City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good evening, everyone. Thank you to everyone who's joining us. Just FYI, we're going to be starting in about one moment. So if you can please find your seats. Thank you very much. We'll be starting shortly. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the City Council regular meeting this Monday evening, June 1st. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. City Clerk, please call the roll. Certainly, Mayor Lorraine. Councilmember Newsom. Here. Councilmember Diaz-Nash. Here. Councilmember Spierko-Goritsky.

Here.

Deputy Mayor Fernandez. Here. And Mayor Lorraine.

Here. Thank you and welcome. We're excited to be here in person with options for those who choose not to be in person to still participate virtually. Thank you for your cooperation and for helping us maintain an efficient and accessible meeting environment. There are several ways to participate in public comment tonight if you're so inclined. For those attending in person, you may complete a yellow request to speak slip and hand it to the city clerk. He's waving it for your example. If participating remotely, use the raise your hand feature in Zoom. And you'll be called on at the appropriate time. If you're calling in via phone, you can press star 9 to raise your hand. And when you're called upon, you may press star 6 to unmute. These options for public comment will remain available until I close public comment periods for each specific item we have tonight. For members of the public who may be watching us on YouTube right now, just note that we do not currently have an option to provide live public comment on YouTube itself. but you can join us through the Zoom webinar instead. Please use the access information listed on the agenda, which is on our website at cityofsanmateo.org. We have some ceremonial items tonight to begin. Item number one is Pride Month Proclamation. We have a special guest to invite to our podium, Mr. David Crafts, San Mateo County LGBTQIA plus commissioner from our county's commission. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

I will read a proclamation and then allow you to share anything you'd like to add. Thank you for being with us. Whereas the city of San Mateo proclaims the month of June 2026 as Pride Month and honors the LGBTQIA plus individuals who have immeasurably impacted the cultural, civic, and economic successes of our country. And whereas the city of San Mateo honors the history of the American gay rights movement and proclaims our respect for the LGBTQIA plus activists and allies who have fought and continue to fight relentlessly for equality. And whereas, Pride Month is a time to celebrate and uplift the LGBTQIA plus community. And the city of San Mateo is committed to promoting progress, tolerance, inclusivity, and visibility. And whereas, on June 13th, we are honored to host San Mateo County's Pride Celebration at Central Park, where our city representatives and residents will celebrate with our LGBTQIA plus community members and organizations. And whereas providing support and safe spaces for the LGBTQIA plus community is imperative. The city of San Mateo is a proud supporter of the San Mateo County Pride Center, which provides direct clinical services, case management services, education, workshops, and resources to individuals and families in need. And whereas the city of San Mateo condemns hate in all forms and strives to build a society where our citizens are valued and our residents and our stakeholders are valued and treated with dignity, regardless of how they look, how they identify, or who they love. And whereas celebrating Pride Month influences awareness and provides support and advocacy for San Mateo County's LGBTQIA plus community and is an opportunity to take action and engage in dialogue to strengthen alliances, build acceptance, and advance equal rights. Now, therefore, the City of San Mateo hereby recognizes June 2026 as Pride Month in support of the LGBTQIA plus community. Be it further resolved that our City Council will take a vote at tonight's meeting to raise the rainbow flag at City Hall on June 2nd, 2026, recognizing all LGBTQIA plus residents whose influential and lasting contributions to our neighborhoods make the city of San Mateo a vibrant community in which to live, work, and visit. Thank you. And Mr. Crafts, if you have anything you'd like to add, please do so at this time.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor Lurien, council members. On behalf of the San Mateo County LGBTQIA plus commission and the communities that we represent, thank you for this proclamation recognizing June is Pride Month in the city of San Mateo. While a proclamation is just a piece of paper, its meaning reaches far beyond these walls. It is a public declaration that every resident and guest deserves dignity, respect and the opportunity to live authentically. It tells people, especially those who may feel unseen or unwelcome, that they belong here in this city. Pride Month has deep roots in this region. Long before many Americans had heard the word pride, transgender women, drag queens, and other LGBTQ plus people in San Francisco stood up against harassment and discrimination during the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria uprising in the Tenderloin. This was one of the first known acts of collective LGBTQ resistance in the United States. A little more than a decade later, San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker created the first rainbow flag, a symbol that would become recognized around the world as a beacon of hope, visibility, and belonging. The story of pride has always been about courage, and courage still matters. However, 60 years later, across this country, we continue to see unprecedented numbers of bills targeting LGBTQ plus people, particularly transgender youth and adults. At the same time, immigrants, communities of color, religious minorities, and other groups are pushed to the margins, and they're facing renewed challenges and efforts to divide us. While these issues may be taking different forms, they are connected by a common question. Who gets to belong in the city of San Mateo? My answer, and I believe the answer of this council is, everyone does. This is why this proclamation matters. It affirms that our community values inclusion over exclusion, understanding over fear, and unity over division. And because this is a city council meeting, I should acknowledge that a proclamation doesn't fix everything. It won't reduce traffic problems, it won't lower housing rates, or explain why a two minute agenda item seems to take 45 minutes. But symbols matter. They shape culture. They communicate values. And they remind people that they are seen and welcomed. So thank you for recognizing Pride Month. Thank you for honoring the legacy of those who fought for equality before us, from the patrons at Compton's Cafeteria to Harvey Milk to the countless advocates, activists, and allies who still help San Mateo City become a better city. And thank you for demonstrating that this city remains committed to ensuring that every person can live openly, safely, and with dignity. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council, David.

We'd love to join you at the podium for a photo with the proclamation. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll now move to our next item, which is Older Americans Month. We have a proclamation for this, and we have some guests who can join us at the podium. Tom Lease, representing the Age-Friendly Coalition, along with Anna Spierko-Guditsky and Ellen Wang for our Senior Advisory Commission. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being with us. I have a proclamation I can read and then give you the floor. And we'll go from there. Whereas May is Older Americans Month, a time for us to recognize and honor City of San Mateo's older adults and their immense influence in our community. And whereas through their wealth of life experience and wisdom, older adults guide our younger generations and carry forward abundant cultural and historical knowledge. And whereas older Americans improve our communities through intergenerational relationships, community service, civic engagement, and many other activities. And whereas communities benefit when people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds have the opportunity to participate and live independently. And whereas the City of San Mateo is committed to creating an age-friendly environment, as outlined in the City of San Mateo's Age-Friendly Action Plan, which includes initiatives such as fostering intergenerational programs, prioritizing the repair of sidewalks frequented by older adults, and launching an age-friendly business certification program, to encourage local businesses to cater to the needs of older adults. Now, therefore, I, Adam Lorraine, Mayor of the City of San Mateo, and on behalf of the City Council, do hereby recognize May 2026 as Older Americans Month. Only missed by one day. It's not too bad. And I call upon all residents to join me in recognizing the contributions of our older citizens and promoting programs and activities that foster connection, inclusion, and support for older adults. And I'll just note that every month can be Older Americans Month, if we will it. And so thank you very much for joining us. And please feel free to share anything you'd like.

Yes. Not right now.

Very good. Well, I just want to take a moment to thank you, as I know we have multiple Senior Advisory Commission members among us, perhaps another one who is part of another group. And to me, I just feel that your contributions to our city enrich us daily. And thank you for your service and for being here today to accept this proclamation.

Who would like to hold the proclamations? Thank you very much.

May I join you? Very good. Thank you.

Thanks for being here. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Thank you, and we have one more ceremonial item tonight. This is San Mateo Foster City School District Community Access and School Facilities Update, a presentation. And we have some special guests with us tonight for this. I'd like to invite to the podium Maggie Trinh, president of the San Mateo Foster City School District Board of Trustees, and the superintendent of the school district, Mr. Diego Ochoa. Thank you for joining us tonight.

Thanks, everyone. Good evening to the city council, to city clerk, city manager, city attorney, and assistant city clerk, I believe, or thank you. Sorry. And to the community, we are here to give an update on the community access to our facilities. and just give everyone a bit of an update on all of the construction that people have no doubt noticed happening across the city, so at our schools. So we can go to the next slide, thank you. This is Borrell Middle School, really close to here, and you can see we have some really gorgeous fields We have a new gym and new classrooms and solar panels. And we are, you know, looking forward to enjoying these. And you can kind of see all, like this is kind of all the new stuff. And then in the background with the red roofs, this is the older buildings. Yeah, thank you. This is George Hall, located in the Villages neighborhood, and they have a beautiful new multipurpose building, as well as new landscaping, new seating areas for students to use outside. And here, Sunnybrae has a really nice new multipurpose room where the school community is able to have events. We recently had actually Mayor Lorraine there for our cultural night. So thanks for coming to that. We are renaming LEED Elementary School. It will now be known as Cottage Grove Elementary School starting this coming school year. They also have a beautiful new multi-purpose room, fields, and other facilities. This is meadow Heights, which is located close to Beresford park, um, just across from the garden center. And they have also a beautiful new multipurpose room. And, um, as you can see new kind of playground facilities and, um, shade structure and, um, lunch area. Then here we have Abbott Middle School. This looks, you can see this is all new, new fields, new paving, and then a beautiful new gym as well that was built in the last few years. And I'll let Superintendent Ochoa take over.

I'm happy to take it from here, first of all. Thank you. Each of those school campuses is, to some extent, a microcosm of the kind of building program that measures X and measure T that were approved by our voters intended to achieve. So you look at a school like Boral Middle School. It means a lot in this community. Thousands and thousands of people send their kids to Burrell Middle School. And then for the most part, they matriculate up to, I can hear myself. My mind doesn't work that way, but they matriculate up to Aragon High School, and on that one facility you see a solar project, which is contributing to the sustainability efforts we're making in the district. And you see a synthetic field that achieved something that was really sorely missing on our district campuses, which were fields that were accessible that were not, as you know, overtaken by geese and ultimately unplayable as a result of difficulty keeping the grass in high quality. And then you see the area just above the higher terrace, which is really beautifully painted track that a lot of our neighbors like to go out and get on on the weekends and really use. For the last four years, our campuses have looked, to some extent, kind of like a work in progress. So to a person driving by, it might just look like the kind of place you shouldn't go in because there's lots of temporary fencing up and signs telling you all over the place, please don't come on campus. And that's all about to change. Where we sit today is we have completed an 18 month school district facilities master plan process. And the slide that everybody can see this evening is giving you summary of what that process has involved. It's involved community meetings at 22 school campuses where parents, teachers, community members, and students have attended to discuss what's next for Burrell Middle School. Those facilities that we built as part of measures X and T are gorgeous. And they're going to last a long, long time. But there are many, many facilities at that school that need to be updated and renovated. And the same is true at Meadow Heights. And the same is true at Parkside and Bayside and so many other schools in the city of San Mateo. And tonight's presentation is a way for us to give information to the community, to invite members of the San Mateo community to find out more about our facilities master plan in what we believe is going to be a preparation to this school board about 25 days from now to consider a resolution for a bond process in November of 2026. one of the things that we uh... anticipate through this long facilities master plan process that has taken eighteen months is we're looking at the school district that has facilities needs in excess of a billion dollars and our plan currently involves a potential bond that's gonna be in about the $490 million range that will accomplish tasks and projects across our 22 campuses, bringing so many of our school facilities up to the kind of learning experience that we want students to have. where they go home and tell their parents about the new CTE course they're taking, where they tell their parents, and some of our schools believe this or not, I now have windows in my classroom. We have many, many classrooms in the school district that don't have windows. Some of us suffer in offices like that in our day jobs, and we know the impact it has. But also just updating campuses so that we have students in learning environments that make them feel like they can thrive. At the same time, we know that the public watches what we do and we invite members of the public to connect with us and to find out more about what we're doing. And in each of the last two bonds, the district did something that we're very proud of, which is we outperformed expectations. When we sought taxpayer support for both of the prior bonds, we announced anticipated interest borrowing rates that we felt would ultimately get the job done and facilitate the construction that we had hoped to achieve. And in both circumstances, the district's strong, sound financial planning and highly effective bond management programs resulted in the savings of almost $200 million back to taxpayers in San Mateo and Foster City. And that's as a result of the district maintaining really, really high, actually the highest credit rating possible for any school district nationwide, and at the same time, delivering projects on time and on budget. And we know that those two factors matter a great deal to members of the public. When we talk about need, we are not talking about something that can be achieved with a coat of paint. And I want to give President Trinh one more opportunity to share a perspective about what it means to have these kind of facilities. And indeed, at some schools, we do have facilities that are already updated at others we don't

So most recently, actually last week, we had an opportunity to celebrate the opening of the new wing at Bowditch Middle School. And one of the things that we talked about as a board last week at our meeting is this is beautiful. The space is so light and bright and welcoming. ALL OF OUR STUDENTS DESERVE THIS, NOT JUST ONES WHO LIVE IN A CERTAIN PART OF TOWN, BUT ACROSS THE DISTRICT ALL OF OUR STUDENTS DESERVE THE KIND OF SPACES THAT MAKE LEARNING FUN AND EXCITING AND, YOU KNOW, NATURAL. AND SO YOU CAN SEE FROM THESE PHOTOS WE HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO IN TERMS OF updating some of our spaces um the lot you know that library is a little bit dark like we could definitely do a little better so what we want to encourage people to do is to kind of check out um you know these photos and check out the photos of our new spaces and you know let's let's finish the job and let's make this a reality for every child in our district

And we have some QR codes at the end of the presentation. So for members following online, we invite you to do that. You may have noticed just down the street over in north central San Mateo, we're finishing up a $37 million project at Fiesta Gardens International School. It is a beautiful project. I promise you, just give us another nine weeks and you're going to be really happy. The other thing we wanted to drop on the city council and potentially our city manager and staff is the idea of coming up with a really innovative partnership between the city and the school district to facilitate some parking on site that might help alleviate some of the issues that we know we're facing that are a challenge. AND I WANTED TO PASS IT BACK TO THE CITY COUNCIL FOR ANY THE CITY COUNCIL FOR ANY REMARKS OR IDEAS, MAYBE SOME REMARKS OR IDEAS, MAYBE SOME OTHER WAYS WE CAN PARTNER AND OTHER WAYS WE CAN PARTNER AND CONTINUE THIS WORK FORWARD. CONTINUE THIS WORK FORWARD. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU FOR THAT THANK YOU FOR THAT PRESENTATION. PRESENTATION. I SEEM TO RECALL FROM A PREVIOUS I SEEM TO RECALL FROM A PREVIOUS ITEM THERE BEING SOMETHING THAT ITEM THERE BEING SOMETHING THAT WE MIGHT LIKE TO MENTION. WE MIGHT LIKE TO MENTION. WOULD COUNCIL MEMBER NEWSOM WOULD COUNCIL MEMBER NEWSOM LIKE TO MENTION THAT?

LIKE TO MENTION THAT? THANK YOU, MR Hi, again. Diego, Maggie, great to see you. I actually liaise with you guys once a month, so not the public might not know that, along with my fellow council member, Nicole. And one of the things that's been brought up to me in my neighborhood is access to EV chargers. So I told you I would remind you about this on the dais, and so that's what I'm asking. You know, there's an interest in having access to EV chargers. We actually had a special session earlier tonight talking about access to EV chargers for the general public. And there is definitely an equity issue with EV charging. Most people who are in rental homes or, you know, in neighborhoods, deep in neighborhoods, don't have access to EV charging, which makes it a barrier for them to buy an EV car. Obviously, with the current administration, EV charging has been waning a little, but we're all of the belief that that course will change again in the not so distant future. And so, you know, one of the asks is, can we please have our schools look at, you know, in addition to opening up parking for after hours which would be a huge improvement and help for our neighborhoods uh also the idea of having access to chargers and uh council member sorgo kariki was talking about it and said you know in a lot of her neighborhoods there aren't any charging stations and that's because when you get deep into residential neighborhoods there aren't the areas that that we have you know we have charging so i would i'd ask you to please try to look at that and see if that could be something you could do on off hours when school's not in session I THINK IT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL FOR THE COMMUNITY AND IT WOULD BE REALLY APPRECIATED.

ABSOLUTELY. WE LOOK FORWARD TO THAT PARTNERSHIP HAPPENING AND REALLY ANNOUNCING IT AND GETTING THAT WORD OUT TO OUR FAMILIES AND TO OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS. WE ALSO WANTED TO PUT A DATE OUT THERE FOR THE CITY COUNCIL AND FOR MEMBERS OF THE SAN MATEO COMMUNITY. Come August 2026, every school will be opened every weekend all year. There will not be closed campuses. You will see signs inviting neighbors. We want all of the residents in the city of San Mateo to get their kids out of their house for a couple of hours on the weekend and bring them to our schools. We have beautiful playgrounds out there and we want to see these kids running outside under the sun or WE WANT TO SEE THEM OUT ON OUR FIELDS USING OUR FACILITIES AND FIELDS USING OUR FACILITIES AND REALLY INVITE THAT KIND OF REALLY INVITE THAT KIND OF ENGAGEMENT WITH THE COMMUNITY. ENGAGEMENT WITH THE COMMUNITY.

WELL, JUST TO REITERATE, WELL, JUST TO REITERATE, WE'RE CERTAINLY VERY THANKFUL WE'RE CERTAINLY VERY THANKFUL FOR YOU OPENING THE CAMPUSES. FOR YOU OPENING THE CAMPUSES. IT MEANS A LOT TO THE ENTIRE IT MEANS A LOT TO THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY. COMMUNITY. THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR.

THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR. THANK YOU, AND THE DEPUTY MAYOR THANK YOU, AND THE DEPUTY MAYOR IS RECOGNIZED.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for a great presentation, Superintendent Ochoa and President Trinh. I wanted to say what a joy it has been to see the new Fiesta Gardens Elementary School come up, or the middle school portion, just down the block from where I live. I was there for the ribbon cutting, and I think a couple of us were there for another ribbon cutting for the groundbreaking, and it's been lovely to see it come together so quickly, and I'm excited to see the final product. My remark was going to be to thank you for opening up the the school campuses especially in on the east side especially in my my district and council members here for gaditsky's neighborhood there is a distinct lack of play space open space recreation space and so we're grateful for that partnership as well um and uh i look i want to just make sure that i uh iterate here on the dice that i am grateful for the parking potential per parking collaboration especially in north central as that continues to be an ongoing issue and i know that we will um hopefully with the support of the council we will be engaging you on that offer so thank you thank you deputy mayor

Councilmember Diaz-Nash.

Thank you to the mayor and thank you both for the presentation. Please pass our thanks to everybody who made all these facilities happen. It took really a village, a very, very large village. So we are grateful. And I just wanted to report that I was over in San Mateo Park yesterday. The Neighborhood Association had their spring, you know, PARKAPALOOZA, AND THEY WERE SO EXCITED THAT PARK SCHOOL IS GOING TO BE OPEN ALL SUMMER, THAT THAT HAS REALLY BEEN SOMETHING THEY ARE, YOU KNOW, THEY'VE BEEN WANTING FOR A LONG TIME, AND THEY'RE VERY EXCITED IN PARTNERING WITH PARK SCHOOL. BUT THAT'S GOING TO BE GREAT. SO THANK YOU.

THANK YOU BOTH FOR BEING HERE. I WOULD ECHO MY FELLOW COUNCIL MEMBER'S COMMENTS. It feels as though you've offered us quite a bit here in our city. And I would include with that the solar projects that you mentioned, because we're all together in a mission to ensure that our future is as sustainable and high quality for our future generations as possible. So thank you for your contributions to your own infrastructure to make that part of our shared goals. And thank you for sharing this and giving the QR codes so that people can have access to learn more.

Thank you. I just want to close out by saying I actually brought this to Superintendent Ochoa a couple of years ago when I read an op-ed in the Daily Journal. So I really feel strongly that good ideas can come from anywhere. I apologize that I don't have the name of the person who read it, but you can probably find it on the Daily Journal website. TO THE PUBLIC, THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING US AND FOR GIVING US SUPPORTING US AND FOR GIVING US IDEAS SO WE CAN TAKE IT AND RUN IDEAS SO WE CAN TAKE IT AND RUN WITH IT. WITH IT. THANKS VERY MUCH.

THANKS VERY MUCH. THANK YOU FOR JOINING US. And we will be proceeding to the consent calendar portion of our business items tonight. We are now moving beyond the ceremonial portion of tonight's meeting, which includes business items being considered by the council. For that reason, I would like to remind all in the room and online that we will be enforcing our rules of decorum. As such, at this point, we do not allow for cheering, jeering, or booing during the business portion of the meeting, as it tends to put a chill on public comment. Our goal is to ensure that all perspectives are heard. Our motto is give respect, get respect, and we appreciate your cooperation with this. City Clerk, please read the consent calendar.

Certainly, Mayor Lorraine. All matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the council to be routine and will be enacted by one motion without discussion. If discussion is desired, that item may be removed and considered separately. Item number four, downtown cleaning service amendment. Item number five, citywide street rehabilitation package 7B agreement. Item number six, annual sewer basin rehabilitation on-call design services amendments. Item number seven, local streets and road maintenance and rehabilitation project list fiscal year 2026-27 adoption. Item number eight, community flood and storm protection fee increase for fiscal year 2026-27 adoption. Item number nine, parks and recreation bulk printing and mailing services agreement. Item number 10, Edward Byrne 2025 justice assistance grant program approval. Item number 11, Recreation Special Events Support Services Agreement. Item number 12, Downtown Landscape Maintenance Services Agreement. Item number 13, City of San Mateo Opposing State Ballot Initiative number 198325-0006A1 Adoption. Item number 14, LGBTQIA plus progress pride flag display at city hall adoption. Item number 15, 445 South B Street bespoke new mixed use development ordinance adoption. And finally, item number 16, boards and commissions appointment subcommittee appointment recommendations.

Thank you, city clerk. Is there any member of the council who would like to pull an item for the consent calendar?

I don't want to pull an item, but I do want to make a comment about number five. So I can wait, or I can do that now.

Let's wait. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who wish to comment on consent calendar items? If you would, please fill out a request to speak slip if you're in chambers or raise your hand. This is for just the items that the city clerk outlined at this time. And city clerk, just feel free to tally and let us know.

Mayor Lorraine, we have not received any requests to speak on the consent calendar, either in person or in our virtual environment.

OK, in that case, I will close public comment on the consent calendar and ask if there is a motion to approve.

I just want to make a comment about number five. So number five is about 13 street segments that we get funding for from the state. Those streets vary, but since tonight is a night about transportation, I wanted to call out that there's potential rehabilitation for Aragon Boulevard, Buena Vista, De Anza Boulevard, Norfolk Street, 27th Avenue, Oakwood Drive, O'Farrell, Edinburgh, Delaware Streets. Also, we did receive several public comments today about Aragon and asking about if you're doing repaving or rehabilitation, is the city also doing bike and pedestrian upgrades and safety improvements? And I did just want to confirm after talking to public work staff that we do indeed factor in bike and ped improvements during those rehabilitation projects. events, which is a positive. So I just wanted to call that out. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, I would entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar. Second. Thank you. City Clerk, may we please have a roll call vote?

Certainly. Council Member Newsom? Yes. Council Member Diaz-Nash? Yes. Council Member Spierko-Kadetsky? Yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez? Yes. Mayor Lorraine? Yes. The motion carries 5-0.

Thank you very much. At this time, I would like to invite all newly appointed and reappointed commissioners who may be with us here in council chambers tonight. You may come to the front of the dais to receive your oath of office from our city court. Thank you for your willingness to serve our community and support the important work of the city's boards and commissions.

If everyone could please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, state your name. I, state your name. Do solemnly swear or affirm. Do solemnly swear or affirm.

That I will support and defend. That I will support and defend. The Constitution of the United States.

against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California.

Amen.

Congratulations, you guys.

Thank you for serving San Mateo. I've been asked to come over here.

No.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

As the new board members and commissioners receive their certificates, we can take a brief two-minute recess. Thanks, everybody. We'll return to business shortly.

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Thanks, everyone. We'll be resuming shortly. Please find your seats. Thank you. Thank you. OK. We have concluded our consent calendar items, and we're now moving to general public comment. Members of the public who wish to comment on any item not appearing on our agenda tonight may address the city council at this time. State law prevents council from taking action on any matter not on our agenda. However, your comments may be referred to staff for follow-up. This public comment section is generally limited to a total of 15 minutes. However, that is subject to Council's discretion and can be extended if Council wishes to do so. If needed, an opportunity for additional public comment may also be provided later in the agenda. City Clerk, can you please tally the total number of requests to speak on general public comment?

