City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening everyone. I'm Mayor Erica A. Stewart and we're here to kick off today's meeting. We we were able to spend some time with the Laguna Middle School with students who have given us at least 30 hours of their time in this community just just volunteering and there were a couple of students that gave over 100 hours and one up to almost 200 hours. So just really amazing when you think about our community and the great caring people that are here. With that, I'm going to pass it over to Councilmember Boswell to lead the pledge. Thank you. And before we started the community service, we had a closed session. Will the Assistant City Attorney Markee Carson please report out? Thank you, Madam Mayor. The council did meet in closed session on one matter of real property negotiations in which the council provided direction on price and terms of negotiation and no further reportable action was taken. Thank you. So as often we get to do, we will be starting off with some proclamations. We have three proclamations today. We get to share about National Foster Care Month, the Peace Officers Memorial Day and National Tourism Week. Once [snorts] we do the proclamation reading, then I will meet the recipient down at the podium and you'll have 3 minutes to share about your organization. And I believe I'll be meeting Felipe Gonzalez and I'll go ahead and start. Thank you, City Clerk.

[sighs and gasps]

So whereas the City of San Luis Obispo recognizes the importance of ensuring all children have safe, stable and loving homes when they cannot remain with their biological families. More than 420,000 children nationwide, including over 28,000 California, are currently in the foster care system. Over 200 children and youth in the County of San Luis Obispo are in foster care. The Department of Social Services continues to actively recruit more Sorry, more resource families to ensure children have nurturing homes in which they can heal, grow and thrive. National Foster Care Month recognizes the critical role of resource families in providing nurturing, stable homes and highlighting the ongoing need for more families to support local children. This month-long effort, which is mirrored across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, celebrates resource families and encourages more individuals to positively impact a child's life through foster care. Now therefore, I, Erica A. Stewart, Mayor of the City of San Luis San Luis Obispo, on behalf of the entire City Council, hereby proclaims May as National Foster Care Month and encourages all community members to join in raising awareness and supporting foster care and resource families in our community.

[clears throat]

Good evening. My name is Felipe Gonzalez and I am a program of youth specialist with the SLO County Department of Social Services. I'd like to begin by thanking the San Luis Obispo City Council for presenting the Department of Social Services with this proclamation. During the month of May, we are proud to honor the San Luis Obispo County's resource and adoptive families as well as the county staff and community partners that support them. Our agency needs the support of the entire community to help reach our goal of increasing the number of available resource family homes. We respectfully ask the council to pledge its support by sharing our digital media content to help spread the word about the need for resource families. In honor of National Foster Care Month, we have created a short video to share with you this evening. A lot of people are probably more familiar with the term foster parent. Resource parent [music] is the same thing. Resource parents are people in the community who have opened their home for our foster youth to reside. We have the same expectations [music] for all of our homes and that's really just for them to treat the foster youth in their home like any other kid living at home with their parents.

[music] I have worked with Christine a lot and I see her monthly and she is always just such a pleasure to work with. She does [music] a fantastic job parenting kids, especially kids who have maybe some higher needs or that require a lot of attention and she [music] is an expert at making sure that all the kids are getting exactly what they [music] need. I mean, I've been around kids my whole life. I love kids. [music]

I actually have a friend of mine who's a resource parent who's done it for a long time and I started helping her out and then we got to talking one day and about becoming [music] a resource parent and she had a family friend going through the process. I said, "Oh, I would love to do that one day." And I started [music] taking the classes the next month. Emergency foster care is 24/7. Through the night, through holidays, through the weekend. My ringer's on full blast at all [music] times. I got a kiddo at midnight on Christmas Day one time and [music] you just you you don't know what you're getting. They just bring you this kid in the middle of the night and you make it work. Well, OFARS options for recovery. So it's for medically fragile [music] or drug exposed kids that are coming into care and so we work closely with the parents [music] and the kids and make sure that they are recovering in order to go home to a healthy environment. Parents [music] start off really rough. They don't know where to start and then they kind of get guided through the the department. And they become this better person. They recover

[music]

and they get their kids back and that's ultimately our goal is to get the kids back to their parents where they should be. I just want to be there where there isn't someone. These kids get pulled [music] in the middle of the night on I mean, any moment and they don't know which way is up. So to have a home that's willing [music] to take them, I I just want to be there for the kids. It takes a lot. It's hard to work. It's not just [music] taking in a kid and okay, now I just have another kid. It's you have appointments, extra appointments. You have [music] therapies sometimes. You have visits with parents. So you have social workers coming in your home monthly. So it is a lot, but it's definitely worth it. You can make such a big difference. Currently, there are a little over 200 children in foster care here in San Luis Obispo County and [music] we just need as many placement options as possible.

If you're interested in becoming a foster parent, you can contact us at 805-781-1705 or you can visit us at slofostercare.com. Thank you. Thank you so much. [clears throat]

Well, next we get to um honor our peace officers with Peace Officers Memorial Day which we will be having a peace officer memorial at the Mission Plaza this Thursday. So whereas in 1962, President Kennedy established National Peace Officers Week and we are honored to observe National Peace Officers Week from May 10th through 16th and especially or sorry, specifically May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day in partnership with the SLO County Criminal Justice Administrators Association. Whereas for generations, brave peace officers have answered the call to serve and protect communities across our nation, often in dangerous and unpredictable unpredictable circumstances embodying courage, honor and pride for representing the best of the law enforcement profession. Today, we recognize and honor the sacrifice of our fallen fallen fallen officers. Sorry, I need some water apparently.

[clears throat]

Our fallen officers both in California and across our nation who bravely and unselfishly gave their lives in the line of duty in the protection and service of others. Peace Officers Memorial Day has a very special meaning for San Luis Obispo. On May 10th, 2021, San Luis Obispo Police Detective Luca Benedetti lost his life in the line of duty while serving our community and protecting his fellow officers. Detective Benedetti will forever be remembered for his selfless sacrifice and exemplary service to our grateful community. The City of San Luis Obispo expresses our gratitude and appreciation for the bravery, service and professionalism of our three Sorry, of our peace officers throughout San Luis Obispo County and nationwide placing service above self in the name of safety and security. Therefore, I, Erica A. Stewart, Mayor of the City of San Luis Obispo, on behalf of the entire City Council

[clears throat] do on this day call upon all San Luis Obispo City community officers sorry community members to observe Friday May 15th as peace officers Memorial Day in honor of our fallen officers and their families who through their courageous deeds have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their home communities.

[applause]

Thank you madam mayor. On behalf of the entire department we want to thank you our mayor and our members of council for this gracious and certainly heartfelt proclamation for National Peace Officers Week and the declaration of Peace Officers Memorial Day on May 15th. This week all law enforcement professionals in our community will come together to honor those that have been lost in the line of duty and to support the family and the friends left behind from their honorable sacrifice. Our police officers serve with honor integrity and certainly with bravery. Knowing the very real very real dangers that exist in our profession doing this important job. Sadly just this last year 12 officers in our state were killed and 36 have been killed nationwide so far this year. To remember is to care. And on behalf of all law enforcement officers everywhere we sincerely thank you for caring and not only the brave men and women wearing the uniform but even those that support all of us our family and friends that are in this profession with us. This proclamation is particularly impactful just as you mentioned madam mayor since we did lose detective Luca Benedetti almost 5 years ago today. And while we are still healing from this terrible tragedy your support that you've shown us and that from our community is appreciated beyond the words I can say from this podium. I'm proud that despite the ever-present dangers of the noble work that our women and men in law enforcement face every day we do so with bravery we do so with integrity and compassion and more importantly we do it with kindness.

There's a word it's called Peace Officers Day and that peace is very very important. It's not Police Officers it's not deputies and it's not law enforcement officers day it's Peace Officers Day because that's what we stand for and that's what every person that wears this badge and takes an oath that's their duty to do day in and day out in our communities. As a reminder San Luis Obispo Peace Officers County Memorial will be held in Mission Plaza this Thursday May 7th at 10:00 a.m. It's open to all of our community we'd love to see all of you there and anybody watching tonight love to have you there to honor those that have fallen. So thank you very much for your time this evening and thank you for recognizing Peace Officers Memorial Day. Thank you.

[applause]

Thank you chief. And next we have our current week National Tourism Week May 3rd through 9th in 2025 visitors to the city of San Luis Obispo produced a total economic impact of $702 million and the regional economy generated 50.2 million in state and local tax revenue and supported approximately 5,000 jobs. Transient occupancy tax revenue contributes 10% of the city's general fund which pays for community benefits like infrastructure projects and quality of life experiences like access to open space. The city of San Luis Obispo collected a record $11.4 million in transient occupancy tax during fiscal year 2025. That's a 4.6 increase over the prior year. I remember the year before we were excited about $10 million so wild. Tourism serves as a vital industry that fuels economic development sustains local businesses promotes cultural awareness and connects communities. In 2016 the California legislature declared every May as California Tourism Month to celebrate the economic economic power of tourism. In 2025 the tourism industry in California generated 158.9 billion dollars in visitor spending making California the top travel destination in the nation. In San Luis Obispo putting hearts in beds and encouraging visitors to live like locals is central to our tourism efforts. Visit San Luis Obispo the official tourism entity led by the tourism business improvement district for the city of San Luis Obispo is a tourism leader in our region advocates for our hospitality ecosystem and shares critical industry data. Now therefore I Erica A. Stewart mayor

of the city of San Luis Obispo on behalf of the entire city council hereby proclaim the week of May 3rd through 9th 2026 as National Travel and Tourism Week and the month of May 2026 as California Tourism Month in San Luis Obispo and commend Visit San Luis Obispo for its work promoting tourism and urging our community members to join me in recognizing the critical role this industry plays in our community and our state. All right. Thank you Mayor Stewart. Thank you council members as well. I also would like to extend our gratitude or my gratitude as a member and a citizen of the city of San Luis Obispo to our peace officers as well. It means a great deal to receive this honor. I'm happy to accept this honor on behalf of T-bid as well as all the other lodging operations in the city of San Luis Obispo from boutique properties like myself to larger properties to everyone in between. Tourism isn't just an economic engine it's the reason our downtown restaurants local farms wineries and small businesses thrive. Every overnight guest is a vote of confidence in the city. The T-bid exists to tell the slow story and through Visit San Luis Obispo and our marketing efforts we're reaching

travelers who choose slow not just for a night but for the lasting connection to this place. We're proud of what the community has built and we're committed to making San Luis Obispo a must-stay destination while also balancing business and sustainability. Thank you for believing in this message. [applause]

Thank you very much. Well next we have the city manager Whitney McDonald to share the city manager's report. Thank you very much. Good evening everyone. We're going to keep it really short this evening. I only have a couple of slides to share with everyone starting out with a highlight of our Mother's Day at the Jack House event on Sunday May 10th from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Our volunteer docents have prepared a wonderful opportunity to celebrate mothers and families again at our Jack House and Gardens. It is a free event that is a drop-in opportunity between 1:00 and 4:00 on Sunday that provides docent-led tours as well as viewing of our carriage house. The garden and outdoor park will be open for families to set out blankets lawn chairs and bring your own picnic items to enjoy the beautiful setting. As the Jack House does not have its own parking lot we want to remind folks we do have a brand new amazing amenity nearby the Cultural Arts District parking structure located on Nipomo and Palm just a couple of blocks away or metered parking along the street on Marsh. We really want to thank everyone for helping bring this event together and to help celebrate the mothers and mother figures in everyone's lives so hope to see everyone out there. Next up our slide just in case anybody wanted a little more details about our Peace Officer Memorial event in Mission Plaza. There's a little bit more information again May 7th this Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Our entire community is welcome. We hope to see folks there. As Chief Scott mentioned this is an annual event that happens around the county and it's really to mark and honor peace officers who have fallen in the line of duty statewide as well as locally and we are really proud to host

this year. It's been I believe 10 years since San Luis Obispo's hosted so we really are proud to have the opportunity to do that. With again, we have this 5-year anniversary coming up, so it helps us to mark that with a lot of importance because it is truly important. We're really grateful for the support of our council and mayor in attending that and the support again of our community and staff to help bring this event to fruition. Also want to let folks know that public safety night at Farmers' Market is held the following week on May 14th, so it's another opportunity to come out, interact with law enforcement and there's usually some interesting kind of piece of equipment out there if anybody's interested. Good opportunity to get out, meet a lot of our staff as well as folks from other agencies around the county. And then really our last here are just highlighting our our items coming up in the in our next meeting May 19th. On our consent agenda, we want to highlight our third quarter budget report. By this time in the year, we have a pretty good sense of where we think we're going to end our year, so there's a lot of really good information in there. And then our business items, we have an appeal of our planning commission's decision to revoke a use permit for a fraternity as well as consideration of our Vision Zero Action Plan. So we know that plan has been in the works for quite a long time. It's really important document for our community and it guides our work in our active transportation planning. So we're really excited to bring that forward for discussion and hopefully approval on that date. So with that, that's the end of my report. That was short and sweet. Thank you so much. And I very much remember, I think it was our last meeting or two meetings ago, Tony Kincaid from the Jack House

really really encouraging people to go check out the Jack House. Vice Mayor. Yeah, thank you for that report. I was wondering if we could get a reminder for the community about when Bike Breakfast is at City Hall. Thursday. This Thursday. Thank you, City Clerk. Thank you. Yes, a lot going on on Thursday. So come down for Bike Breakfast and stay for the memorial. I realized I should maybe also plug the other Mother's Day event happening at another city-owned facility is the Dallidet Adobe is happening on Saturday, so you could actually make it a whole weekend about celebrating the mothers in your lives and mother food, you know, and see a couple of our really amazing amenities that we have some really talented dedicated volunteers who are helping to manage those. Thank you. Thank you. Great point and I will say if you go to the SLOCOG, SLOCOG, if you go to the Instagram or Facebook or website, you'll see things happening for Bike Month all month long. Lots of breakfast, lots of activities. I think there might even be a happy hour, so lots of fun things. And with that, we move on to public comment for things and not on the agenda. So if you have anything you'd like to share about things that are not on the agenda, this is the time. City Clerk. Yes, we have two speaker cards at right now. The first one is Shawn Harris and then Steve Schmidt. All right, hello. Thanks for allowing me to speak. I'll make it short. I have 3 minutes. On December 29th, I was detained by ICE on Bullock Lane, interrogated and blocked in on three sides by ICE vehicles and had my freedom of movement restricted at 6:15 on a dark street and was about as I was going to work. I'm a random American living in a small town and to have Washington D.C. reach out and touch me like that [clears throat] has forced me to

confront the party I voted for and will continue to do so. This party, the Republican Party, touts itself as conservative with an emphasis on small government, yet at the same time provides a $100 billion budget to expand the very federal agency that detained me on a cold December morning under the guise of immigration enforcement. As a veteran, California native and conservative, I find this deeply concerning and antithetical with the planks of the Republican Party. Just as Democrat FDR served a total of four consecutive terms due to his popular policies in response to the Great Depression. Now that we're we're in another depression, this is the Republican Party's opportunity, which is my party, to stake their claim in history and in the hearts of Americans as a party that is concerned with more than just tax breaks for billionaires. Where is our Republican FDR or will we just have more Herbert Hoovers? If Republicans continue down the road we're on, our party may never hold the office of the president again, nor hold a majority in Congress. As it is, Republicans stand an almost guaranteed sweep in Congress during the midterms. Why? Because it is clear after decades of dismantling our social safety net, giving unnecessary tax breaks to billionaires, starting wars and shipping our jobs and manufacturing base overseas, the Republican Party has failed, and that's my party. It is time to defend the free market and until it can recover without state support by putting money in the pockets of Americans through recreating the opposing parties' programs, FDR's programs such as work relief programs and providing uh public employment to the millions of unemployed Americans including white-collar workers that are getting wiped out every day. We need a mixed economy of state-owned enterprises, private enterprise and publicly-owned enterprises. A modern core public employees can be put to work building state-owned factories and centers of production. In doing so, we prime the pump and circulate money into a system currently struggling with liquidity. Rather than expand the public employees of ICE, let's hire public employees to build and staff the new publicly-owned factories. It's time to stop wasting our tax dollars on corrupt defense contractors,

contrived wars and a surveillance state. After time, which include the police, after time, these publicly-owned factories can be sold back to re-energize private sector. Currently, in what can only be described as a satire, rather than expand SNAP benefits, our government is now proposing a law of the land to allow SNAP recipients to buy a $5 hot rotisserie chicken with their SNAP cards. This is similar to telling the starving French under the reign of Louis the 16th to just eat cake as their aristocrats rode around gilded cages and lived in gilded palaces. This will not work. Americans expect and demand well-paying jobs, not rotisserie chicken. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Steve Schmidt. I'm in my eighth month as the executive director of the History Center. First of all, Feliz Cinco de Mayo. As one of the guardians of the county's history, I just want to celebrate an important holiday. I've actually made a pilgrimage to Puebla, Mexico to see the battle site. I just got home last night from a 2-week trip to New Orleans. I got home a little after 11:00 p.m., but it was absolutely incredible. It was my sixth time to Jazz Fest. Two days ago, I saw Herbie Hancock, Earth, Wind & Fire and Mavis Staples or, you know, all in the same day. It was an 8-day festival. I saw Rod Stewart, Lord, Lake Street Dive, Stevie Nicks stole the 8 days. She she did Don't Stop for the first time in over 20 years. And so bottom [clears throat] line, Jazz Fest kind of brings out the best in performers due to the historic nature of the venue and just the culture of New Orleans. And it's completely re-energized me. The best part of travel generally is coming home. And I woke up this morning and did a 9:00 presentation to the county supervisors. I'm here tonight talking to y'all. And I'm just very thankful for the

opportunity to serve and protect and exhibit and collect the history of the county. Let's see, even in my absence, we had daily Facebook posts, daily Instagram post, daily different PSAs on KVEC every day. So we're still working hard. Usually I start my reports to the City Council with thank you, so thank you for the Carnegie Library. But thank you, Alejandro, and to the staff. I emailed him on a Friday afternoon and told him we had troubles with our elevator, that we actually had a board member stuck in the elevator for about an hour and a half. First thing Monday morning, boom, there was a crew. Elevators fixed. Thank you, Alejandro. Thank you very [clears throat] much, Mayor Stewart, for having your county mayors meeting at our research room. One of my big parts of my job is to try to get our name out there, so you helped a lot with that. Thank you also, Teresa, for hosting a wonderful party in the research room. It's never smelled so good in the History Center and I hope I get invited to one of your parties someday. Good save, Whitney. Yes, this Saturday is May 9th, the Mother's Day High Tea at the Dallidet Adobe. You can get tickets on my805tix.com. In May, we're partnering with the San Luis Obispo City of DEI office, the Latino Outreach Council and the Diversity Coalition to have a celebration of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness exhibit that's on display until June 1st. That'll be May 27th and I will invite all of you to attend. We have a new exhibit up right now. It's called From the Collection. Bottom line, we're getting things from our warehouse that have not been assessed into the History Center, putting them on display and then trying to give them back to the people to whom they belong including like mortars and pestles to the Chumash. So thank you. It's good to be home. Thank you so much. Any other speakers? No. Okay. Well, with that, we have lots of

exciting things happening on on May 9th. I can't wait to tell you more, but that will be later. For now, we will go to the consent agenda. That's for items that are, you know, in theory not controversial. So before you we go into the consent agenda, if you have anything you'd like to speak about on the consent agenda, then now is the time to get your speaker slip into the city clerk. And before we um share anything more about that, I have um No, I'm doing that after public comment. Sorry, just kidding. We'll talk about that in a minute. All right, any public comment? Oh, sorry. Council member Marks? Yeah. Is that on? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Um yeah, red is on. Okay. Um unfortunately, I was ill and unable to attend the April 21st meeting, so I'm not going to vote on the minutes, which is item 6B. Thanks. Okay. Council member Schwartzman? Yes, I'd like to pull item 7C, please, the human services grants. Sounds good. Thank you. Um and while we're sharing random things, I will be recusing myself from 7G since I needed to recuse myself during the conversation at the last meeting from the waiting for the FPPC to respond to me about if I should be voting on that conversation of sewer laterals or not. So, with that, I'll go back to any public comment? Yes, we have three. Um the first one is Lisa Sparrow, and then Steve Del Martini. Uh Miss Sparrow's speaking on item 7E, and Mr. Del Martini is speaking on 7G. Are you ready? Okay, good evening, um Mayor Stewart and city council members. I'm happy to be here again. I'm Lisa

Sparrow, the president of Monterey College of Law, of which the San Luis Obispo College of Law is one of our branch campuses. So, thank you very much for bringing back this item of the grant agreement for the establishment of a mediation services program. Um we are stepping into the void that was created about a year ago when Wilshire shut down to try to provide community mediation services. This is in keeping with our mission as a nonprofit community-based law school. Last time I know the council had a lot of questions about the viability of the center, so go ahead and give you some updates that have happened since then. First, we were excited to appoint our interim director, Erica Flores Baltodano. She's been doing an amazing job at reaching out to the community. We also bid on and were the successful and only bidder to um provide mediation services for the small claims court program with the county. We are finalizing the contract, but we do expect them to be providing us with some startup funding as well. I just saw the most recent today. I think by the end of the week that'll be done, and starting July 1st, we will be providing free mediation services to all people that are interested with the dispute in small claims court. We also are providing um we'll be hosting a mediation training program that is May 26th and 27th on mastering the art of mediation at the law school. It is open to all community members who would like to figure out a better way to communicate. I think in this day and age, it's important for people to learn how to talk to each other in a way that de-escalates rather than escalating contracts. I'm actually going to attend the mediation training as well. Um in addition to that, we have we are very thankful for some community sponsors who have come forward, and we've had several lawyers and mediators and other

community members. We've raised $34,600 total from these very generous community members. So, things are going well. We are still kind of doing this phased-in approach. We don't want to offer more than than we can provide, but we would very much appreciate the city's contribution to kind of help us getting closer to to meeting our goal for startup funds, and I'm very happy to answer any questions any of you have. Um I'll be sticking around, but we do appreciate this item on the agenda and and the city's support. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Chief Scott, the attorney department of police department, and I still want to thank you for what you do. And having said that, I'd like to also shout out to a very happy single day drinker.

