a couple hours and hopefully we have a good showing.

Thank you. Yes, if we could encourage everyone to come in and also fill some sandbags, I think that would complement very nicely.

Thank you, council member. We'll go back to council member Howard. All good. Who would like to go next? Council member Sterling.

Thank you Mayor. Thank you so much for your presentation and for all the hard work that you are already doing to prepare our community for the incoming storms. I also want to thank you for some of the, to the second question, additional and alternative services that we're considering. One that I had raised, you know, with the city manager, and the city manager was installing fencing along the railing of the Stafford Bridge to prevent illegal dumping into the creek, which residents, you know, sent me photos of shopping carts and other debris that people just dumped in there, and that adds to the natural debris that accumulates in the creek and creates these dams that then have led to flooding, have contributed to flooding in the past. So thank you for considering that and looking into any solutions that would still allow equipment to get into the creek if needed for the appropriate maintenance that you already do under the Stafford Bridge. I just wanted to clarify, I know we have a contract with the city of San Carlos to do that maintenance and dredging underneath those bridges. Is it both or is it just definitely industrial, right? Is it Stafford as well?

Yes, Stafford as well. So those two locations.

Thank you. And so that, just to confirm, means that San Carlos is the owner for both bridges, right? Definitely industrial, but...

I'm not sure about the, uh, bridges themselves. Um, but we do cost share because, uh, you know, San Carlos owns part of the under crossing and we own the other part since it is a border Creek.

Thank you very much. Okay. And moving on, um, Yeah, I understand that we have very limited authority to install anything on the creek other than where we have, where we maintain it, which is under the two bridges. Once again, I raise the idea of some kind of debris capture device. Not even a device. This is not the same as what is installed in inlets, right? You know, those storm drain grates. But rather, in Red Morton Park, for example, you have just that very simple metal kind of grate, you know, very... very like rebar kind of looking that just prevents large logs and other natural debris from going into into inlets and creeks and so you know where there are opportunities to do that collaboratively with the county I know they haven't been open to the idea but if there's any way you can pull me in pull in anyone else who wants to volunteer, we need to have those conversations. Okay, so moving on to list from the conversation here that we've had so far. want to turn to the mobile home parks. And I appreciate the outreach that it will be done and has been done in the past. But I think what we learned from 2022, 2023, New Year's Eve flooding is that that outreach was still not enough. And there were community partners, I believe, Dreamers Roadmap, or at least the executive director of Dreamers Roadmap anyway, had gone onsite there to kind of help do some triaging, do some wellness checks and kind of information, education. If there's any way that we can partner with maybe some nonprofits or community organizations that have relationships with folks living in those mobile home parks, that could complement the city's outreach that we do. And that definitely needs to be door-to-door outreach. I also want to discuss, I appreciate the addition of another sandbag loading station at the Fair Oaks Community Center. That's brilliant. Depending on how that goes and maybe how popular it is, if there's any capacity to add additional sandbag filling stations, maybe one in Centennial, for example, like at Mezzes Park, where we have authority, right? Or at Redwood High School, where we'd have to partner, of course, with the school district. Just making sure that those resources are readily available, especially for residents who maybe don't have a car or aren't as mobile. One of my neighbors in Centennial neighborhood on G Street wasn't able to go get sandbags, so I also went and bagged some for her. It was a lot harder than it looked, I must say.

You may want to check out the video that the communications team had created. I think one misconception of sandbags is to fill it as much as possible, and that makes it a lot heavier, and you don't need to fill it up all the way. You actually only need to fill it up about a third.

I definitely should have watched that video. So I put those in my Corolla and I was wondering if it was going to die on me. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Also, and I know I need to wrap up here. I've noticed this trend of us filling tree wells, one, liability purposes, right? We don't want anyone tripping in these tree wells on our downtown streets and otherwise. But also medians, too, like on Arguello, between Marshall and Brewster, you know, any... I understand why we have to fill them, but maybe if we could use permeable pavements, just something so that we're not adding to runoff and stormwater runoff. That could be helpful. Just thinking about upstream solutions here. And I will end there.