Thank you, Mary Lorraine. We've received a total of 14 requests to speak for general public comment. For council adopted rules and procedures that would set the timer at two minutes per speaker. When I call your name, if you could please line up to my right, that'll ensure that we receive all of your comments tonight. Our final speaker in person will be Alan Wang, and our final speaker in our virtual environment will be Rick Cicuta. So our first three speakers for general public comment will be Rich Hedges, followed by Kevin Simpson and Anna Sverko-Guditsky.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR LORRAINE AND CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS. I'M HERE TONIGHT IN A VERY HAPPY MOOD. SO I HAVE TO SAY THAT I'VE COME HERE MANY, MANY TIMES COMPLAINING ABOUT 17TH AND EL CAMINO AND THE DANGERS THERE. AND MY BELIEF IS THAT CALTRAN HAD BEEN THE MAJOR BLOCK IN GETTING IT DONE. UNFORTUNATELY, IT TOOK THE LIFE OF A PERSON. TO GET THIS DONE AND THAT'S OFTEN THE MODE WHEN WE GET IMPROVEMENTS THAT SOMEONE UNFORTUNATELY DIES. SO I'M HERE TONIGHT TO SAY ONCE AGAIN VERONICA VASQUEZ, SAY HER NAME. IT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT WE TAKE ACTION WHEN THESE KIND OF THINGS HAPPEN. I WILL SAY, BY THE WAY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ALL THE WORK AND ALSO OUR CITY MANAGER. I will say that Matt Fabre at neighborhood meetings said that 28th is also somewhat of a problem in El Camino. And just to reiterate what I've said before, if you don't make crossings of this main street on the way to Caltrain safe, people aren't going to ride Caltrain. And 28th is another spot where people have to cross to ride Caltrain.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Kevin Simpson, followed by Anna Svirko-Giditsky and Doug D'Anno. Hi, Council.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak. Two weeks ago, a presentation was made here during open public comment that I just can't let pass. Someone stood up, actually three people stood up, and unfortunately perpetuated a couple of trends that we've been seeing lately that I just really can't sustain any longer. First of all, they proposed an absolutely mind-boggling proposal to rip out every tree in the tree lawn of Humboldt Street for two miles and replace it with additional parking. And this is proposed as some kind of great solution to the parking versus bike lane problem. Imagine if I went into Barrisford Hillsdale neighborhood and propose that we rip out the median strip and all the trees and the tree lawns in the middle there on both sides, can you imagine how many cows would be had? We could fill up a cattle ranch in Montana with that. Imagine the cost to tear down all of the utility poles. and all of the street public signs and regrind all of the ramps to the driveways. And we come up here and we waste our time actually thinking about these things. This is about the third red herring that we've had on this entire topic. We've been sent down these wild goose chases before. The other thing that took place is this continual repetition of fake narratives and the demeaning and insulting of residents who attended every workshop brought their kids, spoke up as residents and constituents of that neighborhood in favor of the ability to bike safely to and from schools and work and whatever. It's time to stop shaming people and calling them as a group outside special interests or activists, their people, their constituents, and they deserve respect. And I hope these community leaders will start displaying that.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Anna Svirko-Goroditsky, followed by Doug Deanna and Rick Bonilla.

good evening mayor good evening city council my name is anna i'm a senior and a resident of san mateo for 45 years i want to talk to you about the congregate meal program which has been operating for many years in the city of san mateo the nutrition program is run successfully by the city three times per week at the beresford senior center and two times per week at the king senior center The program is designed to reduce food insecurity, improve nutritional health, prevent social isolation, and promote independent living. It's a very popular program. The funding structures at the two senior centers differ. At the King Center, participants are asked for a $5 voluntary donation, whereas at the Beresford Center, participants are charged seven dollars the city is charged by the caterer twelve dollars per meal and has to make up the difference of five dollars at beresford and seven and kings i can attest that the meals are excellent the problem is that the program is popular due to its excellent reputation and the number of participants is growing Participants sign up for up to five meals per week and more of us are ending up on wait lists for an increasing number of days each month. The wait list is a problem. I spoke to city staff. The city applied for increased federal funding through the county. If the grant is received with the increased allotment, perhaps the need for a wait list will be eliminated. If not, I ask the city council to consider a small increase in the senior nutrition program. The math is simple. Apparently, five extra meals per day might eliminate the wait list. What would it cost? About $7,500 a year between the two centers. It's my estimate. I ask the council to consider the potential increase in the budget. If the county provides the increased allotment, then the needed funds can be recalculated. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Doug Deanna, followed by Rick Bonilla and Carol Eldridge.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. I'M HERE TO JUST ADD TO MY PUBLIC I'M HERE TO JUST ADD TO MY PUBLIC COMMENTARY, WRITTEN COMMENTARY COMMENTARY, WRITTEN COMMENTARY REGARDING THE QUARTER CENT TAX REGARDING THE QUARTER CENT TAX INCREASE. INCREASE. I JUST WANTED TO SAY IT'S 17 I JUST WANTED TO SAY IT'S 17 YEARS AND TWO TAX INCREASES YEARS AND TWO TAX INCREASES COMING OUT OF THE SAME TAX POND COMING OUT OF THE SAME TAX POND FROM THE SAME OVERTAXED PEOPLE. FROM THE SAME OVERTAXED PEOPLE. MAYOR AND COUNCIL, THE POND HAS MAYOR AND COUNCIL, THE POND HAS BEEN FISHED OUT. BE But we all have one thing in common. We all love San Mateo. We just don't have the tax love anymore. So it's my suggestion that we try to fish out of a different pond. And here are four. Franklin, Visa, Roblox, Guidewire, every glass tower with a logo on it. Together, my research shows they're printing about $17 million every nine hours. The tech bros live here. Their kids play on our ball fields. Our fire department saves their lives. And if anyone here works at one of those companies, email the council. Tell them who the decision maker is. Better yet, hook them up. Because if we want this city to grow, it has to be a partnership. Residents, council, and the companies whose names are on our skyline. That's not a tax. That's a team. KACHING! AND THE LOVE JUST PERMEATES THE ROOM, THE CITY, AND BEYOND. I'M HERE TO HELP. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. OUR NEXT THREE SPEAKERS WILL BE RICK BONIA FOLLOWED BY CAROL ELDERICH AND REVEREND ALVARO.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS AND STAFF MEMBERS. I AM HERE TONIGHT TO EXPRESS DISSATISFACTION. Along with Mr. Simpson, I agree. Suggestion for ripping out planter strips and trees all along Humboldt, not a good idea. And I'll leave that at that. I have another issue though. It's called the Horizon Treatment Center. I understand that people need treatment from time to time. People need help. Not all things are perfect. People who need treatment are not criminals. People who've been in treatment in San Mateo, in Hayward Park, and in Glazenwood, down on Palm Avenue, near schools, near churches, near all sorts of places, haven't caused anything like the kind of problems that we heard predicted by certain members of the public. Hasn't happened. Probably not going to happen. We have a certain group of people. They brought... Measure H, they brought Measure P, they brought Measure Y by 43 votes. And then Measure T happened, and there's a new majority in town. 60% of the vote is a C change. There are people now who want to see people get help with getting housing, with getting treatment, without basic health care, and having just a council that listens and responds to reason. And I think we've got a little off the path. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Carol Eldridge, followed by Reverend Alvaro Duran and John Ebnetter.

Good evening, Mayor Lorraine and members of council. My name is Carol Eldridge and I speak this evening as a member of One San Mateo. I came to again encourage you to give your strong and vocal support to the Horizon Recovery Center at its originally proposed location. It is a question of character, the character of San Mateo. Are we the generous community that we purport ourselves to be? Or are we willing to turn our backs on people who are willing, who are trying to restore their lives and reclaim their futures? TO ME, THIS IS THE MOST ESSENTIAL QUESTION. BUT I ALSO WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE PROPOSED ALTERNATIVE ON MOLLER ROAD. I HAVE SEEN INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT IT WOULD REQUIRE TO BUILD THERE AND THE REQUIREMENTS ARE VERY DEMANDING. THE FACILITY WOULD HAVE TO BE RAISED EIGHT FEET AND THERE COULD BE NO TREATMENT ACTIVITY ON THE FIRST FLOOR. YOU KNOW, THESE REQUIREMENTS WOULD RESULT IN MANY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS MORE IN BUILDING COSTS. AND MY QUESTION IS WHO WOULD PAY FOR THESE? AND WOULD THE FUNDING SOURCE EVEN APPROVE THE RELOCATION OF THE FACILITY TO BURLINGAME? I THINK IT WOULD BE AN UTTER TRAGEDY IF SITING CONSIDERATIONS PREVENTED THIS FACILITY FROM BEING BUILT HERE IN SAN MATEO COUNTY. thereby depriving so many people of the ability to heal. And I doubt that this council wants to be responsible for that happening, that you aspire to that being your legacy. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Reverend Alvaro Duran, followed by John Ebnetter and Tasso Zagrafas.

Members of the Council staff and people of some that they want to run the Minister of community life of the congregational churches on the tail, but tonight I'm going to speak on behalf of all the clergy and religious leaders of the peninsula solidarity cohort. In the letter recently submitted by Reverend Dr. Penny Nixon, we affirmed our belief that every person possesses dignity inherent and that the common good is measured by how we care for those who are most vulnerable among us. And I'd like to build upon that message. Over the past months, much of this conversation about Horizon Recovery Center has focused on process, location, and public concern. Those issues matter. Public trust matters, and community engagement matters. But process cannot become a substitute for justice, nor can fear become a substitute for evidence. What concerns many of us is not that questions were raised. Questions are always healthy. Communities should ask difficult questions. What concerns us is what happens when evidence is presented, experts are heard, and questions answered. Yet fear continues to carry greater weight than facts. Public leadership requires more than reflecting anxiety. It requires helping communities distinguish between what it is fear and what is demonstrator. As a pastor serving less than two blocks from the proposed site, I have witnessed a reality very different from They are one often described in this debate. Our church hosts recovery groups for years while simultaneously serving children, families, older adults, and vulnerable members of our community. The catastrophe that has been predicted has not been materialized. What we have witnessed instead is healing. Thank you. The people needs these services are already part of our community.

Thank you. THANK YOU. OUR NEXT THREE SPEAKERS WILL BE OUR NEXT THREE SPEAKERS WILL BE FOLLOWED BY MIKE SWIER. FOLLOWED BY MIKE SWIER. GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL.

GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL. THANK YOU ALL FOR ALL THE GREAT THANK YOU ALL FOR ALL THE GREAT WORK YOU DO. WORK YOU DO. I AM HERE TONIGHT ENCOURAGING I AM HERE TONIGHT ENCOURAGING THIS COUNCIL TO SUPPORT THE THIS COUNCIL TO SUPPORT THE HORIZON PROJECT AND TO HAVE A HORIZON PROJECT AND TO HAVE A CITY-LED WORKING GROUP FORMED TO CITY-LED WORKING GROUP FORMED TO INCLUDE MAXIMIZING THE PUBLIC'S INPUT. THE CITY'S SUPPORT OF SUCH A WORKING GROUP WOULD GIVE IT LEGITIMACY AND ENCOURAGE OPEN AND CIVIL CONVERSATIONS. YOUR SUPPORT FOR THIS PROJECT WOULD BE IN LINE WITH SAN MATEO COUNTY'S BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AND RECOVERY SERVICES, SAN MATEO COUNTY HEALTH PLANS, SAN MATEO MEDICAL CENTER, THE COUNTY'S HOMELESS AND FARM WORKERS HEALTH PROGRAMS, 10 OF THE 11 SURVEYED POLICE DEPARTMENTS IN THE COUNTY AND THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES. THE TREMENDOUS SUPPORT BY ALL OF THE HEALTHCARE DEPARTMENTS IS THE TREMENDOUS SUPPORT BY ALL OF THE HEALTHCARE DEPARTMENTS IS QUITE INDICATIVE OF THE PROJECT'S QUITE INDICATIVE OF THE PROJECT'S EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY HERE IN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY HERE IN SAMANTHALE. SAMANTHALE. THERE IS CONFUSION SURROUNDING THERE IS CONFUSION SURROUNDING THIS PROJECT AS IT PERTAINS TO THIS A STATEMENT CLARIFYING THAT THIS COUNCIL IS NEUTRAL ON THE PROJECT A STATEMENT CLARIFYING THAT THIS COUNCIL IS NEUTRAL ON THE PROJECT AND WILL WEIGH IN ON IT AT THE AND WILL WEIGH IN ON IT AT THE APPROPRIATE STAGE OF ITS APPROVAL APPROPRIATE STAGE OF ITS APPROVAL PROCESS WOULD CLEAR UP THAT PROCESS WOULD CLEAR UP THAT MATTER.

MATTER. THANK YOU.

Humboldt Street bike lanes remain an issue. There are three to four, sometimes five bike trips per day on average. A proposal was brought up to widen the street equal that of Delaware. and it seemed like a reasonable response. Mr. Simpson here argued that imagine going to another neighborhood and ripping out trees, but ignore the fact that they ripped out parking for the residents on Humboldt Street. How is that even equal? Let me talk about Horizon for a second. Horizon is a pure real estate asset buy by a nonprofit that has $15 million in assets and property assets.

That's all it is.

They provide services using our taxpayer dollars and medical county or insurance policies, but they wanna own the asset. If you were given $2 million from the county and $25 million from the state, which is taxpayer money, you'd wanna buy the prime real estate on 101 El Camino versus just providing services, which are needed services on Mahler Road. So they want to own real estate. That's what they want to do. I want to speak a little bit about the recusal. Adam Lorraine has a long standing relationship. He endorsed Seema Patel and Adam owes a huge debt to Patel and Amo Lee for getting him into elected office. Yet no one is arguing that the Thick of Thieves relationship required a recusal. I think this whole misinformation and rumor about recusals is ridiculous and I'm glad it wasn't brought up tonight. And if it is, I'd say it's shameful.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Mike Swire followed by Trina Pierce and Vikash B.

YEAH, THANK YOU, MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL. SADLY, WE'VE HAD TOO MANY TRAGEDIES ON OUR STREETS IN SAN MATEO. VERONICA VASQUEZ PASSED AWAY AFTER BEING HIT IN A CROSSWALK ON EL CAMINO AT 17th AND THE SANDOVAL FAMILY WAS RECENTLY HIT IN A CROSSWALK ON DELAWARE IN FRONT OF THE HIGH SCHOOL. WHILE I WILL DEFINITELY ADMIT THAT I WHINE A LOT ABOUT WHAT THE CITY IS NOT DOING REGARDING STREET SAFETY, TODAY I'M HERE TO SAY THAT YOU GOT IT RIGHT. IN BOTH CASES, YOU AND STAFF SWUNG INTO ACTION TO QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY ADDRESS THE DANGEROUS CONDITIONS IN THESE TWO LOCATIONS. WHEN THERE'S A DANGEROUS INDIVIDUAL IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, WE EXPECT THE PD TO SHOW UP WITHIN MINUTES. WHILE THAT TIMELINE HASN'T TRADITIONALLY APPLIED TO DANGERS ON OUR STREETS, WE'RE NETHERLESS VERY APPRECIATIVE THAT THE CITY WAS ABLE TO MAKE IMPROVEMENTS WITHIN MONTHS, NOT YEARS IN THESE TWO LOCATIONS. ON DELAWARE, WE NOW HAVE QUICK BUILD LOCATION OR IMPROVEMENTS TO SLOW TRAFFIC. And as of yesterday on El Camino at 17th, we have a dedicated pedestrian signal so that those on foot don't need to worry about cars making left turns while they are in the crosswalk. This is how a city should work when there is an imminent danger and people are scared to get around without a car. Thank you and keep up the good work. And yes on Horizon and no on the tree annihilation. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next two speakers will be Trina Pierce followed by Vikash.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. I just want to first say I respect you guys. I thank you guys for keeping democracy, for just keeping it good here. I mean, we're hearing all over the country, people are trying to change democracy. People died for democracy. So I just respect that. And sometimes we don't want the change, but changes come good. You don't want them at first, but then it's a good thing. So it's always good to get new blood. And then looking at the meetings that were at the King Center, people get up here, I mean, me and Kevin, we're friends, we disagree on everything, but we respect each other. We don't call each other names, we don't do that. But at those meetings at the King Center, and by the way, at one of those meetings at the King Center, SOMEONE WANTED TO FIGHT FROM THE BIKE COALITION. AND IT WASN'T GOOD. AND A CITY EMPLOYEE HAD TO STOP THAT. BUT I HEAR THIS ALL THE TIME. THE NUMBER ONE THING THAT CAME OUT OF ALL THOSE MEETINGS WHEN THEY FIRST GOT UP, IT SAYS BRING OUR PARKING BACK. THEY DON'T CARE IF IT'S A SHARED BIKE LANE, BIKE BOULEVARD, BUT THE RESIDENTS THERE SHOULD BE ABLE TO PARK. AND PEOPLE SAY THEY CAN'T PARK BECAUSE THEY HAVE DRIVEWAYS. THEY CAN PARK IN THEIR DRIVEWAYS. THEY CAN PARK IN THEIR GARAGES. SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE HAVE CHILDREN. And they get off from work at one o'clock in the morning. So of course they park on the street. So their kids can come home after work and park there. But they don't see that, they don't care about that. So I'm just tired of hearing that. So I think we should go and do everyone right. Everyone share the bike lane and get the parking back. Because that's what the residents want. Thank you.

Thank you. And our final speaker in chambers will be Vikash.

GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. GOOD EVENING. I'm a tree hugger. I'm an environmentalist. I share marigolds with my neighborhood because we have a whole slew of them. So I have no interest in destroying arbor type things. But in this context, it accommodates an equity priority community who was disenfranchised with false data. You know, when you, in my industry, when we report data, if it is not reproducible and if it's not accurate, we have to retract that data or it's considered fraud. So by that virtue, this proposal still stands as a valid median between everyone. it's a it's a happy balance and i would think that you would take the time to really review this i'm sure the city is looking into it and understand that during covid we suffered from social distancing which made our lives miserable but people could actually put a mask over their face and actually interact socially within six feet Can you imagine if you had social inaccessibility where, like I've said before, where people can't come to your home and visit you for events or just seeing how you're doing on a regular basis? This is what these people are still suffering from for the last three years. Just go talk to them. I have. Just go there. Knock on their door and talk to them. They suffer from social inaccessibility. And I think that we have to take that into consideration in this proposal. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving to our virtual environment where our first speaker will be Lisa Taylor. Lisa, please unmute your mic.

Good evening, Mayor Lorraine and city council members and staff. Lisa Taylor, executive director of the Bay Area Community Health Advisory Council, also known as BAC, HAC. And I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and sponsorship of the 2026 Soul Stroke for Health. that was held at May 16th at Coyote Point in San Mateo. We had over 350 people there. We're close to our fundraising goal of $130,000. We had 30 organizations participating in the Community Health Village. We did free screenings for hypertension and diabetes. We distributed over 110 STI prevention supply packets and 60 STI prevention education materials. We distributed toiletry kits socks, gloves. We had students there from CSM as well, the nursing students. I also want to just give a special thanks to the city manager, Alex, and his staff for championing our sponsorship. It was great to see council member DS Nash there, as well as park and rec director, Joanne McGreeny. And again, this was an event so that we could provide education and access to services to our community. I hope that we can count on you for more sponsorship in the coming year, because it'll be the 25th anniversary of SoulStroll for Health. That's May 14th and 15th in 2027. So again, thank you very much for your support and your sponsorship.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Connie Wise. Connie, please unmute your mic.

Good evening, City Council. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can.

Okay, thank you. So I want to also talk about Humboldt a little bit. You put together a very ambitious plan, $10 million to make it a one-way street. restore the parking, but still have bike lanes. But every day I go down San Mateo Drive and I see two dedicated park lanes, north and south, no trucks, much slower traffic. And I think, you know what, on Humboldt, I would never let my child ride on a Humboldt bike lane. But on San Mateo Drive, I would do that. It seems safer. And they're just a couple of blocks apart. And kids could go to school via San Mateo Drive, and then they turn down the closest street to whatever school they're going to. And it could be a great solution. And then you could just remove the bike lanes on Humboldt, which is a truck thoroughfare and not safe for children anyway, and just put the parking back. So I hope that you will consider that. It's just going to be safer for bikers overall, and it'll save the city $10 million. And just a quick comment on the Horizon situation. The thing that concerns me the most as a resident close by is that it's gonna be a drunk tank. And it would be better to have that a little bit away from elderly housing and elementary schools. So I hope people will consider that when discussing it going forward. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And our final speaker, as was announced earlier, will be Rick Sakuda. Rick, please unmute your mic.

Good evening, Mayor Lorraine and City Council. I would just like to take a minute to say something that I haven't been able to say because there is always so much going on and I only have one minute to speak. But tonight I wanted to recognize the work that is being put in by each of our City Council members, our City Manager, our City Attorney, City Clerk, Department Heads and Staff. I know you are all under constant attack by one side or the other, or me, and sometimes by amazingly both sides at the same time. It seems like we can never make anyone happy, but I wanted to recognize and appreciate the hard work that you all put in in very difficult times. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Lorraine, that concludes public comment.

Okay, thank you everyone for your comments. I just wanna look in the direction of city manager's staff and see if there was anything that wanted to be shared, okay. And at this point, I will, oh yes, Council Member Diaz-Nash.

Thank you. I know we can't do anything about this tonight because it hasn't been agendized, but I would love staff to take a look at the opportunity to address the congregant food, the meals, and see if there's an opportunity to perhaps expand the budget to cover the wait list.

So you have the item tonight, and that would be the appropriate time to have that discussion and give direction to staff to amend the budget. Yeah, that's the appropriate time for that.

Great. Thank you very much.

OKAY. THANK YOU FOR THIS. OKAY. THANK YOU FOR THIS. AND NOW LET US MOVE TO THE NEXT AND NOW LET US MOVE TO THE NEXT ITEM ON OUR AGENDA. ITEM ON OUR AGENDA. OLD BUSINESS ITEM NUMBER 17, OLD BUSINESS ITEM NUMBER 17, 2026 TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM ANNUAL 2026 TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM ANNUAL REVIEW PROGRESS UPDATE. REVIEW PROGRESS UPDATE. WE HAVE A PRESENTATION FROM OUR Thank you, Engineering Manager Ju, for joining us.

No worries, just give me a second here, setting up the presentation.

Did it close itself? No, I forgot.

Let's see. Sorry, I just.