[laughter] I'm um [clears throat]

Mayor, council members, city manager, and the assistant city um attorney, uh I'm here one more time to express my concern over the sewer lateral replacement point of sale. This is the type This type of mandate has probably the longest road to accomplish the goal of of sus- substantially reducing the amount of I&I the city has to deal with. The The staff previously referred to this as millions and millions of gallons of water. It's a process that will take years and years to accomplish a significant reduction of excess water in the system. Just follow the numbers. There are thousands of homes that have not been inspected. There are only so many homes that sell a year, and um then there are only so many sewer replacements that you can have. Uh that might be registered as poor or failed. The suggestion is just to do the replacement or repair after close of escrow if it can't be done prior to close of escrow. In real tour world, any kind of holdover after close of escrow can potentially can be a problem. Um although the intention is appreci- uh the intention of this is appreciated, it's not always that easy to do these kind of repairs after close without some problems. I feel fortunate and want to acknowledge the time uh that staff offers up um to have direct discussions about uh items as they come up from time to time. I truly believe it's it's a ben- it's beneficial to both sides of the discussion. Staff was given direction from the city council to develop a point of sale sewer replacement ordinance, and that's what they did. Since we basically have the entire leadership of the city of San Luis Obispo in this room tonight, I have to assume collectively you all think this is the best solution to significantly resolve the water intrusion problem, or some other solution would be being discussed. I'm curious to know what other uh solutions were tossed around between all of you before you landed on this solution. I'm assuming this was not the only solution considered prior to any suggestions uh for consideration from the general public.

I've said this before, and I'm not sure this happens in all jurisdictions around the state, but the real communi- uh the realtor community and I don't take lightly the ability to have direct and meaningful discussions um not only with staff, but with the uh city leadership as well. Thank you for listening. It's greatly greatly appreciated. As a last thought, I think it would be interesting in or around January 1st of 2028 to see how all of this has played out over the year 2027 as this takes effect January 1st of 2027. Um how all this has played out after a year of the point of sale replacement program, how effective or not it's been. No matter what the outcome, I think it could be an interesting discussion. Maybe Chris could put that on his calendar uh for about a year and a half from now. Thank you. Thank you. I think we have one more speaker. Yes, it's on item 7C, but if you want Okay. No, we'll wait on 7C. Thank you so much for that. Um okay, so we will um vote on item 6A through 7G, and then we'll return to 7C, um which is the grants. Um I have a little script that I need to read according to law on 7F, the appointed officials compensation. So, here we go. Consistent with California Government Code section 54953, this serves as a required oral summary for item 7F, appointed officials compensation, prior to final action. The recommendation is to approve and the city attorney. This includes adopting draft resolutions authorizing the updated contract terms and allowing the mayor to execute the amended agreements. The recommended changes include increasing the city manager's city paid Sorry, city paid deferred

compensation contribution by 3%, raising it from 3% to 6%, and providing the city attorney with a 2% salary increase along with allowing the city attorney to use her sick leave balance for her own care or the care of the family member without being subject to the existing family care usage limit. In addition, the council is asked to adopt the regular and contract employee salary schedule effective April 9th, 2026 as required by CalPERS. That ends the official script. Moving on to um 6A through 7G minus 7C, is there a motion to uh approve? Vice Mayor? I'll move approval. Thank you. Is there a second? Council member Boswell? Second. Great. Thank you. City Clerk, can we have roll call? Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Council member Boswell? Yes. Council member Marks? Uh yes, except I'm recusing on the minutes for April 26th. Say the whole thing cuz it was not on. Oh, okay. Yes, except I'm recusing uh for item on item 7B, which is the minutes for the April 21st meeting, which I missed. Council member Schwartzman? Yes. Mayor Stewart? Yes, except I'm recusing 7G. Otherwise, moving forward, it's relatively 5-0. Thank you so much. Um so now we'll move back to 7C, the consideration of the 2026 to 27 Human Services Grant Funding Recommendations. Uh Council Member Shoresman, do you want to kick us off? Sure. So um just start out as always by thanking the Human Resources Commission for the

enormous amount of work and the difficult decisions that they have in weighing what was it? I think 26 applications for over $400,000 worth of requests when we have a whopping $150,000 uh to give away to local nonprofits who all do an incredible amount of important work in our community. And so it's always very, very challenging and I want to recognize that uh how difficult that is for the for the Human Resources Commission. Uh there is one uh recipient uh that I is not currently recommended for full funding that I would like to see fully funded and I'll explain why and I definitely do not uh fault or take anything away from the Human Resources Commission uh in the work that they did in assessing the applicants. Um but there's probably some information that I have as a member of the HSOC that they would not have had unless they were present at the March uh March HSOC meeting related to prevention homelessness prevention funding uh countywide. So um the organization that I would like to see fully funded is CAPSLO with their request which is around homelessness prevention. And the the reason why is that at that March uh HSOC meeting, there were homelessness prevention funds uh deliberated and decided upon uh that were a countywide grant application process. In that grant application process, uh Five Cities Homeless Coalition and uh ECHO uh uh in the North County uh El Camino Homeless Organization uh both applied for about $150,000 uh in grant funds to serve prevention to provide prevention services in their

regions of the county. Uh the third recipient that was awarded is a very important recipient uh Family Care Network. They received another the the last $150,000 to serve uh transitional aged youth with homelessness prevention services. Um that left uh that left one population or one piece of the county unserved by homelessness prevention funds in terms of the general public. So there is there was um there was funding for the general public the general public home prevention funding in South County in North County and then transitional aged youth countywide, but there was no funding um granted in that grant application process towards uh recipients or community members that are in the central part of the county including the city of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay. Um so the applicant that had applied for those funds was CAPSLO and they were not awarded. Um so that left sort of an a vacancy in um funds for people in the central part of the county. So um while I appreciate that uh that the committee had a difficult decision and I know that they're always trying to fund as many organizations as they possibly can with as much money as they possibly can, I would like to find $10,000 to fund CAPSLO to fill that service gap uh in the prevention services funding for the city of San Luis Obispo and be able to fully fund. Uh right now they're recommended at $10,000, so I would like to find another $10,000. Unfortunately, that means lowering the amounts of some of the other recipients in order to close that gap. Um but I think it's important to do that. Um

my proposal uh there's a couple of different ways that I would propose doing it. Uh to least impact organizations that are already assuming that they are going to receive some funding, it makes sense to me to potentially take $5,000 away from Family Care Network since they have already received $150,000 to serve this population. Um so fill the gap with um fill half the gap with $5,000 from them. And then the other organization um that uh I'm open to the discussion from my colleagues, but one of the other organizations that I was thinking of um taking the $5,000 the extra $5,000 from would be CASA. Um but again, I am open to discussion or deliberation if there is other ways that folks would like to fill that gap. Um one of the other suggestions was since Family Care Network has already received received a $150,000 from the county that maybe taking the the full $10,000 away from Family Care Network um might be one other suggestion. Um but that's difficult because they're expecting to get some money through this process too. So uh with that, I'll throw it to my colleagues to see what they think of of this whole situation. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor? Yeah, Council Member Shoresman, can you clarify if the $150,000 that was given to Family Care Network, was that with the uh same parameters as the um kind of description that we have of the use of funds here? Uh I was talking to staff a little bit that about that earlier today. It it's hard to know if the rules around the funding are exactly the same uh with both the HAP funding that they received already and the funding that we are talking about tonight. Um it's possible

that there would be some subtle differences in that, but their uh language in their grant summaries and the language in their uh request to the county about the population that they would serve is very similar. The vulnerable um transitional aged youth was the language that was used in the description in our packet uh for the Family Care Network funds and that was also the similar language that was used in their grant application to the county. So the grant parameters might be different, but the intended use seems similar in language.

Right. The the population being served is pretty similar. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you. Before I move to Council Member Marks, um do you have any additional information regarding the HSOC grant funding you'd like to share? We don't have it this time. Uh Council Member Shoresman covered that. Great. Just making sure there's no additional information. Council Member Marks? Um I just I fully support um the um idea of of giving more funding to CAPSLO for their homeless uh services [clears throat] here in the central part of the county because we do have so many uh services here. We do also have, I believe um a higher proportion of homeless people, at least very visible homeless people um in the downtown and uh through throughout throughout our our city. And so I think that makes a lot of sense. In terms of of where you get that money, I'm open to what my colleagues have to say. Um I'm not sure with Family uh Care Network, um I'm familiar with their work, but I don't know whether Pathways to Stability actually addresses homelessness which is our council set priority in terms of HRC funding. I mean, that's just I don't know. I'm not I'm not saying it doesn't, but I just don't know. So I'll stop right there. Thank you. Um I appreciate you bringing this forward. I will say on um March 24th, I went up and did a tour of ECHO and I met with um their leadership. And one of the things that they shared had happened just the day before as far as the decision with HSOC and um the application process was something that I'm usually very excited about is

that different nonprofits in our area that do similar things collaborated and they said, "How do we come together and serve the community in the best way possible and how do we ask for our money?" So they really instead of saying, "I'm going to try to ask for the most possible," they really came together and said, "Let's ask for enough that serves our different areas." And so to me um that was collaboration and working together as nonprofits. And then in the end, unfortunately, it kind of um didn't work out. There's just so many terms that are not what I want to say in my head. And so with that, it seems logical to me that if someone that received $150,000, they don't need they always need, but they can live without the 10,000 because they received the 150,000 and we can take that 10,000 and fill a tiny bit of the gap of the 150,000 that CAPSLO is not received from the HSOC grant uh grant funding. No one's ever guaranteed the funding, but the fact that they came together and actually tried to solve a problem together in our county. It really concerns me that that wasn't even understood or or cared for. So, um I would very much support um taking that funding to give it to CAPSLO. And it's not because I feel um any negativity. I think what Family Care Network doing is doing is absolutely amazing and their work is absolutely amazing. And with the $150,000 half funding that they're going to get, they'll get to do a lot of that work. So, that would be my suggestion is to see the $10,000 completely from the uh human services grant go to uh CAPSLO in this case. Council Member Boswell. Um yeah, thank you, Mayor Stewart, for that additional uh explanation. Thank you, Council Member Shoresman. So, um I think I would support that proposal as well. Not having really any other basis to decide. I was trying to read quickly through some of the descriptions, but uh I appreciate your providing some

in-depth explanation of the logic behind the proposal. So, I'll support it. Thank you. And I do and I didn't I didn't start with this, I apologize, but I really thank the Human Services uh sorry, the Human Relations Committee for looking through all of these grants. I know it's a lot of work and I forgot the forget the exact total, but it was well over $400,000 of need that people asked for in this community and I do not take that lightly and I don't want to usually take recommendations and switch them around, um but I do appreciate that you brought forth the H-SOC extra context that probably just wasn't known in this conversation. Uh Council Member Shoresman. So, from your comments, I guess Council Member Marks and Council Member Boswell, are you more What what feels better? I know this is None of this feels good. Reallocating funds never feels good between a lot of really wonderful um well-meaning and important organizations and their functions, but um just from your comments, am I hearing that you feel more comfortable just taking all of the funding from Family Care Network to fill the gap um in the CAPSLO rather than trying to piecemeal it out a little bit among organizations? Okay. Um I'm I'm agreeable that to that too. I was just kind of trying to figure out what everybody else's feelings were on it.

Council Member Marks. Uh I I'd say it I I regret that we don't have about 10 times as more money to to help and you know, we as a city, we cannot fill the gap that the county is supposed to um uh you [clears throat] know, provide uh funds for in terms of of all these different programs, but we do our best to um play catch-up when we can and um I do really respect the work of the Family Care Network. It's just uh a very unusual situation that we face right now and thank you for telling telling us about it. Yes, that's short answer, yes. Council Member Shoresman. Yeah, just one more I guess question to staff kind of based on our conversation earlier. I think um just kind of trying to brainstorm the amount of people that $20,000 might be able to serve. It's not a huge amount of money and there will be probably opportunities for more prevention funding at the county, but maybe not immediately. Um it'll probably be a while before those grant funds come, but um what would you estimate um team as to the number of people that with this amount of money could possibly be served? You can give a big range if you want. Yeah, so um based on the application that CAPSLO submitted, they're estimating about 200 uh people served um through their organization within the city of San Luis Obispo. Um just to clarify, that does include their screening for eligibility. So, I think with the direct service with the direct aid, it was about 8 to 10. And with the Family Care Network, similarly, they estimated about 10. So, I would say about 10 households with the 20,000 for direct rental assistance. Great, thank you for that. So, it's not a lot, but it's better than zero. So, um

so, here we are. So, uh with that, I suppose I'll make the motion to approve the grant recommendations with the exception of moving $10,000 from Family Care Network to CAPSLO. Thank you. I'm going to do public comment first and then we will accept that motion. No, it's okay. Um do you have any public comment? Yes, we have one speaker, Molly Kern. Thank you. I promise to be concise. Um thank you, Mayor and Council. I want to echo your shared appreciation for the deliberations of the committee and the hard work of staff and really um sitting with all of the need in our community. I know it's beyond just moving numbers around on a spreadsheet, but really when you read each of these applications, um it articulates what we see at the SLO Food Bank every day, which is a large and growing need um of people who are doing their best, but are just fundamentally unable to afford to continue living in this community. Um I want to say thank you for your recommendations from the committee and your deliberations here tonight also. Our no cook bag program um provides direct nutrition, but also an incredible tool for each of the agencies that you're discussing here. They receive free of cost no cook bags that are thoughtfully prepared with ingredients that support a full day's nutrition, balancing fruits and vegetables, proteins, healthy fiber um that are thoughtfully also considered for what it looks like to live without a kitchen, a place to safely store your food. Um and so, it's a really amazing combination of nutrition, but also a trust-building tool for each of our partners. When they go out to do outreach to people who have had broken trust time and time again to

be able to offer them something instead of just need things from them um is really powerful. And so, thank you so much. As you mentioned, sometimes this money seems small, but those individual act interactions really make um a tremendous difference in so many lives. So, thank you. Thank you. No other comments? No. And um Council Member Shoresman, I just want to make sure when you say 20,000, you're meaning the additional 10,000, right? Yes. Yes, sorry if I didn't state it clearly, but um the motion would be to move $10,000 from Family Care Network to CAPSLO to make their full grant amount their match their original request, which was $20,000. Great, thank you. I'll second that. And with that, can we have Oh, okay. I'd like to second that. Okay, sounds good. And can we have a roll call? Council Member Shoresman. Yes. Council Member Marks.

Yes. Council Member Boswell. Yes. Vice Mayor Francis. Yes. Mayor Stewart. Yes, and the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much. I know it's always difficult to move money around and help some uh nonprofits versus others. So, thanks for your patience and thanks for your help. And with that, we're going to take a 10-minute break and we'll be back. Well, thank you for the break. We are back and now we go into public hearing and business items. Um item 8A is to introduce an ordinance amending title five, permits, licenses, and regulations, otherwise known as doing an update to our uh zoning. So, I will move forward and have um senior planner David Emini and assistant planner Ethan Estrada share your report. Here we go. Good evening, Mayor Stewart and council members. Again, my name is Ethan Estrada, assistant planner, and I'm joined by David Emini, senior planner, and we'll be presenting staff's proposed amendments for titles 5, 16, and 17 of the city's municipal code. Some housekeeping items real quick. The recommendation before you tonight is for your council to introduce a draft ordinance entitled "An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of San Luis Obispo, California, Amending Title 16, Subdivision Regulations, and Title 17, Zoning Regulations, and Title 5, Licenses, Permits, and Regulations of the Municipal Code Regarding Accessory Dwelling Units, Junior Accessory Dwelling Units, Urban Lot Splits, Mobile Homes, and other clarifications and changes to regulations associated with housing with an exemption from environmental review." Regarding general plan consistency, the proposed code amendments are consistent with a variety of policies in the city's housing element. This includes policies that encourage housing production, infill development, and increased density across our housing continuum.

These proposed amendments would incorporate new legislation pertaining to minor urban lot splits, address inconsistencies between state law and the city's municipal code, remove barriers to housing development identified by the public and staff, and miscellaneous changes to address unclear, conflicting, and or incorrect provisions within the code. With that, we'll start with amendments pertaining to ADUs and JADUs as provided in title 17 of the municipal code. Staff proposed several amendments that would introduce new language and alter existing language regarding height and setback limits for ADUs as provided under state law. These specific limits are already imposed on projects where applicable, so these amendments would not result in any changes to what's already allowed. Another proposed See, there we go. Another proposed amendment would defer maximum height limits for ADUs to the standards in the underlying zone, where currently the maximum ADU height in any zone is 25 ft. This could potentially increase ADU development opportunities in zones like the R2, R3, and R4 zones, which allow a maximum structure height of 35 ft. Staff also proposed to remove a provision of the ADU code regarding a two-step to one-step approval process for certain ADU conversion projects. In 2024, this provision was added to create a one-step permit process where two were initially required for certain cases. However, other amendments made in the same code update resolved this particular issue, and since its implementation, this provision has been found to potentially conflict with state law and has not been utilized to any great effect. Several other proposed amendments would add language that more clearly exempt ADUs and JADUs consistent with applicable standards from discretionary review as is required by state law. Staff also proposed an amendment that would expand the current definition of ADUs to clearly differentiate between attached and detached ADUs. And lastly, staff proposed an amendment to clarify an existing provision that

exempts ADUs from lot coverage requirements up to the first 800 square feet of ADU building footprint as required by state law. Uh, this is already imposed on projects as applicable, so there would be no change to what's already allowed. Now looking at minor urban lot splits as provided in title 16 of the municipal code passed last year, Assembly Bill 1061 introduced provisions to state law that no longer allows the city to prohibit a minor urban lot split subdivision based on a site being located within a historic district. Uh, state law still allows the city to prohibit this type of subdivision on sites that are listed as historic resources, as well as where the alteration or demolition of a historic resource is required to facilitate the subdivision. So, staff has proposed an amendment to the subdivision regulations pertaining to minor urban lot splits to maintain consistency with state law. Moving along to mobile homes as provided in title five of the municipal code with Assembly Bill 2782 having gone into a uh, full effect, the city is no longer required to exclude long-term space leases from its mobile home park rent stabilization ordinance provided under chapter 5.44 of the municipal code. Per council direction, staff has proposed an amendment to this chapter to remove this exemption in accordance with state law. Additionally, in review of chapter 5.44, staff identified a provision that outlines an exemption process for a section of this chapter that was removed in a prior code update. Staff proposes the removal of this provision that was left over. Now we'll move on and look at our affordable housing incentives as provided in title 17 of our municipal code. Uh, currently in chapter 17.140 pertaining to affordable housing incentives for density bonus projects, it doesn't specify whether an applicant must use fractional density as is already provided in our municipal code or dwelling units per acre as provided in density bonus law when calculating the number of market rate and affordable

units that can be built as part of a density bonus project. Uh, so under the current code, applicants can maximize the number of market rate units that can be built via fractional density while minimizing the number of affordable units to be provided. Um, so staff is just providing amendment that would uh, require consistency across the calculations. If you use fractional density, it's required for both your market rate and affordable units. If you use dwelling units per acre, it's required for both units as well. And now we'll just look at some miscellaneous changes uh, to title 17 of our code. Uh, currently our homestay section uh, provides requirements that a homestay must comply with for approval of a homestay permit, but it doesn't expressly state that it must continue to maintain compliance. Staff is proposing an amendment to the section clarifying the the applicable requirements must be complied with on a continuous annual basis, uh, not just upon application for a permit, and expressly stating that the failure to do so may result in uh, the ex- expiration of the permit. Uh, moving on to our accessory structures section, um, there are several proposed amendments that would address um, just some inconsistencies with state law pertaining to ADUs and refresh some of our language uh, that we use to maintain consistency with other sections of our zoning code. Uh, we're also proposing an amendment um, that would require uh, property owners or remove a requirement for property owners to enter a covenant agreement to permit an accessory structure on their property. This is an outdated requirement as it was originally intended to prevent illegal conversion of accessory space into habitable space. Uh, today property owners have a host of methods available to them to develop ADUs, JADUs, and with the state ADU amnesty program as well that provides a pathway for illegal ADUs and JADUs to become permitted. Uh, this requirement is overly restrictive on property owners who want to build an accessory structure on their property. And then uh, looking at um, our code section regarding our vision clearance standards for driveway visibility, staff is proposing the addition of a new subsection regarding driveway visibility standards as is already provided under our engineering standard 75 7950. Uh, this standard is already imposed on