Thank you, council member. And we'll go to council member Chu.

Thank you so much for this presentation and all the work that your team and the city staff have done to kind of get ready for what is very likely to be some pretty intense storms this this season um just a few comments one is um you know i you know the mobile home communities are in my district and i'm happy to go and you know i i have a good relationship with the managers there and i'm happy to go door-to-door and pass out materials and even if there's customized materials particularly high-risk communities or the mobile home parks or if I can work with you to to sort of customize the messaging for for their particular needs if there are any I'm happy to do that the second comment I had was about street sweeping so certainly it's great to have you know sort of community members adopt a drain but at least in in my neighborhood the street sweeping doesn't accomplish anything because every single parking spot on either side of the street is filled. So it just kind of bombs down the middle of the street and nothing really gets swept. And so insofar as street sweeping impacts, you know, the quality of drains and flooding, I think we really need to start thinking about alternate side parking and real consequences for preventing street sweeping. You know, as long as People can park on the street and that parking is full. Street sweeping is not going to be particularly effective. So I think at some point we have to start thinking about strategies to make street sweeping more effective. Everything else, you know, very supportive of my colleagues comments. I don't have a lot to add there. I really appreciate all the work you've done to prepare our community. And I also agree that there were some great ideas around, you know, for people who aren't really physically able to fill sandbags, having sort of community events. A lot of times people love to do that kind of stuff as sort of a bonding community event. So if we could have events where people fill sandbags for people who are unable to do so physically, I think that's a terrific idea as well. Thank you. for all the work on this.

Thank you, Councilmember. Go to Councilmember Padilla.

I have one more thought, and I think this is related. So Public Works with our sidewalks. When people participate in our sidewalk repavement program, and there are certain streets we have that are straight, and there are certain streets that are curvy and windy because of trees or not trees. So I do notice that water does like to flow straight. It tends to flow better. So I was just wondering... if there's any way we could look at our sidewalk replacement program and who it who can use it whether because i know that there are issues whether you're an owner or a renter because if you if like for example if you place if you replace a sidewalk but the house on the corner doesn't and is all rooted and the water is flowing so nicely but then that chunk isn't done i just want to know if if if there are opportunities for us to make something better for an entire street. If we could look into that in the future in terms of our sidewalk program and for stormwater flooding. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Padilla. We'll go to Councillor Strickland.

Just a quick follow up on that. As part of that program, I wonder if you haven't already considered where there's the opportunity to do curb cutting or installation of any kind of green infrastructure bioswales, which is more costly, I recognize. But just if we're gonna replace the sidewalk there and the curb, why not use that as an opportunity like we do in so many other cases to install green infrastructure and sequester some of that stormwater and prevent it from going downstream?

Thank you, council members. Council member Howard.

One last thing. We're doing our Pride and Beautification cleanup this Saturday. And I know Vicki Sherman always puts information out on the table. You might ask her, I'm sure she's already thought of it, putting out information regarding just what we spoke about tonight, giving people an awareness that maybe a quick one-pager or something so they know storms are coming, we want to be prepared, and this is how you can be prepared. Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues. Not seeing anyone else's light on. I will add my thanks, Linda. Thank you for the great presentation. To go off of what I had heard from my council colleagues who brought up the 2022 floods, I remember one of the concerns we heard from some of the neighbors who came out to public comment was around our emergency responders making it out to the mobile home parks and it being so flooded that folks didn't make it to door to door to connect with neighbors. And I'm wondering, is our staff prepared to be able to still go door to door if there's flooding? What have we done since to kind of prepare for that?