All right. Good evening, City Council. I'm extremely excited tonight. This is our second annual Transportation Review, a City Council priority. Yes, there we go. I heard some cheers. And tonight, there are a lot of slides. We are going through six chapters to talk about transportation and really geek out. We're going to explain our transportation network. And then we're going to focus on safety. This is something that holds dear to all of our department heads as well as staff. So we are going to focus a lot on safety. We're going to talk about active transportation. We're going to talk about vehicle congestion management, parking, and as well as some challenges that the transportation division is facing. So first off, our transportation network, it's very vast. It includes roadways, traffic signals, train stations, ped bridges, all of it. And more specifically, we're talking about 80 bridges, 7,000 streetlights in total, over 200 plus centerline roadway miles. We have 90 signalized intersection, the most in the county, and we have over 190 bus stops. There are a lot of metrics to consider and look at, but ultimately, for the City of San Mateo, our transportation network is vast. But how did it get here? Well, it really starts with a general plan. I think a lot of council member is really familiar with this. So the previous general plan really got us to this point. But recently we adopted a new general plan, General Plan 2040. And here it outlines the goals, the objectives and the policies of how are we going to get to our current place to point B. And there are a lot of those. So here is the highlight of our circulation element as identified in the general plan. We've carved out a lot of policies that pertain to really the four main chapters we'll be discussing. Safety, active transportation, vehicle congestion management, and parking management. I'm not going to go through every single policy here, but we will revisit them as we discuss the chapters. Something new, our 2026 strategic plan. Now this discussion here is discussing the 2025 accomplishments, and this strategic plan is adopted for 2026. But we do want to highlight there is a lot of overlap and alignment, even with the current work that we're doing. and more so as we pursue future endeavors in transportation. So there are three main goals that you see there in little bullet points. Work towards a transportation system that prioritizes user safety, accommodates future growth, and maintains efficient and safe operations for all users. Very long. The second one is seek funding opportunities and partnership that accelerate transportation project implementation. And then the last one is to pursue initiatives that increase access to transit, improve east-west travel, and expand last mile connections. For the sake of this discussion, We have really streamlined the terminology of this. So the first one is really to have a transportation network that's safe, smart, efficient for all users. The second one is to really fund smarter to build faster if we're looking at diversifying the way we implement our projects. And the last one is better transit, stronger connections. And you'll see all three of these strategic goals really play out in all the work that we're doing. So our first metric, we explored this and looked at this last year. We pulled data from the American Community Survey, and it ultimately looks at how San Mateo residents are commuting to work. There's a good amount of data here, but ultimately there's one common trend. In 2023 and 2024, the latest data set that's provided, Vehicles still account for over or close to 75% of all modes of transportation when getting to work. Now, the difference between 2023 and 2024 that we want to highlight is there's an increase in carpooling from 9% to 11%, and public transit ultimately went from 6% to 9%, which is consistent with what we're seeing from our colleagues at Samtrans as well as Caltrain. Now, the purpose of the slide is per our general plan policies, as well as where we're heading towards in a complete street nature. We don't know the exact divide in terms of percentages, but we want to get to a more balanced network is what we're striving for. So we're going to jump into our first chapter and program, and that's safety. And there are really three big general plan policies from Vision Zero to El Camino Real being a pedestrian safety corridor to really looking at at-grade rail crossings in terms of eliminating it. And also our first strategic goal in having a safe, smart, efficient transportation network for all users. Here's a highlight of six major programs. And these are programs, these are not projects that we have. These are programs that have multiple projects underneath each of them to go ahead and implement safety. First one is Bike Sam & Tail that promotes bicycle safety is really the priority there. We have our Safe Routes to School program that is ramping up, if you will. We have our local roadway safety plan. And we had our first city adopted local roadway safety plan in 2024. And we'll go ahead and give an update on what that is. But that is a very data-driven plan that looks at collision history, where there are systemic treatments that could potentially solve that. We have our high voltage program that is coming to an end, but really two that we're gonna focus on. The citywide traffic calming, which focuses on speeds. So predominantly a lot of the requests that comes in or general traffic inquiries goes through a traffic calming inbox. Because oftentimes what we notice is over 70% of the inquiries are related to people are speeding on my street. How can I reduce the speeds? So we have a whole entire program for that for implementing ultimately measures to slow speed. The next one is new. It's our quick build safety program. That program was adopted in 2024 and we'll dive into that. But ultimately it catches a lot of different measures. So this is not just speed cushions, if you will. We're talking about bulb outs, lighting improvements, high visibility crosswalks, RFBs, all of it. So this is a new program we're wrapping up and we're really excited to share some details on. Here's a map, and we're not going to go through every single project, but these are our current 2025 active CIP safety projects in here that are listed. And there's a couple of symbols in here that ties to whether it's grant-funded as well, as demonstrated by that home-looking icon. So all of our bikes on material programs, we would consider safety projects for bicyclists. We have at number one, our local roadway safety priority project that looks at over six different intersections in the entire city to improve safety on a streamlined timeline. Then we are currently looking at our Safe for Us to School program. We have a couple of capital programs that we'll go into as well. But this is the first map of many. And later on at the end, you'll see how all the projects overlap each other. Traffic calming, as mentioned, this is really our frontline, if you will. In 2025, we received over 145 traffic calming requests as represented by the graphic at the left. In here, we had over 1800 plus email exchanges with the residents. in itself. Time spent on email responses exceeded 1,100 hours in total, and we spent over 650 hours in the field. And time spent on administrative duties, whether that's looking at surveys, whether that's looking at data, whether it's correct and looking at some of the speed volumes exceed 200 all in over 2000 hours spent just on this one program. These estimates we update every single year as we track through it. And we have done so in 2025. Now I want to note, this doesn't even include implementation time. This is just all the front end work that goes into this one program. So how does that compare to 2024? Well, you can see across the board, whether you're looking at the total requests that increased 14%, whether you're looking at the total hours spent that exceeded 15% increase. And the story of this is there's more demand for this, and we expect this to go up more as we're integrating into our citywide CRM system. Next is our quick bill safety program. So this program was adopted and funded in 2024, and it has the goal to dramatically reduce injuries and fatalities by implementing proven safety treatments in weeks or months instead of years. So since 2024, when we started the program, we have developed controls. What are some of the thresholds? What are our evaluation criteria? What are we considering? Then we drafted design guidelines and toolkits to say these are city standards. This is how we're going to implement paint and post. This is the color. This is what we're going after. Then we established on-call resources because we realized doing everything in-house is not the most efficient. So we wanted to go ahead and establish that. Here we are today in 2026, the program is growing and this is one where we are actively out there designing, implementing as we are steering the ship and streamlining and we'll go through that process. But we are still working on an evaluation and scaling criteria and maintenance and monitoring refinement is ongoing. As our O&M staff is realizing, I think it's really good to implement these treatments. But paint and post is different than, say, concrete, etc. There is a design lifecycle that is significantly quicker. And as we implement this throughout the city, we need to budget and account for how do we maintain the delineators and the paint and the thermal that's on the street. So here's a schedule that I ultimately want to compare. In our normal CIP project that we'll be going through a lot of in this presentation, it roughly takes about four months to do planning on an average project. So our average project here is about $2 to $3 million for us. It takes about 12 months for us to go through the design from 0% to 35% to 65% to 95% to 100%. and do community engagement and about four months for construction ultimately. So a lot on the front end. For quick build, our goal in here is to fit the planning, the designing and the construction of a project in about six months. So that's a 70% reduction in delivery schedule. 70%. And that's what we're aiming for because we wanted this to be different than our CIP project. There's a streamlined process of how we get notification out to the public as well. And we feel like these are safety critical projects that really doesn't have a lot of wiggle room in terms of implementation. So let's talk about our current process. The evaluation and assessment currently that undergoes every single project, whether it's been done internally, proactively, we meet once a month with our health and safety fire and PD to look at collision data, and we analyze trends that are outside of adopted documents. That is done by city staff, planning and engineering. After that is decided and we look at all the collision history, we look at whether it's in a high injury network, the implementation timeframe, the dollar amount of where it is at as well, we then need to design an engineer. Even for intersection project, in order for our O&M staff or a contractor to install, we need something on paper that is constructable. Then implementation. Currently our city staff O&M crew does it and ultimately maintenance as well. A common theme here in the quick build program, as everyone sees, there are a lot of city staff and resources. And as we undergo every single one of our program, these are the same staff and same O&M staff and vehicles and equipment that are doing all of our other programs. So we have to pull away from other things in order to do the quick build program. Now the future process, we're trying to refine and streamline because we do realize there is a bottleneck here and it is city staff to some extent. For the design and engineering phase, we have recently established an on-call transportation consultant. So once we have evaluated, we can go ahead and give direction and scope to our on-call consultant to make the plans. Currently O&M is doing the implementation itself, but we are in the processes of doing RFP to have a quick build specialist contractor that has certain amount of stock of say RFP supplied. We can specify specifically when we give you a task order, how long before you need to complete this to go ahead and meet our six month window. And then ultimately have city staff and O&M maintain the devices afterwards. So what does this do? Well, it maximizes city staff resources for the rest of the transportation division projects. It streamlines implementation, increased delivery as the program ramps up. So here's a map of the 12 plus active quick build projects. And I want to be clear, the active quick build projects are not the ones that are identified in our LRSP, a local roadway safety plan. There's a whole entire other program program that is set up to deliver those projects identified there. These are the ones that city staff meets on a monthly basis with PD and fire that proactively looks at collision data to see if there are trends that we feel like can meet our criteria. And then we'll place it on a map. This is also an area where oftentimes when we get leads from the public, we will investigate further as data refines and we will add it to the criteria. So there are 12 active ones that are ongoing. 17th and ECR is one that we dedicated quick bill funding to. It was instrumental in getting us resources to doing a couple of traffic analysis and funding a lot of the cost to go ahead and streamline this process. San Mateo Drive and Monte Diablo right now were approved for all-way stop and we're going through the process of the warrant and using a lot of the resources there. El Dorado on 4th and 3rd, New Crosswalk and Delaware Street and State Street as well are just a couple to mention that is using quick bill funding to quickly implement safety measures in our streets. Another really important component of QuickBuild funds that we leverage is what we call critical QuickBuild gap funding. So we have a pool of money in QuickBuild, and if there's a capital project that says, maybe there's a bid that came in a little bit higher than expected, and we just need a couple of thousands of dollars to get it over the hump, right, to implement some safety improvements, this is what we call gap funding, and we have funded three projects to date that successfully moving forward. The first one is the Delaware Safe Routes protected bike lane project that's currently out in construction right now. The Hillsdale Boulevard Alameda-Delas Pugas intersection safety project as well. Utilize some of the quick bill funding to move this along. And then the last one is the LRSP priority package one as well. So with that, I'm going to move on to our local roadway safety plan. Again, 2024 seems like it is a pivotal moment in transportation. We adopted our first LRSP in 2024 of May, and in there lies the top 10 priority projects. These are the top 10 intersections that's purely data-driven, looking at seven years of data of where the most collisions and incidents had occurred in our city and whether there are treatments in the engineering field in terms of our toolkit that can solve it. And we're happy to say, Realistically, less than two years later, we have 70% of the projects that are funded and ongoing as of right now. ECR on 22nd, ECR on 27th. We recently completed our number one most collision-prone intersection in Humboldt and Poplar in protected left turns for vehicles to eliminate the vehicle and pedestrian phase. Humboldt and various locations. That's over four intersections on Humboldt alone. That's a 65% design and construction funding is all funded already through grants. Fashion Island. You guys got a big update from Bethany a couple of meetings ago. That is a big win for us and expected to move forward into construction in 2027. towards construction. Hillsdale-Franklin and Norfolk intersection, 65% design. And Peninsula-Delaware is expected to go into construction in about three and a half months. So these are our most injury-prone intersections in the entire city as identifying the ORSP. And we have 70% of them in progress and funded in about a year and a half, a little less than two. We currently have forecasted allocation of the remaining three, eight, nine, and 10 for fiscal year 27 and 28 right now. Next, I want to talk about our citywide speed limit program. So as mentioned earlier, everyone recalls, we went ahead and adopted ordinance, thank you, city council. So if you're within 500 feet of any public or private school, this enforceable speed limit when children are present is 15 miles per hour. So that was done. currently we are recertifying the remaining streets in our city and we have started data collection we selected our consultant they are in the process of doing all the speed surveys and we are as city staff and our professional consultants revealing all of that data and at this moment we are expected to bring an adoption of a new ordinance to recertify all of our speeds in the city sometime in fall or winter of 2026. So we're a couple of months away from that effort. Next, safe routes to school. Again, big milestones in 2024. We started our first strategic plan. We completed that in 2025 to really give a vision of where we're heading towards. So that first phase is completed. What we're doing this winter is we are taking all of the improvements recommended and we're going to put out a detailed implementation plan of what a five-year plan looks like for safe routes. And then we're going to propose that in the summer of 2027 in the next funding request annual budget cycle is our game plan at the moment. But that doesn't mean... There hasn't been anything done in Safe Routes while we're waiting for this detailed implementation plan. The Delaware Safe Routes to School program is in construction, and that's going to be a really good bridge between Delaware and multiple schools, whether that be College Park, Nueva, going all the way up to Concord. It's a great project. Protect the bike lanes as well as complete street elements. Our Alameda Delas Pugas and the Hillsdale Safety Improvement Project started with talking to Hillsdale High multiple years ago, and we are months away from getting into the construction phase. We received over $390,000 in grant funding to go ahead and start another improvement for the Hillsdale area at the Hillsdale 31st Avenue Safe Routes to School Project that also includes another intersection safety improvement at 31st and Alameda Delas Pugas. So while we're waiting for really our vision and our implementation plan to get shored up and vetted through, we are currently working on a lot of safety improvements related to Safe Routes to the School. Safety metrics. This one is a hot topic. I know. Safety is in the forefront. So what we've done is we utilize year after year what we call a transportation injury mapping system that is hosted by UC Berkeley. And in here, what you're looking at are all the injury collisions that does not include US 101 incidents. and 92, so it includes the freeways, excludes the freeways. And in 2025, we're gonna go through some numbers, but we're gonna do a comparison because this is the second year we're doing this, and now we get two years of data to see how we're doing. But in total, 197 total collisions occurred. If you look at the split, 70% of those are predominantly vehicle related. The number one vehicle collision type Still to this day, and I recall last year was the same, are broadsides, which are some of the most severe, and we do not want to see that. In terms of the age distribution, the 15 to 64-year-old split there is still the largest, which is at 78%. And if we're looking at the severity of that, we had one fatality, 13 severe deaths. incidences and 93% of those which accounts for 183 are minor. Now, I just want to note that we did not include freeway collisions. But if we did, the 197 total collisions would be somewhere near 400. So it would nearly double if we include the collisions that are on US 101 and 92, just somewhere underneath there. But I want to note it's a standard practice for us to not include those. It doesn't mean we're not monitoring it and looking at trends. But for this purpose of this presentation, We wanted to keep it within the city limits, if you will. So total collisions 2025, 2024. And we have a new metric here that's called the three-year PP average, which is pre-pandemic. And we wanted to see how we're comparing what 2017, 2018, 2019 before the pandemic hit. And here are the numbers. So year over year is comparing 2025 and 2024. You can see a total collisions that does not include freeway. So 101 and 92 had a decrease in 12%. Pedestrian total collisions decreased by 13%. Bicyclists by 19%. Vehicles by 10%. And fatal by 50%. But again, you're just going from two to one. I just want to note that in here. But severity did go up 44%. So that went from nine to 13. Our minor collisions as well dropped 14%. That went from 213 to 183. When looking at the three-year pre-pandemic average, so looking at 2017, 2018, 2019, It was a decrease again of 18% for total collisions, 30% for pedestrian, 5% for bicyclists, 16% for vehicles, 25% for fatal, 11% for severe collisions, and 18% for minor. Small sample size, we're looking at ultimately at 2024, as well as 2017, 2018, 2019. But as you can see, outside of the year-over-year for the severity, there have been reductions by what we're showing here in terms of what we're reporting. So with that, I want to switch gears to active transportation, which has one of our larger city council priorities, a lot of funds dedicated to it. And we have a lot of plans that dictate how this is going to play out. So here it is at the left. Active transportation, we have a lot of policies that pertain to it, probably the most in terms of where we're going towards. And there are really two strategic goals that really ties to this as well. Safe, smart, efficient transportation for all, better transit, stronger connections. And we have a lot of documents that really tell us where we need to go from our general plan, bicycle master plan, or ped master plan, a complete streets plan that is currently paused, and our transit-oriented development pedestrian access plan. I say we're gonna see a lot of maps, and I'm not joking, and this is one for active transportation projects that are currently active as of 2025 and still at this moment. Starting at the top, there's the Peninsula Quarter Complete Streets, which is grant funded, over $1.5 million in grants. Thanks to the TA, we have our 19th Avenue Fashion Valley Multimodal Project, 20th Avenue Gap Closure Project as well. The list goes on and on. We completed multiple projects in terms of advancing our network for bike ped in 2025 listed at the bottom. And we'll go through those a little bit more in depth. So these are dedicated active transportation projects. I want to say there was a public comment to say, what are we doing to dualize our paving program? That is an ongoing program, and we optimize and look for ways to improve on our active transportation network. So what you're looking at here are in progress, still in progress, as of right now, in terms of what we're utilizing for PMP 4A1, as well as PMP Phase 6B. There is a caveat here. When projects get controversial and parking needs to be removed, substantial amount of parking, I want to say, that's the threshold when it doesn't make sense to optimize and use the PMP program to go ahead and implement some of the bike infrastructure. They have a schedule as well. They have funding ties. We've learned historically that it takes a lot of engagement if we're going to remove parking, right? People feel strong about the parking, and we're happy to talk about parking later. So when we see that happen, a good example is South B Street. When you notice that over 50% of the parking there might need to be removed to implement something like this, it no longer makes sense to go ahead and tag on top of the PMP network too. basically implement bike infrastructure. Bike Simon Tail, I think council have seen this slide before, but the document that was adopted in 2020 included over 170 bicycle projects, $40 million of projects identified. And this year I added the asterisk because I missed that last year. And what the asterisk ultimately means is it does not include complete street elements Right, and it's in 2024 dollars. So what do I mean by that? Well, when we're implementing a bike project these days, we like to think about safety improvements as well. What are we doing for pedestrians as well? We can't just go in here and either you're striping some bike lanes in a roadway that maybe has a lot of potholes, maybe needs repaving, needs a slurry. So we consider those other elements as well. So what's identified in a BMP for $40 million does not include those elements. Once you include those, it can easily exceed the hundreds of millions of dollars. Next is there's over 60 plus centerline miles of bike infrastructure that needs to be improved as identified in the plan. And we'll talk about how we're doing shortly after that. This slide is one to really provide context of some of the difficulties, specifically in the high and medium high range, because this is a city council priority for us to implement. And in the high network in itself, there are 58 of these projects. And in the medium high, there are 35. Out of all the highs, 48% of the projects there don't reduce vehicle lanes or remove parking, but it means the other portion does. So still the majority of the road requires some type of reassessment of the right of way. And when you combine those together in a city of our nature, it does make for tough decisions, whether we need to reduce a vehicle lane, whether we need to remove parking. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But this is our overall network that includes our existing infrastructure. So this is everything that was done in the 2013 BICIC master plan. And all the dash lines are the new network infrastructure proposed into 2020. And just thinking about the context here, when we went ahead and developed our proposed network, we consider connectivity, safety and comfort, equity and ridership. It was a weighted criteria. It was one that city council gave a lot of thought on as well. But I thought it was important to just look at what our bicycle infrastructure could be in the future once we're done with implementation. More specific to the city council priority, what you see here is just the high and medium high. Green is everything identified that has been completed in the high and medium high network. Blue is everything that is currently in progress. And gray is the remaining network that we need to achieve completion. So let's get into the metrics. We have a total of 38.4 miles of high, medium, high bicycle infrastructure to complete in 2024. We complete 6.4. As of right now, we've completed 9.3. That accounts for 24, just a little over 24% of all high, medium, high projects completed today. Of that 24.2, 78% of those are high priority project and 22% are medium high projects. We're currently in progress looking at 2.7 more miles of that and increasing. And of the 2.7, 46% are high priority projects and 54% are medium high. I just want to note that while it's not a city council priority to do the medium low and low because of the pavement management program and the rehab program, we have completed around 11.4% of the new 2020 bicycle master plan proposed network. Next, our pedestrian program. This is outlined in our pedestrian master plan. And this is a really gigantic program. I just want to note that in terms of scale. There are 300 plus non-lighting projects. Over $15 million that's accounted for right there. We've completed about 31%. 60 lighting projects accounts for $200 plus million projects. is our latest estimate at this moment because lighting is not cheap. So it's over 200 plus million dollars. In 2025, we completed 54 curb ramps and about a little over 4,000 square foot of sidewalk. And I want to note that most of the pedestrian improvements are implemented through our PMP and our rehab program in paving. Next, I want to switch gears to vehicle congestion management. And again, a lot of policies that define where we need to go in terms of TDM, roadway operations, circulation improvements. This also ties to two of our strategic goals as well. And there are even more planning documents, infrastructure programs, and maintenance and operation programs to really make sure that everyone could get around the city in an efficient manner. But one item I want to go back to has to do with development. And this has skyrocketed since last year. As everyone recall, the 2024 general plan was adopted in March, then the housing element, and then increased development for the foreseeable future. But what does increase mean? We went ahead and developed new traffic measures to streamline the TIA process, to align our current policies with Assembly bills and Senate bills at the state level to make sure we're in compliance. We've developed clear modeling guidelines for developers to show us whether there are impacts or not. We increased our professional traffic consultant support, and we're still in the process of developing a construction management plan that ultimately looks at overlapping construction when really everything hits ground or breaks ground, if you will. But since last year, when we presented, there was 4,900 plus housing units in the pipeline already. And in the last year since we presented, that has now jumped over 7,000 housing units. So just think about that into our transportation network. We're going to continually refine our processes and processes to make sure it's not bottlenecked and we're developing responsibly. But the scale, as CDD has probably told everyone here, that 7,000 housing units going from 49 to 7,000 is not a small jump. And multiple departments are feeling it. Really, the operations behind the scenes, I'll keep this brief, but ultimately, if it is not in the program, if it's not CIP or even grant funded, doesn't mean we're not doing work behind the scenes on a 24-7 basis. We'll have a communication upgrade program that ultimately looks at our cabinets, whether we're improving ITS devices, controllers, et cetera, to make sure everyone can move through. Efficiently, we have a video detection system that changes our in-road pavement induction loops, if you will, to video detection. We're also utilizing this to capture some usage data of how many pedestrians cross a crosswalk, bicyclists as well, outside of detection. We have a signal retiming. program, ultimately. And if you think about what happened at 17th and ECR, our safety improvement really is re-timing and re-prioritizing the signals there. But it does take a lot of front-end evaluation work and modeling. So we do have funds set aside for that. And all of that is funneled through our traffic management center, where we have eyes and data at about 70% of our signalized intersection and growing. So these are the operational efforts that O&M and our engineering team does day in, day out. It doesn't have really a Glymer CIP project or grant funding tied to it, but it's instrumental. Next, major corridor travel times. Looking at this slide, Hillsdale Boulevard, 3rd and 4th, 19th Avenue, Fashion Island, we went ahead and utilized big data to go ahead and give us a relative average of what we're looking at in terms of trends and travel times. I'll keep this relatively quick, but ultimately volumes are increasing just slightly. A good example is 19th Avenue, Fashion Island. That went from about 4,000 Vehicles traveling the corridor to about 4,400 in the PM peak. But I think what's promising is thanks to multiple improvements are ready to optimize the corridor. We're waiting for the big one next year, but ultimately travel times are about the same. So it's about three minutes. Parking management. We're getting close here. A lot of policies as well in terms of how are we going to build out our parking program for the city. The first one is we have eight city-owned downtown parking facilities. In 2025, we issued over 2,600 residential parking permit programs. We have worked with developers to give access to the public in seven private shared downtown parking facilities. We have over 3,500 on-street and off-street parking spaces in the downtown alone. We have over 13 parking enforcement officers that looks at parking for through our contract last, not all dedicated to downtown, but we have 13 officers and over 12,000 downtown parking permits were issued in 2025. That's a record for us. And we'll discuss that a little bit more revenue side. We're staying relatively the same, but there was an increase of about 200,000 of revenue in 2025. So there's a couple of trends that I want to just focus on here, which is cash is approximately 11% of our revenue for our downtown parking revenue. Credit card payments account for about 1.5, and pay by phone is $800,000, just a little bit over, and monthly permits accounts for about 865. When we look at the way payments are ultimately accepted by the city or done, about 89% of all payments are either by credit card, by mobile phone, monthly permits, and we offer cash options for all of that. That's important to note because we are going to start a comprehensive parking study in the coming fiscal year, and we're going to be looking at trends to reduce operating costs, if you will. But the 11% in revenue does... take a good amount of operating costs ultimately to sustain the cash collection near downtown. This is a quick slide. I'll glance over it, but I want to give the key takeaways here. We presented this in 2024. What we're looking at are weekday and weekend, the three highest occupancy level garages, whether you're on lunch and dinner. So starting on the weekday, lunchtime from 11 to 2 p.m. Second, the ECR has occupancy of about 70%. So just a rule of thumb here, once you get about 75%, Close to 80%. People start to feel it. I can't find parking. It's difficult. So you hear that in the downtown a lot. And mostly the data supports it. If you look at our top three, you look at the weekend for lunchtime, 76% at the tennis course, 66% at Central, and 56% at Main Street. When you get to dinner, this is where it gets to that level of, OK, I really can't find parking. I might as well park in my home and take an Uber type of vibe right now. So from 6 to 8 p.m., where we currently don't enforce. We don't enforce in the downtown. On the weekday, 90% occupancy in Main Street, 71% in Central, and 56% on 4th and Railroad. That's the open lot. When you get to the weekend on dinnertime, you're talking about 90%. on Central, 90% on Main Street, and 72% on 4th and Railroad. So if you're coming to the downtown for dinner on the weekend and you hear it's very difficult to find parking, yes, there's data to support that.

So Jay, just real quick, when we talk about enforce, we do not charge parking from 6 to 8 p.m. That's why we do not enforce. So we don't collect during that time frame.

