City Council and Authorities Concurrent - Regular Meeting

Could I ask the council members to please take their seat? Alright. We have four. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Confirmation of a quorum, assistant city clerk.

Thank you, madam mayor. Yes. Confirming quorum.

Thank you very much. We have a study session item this evening. It's a review of the proposed fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty seven, and fiscal year twenty seven twenty eight biennial capital improvement pro program budget and fiscal year twenty six twenty seven operating budget amendments. City manager.

Sure. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, members of council. Jevon Grogan, city manager. As the item dictates, this is the first presentation of the proposed budget.

As a result of the city's prudent fiscal management and strong revenue growth, the proposed budget accomplishes a number of specific objectives that align with your council priorities. These include notably, one, no reduction in city programs or services, resolving our general fund structural deficit, allocating $2,000,000 for council priority initiatives, funding ongoing capital replacement and maintenance, to the tune of $12,900,000 for new projects. Also, it it establishes a new infrastructure replacement reserve policy to set aside 3% of general fund expenditures for annual capital projects. That is a total of $10,400,000. Additionally, it funds administrative and project staff to support the implementation of phase one for the Measure I capital bond capital projects and restores the number of frozen positions and proposes adding positions across the organization to address organizational needs and performance expectations.

Also important to note that there remain long term fiscal challenges and risk. Our ten year forecast does not fully address all of our this all of our infrastructure needs nor does it fully accommodate all of the additional services for projected growth of the city. There are additional fiscal risks that remain, the risk of an economic downturn and fiscal uncertainty, as well as risk regarding future tariffs or other federal actions. With that, we have a comprehensive presentation to you tonight that will be presented by finance director Ken Lee. As in prior years, we will take questions on the presentation, respond to as many questions as we can this evening, but come back to you at the next study session for the budget with responses to those questions.

With that, I'll turn the presentation over to director Lee.

Thank you. Welcome, director Lee.

Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor, city council. Ken Lee, director of finance. Appreciate the opportunity to engage with you as council members and the public on, such an important, topic as our city budget. The agenda for tonight, I'll talk a little bit about our process.

I go through the highlights. I know our city manager talked about some of those in the introductions, but I I do wanna highlight that, you know, this is mostly a positive budget, but as your finance director, always with some caution as there are uncertainties our economy as as you may hear throughout the headlines on a daily basis. I wanna provide an update to our ten year financial general fund forecast, and then I'll get into a lot of the details, some of the very specific line items that this capital budget focuses on, and and you'll see that, a lot of those projects are are, projects that are required by our city departments to maintain our facilities, not a lot of, I guess, I call them lights and glamour, but but a lot of what's needed to keep our city operating from a from a capital perspective. There are adjustments to our operating budget. As you know, we are in a biennial kind of budgeting process.

There is a two year adopted budget, but in any given year at this point in time, we do bring forward budget amendments, as part of this process to update the the next fiscal year. And then, as the city manager mentioned, you know, an opportunity for you to give feedback on the budget itself, for our public to give feedback. We do have representatives from many of our city departments here, that would assist with those responses. As far as the calendar, you know, sometimes I'm asked, you know, you know, a budget. Oh, that's a one month or two week process.

But really for our, city staff working very closely with our departments, It's it's almost a six month to a one year process, and and it's almost like we're budgeting all the time throughout the year without a break. Wanna acknowledge just, the work of our budget division to my right, Margaret Tess, Libby, and Maxine, who put in countless hours, nights, weekends to get this 700 page document before you, hitting those dates there. And so as as you see highlighted there, this is the first of of three check ins with you and and an opportunity for the public and and you as a council to provide endpoint input with the goal on June 9 to bring forward an adopted budget that incorporates some of the revisions from the feedback that we hear from from you tonight and and over the next couple of sessions. By way of overview, just to, you know, show those at home, just the highlight of our two year budgeting process. So, you know, we're focused here, for a June, approval of a a two year capital budget.

We're amending our second year of the operating budget that does require five votes based on our charter. And then, throughout the year, we're always tracking and reconciling our current year budget. I'm before you with monthly financial reports to report out on current year performance. But in in the scheme of our budget calendars, that's where we're at. By way of themes for our proposed budget, as as the city manager highlighted, you know, there's a lot of positive news within this budget.

So I wanna talk about those within these four boxes, on this slide. The first box in the upper left, measure I geo bond implementation. We all know that our our, city voters, passed a a bond to improve our city infrastructure. We've been before the council with, the first tranche of that 100,000,000 out of that $400,000,000 bond program. This budget continues that program.

It includes carry of carryover, dollars, from that first tranche. It includes dedicated staff to continue the implementation, including, some key engineering positions in our public works departments. And then, also, we'll contemplate over the course of the five years while not detailed specifically in projects, the continuation of tranche two and tranche three for for a geo bond. In the upper right, box here, capital project delivery, there are significant dollars that I highlight, from a general fund perspective, albeit, normally at a modest level given our our, tight general fund, but it also includes significant funding for utility infrastructure, electric, water, sewer department. Very critical for a city our size to continue operating, those, utility pieces of infrastructure.

We'll talk, in detail about the investments in there. Dedicated funds for transportation projects, mostly through a restricted, measure b, SB one, and gas tax funding. So largely dedicated funds allocated through our public works department through grants to fund improvements in our transportation right away to ensure safety of pedestrians. And then the capital project reserve, that's an allocation that by practice in our general fund, we've allocated to a handful of projects that this budget continues that practice, and and I'll talk about those individual line items. In the bottom right, the focus around fiscal sustainability and planning for the future.

We've heard feedback in multiple prior year budgets where we've had challenges around our structural deficit, our forecast, and through the update of our forecast, happy to report a a generally solved structural deficit well. It looks balanced. There are other needs out there that we know that are not funded mainly around capital infrastructure, and we'll take more work and more time and effort to to fully fund those. The idea of a sinking fund, a capital fund that will allow us to set aside dollars annually as a percentage of our budget to ensure that in the future, there's a a fund or a pot to draw from from to ensure that our capital projects are are maintained once that bond program is complete. The significant improvements to our capital budget, a sinking fund to make sure that we have dollars in the future.

And then around some of the staffing, you know, in our difficult COVID years, there were some frozen positions. So this budget allocates the funds necessary to unfreeze those positions. It includes the remaining police department positions that were frozen, and so I'll talk about that as as part of this budget. And then on the bottom left corner here, city services and organizational effectiveness or or council priorities. I know there's a plan council priority session later this month and into the next couple months.

$2,000,000 set aside in this budget that acknowledges there are needs that will come out of that priority setting process when I allocate funds that are available for it. And then this budget includes a number of operating budget adjustments around service delivery. We hear from our departments. We've consulted with various consultants on our organizational review and in some key areas are recommending a number of staff, and or reclassification of positions to, reflect a more modern approach in those specific departments, and I'll talk about those, adjustments in this presentation. Within the capital budget itself, over a two year focus, almost $600,000,000 of of capital funding over a five year plan, 1,100,000,000, so significant investment in our public infrastructure.

This shows significant improvements since the last CIP includes Measure I projects, and so this is a part of that first tranche here, $63,000,000 in in the CIP. There are some dollars allocated to this current year, so that that would total the $100,000,000. Our utilities, so 84% of our CIP is is focused around our utility services and infrastructure. Projects with dedicated funding, transportation our that I talked about earlier that and that, new sinking fund, that infrastructure replacement capital fund. So these are highlights of our capital budget.

And then, I will talk in detail more about, the last two bullets here, measure I and the capital project reserves in the next few slides. Around our operating budget, our budget includes updates to all of our budgetary source and use statements, updates to revenue estimates, revisions based on council approved MOUs with our labor and bargaining groups, revisions to budgeted positions. I know in any given Tuesday, are actions that amend kind of the operating budget and the needs. And so the general fund outlook is has improved, and I'll talk about where specifics to specific revenue line items. The budget includes funding for council priorities, restoration of frozen positions, and dollars across the organization.

Specific to the dollars, on an overall fund accounting, type perspective perspective here, wanted to provide a snapshot of our budget and the change from our current 2526 adopted budget of of close to $2,000,000,000 and our proposed budget here of 1,700,000,000. Wanna highlight a couple key areas where where there are changes in the general fund here, growth in the budget size of roughly 10% or so, and I'll talk about how that occurred with additional revenues and where those dollars are allocated. Enterprise funds represent over $1,200,000,000 here. The large part of that is our Silicon Valley Power electric utility, and we'll talk about those very significant projects in that capital area. Internal service funds, debt funds, and so wanna highlight the changes here.

The the larger number in our current adopted budget largely reflects SVP projects funded through a debt, and so an item separate item might that will be before the council later this fiscal year will appropriate and and recognize some of the debt funds required for expansion projects. And then around capital funds, typically, by the June 9 council meeting, we will include a recommendation working with all our capital program areas around carryover project funds at at any given point in time as that work continues on at the end of the fiscal year that those projects don't end. We're required to kinda continue those projects and and typically in the 2 to $300,000,000 range on an annual basis. Also within the budget, every year, the finance department brings forward the council approved budget policies and principles and wanna highlight a a couple key areas around budget policies here. Working with our city attorney's office on our charter review and and amendments, some changes to the fiscal and budget policies to align with our current practice on our two year budgeting process, include elements of that infrastructure capital replacement fund that I talked about as a percentage of the budget.

And then budget principles changes based on a a change of our fiscal outlook from a budget where we were looking at deficits and cuts to one that's largely balanced and so some of the language around the principles to reflect that new economic condition. With regards to our ten year forecast, over this next section, I wanna provide, to the city council and to the public, where we are sitting, at this point in time. And wanna caution, you know, a ten year forecast isn't, a finance crystal ball. You know, we don't have a secret magic sauce to what economies the economy is gonna look like in ten years, but it's a planning tool for us as a city to be disciplined around council priorities with the best information we have at the time. And so, across, our practice, we work with our UCLA Anderson, forecast.

That's a national forecast that provides trends around our national economy. The chart here shows economy that was projected in March to grow around a 3% clip. That was a large consensus with most economists. Conditions have changed even since March a couple months ago here with Middle East conflicts with regards to gas prices inflation. You've maybe hearing about adjustments to the interest rates, you know, where we were in a down downward trend for interest rates, largely flat and even talking about a potential increase.

And so, some very, significant changes in a short amount of time, so we'll continue to monitor that. And and that provides caution while we are in a stable economic outlook that could change or the consumers' confidence in terms of spending can impact spending within the valley within our city and so something for us to track on a regular basis. And then within our city, a strong sales tax growth. I'll show the numbers on on in a couple slides with, you know, growth around our AI technology corporations in our community, we've been an outlier with regards to sales tax performance, compared to our neighboring, cities. And so our our forecast reflects that growth, and, improvement.