projects as applicable, so there's no substantial change from this amendment. Uh, staff is also uh, proposing an amendment to a table 2-1 provided under our chapter 17.10 regarding our allowed uses uh, to correct an error by identified by staff. Currently, the table incorrectly says that a minor use permit is required for general retail in the neighborhood commercial zone, uh, and in reality one's not required when the floor area of the commercial unit is 2,000 square feet or less, so just correcting that in the table. Uh, then there's also a proposed amendment um, to our section regarding decks to further clarify that uh, decks with a height of 30 in or more uh, are subject to our side and rear setback requirements. Again, we already um, impose this requirement when we're reviewing projects, so there wouldn't be necessarily a a huge process change uh, with this clarification. Uh, here's our recommendation again for you tonight, and that concludes our presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you. I mean, as this is mainly a a cleanup, it definitely was a little bit easier. Uh, there were a couple of things that I wanted to have some knowledge about. I'm not sure if um, you have this answer, but it definitely made me wonder about the homestay permits and wondering how we're doing on the compliance. I know we had a new new er, vendor and that has been looking at the homestays, and I'm just wondering if this is part of what helped us realize that this permit um, requirement needed to change. Good evening. Timmy Toy, director of community development. That is how we discovered this requirement. So, one of the things that we were doing last year was using our online Rental Scape platform where we can identify potentially unpermitted uh, short-term rentals or homestays. And one of the challenges we had was uh, noticing that we did not have strong language to be able to continually enforce requirements. Upon application, someone would prove that they met the code requirements, and then we would ask

them for annual materials to prove that, and we ran into an issue where our code language wasn't as strong as we would like it to be. And so, this is definitely helpful for us to be able to implement that program and make sure everyone is complying year over year. Great, thank you. Any other questions? Okay, one last one. Um, so when looking at the healthcare and childcare section of this um, report, the potential removing removing the minor use permit designation from table 2-1, and then talking about the physical therapy and childcare um, sections of the office zone, um, I feel like we've talked about this a lot as far as doctors being able to have access to some um, locations in our city that really aren't the manufacturing zones that they are today. Like the zone is true, but the actions are not. Um, and then also still trying to clear up um, that childcare can go in more locations throughout our city. So, can you share a little bit about that? Yes, absolutely. We have heard comments from from the council, from the community about some of these challenges related to businesses and commercial uses. Um, this cleanup generally is more housing related because we often have a lot of state laws we have to comply with after they're passed and go into effect. But we did look at some of the commercial uses, and they they kind of go beyond the scope of more simple cleanups or state law compliance. In addition, they we want to take a little more time with those and make sure that I was talking to Tyler Corey, the deputy today about the challenges with that, and he was noting we have a number of specific plan areas in town, and they also all have different regulations for commercial uses. So, we want to really sit down and be able to make sure that all of our plans are consistent, that our general plan, you know, we might

need to address what is the intent of the office zone if it's stated in the general plan, if we need to make changes there. So, it's a little more of a extended exercise than these simple code cleanups, but I absolutely understand the challenges that we're having, especially with some targeted commercial uses. So, one of the things I've discussed um, with Greg Hermann's team in economic development is if there's a way that we can put our heads together, get the economic development team and the planners together to maybe come up with a similar kind of cleanup ordinance, but addressing some of these ongoing commercial issues we see. So, we're going to be looking at whether or not we have capacity to do that, and if not, that's absolutely something we can work into our next work plan item. We are so focused on housing that if you look at community developments work work plan items for the two-year budget cycle, it's almost all housing related. So, I think it is a good time for us to start looking at uh do we need to catch up a little bit with our zoning code with changes in business practices or other changes we're making to our land use. Thank you. Yeah, I know that um I kept telling everyone, "Don't worry, we're going to do a zoning update." And then I was like, "It's not in here." So, I think that would be really helpful cuz I mean while housing is one of our top priorities, also business and economic recovery and uh business resilience is is important to us and it's one of our priorities as well. So, I want to make sure that we are balancing that and I fully understand too capacity is is challenging. So, um I think that would be very helpful for the future. Understood. Councilmember Schwarzman. Yeah, just kind of to piggyback on that a little bit. I guess I'm still a little bit unclear. I think I'm looking probably at the same paragraph that you were. I know that it says um I I know that we've done a lot to make sure that child care in particular can go in pretty much any place that um um that that we would want it to, but I'm I'm just I guess I'm still not understanding a little bit why things

fall services that fall under personal services would need to wait for a full larger general plan update to kind of tease out some of the um some of the examples given like why is that a bigger lift? That's a great question. There's there's a few things there. Some of it is they were excluded at some point for a reason. Like there was a legislative intent of this use has some impact on the space or maybe we thought we need to retain these areas of town for office. We don't want them to be taken over by that type of use. And so, part of it is understanding what was the legislative legislative intent and then understanding what the market needs are and then making sure that we are, you know, crafting that carefully if needed or just removing outright bans. And so, um massage is a really good example of that where we have a things have changed a lot since COVID. And so, our rules were made before COVID when I I I believe we were trying to keep areas of town for office use and then encourage other types of use, for example, in the downtown where we don't necessarily allow office on the ground floor. Now, what you see is not a lot of people need office space as much as they did before. And so, we're seeing a lot more interest for things like salons, masseuses to go into these bungalows that used to be an attorney's office and we're running into this code compliance issue. Um and so, those are just the things we'd have to look at a little closely. Part of probably what it was is traffic and parking related to those uses. They can have more trip generation and if those office uses are closer to residential zones, that may have been the reason why you know, it was encouraged to have more traditional office as opposed to service personal service uses, but we need to look into those legislative the legislative history of that and then

examine it. And again, it does get complicated with the specific plans because they all have their own use tables and we just want to make sure there's not anything we're missing. So, maybe some dated legislation or something that isn't quite as impactful now as Absolutely. I mean if you look at you look at commercial zones in zoning codes, you'll see some things that you'll say like, "We haven't had that type of business in this town for 50 years." And the language just still exists there. And on the flip side, the zoning codes don't imagine things that we have now and so, we have to get creative with how we classify them. So, it is a really good time for us to take a look at what we want in our commercial zones, if we care about the same things that we used to care about or if we want to be a little more flexible because businesses are now a little more flexible. People are doing more experiential businesses and sometimes that um is not allowed in certain ways. So, it's definitely a good time to be looking at what what we want our commercial areas to look like. Medical to your point, Mayor, is a very big one too is we're not as segregating of the uses anymore as we used to be because we don't have the same type of manufacturing that we may have had before where it made sense to not have those two uses together. And now it might make a little more sense to be able to mix them, but we'd have to look into that. I think I remember a similar conversation about a detailing shop versus a car wash not too long ago. Yes. So, um and just to kind of I guess ask another follow-up question about daycare. It says in the staff report family daycares are already an allowed use in all zones except for conservation open space and public facility zones. And it has not been staff's experience that there are zoning barriers prohibiting the establishment of daycare uses in the city. Um but I think I saw your face do something Mayor that implied that you don't see it

that way. And so, I guess [clears throat] I'm wondering if there's something that I'm missing. Well, I try to have my face come on now. [laughter]

I think that what what has been challenging is larger daycares actually. Um the family daycares I think we've been able to do a pretty good job throughout our city to allow in many different places, but if we were to get a couple of larger ones that wanted to come into the community that hasn't seemed to match. We have the um office space, we have the new kind of mixed use in different newer developments. It's it's just hasn't been quite a perfect fit yet. So, that's concerning in the sense of if we really could find someone that we could encourage to come here and and have a larger daycare, they haven't been able to find places they could do that. We have done specific zoning changes though for a couple of the larger daycare facilities, I believe, right? So, in the meantime, that's how we would approach that kind of situation until a larger um exploration of uh general plan amendment was done. Okay, thank you so much. Um my last my last question is about the um the fractional density versus whatever you call the other type of density that's um measurement calculation. And is there any prohibition from in I'm guessing no, but just to make sure I understand there's no prohibition um against what we're proposing to change in our ordinance about you either use the fractional density or you use the other type of density calculation um in com there's no conflict with state law on that. State density bonus law. No, there's not necessarily a conflict. Um the state density bonus law is a bit vague when it it just says units. It doesn't it provides that discretion for cities to decide what they ultimately want to use. Okay, and I'm assuming there is no benefit one way or the other to using one or the other as long as they don't mix both. Or do we have a preference or a

on the type?

Generally using fractional density leverages the maximum amount of both market rate and affordable housing units. Um you know, but if developers wish to choose the dwelling units, we just want to see that consistency so there's not a a mix-up. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, thank you uh Mayor and uh Councilmember Schwarzman for bringing up the the child care discussion. I actually was really interested in that paragraph and um reached out to uh Child Care Resource Connection at CAPSLO as well as uh First 5 to get a little bit of clarification cuz I know that we've been in conversation a lot about some of the challenges and they'd alluded it to it being a lot of zoning issues. Um but they did clarify that really what a lot of the small providers are dealing with is trying to figure out how to navigate the the system because it's challenging. And I know a lot of communities have addressed that by kind of helping with um kind of navigators or cheat sheets that kind of help people figure out how to deal with the the fees, the process, expectations, inspections, all those things that can be real barriers to opening businesses in the city. Um and I know that we do have uh our item 3.1.8 of economic development strategic plan uh that gets at trying to dedicate resources to help prospective child care business owners who are trying to navigate the city permitting process. Uh we haven't really gotten at that completely yet and I know that um CAPSLO and First 5 are working at uh with along with the city to try and deal with that issue right now. So, hopefully we can get to a better place on that soon. So, I appreciate you guys bringing up the um specifics there. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I feel like it's like a future um deputy city manager Herman's department um pathway uh maybe in the future. Councilmember Marks. Thank you. Um uh yeah, just um piggybacking on that. I

think we might need something like kind of a concierge the way that uh 3CE um Central Coast Community Energy has got kind of a concierge program where they uh someone who knows nothing about how to do it can be kind of be a guided and hand-held a bit through the process. So, anyway, that's just a thought. I'm very uh happy to see us getting rid of the exemption uh in terms of um providing more uh access to rent control in mobile homes. And I did ask Mark asked question earlier, but I uh I I think I should just ask it again in open session. So, that's um my question is whether this exemption would in some way be retroactive in that people who have not been able to benefit from rent control because they had long-term leases. Um would they now with this change be able to benefit from rent control retroactively? Thank you, Councilmember Marks. Um so, no. As drafted, the ordinance does not have retroactive effect. Um I touched base at the recess with my colleague who worked on this and um wanted to clarify that in the state law um that this is implementing, there is a window to to have retroactive effect, but it's not automatic and would be left to the local discretion of the local agency in their own code update, but our update does not include that retroactive language um at this time. Okay, so that's something we might want to look at in the future, possibly. Yes, and I'll also clarify that the state law limits the retroactivity, I believe, to like leases um signed

bef- after, sorry, February 13th, 2020. So, it's not, you know, retroactive decades and decades. Um but it does have retroactive effect if implemented by the local agency. Okay, thank you very much. Thank [snorts] you. Great question. Vice Mayor. Yeah, jumping [clears throat] in on that. Um I just wanted to follow up to clarify if that's something that we could modify in the language tonight or if we would have to do that as part of a broader update in the future. My recommendation would be to do that at a later time because of um essentially the implementation of that would be a much bigger lift than what's before the council tonight in terms of outreach and potential legal consequences and how does that factor into any, I don't know, potential legal risk associated between, you know, those who are parties to the lease. And so, there's additional research and analysis that would need to be done by both community development and the city attorney's office. So, it is something that we could explore, but I would not recommend adding it to our ordinance at this time. If we delay adding adding that language to our ordinance at this time, but do modify the other language, are we closing the door on the opportunity to have those folks receive retroactive uh rent control? Not to my knowledge, no. Um I think if at such time we, let's say, come back and update our own ordinance to essentially mirror the retroactivity that's allowed in state law, I don't think our delay in doing that would close the door to those people. So, we can modify it as it stands tonight um and come back. Is that something that we could give direction to come back in the near term or is that a I know you're kind of implying that there might be a lot associated with it. I'm just trying to get an understanding of how big of a

lift this is, if it's something we can do in the the near term to bring some relief to folks who might have otherwise not been able to benefit from the rent control they should have had. Um I don't know how in terms of timeline what the lift would look like. I would need to confer with community development and also my colleague colleague who has worked closely on this. Um but definitely like the city attorney's office would need time to evaluate the legal risks posed by this. Um but if it is a priority to the council or majority of the council, we could certainly work on that analysis and at least report back if it is something that legally is possible or implementable. If there's interest from the majority of council this evening, I would be interested in getting a follow-up memo on um the challenges uh and workload associated with that. Love to have Director Troy come up and add a little bit of um input to this conversation as well. Yeah, I think what Assistant City Attorney has stated is probably the best path forward. I would absolutely hesitate to do that tonight. That's not what was noticed for this item and would potentially impact a different subset of folks than what this item is. And I do think that community development and the city attorney's office would need to get together and just understand what that would even look like given that it would retroactively apply to decisions that people have already made. Perfect. Thank you. Um as far as memo, absolutely, I would love to see that. I think this is, as we look at seniors and um people who have lower incomes, that's typically who's living in a mobile home. And so, if we can help people now, uh not now today, but if we can help people sooner than later, I would love to see that for um for their personal uh budgets, quite honestly. Councilmember Marks.

Uh yes, I I agree a memo would make sense because before taking any action uh in this regard, I think we really need to know what we're up to. Also, we don't have any idea how many people or how many units or how many uh parks we're actually talking about because [clears throat] we don't have a rental registry yet. How are we supposed to know? So, um uh I think just a memo and uh you know, when when now the time is right, if it can work in be fitted into your workload, uh I think it would it would be we really need to have our eyes open uh in this regard. It may just be a handful of people because these mobile homes do turn over and they sell and then, you know, at any rate, I agree a a memo would make sense. Great. Thank you. And absolutely, I'm glad you highlighted that point is that there is turnover and since 2020, there has already been turnover. We know from different uh claims and comments have been brought to us at the at the city already. Um Deputy City Manager, do you want to uh add a little information about child care? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Uh we love the idea about a concierge for child care centers in the city, and that's actually a part of what we're doing with our business navigator program and our business welcome program. So, economic I'm sorry, McKenzie Taff, our economic development analyst, has been working on this. We have two different checklists, one for each child care center that would be located in a commercial space and one for an in-home center. So, those checklists are almost done. We'll be posting those by next month, and that'll be a really important part of completing our uh task related to the economic development strategic plan as well. Thank you. I'm very excited about that. Um I was sharing quite a bit about that at the Cal Cities week a couple weeks ago. Um with that, I don't see any more questions from my colleagues, so any public comment? No, we do not. Okay. Well, we are ready to move that forward

then. Uh Vice Mayor. I'd like to make a motion to approve uh staff recommendations on the updated uh zoning um code and with the modification that we would like a memo on ensuring that by making this motion tonight, we don't disrupt uh retroactive rent control on mobile home parks and what it would take in order to institute that. Great. Thank you. Councilmember Shoresman. So, that's essentially the memo. Yes. Okay. Uh awesome. Okay. Yes, I will second that. Wonderful. We have a motion and a second. Can we have roll call? Vice Mayor Francis. Yes.

Councilmember Shoresman. Yes. Councilmember Boswell. Yes. Councilmember Marks. Yes.

Yes, the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much for a thorough report and clarifying some of the things that we had little questions about. Well, next we have an authorization to advertise roadway sealing project. So, we will have um Transportation Manager Luke Schwartz, Transportation Planner Justin Wong, and maybe Civil Engineer Brian Nelson will be in the room. I'm pulling up the presentation right now. All right. Good evening, Mayor and members of council. Uh I'm Brian Nelson, city engineer in the Public Works and Utilities Department. I'm joined tonight by Luke Schwartz, transportation manager, and Justin Wong, transportation planner engineer. Before you tonight is the 2026 roadway sealing project. This item recommends council's approval of the project design as well as authorization to advertise and award the project if within available budget. This project is shown on slide two. It's part of the city's ongoing pavement management program, which is designed to preserve and extend the life of the roadway network through timely, cost-effective maintenance. Treatments like slurry seal help protect the underlying pavement surface from water intrusion and deterioration, extending the service life of our streets, and avoiding sig- significantly higher costs later via full uh roadway reconstruction. Uh this year's focus of the project is on pavement areas two and three as shown on the map, and that's in the

southeastern portion of the city um with the specific roadways shown for slurry sealing in in blue. And then some striping only streets, as well as the bid additive, which is Broad Street from Tank Farm to the southern city limits if that segment is within the available budget. Just as important as pavement maintenance, these projects also include restriping and pavement markings, which helps improve visibility and clarity for roadway users. Next slide, please. This creates an opportunity to incorporate targeted traffic safety improvements in a cost-effective way since when we're slurring, we're also replacing striping. As we refresh these markings, we can implement the adopted plans and policies such as the active transportation plan, as well as the proposed actions in the Vision Zero Action Plan, which council received a presentation on in a couple weeks. Some of these opportunities include high-vis crosswalks, bike lane enhancements, or traffic calming measures. The focus of tonight's presentation will be on the specific traffic safety improvements and striping modifications, which Justin and Luke will all discuss in more detail on the following slides. With that, I'll hand it off to Justin. Thanks. Thank you. So, I want to start off with some background on the Mill Street Greenway. So, this Mill Street Greenway between Toro and Pepper Street is identified in the active transportation plan as a Tier 1 project, and this sees some use from transit vehicles and emergency response vehicles. There is a history of high speeds here and intersection conflicts at Mill and Toro and Mill and Morrow Street. And there was a temporary traffic circle

installed here as part of the pilot project in 2024. So, what's proposed here is we're planning to put in some Greenway guide signage and pavement markings and various crosswalk visibility improvements, including striped bulb outs and additional crosswalk warning signs. We're also putting in an all-way stop at the Mill and Toro intersections, as well as a speed cushion pilot project. So, just to reiterate, there is a concern of high vehicle speeds that that exceed the adopted local standards, and uh typically on street like this where we have transit and emergency response, we we don't find that speed humps are feasible, so we uh instead will use speed cushions. We want to try speed cushions where we have a wheel cutout for these larger vehicles to get through without being interrupted as much. So, back in the 2024 project, we previously tried to install some asphalt speed cushions, but um they were ultimately pulled due to constructability challenges in the field. So, as a part of this project, we are planning to we're proposing a pilot speed cushion project using preformed rubber bolt down materials, and this will be installed in a separate contract immediately after this paving project to allow for more flexibility for uh changes that might need to be made as we monitor the speed cushions.

So, moving on to Mill and Toro, we're planning to put in an all-way stop and high-visibility crosswalk on all approaches of the Mill and Toro intersection. And throughout the outreach process, we received feedback from neighbors, the ATC, and other members of the community that there were some concerns with the aesthetics and [snorts]

the intuitiveness of using this traffic circle, and we ultimately determined that an all-way stop would be an appropriate solution for this location. So, pavement area two is highlighted in green, and it's generally the area that's surrounding the southern portion of Johnson Avenue. And we've got uh we're doing a few things out on Augusta Street to help highlight that this is a school zone. So, we're we're implementing some speed limit signs and some school warning signage. We're doing high-visibility crosswalks, the ladder style ones, and striped bulb outs at Bishop Street, and we'll be doing some crosswalk daylighting uh along the path where people go to and from Seelhammer Elementary School. And on top of that, we'll be doing two new speed cushions as part of the pilot project to uh in the area between Laurel Lane and Seelhammer Elementary School. On Sydney Street, we're proposing one speed cushion near in between Johnson and Augusta Street, and this came in as a neighborhood traffic management request. So, this diagram shows that the visibility of pedestrians is generally better when there are no parked cars directly against the intersection or marked crosswalk. And it's currently already against state law to park within 20 ft of the intersection or crosswalk, but we'll be adding red curbs on certain intersections near Seelhammer Elementary School, French Park, Isley Park, and other access to trail points to make this clear.