So, yes, staff have the protective gear and typically they're prepared to do whatever it takes. They are out in this rainstorms every year. So they are out getting wet throughout the night, unfortunately, but they are there to provide service to the public. Since that large storm, we are making sure, especially with the mobile home park closest to the Bayfront entrance off of Douglas, they're one of the lowest points, I believe. So the last few years, we've been making sure that they had the ability to start their pumps. They were making sure that YOU KNOW, THEY WERE PREPARED. SO WE HAVE SEEN A HUGE IMPROVEMENT IN THE LAST TWO YEARS. LAST YEAR WHEN WE WERE DRIVING AROUND THERE WAS HARDLY ANY PONDING IN THAT MOBILE HOME PART BECAUSE THEY HAVE SERVICED THEIR PUMP, THEY'RE WORKING AS INTENDED. SO HOPEFULLY THAT WILL BE THE CASE THIS YEAR BUT WE WILL BE MAKING SURE TO MAKE EARLY CONTACT JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY CAN START PUMPING AS SOON AS, YOU KNOW, RAIN IS COMING.

Excuse me. And thank you, Linda. I was also happy to hear about the in-person outreach event that staff is planning on hosting on the 10th. I think that's going to be a very well-attended event, just on the curiosity that I'm seeing. But I'm also thinking about just general outreach, I have to say. Councillor Starkin mentioned going door-to-door. I think if we can leverage our... incredible team at Rapid City together to have them sort of start this work, that would be helpful. I know Council Member Chiu and I had a sort of a neighborhood meeting for the mobile homes a few months ago and would be happy to support if staff is looking at also going to our neighborhood associations. I know we have a few in District 4 that I would be happy to attend to also. And if there are any flyers or graphics that you have for the 10th, I think sharing that out with us, we'll make sure to get the word out and make sure that that room's full. But aside from those things, I was also curious about The apartments we have who may have an underground garage, what kind of communication are they receiving before the rain starts?

That was actually on my to-do list to reach out, to send basically a proactive letter about making sure they are prepared for wet weather. I know some of those underground parking lots are heavily hit when there's high tides. So we want to make sure that they're as prepared as possible, where they can get sandbags. Typically, the sandbag station that we host are for residents, but sometimes we see some others coming out or from outside of Redwood City. They can also purchase their own materials. There are other devices to help divert water back to the street. What we don't want is that water coming down the sloped driveway or entrance into their garage facility and flooding the underground area.

Thank you, Linda. That's great news. I just remember so many of the videos we received after 2022, after that... it looked like a waterfall coming into that garage. And for the folks who didn't get their cars out in time, right, that's a whole other set of costs and damage to their vehicles. And yeah, just thinking about that part of all of this too. And then I was also curious, how did we, happy to hear we expanded the number of sandbag filling stations. How did we land on the Fair Oaks Community Center? Just kind of curious how staff got to that decision.

Um, so parks was, um, lovely enough to offer up a couple of locations. Um, obviously the first one is fair Oaks because it is in the area that is low lying and flat. Um, and typically we do see more need in that area. Um, the parks assistant director, uh, had been also looking at some other locations and other parks, but those are to be determined.

Okay. Um, Yeah, great. And I was also thinking of the floodplain. You know, Councilmember Stricken had mentioned maybe having something at Mezzies Park. I thought of Redwood Shores just because that's way out there and that's a drive if you live in that neighborhood. So just thinking of maybe future opportunities. And then the last thing I'll mention is I guess I'm kind of curious about the inclement weather shelter that we offer. How is that funded and what sort of support is available to the folks who do take advantage of those shelters?

So the county's program for the inclement weather program, since that's their program, I don't have too much insight into it. However, I know in the past we have opened up, I believe, the libraries or a couple of the community centers after hours. That would probably be better answered by the Parks Department since those are their facilities.

I see Derek making his way, but thank you for clarifying that it's county funded. It's good to know.