With regards to other tax areas, property tax, TOT, our transient occupancy tax with hotels, with our Super Bowl and large events and strong performance included. And then as our, SVP utility grows, there's that ballot approved 5% tax that's applied and and includes support for our general city budget. When you look at the numbers across that ten year, on this slide shows a largely balanced, budget over the ten year cycle. It does show two years of negatives in years three and four when you compare this outlook compared to the forecast last year that those negative numbers were in years two through six, so this does reflect improvements. And then in the out years, are some capacity as as our retirement costs are are projected to slow as far as those gross and and it produces some capacity.

And so I wanna mention here in the box that this stronger position does include funding for new that sinking fund for capital replacement restores frozen positions, adds to our pension trust typically in December at the end of the year. We we recommend those dollars. We've built that into this forecast and then assumes the continuation of our geo bond implementation as as part of the forecast. The caveat slides, so just just wanna touch on, we do still have a a large number of unfunded infrastructure needs within our city, so this forecast does not include, that assumption. Does not keep pace with the growth of our city.

So as our city grows and our service are are are needed in our city departments to keep up with the pace of the growth of of our city population and economic activity, we'll have to find additional capacity in the forecast to fund those augmentations that would be required. To the extent there are new services and or funding for pilot programs, know out of the council priority sessions, oftentimes given direction for staff to explore new areas of service, and so those that's not reflected here from an ongoing basis. So the forecast to forecast change from from a year ago, we had a mostly balanced budget in April 2025. We are recognizing about 35,000,000 or so in additional sources reflected on this chart in that second box. Fund balance of 14,000,000 reflecting that at the end of any given year, typically, I report to you additional dollars around vacancies, around revenue performance.

And so we are recognizing that and acknowledging that and tightening the budget and and allocating that out as part of our our annual budget process at the to the tune of $14,000,000. Sales tax growth here from forecast to forecast, $8,000,000 or SVP transfer, 3,800,000. And then some of the other line items there, interest in TOT and property tax, significant improvements from a a year over year basis. So overall, revenue performance. On the expense side, with the, approved MOUs, there's an added cost to salaries and benefits, $3,800,000.

It also includes updates to our health and, retirement, contributions as a CalPERS agency we're required to make. Non personnel adjustments of $2,000,000, interfund services which includes our insurances, our risk, our gas and fleet maintenance as well as technology, And then dollars set aside for capital replacements, that sinking fund to to set aside from an ongoing perspective for our future improvements, and then allocations to to reserves. On the source side, I talked about the revenue growth in different areas, just a different slice of the pie. 60% of our general fund revenues are allocated to three revenue sources here, property tax, sales tax, our SVP transfer. When you include the fourth largest, our hotel tax, there is it's well over two thirds of our budget.

And and so, you know, we get a lot of revenue from some very key revenue sources, these four four revenue sources. Drilling in here, sometimes people like to review the trend analysis analysis of our key revenue performance in the general fund. This is a ten year kinda outlook plus eleventh year of our proposed budget. You can see property tax has been strong over that duration. We're almost doubling over ten years here, largely largely reflective of our the high property tax values of our city as well as the development that's occurred, mixed use, data centers, industrial.

Sales tax performance, which was largely flat, for seven or eight years through that period, reflecting, you know, an a more, transition to more of an online purchase, environment. And so with a larger business to business growth, especially over the last two years, it has improved that revenue source here, of $76,000,000 total for for next fiscal year. TOT, the, you know, highly sensitive, with our economy in the COVID years there, a low of $2,900,000, a tenfold increase since the bottom of that, COVID pandemic shortfall. And and so, a projection here of over $30,000,000 now Included in that amount was the rate change approved by our voters of of, from a nine and a half to a 13 and a half percent TOT rate. So that is built in there, but strong revenue performance from our hotels.

Business tax, this was also one that was affirmed by our city voters allocation here, roughly $6,000,000. That was the projection in the ballot. We are receiving that, and so a a good clip from what was there historically. And then our SVPP transfer as as those that enterprise grows or it says through that 5% tax to our general fund. On the expense side, we are a service oriented agency, so our staff are are the frontline when it comes to our public safety, our parks, our libraries, our internal service departments.

70% of our budget is allocated to salaries and benefits reflected on this slide. When you look at a department by department, expense level, it shows the variety of, expenditures here. Over 50% of that is in public safety, so the focus of our budget is around the safety of our community. When you include, some of the event costs which are allocated in that non departmental level, that 51% allocation, jumps to about 53%. Now shifting gears, to capital projects, you know, we've been before you with Measure I projects.

This slide just is a reminder of of those different pots that were approved by the voters. 400,000,000, that we are focused on tranche one of that pot, the $100,000,000, and and and planning to issue bonds within three phases. On this slide is an example of of those tranches with some overlap as we design, as we award projects, and start to build those projects in tranche one. Some of the activities in tranche two will include the feasibility study, the design, and and eventual construction. So because of the staffing bandwidth that's required to keep going with these projects, we've phased it in three different tranches.

We will get need to go out to, bondholders, to issue that debt as as we move through, roughly an eight to ten year cycle, with this, Measure I bond. On this slide, just a reminder to the public, around the transparency and accountability, measures that were included in that bond. It does require a unanimous vote of the council to another. There is also a citizen oversight committee that, was formed, meets, on a regular interval to, oversee kind of the expenses that occur in that Measure I GO bond. Shifting gears to capital project reserve dollars in the general fund.

I mentioned that this has historically been the the main source of capital funding in in prior budgets for a long time. It was a pay as you go system with very modest dollars. Happy to talk about different sources, our geo bond and as well as our restricted funds. But in this specific slide, $16,000,000 allocated out of that reserve for very specific areas. Just a variety of needs as we work with our city departments on on anything from generators to building maintenance to our historic infrastructure.

A lot of needs across the city required to be funded by our general fund dollars here. So we will highlight some of those line items over the next several slides. And so in this specific slide around administrative facilities, we have been before you through the public works department and ADA transition plan, includes hundreds of millions of dollars of required improvements across city capital infrastructure. This is the start of some of those improvements. This is supplemented by bond project dollars as well as some other allocations included later in this presentation.

EV charging, this is for Citi fleet. So some of the dollars required to expand EV charging as our fleet grows to more of EV based, a need for chargers across different facilities within our city. Fleet shop retrofit, some of the historic and city building dollars here are Triton Museum parking lot and dollars needed to maintain that facility as well as the city hall infrastructure in this facility. So our building maintenance department has modest allocations included in here focused in those two years of of budgeting to maintain those facilities. On the next slide, a continuation of ADA dollars.

Every so often that transition plan needs an update, so $50,000 allocated there. Working with our city librarian, a need for two very key areas of our Central Park Library, the paints within the the facility that has not been done in in a long time as well as carpet replacement. So allocation of of over $2,000,000 across those two projects. And then in our parks department, you know, whenever a park bench or a tot lot piece of equipment breaks, there's a modest amount here about 500,000 a year that our parks department goes to to improve and repair those those pieces of equipment at our parks. Around our storm infrastructure, there are significant dollars included our in our GO bond that these general fund dollars help supplement, those improvements.

We do have a long way to go in in in terms of storm, infrastructure. There was a master plan completed roughly six to eight years ago that has identified hundreds of million dollars of needs. And so this 4 and a half million dollars over the five years continues that investment in very key storm infrastructure to ensure our streets are project our and neighborhoods are protected from flooding. And then in the area of technology and equipment, working with our fire department around sprinklers, relocations within Fire Station 3, continued dollars around our Acela permitting program as we continue to invest in that system to improve the the response for for our development partners. And then our VoIP phone system working with IT, just the system we use is is dated, out of life, and so a need to to find a replacement.

In our transportation infrastructure area, condition continued dollars toward towards ADA public right away improvements, bikeway policy studies to advance some of the needs based on we hear from both our our BPAC as well as the public on bikes and and and public pedestrian safety. Median island, conservation both from a water and a and a resource, towards maintenance. Some of our median islands, they look great but are very resource intensive. So with the drought and with a focus here that some other cities have have performed our public works shifting to to change out some of the landscaping here. And then with regards to that last line item here, every so often with updates to standards necessary as as improvement dollars are set aside for public right away.

Across city, themes, so our budget is organized by theme areas here, administrative facilities, across all utilities here, electric utility over two years, $400,000,000 over five years, $740,000,000. I'll talk about each of these theme areas over the next handful of slides, but in total, about $600,000,000 for a two year budget, $1,100,000 here across the five year budget, and the footnote here, convention center. The zeros here do not mean that that there are no needs. We are doing an independent study that's underway, and so we'll bring forward the both funding and and recommendations around our convention center separately from this process. In our electric utility theme or or five year CIP total $740,000,000 focused work here in in some very key areas.

CAISO, third, two thirty kV transmission line. Every year, our electric department interfaces with the state standard, the CAL ISO, with some key projects to help balance the electric grid across multiple, jurisdictions within the region. In that last annual, planning process, it was determined that the need for improvements around a two thirty k v line into our Northern Receiving Station. As a result, this budget includes a new project for that. As the Northern Receiving Station is underway with some added improvements, this this was an additional supplement based on that annual planning process.

Transmission loop one improvements over a $100,000,000 here is broken out within the electric utility loops that balance out the electric load to our customers. And so as our system grows, as our infrastructure ages, a need to invest ensure that the reliability is there and the power can be developed delivered. Spare equipment strategy as as some some of you may may have heard in the past, and and we've been public through our our quarterly updates and SVP a need for to review our spare equipment or the engine at our DVR power plant failed unexpectedly last this past fiscal year. Our staff looked at that and and determined that there's a needed investment for a fourth engine there and then as well as any of the long lead time procurements here, a focus on making sure that we have the inventory needed to keep our system reliable, safe, and functioning. And then with regards to the next couple projects as as businesses expand as a a need for substations to be rebuilt, some dollars allocated for those projects.

And then the last bullet here, transmission and distribution. This includes the the poles that serve our residents or businesses around our 12 k b system, a a change in the budget or annual budget from 3 to $6,000,000 a year in total 36,000,000 over five years to ensure that we have the dollars needed to maintain our our electric system. This slide shows the the peak growth and the annual growth of our electric system over roughly a twenty seven year period over doubling in size and and projected to continue to grow, largely reflective of of our large customers. I'll I'll talk about them in in this presentation. Our focus here from a a planning standpoint, I talked about the CAISO projects.