So, on San Luis Drive, we'll be reducing the vehicle lane widths to provide space for a bike lane buffer, and we'll be including some green bike lanes at certain conflict points. We've had some uh issues with illegal parking in the bike lane, so we'll be adding flex posts to uh help prevent that. And there'll be a bike box at approaching the San Luis Drive and Johnson intersection. And we'll be also making some changes with how the bike lane interfaces with the right turn lane at the main San Luis Obispo High driveway just to reduce right turn conflicts at that location. So, this map shows pavement area three, which is down on the neighborhood by South Broad Street. And we're doing daylighting and just increasing the visibility at intersections near all of the local parks here and the access points to the off-street trail system, and we'll be installing

[snorts]

elements of the Meadow Park Greenway signage on the east side of Broad Street, while the west side is going to be included in the Higuera Complete Streets project. So, this is the Meadow Park Greenway alignment, and the project area that is included in the this project is highlighted on the right side. And on the west side, which is shown in purple, will be completed with the Higuera Complete Streets project. So, there are a few locations that will be doing striping only, so we'll just be primarily refreshing the roadway markings that are existing there just to give it a refresh. That'll be on North Toro and Johnson Avenue. And on South Street, most of it is largely going to be the same, but we're we're going to be moving the bike lane. We're going to be moving the bike lane to the curb side just since there's already a no parking zone and just to add a bike lane buffer and to prevent illegal parking where it's already signed as no parking. One last thing on South Street is we're implementing a keep clear striping zone where uh at the Meadow Street intersection just uh to keep this clear while cars are queued up at the Broad Street signal. So, this image here shows the Broad and Aerovista intersection, which is an additive alternative to this project. So, to give some background, this street was redone in Well, this street was paved and restriped in 2018 and is due for resealing and restriping due to just for best practices, and we'll be adding

some green bike lane markings through the conflict areas here. One thing I want to note is there is a history of severe left turn collisions coming out of Aerovista here. So, we'll be addressing this by restricting left turns out of Aerovista. And if this is not funded with the project, we still plan to make these changes, and instead of being funded through this project, it will be completed as a quick build through the city's traffic safety and Vision Zero program. Thank you, Justin. Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members. Um, I'd like to focus some of the discussion on Johnson Avenue. It's one of the streets within the ceiling project we've had the most focus on our side and also the most um, conversation with the public and advisory bodies. Um, for a little context, the segment of Johnson that's in the ceiling project is between San Luis Drive and Bishop Street. And again, it's not getting completely repaved. It's not even getting slurry sealed in the current scope. The pavement position is poor. It's beyond what we can even seal to keep the street in good shape. So, really the focus is refreshing striping, making incremental improvements where we can within the project budget. Um, Johnson Avenue's in our ATP plan as a tier two, so moderate priority project, with the goal to provide protected bike lanes. Within the ATP, there's a caveat that says this might require road widening or removing traffic lanes to advance something like this. Um, there's some crash history on Johnson. It's a fast corridor, gets a lot of activity. Um, it's not at a level we've had severe or fatal crashes and it hasn't floated towards the top of our high crash locations citywide. In our draft vision zero plan, which again, we'll be back in a couple weeks to talk about that. Um, it's not one of our high injury network locations or have intersections that are hot spots um, when ranked against other locations in the city. Um, the speeds are high on Johnson on certain stretches. It's posted at 35.

The prevailing speed along this stretch is just a bit above that. It gets faster when you get further south there and people start heading down the hill. You have less traffic signals stopping you. Um, but these are all things that we're aware of and have focused on in evaluating um, plans for this with the project. Um, again, in looking at opportunities to improve safety, get speeds down, um, improve more separation between moving traffic and people on bikes or people on the sidewalks, we looked at well, is there a feasibility to remove traffic lanes to do what we typically call road diet in town? Um, it's been done on other portions of Johnson. Um, to draw your attention to the map in our graphic, if you start to the south, that segment shown in green is Johnson south of Laurel Lane. Um, that was restriped to three lanes, so one in each direction in the center turn lane, 30 years ago. I can't even find the exact date in my files. Um, but also the traffic volumes on that stretch of Johnson are low. They're about 6,000 cars a day. As you work your way north between Bishop Street and Laurel Lane, we advanced a road diet there first as a pilot in 2019-ish and then as a permanent project, um, I'm sorry, about 2021-22 and then as a permanent project in 2023 and from what all the metrics we've looked at, that's been successful. But I'll note, the stretch just north of Laurel between there and Bishop, the volumes double compared to the stretch to the south of there. And then if we get to the segment we're talking about today between San Luis Drive and Bishop, the volumes increase another 50% and you have a really close spacing of traffic signal, traffic signal, traffic signal. When you're looking at like an urban street, the traffic capacity is mostly constrained at what's happening at intersections, not just how many lanes between each intersection. You can move a lot of traffic on a two-lane road if you're not stopping the traffic at signals or stop signs. Um, so we looked at well, is a roundabout feasible? It the volumes are kind of within the upper threshold where they can work, but every quarter is a

little unique. Um, so we prepared a a traffic operations analysis to try to see if this would be viable. Um, just for context, this is what the stretch of Johnson looks like right now with with two lanes in each direction, a center turn lane and a bike lane in each side. Um, we looked at like, can we even make any of these tighter to try to get some additional buffer for the bike lanes or from the sidewalk? All the traffic lanes now and all the bike lanes are at the very minimum width that we can even support within our standards and best practices at the state and federal level. Um, we looked at a full road diet. So, what could this look like if you removed a lane of traffic in each direction? Um, that could provide width to either add a really what nice wide bike lane, maybe a protected lane, or, you know, could provide width for on-street parking on one or both sides. So, there's some options from a traffic operations standpoint, you know, these two variants basically give you the same um, results from a traffic flow standpoint. Then we said, well, what if there's kind of a hybrid approach where you maybe you could remove a lane in one direction, but keep two in the other. Um, does that reduce the amount of impacts on traffic or emergency response? So, we looked at kind of a few different variants. Um, in the attachments to the staff report, you can see a focus traffic operations memo with detailed tables looking at intersection delays and level of service and queuing and travel times. I'm not going to read all those results one by one, but the main focus is you see a lot of red when you start removing traffic lanes. Um, and what we ultimately concluded was um, removing lanes even in one direction results in several intersections that would have significant impacts based on our city general plan adopted congestion thresholds and some queues that would be spilling back significantly. So, what do all those tables mean to an average person? What would this look like? And what you'd be looking at is a lot of congestion in those peak times in the morning commute, the afternoon commute including starting kind of when Slo High releases. Um, you could be seeing delays of, you know, up to 5 minutes trying to get

through a single intersection and particularly by removing lanes on Johnson, you get have to give more of that green time on the traffic signal timing to Johnson, which adds a lot of delays to the side streets. So, certain times a day you might be waiting several minutes to try to turn on to Johnson from Lizzie Street, from Ellis Street. Um, you might see queues that spill back from one intersection to the next intersection upstream. Um, and while we use a model to kind of evaluate these things, um, even going beyond a model, we've had construction projects where we've had one or multiple lanes closed on Johnson into times a day where we typically wouldn't want to if we had another option and the traffic congestion can be pretty um, notable and we'll get complaints day one when we have road work going on that that backs it up trying to get into the high school or trying to get into into town on your commutes. Um, there's also some things that we um, feel like the modeling might even be kind of overly optimistic and that when you get a quarter that's over capacity and traffic spilling back into upstream intersections, certain modeling tools don't fully capture that. So, like if my delay from Ellis Street is backing into Lizzie Street, when I'm analyzing Lizzie Street, that model might not capture all of that additional queue kind of spilling back into it. Um, with that said, like traffic operations is just one of the kind of metrics and things we look at. We do see a policy conflict from just a traffic congestion side. Um, but we also had some um, direct conversations with our emergency service providers because um, as you can see on the map on the right from Cal Fire, the whole hillside on our WUI, our wildland-urban interface on the east side of kind of Johnson and up into the neighborhoods above Slo High School are in our very high fire risk severity zones. And again, that's not just a hypothetical model. We've had fires up above the high school and know from our boots on the ground staff that they did have trouble flushing traffic out. There's limited access points and a lot of that's going to be pushed south onto Johnson kind of getting out

of those neighborhoods. Um, and uh, while we didn't have this at the time the staff report was published, we were able to coordinate with our consultants doing our citywide evacuation study saying, can you do some high-level modeling runs just to see what this looks like? And what they're seeing is that um, potential evacuation clearance times if you had a wildfire or event pushing people out of these neighborhoods, um, the total time to clear will would likely still be under our kind of two-hour informal benchmark. A road diet would likely increase it by about 20 minutes or so. Um, and again, that is also a high-level model. It doesn't really have sensitivity to if you have traffic signals back-to-back-to-back. So, this could be worse if we don't have a well-timed traffic signal timing plan or if an emergency event happened at the same time of day as high school bell times or commute, um, it it could be worse in reality. So, like it the modeling's very useful, but it's something we want to spend more time on if we're thinking of considering moving forward with this. But we also heard from our emergency service providers, we have heartburn about doing something that might slow us down on Johnson Avenue. It's a primary response route. It's the main route to French Hospital, one of the two major hospitals, medical centers in town. Please don't do something that slows us down trying to get to those places. Um, and again, um, our recommendation at the staff level was is not to advance a road diet as part of this project um, for the reasons I mentioned, conflicts with our congestion policy targets as well as some concerns that we're hearing from our emergency services folks. Um, we do have a detailed alternative in the staff report and I'm happy to get into more if council would like to discuss it further that would say, what would it look like if the council majority wanted to still give this more thought and pursue something that involved removing traffic lanes on Johnson. Um, happy to get it to get into that more. Um, we should received a few questions saying, well, what are you doing and what can you do as much with as you can within the the framework of this project to improve safety and address some of these concerns. And what we have in the current plans are not just refreshing

the striping, but there's a couple areas where we can squeeze in buffer bike lanes including along where the Johnson goes underneath the railroad bridge and then also kind of southbound between Fixlini and Bishop where the center turn lane is already narrows down and you've got some on-street shoulder where we can get a buffer going up that hillside on a bike on one side of the road as you approach Bishop Street. Um, we're also recommending some green markings within intersection conflict areas and two radar speed feedback signs. We have some further to the south on Johnson where speeds were higher to just to give driver awareness, oh, I'm going a little faster than I thought I was, as well as adding more speed limit signs and some pavement markings that say like the zone is a 35 mile an hour zone. Just it won't increase compliance 100%, but for the drivers that aren't trying to speed, it just gives you another queue of like, hey, maybe I'll pump the brakes a little bit. Um, we also had some questions I want to make sure we had we can address um as part of this presentation as we were unable to get these out ahead of the meeting um that I can kind of walk through briefly. Um one was the question what would the San Luis Drive and Johnson intersection look like if we were to pursue lane reductions on Johnson. We don't have that drawn perfectly, but the graphic on the board um shows you the red areas would basically traffic lanes that would be striped out and hatched away. Um so that if you've got one receiving lane on Johnson going southbound you only got one lane leaving the San Luis Drive approach. And similarly we'd probably still keep the northbound lane on Johnson that continues to San Luis Drive available, but it would just open up upstream but not as far back as it does now. Another question was um do the current plans how do they address speeding concerns and do they implement any recommendations for our more draft Vision Zero Action Plan? Um as I noted Johnson's not on our high injury network. We don't have specific engineering recommendations in our action plan for Johnson. We have kind of typical preventative systematic safety

improvements that we're doing like speed feedback signs, increasing awareness of conflict areas, and driver awareness of speeds. Um so there are things we that are in the current plan proposals that advance some of those recommendations. Um we had a question could we get a little more detail into the crash history. We've had 26 crashes on Johnson in the most recent 5-year period. Um no severe or fatal, no pedestrian crashes. We've had two bicycle crashes. I looked into the details on those. One was a cyclist coming down the hill that was right hooked at Lizzie. Um there was a combination of factors of a driver turning in front of them as well as the bicycle's brakes didn't work and weren't maintained, so it's kind of the worst case combination coming down a hill not being able to stop. And then we had one that was actually a scooter rider that was going the wrong direction in the going north in the southbound bike lane where someone is turning right out of Lizzie Street from the hospital complex that just didn't see them cuz they were coming the opposite direction. Um other crashes are kind of a mix of rear ends, side swipes, a broadside. We don't see a clear pattern on the corridor as a whole. Um again we haven't had severe crashes at any of those locations in recent history thankfully. Um another question was if there was interest in deferring Johnson or removing it from the current project, how much cost savings would that result in? Um it would save about $300,000 from the current project budget. Again, we're not paving Johnson. It's mostly striping and traffic control that amounts to that cost. Um and can the striping last longer if we don't do this project at this time? The striping on Johnson is starting to get pretty faded. I'd say we can we still probably still probably have to touch up a couple of little spots, but I think we could probably defer it a year or maybe two, but not much longer than that until we need to get out and at least refresh what's out there. Um we've done quite a bit of public engagement on this project. Uh typically with these projects we have a project website, news releases, um opportunities for people to keep up to date on where the project's at. We also did direct mailers for any streets where we were proposing something with a

substantive change like Mill Street on the neighborhoods where we're proposing traffic calming. Uh and then as well as Sydney Street. And we also want to gauge if there was general neighborhood support for those traffic calming measures. And what we were seeing from ballots, informal ballots we sent out and that were returned, it was clear majority support of folks in those neighborhoods wanted to see the traffic calming come. So we know there's general support for these within the neighborhood. Uh we also took this project to not just our Active Transportation Committee, but our Mass Transportation Committee to see your Mass Transit Committee I should say um to make sure they're aware of what was proposed. The Active Transportation Committee was supportive of the recommendations on Mill Street and at the Mill Toro intersection with the all-way stop and generally supportive of what staff was proposing. The one exception would be on Johnson where the majority of the ATC members were supportive of advancing a road diet to prioritize um comfort and safety in getting speeds down on Johnson particularly for active transportation users. Um the MTC was generally supportive of the project. Said keep prioritizing improvements to access and safety for pedestrians near bus stops with this and with future projects moving forward. Uh fiscal impact the project uh the total funding amount is about 4.9 million. The project cost for the base bid and the bid additive alt are right in line with that. Um I want to note to you there's a question of we talk about a publicly disclosed funding amount in the staff report. Why is that value different from the project cost? The publicly disclosed funding amount is like the maximum contract we could award. So and then still have enough remaining for contingencies if things come up and for construction management support materials testing. So we have more than 3.9 million dollars in funding, but some of that's needed for contingencies and other purposes. So I that 3.9 million maximum, you know, publicly disclosed funding amount, that's the maximum contract we could give out whether that's just for the base bid or for the bid and additive hopefully if if bids come in uh within our budget. Um in terms of next steps, we'd be

looking to get council authorization to advertise the project now um and we'd be starting construction early fall and likely push into early 2027 to complete the project. With that concludes our staff presentation. Happy to take any questions. Thank you and thank you for the um additional questions at the end as well. That was very helpful. Councilmember Marks. Uh thank you. Well, I have a probably an easy question to start with. I never heard of a speed cushion. So can you please explain to me a little bit more? I mean it's not bouncy, right? Can you just explain to me what a speed cushion is? Yes. Uh so a speed cushion so when we do traffic calming to try to slow traffic down, we will have some sort of vertical deflection. And typically what we have been doing in the past is like speed humps and speed tables where it still has the vertical deflection. But the difference between those and a speed cushion is speed cushions have like small wheel cutouts for like the larger axle vehicles so that they can have their wheels go around the actual vertical deflection without having to go over. So this minimizes disruption to emergency response and improves comfort for transit riders so that the buses and the larger vehicles aren't going vertically over these humps. But it'll still slow down most of the regular passenger vehicles that are on the

passenger car it's still like a speed bump. Yes. Got it. Okay, so then here's another question. There's been uh we received a lot of different uh emails uh regarding um well, uh advocating for the uh [clears throat]

um for reinstituting uh parking on Johnson specifically on the east side of Johnson, specifically um around uh the area that you identified as being downhill which is going to have more um radar signs and you know um and so I'm not talking about a road diet. I'm talking about what would the effect be of putting back the parking that had been there for decades then at some point it was removed. And now the argument is that because the um residential density is increasing so much with the buildings, with the ADU, with the Welcome Home Village and all that there seems to be a need for more on-street parking from the point of view of the residents. So what would that do if if you put say 10 or 12 parking spots, I'm just making up that number uh on the east side of Johnson, what would that do for all of your um calculations regarding uh traffic flow and all that? Sure, in terms of like the traffic flow and concerns with removing traffic lanes, those would remain whether you're removing a traffic lane to add space for a bike lane or for a wider sidewalk or for street parking. Um right now the road is so constrained there's not an ability to add street parking without taking at least one traffic lane away. So adding parking wouldn't be something we could achieve without removing traffic lanes or I think hypothetically you can go back in time to when the street had some street parking. From what I can tell it was likely removed to get shoulders or bike lanes on the street. So it might not have had those 30 plus years ago. Right.

Um removing the the current shoulders or bike lanes to provide width for street parking isn't probably something that we'd be recommending. Um if there was interest in advancing a road diet concept in terms of like what would be the ramifications of providing some of that extra width for parking um I I think it would be valued by the fronting property owners. I'm sure it's um I'm sympathetic to not having a loading zone or somewhere for your guests or you know, mail to park um when they're visiting your home. Um I can see the value in that. I think what we would be careful with is just making sure that it's it's pulled back from the driveway line of sight so that coming in and out of the driveways you're not going to have a worse safety outcome than you might have now by having no visual obstruction. So you probably wouldn't get as much street parking as some might be hoping for cuz we'd be red curbing that near the intersections and driveways. I'd also be very careful to make sure that we have enough width from the bike lane that's on street and where people might be opening doors from those parked cars so that you don't have a situation where a driver opens a door into a cyclist coming down the hill and either hitting them or forcing them to swerve in the the to traffic. Yeah. So, I it's probably a spot where I'd be looking at doing something where we have like a bike buffer on both the traffic side of the bike lane and the parking side. We've had a a couple spots in town where there's enough width. Um so, there's tradeoffs. I can see value for the private property owners. I don't know if adding the parking would have a a sizable safety benefit. I think if it's done right, it wouldn't necessarily make the street much less safe if it's done right. But, it sounds to me like it couldn't be done without the road diet concept. That's correct. Okay, thank you. Thanks for clarifying that. Thank you. And then, the daylighting rule didn't exist at that time, too. Yeah. Council member Schwarzman. Thank you. Thank you. All [clears throat] my questions are about Johnson. Um not shocking to my colleagues.

Um Can you talk a little bit about the the data analysis on the traffic flow and what the peak time the the peak period time frames are? Like, I know it's largely since it's in front of going into the front of the high school um going northbound that a lot of it is around school starting and ending. So, are we talking about a half-hour time period where the um where the the traffic uh queuing doesn't meet our level of service? Are we talking about an hour? Are we talking about 10 minutes? Um can you talk about the duration that that those are evaluating? Sure. Uh so, uh our our standards we typically look at like the worst hour in the mornings and the worst hour in the afternoons. I would say

[clears throat]

the morning peak's pretty focused. So, traffic drops off quite a bit once most folks have gotten into their office or have picked up their kids or dropped Sorry, dropped their kids off. Um so, I'd say like we haven't analyzed every single hour of the day, but my best guess is that the really noticeable or significant um congestion queuing in the mornings would subside past that kind of 8:00 to 9:00 kind of peak time. In the afternoons, it's similar, but it's drawn out a little bit. So, it really starts earlier, you know, 2:45, 3:00 as some of the other K-12 schools get off and we seem to have a little earlier afternoon commute start than other areas I've worked in. It's get sometimes it's 3:00, 3:30 into that 4:00 to 4:30 and then sometimes it drops off pretty quick around 5:00, but I'd say most likely you're looking at a worst-case hour in the mornings and a couple hours in the afternoons. Um but they're they're pretty significant queuing from what we're looking at. I also think one I'll I'll note, too, is um our traffic analysis was based on the latest traffic counts we have along this whole stretch of Johnson, which are about 2 years old at this point, 2 to 3 years old. So, there might be some additional growth we're not capturing that's happened since then. We also uh for most projects we're looking at major street design changes, we look at like, how does this work now, but how's it work in the next 10 years, in the next 20 years as the rest of the city builds out. We haven't done that level of analysis for Johnson is that even day one we're seeing some pretty notable conflicts. So, um just as an example, I'm looking at the chart right now that was in the um the amend the addendum um memo and there are some times when at the a northbound road diet Excuse me, [clears throat] where there is an F level of rating. Again, I guess maybe I'm asking the same question again, but when we

[cough] [clears throat]