Yeah, I don't have too much to add. That inclement weather program, it is funded and run by the county, but it does use our Fair Oaks Community Center and the coordinated entry system into the kind of the social services world to help direct people to be able to take advantage of that emergency shelter when it comes up. So it's for the folks who are already kind of in the shelter network or already receiving services, it's kind of pretty easy for them to get connected with that. Yeah, and then as was mentioned in the presentation, we kind of during the pandemic, like cooling and warming centers kind of became a big thing because our physical facilities were closed. Now that our physical facilities are open, libraries and community centers have a pretty broad set of hours that make available for people to be able to just go there and we don't have to make a production of it that it's a heating center or a cooling center. But we do, in the event of particular emergencies, we work with the Red Cross, we stand up shelter for folks if there are major incidents. Our new veterans building is the home for a lot of that activity and we certainly have a lot more space in the new building for that work than we had in the old building.

Thank you, Derek. And this question just came to me because we're talking about these new spaces. But I guess I'm just kind of curious, what is our sort of power backup situation like at some of these facilities if we were to direct some folks? Just wondering, yeah, what that situation is like.

Yeah, no, a lot of our facilities do have emergency backup generators for at least core services. I should probably defer to Public Works Director Lee who probably knows a little bit more about that than I do.

Thank you for the question. Yes, City Manager Derrick is absolutely correct in that a lot of the facilities do have backup generators. We do also have the ability with kind of mobile generators and can be hooked up at certain locations for certain... you know, activities if there's an issue there. So, you know, we do, you know, for the most part, have a good redundancy system in place now that all those generators do run off of fuel. So, you know, we need to make sure that we have them topped up. But, you know, that's part of the preparations that we do in anticipation of a storm or a power outage is we make sure that, you know, we have enough fuel and the generators are topped off, so.

Thank you. It's good to know. It makes me feel better and I know if we're directing folks there, they'll feel better knowing that if their lights are off, the senior center, the library, it's still gonna be up and running and they'll have that sense of comfort, so thank you. Thank you, and those are just all of my questions. I really appreciate just being able to talk about this and get the information out because this is the right time to do it. Way ahead of any rain coming our way, letting people know what is available. So I'm glad we're starting this work early and we'll be able to back it up with in-person connections to the community, so thank you. Colleagues, this item is information only, so we don't need to move any motions here. And I will move us along then to item nine. We have a notification to the city council. Item nine is a notification of a parcel map approval for 1104 17th Avenue. This item is for notification purposes only and materials were provided in the meeting packet. No council discussion or action will be taken tonight on this item. And that takes us to item 10, Matters of Council Interest, beginning with 10A, City Council Member Report of Conferences Attended. Does anyone, Council Member Howard.

Thank you. Tomorrow morning I will be attending a press conference at the San Mateo County Board of Education. They are our partner. I'm the vice chair of the HART Board, the Housing Endowment and Regional Trust, and we are going to make a wonderful announcement that we are partnering with the Board of Education to purchase an existing multi-unit apartment building for teacher housing in the North County. This is a wonderful direction that HEART has taken. We have one purchase already in Redwood City, which is Stombau-Heller, and this is terrific that it's teacher housing. We've been saying it. And a lot of people wanted to do it. We're doing it. So I'm very happy about that. So we're going to announce that tomorrow and it provides long-term affordability with the heart as the manager of the property. So it'll be carried on in perpetuity and we look forward to doing more preservation of existing housing. That really is the way to go. We just don't have raw land anymore that's affordable, that we can put affordable units on. This is the way to go, and I'm glad we're leading the charge on it. This Saturday, the 19th, Brighton Beautification will be doing our cleanup of the city, and we begin at the Public Works Yard on Broadway and Woodside Road with breakfast between 8 and 8.30. You go out, and we have sites to clean up, and when you come back at noon, we'll have a barbecue for you. And you can even get your sandbag if you'd like. So I hope you'll join us. And I know Vicki Sherman will be handing out information at that meeting, I mean at that cleanup. So anyone who would like to join me on Saturday, love to see you there. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member, and congratulations with the great work at heart. Colleagues, I'm seeing anybody else. We will move into Item 10B, starting with Council Member Padilla with a report from ESJ.