Thank you for that, Alex. That is a very clear note. We do not charge there as well, and we do not enforce. Next, I want to talk about our monthly permit utilization. So what do we do at our parking is we look at our occupancy and we allocate X percentage per parking garage to the public to park and we allocate X percentage for businesses, companies, employers to go ahead and subscribe to monthly permits and the public can do so as well. These are what we call our 10-hour parking permits. In 2024, you can see the tennis court had 100% utilization. That means all of the offered permits are taken up. And as you go down the list there, 91% for Second and ECR, 27% for Transit Center, 82% for Main Street, Kiku is at 26%. When looking at 2025, the numbers jumped up significantly. And what we're noticing is there are now more employers in the downtown as work from home is transitioning to coming back to the office. We've been approached by multiple employers to say, we want more parking passes, monthly passes, and the public is demanding them as well. So as a result, secondary ECR is at 100% monthly parking utilization. Transit center went from 27% to 90%. in terms of allocated spaces. Central went from 96 to 100, and Kiku had a really large jump from 26 to 62% of all the spaces that are allocated for monthly permit holders are utilized, and South Railroad stayed roughly the same. There's a common theme as we're looking at here, whether it's revenue collection hours or non, and our monthly parking, that utilization is very high, and parking is in demand in the downtown. Next, our free residential parking permit program was a big year. It was a permit year for us. Over 16 residential parking permit zones as part of this program. In 2025 alone, five new requests were made to our planning team that they want to establish a new residential parking permit area. And that does not include the effort we're exploring at Humboldt. I want to just note that. We process over 2,600 residential permits And we have roughly about six FTEs that patrol all the 16 zones to make sure there's compliance in terms of enforcement. Over 1,500 residential permit program calls, over 250 emails at the program level that we received all in in 2025. We estimate over 12,500 plus staff hours were allocated to this free program. One thing we've noted is the public wants parking. I think in here, we've got a lot of requests to have their streets become ultimately a permit area and having it be a free program. We are, this is the same planning team, engineering team that are doing the quick bills that are doing the other projects, but we are putting a good amount of resources into this program here. We're getting towards the end. So this is the fun part, the challenges. transportation funding. Out of the 42.5 active CIP transportation funding that we have currently allocated, 84% of that are from grants. So that's 35.64 million are from grants and local funding, which includes the traffic impact fee, measure A, measure S, general fund, accounts for about $6.88 million of that. So roughly about 16% If we dive a little bit deeper, there's been a shift in federal funds. Last year, that was the predominant one. This year, thanks to the highway program and the TA, county funds account for 76% of all of our grant funds. That's about $27 million. We have about 1.6 in state, which are some of the most prized money because there is no local match in some of those. And then about 6.66 million of those are federal funds. And it comes to all the timeline. But again, this speaks to the fund smarter to build faster component where we need to leverage every funding source we can to deliver all the goals that are outlined. Next, grant strategy. As you've seen in the previous slide, we have been pretty successful in grants, in funding our entire transportation network, but there's a tier system to this, starting at the top. We call this the tier one. We actively pursue these. These are the ATP, state allocated resources that have a high amount of allocation. Our average project is two to $3 million, and they have no local match. Minimal paperwork. That's what we call tier one. And we actively pursue those. There's the tier two that we do selectively pursue. This is a little bit more balanced. We're talking about moderate awards that could still fit within the two to three million, maybe even higher for capital. But some of the planning efforts we're noticing because of the high intensity of public outreach can easily exceed one point five million dollars. And some of these grants might not fit the bill. And then the lowest tier in here tends to be higher burden. The federal grants, we have to go through the local assistant procedure manual. A lot of paperwork, oftentimes we need a grant manager, a contract manager to go ahead and administer these grants. The dollar amounts oftentimes don't fit the bill for this, but sometimes it does for larger projects as well, and there's a hierarchy. Every single grant, we go through the award size, We look at the local match requirement to see how much we really have because we don't have a lot of local funding, right? We need to leverage some of our resources. Administrative burden to see if this is going to bog down the entire program because we're small but mighty. Transportation team in here. What's the project readiness? Is there any flexibility if we want to switch it from, say, the design phase to construction phase later on? And is there a project fit? Is the scope right for this project and will we grade high? So all those considerations we think about, there are a lot of grants out there. Thanks to the city manager's office, we do have a grant consultant, CPPG, that's on board to really help with a lot of this. But even with that, it's a lot of work to just consider grants. We mentioned this in terms of some of the challenges. San Mateo is the most populated city in the county. We're the fourth most dense. We'll probably be higher if it wasn't for some of our open space, if you consider that. Most of our city is built out. So when we are coming in to redevelop infrastructure, we're not just painting some paint on the roadway and moving some lanes around. We have to make decisions in terms of how do we prioritize. We mentioned the number of streets or number of bike projects that we need to remove some type of lane or parking. That number pertaining just to high and medium high projects is at 46%. 46% of our high, medium, high, we need to make decisions in terms of lane reduction or parking removal. So that is a high bar. And we have 200 centerline miles for vehicles and about 23 for bike lanes. Next, I do want to highlight actually a really positive note on challenges. So previously, a couple of months ago, before city council made a decision to go ahead and give more staffing, there was one engineering manager ultimately that oversee traffic engineering, transportation planning, as well as private development. So that's the team responsible for really the frontline and public works of the 7,000 housing units that are coming in. So a robust transportation network, a lot of PAs are coming in. And thanks to city council and moving, appropriating some funding. This is where we're currently at now in terms of transportation. More focused. There's a dedicated engineer manager just for transportation. We also went ahead and converted a safe roster school per diem position to a permanent full-time assistant transportation planner position. Now, currently, you do see some red in there because those positions are vacant, but we're in the process of recruiting and the candidates are promising. I'll say that. So lastly, before we get into the key takeaways, we have a lot of maps. Our active transportation project is shown here in our city. You layer that with our active safety projects that we had the list. So this is just the list. We're just going through this, right? One by one. Then we layer on what are we doing to optimize our active transportation and our bike ped PMP. then we talk about our new quick bill program that we're up and running with this team we then layer on all the parking demands whether it be the permits the 12 000 hours that we spent last year residential parking permit program new zones we're looking at paid parking in downtown right how do we look at fees and then lastly our traffic calming program request that came in 2025 There's a lot that is to be proud of in 2025. We did a lot in transportation and this map I think is really good in describing all the pages and all the isolated maps that are in there. So key takeaways for 2025, safety. 22 active safety projects currently ongoing. Seven of 10 active LRSP priority projects are funded. Active transportation, we have 11 active CIP transportation projects currently undergoing and still moving forward. We completed about 24% of our high and medium high BMP network. We'll just note that between these two programs, 84% of the transportation CIP projects are grant funded, accounts for both safety and active transportation. Congestion management, we streamlined transportation review, supporting 7,000 housing units, and we're still moving. Now, if that gets to 10,000, we might need to readjust and figure out some new policies of how do we deal with that. Major corridor travel times are staying relatively the same from our data. And parking management, parking occupancy in the downtown remains strong. Even after 6 p.m., demand and staff resources for the residential parking permit program is increasing. So we can come back to the slide, but thank you very much. My name is Jay Yu, the engineering manager, and I'm excited to talk about transportation. Thank you.

Thank you very much for that presentation. At this time, I would like to open this item up for public comment. So if you'd like to give a comment in chambers, you can give the city clerk a request to speak slip. If you're on Zoom or on the phone, you may raise your hand, city clerk.

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine. We have received a total of three requests to speak in chambers. Currently, no hands raised in our virtual environment. So that will be three speakers. If I call your name, if you could please, we'll set the timer at three minutes per speaker, per console rules and procedures. Our first speaker will be Kevin Simpson, followed by Mike Swire and Michael Regan.

Thanks Mr. Clerk and City Council. So there's a lot here. I first want to start by complimenting the team for number one, a really thorough and important presentation. Number two, making that presentation available to us to review before. We don't always get that opportunity and it's really important in something that's this complicated. I've been hard on this team over the last couple of years, especially when we went through the year of wishful thinking of trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat on Humboldt. And we seem to still be in that mode. But some of the big takeaways for me from looking at this Number one is we have to exercise discipline as a city to not add to our own burdens. And I'll cite that whole Humboldt trying to reroute it down the time, money, effort, and capacity that we used up during that year is lost to us. And we have so many other things to do. Number two, congratulations on the quick build improvements at State and at BOVIT. This shows that we can affect change and improve safety drastically really quickly if we want to. My concern is that in all the granular data, in all the complexity, where is the next State Street? Where is the next BOVIT? Where is the next Peninsula and Delaware? Where are the really... community-identified dangerous hotspots. And that leads me to those two incomplete safe street studies. I, with many of my neighbors, went up and put red dots on maps and told the city about really dangerous places. And so it's very hard for us to see how those have worked their way up. And knowing that those things are still sitting there incomplete worries me greatly. Because somebody reported the next State Street and the next Bobbitt and the next Delaware and Peninsula. in those exercises around the city. And we need to go find those things because that's where we need to be focusing. We need to get ahead of people dying or being grievously injured in order to make those safety improvements. um finally i also want to say that let's not get too overly self-congratulatory about some of the shifts and percentages and what seem to be improvements in safety i think that data-driven decision-making is really good but we have to recognize the weaknesses of our data collection like so through that whole year of reconsidering the humble thing and looking at statistics or even the run-up to the final votes We learned that there were things that weren't in the data because the data is just so dispersed. And we have to remember that that's probably still the case. And probably out there, it doesn't feel like things are getting better that fast. So those are my comments. Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Mike Swire, followed by our final speaker, Michael Reagan.

YEAH, THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK AND THANK YOU TO MATT, KATHERINE AND JAY FOR ALL THE HARD WORK AND PRESENTATIONS AND PUTTING UP WITH OUR GRIPES. YOU GUYS ARE DOING GOOD WORK. I WANTED TO JUST STEP BACK AND SAY, AGAIN, I THINK AS KEVIN SAID, METRICS ARE GOOD AND I THINK WE REALLY NEED TO HAVE SOME GOALS. I THINK THE GENERAL PLAN AND A LOT OF THESE GOALS ARE VERY GENERAL. LIKE WE WANT PEOPLE TO TAKE CLEAN TRANSPORTATION. WE WANT THERE TO BE PARKING WE WANT THERE TO BE PARKING AVAILABLE, ET CETERA. AVAILABLE, ET CETERA. THERE ARE TRADE-OFFS HERE. THERE ARE TRADE-OFFS HERE. WHAT DO WE WANT FOR THE FUTURE OF WHAT DO WE WANT FOR THE FUTURE OF SAN MATEO? SAN MATEO? I THINK THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE I THINK THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE IS HOW MANY PERCENT OF TRIPS IS HOW MANY PERCENT OF TRIPS ARE BEING TAKEN BY CARS. ARE BEING TAKEN BY CARS. I THINK IT WAS ABOUT 85 TO 90% I THINK IT WAS ABOUT 85 TO 90% IN THE MODE SHARE DATA. IN THE MODE SHARE DATA. WE SHOULD HAVE A GOAL FOR THAT. WE SHOULD HAVE A GOAL FOR THAT. WHAT SEEM um that's not a good policy parking shouldn't always be available i mean as we increase are we going to proportionally increase the amount of parking that's out there or are we going to encourage people to take other modes of transit i hear that businesses are requesting more parking spaces at some point do we say you know what we've got five garages here um If we want our shoppers to prioritize them and there's a train station right there You should be taking that so I really don't like the fact that that parking seems to be this more is better It's expensive for taxpayers. We saw that we're getting three million in revenue What's the cost to us? I mean, there were about three parking garages shown with the highest utilization, but I think there were seven or eight total garages. So what does that mean for garage number eight? Is it like 0%? Is it 10%? I think Kiku was like 20% or 30%. There is an opportunity cost to every idle parking garage that we have. We could have housing there. We could not be maintaining it. I think tennis courts, we have to rebuild that for seismic reasons. Do we really need that? One of these might be at 90, but if we have another one a block away that's at 20, we're okay. The 90% number is not scary. We also have to price parking accordingly. I think we're only charging up to $100 for some of these spots a month. The market rate, I just told you, my building is $250 a month. I mean, you're giving away things and taxpayers are subsidizing it. on the parking permit programs residentially are free. And yet we just admitted that this project has a huge cost to the taxpayer. So why is there no cost to store your private good on the public right-of-way? And then the 10% of people that don't drive are basically paying for that. I think everybody should be paying who needs a spot on the street. ON THE CRASHES, I THINK YOU NEED TO INCLUDE 101 BECAUSE WE ON THE CRASHES, I THINK YOU NEED TO INCLUDE 101 BECAUSE WE HAVE AN INFLUENCE ON THAT. HAVE AN INFLUENCE ON THAT. WE HAVE A MEMBER THAT CAN WE HAVE A MEMBER THAT CAN INFLUENCE WHETHER OR NOT WE HAVE INFLUENCE WHETHER OR NOT WE HAVE MORE PEOPLE GOING THERE. MORE PEOPLE GOING THERE. I THINK THE BIKE BOULEVARD SHOULD I THINK THE BIKE BOULEVARD SHOULD BE EXCLUDED FROM OUR COUNTS BE EXCLUDED FROM OUR COUNTS BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT ADDING BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT ADDING SAFETY. SAFETY. I THINK ON SPEED LIMITS WE I THINK ON SPEED LIMITS WE REALLY NEED TO LOOK AT SOME OF THE REALLY NEED TO LOOK AT

GOOD EVENING. I ALSO WANT TO COMPLIMENT IT I ALSO WANT TO COMPLIMENT IT WITH EXCELLENT PRESENTATION. WITH EXCELLENT PRESENTATION. I'M REPRESENTING ON THE FIRST I'M REPRESENTING ON THE FIRST PART NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION. PART NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION. I'M THE CURRENT PRESIDENT. I'M THE CURRENT PRESIDENT. I KNOW SOME OF THIS STATED WAS I KNOW SOME OF THIS STATED WAS COLLECTED OVER THE LAST COUPLE COLLECTED OVER THE LAST COUPLE But with the Hillsdale Mall project coming in, our neighborhood is quite concerned about the increase in traffic. When this project is completed, there could be between 7,000 and 9,000 people working and living in that development. And the traffic and the other problems that that brings will definitely affect the neighborhood. And I think that does need to be, we're very, very concerned. Also with parking, I'll give you an example. The townhouses that they plan to build that are for sale, they have no visitor parking. And when we talked to the Bohannon group, they had really no explanation to where these people would park visiting the development. AS FAR AS THE OTHER THINGS THAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT, YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THE IMPROVEMENTS OR THE THINGS THAT ARE PRESENTLY HAPPENING. THE HILLSDALE ALAMEDA TRAFFIC LIGHT, I HOPE THINGS SPEED UP IN THE FUTURE FOR OTHER DEVELOPMENTS BUT WE'VE BEEN WAITING SINCE 2018 FOR THIS DEVELOPMENT TO OCCUR. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PUT IN and we then 26 of this year and we got it delayed again till 27 and that's we're just waiting for something bad to happen in that neighborhood uh also you talked about in your presentation maintenance and monitoring well i've been asking FOR SEVERAL YEARS, THE 31st AVENUE THAT PUT IN SPEED BUMPS AND OTHER PROTECTIVE ITEMS FOR SAFETY, WE JUST FEEL ARE NOT UP TO STANDARDS. THEY HAVE NOT WORKED. AND I'VE ASKED OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR YOU GUYS TO COME OUT. YOU PROMISED ME WHEN YOU PUT THEM IN THAT WE WOULD RE-EVALUATE THE SITUATION. And we haven't heard anything from you guys. And if you guys are to your word, then maybe you can start with us on getting that done. As far as bike lanes go, I think, and I've said it before, I THINK YOU GUYS NEED TO FORM I THINK YOU GUYS NEED TO FORM A CITIZENS COMMITTEE THAT A CITIZENS COMMITTEE THAT WILL HELP INTO EVALUATE PUTTING WILL HELP INTO EVALUATE PUTTING BIKE LANES IN. BIKE LANES IN. I KNOW A LOT OF THE MONEY IS I KNOW A LOT OF THE MONEY IS TIED UP FROM WHAT THE STATE OR TIED UP FROM WHAT THE STATE OR THE FEDS GIVE YOU WHEN YOU DO THE FEDS GIVE YOU WHEN YOU DO THESE PROJECTS THAT ARE TIED THESE PROJECTS THAT ARE TIED INTO THE BIKE LANES. INTO THE BIKE LANES. GET A COMMITTEE TOGETHER. GET A COMMITTEE TOGETHER. LET US HELP YOU OUT. LET US HELP YOU OUT. MAYBE WE CAN GET BIKE LANES IN MAYBE WE CAN GET BIKE LAN

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine. That concludes public comment.

No one online?

OK. thank you for those comments i'll close public comment and bring it back to the days for council member questions and feedback i will just note um that i is this is a we had a long presentation with lots of data and i'm sure there are all kinds of questions and feedback we might like to give um I'll just suggest that we use our tried and true model of maybe a few questions. Maybe try a few, three questions per person just to circulate it and keep things moving a little bit. We can ask a good number of questions. We can go a few rounds if needed, but let's try that. And we can start with anyone who would like to start. Council Member Sveta-Kogodinsky.

Thanks. Thank you. I was going to say I do have a fair number of questions, but I'll just do three and then pass it along. Jay, thank you so much for the presentation. I know that was a ton of work, and I just want to say thank you on behalf of the whole community because we hear a lot from residents across San Mateo about transportation, public safety, and so I think people are excited to hear what's going on. One of my questions is, we launched the My San Mateo app, and so have we considered adding a feature enhancement that could possibly be for near miss? That way we could start to collect some data on potential unknown dangerous conditions before people are injured.

That's something that's currently not in the app right now. I'm looking at Director Fabry or Catherine or Deputy Director. Maybe that's something we can consider.

So currently the MySaiMonteo app is really intended to be more of a two-way dialogue between staff and community members. So they would submit a service request and then staff would respond to it. So it's not really intended as a data tracking tool at the moment. SO THERE IS A MEANS OF REPORTING AN INTERSECTION SAFETY HAZARD SO THERE IS A MEANS OF REPORTING AN INTERSECTION SAFETY HAZARD SO THERE IS A MEANS OF REPORTING AN INTERSECTION SAFETY HAZARD WITHIN THE MY SAN MATEO APP. WITHIN THE MY SAN MATEO APP. WITHIN THE MY SAN MATEO APP. YOU CAN GO TO TRAFFIC ENGINEERING YOU CAN GO TO TRAFFIC ENGINEERING YOU CAN GO TO TRAFFIC ENGINEERING AND INTERSECTION SAFETY HAZARD AND IF AND INTERSECTION SAFETY HAZARD AND IF AND INTERSECTION SAFETY HAZARD AND IF SOMEONE DOES SUBMIT SOMETHING ON THAT, SOMEONE DOES SUBMIT SOMETHING ON THAT, SOMEONE DOES SUBMIT SOMETHING ON THAT, THEN STAFF WOULD EV

What would be interesting for a future transportation report is if there was a way to parse out some of those resident complaints to see if there's like key themes and you could probably use AI, which is. Um, a city goal as well, um, to kind of see if there's a higher incidence rate or collection of complaints. Um, yeah. And I guess the meta point I really want to make is that, you know, we do need some kind of dashboard, um, or public facing tracker for. near miss because what happened the the current near miss strategy is Residents on next door saying I almost got hit by a car and then we have to like take a screenshot funnel that to PD, you know, whoever is so It would just be good to have that data. I fully recognize that that's very difficult to collect and So just a comment there. And I know you guys can build excellent dashboards because you did it for flood-free. Yes, Jay?

I do want to note that as part of our local roadway safety project, we did look at there's an engagement process that had occurred as part of that. And we did analyze near misses. Now, we didn't take it at face value. We collected data and we looked at trends. And those are what we call systemic treatments. If there are certain configurations, geometry changes. Alignment in an intersection, I'll give you a really good example of what we did there up here in Alameda, free turning right turns for vehicles that we have looked at. Yeah, maybe there are some near misses and there isn't a high collision rate, but there has been reported and studies have shown that free rights do cause severe injuries. We don't necessarily tie 100% to near misses, but that is a set of data that we did analyze as part of the outreach effort for that plan. And systemic treatments, there's a chapter in it in the LRSP for how do we implement throughout the entire city without looking at collision history. So I just want to note that.

Okay, thank you. I noticed that 14% of collisions were with residents over the age of 65. Could you talk a little bit about how many intersections still lack sufficient crossing times for slow walkers? And then can you talk a little bit about the leading pedestrian intervals plan?

Yeah, definitely. So for every single... signalized intersection, we have what we call a pet clearance. So that is defined by the MUTCD in terms of a range, anywhere from say two and a half feet per second in terms of traveling speed all the way up to say about five. On average, the city uses an approach of using a 3.5 foot per second speed to go ahead and determine the crossing time for our average intersection. At this moment, we have not determined any intersections that warrants a lower crossing. travel speed and therefore increasing that time duration for the pedestrians to get across the intersection. But that's something we can happily look at as part of the lead pedestrian interval as well. I don't know the exact number right now, but we can follow up a little bit later. But in 2022, during the pandemic, there was a conscious effort to ultimately implement LPI in every single signalized intersection in the city. So for the most part, I want to say it's a large percentage, but I don't have that number available.

Okay. And then just before I pass it on and on this thread. So for the future, I think what would be interesting as well is to look at where across the city we have senior centers and also medical corridors and see if we can get an inventory of of kind of where those high pedestrian or potential bike crossings might be, right? Like if you have to go into an urgent care or hospital and making sure that we've really checked off the list that we have ADA compliance and then, you know, all the outstanding safety needs for those areas. I have more questions, but I'll pause.

Thank you.

would like to go yeah i think that would be fine as long as we can try it councilmember newsom okay j team thank you for a great presentation that was a lot um i guess to kind of reiterate or go on a common theme even if we don't have a dashboard to report incidents i think it would be interesting to have Somewhere on the app, even if it just takes them back to the website, a dashboard of all the quick build projects that are in process so they can actually kind of track that. I'm curious if we're using technology like AI, if we have wikis in place to look at like projects, meaning, you know, you do a quick build and then you have another, you know, similar situation on the other side of town and you look at all the metrics and you go, wow, this is 70% the same project that I just did on the other side of town. Are we looking at those and then using that to help prioritize? Like we've lessened learned how to do these things fast and Let's go and find out if there's another place we can replicate it. Has any of that happened?

The first part, yes, I think as the program matures, our goal is like all of our other programs, our transportation safety website, our bicycle master plan. As you can see, we list the projects that are ongoing, completed. We map it out. We use every single aspect of our GIS program. We plan to do the same as well for a quick build, but we're ramping up. So in the future, I don't know what the timeline is, but that's something that is just consistent with how we have been reporting to the public. In terms of utilizing, say, AI and other softwares, that's something we'll definitely look at. Ongoing right now, we're looking at three different vendors to gather big data in order to help us make planning decisions at the moment. One of them is one that looks at pre and post implementation in terms of usage as well. So having AI, I don't know the exact software yet. And I know the city's developing a policy in terms of what we can do or not do with AI. But we are willing to go ahead and stretch our resources. I'll say that.

Great. Fantastic. My last question for now would be, what are we doing for the El Camino Real corridor? You mentioned that this data didn't include freeways. So does this data include the El Camino Real?

This data does include El Camino Real. Yes, it just did not include 92 and US 101 in regards to that. There's a lot going on in El Camino Real. If you recall, Council Member Newsom, one of the general plan policies is to make El Camino Real more pedestrian safety. There's currently a regional effort led by Sam Trans, the central ECR project that I think they'll be bringing it back to city council in September to look towards some direction of alternatives of where do we head towards in terms of making it more pet friendly, bike friendly, transit friendly, all of that. But yes, there's, there's a lot of projects on El Camino Real, including 28th Avenue gap closure project.

Yeah. That was my, my last followup would be, you know, I really appreciative to the department of public works and the city staff as a whole for working with the state to, to, expedite the 17th and El Camino Real corridor and really get a fix put in place in a much more realistic timeline and remove a lot of the bureaucracy of getting it done. So thank you for all the data that you guys put in and all the efforts you did to make that happen. But let's not let CalTrans off the hook. Let's make sure we're looking for the next El Camino Real crossing and we're keeping those meetings going and keeping that process moving. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Diaz-Nash.

Thank you to the mayor, and once again, thank you to the entire transportation team, and for your endurance, Jay, and you look positive, and you were energized the whole time, so very impressive. Okay, I'm just going to dive in with some questions. In the AR and also in the presentation, it said that we had pedestrian projects worth about $215 million, and about $200 million of that was lighting. Does those projects have the same bottleneck that we've talked about a lot, the transportation, excuse me, transportation team is small but mighty and we've got all this to do so a lot of times the people are the bottleneck. Do the lighting projects have the same people on those projects?

The lighting projects do have the same people on those projects. One key difference as we identify the 200 million that we discuss in lighting projects, when we look at the priority of where this would sit in safety critical, this is a safety first project. This is one that is enhancing the quality of life. The city of San Mateo actually has a lot of streetlights existing already. And the street lighting project identifying the pedestrian master plan are ultimately upgrades to the lighting. So when we're balancing workload with multiple programs, you know, this falls in under active transportation of do we want to advance transportation? A new infrastructure in, say, a class four bike lane or upgrading street lighting, which oftentimes is even more expensive. The priority oftentimes goes to one that has a lower safety benefit right now versus implementing a project. So it's just lower on a priority scale.

And I guess I would challenge that way of looking at things because if you look at, you know, we all want to get people out of their cars and doing things. If you want people to walk, you have to have the lighting. And I know that certainly in my area, I believe in lots of other council members' areas, there still is a lot of issues. So I would... I would want to throw those projects, and maybe there's some kind of on-call consultant just like there is for the quick build. But I think there's a different way of, I would love to see a different way of looking at some of that. Thank you. Number two, what is, I know in the AR, you talked about the neighborhood traffic guide, which is one of the blue sky priorities, strategic objectives. What is the latest timing on that? Because we're about ready to hit July 1. Because that seems to be a lot of the traffic calming. It's all about speeding on my street. So the faster we can get that done, the more it's going to be able to help everyone.

That is correct. To my knowledge, the new strategic metrics, the smart metrics, smart activity metrics go into effect sometime in July. Now, they're waiting for adoption, if I recall, very soon. But ultimately, what we're planning to do is not so much more. Streamlining to a certain extent, but we're definitely doing that, but we're adding transparency. So we're updating the website. We're looking into a process in terms of notification of how many notifications we oftentimes send to the public in terms of getting adoption of saying a speed cushion being on board. But there are different processes that we will start looking at. come July 1st of this year, and a lot of it is around transparency first, improving the process, being clear about the timelines, and ultimately all of that leads towards streamlining the program as a whole.

Yeah, I think the public is really expecting streamlining, not just different metrics, because as you know, and everybody who deals with all these You know, residents were coming in saying, help, and eventually the team is doing great work, just like what happened on Parrot up in Baywood Knolls. And the team was fantastic in doing the survey and redoing the survey. And then at the end, they said, oh, we're going to get to it in 27, 28. And that's got to be really frustrating. I know for Bethany to have to write that email, I felt for her. But we've got to find a better way to get through that. So I would really encourage the team to say, how can we do this? Does it have to be a really fast, fancy speed hump? Or can it be strips? How can we do a little bit of quick build when it comes to traffic coming as well? I think that would go a long way to addressing some of the issues. And then I would just love to put in a plug for my third one. You know, I was looking at what you said, about 200,000-plus hours on traffic calming versus 17, 16, 20, 24. That's a huge amount of time for your staff. And how, even though, Katherine, you said that My San Mateo isn't necessarily used that way, How can we use that app and the CRM system? It just happens to have an app on the front of it to make it easier, better, faster, so there's less staff time analyzing all that. So I would just really encourage in phase two, which hopefully comes very quickly, that we look at how we expand the capabilities of the CRM system because it's supposed to be there to help all of you and not just improve the reporting. So that's my third.

ALL YOURS.

ALL YOURS. ALL YOURS. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DEPUTY MAYOR. DEPUTY MAYOR. DEPUTY MAYOR. I CAN TALK. I CAN TALK. I CAN TALK. OKAY. OKAY. OKAY. SO THANK YOU AGAIN, JAY. SO THANK YOU AGAIN, JAY. SO THANK YOU AGAIN, JAY. AMAZING PRESENTATION.

AMAZING PRESENTATION.