There will be additional CAISO projects that will be recommended in the latter years of our budget in in the five years. We don't know what those projects are. So as as those are determined, staff will bring forward amendments to that CIP on a on a annual or biannual basis. But that is an important process our city undertakes with with the state in terms of planning and development. And then our long term and short term priorities focused on, increased capacity of the system, maintenance and replacement of equipment, and then providing high service to our, customers.

In order to address those priorities, we talked about the the the two thirty k v line and and the transmission loop here. Just again focus on these four key areas as high priority areas. It's not just expansion, it's reliability focused on new new business and and then equipment to ensure that our our system is continues to operate on a reliable basis. The electric utility is not without risk. Like like many utilities within the the nation, we there faces long lead times with key infrastructure equipment or transformers or or or both, or require advanced planning, when it comes to our utility or staffing.

We'll talk about recruitment and and, retention efforts around our utility, very specific types of workers. We have added two positions within our HR department to help assist with, the the backlog of recruitment across the whole city, but very specifically our SVP utility. And then project delays are are, we have very large projects underway, under construction, and they're stacked back to back, and so very tight timelines that have risk, and to the extent there's unanticipated delays, for any given reason, that, you know, with with the number of projects very critical for a U utility. And then tariffs. So we have some large, equipment, being delivered later this calendar year, from Korea, and so that includes tariffs in in any given time.

It can add uncertainty and costs to the utility. In the area of administrative facilities, this includes our our bond program, notably here, Fire Station 5 And 7 replacements, changes to the fire training tower, security upgrades around our fire stations in in the police area or a real time intelligence center, first responders for drones infrastructure, and then I mentioned the the roof on our Triton Museum. Beyond Measure I bonds funding is allocated for parking improvements or historic and city facilities, ADA transition, and EV charging. Around community facilities, this includes our central library. And so within the bond projects, restrooms and the access controls, redesign, central library lighting controls as that facility ages and need to retrofit and and replace out and improve some of the key systems in that library.

North Northside and Mission Libraries, those branches, modest designs and and taking a look at some of the needs. And as the public's aware, the the construction underway to our ISC, the the picture there, both bond funded as well as other funds supporting that large investment and renovation. And then in in the Central Park Library, I talked about the paint and the carpet needing some improvement there. In the convention center theme, I I just wanna highlight here as we've had that Super Bowl and large events. The picture on the right there shows some of the key upgrades, the paint on the exterior, as well as a boiler was replaced.

I mentioned that there's an effort underway to prioritize some key projects. We'll be back before you with recommendations separately as part of our year end process around the convention center. The other community projects theme area, this is the catch all, but but specific to some key areas. This includes the staffing necessary to implement our GO bond. It includes funding for furniture, fixtures, and equipment, which cannot be allocated or funded through the bond, and so some general fund dollars here as in this catch all theme area.

Parks and trails, Measure I projects around Warburn, Henry Schmidt, and other playgrounds, Maywood, Carmichael, activity around the Central Community Park North effort, and then improvements across the city in in some of the key areas. And then the picture there on the right, just one of the the playgrounds recently turned over to the city through private development. In our sewer utility area, a $157,000,000 of improvements. Our water and sewer department, on an annual basis, reviews. They send down a a video camera within the sewer system to inspect and and code and and clean out some of our sewers.

And so this capital budget includes the continuation of those activities as well as improvements at our treatment wastewater treatment plan co owned with San Jose. So it includes our share of those investments, and it's funded largely through our rate payers. But within the five year planning cycle, we'll require an additional debt issuance to fund those improvements. In the solid waste theme area, focus here around our landfill, closed landfill, the monitoring of methane gas, as well as the collection system. This is funded through our solid waste fees and and monitored by our public works department.

The storm drain area, the focus around improvements to support flood protection for both ten year and hundred year flood cycles, and so maintaining those storm drum storm drain pumps and lift stations to convey storm water. Technology and equipment, I talked about these here. I just know that there's a long list of of needs within, the city for, technology improvements within the finance area. I know, our our PeopleSoft system, our utility billing touches both all our employees and all our residents, and so dollars are allocated within the budget to ensure that those systems are continue and are improved as as within the five year cycle. Transportation, the key focus area here are bond projects as well as street maintenance and rehab program.

That those our streets are are measured through a pavement condition index, which currently sits at 73, projected to improve to 74 over the five year CIP dollars and our GO bonds. It it does include additional funding, grant funds, and restricted funds for other improvements, around neighborhood traffic calming, Vision Zero, ADA bikes, crosswalks, and so a list of those funding sources are are are listed here. And then around water and recycled water, 25 $24,000,000 or so, the the tanks, the the pipes, including our recycled water system. I was given the fact that that 20% of our water is is sold is is through recycled water, and so that's a significant clip, especially in the drought years. So we need to continue to make sure that businesses are connected to that system and and funding is provided to invest in both the the potable water and recycled water system.

Now that was what was funded. A lot of key highlights, a lot of pictures and accomplishments to be proud of on this slide. Historically, I've talked about unfunded needs and and this number on on the right was was over $600,000,000 with with our $400,000,000 bond. Our departments have updated that and over the five year cycle of what's what's known. $250,000,000 over a five year period.

But when you look on the left and the bullets on the left, and in fact, the parks and recreation master plan is one that's that's, will be before you shortly. The library master plan was before the council, earlier this fiscal year as well as Vision Zero. When you add up some of those dollars within those master plans, well over a billion dollars of need. And so, we will continue to to need to, as as staff recommendations to our city council, creative solutions to solve that gap with regards to dollars, funding, as well as resources to allocate to make progress, in those key areas. Around the operating budget, almost there.

Roughly, 12 slides or so, 10 slides or so slow left. Wanna highlight key changes in the operating budget. As I mentioned, there is a two year adopted operating budget that was approved in June 2025. The our staff, to my right, updates those line items on a on a annual basis, and so we've updated revenue estimates in the general fund as well as other other funds. We've updated costs, both resource and production costs in the enterprise funds, staffing costs with regards to our MOUs.

It does incorporate enhancements around council priorities, restoration of frozen positions, and it it it also includes recommendations for roughly 24 new positions within the budget. And over the next couple slides, we'll talk about it. There is a detailed line item section in the proposed budget in the appendix that outlines the operating budget amendments again on on June 9 will require five votes to amend that budget, but wanna acknowledge that this budget, while its capital focus, does include a number of operating budget changes. Within a couple of key departments here, we are underway and and close to conclusion of of, organizational reviews by our, staffing consultants, working with our parks and recreation director and and and the consultant here, the the recommendation here is for six additional positions. Net in our parks and recreation department listed here, management analysts, office assistants, recreation coordinators.

It was a a large effort to, as as a consultant, make recommendations on on both restructuring and and allocation of positions to look at areas where we can trade in either vacant positions or or or perform some duties in a in a cost effective manner. And so that second bullet does include a number of net zero reclassifications to better align staff with with the needed duties. And so listed on here around assistant directors, division managers, maintenance workers. I I won't list the whole name, but we did a comprehensive study working with a consultant to recommend, the items before you as part of the budget. And then the third bullet here is as part of the effort to fund the frozen positions and and and in this case, trade in some of the frozen position classifications, removing those four positions from that frozen position list.

In our public works department, working with our director of public works and our consult in a net addition of seven positions here. One was before the council around vision zero for a senior engineer. There are position additions here related to bond implementation as well as our fleet as we look at both succession planning as well as the needs in the future for staffing. And then with regards to frozen positions, the unfreezing of an assistant engineer and a division manager, the reclassification of of one position, a deputy director to an assistant director, and then the removal of five positions from the frozen position list. In the area of our electric utility and finance, I know that when you look through the finance department, it shows a large number of of FTE changes that reflects a consultant recommended restructure of the business services unit working in partnership with our electric utility transition of that division over to finance.

It it does mean that, from a process standpoint with regards to contracts and purchasing working directly with our purchasing division manager and her staff to expedite some of the procurements. You've seen a large number of those procurements come through on any given Tuesday, large dollar value, urgent need to to move quickly on those items. And so part of that restructuring effort was an effort to streamline both procurement and then in the area of the finance unit within SVP as it as it relates to load forecasting, rate development, rate studies, having a direct kind of financial link and involvement in that. And so that that that shift is reflected in the budget as previously reported to the council. And the budget also includes with that restructuring of management analysts over, you know, three locations, finance SVP at 881 Martin and and shortly the move to 831 Martin.

The additional bandwidth needed to to cover the administrative functions and and and oversight, and so a management analyst edition in in the finance department recommended here. Within the electric utility, four positions here around engineering, a customer service for large complex customers, and then programs around our public benefits program. I know there is a large balance there within that program, and so we need to spend those dollars, allocate funding for some key areas, and and we can talk about that through our electric utility departments, but an enhanced effort to restore and and improve our our public benefits program. And then there is an ongoing study around the organization for SVP and a set aside here. There will be additional positions recommended forthcoming, so we've set aside some funding in anticipation of of that organization review.

And then some of the other, key position changes, with regards to our city manager's office, supporting small businesses. You've heard in the financial, municipal fee schedule, some of the feedback from our small businesses, and and and we heard from you as as council members funding in this budget for a dedicated small business support under our economic development director. And then also some with aligning with the unfreezing of certain positions, unfreezing of a senior management analyst in our our city manager's office. In our HR department, with the efforts around safety, we had a a safety consultant come through, every city department review, operations and provide a work plan. And so last year in the budget, we did allocate a safety manager in in this budget, two additional management analysts to fully build out a safe environment for our city workers.

We've heard from, bargaining units around this effort, and so a key investment toward our the safety of our employees. And as well as a couple positions here around hiring, in a slide, I will show, the efforts around filling vacancies. And then wanna highlight here just some of the other areas around, organizational reviews. Or I've mentioned SVP, but there are efforts in community development. We've been before the board, on on a Tuesday to allocate some resources, around our bill building development review review to make sure that, our development partners have the resources needed to respond quickly.

Water and sewer is shortly gonna kick off organization review. So that effort to review department's structures and and provide input for future considerations of resources ongoing. On this slide, I wanna highlight just the change in hiring. Every year, there's this new state requirement that started last year to report out on city hiring efforts. So as part of the budget adoption on June 9, there will be a separate resolution, around that state requirement for hiring.

Our our HR department's very busy. And so as you can see here, a 160 vacancies, as of April 25. Rate vacancy rate of 13% or so down from 16% a year ago. Active recruitment's underway, a 108 and a half positions out of those that 160 vacancies, 14 as needed. Four classification studies, when you look at the near term, a 115 new hires and rehires, 63 promotions against about 80 separations.