When we say there's an F level rating, do we mean that's for like that whole hour that you're talking about? I mean, my experience with that is that it usually lasts a couple minutes. Um I use I travel that daily. Um so, like what is the duration of time period, you know, what's an estimate that you if you can give an estimate of how long it's at that worst level? Sure. So, it's a it's looking [clears throat] at the hour as this analysis scenario, but we have factors built in there that reflect like the worst-case kind of 15-minute period. So, it's reflective of there's likely a 5- or 10-minute period within that individual hour that might be worse than what those results say and then there's a back end um that might be less bad. Um and there's times where we can break it into increments to kind of see how it floats between peaks and off-peaks. Um but that hour that analysis represents like an hour as an average. Okay. Awesome. That that's helpful. Um and then, the data, the crash data, um two uh two bicycle accidents or crashes in the last 5 years, where do we get that data? How is it reported to us? Is it based on responses by PD or how do we gather that data? Yeah. So, all of our crash data are based on collision reports that have been filed with the police department um or from CHP and that end up in our records if they were the responding entity. With that said, like there's there's going to be crashes that get missed if they don't get a collision report filed. Um and that is less likely when there's a real injury involved. Um but, you know, minor fender benders are We'll see this sometimes more with like, you know, students as they pick up their bike and they take off again. Um said, "I'm fine." So, I'm sure there's some crashes that we miss. I think hopefully we're not missing any really bad ones, but I'm sure there's data out

there that isn't part of our package. And so, we also rely on like community feedback and inputs. So, we'll get emails every once in a while that says, "You know, my my student got hit. I don't think they reported it, but I want you to know about this." We'll file this in our records. It doesn't end up as like a data point in these summaries, but it helps complete a little bit more of the picture for us, at least. Yeah, I know of at least one bike student crash uh that went to the hospital, but probably is not reported cuz it wasn't represented in your explanations of what happened. So, um and I suspect that a lot of students just get up and by the way. Um and we don't have a way of calculating or keeping track of near misses, either, right? Because again, if someone doesn't get hurt, then you don't know if a near miss happened at one of those intersections, for example, along the route. Yeah. We'll We'll talk a little bit more of this on our Vision Zero Action Plan in a couple months, but um what's really helpful for us is we did a really robust public input process as part of that where people could pin points on a map. And we've got hundreds and hundreds of points. So, as we're planning a project like this, one thing is we'll look at our crash data and then the next part is we'll look at that cuz sometimes there's really great detail that's like, "This is unsafe because there's this one van that always parks in this spot." And so, that is also a piece of information we take in to help guide improvements, whether there's been a crash that's happened or close calls. So, that's one way we've found that's helpful with that. Okay. And then, um last, I think for now at least, um actually no, I have one more about your slides, but um second to last. Um We relatively recently, and you pointed out a situation on another stretch of Johnson where we implemented a pilot project and then not too long ago we implemented a pilot project on Grand Avenue. Um they're reevaluating. There's an opportunity right now to give feedback on Grand Avenue to see if that's potentially a long-term solution that started out as a pilot project. We have a pilot project on the other

section of Johnson that became a permanent solution. Is this not a decent opportunity for a pilot project? We're just talking about paint here. If things don't go right, could we uh take the scrape the paint off and give it another go? Um yeah, that's a great question. Um first I'll say is like I think our philosophy moving forward with any major street design is start with temporary pilot things you can test and really have confidence on what the right longer-term design is. Um and we've been that on Johnson and Grand. I would say this the first project where we've had a road diet contemplated where we're finding conflicts with our adopted policies that we didn't feel comfortable recommending it. Um so, that gives us a little more caution. I think for us, the congestion is a policy decision. It I mean, it does affect our transit riders and our commercial deliveries and our commuters. But, for me, too, is if if I'm not hearing that we're comfortable with this from like an emergency response standpoint, I have less confidence about even trying a pilot if there's real concerns that there a wildfire comes through and we can't flush people out safely. Um so, I'd say I have some thoughts on like what a pilot could look like if there's interest in this. With that, I think it'd still be something where we'd want to do some more close um collaboration and review to make sure we know what the implications are and that everyone from a public safety standpoint is comfortable with testing something. And also, like we haven't notified the community on this corridor that we're going to be moving forward with the road diet. So, I think personally it's something we want to know that even if it's a temporary pilot, that they know it's coming and why and what kind of feedback we're looking for as we do that. Um I'd say even a pilot is something we need some staffing resources to put into, like how are we measuring the success? Um it still doesn't cost nothing, so it'd be striping like we're currently proposing and then potentially removing it or modifying it again. Some traffic signal timing changes our staff would have to work on. So, there's some additional resources that would just be the the

main tradeoff side I convey regarding the potential for like even a a pilot project uh to take away traffic lanes on this stretch. Okay. My last question, I promise, is back to the slide that you I think it was my question from earlier today. So, I appreciate you trying to incorporate it sort of on the fly, but the the pictures of or the design drawings of what it would look like with a road diet in either one direction just removing one lane in either direction. Um could you maybe um I think it was maybe one more slide one way or the other. You were almost there. Is this society you're thinking of? Um, no, like like the overview um of San Luis Drive the intersection of San Luis Drive and

it. Just to try to like help visualize if we took a lane away in one direction of the other, like what how would that look? So, I was a little confused as to what you were trying to explain with the red um lines here. Sure. So, where you see the red here, imagine that would just be striping that's like hatching out that lane. Like, I don't think we'd be putting in like a raised median or something. But, if we had one lane in each direction on Johnson south of San Luis Drive, we currently have two lanes that turn left from San Luis Drive onto southbound Johnson. So, we would need to remove one of those upstream, or else we'd have two lanes turning onto a street with only one receiving lane.

Got it. Yeah, and then the other direction I was just trying to convey like we still think we would need that lane where it splits in one direction continues left on Johnson under the railroad. The other single lane continues north on San Luis Drive. Like, that would still need to remain. Just where it opens up from one lane to two is something that we'd have to convey a little more in detail. Okay. And right now, just with looking at this picture, not what you were trying to depict here, but northbound it shows a little bit of a buffered bike lane just past the crosswalk there. Is there a buffered bike lane there right now? I didn't think so.

with the project. So, we get a little little more width to work with once that lane splits off towards San Luis Drive and we go along the curve where we've also seen some crashes with people coming in that corner too hot. So, one of the recommendations that we can do even without removing traffic lanes is striping that buffer. And then we have width as you go down underneath the rail bridge to keep a buffered bike lane to at least get a little more separation, hopefully slow down speeds coming down that hill as you start heading into downtown. Yeah, that is definitely a not comfortable place to ride a bike down that steep hill with fast moving traffic.

do with with without removing any traffic lanes. Okay. All right, I'll let my colleagues have at it. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Boswell. Uh thank you. I just first question is on the uh speed cushion pilot. I'm just sort of curious how we are we going to institute some sort of monitoring program and when would we have how long would we take to evaluate before we decided whether to keep or go to a different solution? Yeah, so as as Jess mentioned, we we tried these about 2 years ago building them in asphalt. There's great standard plans other cities have used. We found is you really have to get the shapes really perfect and our contractor were having trouble. And so, we put them in and they didn't slow traffic at all. I could go through with my small SUV and it didn't slow me at all. So, we said we'll take those out, they're not working. Let's have more flexibility to fine tune and get our shapes right so that they work for controlling speeds and work for our fire trucks and our buses. And so, our approach right now is we're actually going to advance two cushions on Mill Street east of this slurry project where it was already slurry sealed and striped a couple years ago when we tried the asphalt. Just in those same spots, putting out our speed detecting equipment before the cushions go in and then directly afterwards. And then also having conversations with our transit operators and our fire department like in ambulance companies like, is this working for you while also slowing down everybody but you? Um we'd like to have that feedback and one of the reasons Jess mentioned we're recommending doing that with prefabricated bolt-down cushions that have a the same shape every time, but using uh hoping to work with a local contractor outside of a large paving project where that might be a a sub-consultant that's in the the valley or somewhere outside of town. So, we can say, put this in based on our spec. Oh, it's not working. Put these a little closer together. Or move them a little bit this way. And try to hone in and have a design we're really comfortable with with those two on Mill

with the intent that over those coming month that could happen over the coming months into the summer and then we're ready with the spec that works and we know is effective to come in with the rest of the cushions on Mill, two on Augusta, and the one on Sydney as soon as this slurry project's complete. Okay. So, that's the value of the bolt-down is we can move them. You can move them if you have a sewer line or a lateral placement, you can pop them out. Unfortunately, they're not that much more cost-effective than asphalt. Um the between equipment and labor, it's about the same. But, you can pop them up and move them around if you need to, which is a huge benefit. Um there I think it's on and my notes say I've got it on page 265 of what whatever my version of the staff report to PDF. Uh this is regarding um um you know, discussions about how to better facilitate um bike ped activity along the Johnson corridor, particularly associated with the high school and high school students. There's a discussion there about the informal agreement with the uh uh Flora and Fixlini collection connection with the county. It what is the status of that informal agreement? How informal versus formal is it? Yeah, that's a good question. I actually have some timely um updates too. So, um for decades, probably longer than I've been around, there was a goat path kind of through the county's property between Fixlini and Flora down the hill that people would walk and bike to and from the high school to stay off Johnson. With the county's recent probation building as they started developing plans for that, we started seeing where and said, "Well, you're kind of blocking that off. Like, what are you doing to fix that? We have this planned shared use path through that connection." Um and the county agreed for now to say, "Well, we're not going to stop people from getting through. They're just going to take a a slightly different route. We won't trespass them, but we have no formal easement or legal agreement saying the public can use that." It's more of kind of an informal agreement from the county. Although, their

approval their environmental approval of their probation building said phase two of this master plan needs to include this path and accommodate this. Phase one is allows to continue to not block people from cutting through. Um and we had recent conversation with the county that sound like they might have some interest in exploring negotiations to maybe dedicate the right-of-way for that path sooner. Um but likely in the condition that says, "Well, then you got to let us off the hook to build this with our next campus plan, you know, development. If the city wants to take the lead, we're happy to talk with you about getting you a path towards that and not precluding it, but that means you might be taking the lead in building this." Um so, no formal negotiations. No, we don't have engineering drawings for what it looks like or what it might cost, but um there might be at least a path towards some kind of mutual agreement at least controlling our own destiny on right-of-way. But, that's really the long-term picture is like get people off of Johnson where you can if they're on foot or on bike. Um and that might be best explored as car as part of a separate, you know, safe routes focused planning effort for both that and how do you get that last leg into the campus? There's kind of a steep semi-paved trail. Um but you know, I can see value in getting people the ability to ramp up off of San Luis Drive as you come down the hill too and just avoid that whole campus entry if you can as you're coming into campus on a bike or on foot. So, I've been spending a lot of time out there watching traffic. I think that Fixlini and Flora connection's huge in the overall safety and kind of long-term plan for this. So, it just needs to be something that comes to the top of that priority list when we're putting our money into different projects. Um in terms of uh lane width on Johnson, I was trying to read the plans. It seems like we're in the 10 to 11 and 1/2 ft range. Have we gone as far as we can in reducing lane widths on that section of Johnson? Yeah, we've actually even had staff go out and just double-check everything with a laser. There are through this stretch we've been talking about, they're almost all

exclusively exactly 10 ft. A couple of points where they're even tiny bit less than that. That's about the narrowest we can go on an arterial street and that is not super comfortable for transit drivers, emergency response. It's real tight. And then also the bike lanes are 5 ft. That's our absolute minimum width. Um the stretch where we might have a little bit wider lanes are the stretches we're already showing adding bike buffers and squeezing the traffic lanes down narrower. Um but the bulk of that stretch between San Luis Drive and Bishop's kind of absolute narrowest. Like, I wouldn't feel confident going to like a 9-ft lane on a street like this. All right. Okay. Thank you. Uh one more question. Uh similar question on um South Street. Um but the issue here is um uh it was interesting to hear you mention that there's a couple places where we're going to uh we've got some space to add a buffer, move the bike lane in a little closer to the curve and add a a buffer. It's always it was always odd to me the way we striped it when we first did the lane reductions on South Street, but um I was listening to your description and looking back at the um at the plan set for it. It seemed like there's some other places where it still looks like there is space to the right that is not on-street parking space or even marked as no parking where uh there wasn't Are are we going to sort of Are you just looking to maximize every opportunity where we could push the bike lane in and put a a buffer? Or are there some areas that for some reason we would sort of want to maintain that current still configuration where there's the extra spaces to the right in effect versus the left? Yeah, so on South Street um it's primarily on the south side of the road, the eastbound direction, that most of that is no parking allowed. And again, it was Caltrans striped it before they handed the road 227 off to us. And yeah, for some reason they left what looks like a parking lane on their side and put the bikes close to traffic. So, that's where we're saying where there's no parking already allowed, like let's

make that super clear and get a little more separation by striping the buffer on the left side and put the bike lane to the curb side. Where you see that shift back out is primarily on like an intersection approach where we dash it and you want drivers to like kind of merge into the bike lane, yielding to bikes before they make a turn, or where we do have on-street parking allowed fronting Meadow Park or there's a bus stop right there, too, where that we'd still want that to shift back and you drop the buffer to keep with for the the bus stop and the parking lane. Um on the north side, there's on-street parking for a majority of that stretch. There's probably some pockets where parking might be restricted where you can, you know, hypothetically squeeze something in. The transitions might be weird and we might have to be like doing some fog seal or something so you don't have weird conflicting markings still showing, but we squeeze in where we thought we could fit it in most effectively within the budget we have, too. Okay. Yeah, and I you don't want you don't want uh weaving behavior, either. So, that's Okay. All right. Uh thanks. That's all my questions for now. Thank you. Thank you for answering so many already. Um I'm going to go back to the postcards for a minute. Do those go to the owners and the tenants? Awesome.

Correct. Awesome. Thank you. Um So, this is a probably a crazy idea, but I just have to ask. So, I think about like Pasadena or San Francisco, there's some areas where like from this time to this time, this is an open lane. Otherwise, it's uh a parking lane or otherwise, it's a bike lane. I'm just wondering that sounds like a nightmare to communicate, but I'm just wondering if there's ever a conversation we would have about Johnson during certain times, I cannot even imagine it going down in lanes, but then as you've just described, it's only a couple of hours earlier and a couple of hours later, the rest of the time it could be free flowing. So, have we talked about kind of on a time basis or a scheduled basis that we could change the lanes? Uh that's a really interesting question. I have seen a lot of those zones in San Francisco and other places. Where I've seen it most is where there isn't a designated bike lane on the street, but basically what is an outside space that maybe has the most need for parking outside of peak times, but the most need for to be a traffic lane during peak times. And I've seen those work. It is it takes a lot of driver awareness. Um and I'm sure there towing companies are on call and ready every morning to kind of get people out of the way if they're not listening. I don't know if I've seen it used um where you also have a bike lane. I'm sure it's been done. Um my my concern would be just in terms of risk and um and liability for the road user, but for the city, too. If you had off-peak time in the middle of the night, but you happen to have a cyclist going to work and there's a car in the lane and they're just forced to swerve on a higher-speed road. So, I think it's an interesting concept and you're going to see some of that on like 101 South with the part-time managed lane that Slow Clog and Caltrans are working on. I don't know if it's something we thought a lot about on Johnson. If there was no bike lane, maybe it there'd be some more potential to do kind of a part-time parking lane, part-time traffic lane. If we're keeping a bike lane on street, I I don't know that I could see something that works real

effectively. I didn't think so. I just thought I'd ask cuz it seems like we are really only talking about a couple of hours within the day, but during those couple of hours, that's key, whether it's emergency or whether it's um families in their vehicles. Um can we go to the Aero Vista picture over the additive? Thank you. Totally hear you on the accidents there and it's very scary to go out of the left, but um or and so that means that people that are going to the medical businesses, restaurants, etc. are coming around into the airport to then turn around and take a left?

You've got a couple of two options and I'll note, too, this is a recommendation we've already been working on even before we confirmed that Broad would be part of the scope of this. And I've also already discussed with our fire department and police to say, would this create create any issues with you being able to navigate through this? It actually was a likely to be a condition of approval for a development on on Aero Vista that would be adding more traffic to it. It just hasn't moved forward yet. And the issue we're seeing is people just trying to make that left out of Aero Vista and trying to judge gaps in multiple lanes of, you know, 50 mile an hour traffic. We've had two fatal crashes in the last three or four years from that. Yeah. Um but there needs to be an option to get out and what the options would be and I'll note, too, before we would make any of these changes, we'd be doing mailers and communications to all the properties on the street so they know what's coming, but also what their options are. You've got two real options. One is you could navigate out to the on Aero to where Aero Vista connects to Aero and come out at the signal. Um or what I expect more people will likely do is make a right turn and then you can do a U-turn at that Aero signal, too. We've analyzed, you know, does that shift create any operational issues at the Aero signal or safety concerns? And and we've looked at that, it works fine. Okay. So, you've got two options, um but we'd really like to eliminate that turn out. Okay. Um we can keep the turn in. We can keep right turns in and out. It's just the left turn out that's been problematic. Yeah. Our general plan um and our safety plan recommend in the long term like a continuous raised median along this whole stretch where it's only open at spots you want left turns to happen. Yeah. So, this is likely something that would materialize at some point in time and we think with the recent fatal crashes like now's the time to take action. Makes perfect sense. I just was trying to picture how that works. So, thank you so much for that clarification. And then lastly, um I may have missed this in the report, so I'm sorry if I have. Uh the traffic signal timing. I remember being quite surprised around the complete streets on South Figueroa that we didn't have the ability to work on the um traffic signals so that emergency

vehicles could get through. So, similarly on the Johnson, back to we have a hospital right there, do we have the ability to change the traffic signals um in an emergency? Yeah, so there's kind of two things I'll separate. One is like a day-to-day emergency. Can an ambulance, can a fire truck tell the traffic signal it's coming and flush traffic out? And yes, we've got those on Johnson that currently at each intersection, I'd say with the exception of Bishop for some reason, but the signals closest to the hospital have that equipment already. Okay. That's what I thought. Just wanted to make sure as we're talking about it, made me think maybe I didn't maybe it wasn't true. So, okay, great. Thank you so much for that. Uh Council member Schwarzman. Sorry, one last question. You had offered to talk about alternative number two a little bit more if we wanted to and I would like to hear what the pluses and minuses, I guess, um and especially what the ramifications might be in terms of trade-offs uh if the council decided to favor alternative two and um put a little bit more energy into a sooner implementation of more actions on Johnson Avenue. Sure. Um as alternative two is described, it that would be deferring Johnson from this current project. If there's interest in further exploring a road diet, I don't think it's something we can do and still keep this project on track and have Johnson be part of the scope of the ceiling project. Um the major trade-off is there's more technical studies and coordination we would need to do, not just with the community and the folks that live on Johnson, but with our fire department, emergency service providers, and making sure we fully understand the real ramifications and trade-offs of this. That's stuff that will take time. I think it would take us at least a year to have a really firm grasp on that to come back with even like a well-crafted pilot project. And we'd struggle to come back with something if we're hearing from our emergency service providers that this is a real concern for us that we could confidently

recommend. Obviously, we'll take um recommendations from the council with whatever you'd like to pursue. Um the other trade-offs in terms of workload, if there was interest in prioritizing that to happen any sooner, um we'd have to look in The other things we're working on over this next year are, you know, Figueroa complete streets going to be in construction. Like we can't really not work on that.

Yeah. It's Foothill Corridor planning. It's South Broad Street Corridor planning. It's Grand Avenue guiding the beyond the pilot project. And it's implementing our Vision Zero action plan. So, we would need to defer, kind of take resources off of one of those if we want to really focus on this. So, that that would be the main trade-off. Um it's just some time to better understand what this looks like, make sure the community knows that we're considering it um before we could come back with you like with a firm, you know, pilot project or whatever that form of next steps would look like. So, let me just make sure I understand. So, the way it's written in alternative two, um taking an extra year to 18 months, would not necessarily require a trade-off on some of those other projects. It would only be a trade-off on some of those other projects if um if we wanted to push it through quicker. Did I hear that correctly?