Thank you. Thank you, Jay, very much for the presentation. There was a lot to take in. So my first question is, this is probably just me coming from maybe my PTSD as representing district two. But we've completed about 22% of our high priority bicycle network, which is awesome. But it looks like 48% of our remaining high priority bike projects will involve a potential vehicle lane reduction or removing parking. So with the full understanding that what you did for Humboldt was extra and amazing and you guys worked miracles with like the two pennies we gave you, what can you do on a large scale to make sure that we're doing increased outreach for these upcoming projects as well?

Yeah, that is definitely a really good question. So we learned a lot in Humboldt. And I think looking at 3rd and Norfolk, 19th Avenue, Fashion Island, Delaware Safe Routes to School, we had a lot of lessons learned. And there isn't really one approach we realized that could really supplement just the level of volume that we have to get out there. So one is we have adopted multiple ways of reaching out to the public from being in person and virtual. So at a minimum, oftentimes we have an introduction meeting and that's in person virtual. But even before the introduction meeting, a lot of times we like to blast the survey to get a general pulse of the consensus of community members of where the scope impacts. We oftentimes have a minimum of one meeting. meeting in between to go ahead and refine the design and update and get input midway through somewhere around 65%. And then at a minimum, we have a closing meeting that's in person as well as virtual. Now that's just kind of the baseline that we've learned. There's a lot of things we learned in terms of what works for a certain community. I think in the North Central community, we realized that You know what? We got to go to them. So we have to be sure that the rec centers, the churches, whether it even be mid-Pablo, we've done that earlier in a couple of phases of doing some pop-up events. Those have been working really well. But to answer that question, there really isn't a one-size-fits-all is what we realized. And we're just learning from the past projects to go ahead and optimize the future ones. Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate the honesty and candor in that answer. I appreciate it. Another statistic that I found kind of reading the report is that we've installed zero bike racks in 2025, which, I mean, we have, you know, just given what we've done with the general plan and our priorities with first and last mile connections, do we know why we haven't been able to get to that in the last year? Is it a funding issue? Is it an admin issue? What do we think the reason is behind that?

I just want to say that's a really good eye. That was, I want to say, number four. And it was at the bottom right. And it was zero. That is correct. The year prior to that, we had double digits in there. It's not funding. Ultimately, it came down to, I hate to say it, but staff resources. When we're looking at the safety projects, the grant deadlines that we have to meet, installing bike racks was one that we had to wait until we fill some positions. But we do hope to start back our bike parking program soon. once we hire for the senior transportation planner, as well as our assistant associate, currently recruiting for.

I appreciate that. And again, I appreciate your honesty with the fact that it is a staff capacity issue. So my last question is going to kind of delve into that. which is we're going to go over in the next item, we're facing a little bit of a deficit here at the city. And our current teams are being dispatched and stretched as needed to kind of deal with the quick bills and everything else. So can you tell me if the teams, as they're currently distributed or whatever, are they equipped to handle the heavy load of incoming construction management plans and analyses that are coming our way with just the sheer number of projects we have coming up?

It's a little early to say, I think you're, you know, Deputy Mayor Fernandez, you're speaking specific to private development in terms of, yeah, it's a little quick because if we're mapping out the entire pipeline, if you will, and the schedule of what this looks like, we're in the early phases. We're in the phase one, the planning application phase. We get to entitlement. There's usually a period that they wait one year, maybe two before a builder comes on board. And a project would take anywhere from three to four years, depending on the complexity. We don't know yet. That's the real answer of how we're doing this. We might need to scale up. But I think some of the promise that shown in the develop responsible slide is. We have practices in place in terms of policies and plans and committees that we're putting together internally as staff that can scale up and down. But to answer your question, I would be a fortune teller if I told you whether we are, but we have the pieces in place and I think only time will tell.

You're so multi-talented, but you're not psychic. I'm so sorry. Thank you. That's all.

Okay. Thank you Jay and team for everything. This is awesome. I wanted to ask about the QuickBuild program. I appreciated you sharing a bit of the potential benefits of pursuing QuickBuild projects with regard to having quicker timelines, addressing, intersections that we are understanding could use something more quickly. Can you talk a little bit about how we plan to continue to grow this quick build program and develop and evolve it with the current amount that seems to be allocated in our budget, which I noticed seemed to be on the lower side. I saw 200K for this upcoming year. Could you talk a little bit about how far that goes, for example? You mentioned 12 projects we're currently working on. But you also mentioned, for example, design elements related to Complete Streets and so on, adding to costs. So how... How can we continue to grow a QuickBuild program with what we're allocating?

Yeah, so really good question. Scaling a program. There are multiple phases in program development. We're right now in really phase one. And the current process is really onerous and really restricting. And inherently, that has a little bit less to do with money. if you will. So currently, our fund balance in there is sufficient to do, say, the next six to seven. But that's not the bottleneck at the moment with our current structure. It's really staff resources and allocation. And whether it be design, pulling away our entire team to focus, say, months out of the year and do nothing but quick build and then also implementation as well. Right now, we're not in the funding constraint phase, but we're planning for that. So currently right now, it's really resource constraint. We will hit a pivot point when we develop our new process of having on-call designers and a quick build specialist contractor where we can just dish out task orders and work orders. And on average, some of those quick builds, I hate to put a number, but it's anywhere from if it's small, 20,000. If it's large, it could easily exceed 100,000. And these are still quick build programs. So depending on where the range is, we can quickly get to an area where then we're funding constrained. Right. And this is part of building up a program. So when we get to that point and resources are no longer the bottleneck allocated for this point, we will have to make a decision of how much funding do we allocate to quick bill. Now, with that said, once the program is developed, and we have a good priority list, we can then apply for more funding strategically on the grant side of the house. We wouldn't apply for a $50,000 grant to go ahead and do one intersection. As mentioned earlier, our average project size is anywhere from two to three. That's on average. The other side of that is we did great SEP a couple of years ago, 205 million. Currently right now, 19th is about 30 million. So that's the spectrum. But on average, the projects are two to three million. So that's kind of the trajectory of where we're going. But we will hit a point probably in the near future where funding will be the constraint.

Okay, thank you. That's helpful. All right, let's see. I did want to ask about... I did want to touch on the parking lot utilization figures. I did just notice in the slide that I think when we looked at the one that talked about our top three uses and so on, it noted 2024. Do we have, is that the latest stats we have?

That is the latest and greatest. Our common practice is we do occupancy to that level on-street and off-street really every three to five years. But those studies are expensive for us to capture, so we don't do it annually.

I see. Okay. Okay. Okay. Some of these questions have already been asked, so I appreciate that. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to pass to the next questioner.

Okay. Just following up on Mayor Lorraine's comment about quick builds, do we know so far from what we've done if it's helping? Is there any data?

It's a little too soon right now, but qualitatively, we have gotten a lot of compliments on some of the quick builds, but we are setting procedures in place to analyze volume. And as council knows, it takes time to develop collision history to see year over year whether there are reductions at an intersection. But that's something that we're actively working towards.

Okay, great. I did want to ask about daylighting. So do we have a wholesale plan to paint everywhere? I know we started with schools, but what's the next phase?

Yeah, so AB 413, basically, you don't have to paint a red curb to be enforceable, but we did go ahead and implement a red curbing in all the school areas. Our next phase is high pedestrian activity areas. So in our downtown, our parks and recs, some of the community centers, and that's starting in this coming fiscal year. And after that, really, we are implementing red curb as we do capital improvement projects. So that will be the strategy moving forward.

Okay, so you said schools and then high pedestrian areas and community centers next. Okay. Just going back to ADA compliance, and also this may be like a little bit of a regional type question, but so you mentioned we built 54 curb ramps this year, which is great. I am wondering, you know, how we'll keep pace and compliance, right? the future and then is this something that potentially with the proposed Sam trans measure We can talk to them about a future assistance I'm gonna defer this one to Katherine

So a lot of those curb ramps were constructed as part of our paving program. So certain pavement rehabilitation strategies that we use will trigger the ADA compliance to be required. So concurrent with that pavement project, you would be required to replace the curb ramps. So as long as we're GOING ALONG WITH OUR ADA TRANSITION PLAN, WE'RE IN GOING ALONG WITH OUR ADA TRANSITION PLAN, WE'RE IN COMPLIANCE WITH ADA REQUIREMENTS COMPLIANCE WITH ADA REQUIREMENTS WITH THAT. WITH THAT. WE'LL CONTINUE TO DO THAT WITH WE'LL CONTINUE TO DO THAT WITH OUR PAVEMENT PROJECTS. OUR PAVEMENT PROJECTS. GOING TO YOUR QUESTION ABOUT GOING TO YOUR QUESTION ABOUT SAM TRANS, I THINK YOU'RE TALKING SAM TRANS, I THINK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THEIR PROPOSED MEASURE. ABOUT THEIR PROPOSED MEASURE. I GUESS WE CAN'T SAY WHETHER THE I GUESS WE CAN'T SAY WHETHER THE MONEY THAT IS COMING IN WILL BE MONEY THAT IS COMING IN WILL BE SUFFICIENT FOR I GUESS ALLOCATED SUFFICIENT FOR I GUESS ALLOC I GUESS GO TOWARDS OUR CURB RAMP REPLACEMENT BUT IF IT DOES THEN WE CERTAINLY WOULD, THAT WOULD BE WELCOME. I KNOW ON EL CAMINO REAL THE SHOP PROJECT THAT'S PROPOSED WILL DO A LOT OF CURB RAMP REPLACEMENT ALL ALONG THE EL CAMINO REAL CORRIDOR IN 2028 ALONG THE CITY LIMIT SO THAT WILL DEFINITELY DO A LOT OF SIDEWALK AND CURB RAMP TYPE WORK IN THAT AREA.

AND THEN LIKE DO WE HAVE A MECHANISM WHERE WE'RE TRACKING LIKE SIDEWALK HAZARDS OR, YOU KNOW, HOW DO WE MAINTAIN KIND OF THE SIDEWALK CONDITION OVER TIME?

SO WE DO HAVE OUR ADA TRANSITION PLAN AND THAT HAS AN ACCOUNTING OF A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT SIDEWALK OR CURB RAMP OR OTHER FACILITY DIFFERENT KINDS OF ADA HAZARDS AND WE WORK SYSTEMATICALLY ON THOSE AS WE DO PROJECTS. FOR SIDEWALKS SPECIFICALLY, MANY OF THE SIDEWALKS IN SAN MATEO ARE ACTUALLY THE PROPERTY OWNER'S RESPONSIBILITY THAT'S UNDER THE STREETS AND HIGHWAYS CODE. SO THE FRONTING PROPERTY OWNER HAS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO MAINTAIN THEIR SIDEWALK. WE GET REPORTS IN FOR SIDEWALK TRIP HAZARDS AND WHEN THOSE COME IN, OUR STREETS ENGINEERING TEAM WOULD EVALUATE THEM, SEE WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM AND THEN SEND A LETTER TO THE PROPERTY OWNER. THERE ARE SOME CASES WHERE WE MAY DO A COST SHARE DEPENDING ON ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES, MAYBE THERE'S A CITY TREE THERE, AND THERE'S A LOT OF THOSE THAT COME IN EACH YEAR. SO WE DO HAVE A SIDEWALK REPLACEMENT BUDGET THAT GOES TOWARDS THOSE KINDS OF REPAIRS EACH YEAR.

I WANT TO MAKE SURE WE ROTATE, BUT JUST ON THAT THREAD, So on the east side, I mean, the soil, as we all know, is kind of special. So there's certain streets where it's like you're literally walking down a valley and then back up on the sidewalk. And I guess like I'm always curious, is it like delayed because the street needs to be repaired? Is that the homeowner or is that the city? One that's like really... DRASTIC? YOU KNOW, BECAUSE IT JUST SEEMS LIKE A HAZARD.

YEAH, IT'S A GOOD QUESTION. I THINK MOST LIKELY THE SIDEWALK LITTLE THE SIDEWALK CONDITION LIKE IF IT'S CRACKS OR LITTLE TRIP HAZARDS THINGS WOULD BE THE FRONTING PROPERTY OWNER BUT IT LIKE SLOPING IF IT'S SLOPING DOWN I MEAN THAT'S NOT NECESSARILY A CONDITION WE WOULD GO IN AND REQUIRE A CORRECTION FOR DEPENDING BUT WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT A SIDEWALK CUTTING PROGRAM, I DON'T THINK IT WOULD REALLY CORRECT THE ISSUE THAT YOU'RE DESCRIBING JUST IN OUR EQUITY PRIORITY AREAS AND SO WITH SOME OF OUR DOLLARS AT LEAST IT'S A GOOD COST EFFECTIVE WAY TO ADDRESS PSYWALK ISSUES.

JUST THROUGH THE MAYOR TO ADD TO THAT. JUST THROUGH THE MAYOR TO ADD TO THAT. I THINK WE USED TO IDENTIFY A I THINK WE USED TO IDENTIFY A LOT OF CHALLENGES WITH DRAINAGE LOT OF CHALLENGES WITH DRAINAGE AND THINGS BECAUSE IF THE AND THINGS BECAUSE IF THE SIDEWALK IS GOING UP AND DOWN, SIDEWALK IS GOING UP AND DOWN, OFTEN THE GUTTER IS GOING OFTEN THE GUTTER IS GOING UP AND DOWN AS WELL SO AS WE'RE UP AND DOWN AS WELL SO AS WE'RE COMING THROUGH WITH OUR PAVEMENT COMING THROUGH WITH OUR PAVEMENT PROJECTS WE'LL TRY TO FIX SOME OF PROJECTS WE'LL TRY TO FIX SOME OF THOSE BUT WE DEFINITELY HAVE THOSE BUT WE DEFINITEL DRAINAGE ISSUES THAN FIXING PAVEMENT AND SO WE'VE BACKED AWAY FROM THAT BUT ONE OF THE GOOD THINGS WITH OUR NEW STORM FEE IS THAT YOU KNOW WE HAVE MONEY THAT'S AVAILABLE THAT WE CAN START DEALING WITH SOME OF THESE DRAINAGE ISSUES AND SO UH TYPICALLY IF IF THE SIDEWALK IS GOING LIKE THAT AS I SAID THE DRAINAGE IS MESSED UP AS WELL AND SO WE WOULD BE FIXING BOTH THE SIDEWALK AND THE THE GUTTER AS PART OF THAT SO WE ARE budgetings for some of those more minor drainage issues as part of the storm fee that we would be addressing and some of those get addressed that are able to be addressed through the paving projects as we come along great yeah very interesting I saw more questions but I'll pass thank you anymore councilmember Newsom

I'll only ask one more, I swear. You mentioned there's a lot of safe route to school projects that are being built. Do we anticipate any of them will be completed over the summer so that by the time kids go back to school, they're completed?

We have three active safe routes to school projects right now. I don't see them being completed in the summer. Some are forecasted to be completed later in the year, but school will be back in session.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Diaz-Nash.

Thank you to the Mayor. Let's see. Jay, maybe I missed it, but I was really excited listening to you talk about how you're bringing in on-call resources. And currently they're in the design phase and you're going to start bringing in implementers. Can you be any more specific about the timing of moving to that phase where you will have that kind of resource?

Yeah, definitely. So I think Council Member Nash, you were talking about the quick build program. Yes, definitely. So just last month, we actually onboarded our on-call transportation design firm. There's a couple and we have allocated one specific firm that does this into doing quick build design. We're currently working on the RFP right now for a quick build contract specialist. We haven't done this before. So this is the first time. Oftentimes when we get contractors, we do low bid. But yeah, so we're going through that process, but we don't expect to ramp up until the new fiscal year.

Okay, but that could be July 1.

July 1, we will dedicate more resources to it. This is one that's in a work plan for one of our planning staff right now.

So maybe by the end of the summer, we'd be able to actually, if there was a quick build project that came on, by the end of the summer, would you be able to say, okay, we've got the on-call design resources. We've got the on-call implementing resources. We found the money somehow. Let's go.

I think end of summer will be a little quick. The timeline for us to do RFP, oftentimes we have to develop it. Advertisement easily takes one month for us to do the vetting. And the comparison could easily take another month or two. And to get it to city council and approve, that's another two to three month process.

So we're talking the end of the year.

best case scenario.

No, that's fair. I'm just trying to put some kind of, so I don't come asking you every day, Jay, how are we doing, right? Okay. Then, as you know, our city manager and police chief and staff, we did a traffic safety update over on Alameda and the traffic substation. And one of the things that, you know, it was Alameda and Hobart, Alameda and Barnison. And everyone was great, was very grateful to see in the transportation plan that Barnison and looking at a traffic light was a real serious evaluation even though it's the following year. But in it, it said that the Alameda Hobart shorter term traffic safety measures, there was going to be a recommendation by the end of June. Is that still on track?

I have to check with my team, but I can verify that that specific location is something that's in the quick build active list, if you recall. So that is a project that's in there. I don't have the specifics on the timeline, but I do know that's something we're working on.

Okay, because I know that it went out. That was the letter that I sent. For Hobart? For Alameda Hobart, the recommendation.

So what we're doing is right now, the study has been done now. We're analyzing the information, and hopefully we can get back. And this is all off Tyrone's email, by the way, one of our engineers. It was a recommendation, not an implementation. We'll be getting back about just what we would recommend, if anything, if we do recommend anything, probably by the end of this month, early next month.

Okay, thank you very much for that. And then, let's see, I guess are you, in terms of the parking area, you know, you did a great analysis of how full everything was, but it just seems to me that there's a huge opportunity to use wayfaring to try and get people to go into Verkada, to go into Brickline, to go into all the public-private buildings that we have. What plans are there to try and ramp up? Because there seems to be, at least on nights and weekends, a lot of parking that people don't even know exist.

Yeah, definitely. I want to say back in 2018, we installed our first downtown parking technology project. That was a dynamic wayfinding project that was grant funded over $2.5 million in federal dollars. Right now, there is to be a downtown area plan installed. That will be ongoing, that the city will be doing. And as part of that, we're hoping to scope a comprehensive wayfinding plan that's part of that. So it wouldn't be an isolated project, but that's something that we do want to scope into the downtown area plan.

Okay. Then I would strongly suggest we come up with some kind of interim marketing education something, because we have a downtown parking issue, and we have buildings that people aren't using because they just don't know they exist. So I would just put that recommendation in and say thank you very much. Deputy Mayor? Mayor, excuse me?

Deputy Mayor?

Through the mayor. Through the mayor. I just have one question for you, Jay. And this was actually just looking at the data of the major corridor travel times. I was actually, you know, most of the corridors had like, you know, 2%, 3%. But I was actually really shocked to see 19th and Fashion Island increase 10%. during the time that we were studying. And so I'm just trying to figure out what signal synchronization adjustments are we doing or anything short-term operationally that we're doing to sort of keep traffic moving in this particular, at this particular intersection.

Yeah, a couple of years ago, we actually got a PASS grant to ultimately look at arterial synchronization. So that was a grant that was implemented. And the purpose of that is to look at signal timing to ultimately optimize throughput. Since we implemented that, and that was completed sometime in 2024, and we're looking at 2025 data, that could be a contribution. But the specifics, we're not exactly sure at the moment. But we are noticing an increase about 400 vehicles. And that's on average. I want to note that for the major corridors travel time, that includes for Fashion Island, that includes westbound and eastbound. And we take an average of the peak hour travel time. So that's right now. We don't know for sure, but we have implemented signal optimization projects that may have contributed to maybe a little bit more volume.

Okay, if I could just follow up really quickly. Maybe you can't answer this, but when or how would we know for sure?

Whether it was the past grant that... I'll have to get back to you on that. Thank you.

Okay.

Jay, I was thinking... about the slides you had about the RPPP applications increasing and representing a decent amount of staff time and resources. And I was just curious about whether we would be considering activity like that in our ongoing and upcoming, I think like, assessments of uh you know like i guess frankly our fiscal sustainability plan and and considerations of of staff bandwidth and um potential cost recovery related to such activity or considering um you know a different timeline for uh like a different you know uh Yeah, perhaps considering a schedule of implementation that might allow for reallocation of resources to other projects if necessary.

Yeah, really good question. So the last time we brought this to city council, I want to say it was pre-pandemic and it is ultimately a policy decision of whether we subsidize the residential parking permit program or not. I can say that starting in this new fiscal year, there is funding allocated for comprehensive citywide parking study. And not only are we going to study revenue, whether it's appropriate for a city of our size and demand of our size, but we are going to look at residential parking permit program as well. So when that study is near its completion or midway through, I think there will be policy discussions. I'm looking at our city manager here that we will shore up to city council if that's the direction of looking at whether cost recovery is the model we want to head towards for residential parking permit program.

Okay, that's good to know. I think that's it for me. I can pass.

Thank you. Can we pull up slide 44? It's kind of similar.

Yes, this one?

Yes, so on parking. I guess one of the things I would love to understand, especially because The next item is about the budget and the reality that we're headed into a very large budget deficit potentially. If we were to change our policy that we actually do charge for those two extra hours, like six to eight, how much revenue would we get back as a city for charging for parking?

That is near that psychic discussion. We don't know right now. So I want to be clear. But that's why when we strategically looked at this and we looked at the occupancy, that we are out of the COVID era and demand is high for our downtown. occupancy is very high above 80 85 in some areas as part of this new fiscal year our comprehensive parking study we do intend to scope that to study that to see what that would mean and we would bring that forward to city council yeah you know

it's great that the downtown is so popular. Um, and I want people to come visit us, but we also have to be realistic. Like some of our parking garages in recent years, and it was alluded to by a public commenter do need extra support or seismic retrofit, which is very expensive and actually maintaining the cost of garages is expensive. Um, um so we should be charging more um and increasing the rates especially given the city's fiscal outlook um can you go to slide 46. So when I look at this map, I see that pretty much the whole city, with the exception of the east side, has a residential parking permit program. I know that one little yellow strip exactly why they have an RPP. It was because of commuters actually parking in the neighborhood. I know that the fish market project, you know, we're a ways away. um but i do think we need to have some kind of discussion at some point about the way um park permit parking is designed because currently we wait for developments to be in place before we you know, have some kind of permitted parking program. And to me, that seems a little backwards. Like residents on Roberta and Eisenhower have already asked about, hey, how can we have a residential parking permit program knowing there's a huge development going in? And that development, to their credit, is supposed to have a parking garage there for residents. But even still, just understanding what are our options and getting in front of what we already know will be an ask by the community would, to me, seem like a smarter play than waiting for it to become an issue in the future. So just want to call that out now. I did want to talk a little bit about the 101-92, and I totally appreciate that staff didn't bring this up because it's not a city-led initiative. However, I did want to make a comment that we should be incorporating regional projects that could have major local impact. And for example, the 101-92 project could move forward, you know, against the city's perspective on that. I think the council wrote a letter on our position. And we really aren't clear yet on the projected congestion and also emergency response of that project. And so when we think about transportation, to me it has to be holistic. looking at some of these wider regional projects and wider regional impacts. So I did just want to call that out. There are two questions I have. They're very sensitive, but they are important. So the report really discusses projects in our highest injury corridors. And I am curious, you know, in the next 24 months, what quick builds we're doing for those high injury network areas.

Yeah, so as part of, and I'm gonna go to our LRSP slide here, way in the beginning, right here, LRSP. So the local roadway safety plan is really the beginning of understanding what data can do to analyze collisions and where we should focus our priority. So the top 10 here really identifies after a multiple year effort of collecting data and analyzing and doing community outreach that also looks at near misses. Right. This is this is that project list of our highest, most injury prone, if you will, network. So and we're moving towards that. Our quick bill program is really an evolution to actively refine that. And we meet monthly with PD and fire to look at collision history, to see what trends there are. And there is rolling three rolling five year data that we do look at as prescribed to make sure it could get on the list. So we are working on that. To give you a list right now of where that is with the 12 plus projects, I don't have that available, but that's something that we can share after I could talk to my engineers about it.

Yeah. And I think just on that note, you know, in terms of where we're putting resources, I think there is still unfortunately a perception gap that North central shore view and Los Prados do not receive their fair share of like equitable, equitable investments. Um, and so, you know, I'd be curious specifically if you can share like the breakdown of what those neighborhoods have received in the last five years.

Definitely. And that's something I don't have available right now. But I think that's something that staff can look into and break it up into neighborhoods.