So the goal here is is to, hire faster than people leave, and so our our HR department's been very busy, when it comes to hiring. And then I wanna close out kind of the presentation around our our reserves. I know, the focus in the general fund is budget stabilization, our our land sale, and our capital projects which which now includes that new infrastructure capital replacement funds. Very healthy reserves here. Our our budget stabilization reserve continues at, over $80,000,000 or 25% of of our general fund budget that aligns with council policy.

Our general fund capital projects reserve with this budget, it it does dip into that reserve. We do anticipate to replenish some of those dollars or or a significant amount of those dollars as part of our year end close activities. That will be brought forward separately in June and in December. Our land sale reserve by policy as proceeds are, from land sales are allocated in this reserve for future land purchases. And then our pension trust, roughly $50,000,000 projected in our general fund policy here of 1% of our unfunded liability, every year to allocate to this reserve, and then $10,400,000 to that new capital infrastructure replacement reserve over, the ten year forecast projected to grow over a $100,000,000.

That's important just from a fiscal management perspective, to have that fund set aside, in an effort to, remain untouched and and focused around keeping our capital infrastructure maintained. And so over the long term, goal there to really build up that fund for future improvements. And so with that, that concludes my presentation. There's a number of city staff here ready to answer questions. We'll take questions as as the city manager mentioned, to the extent we can't answer those tonight. We'll bring that, back, to the council in the next meeting. And, again, appreciate your engagement on this, this budget and your time. Thank you.

Take a breath. Have a seat. Relax. Thank you so much. That was a very impressive, presentation, and it just shows the depth of our city and how busy we are and all the the different departments and all the work that's going on. So we really appreciate all the work that went into making this budget. I use it as weightlifting. So it's awesome. So I think we're only gonna have time for questions this evening. I'm going to ask the council for the questions, and then we can you can bring them back as you have in the past at the next budget study session.

And then after the council questions, I wanna make sure I have time to go to the public as well. So thank you so much. So we're gonna start with the city council questions only. Council member Jane.

Yeah. Thank you very much, to Ken and all of your staff and all the city employees because, you know, this budget actually is a surplus. The reason why it shows zero balance is because we're putting money into capital reserves that we never did before. So it's actually kudos to everybody here because, you know, I just heard today that LA, Sacramento, San Francisco, they're they have budget deficits. San Jose, I've known for a while, has had a budget deficit.

So Santa Clara is really, shining among our peers. And so, you know, we're building up our reserves. So I wanted to say that, I'm very happy to be in this position. I think in one of the briefings, you said that you've been through 25 budget cycles and the vast majority of them had staffing cuts. And so here, we're adding positions, so it's, admirable.

On slide 25, you talked about technology. And, so I was reading through the, parks master plan, and there's a couple of technology things that seem to be lacking in the city. One is a GIS based asset management system, and the other one is software to track the maintenance and performance of, our equipment and, all the maintenance that we have to do. So there should be software that tells us, okay, you know, every two years, you need to replace this filter or do whatever you need to do to our equipment. So, I would like to see more technology being used, to help us be more efficient and actually be on top of our maintenance issues.

I have a concern about, the $500,000,000 CapEx for SVP. It seems like most of that is gonna be, through debt, and my concern is how are we gonna pay off that debt. Is it gonna what percentage of that is gonna be low development fees? What percentage is gonna be future revenues from, say, data centers, which may not materialize, in which case we've, you know, put a burden on our ratepayers. So, and the other thing is with SVP, you know, there's $50,000,000 of public benefits money that's just sitting there not being used to help people decarbonize and and, be more efficient in their energy use.

And I know that it seems like we're adding two people to that, so, I'm pleased that we're actually going to add people. So now, sort of my asks. So downtown hasn't really moved for a while. And, you know, I know we have had, Rina Brio, working on that, but she's also our sustainability person. She's our economic development person.

So I'm asking that somehow we find a position, either staff or a consultant, to be dedicated to be handling the RFPs and and talking to developers and moving that project forward. I have been asking for over ten years for a sustainability manager, and I know we have a management analyst for a sustainable for sustainability, but, you know, we're a $1,700,000,000 entity. And, you know, other places like Sunnyvale and Mountain View and Palo Alto, San Jose, Fremont, they have sustainability managers. So the SVP billing system, I've been asking for years, probably eight years now, for Green Button Connect. And, we don't have Green Button Connect because we have not upgraded our billing system.

So we desperately need to upgrade the billing system for SVP. You know, I've been attending the Lunar New Year festival and the night markets, and they're packed. How and everyone's, like, asking me how can we continue this? What are we gonna do next year? So somehow we need to figure out how we're gonna fund these ongoing because there really is appetite, pun intended, for attending these these, night markets.

And, so we need to somehow allocate money for whether it's in parks and rec or whether it's some sort of, economic development, money. Then, two more things. The Berryessa Adobe, and and, actually, the Morse Mansion are in, desperate need for some repairs. The paint is peeling on the Morse Mansion, and the Berryessa Adobe, the porch is really degraded, and we need to, fix that porch. I know that the, historic home tour want to put the Berryessa Adobe on the tour this year, so it'd be nice to see that done.

Finally, you know, we sold Loyalton. I worked on that ever since I came here since 2021 to sell Loyalton, and we finally were able to sell that. That's $6,000,000 to SVP, and I would like to understand where that money is gonna be spent, how what the plan is to spend that 6,000,000. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Hardy?

Thank you. Well, the 650 pages I read every single just keep I did work through it very hard, and I do have a few higher level questions and then a few very specific. I will say it was very easy to read, and I appreciated the the hard work that went into it. We have a two year CIP term, and we have a two year maintenance operational. And those those basically, what we've done is they don't overlap.

Well, I they they do overlap, but we do every two years. So we're on the CIP this time, and we just do a little bit of tweaking if we need to. I wondered if that is working better because it's we've only been doing that for about six years, if that is a better way to handle it. When I look at the unfunded list, which is always frustrating, but, you know, like, 8,000,000 in parks, 10 0.4 in convention center, 21 storm drain, 54 in transportation, and that was from your slide number 48. I'm just wondering how we prioritize that so that we don't let something go so long that it is a true problem.

And I just because we have those listed, is there a way that they're prioritized either critical or can wait or whatever? Also, under the enterprise funds, I was I knew we had a SVP as our electric. I was a little surprised to see our water treatment plant listed under the enterprise funds. I wonder if that is because we are a part owner with San Jose. But as far as our our rates, we don't make money on that.

That that is we pay for and only charge our residents by law what it actually costs. Now I've had some people yell at me and say, you know, it's going up, but I will say that we're having to rebuild the entire treatment plant while we're still running it. Now it would have cost less if we turned it off and just did it all at once, but I thought that wasn't a very good choice that, we keep it running while we're working on that. So, I just was surprised, like I said, to see that listed under the enterprise, and I wanted to completely understand. Now the little tiny specific ones, I'm going to guess as gas prices go up, our our revenue does not go up, that it may even go down because people will drive less or whatever.

So I'm wondering if we're kind of thinking through that. It's I know it's a smaller portion, but it is part of it. We do not have an auditor at this point. I wondered if that was a priority situation as far as making certain where that that position was never taken away, but it has not been filled. And I wondered if that was any kind of a priority.

And on El Camino, you mentioned a bike lane. I know we do have the bicycle and pedestrian group really wanna see that. A lot of us do. But since that is a state highway and you have to work with, Caltrans, I'm wondering, is that something we're supposed to fund, or is that on them and we are supposed to make certain it happened? You will recognize that when they restriped El Camino, when they did the repaving, we we repaved it and striped it in such a way to leave that larger site.

But my understanding is all we had to do is make certain that we made certain businesses were not using that as parking before that could be turned into a bike lane. I didn't think that was a cost we were supposed to handle, so I wanted to understand that. That was a very specific one. Thank you. Good work.

Thank you. Councilmember Cox.

Microphone. Thank you. Got it. So, I wanted to understand a little bit about our prioritization, with the 252,000,000 in high priority projects that are unfunded. I wanted to just make sure over the next five years that we weren't neglecting anything that was lifesaving, lifesaving or legally mandated in that.

The sinking fund is a great idea, but I'm wondering if we're setting that 3% allocation this year based on actual analysis or just what we have in capacity. Something we didn't talk about in the presentation, but I I noticed as a risk, this ERAF fund, the education revenue augmentation fund, it says that 18% of those receipts are right now flagged at the county level for, review and could possibly possibly be be pulled. Pulled. And And I I wanna wanna know what impacts that would have if we didn't indeed lose 18%. And then I'm I I just wanna understand the sales tax volatility here that we're relying on here.

Again, if I'm understanding this right, we had this record year in 2425 where we went up 28% roughly. And now this year, it's saying in the first half of the year, we fell 2.5%. But if I'm understanding that, that's compared to the already very, inflated 28% year. We're anticipating a steady state in three years, back to I'm sorry, in 2728, back to the 3%. But the 3% is being compared then again to this really, unusual year of unexpected growth.

So we're calling this a a conservative budget, but I wanna know if if we don't maintain that and the 2.5 trend happens, we've already acknowledged that this budget doesn't have built into it, you know, the population growth that we're experiencing being the the fastest growing city in The Bay. And so I wanna know what that that point five percentage, does to our budget. And then, again, I think that would go into the maintaining of the the 24, 25 new positions that we're we're putting up, you know, if if we're not able to because I I guess what I'm what I'm saying is this 3% growth is really being based off of the 28% growth two years ago. And so if we don't see that and with AI and data centers being at the center of it, there's huge volatility in this right now. And so I I just I wanna know what the reality is of us being able to to maintain a structure like that.

And then I think the only other thing that stood out to me is Silicon Valley Hopper has been with us for several years, but it still is called the pilot program. And so what funding would either sunset could we sunset it? Or are we gonna be able to permanently fund this so it doesn't look like the the longest pilot program that's ever taken place?

Thank you. Anyone who hasn't spoken yet? Questions? Councilman, vice mayor Gonzales.

Thank you, madam mayor. Just a couple of points. As far as the 3% reserve. I know we've talked I've kinda mentioned that we should have more than that. And I think it's it would be beneficial to to have more of a a data driven number.

As council member Cox mentioned, I think the that's 3% is too low. Think, yeah, I mentioned it in the past 5% is something that school districts have by law. The other question I had, if we do start to invest more in removing center dividers, maybe the Lafayette between Guadaluna and and Hope Street as we look at some of the the the things that we're doing around the that area. It might be something where we can save some water in those areas and and benefit the flow of traffic. I know there was bike, and I forgot what they were called, but the bike sticks that go along the bike lanes that were there for Super Bowl have been removed.