Yeah, and I'll clarify. So, like if there's interest in pushing it through quicker, we would need to like pause on one of those other projects. Yeah. Okay. Um this is not like an insignificant work effort and if there's if we have funds where we can have some consultant support on some things, that might really reduce the burden on staff. I don't think it would like cause a complete standstill on any of those project activities, but um I'd be I wouldn't be accurate if I said it would have zero I know there's zero consequence. It might add some friction on other things that we're doing. Um but I wouldn't say it like pushes those out a year more than they would otherwise be otherwise beyond schedule, but there'd be there'd be some some friction.

trade-off, yeah. Okay. And and with the Figueroa complete streets project, you all did that full analysis with fire and law enforcement to make sure that because it seems like we're doing a lot more we have a lot more proposed in terms of vertical um you know, curbs and things that would interfere with emergency vehicles on South Figueroa than we're even talking about really on Johnson. We're just talking about at least if the the designs that you have, rough designs are any indication that's just all paint and maybe some flex posts. So, um I just want to I guess my question is did we do as much analysis on Higuera in terms of safety vehicles as we're talking about doing here on Johnson? I think the concept of a road diet on Johnson with no vertical obstructions maybe reduces some of the concern about day-to-day emergency response in that you still have as much width to clear to the curb side and get out of the way. And the center lane. Yeah, with that said it's not zero like people don't always know what they're doing when they see those lights and sirens and they maybe go to the left or stay in the turn lane and don't get out of the way. And if it's certain time of day where it's backed up like it's you're just going to have some more residual kind of delay. So, there's maybe it's not um catastrophic delays for emergency response but it's probably not zero and it's going to be worse than it is now. Um by how much is difficult to measure. I think I see have more heartburn about some of the evacuation concerns and that is difficult to flush all that out and like we're having this conversation with Higuera and even with tank farm with the road diet and tank farm and what I was highlighting is like these bottlenecks are at the signals. Um with Higuera the stretch where we're reducing lanes doesn't have a bunch of signals and I was like well this would actually move a lot of traffic if you're not getting stopped very frequently. Where this is kind of the opposite where in this case I have worries that the modeling's not um is overly optimistic because it the model for evacuation analysis doesn't know if there's a signal there or if

it's just a road with two lanes and nothing. So, well you have the ability to have some custom signal time plans that if your communications are working you get a call there's a fire coming can you turn on these plans you can help flush some of that traffic out and everything works as intended. It's not perfect and it's still going to be less capacity during emergency event than having more traffic lanes. So, this is one where it's probably the evacuation concerns that gives me a little more heartburn from the public safety side than just getting places and disrupting day-to-day emergency response but even on that I would expect there to be some additional delays in what we see now. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate all that. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, thank you so much and thanks to my colleagues for kind of poking at so many different angles with your questions. I really appreciate you covering a lot of the questions I had. Um I was wondering if we could pull back up the slide that you had on the recent um evacuation modeling um that WUI zone if there's an east side emergency. Yeah, awesome. And I was wondering if uh if the modeling when the modeling is uh what time of day the modeling is kind of based on is it based on kind of a particular time time of day, ideal conditions, is it like what are what's being modeled here? Yeah, so it's somewhat simplistic in that it's looking at like total effective population what's your kind of and there's some assumptions on this side that are maybe a little conservative like how many vehicles are evacuating and how much time do you have between when you give that notice to when people actually get in their cars and leaving this the area and like what points can they go to? And some of these scenarios look at like you know, what if there's a potential flood that floods that bridge on California and they're all coming out this way versus having the option to come out on California from this neighborhood or coming down Johnson. I'd say what the model's not sensitive to is like how detailed your intersections are operating and also like what time of day

this happens at. So, if this happens in the middle of the night um and people are awake and ready to get in their cars like this could be um maybe overly pessimistic but if it happens at 3:00 and the high school's getting out and you've got your commute traffic it could be much worse than this. So, it's not sensitive to like a specific time of day and unfortunately we don't have the ability to set a time of day to adjust like baseline flows for these for this type of modeling. So, there's ways you can look at it but it just requires some more detailed post kind of analysis to try to get a better picture of that. And I know you mentioned that this was kind of an 11th hour modeling that we were able to do and I'm super appreciative that it was added in um but I was wondering and I know there's so many variables that could be modeled but I was wondering if uh we looked at either kind of a northbound or southbound only road diet as part of the modeling and kind of got an idea of what that added in cuz mostly people would be evacuating to the south. Is that right as part of our plan? Yeah, that that's right and I think well we looked at it at the traffic the day-to-day traffic operations we looked at a kind of hybrid of what if you just have two northbound lanes or if you have two south. They're both kind of bad for like day-to-day traffic flows. We haven't looked at different variants in the evacuation modeling but the way that modeling is set up is it's flushing everyone out into the south. So, I think what you see the results would be the same if you even if you had two northbound lanes I don't think it'd make a difference but um I would my guess and we'd have to model it but my guess is if you had two southbound lanes your results would be closer [snorts] to what you have existing maybe a little increase but it's certainly something we could look at. Um and that was one value of why we were kind of looking at these hybrid scenarios like does having two lanes southbound reduce some of those concerns and it's not a scenario we have yet. It's something we could look at. Great and uh you mentioned that two hour threshold and remind me um is that a a local threshold or kind of a state wide standard? And we're getting darn close to the two hours there um when you start

adding in some of the the road diet scenarios and so I was just kind of curious who determines that kind of baseline of trying to evacuate under two hours? Sure and and I don't know if Chief Harris is still around he might have better even more perspective on this so I welcome to invite him up to convey but Wonderful. My understanding is there's no formal adopted standard that says state wide or nationally this is your target and you must be under this one minute over this is an impact. In the evacuation studies we've been preparing city wide two hours is kind of a typical benchmark for comparison purposes. It doesn't say one second over that's a okay or one second over that's impactful and I'm sure Chief Harris can probably um weigh in on that with a little more perspective of how we're using that moving forward. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Chief. Hi, Randy Harris Center on Fire Chief. Uh Mr. Schwartz is entirely correct that there is no one model. Um when you look at geography and topography and everything that goes into it there's not an ideal situation for any community. Um what I can say is this is an absolutely critical area uh especially because of French Hospital and amount of emergency response both to and from there and then the other dynamic piece is because of the um hillside and how many residents as we would have to evacuate both during the day um during traffic times and in the evening because of the higher winds. So, it is a a piece that we really would want to take a special look at. And perhaps not a fair question cuz I didn't ask it in advance um so I don't know if the data is top of mind but uh you you mentioned that we had some concerning evacuation times um during the uh last fire emergency in that area and I was wondering if we had data on how long that took um to evacuate that zone. I really don't. I I don't have all the dynamics of when they activated that. Um it's one of those things that's really hard to capture because we're so focused on the emergency that there's no um like dispatch point or anything to go back um reflectively and measure that.

So, it's it's really a tough one. Yeah, fair enough. Thank you. Appreciate it. Great. Thank you to all my colleagues for the good questions and thank you to staff for being able to answer questions that you really can't have all the answers to. So, thank you for that. Um any public comment? Yes, we have one speaker, Garrett Otto. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Garrett Otto. I'm the chair of the Active Transportation Committee. Uh happy bike month. Um so, uh I'm going to focus our comments on the ATC from the ATC as uh to Johnson because the rest of the plans kind of uh implemented most of our recommendations. Um it was pretty clear that from what was being proposed that um in our purview we're uh reviewing conformance with the Active Transportation Plan as well as um you know, how it conforms to other city documents and the you know, when we look at when we take that as um a whole we look at the Active Transportation Plan and we have recommended recommendations for protected bike lanes so it's not in conformance with Active Transportation Plan. Vision Zero is this creating a more safe corridor with what's being proposed? No, it's essentially putting back what's currently there. Is it helping our our climate action plan which heavily relies on a mode shift? And is this going to help people feel more comfortable riding on it? Absolutely not. So, I mean there's there's all sorts of reasons that that we decided to say we don't recommend going forward with what's being proposed. Um we recommend that there is more consideration for a pilot project to reduce um the number of travel lanes and get some real world data. We have models that are just guessing as you've

heard we can't predict it. Let's put out some some new different way of configuring it and what we might see is the fact that so many people are going to the school in the morning is because their parents are not comfortable sending their kids to get to school on bike. And so, you might see a good level of mode shift if you gave them a safe and comfortable spot. But we're right now assuming that that mode shift doesn't happen from the fact that okay, yeah, we're going to keep growing but of course if we keep growing and keep trying to make our level of service for vehicles as fast as possible yeah, people aren't going to choose a different mode of transportation, especially when it feels like you might be sending your kid out to be to potentially not come home that day. I want to highlight a few other safety statistics that that I found. I have the I have 12 years of traffic collision data from 2010 to 2022 that I've used for kind of some analysis. And so on Johnson Street there in that 12-year period there were 30 collisions with with bicyclists and pedestrians. And that represented 18 sorry 16% of all traffic collisions on that corridor. Meanwhile, the number of people biking and walking only represent less than 2%. So there's a huge disparity of where of who's getting hit on this corridor. And of course people aren't going to try to go out there when when it's not feeling safe. So please do what you can. Thank you. Thank you. [clears throat] Feeling commentator, right? Yes, I am. Okay, great. Thank you. Council member Shorsman. Yeah, I'm going to kick this off. So uh I just want to commend staff, commend the ATC. Thank you for the really hard

work that you've all done on this. I attended the ATC meeting quite a while ago now when this was discussed and just really appreciate both the ATC and staff really listening to the residents. It was a it was a packed house that night. There were a lot of people there interested in talking about Mill Street. There were a few people there I think remember if I'm remembering correctly talk interested in talking about Sidney Street where we've had some agenda correspondence over the last day or two. And there were some people there to talk about Johnson Avenue. I think you know as as Garrett said most of the recommendations are pretty straightforward. I'm happy to support. And again grateful to staff for listening to the community members on Mill Street who really do not like that traffic circle. I I drive through it all the time. I do think that it it does function but if it will function better as a crosswalk as four a four-way crosswalk and stop signs then let's give the neighborhood what they want. It's it's an easy enough one to do. Also really grateful that there's another opportunity to make the Aero Vista changes if the bids come in too high on this one because it's pretty pretty sketchy to make a left-hand turn in a car let alone don't even think about a bike making a left-hand turn there. It's just there's just too many lanes of traffic to cross. So I'm glad we have a few alternatives for taking care of that. I would love for us to consider taking another look at Johnson. I walked in here tonight. I'm going to be honest. I walked in here tonight advocating wanting to advocate for a pilot project right now because we've done it before on other corridors. It seems like we could do it here. It's just some paint not putting any vertical you know vertical barriers that might inhibit our

emergency vehicles but I understand that we really probably should do some more community outreach on this if we're going to really make some changes to that roadway and it would be good to do a better analysis on the emergency vehicle impacts. So I would be okay with not pursuing quite as aggressively a pilot project right now but I I do really want us to look at this a little bit more. There are lots of kids. It's a safe route to school. I've had near misses on that that I haven't reported. I've had scary instances going down that street with cars trying to either turn in or out of the side streets on my bike and it's it doesn't feel safe. So I can imagine why my neighbor has had two high schoolers. I live just on the other side of the hill from the high school on Johnson and I've had and they all drive their cars to school. Well, my son bikes to school through the Fixlini Flora bypass behind the health department. I see a lot of bikes going through there. So I know that is an alternative but I don't think that that's as good of an alternative for those that are coming from other parts of town. If they're coming from my neighborhood, yes, but not not many others. So I I would really like to see us look at that a little bit more and I just think our data is not because staff have any better access to data and are keeping it from us or anything like that. I think you guys are reporting the data that you receive. I just think the data is really woefully inaccurate and if we had real data on near misses and and crashes and they weren't all high school students that if they get hit or they crash into somebody they're not just getting up wiping themselves off and going to school. I think the the numbers would be different. So um Just looking through my last little bits of notes here to see if I missed

anything. um I don't see anything. So that that's where I'll leave it and I'm curious to hear what my colleagues think. Um but I would I would love to see us do a little bit more on that on that area. Thank you. Thank you, Council member Boswell. Yeah, thank you. Um similar Council member Shorsman, I was also hoping that we would find something we could do that would be providing some additional safety benefits both pedestrians and bicyclists in that section of Johnson. Um I just I I don't see that we have enough evidence nor have done enough outreach at this point probably to justify moving forward with lane reduction. I think the difficult question is what then to do next. I mean other than we can move forward with staff recommendation. I'm very aware it's a two tier two project and that we have quite a few tier one projects we still have not completed and I definitely don't want to distract staff from those tier one projects. I think I'm thinking a couple things and this is sort of future thinking but one is that in the next financial plan might be the appropriate time to have some discussions about um how we're prioritizing both the remainder of our tier one projects and our tier two projects. Um I mean it's interesting that this one is a tier two. I understand partly because of the data on on um injuries and crashes but it's also obviously right next to the high school. Um Which probably puts it in a tier 1.5 in my mind. But um but the other is the Flora Fixlini neighborhood greenway. Um you know maybe

it's time to move a little faster on that solution as an alternative because frankly regardless of what we did would do on Johnson this would be a if we design this right this would be a superior alternative for folks on the north side of the street and then even integrating or excuse me on the east side of the street and even integrating um for folks on the west side to be able to cross and then use the the greenway as well. So I'm almost thinking like that might be the thing we would want to put the effort into even before we address a tier two project on that section of Johnson. So I guess that's kind of where I am. I mean otherwise the rest of the plan I'm happy to support staff recommendation on all the other streets. I think Johnson was the only one I was sort of really having um some difficulty sort of deciding which what was our best path forward. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, a little bit of heartburn on this one. I I have a kid who bikes to school. One of my best friends has a son who is one of the statistics you mentioned earlier ended up with a broken arm after getting a right hook. My gut response on all these is to really focus on advancing safety features for all of our users. Um but I I got to say I the particular location of this one is really giving me a little bit of consternation just because of the hospital and the evacuation zones. I I liked the discussion that was just happening from Council member Boswell about perhaps advancing this Flora Fixlini project as a way of dealing with some limitations that we have in this stretch. Um I'm really hesitant to move fully into

putting this project off so that we can look at it in 18 months though because I think there were some elements that felt really important right now that um the the bike box and protected bike lane under the bridge and it's my impression we would be putting that off as well. Is that the case if we were to delay? Or are there can we put in some of the elements and then in 18 months do the a pilot project? Yeah, it's really just that stretch once you get outside of that intersection from on Johnson from San Luis Drive to Bishop that there's like decision points. So like I don't see a reason why the portion that's under the rail bridge and the bike box couldn't still be part of the base package. There's flexibility there if that was something. I'm sorry to get into questions again but um just to be really clear that it the $300,000 was just if we didn't do that very limited section. Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's correct. Okay. Um I'm actually going to pause my deliberations for a moment and turn to my colleagues and kind of finalize my final thoughts on this. Great. Thank you, Councilmember Marks. Thank you. Um Well, I I want to start with getting rid of the little mini roundabout at Mill and Toro. Thank you very much. Uh I happen to have a [clears throat] family member who lives really close there and he he give every time we go past that, he says, "You're on City Council. Can't you do something about that? Get rid of it, you know?" And I said, um I don't know, but now I can say it's in the works. We're going to get rid of it. So, thank you. That's going to really make people happy. Um in terms of uh so, I I support the staff recommendation including uh the Johnson portion of it. I I think that um you know, having walked the Fickleliney green greenway um um route uh and talked with the neighbors actually uh gosh, this was probably in 20 2024 when I was uh running for re-election. I I was canvassing that street and and Flora and around you know, they're all really in favor of having an actual uh greenway and I think the county is going to you know, they're people ride bicycles too. I mean, you know, so I think the county needs to uh just uh be a little more collaborative. So, that I I would go for the staff recommendation uh with the uh added directive to move more quickly on the Fickle Fickleliney uh greenway is a way of trying to keep the bicyclists

off of Johnson as much as possible. And uh in terms of you know, your analysis when it comes to the emergency vehicles, I feel that that's primarily that's very very important and I understand why we can't have uh more parking on the east side as uh as the residents wish. So, that's kind of where I where I stand. I'm going to support the staff recommendation. Thank you. I'm going to say a few two cents, then I'll bring it back for everyone's seconds, for shall you say. Um Yeah, [clears throat] very much agree, Councilmember Marks, the Mill Street. Thank you very much. A full stop will be great versus I go that way often on bike and on car and I just thank you. Um

[laughter]

Um I also would love to see that underpass the railroad uh on um Johnson be able to be a little bit slower for traffic a little bit wider for cyclists. I think that would be ideal. Um it's a very concerning part from many different angles when you're coming out. Um so, I would think that would be great. Um when it comes to the Fickleliney conversation, um I I think it it just keeps bringing to my mind kind of what I've been struggling with with this whole space. Um I remember having this conversation quite a few years ago around Johnson when I thought that the road diet was not going to end at Bishop and I'm pretty sure you might remember my face from my thoughts on that and I wasn't really keen um due to the amount of traffic queuing we already have when it comes to the high school. On one hand, I hear what people are saying around we need to make it safer for students to get to school on their bikes, 100%. It is also the only high school we have for the entire city. So, there's just not that capacity for some people to come from Los Osos Valley Road on a bike. I know it's possible, people do it, but on a regular basis, that's not realistic, especially then with people's uh schedules and work schedules and so, I just I want to be realistic with where we're where we're at. I also am concerned around emergency vehicles. I um We saw with Lizzie, we saw the Lizzie fire, we saw the evacuation needs and to me even adding almost 20 minutes in a fire that sounds like we could have a lot more danger and a lot more injury and a lot more fatalities and that is something that concerns me. So, um I I want to make sure we're we're taking care of that. So, going back to the Fickleliney and the and the getting to school, I'm just wondering at times when we're looking at

our different streets and we have our tier one projects are we maybe trying to make sure that every single street is the best for bikes and I'm wondering if maybe if we have the better uh better access with the greenways and better ability to say, "Hey, go on a different road and it will be safer for you." I think that makes a lot of sense, whether you are a newbie dry cyclist or whether you're experienced cyclist, whether you're young, whether you're senior, whether you're on different types of um cycles and cycles is really the right word, but you know, different types of the tricycle, the the one wheel, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the I just I wonder if we do we need to make every single road the best. Um and maybe eventually yes, when we have all the money in the world, but as we're looking at tight money, I'm thinking that let's enhance the greenways we are looking at and the greenways we have versus trying to make Johnson the best because there's a lot of work that needs to make Johnson the best as a cyclist. There is no way I'd want to be on that. And um so, it's I don't think it feels safe for a cyclist. I I hear that and I agree with that. And I also don't think it's logical to slow down our emergency vehicles and in in an emergency and slow down uh or increase the queuing for um the high school. I I know thank you for entertaining my silly question around the um hours. I'm just I keep trying to think about how do we make that work cuz it's only a couple of hours that this really becomes a problem. Um so, thank you. Um I think also as we talk about more data in the future, I would love to see buses as part of that conversation because um you know, I remember when we lost the school buses and now students depend on city buses to get to high school, which is a problem, but we won't even go into that conversation. But I do think that we we have to look at that

cuz it's the mode shift is getting out of the car with the bus and the biking and the pedestrians. So, how do we how do we increase that as well as bikes? Also, how do we help people get on their from their bikes onto the bus so they know that once they're in once they've gotten all the way from Los Osos Valley Road or somewhere far that within our city is still far. Um that they can then still bring their bike and still be able to get around for lunch or for after school or whatever that looks like. So, I do think that has to be kind of part of the conversation and for sure more community outreach. If people thought today we were going to get rid of their possibility to uh drop off their kids to high school, I think this room would be full. And um I think we have to have that conversation realistically with people and it's fine if whichever way we end up in that conversation, but we have to genuinely authentically encourage people to have that conversation. Um I think [clears throat] also as we talk about Mill and that um neat route mini roundabout, I would love to in the future talk about Johnson and Southwood and that unique left turn in the middle of the road where pillars just show up or bollards kind of show up. I think that would be a good conversation to have with the neighbors and the people who utilize the um churches around there. I hear lots of conversations about it similar like, "Why is this here and can we please" So, um just want to ask that as well as Grand if we can kind of just scoot it in a little bit so that people are not running into those um bollards that go right at the freeway entrance, for example. That would be amazing. Um so, I think I've hit everything. Oh, but I I do want to say with all of this conversation that similar to what you were saying, Councilmember Schwarzman, is that I agree. This is the time to look at quick bills, time to look at pilot programs. I've always been in favor of if it makes sense, hey, we're already paving, we're

already spending the money, let's talk about this. And so, I I appreciate we're having this conversation. I appreciate we're looking at it cuz if we can save money while we're doing something, it often makes sense. I just don't think right now it does. So, thank you. Councilmember Boswell. Yeah, I just want to get a clarification from staff based on some of the comments. So, the like the bike box, the improvements, the green striping improvements in front of the high school entrance, um the little bit protected buffer or buffer on the bike lanes under the railroad tracks, that's all in the proposed paving plan, right? We don't Okay, so, just want to be clear and that's what I'm supporting is the as proposed. Yeah. Thank you. Perfect. That was a yes from Mr. Schwarz. Sorry. Thank you. Councilmember Schwarzman. Yeah, some other clarifying questions too after some of the comments. Um and this is why I asked the question really carefully before because what I heard you saying is that not spending the $300,000 now and maybe looking at alternative two in the staff report would not necessarily mean or that it would not mean deferring the work on the tier one projects that we have underway. It would mean looking back at this one you know, maybe not spending the $300,000 now to repaint things the way it the way it is, but to pause on that piece and look at the evacuation route issues and the potential queuing issues with a little bit more clarity in all those models in a little more detail before and get some more public feedback before actually making some paint or other changes to the area. I think city manager wants to add some input into this. Thank you. Yes. I I and certainly our director is here to help provide some additional support. Um

I I think it will be difficult for us to prioritize this work now and have something ready within that 18-month time frame and not have other projects suffer. Uh and so we can provide a little bit more detail. There will be I'm sure delay because our our team is certainly incredibly talented and also very dedicated and working full tilt on what we have currently in the queue and so there's something will be pushed off during that time frame. It's just I don't know that we've determined which thing at this point. And all of all of the things are painful in some way or another, but certainly uh director Floyd can provide more detail. Thank you city manager. Thank you mayor and council members. Aaron Floyd, public works and utilities director. What is in front of you tonight is a very tough issue. We definitely understand that and Luke along with staff and I and city manager and um Mr. Collins had a lot of conversations on this and I think what you'll see here is probably in my experience the most thoughtful alternative that has ever been put into a staff report understanding the complexities around this issue. I I have to at this point state what I have seen in my tenure so far at public works and it's most evenings many of us stay a little late. Mr. Schwartz and his team are repeatedly there into the 8:00 hour. So what feels a little bit late now I'm respectfully going to say that Mr. Schwartz might not have as much free time as he might make that sound. So if council does choose to go with the alternative two, we really do need to have a conversation on the prioritization of those other projects as some of those and I need to also look out for Mr. Schwartz because he does so much on behalf of our community.