And by the way, I do know that there is a lot of like we talked about lighting tonight. There is a lot of lighting and safety improvements going into North Central right now, which is really exciting. And I think the third avenue in Norfolk. This is my opinion, but it does seem like there's a lot more utilization since that infrastructure went in and people seem really excited about that. So thank you. Good job. I just want to say, you know, again, I really appreciate the report. It shows a lot of progress. Collisions are down, which I think is great news. I still feel like for seniors, you know, they're struggling a little bit to get across streets. I know people mentioned, you know, safe routes to school. Residents, you know, are still waiting for like traffic calming and we still seem to need a lot of like significant ADA and infrastructure. So we just need to make sure that we as a council are really spending every dollar um strategically um i really want to say thank you too i know there's been a ton of grants that have been invested um and time that's been invested to get grants um so we just got to keep going um in the right direction and um you know figure out how we can deliver more quickly especially because we are limited in terms of staff bandwidth and resources and then fiscally too

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. ANY MORE? ANY MORE? NO. NO. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

JUST AS SORT OF A FINAL OVERALL JUST AS SORT OF A FINAL OVERALL URGING, THERE IS SO MUCH AMAZING URGING, THERE IS SO MUCH AMAZING DATA IN THIS. DATA IN THIS. THERE IS SO MUCH THAT YOU HAVE THERE IS SO MUCH THAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED, THAT YOU HAVE DONE, ACCOMPLISHED, THAT YOU HAVE DONE, THAT YOU ARE DOING ACROSS THE BOARD. I'm sure nobody, including probably staff, were aware of the full range of what has been accomplished. And I'm putting my marketing hat on and my constituent service hat on. We need to get out and start telling people what has been done. Because a lot of the slides here were, here are all the hours that are being spent doing good work. They weren't necessarily, you know, we filled 437 and a half potholes. We fixed 14 miles of streets this year. It was all in there. But I would really, really love to see a couple of infographics because we've got to get all this information out. But that just says here is what the city is doing for you citizens across all of San Mateo And we can talk about what those are a lot of it as I said, it's just pulling out But I if I could ask for one thing in addition to all the good work you're doing and all the good work you're planning on doing is Doing something that we can start communicating out because I think that will people now are saying to me. I Boy, they're paving the streets. They're doing this. They're doing that. There's a lot going on. So there's a lot of good feeling. But people like to be able to hang their hat on numbers. So I would just ask and urge for that. But I think people would be very excited by it. But thank you very much to everybody.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I will come back. I just, I think one thing before I forget, I appreciated Councilmember Diaz-Nasch's mentioning about the opportunity to highlight, among other things, the public-private partnership parking options we have downtown. It made me think, Jay. I guess we need at least one more overlay on that grand map of all kinds of different cool things. But I second that idea. And something council member asked about the impact of projects like 101 and 92 kind of reminded me. I just wanted to ask quickly, Jay. I appreciate you noting that when we are looking at the safety data and the splits, 2024, the pre-pandemic years and now, that it was mainly local streets, including El Camino, but not our highways. I was just curious, as you noted, you're looking at that data too and how it all fits. If that data is trending differently than what we are seeing with the local data.

THAT'S SOMETHING WE COULD LOOK INTO.

OKAY. THANK YOU. AND THEN COUNCILMEMBER STREET.

I APOLOGIZE. I ALWAYS FORGET A QUESTION. Something came up today from a constituent about demystifying traffic studies. And you mentioned, you know, there's 7,000 units plus of housing coming in. And the council is actually doing town halls this month. on a different topic, but it was a good point, which is with all these new state laws and all this new development, I know you guys are super busy, but having some mechanism to kind of educate and inform the public on what really goes on in a traffic study and how much sway the council or the city actually has based on that data and information around development, I think was a really good call out. And we should look into that. So that's all.

Thank you. Okay, given the hour, I will leave my comments there and it sounds like the council has done so as well. So I want to thank everybody for their thoughtful questions. I think we got a decent amount out of this. So thank you very much Jay and staff for your presentations. And now we have another item. Item number 18, fiscal year 2026-27 proposed budget and 2026-31 capital improvement program review.

Through the mayor, since it's 10.30, could we extend the meeting to 11.30?

That sounds reasonable. Roll call. It sounds like we have a motion from Council Member Spierko-Guditsky and a second from Council Member Newsom. City Clerk, may we have a roll call vote?

Certainly.

The meeting to 1130 please. Certainly.

Council Member Spierko-Guditsky? Yes. Council Member Newsom?

Yes.

Council Member Diaz-Nash? Yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez? Yes. Mayor LaRaine? Yes.

Thank you, motion carries 5-0. Mr. Mayor, may we take a five minute break? I'll make it less than five, just five, five or even less, three minutes.

Okay, so I think we can certainly take a break and let's just try to keep it as tight as possible. All right. Two-ish minutes. Two-ish minutes.

Thank you.

© transcript Emily Beynon

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Thank you.

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A presentation from our finance director, Abby Visser. Good evening, Abby. Thank you.

ALL RIGHT, GOOD EVENING, HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY ALL RIGHT, GOOD EVENING, HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL. COUNCIL. AS YOU MENTIONED, I'M ABBY AS YOU MENTIONED, I'M ABBY VESER, FINANCE DIRECTOR FOR THE CITY VESER, FINANCE DIRECTOR FOR THE CITY OF SAN MATEO. OF SAN MATEO. TONIGHT WE'RE GOING TO BE LOOKING TONIGHT WE'RE GOING TO BE LOOKING AT OUR FIRST LOOK AT THE FISCAL AT OUR FIRST LOOK AT THE FISCAL YEAR 2628 BUSINESS PLAN. YEAR 2628 BUSINESS PLAN. SPECIFICALLY WE'RE GOING TO LOOK SPECIFICALLY WE'RE GOING TO LOOK AT THE PROPOSED 2627 BUDGET AND AT THE PROPOSED 2627 BUDGET AND THE FIVE YEAR 26231 CAPITAL THE FIVE YEAR JUST KIND OF QUICKLY GO THROUGH THE AGENDA. WE'LL DO BUDGET TIMELINE. WE'LL LOOK AT THE CITYWIDE BUDGET AS WELL AS THE GENERAL FUNDS, SOME OF THE SPECIAL FUNDS, CAPITAL BUDGET AND SOME OF OUR CHALLENGES. BUDGET TIMELINE, JUST TO REMIND YOU WHERE WE ARE. WE ARE AT THE FIRST PROPOSED BUDGET PUBLIC HEARING JUNE 1ST FOR THE WE STARTED THIS PROCESS BACK IN DECEMBER OF 2025 WHEN THE DEPARTMENT STARTED LOOKING TO DEVELOP THEIR BUDGETS. WE'RE LOOKING AT KIND OF THE PROPOSED BUDGET THAT WAS POSTED TO OUR WEBSITE AS OF LAST WEEK. IT IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE LOOKED AT AT THE APRIL 20TH BUDGET STUDY SESSION SO WE'LL KIND OF GO THROUGH THOSE THINGS AS WELL THROUGH OUR PROCESS. AND OF COURSE WE'LL COME BACK ON JUNE 15TH FOR ANOTHER PUBLIC HEARING AND BUDGET ADOPTION. JUST TO KIND OF GET STARTED HERE, FROM THE STAFF REPORT YOU COULD SEE THAT OUR PROPOSED CITYWIDE BUDGET IS $356.5 MILLION. AS YOU CAN SEE THE MAJORITY OF THAT IS OPERATING FUNDS. THE GENERAL FUND BEING THE LARGEST AT $183.8 MILLION. THAT OF COURSE SUPPORTS THE CORE SERVICES LIKE POLICE, FIRE, LIBRARY, PARKS AND RECREATION, ENGINEERING STREETS GENERAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE CITY. SO IMPORTANT OUR LARGEST FUND AT 183.8 MILLION. WE ALSO HAVE THE TWO ENTERPRISE FUNDS SEWER AND STORM AT 74.9 MILLION AND OTHER FUNDS SPECIAL REVENUE FUNDS ARE 31.6 AND THEN OF COURSE CAPITAL PROJECTS ARE INCLUDED IN THE CAPITAL PROJECTS FUND. THAT'S A TOTAL OF 66.3 MILLION THAT WE'RE LOOKING TO DEDICATE TO CAPITAL PROJECTS FOR 26-27. SO WE'LL DIVE INTO OUR FIRST FUND, OF COURSE, WHICH IS THE GENERAL FUND, THE LARGEST FUND. I WANT TO JUST START BACK TO REVENUES AND LET YOU GUYS KNOW THAT WE ARE PROPOSING AT THIS POINT GENERAL FUND REVENUES OF 173.9 MILLION FOR THE 26-27 YEAR. THAT IS VERY SIMILAR TO WHAT WE PRESENTED AT THE STUDY SESSION, AND IT IS STILL A DECREASE FROM THE PREVIOUS YEAR'S BUDGET BY ABOUT $1.9 MILLION. AS YOU CAN SEE, OUR MAIN SOURCE OF REVENUE IS PROPERTY TAX AT 49%, THEN COMES SALES TAX AT 16%, FOLLOWED BY OUR REAL PROPERTY TRANSFER TAX, CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY BUSINESS LICENSES. AGAIN, THIS IS THE OPERATING SIDE OF THE BUDGET AND THE REVENUES THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT. THAT'S, OH, YEAH, WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT A LITTLE BIT MORE AS WE TALK ABOUT HOW WE CAME UP WITH THESE ESTIMATES. IN GENERAL, MOST OF OUR REVENUES ARE GROWING. THE PROPERTY TAX WAS ASSESSED VALUATION AT 3.2%. SO PROPERTY TAX IS GROWING IN GENERAL AT 3.2%. SALES TAX HAS MINIMAL GROWTH ABOUT 1%. REAL PROPERTY TRANSFER TAX WE ADJUSTED THE BASELINE TO 9 MILLION. TRANSIT OCCUPANCY TAX, AGAIN, A LITTLE BIT OF AN INCREASE UP TO $4.1 MILLION, AND OTHER REVENUES ARE ALSO GROWING MODESTLY. HOWEVER, AS YOU WILL NOTICE, OUR OVERALL REVENUES HAVE DECREASED, AND AGAIN, THAT IS BECAUSE OF THE VEHICLE LICENSE IN LIEU FEE ISSUE. I HAVE A QUICK GRAPH HERE JUST TO KIND OF HIGHLIGHT HOW IT'S LOOKING, AND I'M USING THE PRACTICAL SCENARIO HERE. SO AT THE APRIL 20TH BUDGET STUDY SESSION, WE REVIEWED A COUPLE DIFFERENT SCENARIOS. FOR THE BUDGET BOOK WE'RE USING THE PRACTICAL SCENARIO WHICH ASSUMES IN THE FUTURE THAT VLF REVENUES WILL BE BACKFILLED AT 67% OF WHAT WE'RE OWED. BUT ALSO ASSUMES THAT FOR FISCAL YEAR 26-27 WE DO NOT HAVE ANY VLF BACKFILL GIVEN TO US. SO AS YOU CAN SEE KIND OF The blue bars are the VLF that's available. The orange is the VLF shortfalls. So you can see in 26-27, we have no orange because we're not budgeting any VLF backfill. If we were actually getting our full entitlement, that's the yellow bar that you kind of see going up. That would be what it would be if we got our regular entitlement every year. The backfill, though, shows kind of that purple line, again, at 67% going forward. AND AGAIN WE BUDGETED NO VLF SHORTFALL TO BE IN FISCAL YEAR 26-27 GIVEN THE STATE'S CURRENT BUDGET AS WELL AS THE CITY'S LAWSUIT IN PURSUIT OF LAST YEAR'S VLF IN WHICH WE ONLY RECEIVED 67%. SO WE WILL KEEP KIND OF SEEING WHERE THE VLF ISSUE GOES BECAUSE AGAIN THAT'S A BIG PART OF THE BUDGET GAP THAT WE'LL BE LOOKING AT. NEXT, I JUST WANT TO LOOK AT EXPENDITURES. THIS GRAPH SHOWS YOU THE GENERAL FUND EXPENDITURES OF $190.9 MILLION. WE'VE BROKEN IT UP KIND OF SO YOU CAN SEE BY DEPARTMENT. GOES FROM POLICE, FIRE, PARKS AND RECREATION, PUBLIC WORKS, LIBRARY, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. WE ALSO HAVE GENERAL ADMIN AS WELL AS NON-DEPARTMENTAL AND TRANSFERS. TRANSFERS DOES INCLUDE THE 3.95 MILLION IN GENERAL FUND MONEY THAT'S GOING TO CIP THIS YEAR. JUST SO YOU CAN KIND OF SEE THAT, AGAIN, MORE IN COMPARISON TO HOW IT WAS FOR THE ADOPTED BUDGET FOR LAST YEAR. AGAIN, YOU CAN SEE THE REVENUES ARE SLIGHTLY DOWN BY $1.9 MILLION. EXPENDITURES ARE UP BY $3.2 MILLION, A 1.7% INCREASE. BUT AGAIN, GIVEN THOSE, WE'RE LOOKING AT A $17 MILLION BUDGETED DEFICIT. I WANT TO WALK YOU THROUGH HOW WE DO GET THERE BECAUSE THAT'S OBVIOUSLY AN IMPORTANT NUMBER. WHEN YOU LOOK AT PERSONNEL, YOU SEE THAT WE'VE INCREASED IT TO $83 MILLION.7. THAT'S A 3.6% INCREASE IN PERSONNEL COSTS IN THE GENERAL FUND. THIS IS DUE TO PREVIOUS NEGOTIATED COLA AND EQUITY INCREASES THAT BROUGHT EMPLOYEES TO TOTAL COMPENSATION MEDIAN IN PREVIOUS LABOR NEGOTIATIONS. AGAIN, IT'S 3.6% WITHIN THE GENERAL FUND. BUT I DO WANT TO NOTE THAT IN THOSE PERSONNEL COSTS, WE HAVE TAKEN THE WORKERS COMP FUND. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER I DON'T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER DURING OUR DISCUSSIONS OF THE DURING OUR DISCUSSIONS OF THE FISCAL FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY FISCAL FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY PLAN WE DISCUSSED THE OPPORTUNITY PLAN WE DISCUSSED THE OPPORTUNITY TO NOT SEND AS MUCH MONEY TO TO NOT SEND AS MUCH MONEY TO THE WORKERS COMP FUND FROM THE THE WORKERS COMP FUND FROM THE GENERAL FUND AND OTHER FUNDS IN GENERAL FUND AND OTHER FUNDS IN ORDER TO SAVE THAT. ORDER TO SAVE THAT. SO WE HAVE ACTUALLY ASSUMED SO WE HAVE ACTUALLY ASSUMED THAT IN THIS BUDGET SO THAT 1.5 THAT IN THIS SO I JUST WANT TO LET YOU KNOW THAT THAT IS NOW BUILT INTO THE BUDGET THAT WE'LL BE GOING FORWARD WITH. HOWEVER, WHAT'S NOT BUILT IN AND I THINK ALSO IMPORTANT TO NOTE IN THIS PERSONNEL COST IS THAT WE HAVEN'T BAKED IN THE FROZEN POSITIONS. ANOTHER THING THAT WE'RE DOING THROUGH THE FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY PLAN IS FREEZING POSITIONS. RIGHT NOW TEN ARE FROZEN THAT ARE AFFECTED BY THE, THAT HAVE GENERAL FUND FUNDING. But we have not built that into the budget because it's kind of best practice when you still have a budgeted position to keep that money in the budget. So that's about $1.5 million that we're estimating for next year that is in the budget that we expect to save. So that actually will reduce costs. our deficit as long as we maintain those frozen positions throughout the full year, another 1.5. So again, that does actually get us to 15.5, but we didn't want to build it into the budget given that they are technically still authorized in budgeted positions. MOVING ON TO THE UNFUNDED LIABILITY, YOU CAN SEE THAT THAT HAS INCREASED. THAT WAS AN EXPECTED INCREASE BASED ON THE KIND OF PERS ESTIMATES THAT WE'VE HAD. THEN WE HAVE NON-PERSONNEL OPERATING EXPENSES. THIS IS THE ONE THAT'S ACTUALLY A LITTLE BIT LARGER THAN WHEN WE CAME BACK IN APRIL OF 20, THE APRIL 20TH STUDY SESSION. THIS ONE HAS INCREASED PARTLY BECAUSE WE REFINED SOME OF OUR INTERNAL SERVICE COSTS AND THOSE HIT THE OPERATING SIDE OF THE GENERAL FUND AND THAT'S THINGS LIKE TO FUND THE VEHICLE EQUIPMENT REPLACEMENT AND THE BUILDING MAINTENANCE AND SOME OF THOSE FUNDS NEEDED ADDITIONAL FUNDING TO MAINTAIN THEIR HELP. SO THAT INCREASED A LITTLE BIT. YOU CAN SEE THAT'S A CHANGE OF ABOUT 6.6%. AND OF COURSE THERE'S ALL THE OTHER INCREASES IN THERE AS WELL. WE'VE TRIED WHERE WE COULD TO REDUCE THE COST BUT A LOT OF INFLATIONARY INCREASES HAVE AFFECTED LIKE CONTRACTUAL SERVICES AND OTHER OUTSIDE COSTS THAT WE HAVE TO PAY IN ORDER TO GET THE WORK DONE. SO THAT'S ABOUT A 4% INCREASE THAT'S HAPPENED FROM THOSE ACTIVITIES. THERE'S ALSO BEEN INCREASES IN UTILITIES WHICH IS ABOUT 9% AND INCREASES IN THE INSURANCE PREMIUMS WHICH IS ABOUT 22%. SO ALL THOSE DIFFERENT INCREASES KIND OF GO INTO MAKING UP THE 6.6% WITHIN THE OPERATING SIDE. AND THEN JUST ALSO TO NOTE YOU CAN SEE THE TRANSFERS TO CIP DID CAN SEE THE TRANSFERS TO CIP DID GO DOWN AS WE DISCUSSED IT'S GO DOWN AS WE DISCUSSED IT'S ABOUT 4 MILLION FOR THIS YEAR ABOUT 4 MILLION FOR THIS YEAR LESS THAN IT'S LESS 5 MILLION LESS THAN IT'S LESS 5 MILLION LESS THAN IT WAS LAST YEAR SO AGAIN ALL THAT LESS THAN IT WAS LAST YEAR SO AGAIN ALL THAT KIND OF LEADS TO OUR 17 MILLION KIND OF LEADS TO OUR 17 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGETED DEFICIT AND ONE OTHER THING I DIDN'T MENTION AND WANTED TO HIT ON IS IN THE LAST YEAR'S BUDGET WE DID BUDGET IN SOME VACANCY SAVINGS KIND OF WITHIN THE OPERATING BUDGETS BECAUSE WE KNEW THERE WAS GOING TO BE SOME VACANCY HERE AND THERE. WE HAVE AGAIN KIND OF TO BE CONSERVATIVE THIS YEAR WE DID NOT PUT THAT IN PARTLY BECAUSE WE HAVE THE FROZEN POSITIONS AND SO THAT OFTEN WILL EAT SOME OF THE VACANCY SAVINGS WE WOULD HAVE SEEN. AND ALSO BECAUSE WE HAVE A PRETTY LOW VACANCY RATE. SO WE WANTED TO MAKE SURE WE TOOK THAT INTO ACCOUNT. SO AGAIN, CONSERVATIVELY BUDGETING, THERE IS NO VACANCY SAVINGS THIS YEAR IN THE BUDGET, BUT THERE COULD BE SOME SAVINGS DOWN THE LINE IF DIFFERENT POSITIONS THAN WE EXPECT TURN OVER. And then finally, if we do see good news on the VLF backfill front, we do have a potential to bring that deficit down by the $6.9 million, which again could get us closer to $10 million deficit. So that's kind of where this, that's why I'll leave the general fund budget. And next, I did want to talk a little bit about the Sewer Enterprise Fund. I don't want to leave it out. So in terms of the Sewer Enterprise Fund, we do do a five-year fund in the budget book. But right now, you're just looking at the two years because this is a two-year business plan. I want to focus on those. YOU CAN SEE OPERATING REVENUES ARE ABOUT $92.2 MILLION AND THAT IS MOSTLY MADE UP OF SEWER SERVICE CHARGES FROM OUR APPROXIMATELY 40,000 CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS WITHIN THE SEWER ENTERPRISE. IN ADDITION, WE SHOW CAPITAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM OTHER, THOSE ARE OUR CAPITAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM OUR PARTNER AGENCIES. THAT HAS TO GO STRICTLY TO CAPITAL PROJECTS SO WE DON'T NECESSARILY COUNT IT AS THE SAME TYPE OF REVENUE. IT'S DEDICATED PRIMARILY TO CAPITAL. And then you'll see the expenses for the sewer fund are $108.8 million for next fiscal year. That's including the operations and maintenance, the debt service, as well as the capital projects of about $39.9 million. I DO WANT TO NOTE AT THE BOTTOM WE SHOW A LINE CALLED LOAN PROCEEDS. THAT REPRESENTS THE STATE REVOLVING LOAN FUND FUNDING WHICH WE HAVE BEEN REIMBURSED OVER THE LAST THREE YEARS. WE'VE BEEN REIMBURSED THE LAST TWO YEARS AND WE EXPECT ONE MORE REIMBURSEMENT PAYMENT FROM THE STATE. So that's reimbursing us for the cost that we put out from the sewer fund for the wastewater treatment plant. And then we will start paying that loan as a result next year. So our debt service goes up a little bit because we'll start paying off that loan. And that's where we are with the sewer enterprise fund. And I also just want to do a quick review of the Storm Enterprise Fund so you could see where that was. Again, we're looking at revenues of about $4.2 million for that one, with expenses about $1.03 million. The capital you see in this line item is actually referring to capital outlay, so I don't want to confuse this with how we show it in the sewer fund. THIS IS CAPITAL OUTLAY IN THE OPERATING SECTION, AND THEN WHEN YOU LOOK AT TRANSFERS OUT, THAT'S THE CAPITAL AMOUNT. SO WE'RE BUDGETING ABOUT 3.4 MILLION FROM THE STORM ENTERPRISE FUND TO CAPITAL PROJECTS IN 26-27. And then we'll go on and do a short review of the 26-27 capital budget as a whole, including the five-year capital improvement plan. So I've got a summary slide here, but I do want to kind of note that in the budget that we posted online, there is a whole capital improvement section. It shows the five-year capital improvement by funding source and all the different projects, and it also shows them by category. This is the kind of category SECTIONS, BUT IN THE BOOK IT HAS EACH OF THE PROJECTS WITHIN THESE CATEGORIES, SO PEOPLE CAN GO ONLINE AND LOOK AND SEE ALL THE DETAILS OF WHAT'S PROPOSED WITHIN THAT. THIS JUST GIVES YOU A SUMMARY THAT WE'RE PROPOSING 66.3 MILLION IN CAPITAL FUNDING FOR THE FIRST YEAR OF THIS CIP BUDGET, AND YOU CAN SEE IT'S 349 IS THE FIVE-YEAR ESTIMATED TOTAL. But of course, as per this budget process, we typically only adopt that first year, the 26-27, though we do like to do the planning for the full five years. And just to give you some highlights of the five-year plan, I'll note that for the wastewater treatment plant funding from the sewer fund, we do have some new capital funding there that is going to be funding for the solids processing side within the wastewater treatment plant. So although we're coming close to finishing the clean water program, we will be putting funding in for these new solids processing facilities. Not new, but repairing our old solid waste processing facilities. IN ADDITION, WE ARE CONTINUING TO COMMIT AT LEAST $8 MILLION ANNUALLY TO STREETS PROGRAM, BOTH SMOOTH STREETS AND STREET REHABILITATION PROGRAMS. WE DO HAVE FUNDING FOR THE VERY HIGH PRIORITY PROJECTS AS IDENTIFIED IN THE CITYWIDE STORM DRAIN MASTER PLAN. WE ALSO HAVE FUNDING FOR CITY BUILDINGS AND FACILITY IMPROVEMENTS. SOME OF NOTE ARE THE KING RECREATION AND SWIM CENTER AND THE NEW FIRE STATION NUMBER 27 WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR OF FUNDING. WE HAVE A COUPLE OF STUDIES FOR PARKS AND RECREATION FACILITIES THAT ARE PART OF THE FISCAL YEAR 26-27 BUDGET. THE LAKE SHORE CENTER FEASIBILITY STUDY AS WELL AS THE RECREATION AQUATICS FACILITY STUDY. AND THEN WE ALSO HAVE WITHIN THE FIVE-YEAR CIP AN ADDITIONAL 7.1 MILLION. For bikeway and pedestrian safety, that does include funding for the local roadway safety plan implementation. And then just to note also, we do have in the budget a list of unfunded projects that we try to update every year. And so this is just a summary of that. We have an unfunded projects total of about 348 that we've estimated. You can see here some of the priorities that are unfunded. Much of them are second phases of some of the larger projects. And again, for things like bike master plan projects, those are all detailed in more detail within the budget book that is online. And then to talk a little bit about the challenges to the general fund and the financial sustainability plan. We've talked about this a bit, but I just want to remind that it's potentially we're seeing this deficit for fiscal year 26-27 because of a lot of the slow growth we're seeing in revenues. But it's also part of the rising costs of the services. I mean, as we've discussed, there's a lot of inflationary pressures that have been hitting the budget, both within the operating and personnel side. IN ADDITION, OF COURSE, VLS SHORTFALL REMAINS A REALLY BIG COMPONENT OF OUR BUDGET SHORTFALL, AND SO WE'LL CONTINUE TO MONITOR THAT AND CONTINUE TO WORK TOWARDS WHAT WE CAN DO TO HAVE A LONG-TERM SOLUTION TO THAT ISSUE. AND THEN, OF COURSE, THE AGING CITY FACILITIES INFRASTRUCTURE CONTINUES TO BE AN ISSUE WITH OVER 348 MILLION IN OUR UNFUNDED CIP. I DID WANT TO SHARE THE GRAPH THAT WE'VE KIND OF LOOKED AT IN THE PAST. THIS IS UPDATED WITH THE PROPOSED 26-27 BUDGET. IT STILL HAS ALSO A 7.1 ESTIMATED SHORTFALL FOR 25-26. I'M STILL HOPING TO SEE THAT GO DOWN BUT RIGHT NOW THAT'S WHAT WE'RE ESTIMATING STILL. AND THEN OF COURSE THE 17 MILLION FOR THE PROPOSED SO WITH THE RED LINE WHICH IS OUR PROPOSED REVENUES IT'S GOING DOWN A LITTLE BIT UNFORTUNATELY INTO 26 27 SO YOU CAN SEE HOW OUR OPERATING AND CIP ARE NOT FULLY FUNDED BY THE REVENUES WITHIN THE GENERAL FUND AND THEN AGAIN, AS I MENTIONED, WE DID USE THE PRACTICAL SCENARIO AND THE BUDGET PLANNING HERE TO SHOW WHERE THE DEFICITS WOULD GO OVER THE NEXT 10 YEARS. WE HAVE THE 7.1 AS I MENTIONED IN 25-26, 17 MILLION IN 26-27. And that gets us through a couple of years, but definitely shows that we need to continue looking at the different pieces of the financial sustainability plan to see how we can reduce that ongoing structural deficit. AND AS A REMINDER, I'VE KIND OF LISTED SOME OF THE ITEMS THAT LISTED SOME OF THE ITEMS THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IN TERMS OF OUR WE'RE LOOKING AT IN TERMS OF OUR FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY PLAN. FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY PLAN. AS I MENTIONED, THE BENEFIT AS I MENTIONED, THE BENEFIT SAVINGS WE PREVIOUSLY TALKED ABOUT SAVINGS WE PREVIOUSLY TALKED ABOUT HAS BEEN BUILT INTO THE BUDGET. HAS BEEN BUILT INTO THE BUDGET. BUT FROZEN POSITIONS HAVE NOT. BUT FROZEN POSITIONS HAVE NOT. WE STILL HAVE OPPORTUNITIES TO WE STILL HAVE OPPORTUNITIES TO LOOK AT ADDITIONAL OPERATING LOOK AT ADDITIONAL O IN THE FUTURE. WE WILL CONTINUE LOOKING AT WE WILL CONTINUE LOOKING AT WE WILL CONTINUE LOOKING AT REVENUE ENHANCEMENTS, THE COST REVENUE ENHANCEMENTS, THE COST REVENUE ENHANCEMENTS, THE COST RECOVERY AND COST ALLOCATION RECOVERY AND COST ALLOCATION RECOVERY AND COST ALLOCATION ITEMS, GRANT OPPORTUNITIES AS ITEMS, GRANT OPPORTUNITIES AS ITEMS, GRANT OPPORTUNITIES AS WELL AS THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WELL AS THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WELL AS THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES THAT HAVE BEEN OPPORTUNITIES THAT HAVE BEEN OPPORTUNITIES THAT HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED. DISCUSSED. SO ALL THOSE ARE THINGS THAT WE'LL CONTINUE WORKING ON EVEN AS WE ADOPT A BUDGET WITH THIS LARGE DEFICIT. AND WITH THAT, I'M HERE FOR QUESTIONS FROM THE COUNCIL.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. WE'LL START WITH PUBLIC COMMENT. SO WE OPEN PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM.