So maybe, you know, whether it's something that's more permanent for, for our bikers or what have you, but that's something that if we can have some answers as far as that. I know that we we we had the 50 mile per hour zone that we we approved about a year ago or so. We haven't implemented that in any any fashion. You know, is there a possibility of doing that around the schools and have we talked to our our school district partners to make sure that that's something that's I think it's always needed in certain aspect to to calm traffic around schools or on the drop off and pick up times, but, you know, making make sure that we we don't make anything for the situation any worse. Right?

So how how does that look as far as possible implementation and dollars for that if if we are moving in that direction? The other thing I was just gonna say, I I do concur with councilor Regina as far as how do we kinda get some priority around downtown and the possibility of of doing more there. Obviously, the the budget is a statement of our priorities and our values. And, you know, in that respect, how do we, you know, put more more money to do something there? And, lastly, just as far as over overlooking the different aspects of of city offices and that, you know, that includes our enterprise departments or or businesses.

How do we look at in the future? Basically, looking at projecting, you know, what does it look like if if we maintain, you know, city hall here, those those offices there versus having some some coordinated effort to bring them all together in some location, whether it's downtown or somewhere else to to look at that. I'm not sure if it will be in a ten year plan. I mean, it's something that we might hopefully, it's sooner than that, but I know things take time. So, you know, how would that look like as far as our general fund? Would it would it help? Would it hurt? And, you know, CIP monies that would be available or or some some facility money that would be available for that.

Thank you. Vice mayor Gonzales, I've seen the 15 mile an hour signs around some of the schools, and maybe we can ask the police department to let us know which ones they're around. Oh, yeah. And it's hard to go 15 miles an hour. You really have to step on the brakes if you're going 25 miles an hour and really coast. It's, yeah, it's a new experience, but they're starting to pop up. So maybe our our like I said, our police department can let us know what schools they're at now. I can tell you a few. Councilmember Chahal, I didn't know you were with us. So councilmember Chahal?

Yeah. Thank thank you, mayor. I have been with you from the very beginning to just to make sure. Thank you. Thank you, director Kenley, for the presentation and some positive news about it.

I know we are running out of time, but quick questions. With the latest tariff judgment from the Supreme Court, are we anticipating some tariff benefits, basically savings on the tariffs what we projected for SVP? That's my first question. My next question is, I know you added some positions for different departments, but I did not see any position for AI implementation, which is pretty seems like, we can add a portion and increase the efficiency of various offices, various departments within the organization. So, in I would like to see that, details about that.

And with that said, I would also like to see our fast tracking of technology implementation as mentioned by council member Jain and as I've been stressing out for multiple years in the

past.

Concerns about the unfunded liability, although we are in a much better shape where we were few years back, but still we have almost a billion dollar unfunded liability. So we need to take care of those. Other question is, I did not see anything about public private partnership. Like, there are can be some projects where we can have a public private partnerships and that can help us out in our CIP, basically. So these are the questions I have right now. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Chahal. My questions are more at a macro level. Looking at this report and in prior years, we're seeing consistent and material variances between what we budget and what actually occurs. So revenues are coming in significantly higher and expenditures are often well below budget as we learned in the midyear budget last, maybe it was January, and we're identifying issues like delayed revenue recognition and mid year adjustments, but my concern isn't that we're doing well financially because we are. The concern is that these gaps limit ability to make informed decisions during the budget process.

Instead, we're allocating large surpluses after the fact just like we did last year. So I would like to see the fact that we've had record breaking, sales tax, property tax, hotel tax, and especially the the massive growth in Silicon Valley power. I don't understand. I wanna find out from you how you're projecting our sales tax, our TOT, and SVP, and and, property tax because I think, you know, one or more, I think sales tax was projected less than last year, and last year was a a banner year. So I I wanna know what what you're thinking, what you're what you're why you make these projections.

Because if there's extra money we find during the budget process, the council should be determining how those funds are used as opposed to finding out midyear. And then the staff makes recommendations on how we should use the money, and we don't have a full budget process. So I wanna I I kind of see that happening again. So I I'd like to know why and how you're doing what you're doing. And then, are we funding because I I'm not sure.

Are we funding vacant positions in this budget or, frozen positions? I would like to know that. Because last year, there was positions that were funded that weren't filled, and then we came in under budget, and that was part of our what did we have? 40,000,000 left over mid you know, the midyear report. So I wanted I want us to get a better handle on the expenses, like, truly, what are they? And then the revenues, truly, what are they based on trends? So, those those are my questions. Council member Jane, you had an additional question. I need to go to public.

Yes. I forgot about one of my questions. When councilmember Emily Ramos came in the room, I was reminded of that. Last year when we were doing the CDBG and the home funds, I asked about whether we could fund, a basic income pilot program. I know Mountain View has done that. You know, people are really hurting out there, and, you know, we we're in a enviable position of having surpluses, and I would like to do more to support people that are hurting out there. So, something to consider. Thank you.

Thank you. So I'm going to the public now. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this study session for the budget or any questions? Does anybody have any? Do we have anyone online? We do. Wanda? Is it Wanda? Go ahead, Wanda.

Hi. This is a micro question, and it's my, concern for senior advocacy. I really appreciate the budget and the challenges and the hard times we've been through, but I'm wondering if there's ever gonna be a time or if there's so much money collected from the seniors that the promise that they would never need to pay dues can ever be addressed again. And I don't know if it's this year or next year or last year that this should have been brought up, but I wish you would consider it and make a priority because seniors have paid for a lot a long time, and it's even ethical about the promises. So please consider that someplace at the appropriate time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Wanda. Do we have anybody else? No? Alright. So you have our questions. We are now going to take a ten minute break before we start our city council meeting. So thank you so much, everyone. And I assume you're all staying for the council meeting. Right? See happy faces.

Thank you. So 07:10. City manager. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Santa Clara City Council Stadium Authority concurrent meeting. I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Could you please stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for our statement of values? 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.

As we gather, we humbly seek blessings upon this meeting. May we act with strength, courage, and will to perform our obligations and duties to our people with justice to all. Let us seek wisdom so that we may act in the best interest of our people, our neighbors, and our country. All this we ask so we may serve our community with fairness and respect, putting their needs before all.

Thank you. Please be seated. Roll call. Assistant city clerk.

Thank you, madam mayor. Before I, do the roll call, I'd like to note for the record that council member Shahal is participating remote today. And in accordance with the Brown Act, the government code section five four nine five three b, council member Shahal is attending tonight's meeting via audio only teleconference. The location from where council member Shahal is attending was included on was included on the agenda for this meeting. So at this time, council member Shahal, could you please confirm that the agenda for this meeting is posted at your teleconference location?

Yes. It was posted.

Thank you. And that this location is accessible to the public?

That is correct.

K. Please also state whether any members of the public are in attendance at your teleconference location.

Nobody's here right now.

Thank you, council member. All votes taken during this teleconference meeting tonight shall be by roll call vote. So with that,

council member board member Shahal.

Present.

Council member board member Hardy. Present. Council member board member Park. K. Council member board member Jane.

Here.

Council member board member Cox. Here. Vice chair, vice mayor Gonzales.

Here.

And mayor and chair Gilmore.

Here.

Thank you.

The a b twenty three announcement. Members of the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, Sports and Open Space Authority, and Housing Authority are entitled to receive $30 for each attended meeting. Statement of behavioral standards. The city of Santa Clara has adopted a code of ethics and values and behavioral standards for public meetings to promote and maintain the highest levels of conduct. This includes mutual respect, robust discussion, and allowing city business to be done in an efficient and consistent manner.

Please note as the presiding officer, the mayor and chair's direction in matters of process and decorum should be followed and that use of the gavel indicates all conversations must conclude and everyone in attendance should come to order and attention. Welcome and thank you for your participation. For those joining us this evening in the capacity of a registered lobbyist, we ask you to please identify yourself as such and disclose the clients and or organizations that you represent. This is pursuant to city code section two point one five five point one one zero. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you. So good evening, everyone, and welcome. For today's meeting, the council's back in person and is conducting its meeting in a hybrid manner. The public is welcome to attend in person, and the city continues to use a Zoom feature shown on the screen now. If you would like to participate from, the public can still join via the link and or call into the Zoom meeting, phone number is shown on the screen now.

If you would like to speak on an agenda item or during public presentations, please raise your hand on the Zoom application or press 9 on your phone. Please only raise your hand while the item you're seeking to speak on is presented. Staff will enter your name or the last four digits of your phone number, and I will call on you to speak. As a friendly reminder, members of the public have two minutes to speak on an agenda item and three minutes on public presentations, and those are reserved for items that are not on the agenda. Prior to each agenda item, staff will lower your hand to ensure that members of the public are seeking to speak on the appropriate agenda item. So we'll move on to the council agenda now. City attorney holdover report from last council meeting.

Thank you, madam mayor. Yes. On April 21, the city council met in closed session after the regular meeting. And, madam mayor, you and I reported out of that at that time, but to the empty chambers. And when that happens for full transparency, we like to rereport out at the next live meeting. And so council did I will report, that council did meet in closed session on April 21 under labor conference with labor negotiators. The employee organization under discussion was unclassified fire management unit nine b. However, there was no reportable action. Thank you, madam mayor.

Thank you. Next, we have continuances, exceptions, reconsiderations. Do we have any from the council, staff, or the public?

Mayor.

Councilmember Jane?

Yeah. I had my hand up, but somehow it disappeared. I would like to move item nine to after public presentations because we have a number of representatives from the beneficiaries of the CDBG funds here.

Okay. We'll do that. We'll do that. Okay. Next, we have, let's see. Any other continuances, exceptions, reconsiderations? Alright. Seeing none, we are going to move into our special orders of business, and we have a few tonight. Our first special order of business this evening commends the Santa Clara City Library Foundation and Friends on the occasion of their twenty fifth anniversary. The foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supplementing public funding to expand and enhance the Santa Clara City Library's programs and services and enrich lifelong learning.