We do need to have a prioritization conversation about what of those other projects does need to come off. So. Appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for this opportunity to Thank you.

clarify that. Okay, one last follow-up and then I'll I'll let the others go cuz I think other questions have evolved. Um if we do do the painting of Johnson now then um when would we look at it again? When would our next opportunity be cuz we do usually do these things in coordination with the paving plans cuz that's a smart way to get the most bang for our buck. The next time Johnson would like organically come up as part of like a maintenance project like this would be either the next time it's due for like striping refresh which that would be typically about 10 years out of that. Um or when there's funding and priority to repave Johnson which is really what's needed for the pavement quality. That one's it's not in our current pavement schedule. That could be 10 years or more. So I don't think there's a time that this would be otherwise scheduled to come up unless it was prioritized in like an upcoming budget to revisit these conversations. Okay, thank you. And I just want to clarify for the record um you know, I heard heard some language from my colleagues about you know, we [clears throat] we need to prioritize and need to make sure that our public safety vehicles can get through this area and I'm not advocating that we not do that. Um I'm advocating that we take care of and to make sure that that we cover all the bases that we make sure we have accurate data and modeling and the best data and modeling that we can for emergency vehicles as well as um pedestrian and bike users. I also just want to clarify um with the Fixlini Flora um again see that daily. Uh there there is um Luke touched on it, but there is more than just uh the easement through the county property that is you know, a barrier. They seem willing to work with us in some ways as as staff

has noted, but the easement on the other side of the property um between the county property and Fixlini is a pretty steep slope in order to make that really usable for a non-experienced rider um would take some regrading. I I believe I've we've talked about this before. I'll I'll I'll look to you to to clarify, but it's a pretty steep slope. I'm not comfortable going down it on my e-bike. So um because it's it's really nicely maintained by the um the owner of the property next to it um with really nice pavers and everything, but it's it's not comfortable for a non-experienced rider. So um completing that pathway from all the way from the far end of Flora to the high school is probably a I'm guessing a little bigger project than than it may seem. Is that correct? Sure. Yeah, that that last piece of that stretch going down to the um Fixlini side there's a stretch of that that we could probably never make and call as a formal shared use path. You can't meet ADA grades. The surface is weird. Even with grading it's really really I just say it's impossible. So there's a portion that's probably always going to be designated a trail and if it was a formal easement, we might even have signs and things saying you should be dismounting and walking this. Um I don't know that even money is going to fix that constraint just with the topography of that bit. The rest of it I think you could get a a nice high quality relatively flat you know, path in, but yeah, that's going to be an inherent challenge it moving forward regardless. Agreed. And the the difficulty also from people coming from other parts of town, maybe from uh you know, the railroad safety trail or over from Los Osos Valley Road or Madonna. Once they've gotten that far and close to the high school if they're going to the high school um to go I know it seems not it seems silly maybe, but

to go another block further or two uphill to get to Fixlini um is it's possible. It's just not what we would call a desire line for a cyclist to use. It it's just a little further out of the way than might be most practical for a high school student for example to consider. So just wanted to to throw that out there just for um general information, but um in general I'm you know, like I said I'm I'm supportive of all the other projects. I'm just still really having trouble with this one piece of Johnson and not wanting to spend the $300,000 now to wait you know, potentially many many more years to look at this area. Um appreciate the um appreciate the context director Floyd also. Thank you. And thank you for that clarity clarity council member Schwartzman. Please know it's not necessarily that I'm saying Fixlini Flora necessarily and cuz again this goes back to data that we're not having. That would be part of that conversation, right? I think I'm just I'm just wondering sometimes we're talking about these main streets in a sense that maybe if we shifted a block here or there where it doesn't feel as stressful for the cyclist to be on. That's that's was really my whole point and it may not be the right that may that greenway may not be the right answer in this moment. I've just trying to get us to the think about things just maybe a teeny bit differently at times cuz there are some big streets that I don't care if it's 10 more years from now I'm not going on those streets. So I'm trying to think about for people who don't have as much experience as some people that are coming to us from that are you know, fantastic everyday cyclists can we can we look at people from different levels of abilities and and interests. So that's more what I'm looking at. Nice mayor. Yeah, glad I paused to kind of gather my thoughts and actually hear a few more of your questions cuz I think it it helped me kind of finalize my my thoughts around this. You know, I've already expressed that

this is a concerning stretch for me. You know, it's one that I travel on often and of course I know people who've been injured on it. And and I think that you know, our ATC is right that this is an area that's kind of ripe for us to make improvements and really draw more people into utilizing it, but um between kind of the potential delay on some of our other priority projects, specifically Higuera Complete Streets and Foothill Complete Streets and South Broad Street and then taken into context also with the the new data around evacuation modeling and then being in such close proximity to the hospital I am going to reluctantly support moving forward with the staff recommendations. Eagerly look forward to moving forward all the rest of them, but this particular one without the pilot exploration today, but with the hope that maybe with the paving project because you said that the paving is needs to be addressed in maybe the nearish term not in the 10 years, we might have an opportunity to um look at it a little bit more more soon than we expect. Um intrigued by the Flora Fixlini project, but um eyes wide open that it's going to probably address with address some of the safe routes to school, but not necessarily other commuters. So, it's not going to be a a fix-all here. Um and I'll I'll leave it there. Thank you, Councilmember Marks. Yeah, well, um I just had a sort of procedural thought here. And that is that uh it seems that we have uh consensus on everything except Johnson. So, I don't want any of us to be in a position where we have to vote against the whole darn thing because of our feelings about Johnson. So, my question is whether we would want to kind of bifurcate

uh the motion and um have uh you know, consider everything but Johnson Street as one motion and then the Johnson Street, okay? And I still uh although I appreciate everyone's perspective, I still am in favor of of the staff recommendation and not alternate two for all the reasons that have been stated, but I also don't want to be in a have any of of us in a situation where we're um like I said, having to reject the whole thing because there's one aspect we don't care about. So, what do you think, Mayor? Um let's go a little bit longer. Seems like we have a few more comments and I'm feeling like I'm hearing some consensus, but I could be wrong. I like I like I like the backup though, for sure. Councilmember Shoresman. Yes, you read my mind, Councilmember Marks. I would like to um I'll do it if we're ready, but I'll make a motion to support everything but Johnson and then I would like to vote on Johnson separately. That sounds fine, Vice Mayor. I'm happy to second that. All right. Roll call, please. Councilmember Shoresman. Yes. Vice Mayor Francis. Yes. Councilmember Boswell. Yes. Councilmember Marks. Yes. Mayor Stewart. Yes, and that motion passes 5-0. Thank you, that made that part much easier. Thank you to Councilmember Councilmember Marks as well. And with that, now we're ready for the Johnson conversation of um this roadway sealing project. Councilmember Shoresman. So, I think you all see where this is going. Uh I you know, this is this is hard. I just empathize with the the Vice Mayor. I um

you know, there there are just so many issues with Johnson. We've talked about it many times in the past. I've had conversations with staff. I've been to several ATC meetings where this has been brought up. I've talked to the chair of the ATC probably over maybe multiple chairs of the ATC about this section of road and I've experienced it with my high schooler over the last 4 years. And I experience it myself every day and while I feel very, very strongly that we need to keep pursuing our tier one network and our high injury network um as a top priority. I agree with what some of Councilmember Boswell said that I think that the difference between this and some of our tier one projects is that thankfully, we haven't had any recently or I don't know of many fatalities. I think if we had had fatalities on this section, unfortunately, it would be part of our tier one network and I think our data just hasn't supported what we know to be you know, what what we as users experience as an as a pretty unsafe roadway. And I acknowledge that we really need to take a look at the new information that we have about fire maps and WUI problems um WUI problems. They are problems in some ways. WUI requirements and take into account the fact that we have had a wildfire in the area and so we need to make sure that everybody can get out of there safely in an emergency. Um but I would love us to be able to do more here and so at this time, I'm not going to be supporting this part of the motion. Thank you. Okay. Um with that, I will say that I I definitely hear you on the concerns

about wanting to see this being a safer um a safer part of Johnson for cycling as well as for um our roads. And in that, I also heard that we do need some striping done and so if we're pushing this off to the work plan in next year, I'm sorry, in in 2027-29, this may be faded then by the time, which seems even less safe than what we're at now. So, to me, I would um I would think that we would I would recommend continuing the paving project um at this time and there is still time to do the um to do the data analysis and the community outreach as a future work plan. So, personally, I would like to support this. Um if there's anyone that is willing outside of Councilmember Shoresman, I would love to move this forward so we can still continue to improve our current um Johnson Street. Um could you clarify, is there a motion you're making? I just I'm sorry. I'm I'm I think I'm more just trying to find out if there's any interest cuz if there's not and it's just you and I, then what there's no point in making the motion. Oh, okay. Any interest in the staff recommendation?

Yes, staff recommendation. Yes. Uh I um well, no. Okay. I understand what you were saying. Sorry. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Councilmember Boswell. Yeah, as I I discussed earlier, I'm going to support the staff recommendation um on Johnson. Um I was just looking back quickly at our tier one project list and you know, we're doing so well and we've got really good momentum and I just really want to keep our eye on the ball on the tier one list. Um I think there's going to be a number of points of conversation that we can have in the next year uh because we're starting to move closer to our tier two list. We are getting closer to it, but uh we're not quite there yet and we would need to talk about some budget implications and additional data to support work on the tier two list. So, um I recognize there's you know, it's here in front of us and there's some good timing, but um we've got very good momentum on as um as has been stated on Higuera, Foothill, and Broad Street and I think that's where we need to keep our energy. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, I thank you for for your comments, actually both of you. Agree with everything that both of you said. Um just unwilling at this point to risk any delays in those other projects that we've already got moving forward. But I did want to add in and I think I expressed this during deliberations earlier, but um when we move into our budget setting and we're looking at the need for more comprehensive paving, I would really like that we're setting the groundwork to do the the outreach and the data collection that we might need to do if we were to explore doing a pilot project in the kind of short to near term here. I think you said that paving is likely to need to be replaced more like in the 5-year range, which or was that accurate?

I mean, the paving I mean, I just replaced it now. Yeah. It's it's there already. In fact, the reason there's not a slurry seal proposal on Johnson is it's beyond the point where even a slurry does anything. Right. Um it's not in our current 5-year pavement management plan. Got it. Um I can't say confidently when it would be prioritized. It's going to be a costly project.

Yeah. But yes, if it is in the cycle, we'd be starting outreach much further ahead. So, you can see we're doing outreach right now for Grand Avenue, which is scheduled for 2027 paving to say, "What's working with the pilot project? What's not? What is the right fit for more permanent things when we come and pave this more than a year from now." So, we'd be doing something similar Johnson was scheduled for paving in an out year. Excellent. So, I'll just add an asterisk to my agreement with staff recommendation, but also really starting to think about where can we fit this into the the paving schedule since it is one that's in in need of doing that and I know money, budget, all of those things, but I really want to be thinking about what can we do as a a bigger project on this as we move into that next phase. So, thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Boswell. Yeah, just uh just following that, one more question. So, um if in a few years, we decide, "Yeah, we've got to move forward on paving here." And we did want to include complete streets elements, uh could we potentially get some state funding to assist in that work? How's that look these days? There's the state the active transportation program is really your your best bet for doing things like that. Um the other would be like the H SIP. It's a highway safety improvement program that's also administered through the state, but it's it's federal dollars. On that side, you need a really severe crash issue to qualify and compete well. For the ATP, you also need a really compelling project. Um if you're doing something like that and you have the right scope that's really wows and checks all the boxes, you could compete well. Even that program is very constrained and competitive. That's what we're funding the Higuera complete streets with. That's what we funded the Railroad Trail, the bridge over at Pepper Street. Um so that would be our best bet in the alignment, but it really depends what the scope looks like and with those we'd want to have a project well refined in terms of what the design looks like, what it's going to cost, what the council wants to see to be able

to compete and and have a well-suited application for something like that. If it included San Luis Drive and San Luis's connection into California, basically it's including the high school um with that up its competitiveness potentially or maybe even make it eligible for other funding. Yeah, just hypothetically if you're looking out into the future and you had some improvements well scoped, you could have maybe a more comprehensive kind of Safe Routes to School package where it's things on San Luis Drive, maybe it's some things on the Fixli and La Flora connection, maybe there's some safety improvements on Johnson itself. Those tend tend to score well um if you can match the funding that you need outside of what the grant will provide. And you can deliver on it, you're not dealing with a railroad or a state highway that could delay you and risk loss of the funding even if you can't get it. Yeah, that little that little California connection into San Luis Drive is a problem as well. It's basically no infrastructure there for bikes, so um seems like there's possibly a bigger package to be put together for this whole area, but anyways, that's just, you know, talking out loud, but yeah, okay. Um yeah, thank you. Thank you. Uh Council Member Marks. Uh yes, so if the time is right, I'd like to make a motion that we uh um uh to approve staff recommendation for the Johnson area. I will second and um I just really want to thank you um Luke. Sorry, Mr. Schwartz. Um thank you very much, you and your whole team. Um It does not go unnoticed the amount of work you do. And I just want you and your entire team to know that. It is very a very much appreciate because this is this is difficult. We're trying to figure out how to help create better access, better safety literally for all different modes of transportation in these very old streets, quite honestly. And so we've

continued to update them and do what we can and we don't always always even have um all of the right-of-ways, we don't have all of the easements, so we don't have all of the funding. And after sitting through some um pretty challenging conversations about uh funding over these last 2 weeks with SLOCOG and with rail, um yeah, it's not coming tomorrow and the ballot initiative is another conversation for another day, but thank you for that. So happy to second and um move to roll call, please. Council Member Marks. Yes. Mayor Stewart. Yes. Council Member Boswell. Yes. Council Member Shoresman. No. Vice Mayor Francis. Yes. Thank you and the motion passes 4-1 and City Manager. Thank you. I've been sitting here contemplating how the the motion and minutes might read on this item because our staff recommendation is for the full uh plans and specs package for the project that included all of the striping and so I just want to make clarify and make sure we we have a a four vote in support of that whole package and I think we'll find a way to note for the record the vote on the rest of it. I'm just trying to figure out how we would do that, but I want to make sure that we are clear that the motion included all staff recommendations for the full set of plans and specs and all the budgetary changes and recommendations and in the staff [clears throat] report. Yeah, in the end it really is a 4-1 with the staff recommendation with noted of what um Council Member Shoresman was willing to vote on versus not. Um Council Member Shoresman, if you want to add anything to that. Um I we've we've had situations like this before. It feels like maybe not quite on a streets project, but where um I think in particular I can think of Council Member Marks um

not voting in support of one part of a proposal, so I'm I'm hoping that you can still note my um my opinion about the one part versus the rest. Yeah. We have a talented city clerk staff, I'm sure of it. That's right. [laughter]

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, uh thanks to Teresa and her team for all of their work to bring this item forward. As you saw from the staff report, there are a lot of pieces associated with this legislation and doing the cross-referencing needed to make sure that we were covered was a really important job. So as you know, SB 707 updates several parts of the Brown Act. The good news uh as you saw is that a lot of those changes are already incorporated into our policies and procedures. Um but there are some amendments that we need to make. We'll be highlighting those in more greater detail. Uh the new requirements take effect in two different phases. A tranche of those were January 1st of this year and then the balance is July 1st. I'll cover the first section and then I'll hand it over to Therese uh Teresa for the second section. Our recommendation tonight is to adopt the draft resolution amending council policies and procedures to comply with the changes to the Brown Act and adopt a new disruption of telephonic and or internet services policy.

So just a quick overview, the traditional Brown Act tele teleconferencing requirements remain unchanged. Uh this as Council is familiar is when uh Council's on personal travel or non-city business travel, the requirements are that each teleconferencing location must be listed on the agenda, teleconference location must be uh listed and posted, location must be open to the public, public participation must be allowed at that location, quorum must be within city limits, and all votes uh by roll call. This is the exercise that many of you have been in of printing out the piece of paper and posting it in a likely a hotel business center and uh participating in a meeting from there. Um the good news is that there's some alternatives associated with that. So uh we'll talk about some of the changes that went into effect on January 1st that build on uh the 2023 AB 2446 uh law. So these rules let council members participate remotely for just cause or during a state or local emergency without opening or posting their remote location. Those rules were set to expire in 2026, but SB 707 extends them to 2030 and clarifies when they can be used. So this alternative can be used um I'm sorry, when this alternative is used, the public uh must be allowed must be able to join through a two-way audio-visual system. Uh we must allow real-time public comment. Members need to disclose whether any adults are present with them at their remote location. All votes have to be roll call votes and minutes must note who participated remotely and why. So for those just cause provisions, um the basic process uh for using just cause remains the same. Members must

notify the body as soon as member is limited to just five just cause uses per year. What has changed is that the list of acceptable just causes has expanded. That includes physical or family medical emergencies, uh protecting an immunocompromised relative, and military service obligations. There's also a new uh section that provides flexibility for disability accommodations for members who need to part participate remotely as a reasonable accommodation. These members are exempt from both the traditional and alternative teleconferencing rules uh when a disability accommodation is used, the remote member counts as in-person for quorum and location purposes. Uh they participate by audio and video unless their disability requires them to be off camera and they must disclose if any adults are present at the remote location and their relationship to them. To cover the changes effective July 1st, I'm happy to hand it over to Teresa. So these changes are as Greg noted the more substantive ones, um but before we get into those, we need to understand what an eligible legislative body is. And basically it's a city or county that meet any one of these criteria. Our city having more than 30,000 population, that makes us an eligible legislative body. So what that means for us is that we will have to have enhanced teleconferencing and transparency requirements. Meaning we have to adopt a policy that had the service disruption policy for our meetings. Our meetings must have closed captions. Um, we must have public real-time public

comment from those members attending virtually in our case. And in some instances, not in ours and I'll go into that in the next slide, um, translation of agendas and other accommodations for language interpretation. So again, two-way telephonic or um, audio-visual platform. We use Zoom. That qualifies because you can use a phone and still call in to Zoom. And again, as we normally have with our Zoom platform for um, council member attendance the two-way of audio-visual. Um, again, it says we have to adopt this disruption policy. Um, and it's a two-part disruption policy. One is member disruption part and the other is service disruption. Our existing policies procedures already have what we could do in the case of a disruption in chambers. So basically the only change we need to make to that is that we're including or audio-visual platform. So we would handle those the same way that we currently do, which is the mayor will um, inform them that they're disrupting. If they continue, we can recess the meeting and have the chambers cleared and then come back to that meeting. For the disruption policy, it was very very specific in the law of what we had to do. So again, it's if it's the disruption of service. So that means if our internet goes down or if the Zoom platform goes down for any reason, we have to um, recess the meeting for everyone in in chambers and on video um, for 1 hour. Try our make our best good faith efforts to restore those services. The body could meet in closed session

during that 1 hour while we're um, working if there are items for them to hear in closed session. Um, if after 1 hour has passed and service is not restored, um, we have the option council has the option to upon roll call vote, make a motion that good faith efforts were made and that continuing the meeting outweighs the public interest in remote access. And at that time we could That is the only time we could restart the meeting in chambers without internet. Um, now on to translation portion the translation portion. So what the um, new law says is that we have to provide translation for any communities that um, any population that does not speak English very well, more than 20% of the community, sorry, that does not speak. In the instance of the city of San Luis Obispo, our Spanish-speaking population was the one that had the highest and it only reached the 17.6%. So at this time, we do are not required to do um, agenda translation. Um, which is a really actually really big hurdle for some because while the law says we could use AI, um, it still would make sure that we have to verify that, you know, there has to be some checking. And they have to be published at the exact same time. This has been a very big hurdle that people are trying to figure out how they're going to do it with the 72-hour notice. Um, so but with that it also says that we have to help assist with public interpretation in other languages when possible. Um, and as part of our um,

diversity, equity and inclusion goals, it you know, we have been trying to do that. Our IT department has received a grant for um, that we can use to pay for um, interpretation that is done through AI remotely. So what would happen is we would publish a QR code on our agendas or on our and in our screen on the screen where you could scan it and with their own equipment, so um, with their phone and a headset, they could be sitting in this room and have it translated for them and um, in in their ear, so for audio. And also um, on their phone if they were reading it on the screen. Um, it's up we're and we're recommending for that a pilot program um, to just see how much use we'll get. Um, from what we We've talked to a couple of different firms for like about 100 hours of service on call. So it would be used paid for as used. Um, I figured out if we had a 5-hour meeting, I know that's high, but I like to always think about the highest. Um, we could probably do almost 20 meetings at that. Um, because it it's not by the number of users, it's by the amount of hours. So um, again, I we're we're not required, but we are recommend staff is recommending we at least launch the pilot program um, for the next year and see how much use we get, maybe to you know, get more people uh, Spanish-speaking people, you know, watching and participating in our meetings. So there is one portion of the um, regulations that is not required, but it would allow advisory bodies who are exclusively advisory, who do not make

any final decisions, to participate remotely. All the entire body to participate remotely. The only difference with council is you would have to have a staff member in a location in the city where the public could come in and participate. At this time, staff is not recommending we go to that for two reasons. One, the staff time it takes to run a virtual meeting and um, actually staff the meeting because many of our advisory bodies don't have a clerk dedicated to their meetings, so they're sometimes running both sides of it at once. Um, and also for us to take some time and see how it works with council before we open it up to additional bodies. So there are a few other minor changes that were made in the um, the law that we have already implemented and have had implemented in um, since I would say since we came back into chambers in 2023. That is our social media policy and in council policies and procedures. Basically says that you can have it, you can talk about things, just can't talk together on them. Uh, a requirement that we now, which we like I said, do have in our policies and procedures both for council and advisory bodies is that we provide them a copy of the Brown Act when they start their service. Um, and then the one that you heard today at the when we did consent, where any we have to do a verbal report out for any executive or above and department head compensation. So it's department heads, executives and um, elected officials all have to have a verbal summary of the actual action taken and the actual dollar amount and

different benefits that are provided before the final vote. Um, another part that you kind of experienced already is you cannot do discuss compensation at a special meeting. That is why when we did appointed officials, we could do the um, evaluation, but we had to go to a public closed session on a public meeting to do that conversation on the salaries portion of it. Um, removes it it removed the limitation that some in some instances you had to you didn't have to publish your special meeting agendas. We have always published all of our agendas, so that one did not apply. And then there was another different assembly bill that says that we have to publish any writings that we provide to the council with regard to an agenda item at to the public at the same time as we do the council, which of course, as you know, we already do because when we send out our agenda correspondence, it is published on the website with the agenda at the same time that you receive it. And with that the recommendation is on the screen again and that concludes our report. Well, thank you for the thorough report. I know with the um, changes from the bill, there was a lot of little details and I really appreciate the redlining as well to be able to go through our um, council policies and procedures. And with that, Councilmember Shorshin. Yeah, I just have I thought I had one question at the break, but now I have one or two small ones also. Uh, the one the one that I knew I had before the meeting was there's something on page, I think it's 354 of the packet and it talks about if you have technical problems with your uh, your Zoom as we would be using during

the meeting, that we have to recess the meeting for at least an hour. Did I Am I And yes, that is very That is correct and that is very specific. So, if you have if it takes you more than an hour, you can come back to chambers and say make the determination that if it's in the better interest of the public to continue without Zoom, we we can, but we have to try for an hour to get it back up. So, does that mean that if you try for 15 minutes and it you get it functioning that you have to still wait an hour be- because you've noticed Okay. Thank you. That's what I was concerned about cuz I thought it might be like a noticing thing where you people know that you have a problem and they know Okay. I'm glad that wasn't how I was understanding it. Um in your slides in one of your early slides, you it said um that it can that remote participation by uh council member or elected official can be uh can occur while traveling on official business of the agency. Uh does that mean that only if you're traveling on city official business or if you are if you if you have another job, you're working out of the area, are you still able to participate? Yes, the only difference is if you're traveling on personal or personal business or work unrelated city business, you have to do the whole publishing of the agenda, posting the address on the um the agenda. But, if you're on city business, you don't and you have to open up the room to other people. And city business, you don't have to open up the room. We don't have to do all those other things. Okay, thank you.

still allowed. Okay, so it's it's basically the same as it is now.