Thank you, Mayor. Equity and Social Justice Subcommittee, consisting of myself, Vice Mayor Egan, and Council Member Sterkin, met on Wednesday, September 2nd, Interim Library Director Sarah LaTorre shared an update on efforts to revise the library's meeting room policy in response to community concerns about a controversial event held at the main library on June 7th. The event was not sponsored nor endorsed by the city. Council member Sterkin and myself shared several suggestions for consideration in the library's revision of its meeting room policy. Community members will have an opportunity to attend the library advisory board meeting when the meeting room policy is brought forward for discussion. That date has yet to been established.

Thank you, Councilmember. And we'll go to Councilmember Stern.

If I may just specify the suggestions for consideration that we discussed at the committee meeting. Please go ahead. Thank you. So one was to consider reviewing the bylaws of any nonprofit that wants to use one of our meeting spaces in the library for consistency with the library policy and all applicable policies and laws. Another was to offer additional LGBTQIA plus sensitivity training to library staff. And another suggestion was to incorporate into our existing library policy some sort of kind of game plan for if an event taking place in our library meeting rooms does not align with our policy, how we respond to that. And finally, conduct some outreach in advance of that library advisory board meeting to partners who are interested in this topic. And I think, Council Member Padilla, there was something you had suggested, too. It was like the behavioral something policy. And I apologize. I don't mean to put you on the spot. But yeah.

I have my notes from that meeting right here. Those are mine.

And the date for that library board meeting is estimated for October.

Great. Thank you, Councillor Stricken. Councillor Padilla, just double checking.

I am not sure of that suggestion, but thank you for bringing it up. And yes, thank you for also going into more detail about our notes.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you both for your work on that committee. And with that, we'll move to our utilities subcommittee. And Council Member Howard has an update.

Thank you. On Friday, September 11th, city staff presented the next steps for the Redwood Shores Sea Level Rise Protection Project, which included some potential nature-based solutions to evaluate, place-making amenities, and other agencies to coordinate with. Staff also presented preliminary findings from the ongoing sewer rate study and tentatively anticipates presenting the final findings to the City Council in fall 2026. Lastly, staff presented new state legislation that will prohibit potable water irrigation in non-functional turf for various types of properties and anticipates bringing municipal code changes to the city council in fall of 2026. Vice Mayor Aiken and Council Member Padilla and myself serve on that committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. And I've got two quick reports. The first is from our 84-101 ad hoc. The ad hoc committee comprised of council members Chu, Ji, and myself met on August 25th. The consultant reported on the 84-101 interchange reimagined project, which included the project progress, cost, and schedule. The project team also updated the committee on the next steps for the project, and the ad hoc is scheduled to meet on October 2nd, 2026. And then we also had a meeting on our ad hoc committee on intergovernmental relations, and we have Council Member Jeff Gee, Vice Mayor Aiken, and myself on that committee. We met on August 27th, and Matt Suka from Silicon Valley Clean Water attended the meeting and provided an update on the organization's work. And with that, I will pass things over to our city manager for an update.

Great. Thank you, Mayor. Just very briefly, so you may recall a couple months back, the city council had a discussion of potentially locating an affordable housing site on Library Lot B. We have scheduled the, we'll call it open house for the community to come out and discuss that item. It will be on the evening of October 6th. and I'll be forwarding a lot of information with the exact time, location, and it's going to be at the library. But we'll get some information out there and kind of some more information on the format of that meeting so you can share it with your networks. Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager. And that takes us to Item 11. We'll now adjourn to closed session to discuss existing litigation as identified on the agenda. Before we move to closed session, I would like to ask the City Clerk if there's any public comment on this item.

No public comment, Mayor. I'll give it one more beat to anyone in the audience who would like to give us public comment on the closed session item. Seeing none, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. And as there will be no reportable action following closed session, we'll adjourn the meeting immediately following the end of closed session, and the City Council will not return back to the dais. With that, I thank you all for joining tonight's City Council meeting. We meet next on Monday, September 28th, and I wish you all a great evening and great week ahead. Thank you.