The foundation actively seeks gifts, grants, and bequests, and the organization also raises funds through the sale of donated used books to fund classes, events, and resources. Since 2001, foundation has raised over $4,000,000 and continues to be a valuable resource and partner for libraries. 2026 marks the foundation's twenty fifth anniversary to be celebrated at a fundraising gala on Saturday, 05/16/2026 at the Triton Museum of Art. With us this evening from the foundation are Joanne Davis, executive director,

and

board members, Kathy Betts, Emma Toole, Neri Raman, Steve Ricosa, and Camille Sakicchi. I now invite Joanne Davis, executive director of the foundation, to the podium to speak and tell us more about the upcoming anniversary gala. Were you prepared, Joanne, to do that? More or less. That sounds good. We'll take the more. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you very much. We are really honored, to be here tonight. Personally, I'm very honored to be associated with this organization that has done so much for the community of Santa Clara. Our twenty fifth anniversary at the Trite Museum of Art will have wonderful food, will have music, will have an auction, and an interview with Alexis Madrigal, who is an author and journalist, cohost of KQED's forum.

Promises to be a really wonderful evening, and I hope to see all of you there. In addition, I just wanted to say that our partnership with the library with the library with the city librarian, Patty Wong, and her excellent staff helps make what we do possible. Because if we weren't working together as a collaborative in a collaborative manner, it would be really hard for me to go out and raise money for them. So the staff is great. Our board of directors is very committed. And, and, again, we just really thank you for this opportunity and for the acknowledgment of our anniversary.

Well, thank you. I'd now like to invite the those that are with you that I mentioned or others that are on the foundation if they'd like to come forward. Think we can go down. Yeah. If the council would join me down there, please.

And, Joanne, could you tell us how we can get tickets to this event?

No? Okay.

You can buy tickets at wwwlovethelibrary.org and follow the link, and you can buy tickets online or you can mail a check to the library at Central Park Library.

Is it l o v e, the library, or l u v?

L o v e. Lovelibrary.org..org.

Yeah. Very good.

Alright.

Well, thank you, and I'll see you there. It's in a couple weeks.

It is a week from Saturday.

Very exciting. Believe it

or not. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. For our next special order of business, the city wishes to proclaim May as affordable housing month and to recognize s v at home for its important role in calling attention to the region's housing and community development challenges and highlighting effective solutions.

Housing affordability continues to be a top concern in our city and throughout the region. We want to create a community where all residents have a safe place that they can call home. Effective partnerships are one tool to boost affordable housing production. The nonprofit SV at Home works with a broad coalition of partners, including the city of Santa Clara and our community development department to advocate for solutions that address the urgent need for housing. I now invite Emily Ramos, but I know her as mayor Emily Ramos of Mountain View, who is the tenant protection and empowerment association from SV at Home to the podium to say a few words.

Welcome, madam mayor.

Thank you, madam mayor. Good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor, council members, and city staff. My name is Emily Ann Ramos, and I am the, tenant protection and empowerment associate at SB Home. Thank you for inviting us to join you in recognizing affordable housing month. We are proud to receive Santa Clara's Affordable Housing Month proclamation and glad to see this important recognition on how critical affordable housing is for our community.

As a local nonprofit, SB at Home advocates for practical solutions to meet the housing needs of residents across Santa Clara County. Our theme for affordable housing month this year is all in for housing. We are excited to coordinate dozen of events throughout the month hosted by s b at home and many of our partners. We encourage everyone to visit siliconvalley@home.org/events to find virtual and in person events where you could learn and connect with your neighbors. It is no secret that our need remains great across every city and town.

Nearly half of Santa Clara County renters are cost burden. Too many of our residents have been priced out of their homes, and local cities, schools, and small businesses struggle to recruit and retain talent due to housing costs. That that is why your continue lead continued leadership is essential. Our work focuses on the three p's, production, preservation, and protection. That means building new housing, preserving existing affordable housing that we have, and protecting our most vulnerable residents from housing instability.

By investing in affordable housing, we are securing the future and well-being of all our residents and our community. We invite you to join us in envisioning, planning, and creating a future with stay safe, stable, and affordable homes for all. Thank you again for your partnership and leadership this affordable housing month.

Thank you so much. And would you join us up here? And I'd also like to invite our community development department to come forward for the photo and the council back down again.

No. No. No. It's really okay. I'm I I

think this is their show.

Okay. Moving along. This year, National Public Works Public Works Week is May 17 through the twenty third, and the theme that has been selected by the American Public Works Association is rooted in service powered by community. This theme highlights the deeply rooted service oriented reputation of public works professionals whose everyday efforts, both big and small, form the foundation of thriving communities. The city of Santa Clara has a dedicated staff that helps maintain and improve the city on a regular basis through public works.

City staff delivers high quality pub public works projects that provide critical infrastructure services in transportation, roadway and building maintenance, wastewater and storm water treatment, water and solid waste systems, parks, power, emergency management, and first response, and other facilities essential to our citizens. In honor of Public Works Week, I want to thank our staff in the Public Works, Silicon Valley Power, water and sewer utility, and parks and recreation departments for their continued resiliency and hard work, especially in these ever changing and challenging times in maintaining the utmost efficiency and providing the high quality services that help keeps our city and community strong, safe, and thriving. In honor of public works week, I invite Craig Mobach, director of public works, to the podium to say a few words or more than a few words after what I just read and all you do. Welcome.

Welcome. Thank you very much, mayor and council, and I wanna welcome, some of our staff, that I brought here with us. Certainly very happy and honored to celebrate public works week. Again, it seems like we're just here last year doing the same thing. But community is what it's all about. That's why most of us are here and and chose this profession and enjoy working here in Santa Clara. So I wanted to introduce some of our key managers. We've had a lot of change, a lot of retirements. So some of the faces, I'm sure, are familiar, but there's many new ones. And so I just wanted to introduce them Very good.

To you. And so I'll say their name. They'll call themselves out. And I'll start off with Mike Lou, who you know is our city engineer, assistant Yes. Director and oversees our engineering functions. And we have Vince Lucchesi, who is a newly promoted principal engineer who oversees our design functions working with a variety of projects throughout the city. We also have Lourdes Marasagang, who is our management analyst. We heard budget tonight. She leads all our budget efforts operating and the capital budgets, so always busy doing that. We have Jing Dang who is our acting principal engineer in LPD.

Of course, they're involved with all the development that comes through and and reviewing the encroachments in the public right of way. We've got Kaveh Farooi, who is our field services principal, and he oversees all the construction as well as all the utility permit work that gets done in the public right of way. Carol Sheriot recently promoted to transportation manager. So very happy to promote her, obviously, overseeing all the traffic operations, maintenance, and planning. We also have Ken Wineland.

I'm sure you all know Ken. He makes sure all these facilities function at a high level whether it's city hall, the police department, CEOC, or the fire stations. And we also have Colleen Trussell. So Colleen accepted the challenge and is currently the acting deputy director of public works. So she oversees our largest division right now, which is streets. And, of course, you know that encompasses a wide variety of efforts from all the maintenance to the fleet, trees, landscaping, and environmental programs, just to name some of those efforts. So I think I captured everybody. Oh, and I have see,

I did see.

Matthew Nguyen. So a recent principal engineer who he was hired on with his expertise in capital projects to help us kick off all the bond projects. He's done a great job as we've moved a lot of those forward. So appreciate his efforts as well. So

Thank you so much. I'm gonna I have a proclamation for him and ask you all to come up here and ask the council to stay up here. That's a big group down there. So the council would stay up.

Looks good. Alright. Microphone on. K. Well, that looks good. Take a few more. Hold that. We're gonna do one more here. Thank you. Thanks, you guys. I'm up here. Thank you. You.

Okay. And our last special order of business tonight, we are proclaiming the week of May as municipal clerk's week. The office of the professional municipal clerk is a time honored and vital part of local government that exists throughout the world and is the oldest among public servants. Wow. Okay.

Municipal clerks provide the professional link between citizens, local governing bodies, and government agencies at all other levels. They have pledged to be ever mindful of their neutrality and impartiality, rendering equal service to all serving as the information center on functions of local government and community. This evening, we recognize professional municipal clerks for the vital services they perform and their exemplary dedication to the communities they represent. I now invite Nora Pimentel, assistant city clerk for the city of Santa Clara. I was gonna say to the podium to speak.

If you'd like to speak from your chair Yes, that would be great. And then maybe afterwards, I'm gonna ask our elected city clerk to say a few words as well. Go ahead, Nora.

Thank you, madam mayor. Counsel, Nora Pimentel, your assistant city clerk. I appreciate, the recognition of the fifty seventh annual municipal clerk week. This is a great way to promote the profession. We are a group of folks that are con continuous learners and are kept abreast of the different and best practices, in the city clerk world.

The office of the assistant city clerk's office currently has four FTEs. We are not as big as public works. However, my staff could not join me this evening, and I'd be remiss if I did not acknowledge them. The staff that work so hard and are dedicated in providing the services that we do is Jose Armas and Stephanie Davis, who are our staff aides one, Yesenia Bozunski, who is an as needed, and my right hand man, deputy city clerk Vin Nguyen. Couldn't do it without him.

Couldn't do it without this whole group. We're currently recruiting, to fill a vacancy for our office record specialist position, and that will bring us to our full capacity. We may be a small group, but we are mighty in providing the services that we do. We are also we work alongside our elected city clerk, Bob O'Keefe, and we've built a great rapport together. It has been my privilege serving the city of Santa Clara, the electeds, the community for over seven and a half years, and I look forward to continuing to provide that service and that support.

And we do this because we are people, people people, enjoy working with the public, and we do the office does strive to provide that, excellent customer service to everyone. So thank you very much.

And we are one of the cities in California that has an elected city clerk who has certain responsibilities as well. And our elected city clerk is Bob O'Keefe. So, Bob, if you'd like to say a few words.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. I wanna thank the you and the council for recognizing the professional services of our city clerk's office. As you all know, our city clerks our our assistant city clerk, by ordinance has been, ordained to do the lion's share of the city clerk's work. The professional service of the offices is done by our assistant city clerk Nora Pimentel, our deputy, city clerk Vin Nguyen, and the other employees of the city clerk's office.

They are the ones who do the professional work. I have been honored to be elected to be the city clerk, which is mainly the elections official for the city with some other, ancillary duties involved in that. But as a lifelong resident of Santa Clara, I have seen our city clerk's office. I've been involved a few times with it, and I am glad that they are being recognized for the hard work they do every day. This group is hardworking. As Nora said, they're small and mighty. I guess they're mighty small, some might say, but, they do a great job. And I could tell you from a citizen's point of view that the other citizens recognize that work too. So thank you, Nora, and the whole group.

Thank you. And I I just can't tell you how much we appreciate your work, on and off the dais for all of us. We appreciate everything you do, and you always have smiles for us even when we're difficult. So we do appreciate that. So we have a proclamation for you.

If you'd like to, we

can all join down here. K. That was the fun part. Okay. Alright.