MAYOR LORRAINE, THERE'S NO REQUEST TO SPEAK ON THIS ITEM.

Thank you. I will close public comment on this item and bring it back to the desk for questions and comments. Council Member Spierko-Kudyski.

Yeah, thank you so much, Abby. I mean, to me, the budget reflects like a simple reality, which is the cost of maintaining the level of service in San Mateo residents expect is growing faster than the revenue available to support it. And our responsibility is not, you know, to just try and balance next year's budget, but to really ensure the city remains fiscally responsible and sustainable for the future. So thank you. I do have like a series of questions, comments. So we did get a resident email today and a public comment about corporate sponsorship and naming rights. And I do feel like we kind of, everybody mentions this here and there, but, you know, can we set up a formal process to evaluate that?

It is something that we can look at. I believe that we do have sponsorships and we have a program overall. So like with Parks and Rec, for example, I believe we've budgeted at $38,000 in sponsorship revenues coming in. Now looking at going more robust, I would ask all these individuals who are bringing this up, Please get us in front of the right people. We try. We're very aggressive in this. But at the same time, it's challenging overall. And so I'd be happy to sit down with any individual who wants to talk about establishing those relationships and getting in front of the right people.

Yeah, so just to kind of press in there, totally hear you. I think this is a community-led effort. But there was like a proposal that a resident had about doing like a community tech conference where we invite some of our Maybe it's something we talk to the chamber about where we invite some of these leaders from these tech companies in San Mateo to really get to know us with the chamber and to really have an open forum or discussion about, hey, your workers live here. For example, you're asking about amenities and services like a swimming pool. Well, we could have a roadblocks Joinville pool. or an amazon joinville pool right um so i think to me when i look at the economic pie chart that is something that's missing and i totally hear you that it's a community city you know collaboration um but would love for us to do more there um and that's great that we have thirty thousand dollars by the way that's a great start so thank you um I am curious, and I guess this is all for the city manager, can you talk about the city-owned parcels that could support housing or mixed-use development and what those partnerships could look like or public-private partnerships?

So a good example is tonight, actually, the city council went ahead and did the final adoption for the Bespoke Project, which is a public-private partnership for downtown, which is going to energize South B Street in our downtown with 159,000 square feet of office, 14,000 square feet of ground floor retail at 6,000 square foot. senior center facility and 71 affordable homes, which will re-energize the downtown. As part of the downtown plan, that's one of the areas that we want to focus on, but that downtown plan has been delayed a little bit with our historic work and initiative. But hopefully we'll get to that here in the future so that we can focus on our city-owned parcels in the downtown and look at heists and best use strategies overall and really position ourselves YOU KNOW, TO REALLY MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE LEVERAGING OUR REAL ESTATE ASSETS FOR THE LONG-TERM FUTURE OF THIS COMMUNITY. WE'RE ALSO DOING A REAL ESTATE PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS OVERALL, AND SO WE'VE RETAINED A CONSULTING FIRM, AND SO WE HAVE BEGUN, I HAD THE KICKOFF MEETING MAYBE ABOUT A MONTH where we're looking at documenting all our real estate in the city, all the different parcels, and then also looking at highest and best use, especially as the general plan was updated recently, so that we can see what are some viable opportunities out there for us in the future.

Thank you. So as you all know, we have a Parks and Rec Foundation and we have a library foundation and they offer philanthropic support. Have we ever considered creating like an infrastructure giving program or resilient resiliency fund?

So that would be the foundations that have really helped in that area overall. Is there an opportunity where we could look at potentially working collaboratively even more so with these foundations? I think there is opportunity and upsides. I know I meet on an annual basis with the Library Foundation, and they have really upped their game. And so you'll see that year over year. um with the work that they're doing on parks and rec i know their main funding source or the revenue source that they're bringing in is the concert series and the beer wine booth overall and i know that they have been collecting funds and so really sitting down with them to talk about ways that we can partner for the future but for example we're working right now with it's the arboretum right joanne where we're going to be sitting down with them and they're gearing up to do a $1 million fundraiser to really make an investment in our Japanese garden in Central Park. And so these are areas that we're looking at partnering with our foundations and with our local nonprofits who really want to have a hand in making those, really collecting funds to make those improvements in our community.

Thank you, yeah, I have no idea what it would entail, but just given that we have such a large deficit for capital improvement, if there was an infrastructure giving program, yeah.

No, I hear you, but doing this for about 24 years in five different cities, really, I wanna be realistic in expectation settings that business overall, they're gonna first look out for their business interests first and foremost, And so you have to look at those corporate giving programs and you have to be in alignment with what their vision is and what their interests are overall. And sometimes we might not be in alignment. And so we have to figure out and align ourselves, you know, to look at funding that aligns with their corporate interests overall.

Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about tourism? So like, what would it take for us to increase hotel night, or like visitor spending by like 2% or 5%? And, you know, what do you think that could look like over the next 24 to 36 months?

So if we're looking at the visitor serving kind of outlook, well, you shared an email with me that, you know, when you look at it, one of our bigger hotels is looking at being purchased and being pivoting to housing, which when I looked with our finance director today, brings in over a million dollars of TOT. So you saw the four million up there could potentially be in the next few months, only three million. And so. That is something that we're challenged with. We have a limited number of hotel rooms here, one with the Marriott going down. That was significant. But then looking just overall, the hotel properties, there's a lot of interest in looking at having those pivot over to housing instead of hotels themselves. And we really rely on the TOT that we collect from these properties. Now, with our limited amount of hotel rooms that we currently have, Really, working with the Visitors Bureau, one of the main strategies is, of course, our proximity to SFO and being able to get people who are traveling through the airport to be able to stay here locally. Second, one of the big bumps that we're seeing is working with our event center team here. They bring in significant sporting events on the weekends, specifically volleyball events. They're kind of the mainstay up here in Northern California. And so having those tournaments here, you're seeing a lot more people on the weekends staying here in our hotels for those tournaments, youth tournaments overall. And so that's another strategy to look at is how can we attract those types of youth tournaments here in town so that we can capitalize off of getting more, I like to call it butts in beds, which allows us to you know, get more tax dollars on that.

Yeah. I just want to say thank you. And thanks for walking us through that. It seems like you and Abby have really exact exhausted and looked at all these different scenarios and options. And I think we're all appreciative of appreciative of that. And I just want to remind the public that this month we're doing a big education and information session. We're having several town halls, I think across the whole council and, I do support exploring a quarter cent sales tax just because I believe in protecting public safety and maintaining our parks and preserving our libraries and continuing to invest in the infrastructure and the core services. And I feel like, again, that's our responsibility. So thank you for the update.

Thank you. I'll just look to see if others have questions. Councilmember Newsom, yeah, we can try the same model.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Abby, I was curious, looking at the SMC fire legacy cost, I noticed that it seems to still be increasing year over year. Do we anticipate there's a point in the future where it goes the other direction? And when is that?

Yeah. I DON'T HAVE THAT IN THIS PRESENTATION, BUT IN THE BUDGET BOOK WE DO HAVE A DISCUSSION OF OUR PERS UNFUNDED LIABILITY COSTS AND THE FIRE LEGACY COSTS ARE TIED TO THAT UNFUNDED LIABILITY CONTRIBUTION. AND SO WHAT WE BASED ON CURRENT PERS ESTIMATES AND KIND OF HOW THE MARKET IS DOING AND OUR FUNDED AMOUNT WITHIN OUR UNFUNDED IT LOOKS LIKE IT WILL KEEP GOING UP FOR ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE IT LOOKS LIKE IT WILL KEEP GOING UP FOR ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS AND THEN THERE SHOULD BE, I YEARS AND THEN THERE SHOULD BE, I WOULD SAY, A DARK DECLINE BUT WOULD SAY, A DARK DECLINE BUT THEN IT WILL START TO GO THE OTHER THEN IT WILL START TO GO THE OTHER WAY AS WE WORK TOWARDS GETTING TO WAY AS WE WORK TOWARDS GETTING TO COMPLETE FUNDEDNESS WITH OUR COMPLETE FUNDEDNESS WITH OUR DIFFERENT PENSION FUNDS. DIFFERENT PENSION FUNDS. SO FIRE IS TIED TO OUR SAFETY, SO FIRE IS TIED TO OUR SAFETY, LEGACY FIRE IS PART OF OUR SAFETY Both of those kind of are in the same trajectory. So again, that's all dependent though on how the market does because how our overall funded pot becomes for paying out PERS depends on how well the market does. And it also depends on new actuarial studies. So when they do the next actuarial study, if they decide people are living longer and doing well, then they may say you still owe more. That can change, but at the moment, it looks like in the next five years, there'll be a change in that.

Thank you. Um, I mean, I guess just looking at it, we all kind of are recognizing the same challenges. We need to, as a city continue to look for new revenue streams. Um, and I know we all, we all talk about this one-on-one with you, Alex, but, um, you know, some of the things that were even mentioned tonight, extended parking hours, um, things like site to parking citation fees. Uh, I know we've talked about potentially looking at digital billboards, um, Concert in the park. I've heard from people in the past saying that, you know, they want to sponsor and pay more and they're told, okay, that bracket's full. So we want to make sure we're looking at every single opportunity. Even, um, another idea we were talking about last week was like going to the Amazons and the Uber and Lyft drivers and seeing if those corporations would fund, uh, cleaning of the park and rec bathrooms, making them available to the, um, the drivers for Amazon and Uber and Lyft. Um, I guess the other questions I'd have are, you know, when it comes to development, we have a lot of projects and it seems like even more are coming down the pipeline very fast, but we do seem to have quite a few that are stalled out. Is there any mechanism in place that when a project stalls out for a certain period of time, we can actually start finding the project? As an example, we have the North Central Mosquito Pool. I'm just curious, you know, how do we handle these vacant spots that are

So I have our city attorney and also Zach Dahl should be on this call. Specifically, I know that there's, I believe we've been going to court on that property specifically, right?

If you're referring to the property at 200 South Fremont, I mean, code enforcement staff has been in active discussions with them. More broadly though, in terms of the land use development projects, I mean, sometimes if the market turns, projects may get abandoned not after construction necessarily although I know that's what happened in this one instance but there's not a mechanism to really find developers for failing to proceed with an application because maybe the financing might dry up maybe a project might get entitled and then there may not be a financial capability when proceeding with that entitlement so IT'S MORE ABOUT JUST CODE COMPLIANCE FOR THOSE PROJECTS, WHETHER THEY'RE UNDER CONSTRUCTION OR FOR THAT MATTER COMPLETED. NOT REALLY, THERE'S NO MECHANISM FOR FINING DEVELOPERS FOR FAILING TO PROCEED WITH THE PROJECT TO BEGIN WITH.

THANK YOU.

AND I GUESS MY LAST QUESTION, SORRY.

I WAS JUST GOING TO SAY UNDER OUR CODE WE ALLOW FOR EXTENSIONS AS WELL. SO THAT'S ANOTHER THING OVERALL. AND THAT'S UNDER STATE LAW TOO, I BELIEVE, CORRECT?

There are mechanisms under state law, under the Subdivision Map Act, and also in our local code.

So there's no opportunity to charge if they're extending beyond a certain period of time? No. Okay, the last thought that I heard, and, you know, I sit on our San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department, and the idea was floated last year when we had the Council of Cities come and tour our Arctic police station, our rapid, wait. COME ON, YOU GUYS. COME ON, YOU GUYS.

RAPID INFORMATION. RAPID INFORMATION. RAPID INFORMATION.

REAL-TIME INFORMATION. REAL-TIME INFORMATION.

REAL-TIME INFORMATION. THERE IT IS.

THERE IT IS. SORRY. SORRY. BUT, YOU KNOW, SEVERAL CITIES IN BUT, YOU KNOW, SEVERAL CITIES IN THE AREA SAID, BOY, WE WISH WE THE AREA SAID, BOY, WE WISH WE COULD HAVE THIS. COULD HAVE THIS. I'M WONDERING IF WE ARE LOOKING I'M WONDERING IF WE ARE LOOKING AT THOSE TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES. AT THOSE TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES. I'M JUST PICKING THAT ONE OUT OF I'M JUST PICKING THAT ONE OUT OF THE AIR. THERE'S ALSO A LOT OF NEIGHBORING CITIES THAT HAVE THEIR OWN PARK AND REC DEPARTMENTS STOOD UP. I'M WONDERING IF THERE'S OPPORTUNITIES FOR SHARING LANDSCAPERS, SHARING TYPES OF RESOURCES WITH OTHER CITIES IN A JPA MODEL WHERE ULTIMATELY YOU WOULDN'T REALLY BE CUTTING JOBS BUT YOU'D BE CUTTING OVERHEAD. ARE WE LOOKING AT THOSE TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES AND DO WE Any thoughts there?

So if that's what council wish to direct for us to look into, that would be something that we would have to look into in the future. I want to be sensitive, though, to our workforce overall who are handling our day-to-day operations here first and foremost. If there's opportunity to leverage resources across cities or government jurisdictions, that is something that I would say we can look at in the future. And then as a as a I guess maybe from the real time information center example, at least from what I'm experiencing and I'll you know, the chief can step up in here and talk about this possibly. But I'm seeing a lot of departments actually just go get their own drone programs and start utilizing their own Arctic's. I think the county is also standing up in Arctic. Is that right, chief? THEY ARE TRYING. THEY ARE GOING SOLO ON THEIR THEY ARE GOING SOLO ON THEIR OWN. OWN. WE GAVE THE OFFER OUT TO WE GAVE THE OFFER OUT TO EVERYBODY AT THE SAME TIME. EVERYBODY AT THE SAME TIME. BUT A LOT OF THEM JUST WANT TO BUT A LOT OF THEM JUST WANT TO GO ON THEIR OWN. GO ON THEIR OWN. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, THROUGH THE MAYOR. THANK YOU, THROUGH THE MAYOR.

THANK YOU, THROUGH THE MAYOR. JUST A COUPLE QUESTIONS. JUST A COUPLE QUESTIONS. JUST A COUPLE QUESTIONS. NUMBER ONE, THANK YOU, AVI. NUMBER ONE, THANK YOU, AVI. AND THANK YOU TO THE ENTIRE AND THANK YOU TO THE ENTIRE TEAM.

TEAM.

SO THE REVENUE PRO I assume they do not include if the real property transfer tax ballot initiative passes.

THAT IS CORRECT. THAT IS NOT REPRESENTED AT ALL IN THAT IS NOT REPRESENTED AT ALL IN THIS BUDGET BECAUSE TECHNICALLY THIS BUDGET BECAUSE TECHNICALLY SPEAKING IF IT DID PASS IT WOULDN'T SPEAKING IF IT DID PASS IT WOULDN'T GO INTO EFFECT FOR ANOTHER TWO GO INTO EFFECT FOR ANOTHER TWO YEARS SO IT WOULDN'T AFFECT THIS YEARS SO IT WOULDN'T AFFECT THIS BUDGET. BUDGET. SO I DIDN'T PUT THAT SCENARIO IN SO I DIDN'T PUT THAT SCENARIO IN THIS BUDGET AT ALL. THIS BUDGET AT ALL.

RIGHT.

RIGHT. BUT IT WOULD MEAN IN TWO YEARS BUT IT WOULD MEAN IN TWO YEARS GOING FORWARD BUT IT WOULD ALSO BE GOING FORWARD BUT IT WOULD ALSO BE RET

WELL, WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO GIVE BACK ANY REVENUES. BACK ANY REVENUES. BUT ANYTHING THAT WAS ADOPTED BUT ANYTHING THAT WAS ADOPTED RETROACTIVELY WOULD HAVE TO BE RETROACTIVELY WOULD HAVE TO BE STOPPED. STOPPED. BUT YES, WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO GIVE BUT YES, WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO GIVE BACK ANY REVENUES.

BACK ANY REVENUES. OKAY. OKAY. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THEN I ASSUME THAT THIS BUDGET THEN I ASSUME THAT THIS BUDGET DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY POTENTIAL DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY POTENTIAL NEW SALES TAX LOCALLY. No, it does not include a new sales tax. Okay. And then, as I had mentioned earlier tonight, I personally would love to ask my fellow council members for support in finding what sounds like a fairly minimal amount of money to stand up the congregant meal program so that there's no wait list. Okay. and i guess i would want to ask for what what would that mean in terms of dollars it sounded like not a lot but i don't know i'll ask our parks and rec director do we have a joanne can you come up and speak to the program thank you director mcgreeny

Good evening. So the congregate lunch program has different wait lists, different months that fluctuate. So we've seen it top out over 10 at some locations on some days. So staff have run the numbers. And I think in order to accommodate an increase for five spots at both locations, it would be an increase of about $15,000 a year. And to do 10 spots at both sites, it would be about $31,000 a year. OK. And that's just for the meals.

So that's five, so that's meaning five more people.

Five more people.

At each place each week. Yes. OK. Well, then I would want to suggest we start out maybe with five additional positions, 15,000, and come back.

Or please. If I may, just to add to that. So one thing to note is that there is a grant request in right now. So we could approve a special one time for... 10,000 to 15,000. And then if the grant is approved, then that money can go back to the general fund. But if it's not, then at least we get people off the wait list, which I think is really important right now because the economy is not in a great place. It's high inflation. Clearly, people are coming in because this is a federally funded program. It's a nutritionally balanced meal, and it's cost-efficient for many seniors.

It's also giving seniors an opportunity to get out and have social interaction. Absolutely.

So just really quickly, as we build out the budget, because you'll have to adopt this in two weeks from now, looking across just at the council, looking for nodding heads, that we'll go ahead and budget $15,000 general fund money one time for the senior meal program.

YES.

I SEE A MAJORITY. I SEE A MAJORITY. NOT IN THEIR HEAD. NOT IN THEIR HEAD. WE'LL BUILD THAT OUT IN THE WE'LL BUILD THAT OUT IN THE BUDGET. BUDGET. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU DIRECTOR MCGRINNY FOR THANK YOU DIRECTOR MCGRINNY FOR HAVING THAT INFORMATION. How is CalPERS doing in terms of how they're budgeting the stock market returns? Because there have been some years where they've perhaps not quite as realistic as others.

Well, again, the CalPERS kind of discount rate standard is 6.8% increase. And I think they're doing fine with that number. The overall funded, like PERS kind of posts what their overall funded pot is for the overall fund, and it's doing better than it was doing last year. So what I anticipate is that they will definitely hit their six point interest rate at the end of this fiscal year, as long as, again, nothing Crazy happens. Crazy happens. We don't know what's going to happen with the stock market. But as long as nothing crazy happens with the stock market, they will hit their 6.8% and most likely be above, which means that there wouldn't be a change to our contributions other than through actuarial changes and things like that.

Okay. Well, thank you for keeping us involved and updated on that.

Yes. And they usually, you know, again, we'll know at the close of the fiscal year exactly kind of what their first estimate is. So we can share that with the council when it comes out. That would be wonderful.

Thank you. All my questions. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Just a couple of quick questions for the city manager. And Abby, thank you for a very comprehensive presentation. Appreciate it. Do you have any, since you are on one of the key players on the county VLF working group, do you have any updates on that?

So I had a meeting last week with the county manager and two other city managers as we make up that VLF group. And what I've heard is that Senator Becker and Assemblymember Papin are fighting a good fight up there, trying to go after any remaining crumbs of budget that's left. And we'll know our fate here in about a week and a half or so of whether or not we get some money or get nothing at all.

And is there... Is there any action that we can encourage our community members to take in the next week and a half?

Well, we can always write to the governor and the state legislature overall, seeking support overall. But I believe we've done a big mass showing as a county and as a city overall. I've gone up to testify. Our police chief has gone up to testify. Our finance director has gone up to testify. in front of both the Senate and Assembly budget committees on behalf of the city of San Mateo. And we also have our legislative consultants and lobbyists up in Sacramento who have also been advocating our position as well. And so I believe, you know, we've looked at it from every which way, I think. And so we'll see what happens. I know that the Department of Finance, they originally were willing to talk to us about a permanent fix. And then that was pulled back a few weeks ago, unfortunately. And so now we're just looking at just this upcoming year, um, about whether or not we can get our VLF. And as you see, you know, we, we have the practical, um, scenarios up there for you over the next 10 years when you look at those budget deficits. But, um, if we don't get the VL and that's at 67% on the outer years, we put budget at zero in here. But when you start looking at, um, And it's really concerning on those outer years if we get no VLF whatsoever. And so we're actively in this lawsuit with the 20 cities and the county against the state of California. And so we're doing everything we can on all fronts to try to preserve what is rightfully owed to us as the city of San Mateo. Okay.

Thank you. And then the last question, just kind of tying into what Council Member Spierko-Guditsky had spoken about with regarding the sponsorships. Can you, a key part of that, pulling those ties together is having a economic development manager in place. And I was wondering if you could give us an update on that.

Yeah, so right now we are going to be looking at restructuring our economic development division and we're looking at adding some full-time staff, you know, additional full-time staff in addition to whether or not is an elevated position of an ED manager or a chief economic development officer. We're looking at all the scenarios in the interim. We have multiple staff members here who are kind of filling in the gaps, but then we're also going to be Contracting with a consultant, Erica Wood, in the meantime to help us over the next few months as we reorganize our overall economic development division and operations so that we can really put San Mateo on the map and try to attract business here and really retain the businesses that we have here as well.

Thank you very much. Those are all my questions, Mr. Mayor.

Of course. Thank you. I think at this time I'm going to have to ask council about potentially extending to 1145.

A second of motion. Second.

Thank you.

City Court? Certainly. Councilmember Spierko-Guditsky? Yes. Councilmember Newsom? Yes. Councilmember Diaz-Nash? Yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez? Yes. Mayor Lorraine?

Yes. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. One question from me, Abby. I saw in the administrative report with some changes to positions and overall staffing, I believe I saw something that indicated a change from sustainability analyst to business manager. And I just wonder if you could explain a little of what that means.

I can go over it. Basically, so the sustainability analyst is being reallocated to a business manager position, and that really is to allow for growth in the position. So the position will still continue doing sustainability. It will have the sustainability program under the umbrella, but it would also do things like it'll have the citywide CIP budget. In fact, we had someone from the city manager's office helping facilitate that process this year and it really helped kind of smooth out the process. So that will be a continuing job. They'll have the customer relationship management program will be part of that person's responsibility. They'll have other citywide projects as well as the budget for the city manager's office. So it will still have the core duties. They'll have some additional duties as well.

Excellent, thank you for that. And Council Member Spierko-Kudyski, did you have something?

Oh, I was actually going to bring up the congregate meals, but since Lisa did, thank you.

Excellent. All right, just checking. Okay, I believe those are the questions and comments we have at this time. So I'd like to thank Abby for her presentation. City Manager, did you have something?

No, we have direction and we'll come back in two weeks with a final adoption of the budget.

VERY GOOD. THANK YOU ALL FOR THIS. WE HAVE ONE MORE ITEM. IT IS ITEM 19. SENATE BILL 707.

THERE WILL BE NO CHEERS.