Yeah, so yeah, it's more of I think of I kind of think of it more as a two-tiered. So, if it's personal, more requirements, little bit stricter. If it's city business, slightly easier, but still some of the same restrictions. Okay. Last question is um about some of our advisory bodies that are kind of quasi-judicial uh that do make decisions on hearings or hear hear uh participate in hearings, do they have to participate in these rules or it does it apply uh universally across all our advisory bodies that you're not recommending participation in these um changes right now?

If we were to allow Oh, this Okay, so it again, everything in this bill is two-tiered. Um actually, in this one instance, it's three. The only people that are required to do audio-visual are eligible legislative bodies, which means the council. Planning commission could um but what you would have to do is every 6 months, we would have to Remember COVID days when we had to come back every 6 months and say that we were going to continue doing remote? We would have to do that for the planning You would have to do that for the planning commission every 6 months to do that. Um and or any other of the advisory bodies. So, they're not required. It's an option for them. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilmember Marks? Yeah, I have a question um about the uh ability of uh How do I how do I put this? In terms of Zoom bombing or the uh nasty nastygrams that we've that we've gotten in the past, uh does the new requirement assume that the mayor is going to be able to like cut somebody off in the middle of this kind of um uh antisocial either image or or diatribe, whatever, um before they finish saying it? I mean, are there any kind of safeguards that would be allowed in terms of um uh trying to really protect the the general public uh from having to be subjected to

this whatever it is, this nasty hate stuff. Um that's what I don't understand. It's like, oh yeah, right. Well, I'm sorry. I I was mayor for 6 years, so I identify with the Yeah. It It does not provide any teeth to do that. Um that's why I think I would like our assistant city attorney answer more. We have certain things. I mean, it would be just like someone being in chambers where we would admonish them or you know, remind them of our rules. Um and then, you know, if they continued, we would probably have to call a recess and clear the room. And then come back. The only problem with Zoom is I can turn off their mics, which is fine. And I can even put them out of the Zoom room, but I can't stop them from coming back in. Because you can use a different email address or if you're you're really tech-savvy, you know, a different IP and get back in and I would not know if they were somebody the same person. Assistant City Attorney? Assistant City Attorney. Thank you, Teresa. Um yeah, and just to clarify um the the policy will not and Teresa, jump in if I'm I'm wrong here, will not allow them to be sharing video or images unless they were sent to the clerk in advance in accordance with our existing policy and for projecting images. So, we wouldn't have to worry about that in terms of visual depiction. Um and as it relates to any type of

[sighs and gasps]

speech that is disruptive in other ways meets the definition that would apply to someone speaking here in person to Teresa's point, the same rules would would apply. We would give them a warning that their conduct uh or their speech is disruptive to the orderly conduct of the meeting and their failure to stop it might result in their um dismissal from the Zoom room. Um and if they failed to do so, we would push them out of the Zoom room. To Teresa's point, we'll have to navigate if they were to come back in, but hopefully that is not what we're dealing with. Okay, thank you. I mean, okay. It feels to me like this is an open invitation to Anyway, I'll talk about that during deliberation, so okay. Thank you. Do you want to answer Deputy City Deputy City Manager anything additional? I was just going to clarify that the the tools haven't changed for us in terms of how we manage speech either for uh public comment for items not on the agenda or comments for items on the agenda. This is um this is a new opportunity for us to be able to receive comments in that way, but it it doesn't give us additional tools or teeth to be able to manage to manage those comments beyond what we currently have or what we have used in the past when we've experienced this. The most functional tool we have is being able to switch the order of the agenda and shifting public comment for items not on the agenda to the very end of the agenda, which has been somewhat effective, but um we also experienced as we went through that that sometimes uh some of the comments uh gravitated to items on the agenda uh and that made it more difficult because we can't move those to the end of the

agenda. The council needs to be able to hear those comments before taking final action, so it's going to be complicated for us to manage. Also, just um for point of clarification that I did not I missed in my presentation is the one thing we are recommending to do differently this time in um is not allow the public to share their video. And the reason for that is twofold. It is um because we want to be able them not to be able to do anything we don't want them to, but also it it is harder for me and for the public to understand that you have to click another button. I think a lot of you might remember that I kept You have to click the button. You have to click and so, not having them show video, just being able to talk. And it is um a best practice of some of those cities that um didn't stop doing Zoom um public participa- public participation at when we did, um that they found that that is a little bit more of a deterrent. It's not 100%, but it will help with some of that. Thank you. Any other questions? Any public comment?

[laughter]

There are three people in the room and no one's raising their hand. Okay. Um with that, uh I'll bring him back for deliberation. I would just want to say thank you, Councilmember Marks. I I hear you. This has been my concern as well. We've gone through this. It's not enjoyable. And I think that the pictures not allowing pictures may help and that we've gone through this before will also help. My my largest concern is that we have community members and staff members that have to be sometimes negatively affected by some horrible statements and um until it goes far enough we can't necessarily stop it at that point. But we do know how to take a break when appropriate and free speech is important and we value free speech in America and I value having more access for our community members to reach us. This is something that was very very desired by me during COVID and yet it does outweigh or sometimes the negativity and and hate speech is somewhat outweighing that access. But here we are, the state has said this is what we need to do. So we will move forward and and honor that expectation and be compliant. And with that, Councilmember Schwarzman. Yeah, there there are some pieces of this that I am for sure not looking forward to the possibility of horrible things being said at our meetings again and um you know, Mary, you at the the situations that we had, you you handled them with grace and very appropriate. So I'm not concerned about your ability to manage these situations in the future if they do

happen. And we did have several times when we had community members with very valid reasons why they could not participate and be here in person calling and thank us at the time that we were doing it that they were able to participate because they had kids in bed and they were single parents or what have you and they are not normally right now able to come and participate. And so, you know, it as you said, it's important and I think that this is very necessary to help really stick with our goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion and trying to include as many voices as we can and [snorts] we'll just deal with the others when they happen and again I'm quite confident that you and our staff team will support us as needed when we get there when if hopefully it's an if. Let's be optimistic. It's an if that we get there. And I do also just want to mention and thank the team both the city clerk's office and IT for exploring opportunities to make translation a little bit easier. I think even if we don't have high uptake or utilization of the service we talk about this in my other role quite frequently. If you don't have it there, it removes the access even if you know, there isn't use, it's sometimes worth the expense to make that accessibility available to people who otherwise would not have it. If you decide that, you know, you've only used it once or twice in the last year and then, you know, it's a cost saving measure, you need to cut that expense, but then that cuts off access as soon as you make those decisions. So I think it's really important that we do our

best to try to make our meetings accessible to anybody whether they speak our language or not. So thank you for pursuing that. And I hope it does increase the participation. Thank you. I also know AI hallucinates, so it does concern me a little bit, but I trust in our IT team. Councilmember Marks. Um yes, I didn't mean to express any doubt that the mayor could positive the mayor can handle the situation. The problem is that they they are quick and they just blurted all out and you know, it's really I was coming from the point of view of how do you stop somebody in the middle of trying to say something? So I'm wondering if with our admonitions maybe when you look at the script for the admonitions that you give at the beginning of public comment I don't know if there would be additional admonitions that were made before the Zoom or audio testimony the out of the out of our physical presence testimony but maybe that's something we could look at in terms of the script um so that uh everybody understands that uh this is what could happen if um there were hate hate speech that resulted that they would be immediately cut off or that they'd be you know, I don't know, I mean you guys can decide that, but I really think we need to build in within the law, we need to build in whatever protections we can. Um and I do agree that having greater access especially for people who can't be here in person is is really important. So thanks.

Thank you. I agree and I and I do want to say that I've been chatting with the attorney's office and the city clerk's office about having kind of a script ready to go for when that happens. And I remember when we did the we added the Zoom opportunity in the past for a little while we did say the whole same spiel in the beginning of this is what's going to happen so people were not surprised by it. And then we started asking public comment on Zoom and making sure every time that we did that. And so kind of starts to become normal eventually or or uh normal, but just a routine part of our of our meetings. So we'll plan to do something similar when it comes time, which is not far away. Vice Mayor. Yeah, thank you all for your comments and especially for your admiration of how the mayor and city attorney handled previous situations that we had. Um you know, here's hoping that we we don't have those in the future and I also want to echo your comments just about anything that expands access I think is a good thing for us to to try and particularly around language accessibility. Very much looking forward to that use of AI and hopefully as you said it expands who's able to join us in our meetings here. And so when it's time I'd be happy to make a motion here. Great. Well, thank you. I I agree. I mean I think in the end if we're trying to increase access to more people, increase access through translation and help provide or protect freedom of speech, I think we're doing the right thing. So even though it's required, I do think I do appreciate that we're trying to do the right thing in the best way possible to also preserve people's dignity and space from those who choose to not respect that ability. But let's go with the good and the positive and what

we're doing which is increasing access and that's good. So I'm ready for your motion when you're ready. Vice Mayor. I would like to move to approve staff recommendations. Wonderful. Councilmember Schwarzman. Oh, sorry. I'll second the motion. Thank you. Can we have roll call? Vice Mayor Francis. Yes. Councilmember Schwarzman. Yes. Councilmember Boswell. Yes. Councilmember Marks. Yes. Mayor Stewart. Yes. The motion passes 5-0. We'll be back in July 1st or well, July 21st, I believe. And we'll be back to teleconferencing. And with that, all we have left is liaison reports and communications, which is good because we are at 9:49 p.m. I'll wrap mine up pretty quickly. The last 2 weeks have been eventful. I was at the Cal Cities Legal Leaders Conference with the city manager, vice mayor, deputy city manager and we had some great advocacy meetings and I just want to thank Assemblymember Addis and her staff, Senator Laird and his staff and the California Natural Resources Agency staff as well from Wade Crawford Crowfoot's office, sorry about that, to really chat about Diablo and our local Chochenyo and Northern Chumash and tribes and and how that's working or not working in our community. And also got to um go to Sacramento again last week and go to the California Rail Passenger Summit. Really exciting about the World Cup and FIFA and um the Olympics in 2028 and how people are going to get around the southern part of California because people have to remember it's not just in LA, it's really the whole Southern

California. It's going to be kind of wild. But with that, just some amazing braiding of funding to make this happen. And also major loss of funding from the federal government. So I I just really want to as we were talking about some transportation earlier, really kind of highlighting unfortunately we've lost a great amount of funding for transportation in the state of California and that is causing some challenges. But one of the good things is just yesterday we welcomed the third train from slow to San Diego and back and it is exciting. You know, really truly just general tourism and then Cal Poly students, Cuesta students everywhere around it's it's really exciting. So I would got to go out there. I haven't gone on it yet but I did get to see it. Um

[laughter]

Also just wanted to thank my colleagues around the around the county. We met for the city selection committee for a second time. Usually we just do that in January. We had the airport land use committee renewal of Alan Settle. And oh my goodness, I'm forgetting Michael's last name but Michael Kripe and I'm just thanking them for going in to sit on this committee again and went to the Lumina Alliance Dancing with the Stars and so thankful for all the dancers. Wow, that's a lot of work and really helping our entire county and truly all the people who shared their stories in the videos. Wow. Thank you for being so vulnerable and vulnerable and sharing. And lastly, wonderful for our downtown slow yesterday was or sorry Sunday was a sip and saunter. I hope all the businesses saw some great activity. I know that there were a lot of wonderful vendors there and got to see a lot of people around the whole community. So thanks for holding that and with that I'll pass it on to Council Member Schwartz. Thank you. Yes, I while the vice mayor and mayor were in Sacramento, I covered at a few events which was fun. Most not most importantly but most fun probably the International Film Festival. I welcomed at their opening ceremonies their their opening night. So that was that was always fun and then attended Good Morning SLO. Um the last last week and then also attended the City University quarterly lunch. I had my one a year where there was a lot of good information shared a lot going on with the construction. They have actually gotten to the top story of their first of the buildings. It's seven stories tall and 520 beds, I believe. They're

planning to open at the beginning of next school year. So the update was that their tentative plan is for one building a year for the next several years and so that's 520 or more beds each year for the next several years and next year will be the first year that they require students to live because they have all these additional beds. They will be requiring students to live on campus for two years starting next school year. So that's exciting and interesting news. Also over the weekend had the chance to attend the Arab American Heritage Festival which was a ton of fun, great food, dancing. Got my first henna tattoo which is now worn off but it was fun while it lasted and then also had an IWMA ad hoc budget committee meeting because I have been appointed to an ad hoc committee to review the budget in advance of the full board seeing their budget and give a little bit of extra feedback on that process. And then last but not least attended AngelCon which is the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship sort of pitch festival where the student businesses get an opportunity to to pitch their businesses to investors and the winner of this year's top award, it was $155,000 that went to a company called Cantaloupe AI. Cantaloupe does not really describe what they actually do but it's essentially a business that uses AI to help small businesses mostly in the food industry. One of their customers is Wendy's. Interview and select candidates for their jobs and they've shown really good

retention rates in hiring using their platforms. So super interesting to see all the ideas that that the [clears throat] students and the participants come up with and don't forget tomorrow all this conversation about bike and safe routes to schools. Tomorrow is bike to school day. So get out there and ride to school. Thank you, vice mayor. Yeah, thank you so much. It's also at Cal Cities and man that was a really productive couple of days up there and a lot of fun getting an opportunity to to talk policy with our representatives. We've had a busy couple of weeks with advisory body interviews. Those are still going on and just another shout out to everybody who applied. Incredibly grateful to the community for stepping up and into those roles. We had the Central Coast Performing Arts Center Commission meeting on Wednesday the 29th. Couple of quick highlights from that of course the 30th anniversary year which is awesome of the pack. The F Pack is planning an organizational assessment kind of rethinking what the role is in the community since 30 years ago when they opened there wasn't a Clark Center, there wasn't a Miossi Center, there wasn't being a Rubles, there wasn't the Fremont doing live music. So what is the kind of new vision for the future there? And good news also on the infrastructure front the front gutter no more leaks. So that's huge. This past week I visited with the Women in Politics at Cal Poly. They have a great club up there and awesome that people are engaged and paying attention to local politics. I always love that. We had the bike month kickoff last Friday. That was exciting. Got my socks. Hopefully everybody's going to be sporting those this week and had waffles at Caltrans this morning with a bunch of middle schoolers before I was told I wasn't allowed to

hang out with them anymore and got turned around. And the Better Together luncheon was this past weekend. Julie Jones always bringing together the people who do the most in our community. So that was just fabulous to hear about all of the community organizers and volunteers and organizations that really make our city function. Also this weekend got a chance to set up one of the units in the Welcome Home Village with some friends and I heard there are four units left to adopt. That might have changed at this time but if you're still chomping at the bit to get involved there, I think there's a couple units left if you'd like to help out. And on Sunday had an opportunity to go on a birdability tour which was led by one of our community academic academy graduates and it's making birding accessible to those in the disabled community. This one was specifically targeted at blind members of the community so it was birding by ear and it was a really awesome experience to go out and and bird with very different senses and to really just think about the world in a different way. So I will leave it there. Awesome. Thank you. Council Member Marks. Thank you. Um Well, I'm going to start with the Air Pollution Control District. I went to the executive committee meeting and that sets the agenda for our May 20th meeting that's coming up. Um and it's basically budget. We're heading into that that time of the year. Um and then also tomorrow is the County Water Resources Advisory Committee, the WRAC and it's a big topic which is diesel. So we're going to be getting a um in-depth analysis from the county about

all the possible um ways that diesel could end up happening in our county. I don't know if it directly would affect our city exactly but it is something that it really concerns a lot of people also the environmental aspects of the whole thing. Um yeah, we've been doing advisory body interviews which is really important. It's always thrilling to encounter these people who are willing to devote their time and energy and their mental space rent a an advisory body agenda in their mind. Um and you know, and we are getting more applicants than we can possibly offer positions to. So it's it's always a difficult choice but also I feel really confident with my colleagues of making the best recommendations. I attended the Community Foundation um yearly awards ceremony, I guess you'd call it. They were honoring Warren Sinsheimer for his years of um philanthropy. Um and it was it was packed. The the whole the whole meeting was packed. It was very inspirational. Um I went not as a city council member but as as someone who's involved with a philanthropic uh, here in the county. And basically, it was also a real um, uh, a real sense of, uh, the need for the Community Foundation to support nonprofits during the time that there are all these different cutbacks going going,

uh, going on. So, and then my announcement is that on uh, May 9th at noon, there is a big party at City Farm SLO. It's called the Sheep Shearing Shin Dig. And now, it starts at noon. The shearing of the sheep is going to be promptly at 12:30. So, don't be late for that. And also as a birth announcement, there are now um, seven No, let's see. Yes, uh, see. Yeah. Uh, yeah, seven new lambs. Wow. One, uh, great sheep named, uh, Clover managed to have three. Which is almost almost, uh, unheard of. Usually, they just have two. But anyway, the they thought that she was through giving birth and, uh, they were up all night and then next morning, a little little boy popped out as the third one. So, anyway, there's big sheep news there at the City Farm SLO. It's free. It's open to the public. Um, the parking is going to be in the kind of Target, um, Dick's Sporting, uh, parking lot that has all the Tesla chargers. And then people have to walk across the bridge. They'll be hayrides. So, that's that's my announcement. Thank you. I love the variety of our, uh, reports. Council Member Boswell. Yeah, thank you. Just a few items to report. Uh, on the 22nd, I was at the San Luis Obispo Airport for ribbon cutting. Uh, it was mainly for their, uh, new solar panels in the parking lot, but it was really also for all their sustainability programs and their, uh, international recognition for their sustainability efforts at the airport.

Uh, then quickly, uh, headed over to SLOCOG, uh, board workshop. Uh, uh, since, uh, Mayor Stewart was out of town, I was participating in her place. Uh, it was great. I um, learned a lot about our very soon-coming RHNA numbers, which are a lot bigger than they were last round. Um, so that was good. It was very good educational, uh, moment to to learn more about how SLOCOG was negotiating with the state around those numbers. Uh, so we'll learn more, I'm sure, very soon, probably the next month. Um, and then I was, uh, on the 24th, I at Cal Poly attended the Armenian Students Associat- Associations Armenian Armenian uh, Genocide Remembrance Day, um, and delivered a proclamation on behalf of us, uh, to them for the day. Uh, it was a wonderful, moving event. Um, many of the students there gave, uh, testimonies about themselves and their family. Um, so it was a wonderful, beautiful evening at Cal Poly. I'm glad I got to both in wearing my City Council hat, but also as a Cal member of the Cal Poly community, got to have that experience. And then just finally, I want to give a shout-out to Florencia Breda for uh, getting in as a finalist in the Ultimate Baking Championship. I think she's now a global ambassador for the community of San She's a very proud San Luis Obispo downtown business owner and kind of our global ambassador now. So, congratulations to Florencia. Good. I love it. Yes, Florencia has been doing some great work at Breda and beyond. Um, you know, there's one more thing I almost forgot to mention. Uh, unfortunately, there's so many wonderful things happening at the same time on this Saturday, uh, that we can't be at them all, but there's also the community mural that many of us were part of. Um, that's going to be kind of unveiled, shall you say, ribbon-cutted, um, this, uh, Saturday at 10:00 to

11:00. Uh, that's at the Newport Street, very close to, of course, um, CL Smith. So, a big thank you to everyone who was part of the public art, uh, department, our amazing artists, and, uh, professional and elementary and everyone in between. Yeah, professional. Um, and, um, I just I just again, so thankful that we got to hear about the Rama Lama Ding Dong and the new babies coming along. And I hope you all have fun at the Sheep Shearing Shin Dig. All right, have a great night.