Next is our consent calendar. All items are approved with one motion unless an item is pulled for discussion. Does the council have any items to pull? Councilmember Jane.

Thank you, mayor. I would like to pull item 3A for the parks and rec commission meeting of 03/09/2026 for a comment.

Alright. Anyone else? I have a question on three g. I don't even wanna pull it. It's, the flag raising for FIFA World Cup, and it said it was and I'm just gonna ask the city manager. It's, moving it from May 12 to July 19, which is after all of our games. Are we is that are we doing that deliberately after all of our games?

Mayor, it's not moving it. It is authorizing the displaying of the flag for that entire period.

Oh, okay. I thank you. I'm glad I didn't pull it. Thank you. Okay. I thought we were moving it to after our games. I'm like, why would we do that? That didn't make any sense to me. Okay. Is there anyone else? Any member of the public want to, pull an item? Alright. Council, you all know what to do.

I'd like to make a motion.

No. No. Vice mayor Gonzales.

I'll make a motion to, for the rest of the consent calendar minus 3AM in the parks commission minutes.

Alright. Is there a second?

Second.

Alright. We have a motion by vice mayor Gonzales, second by council member Jane. The consent calendar minus three a. We have to have a roll call vote.

Council member board member Shahal? Yes. Council member board member Hardy? Yes.

Council member board member Jane?

Yes.

Council member board member Cox?

Yes.

Vice mayor, vice chair Gonzales?

Yes.

Mayor and chair Gilmore? Yes. And council member board member Park is absent. Thank you.

It passes six to zero with those present. Thank you. Public presentations. City clerk, do you have a list? If anyone wants to make a pub public presentation, please come forward.

Welcome. Good evening.

I will be time donated to me from Fred who's online. Hey. Good evening, everyone. Former council member here, Anthony Becker. Public service is supposed to be about the public good and transparency, accountability, and doing what's right, right, Even when it's uncomfortable.

Correct? That's the standard this council should be held to, and it's the standard the the public expects. I've been coming to council the last several council meetings with one simple goal, to get an item agendized. That request started on February 10. Here we are, May 5 May 5, Cinco de Mayo.

And still, no action from this council nor the city manager on an issue that goes directly to public trust and the integrity of this body, which we keep talking about. I have asked repeatedly for an agenda item calling for the real investigation into the 05/07/2024 FIFA disclosure that appeared days later in the San Francisco Chronicle. At the time, I raised serious concerns about the integrity of that investigation, specifically, it seemed deliberately avoiding looking at everyone who's in that room, including the council members. And let's be clear about what happened in that room. While others were not taking notes, mayor Gilmore was.

She was actively writing things down and, at times, asking the city attorney to repeat lines, same lines that ended up in the press. This matters. Those details matter when we're talking about information that could have been captured and later disclosed. When When I pressed the city manager on why the city employees were being investigated and from what I recall him saying, to the extent of, you know, she's just going to lie, referring to the mayor. So I have to ask, was the reasoning for not pursuing the truth fear, basically?

Because if that's the case, that's a serious problem. And to be clear, this is not personal towards the city manager or staff. I believe he and others are in a very difficult position, but accountability is still responsibility of this council, city attorney, and city leadership as a whole. Now there's another layer of urgency. At one last council meeting, council member Jane raised an important issue tied directly to my request, public records retention.

Those those records are subject to two year retention policy, which is May 7, just two days away from now. How convenient. When those records could be gone, I, as myself, put a public records request in. And if you can go try to find that. And I know for a fact that there are emails specifically from me to the city manager raising those concerns about only why city employees were investigated and not members of the city council.

Those records matter. And if they disappear, so does part of the truth. Since then, silence, no movement, no answers, and, frankly, it follows a pattern. The same silence I've seen for other serious issues, ethics concerns involving the mayor's adviser, ethics adviser, meth injecting, questionable nonprofit dark money violations, legal matters informing involving former elected officials trying to run for mayor, and even a district attorney who appears more focused on campaigning and citing the mayor's blog rather than the real concerns raised in this city. Meanwhile, distraction delays take center stage while the core issue here remains.

Let's not lose sight of that core issue. A disclosure happened, information from a closed session end up in the press, that's a breach. And the investigation into that focused only on city staff, though the circumstances suggested otherwise. At this point, the public good outweighs any claims of confidentiality. Public already knows about the disclosure, the aftermath, and the information that was released. They what they don't have accountability is the real concerns that the city is protecting certain members of this council. So, again, I've been asking, do we spend taxpayer money to investigate something that was never meant to find the truth? Are we applying accountability selectively? And are there potential Brown Act violations being ignored? Are we protecting one person?

So, again, for the seventh time, I'm formally requesting that the asylum be a genesis for public discussion, leading a truly invest independent investigation, one that has authority to examine everybody who's present in closed session, and one that happened and and after the individual is held accountable. No exceptions. A straightforward decision. And until that happens, this issue still remains in salt resolved. And I'll and I have another item I do wanna talk about very quickly, which is I'll close with this as an experience on this council and what I continue to witness is exactly why I'm here.

What started as a long term effort to con to document and understand local government has only reinforced the lack of action we continue to see. The other item is about public records request twenty six dash four twelve. For March 24 meeting, I requested information about video from the front the area front over here. In the video, someone accused me and my husband of harassment. When I got the information from the city in that public records request, the video looked like it was altered. There was three minutes missing. I then ended up following up on that correspondence. Wait. What why did this happen? The city responded with this camera stopped when the movements were too small for the camera to pick up due to its motion sensing setting.

The retention period for city hall cameras is thirty days, so we are unable to see the video from that date. The they have reference that go back to the original PRA that I filed, which is funny because three minutes are missing. I'm, you know, in film. I know all about that. I know editing.

Three minutes are missing. And when we talk about, you know, three no no motion was happening in there. Well, there's a person from the 40 niner standing in there unless he's the, perfect person for the mannequin freeze challenge and not moving, then something was happening, including people who were accusing us of harassing them in the lobby area. So the city should start putting cameras outside and really investing into maybe some better security cameras because three minutes missing out of a video is a lot of questions. And I do have a lot of concerns and questions about that because it seems like every time that there's an accusation, and myself or others on this city council in the past have gone to prove it, things are always missing. So I'd start questioning that. Thank you, everybody, and have a great evening.

Thank you very much. Next, we have, Mary. Go ahead, Mary. Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes. We can. Go ahead, please.

Good evening, members of the council. We are now three years past approval of the precise plan, and the city is still stuck in neutral. The nexus study sometimes or something that should have been completed last year still is not finished. Worse, serious questions have been raised about whether the firm hired by the city even meets the qualifications necessary to perform the work properly. That should concern every resident, every policymaker in this room.

At the same time, the RFP process appears to be falling into the exact same cycle that has stalled this project for years, controversy, delays, confusion, and a lack of public trust. Instead of momentum, the community sees another process becoming mired in conflict before anything is ever built. And throughout all of this, the public has largely been kept at arm's length. Residents who care deeply about downtown have repeatedly asked for transparency, interaction, and meaningful involvement, not just presentations after decisions are already moving forward behind closed doors. People are beginning to ask whether this city truly intends to build a downtown or whether the process itself has become the excuse for endless delays.

Because after sixty years of promises and three more years after the precise plan approval, the public deserves more than studies, consultants, and process that that they deserve visible progress. Thank you, and have a good evening.

Thank you very much, Mary. Next, we have Brian. Brian, please unmute yourself. There you go. Oh, now you're gone. Is he gone?

Hi there.

Oh, there you go. Go ahead, Brian. Go ahead, please.

I wish I could've made it today. I'm sorry, but I had some lifespan at Santa Clara. San Jose is a city council. I just wanted to tell everybody thank you, and I'm glad you recognize the city clerk. That's a very, tough job, and I don't know if I can get this question answered yet.

But I have a report I did for San Jose about using manufactured homes. It's, like, about 25 pages long. It lists a 100 different, groups of people that provide manufactured home for emergency housing and permanent housing. There's a limit on how much it's a fairly big file to mail it to email it to the city clerk. So do I should I break it up, or I can bring it into I just didn't wanna make them have to scan it. Okay. Thank you, and have a good day.

Thank you, and you may wanna bring that in. Thank you so much, Brian. Appreciate it. Do we have anybody else that has a public presentation, something not on the agenda? Alright. Seeing none, we're gonna move on. I'm actually gonna put the consent item at the end so that we have so many public hearings to move ahead. So we're gonna take the public hearing number nine. Public hearing opportunity for public comment and action on the final version of the fiscal year twenty twenty six twenty seven annual action plan for the use of federal housing and urban development HUD grant funds. And this is the second of two hearings, and the public hearing is open. So city manager.

Alright. Sorry.

I'm moving fast. You are. I'm on speed today. I mean, super speed fast. Not on speed. Thank you. That didn't come out right.

I go in there.

And shame that you know what I'm talking about.

Alright. Thank you, mayor. You jumped out of nine. This is a public hearing, to provide an opportunity for comment, and action on the final version of our fiscal year twenty six twenty seven annual action plan for HUD grants as you noted. Important to note, annually, city receives HUD grants from CDBG and Home. The city must hold two public hearings on that process. The first one was held on March. Staff is returning with updates and revisions and requesting that the city council approve the action plan. Adam Marcus, our housing man our housing and community development manager, will make the presentation.

Adam? Thank you. Welcome, Adam.

Mayor of city council. As, as the city manager mentioned, we're here tonight for our second and final hearing, for the 2627 annual action plan. The purpose of these funds is to assist low income residents through a variety of programs and small capital improvement projects. Every five years, the city must create a consolidated plan to identify overall needs and goals, and we're here tonight to talk about that. In 2025, the city conducted a grant application process covering the first three years of this cycle.

Agencies must apply in order to be considered for this grant funding, and the next NOFA is tentatively planned for 2028. It requires two public meetings as we mentioned. There was a thirty day comment period that began on April 2 and ends tonight. The action plan allocates funding for community development grants, home home ARP, and local funds. And, also, I wanted to give you some updates in that. On April 3, the city actually received its actual numbers. So when I was here last, there were estimates. So we are very close. Our staff is really good at estimating these things. And there was a slight decrease in the CDBG funds and a very nominal change in the home funds.

So those changes are reflected in the version of the document you're seeing tonight. In addition, on April 28, the court granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the city, which will allow the city in the short term to process certain HUD funding requests. So some of these numbers have changed slightly since the first first public hearing. Again, for CDBG, our actual resources are 1,500,000. For home, 761,000, for home ARP, 30,000, and local funds at $771,002.39.