WE'RE NOT LEAVING UNTIL IT'S OVER. TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTION POLICY AND PUBLIC OUTREACH AND INTERPRETATION POLICY ADOPTION. WITH A PRESENTATION FROM CITY

All righty. Good evening, Mayor Lorraine, members of the City Council. The item before you tonight relates to recent updates to Senate Bill 707, which amended the Ralph M. Brown Act and addressed two key areas, First, how agencies respond to technology disruption during public meetings, and second, how agencies expand public access through outreach and language accessibility. I'll be providing the console and members of the public with a broad overview of some of the provisions contained within the bill. Just to give an overview of the recommended actions from staff tonight is that the council consider and adopt a resolution to approve the city's technology disruption policy. In addition, adopt a separate resolution adopting the city's public outreach and public interpretation assistance practices, and finally receive a presentation on SB 707. Just to give a little bit of background, and I'll try to be brief on this given the hour, Senate Bill 707 was signed into law by the governor on October 3rd, 2025. And its broad intent was to expand pandemic error rules and provide some permanent framework for hybrid meeting and expanding remote access and public participation. I will just note that it is a very complex piece of legislation. My office and the city attorney's office spends a great deal of time reviewing the bill and its various provisions. It's been the subject of various conferences, the California Municipal Clerks Association, the League of California Cities as well spend a great deal of time analyzing the bill and its applicability to those agencies. The city of San Mateo meets the population threshold to be considered. applicable to SB 707's requirements. And there are two key implementation dates that are referred to within the bill. And I'll just briefly go over some of the requirements and our status on those. Starting with provisions that were effective January 1st of this year, there was a requirement within the bill that the copies of the Braun Act as well as median locations be distributed to our public officials. That has already been completed. City Clerk's Office staff have completed that step. With regards to the next provision, verbal report on department head compensation and executive compensation, this is just a simple change in practices as it relates to future adjustments. Staff have noted this for all moving forward. Such actions will be discussed in the requirements as set out within the bill. This slide also just covers briefly the requirements under SB 707 as it relates to ADA accommodations. So this is a new portion of the bill which addresses the requirement for the legislative body to accommodate requests for individuals with disabilities, that the individual not be required to publicly notice their address on the location. So this is something that we're where we're positive about and it feels like it's a it's a constructive addition to the Bryan Act. Real briefly, the social media communications by legislative body, this is the requirement that council members and other legislative members are required to limit discussion on social media as it relates to matters coming before the body's jurisdiction. This portion of the bill just removed the sunset provision on that requirement, so this is a permanent fixture of the Braun Act NOG. Another provision of the bill was an expansion of just cause, and this was under a previous piece of legislation, AB 2449, which expanded eligibility to contain caregiving, contagious illnesses, and travel. The revisions now increase that to five usages per calendar year, and there's no location requirement as it relates to the noticing of the meeting. There are a couple of key requirements here just to note that a quorum of the legislative body must still be at the physical location. Audio and video are required to utilize just cause provisions. The meeting minutes must also reflect the nature of that member's participation in the meeting and the public must also be provided an opportunity to participate remotely. SB 707 introduced a new form of dealing with remote participation. And at this time, this is not something city staff is recommending that we currently utilize, just because it's quite a convoluted element of the bill. And we feel our current approach to providing for hybrid meetings a lot offers the necessary flexibility. This provision is limited to very specific forms of legislative bodies, and it's targeted at those that can't take action on legislative items, entitlements, grants, et cetera. So they are bodies that are purely advisory in that capacity. If we were to move forward with utilizing this provision of the Brown Act, again, it's optional. The consulate would be required to authorize the eligible subsidiary body to meet remotely by making findings, and that needs to be reviewed every six months. And there is a requirement for a physical meeting location in order to preserve public access. Moving on, this is the provisions under SB 707 that are effective July 1st, just to give the council an update on where we're at on that. The requirements are that the mandatory remote public attendance, now this applies specifically to city council meetings, and this is something that the city of San Mateo has a long HISTORY OF DOING SINCE THE COVID ERA WHERE WE'VE INTRODUCED HYBRID MEETING SERVICES FOR OUR CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS. I DID WANT TO JUST NOTE THAT THIS WILL INDICATE SOME FUTURE ADJUSTMENTS FOR FUTURE CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS BEYOND JULY 1ST WHERE MEETINGS WHERE WE HAVE HELD WORKSHOP ENVIRONMENTS, THINGS LIKE OUR BLUE SKY STATE OF THE CITY AND OTHER CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS WILL REQUIRE MANDATORY REMOTE PUBLIC ATTENDANCE UNLIKE IN PRIOR YEARS SO THAT IS THAT IS A CHANGE WITH REGARDS TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR REMOTE PUBLIC COMMENT THIS REPRESENTS NO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE TO THE CITY'S CURRENT PRACTICES WE AFFORD EQUAL SPEAKING TIME TO BOTH IN PERSON AND VIRTUAL SPEAKERS THIS IS JUST A PROVISION OF THE THE BRYAN ACT THAT WANTED TO ENSURE THAT equal opportunity has been given to both in-person and hybrid members of the public. Again, another requirement under SB 707 is the public meeting information should be readily available on the website. We're already meeting that requirement. The city has a thorough agenda management system and notification alert system through our website, which and we also have a list of all of our scheduled public meetings for the year listed on our public portal. So we're in very good shape as it relates to that requirement. Public location for agenda translation by community. This is a A requirement that the city must make available to the public a bulletin board that's available exclusively for the purposes of allowing community members to translate copies of our agenda. The city's in the process of procuring that and will be installed in advance of the July 1st deadline. And then just moving forward, as was mentioned, one of the key actions that's required for the council under SB 707 is to adopt a policy that addresses disruption of telephonic or internet services during a public meeting. The bill specified that this policy could not be adopted on the consent calendar. It requires a discussion. And then just to briefly cover what the policy includes, if a disruption does occur, the City Council must recess for at least one hour to attempt to address the issue or until the issue has been resolved, whichever comes sooner. The City Council can meet in closed session during this time if there are such items to be considered. And after one hour, the Council must adjourn the meeting or make findings by roll call vote to either continue the meeting noting that good faith efforts have been attempted to resolve the issue and that the public interest is better served by continuing with the item. And the proposed policy included with the city council's packet for this meeting addresses all those requirements. Just as it relates to language access, SB 707 also stipulates that the legislative body must make reasonable assistance available to members who wish to utilize interpretation services. We have a practice of doing this already within the city. We have vendors who provide that support. We also have practices in place for individuals who are not speaking English but another language INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF SPEAKING TIME AVAILABLE TO AFFORD FOR THAT SCENARIO. SB 707 ALSO REQUIRES THE TRANSLATION OF MEETING AGENDAS, SPECIFIC CITY CONSUL MEETING AGENDAS FOR WHAT'S KNOWN AS APPLICABLE LANGUAGES UNDER THE BILL. WE ANALYZE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY DATA TO MAKE THAT DETERMINATION AND THE CITY OF SAN falls above the threshold for Spanish. So beginning July 1st, we will begin to translate our city council meeting agendas into Spanish. Just a brief note, the SB 707 also stipulates that the city council must make reasonable efforts to outreach to historically underrepresented and non-English speaking communities. What's before the council tonight is a policy, a resolution which stipulates that the city clerk's office will maintain and develop a community outreach distribution list. The agendas will be shared with those organizations and community groups. We'll have ongoing coordination with the city manager's office and communications team to make sure that that list has been growing, has expanded, and continues to meet that need. The public will be able to subscribe to that list. And as I mentioned earlier, the resolution is contained within the packet for council's consideration. And that, I'll just leave the council with my final slide here, which is the action recommended. The council is to adopt policy to approve the city's technology disruption policy, adopt a resolution approving the city's public outreach and public interpretation assistance practices, and also to receive a presentation on Senate Bill 707. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you for that presentation. I would like to open public comment for the presentation item. Just in case.

Could be. Mayor Lorraine, there are no requests to speak on this item.

Okay, I'll close public comment and bring it up to the desk. Deputy Mayor.

I'd like to move acceptance of this amazing report.

I have two questions, Mr. Mayor. Sorry. Okay.

Yes, of course. Council Member Newsom.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Nicole. Okay. Actually, it's three questions. Some of our JPAs, some of our boards and commissions don't really have a need to meet in person. So are we going to, as a city, look at them and say, for example, the personnel board could always be a hybrid? And are we going to do that on a commission and a board-by-board basis?

So... The current approach that we have for the city's advisory bodies is somewhat flexible. There's really three approaches that we have. So the full service option is essentially what we're having right now, which is the city council meetings, which are facilitated by both hybrid and a MCTV is our public meeting service where we have live switching, we have some additional services. So that's made available to Planning and our Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission. The other option that we have is more of an as needed basis. So our Civic Arts Commission, the Community Relations Commission, the THE LIBRARY BOARD AND PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION CURRENTLY OPERATE ON A HYBRID OPTION ONLY. SO THAT'S NO MCTV PRODUCTION. AND IT'S A MORE COST EFFECTIVE OPTION FOR PROVIDING HYBRID MEETING AVAILABILITY FOR PUBLIC COMMENT. AND AS I MENTIONED, SOME OF THAT IS ON AN AS NEEDED BASIS. AND AS WAS MENTIONED, PERSONNEL BOARD, MEASURE S, AND SENIOR ADVISORY COMMISSION, THOSE THREE ARE CURRENTLY OPERATING ON AN IN-PERSON ONLY BASIS. um but our current direction from consular current policy has been directed based on need so if there's a need for hybrid option if there's a need for us to change our practices we can do so at any time but if the consul wishes to give further direction on that we would be happy to move forward thank you um when it comes to council technology disruptions um question for the city attorney can we actually meet in a closed session if it hasn't been agendized

So I think those are two different issues. So a closed session has to be agendized in order for the council to meet. It's just not a public meeting. But whereas for a technology disruption, oh, I think I understand your question. So you're referring to situations where if there's a disruption in technology, the broadcasting of a meeting, could you still mean a closed session? I mean, I think the key aspect of that is it's really like the public comment portion of that meeting. Of course, it's not broadcasting the closed session. So I think if there were a situation where we were unable to broadcast the meeting, At the time when public comment was sought, I think we would probably need to pause and then wait for that disruption to be addressed. But if there's a disruption during a closed session, which is not broadcast, that's not an issue. Okay, thank you.

And my last question is, what percentage of the population triggers additional need for language translation? So I... I know that we have enough of a Spanish-speaking population that we need to have it in both languages. At what point do we need to have that for Mandarin or Tagalog or other languages?

Sure. So Senate Bill 707 requires the threshold is 20% of the population. So Spanish, I believe, is 20.5 or 21%. OF THE APPLICABLE POPULATION. I BELIEVE THE NEXT HIGHEST WAS I BELIEVE THE NEXT HIGHEST WAS MANDARIN AND THAT WAS IN AND MANDARIN AND THAT WAS IN AND AROUND 9 TO 10%. AROUND 9 TO 10%. BUT IT'S SOMETHING THAT CITY BUT IT'S SOMETHING THAT CITY CLERK'S OFFICE STAFF WILL BE CLERK'S OFFICE STAFF WILL BE REVIEWING ON AN ONGOING BASIS REVIEWING ON AN ONGOING BASIS PER THE AVAILABILITY OF PER THE AVAILABILITY OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY DATA. AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY DATA. ONCE THAT CHANGES WE'LL COME ONCE THAT CHANGES WE'LL COME BACK TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND BACK TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND PROVIDE AN UPDATE IF WE REACH

Of course, yes, Council Member Mr. Bogdanski.

Yes, I will be quick. I would like us to consider having the Senior Advisory Commission meet in chambers, but offer a hybrid participation through Zoom without MCTV production services, which would be cost efficient. But also, my perspective on this is the Senior Advisory Commission They represent the largest and fastest growing demographic in the city. They also, there are members of that commission that do need ADA support. And the chamber is the only place that actually offers that compliance and hearing availability. And I do think that's something that our residents would be interested in. And they would probably engage and watch more if they didn't have to go in person and actually have an opportunity to watch it. So I wanted to see if there's support for that.

I am supportive of this.

I would agree. Sure. Yeah, me too.

We have direction, thank you.

Nicole? I'd like to move adoption of this report, please.

If I can interject so there are 2 resolutions that the city clerk is asking that Council to adopt so you could move the staff recommendation which would be to adopt those resolutions.

I move everything persona just said I second.

Thank you. It looks like we have a motion and a second. City Court, could you please call the roll?

Certainly. Deputy Mayor Fernandez? Yes. Council Member Spierko-Gaditsky?

Yes.

Council Member Newsom? Yes. Council Member Diaz-Nash? Yes. And Mayor Lorraine? Yes. Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you, and thank you for your presentation. Okay. We have now... Reached reports and announcements and committee updates. Does anyone have anything they'd like to share? Deputy Mayor Fernandez.

I just want to give amazing credit to our city clerk's office and Parks and Rec's office for our first annual Memorial Day event a few weeks ago. and police and fire for our first annual event at Central Park near our Fallen Heroes Memorial. It was really fantastic just to see how many people came out on a Monday morning and great to build community around our 101st Airborne. So thank you to everybody who was involved in that. That was amazing. I also just wanted to follow up on some of the public comment that we had this morning, or this morning, it's not this evening, sorry, it has not been here, we have not been here since this morning, around the working group for Horizons. I was wondering if we could, Is there any sort of official action we can take on that? And I'd like to see it maybe after the application came in. Is there any sort of...

So it's not a city project, first and foremost. And the city is the regulator if they go ahead and move forward with a project here in the city of San Mateo, albeit limited regulatory oversight because they would be using a state law that really limits the city's regulatory oversight on the project. It's the council's direction if you wanted to have another kind of like what we did with Hillsdale, a study session. At some point, once we received the application, once staff kind of absorbs the information and then bring that back out, if you wanted to have more engagement, that could be something. But we'd look for council direction on that if that's what you wanted to do.

Yeah, I'd look to my colleagues on that.

I see the city attorney.

I just wanted to add that, I mean, of course, as you know, there was a council meeting on this topic, but also under AB 531, this particular proposal, once it's submitted, it could only be considered ministerially by the city. There's no discretion once all of the statutory requirements are fulfilled.

Understood. That said, I think the request has more to do with simple awareness building information for the public about the project and what it's offering, right?

Yeah, I'm just trying to make sure that we hit all parts of the community when we're doing the community engagement. And I just if we can help facilitate that. And I again, I'm not sure what our role would be. But if we can help facilitate in some way, that'd be great. And

Yes, councilmember DS Nash.

Thank you very much. I guess my question is what would Come out of that session that didn't come out when we had that initial Meeting when horizon came and answered community questions so my understanding is that perhaps some parts of the community feel like they aren't engaged and

In what is taking in the discussions that are already taking place? So I actually don't know what the outcomes would be and again, that's a valid question I'm just trying to bring forth. Sure This is a big project happening in our town I'm just trying to make sure that we have as much cross-sectional engagement on this topic as possible and if there are community if there's any leadership coming on this topic from outside the city administration, I'm just not sure how inclusive all the voices are around the table, and so I just want to make sure that we're being as inclusive as we can.

Okay, I guess what I'd say to that is that When we did what I suggested that there should be a community group you did I did not suggest that the city should get involved in it because it was not our project and it continues not to be our pressure as So I guess I I would just have questions about What our role would be because where we would be managing a project that wasn't our project so I'm I just have questions as to how that would all work. I

Yeah, I'll be really honest with you. I haven't really fleshed it out. I'm just trying to pick up from what came up this morning. We didn't meet this morning.

We met this evening. And maybe could I suggest, excuse me, I should, to the mayor. I'm good. It was really a question to the mayor if I could make a suggestion that we don't know what's going to happen with the project. It may come to us. It may not come to us. Who knows? And maybe what we should do is wait for that to be answered and then if it's answered and it it stays in san mateo then and it comes to us then we can have that discussion again sure thoughts from anyone else on this

Yeah, I think part of the reason this has come up is there are members of the community that have asked to be included in those public sessions. And then because they're being run by residents, they're not being included because certain residents feel like the other person has certain ideological interests. And that's not okay. Like everybody needs to have a seat at the table, whether you agree or not.

So, so I, you know, from that meeting, if I recall what the council's direction was, I thought the expectation was, is for horizon to go ahead and facilitate, not the resident, not the residents, right. It's their project, them in the County, actually for them to facilitate community engagement. It's kind of like how we're going to go and do eight different town halls. Right. So, you know, typically, like any of our other development applicants, they would go ahead and engage the community. That's one of the things under state law that they have to do. And so, you know, similarly, this is another development project, right, overall. And so they should be having a community meeting if that's the direction that this council gave it. I mean, that's what I thought I heard from this council. The expectation would be for Horizon and the county to facilitate that. you know, engaging with the neighborhood and the community doesn't have to be whatever, you know, people should not be getting forced out of, you know, into the discussion overall. That's not how we, you know, our expectation overall would be is when we engage, but that's the council's prerogative, however you guys want to do it. But I would think that it'd be horizon and the County who should be facilitating, um, a community meeting allowing everyone there.

Councilmember Deason? I agree with what the city manager says. The only suggestion I might have is if Horizon is facilitating these public meetings and they would like to share that information with us, we could continue to share that to the public through our known networks because we maybe have a little more reach than they do.

Indeed, I feel we are, in fact, doing that, at least with regard to their open hours sessions. Yep.

So because I just had the city attorney in my ear saying I need to wrap this thing up just from a Brown Act consideration. Just I think if you want, you guys can give me direction. I can go talk to Horizon to see what you know, how they're approaching this overall, because my understanding is from the expectation was that it would be open to everybody, any type of community engagement. WOULD THAT WORK TO TALK TO THEM A LITTLE BIT MORE? WOULD THAT WORK TO TALK TO THEM A LITTLE BIT MORE? AND THEN I CAN GIVE YOU GUYS AND THEN I CAN GIVE YOU GUYS AN UPDATE AND A WEEKLY UPDATE AN UPDATE AND A WEEKLY UPDATE FROM THERE AND THEN IF YOU GUYS FROM THERE AND THEN IF YOU GUYS STILL WANT WE CAN BRING IT UP STILL WANT WE CAN BRING IT UP AGAIN. AGAIN. OKAY. OKAY. I'LL DO THAT THIS WEEK THEN IF I'LL DO THAT THIS WEEK THEN IF THAT'S OKAY.

THAT'S OKAY. I WOULD LIKE TO I AM I AM I WOULD LIKE TO I AM I AM COMFORTABLE WITH THAT AND I WOULD COMFORTABLE WITH THAT AND I WOULD JUST LIKE TO FURTHER PROPOSE that if the Horizon project does come back to San Mateo, that I would like to ask if there's interest in going ahead tonight and asking for another public meeting similar to the one we had. My reasoning for that would be that as we, I think during that meeting, which I thought was productive and useful for the community and for myself and others, There were some, you know, some had questions that couldn't be completely answered because the project had not been submitted. And, you know, for staff, for city staff to weigh in on the details of possible impacts of the project to the city, they would need that step to be taken. And so I think the there might be some new content to be offered. Anyone else interested in that?

I agree. I'm in.

And I would agree as well, if it comes back, yes.

Okay.

I have direction.

I'm done with my remarks, Mr. Mayor, thank you.

Thank you very much. Does anyone else have reports, announcements, or committee updates? Council Member Diaz-Nage.

Oh, excuse me. So here's something I've been sort of thinking about all night long, and I would love to get my fellow council members' thoughts about this. We spent all night long in one way or another talking about all the exciting growth that is coming to San Mateo and that it will make us a much more vibrant city. We also have been talking about the fact in transportation in particular, but other areas, that there's going to be a real impact along the way. And I'm sure all of us have heard from...

IT'S 1150. SO CAN WE EXTEND THE MEETING BY TEN MINUTES? SURE.

I MOTION. YES. OKAY. THAT'S FINE. YEAH. WHY DON'T WE GO TO 1159. PLEASE. YES. VERY GOOD. DO WE HAVE, ALL RIGHT. I WILL SECOND. I MOTION. ALL RIGHT.

COUNCIL MEMBERS, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, DEPUTY MAYOR FERNANDEZ, planning for construction management. So what I'm feeling is that there's a lot of working going on in the city. There are a lot of questions from the residents. And I would like to propose that we form a subcommittee to be called whatever the appropriate name is, Neighbors Quality of Life, or I'm open to names, but just to say we want to help the city facilitate bringing together all the information, not creating more work, but all the information that exists, whether it's creating a portal or holding meetings, so that residents know, how do I deal with the fact that Safeway is going to be redeveloped, and there are going to be transportation impacts, there will be housing impacts, there will be construction impacts, traffic impacts. Where do I go? How do I get the information? And I would love a subcommittee of the council to really talk about what would be the best thing for our residents. And it's businesses as well, but I think it would be worthwhile.

Deputy Mayor?

So this is a quality of life subcommittee?

We could call it whatever. It's taking all the information because when we heard the transportation presentation, it was all about we're doing all this planning and all this engineering, but it wasn't when residents say, what's going to be the impact of three buildings going up within two blocks where I live? Where do I go for information? What do I do? It's... There's a lot of information that the city has, but it's in disparate places. And I would like to have a subcommittee talk about how do we bring that information together in a way that helps our residents understand and minimizes the negative impact, because there will be negative impacts when there's all this development. And that could turn into a recommendation for how we present the information the city's already doing. I just had the feeling that each one of us is doing that kind of mitigation work on our own, and I think we'd be more effective if we had a concerted effort, and hopefully would be helpful to the city as well, so that they could focus on, we do the construction management, we know how to do that, we're hearing from our constituents, here are the questions that I've got, that we can be a better vessel if we have a concerted recommendation as to how to do that. CITY MANAGER?

SO FIRST AND FOREMOST I SO FIRST AND FOREMOST I PROBABLY WOULD SAY MY PROBABLY WOULD SAY MY RECOMMENDATION WAS NOT A RECOMMENDATION WAS NOT A SUBCOMMITTEE, AN AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE, AN AD HOC COMMITTEE THAT IS LIMITED TERM COMMITTEE THAT IS LIMITED TERM FOR A SPECIFIC FUNCTION AND FOR A SPECIFIC FUNCTION AND THEN IT CAN BE DISBANDED ONCE THEN IT CAN BE DISBANDED ONCE IT'S DONE. IT'S DONE. STAFF IS AGGRESSIVELY WORKING ON STAFF IS AGGRESSIVELY WORKING ON CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT PROGRAM. CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT PROGRAM. YOU SAW THAT IN ONE OF THE YOU SAW THAT IN ONE OF THE SLID but that's also happening in our community development department as well and we're going to get our first dose of this uh in the downtown with a number of the projects that are going to be going up hopefully in the next year or so um i have to see if there's council direction i you know if you want to have you know a limited term committee to talk about because we are already on this path of you know looking at construction management if i'm looking for direction yep

I APPRECIATE THAT ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM WITH DOING AN AD HOC I APPRECIATE THAT ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM WITH DOING AN AD HOC COMMITTEE. COMMITTEE. MY TERMINOLOGY. MY TERMINOLOGY. BUT I JUST THINK THAT WE CAN BUT I JUST THINK THAT WE CAN BRING WHAT WE'RE HEARING FROM BRING WHAT WE'RE HEARING FROM CONSTITUENTS TO THAT CONSTITUENTS TO THAT DISCUSSION. DISCUSSION. SO THAT WOULD BE MY SO THAT WOULD BE MY RECOMMENDATION.

RECOMMENDATION. ANY THOUGHTS? ANY THOUGHTS?

I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING. PARTICIPATING. OBVIOUSLY WE DON'T HAVE TO DECIDE OBVIOUSLY WE DON'T HAVE TO DECIDE RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW.

I'm fine with Lisa and Rob starting a committee and let us know how it goes.

I see a majority giving direction of having an ad hoc committee on the construction management in the near term, short term, limited term committee.

Right.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Newsom.

Well, It was a great PAL event, so I want to thank the PAL and the chief who's sitting back there reading his phone. Thanks, chief. Woo-hoo. Tenth event, so congratulations on a successful event. I want to encourage everybody to get out and vote if they haven't already. Tomorrow is election day. YOU CAN VOTE RIGHT HERE AT CITY HALL OR AT OUR LIBRARY OR AT CITY HALL OR AT OUR LIBRARY OR AT OUR WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLANT. OUR WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLANT. ALL OVER. ALL OVER. LOOK IT UP. LOOK IT UP. AND THEN, MR. MAYOR, WHEN YOU'RE AND THEN, MR. MAYOR, WHEN YOU'RE READY, I HAD SOMETHING THAT I WANTED READY, I HAD SOMETHING THAT I WANTED TO SEE IF WE COULD CLOSE ON.

TO SEE IF WE COULD CLOSE ON. JUST LOOKING TO SEE IF ANYONE JUST LOOKING TO SEE IF ANYONE ELSE HAD ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY. ELSE HAD ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY. I WOULD SAY PLEASE GO AHEAD.

I WOULD SAY PLEASE GO AHEAD. OKAY. So in the early hours of this past Saturday morning, four Hillsdale seniors who had just graduated on Thursday night were in a horrible car crash in San Francisco. Initially, the one young man who died had his name released, but in looking at it, it appears it's been redacted as they've learned since that he was just 17 years old. So the second man was also critically injured as of yesterday. I'd like to ask that we observe a moment of silence for the young Hillsdale student who's passed and that we also send warm thoughts to the second young man who's still fighting for his life.

thank you mr mayor thank you very much and uh with that this meeting is adjourned