As you can see, each of these agencies is funded at or proposed to be funded at $30,000 using CDBG funds. And these agencies would be funded or are proposed to be funded using local funds. And we have a breakdown of our capital improvement projects, noting slight increases in the neighborhood conservation and improvement program to 671,000, and the rest are are here for you to see. And for more specifics on our NCIP program, two parts, the minor repair program with rebuilding together, $200,000 for ten to twenty minuteor repairs to homes. And for the major repair loan program, 671,000, which would help fund five to seven major repairs, for homes.

And with that, we have our recommendations. We do have, several agencies here tonight who are gonna be making comments, but we're happy to answer any questions you have.

Okay. Do we have any questions from the council? Councilmember Hardy.

Thank you. I did raise this last time. I was concerned. I called out one of our partners who I had used thirty five years ago and was happy with, but have had two separate situations call me and tell me they were not happy, were not taken care of. And I personally called them, called this entity and, had a bad experience as well and had to essentially then call out and say I'm a city council member, and I'm not happy that we're not getting anything.

When I read the report, I was a little surprised you went through the numbers real quick on seven and eight. In the report, it said project Sentinel was given 70,500, and there were only 18 households served. But yet according to here, it says 100, and then on the next one, says 50. So I'm concerned about that discrepancy in numbers because I'm getting that from the reports that I read and wrote that down as I was working. So there's my concern because as you see listed, that's one of the larger amounts, and it is under the housing situation.

And I do know of one couple that called them that were not given correct information, and I even knew the information. And that that is my concern. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Jane.

Yeah. I had the same concern about project Sentinel. I'd like to understand the accountability. How do we check accountability? I know when we do the HUD grants, those have very strict accountability.

In fact, the reporting is a little onerous in my opinion. But how do we, what is the process that we keep these organizations accountable? And then, something that I've been concerned about is, you know, we did the homeless homelessness task force a while ago, and one of the number one, suggestions was outreach in the creeks and parks. And so where is that in here? I yeah. I'd like to understand that. Thank you.

Any other questions from the council? K. That's those are the questions.

Thank you.

Before I go back to before I go out to the public. Thank you.

So

I will mention in terms of Project Sentinel, when we do get to the public comment period, Carol Khan, the executive director for the agency is here and has asked to to comment. So I'll defer to Carol to answer some of those questions, specifically to council member Hardy. But on the question about accountability and and how the city oversees nonprofits, so we do we do require quarterly reporting. We collect data. We get a quite a bit of data from each agency every quarter, and we review that data.

And in in this particular case, there's different types of services that they offer. So there's education that they give, and sometimes it's referrals and helping people understand what their next steps are. In some cases, it's more in the weeds with opening cases and really getting into more extensive work that requires multiple meetings and touch points and calls, five, ten, fifteen, twenty calls depending on the nature of of the situation. So we do we do look at those reports. We do prepare the report every year and bring it to council, the CAPER report that you guys receive every year.

We did actually meet after this council meeting. We did meet with project Sentinel because we heard concern from the council and the staff, and and they're very receptive to that. They really want to work with us. And one of the things that we were looking to do is really add some more metrics to their to their contract to be able to collect more data to really help us understand specifically on the responsiveness piece when a call comes in, when a call is responded to, and what the average response time is and have that front and center in our in our quarterly reports. So that's sort of one example of one of the areas where we reached out.

We were looking to respond to that concern, at least in terms of responsiveness, and we think that will that will help. To answer council member Jane's question about homelessness, we are in the process of negotiating completing negotiation with a with a vendor, and we are supposed to hear from them literally this week. They had to go to their board and confirm that they wanted to move forward with that partnership. So as soon as we hear that, we will we're getting ready to sort of bring this back to council as soon as as possible, which would be within a few weeks. So really preparing all the things we would need to prepare to bring that contract to council for approval.

But ultimately, the nonprofit needs to have its board give the green light.

Thank you. I just have to say in both my position as mayor and because in my other job, I'm a real estate broker, I have referred many to project Sentinel with very good results. So I maybe these were one off sort of situations, but they've really come through for people that have needed help over the years. So I felt like I needed to to balance this a little bit. Thank you. Alright. So now we have members of the public if you'd like to speak. Do we have them listed? Okay. We're gonna start with Carol. Please come forward. Welcome, Carol.

Thank you very much. I'm Carol Khan. I'm the executive director of Project Sentinel. I understand that there are some very deeply held concerns, council member Hardy and and Jane and others, around the responsiveness, the quality of service provided by Project Sentinel. I really do wanna address that concern straight on and also give it thank you for this opportunity to respond and also provide a bit more of an overview of the totality of our services.

We have enjoyed an eighteen year partnership with the city of Santa Clara. We are headquartered here just a five minute walk away, and we very much treasure this city and the services that we provide to the many in need. First, to respond to the responsiveness question, I we we have not heard of a complaint this fiscal year around what you've mentioned tonight, council member Hardy. So I wonder if it does go back to a time in January 2025 when we did receive a complaint through you at our office, and we attempted to contact that client who allegedly had called us for years for months to no no response. We don't know exactly what happened.

We wanna I wanna emphasize that every client contact, whether it's in the form of a complaint, an inquiry, request for assistance is cataloged in our database. And all complaints are responded to within twenty four hours, if not the same day. An investigation is conducted in accordance with our grievance protocols, and we take every concern seriously, whether small or large, and we seek to resolve the matter constructively. To date, we, like I said, haven't been made of any specific complaints this fiscal year. We therefore believe that this concern may be connected to a single complaint received by city council, last January 2025. I understand there are others, however.

Okay. No. There's no trapdoor that opens that you fall into. You look down, like, what happens? We have a two minute limit. So I think you got everything out, though. Thank you very much for that. Delinda, please come forward, followed by Pilar. So just be ready. Alright.

Good evening. Oh, good evening, mayor Gilroy and city council members for Santa Clara City and staff. I'm Delinda Yaskevec. I'm the program director for Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley, and I'm here as a representation of my team to thank you for your past support and to emphasize how important your future support for the housing security here in Santa Clara City is. Our critical home repairs and safety modifications not only restore healthy living environments and improve the quality of life for each recipient, but our work strengthens neighborhoods, fosters connections, and preserves the culture and economic diversity of our community, all, all for a relatively low investment while at the same time saving our community costs that far surpass the cost of those repairs.

Our clients are long time Santa Clara residents who've given so much to this community. 75% of our Santa Clara recipients are either extremely low or very low income, and that's 50% or below the median income for Santa Clara County, with our average family bringing in just $43,000 per year. We are helping meet the city's goal of assisting the lowest income residents as these residents tend to experience housing insecurity at a, more disproportionate rate. Your support for the work of Rebuilding Together directly addresses your annual action plans, goals to assist in the preservation of affordable housing for low income and special needs households. Seventy five percent of our clients are older adults, and forty three have a registered disability.

Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley has committed the last thirty five years to preserving and protecting our current housing stock. Our work of stabilizing homes supports generations supports generational wealth by reducing the risk of disasters.

Thank you very much. Palar? Is Palar here? Thought I saw her. Is she online? Online. Pilar, go ahead.

Great. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Okay. Perfect. Good evening, mayor, city council. I'm Pilar Furlong with Bill Wilson Center. I, as a longtime recipient of CDBG funds from the city of Santa Clara, I was very happy to hear staff say that they had just gotten the allocation notice from HUD, and it sounded positive like things were gonna be moving forward.

I did just wanna say thank you to the staff for taking some of my comments from the last meeting into account and some changes that were made on the draft plan. I did have a question, however. I noticed when staff was speaking, they were mentioning that many of the public service grants for CDBG and also perhaps one that is in the general fund for Bill Wilson Center was gonna be at the $30,000 level. But when I'm looking at the document on page 17 and page 20, it says 36,000, and I just wasn't sure about about that difference. And so I was hoping that that could be addressed.

And, otherwise, I I encourage you to adopt the plan so we can continue funding public services for the residents in Santa Clara. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll have our staff address that at the at the end of the public public comments. Brian, go go ahead, Brian.

Hello again. I I wish I was there today because I wanted to ask if those agencies they do really good, I do hope you support the work they do. If they need any kind of volunteer help, I would love to help out. I'm doing I'm good with computers, AI, word, and all that other great stuff. Anyways, thanks for the work they do, and thank you for your con you know, people brought up the concerns about some of the, the the way they have a good process for dealing with complaints too. That's important for accountability. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Alma? Is Alma here? Online. Go ahead, Alma.

Yes. Hi. Can you guys hear me?

Yes. We can.

Wonderful. I would just like to address the council and state that, you know, this last year has been quite difficult since we were unable to get the CDBG grant. Luckily, we've been able to find some funding that has been able to help supplement, but it was definitely difficult. And I'm thankful that we're here at this day being able to discuss this upcoming funding round. And I really do appreciate how much the city does help, especially when it comes to the services for the seniors since they themselves are struggling, especially during this particular administration time.

And I have been able to, speak to many seniors within Santa Clara and within the surrounding service areas that we also do provide, how much they are struggling. And so I'm just really thankful that you guys are help supporting our services. And I'd also like to mention that I have recommended multiple seniors to Project Sentinel, and they have helped. So in relations to maybe this one off situation, I have experienced great, help within Project Sentinel, and I'm thankful for all of these entities that are helping our low income, underserved community members. And thank you again to the city and to the city council for help supporting us for this

following year. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Alma. Georgia.

Good evening. Georgia Basile, directing attorney of senior adults legal assistance. I wanted to let you know that SALA provides free legal services to Santa Clara residents 60 or older targeting clients that are low income or at risk of abuse or loss of independence. We are recommended for funding in the action plan before you. This funding will support the expanded availability of our services to your elder residents.

We provide our services locally at monthly appointment sessions at Santa Clara Senior Center and by phone for clients that cannot leave their homes or with emergencies. We address a range of critical matters impacting our clients' lives. We address income and security by assisting clients with legal problems regarding public benefits they depend on to meet their needs, Social Security, SSI, Medicare, and Medi Cal. We address housing instability by assisting clients worried about eviction, clients needing reasonable accommodation in their housing, or clients whose housing is otherwise in jeopardy. And we address elder abuse and domestic violence by assisting clients that are victims of abuse, usually by someone living in their homes or someone they know such as adult children, grandchildren, caregivers, even tenants renting rooms in their homes.

And often, this involves obtaining restraining orders to prevent physical abuse. When we can't charge fees for our services or accept fee generating cases, The primary way we support our services is through grants like CDBG. So in this current climate, your funding is more critical than ever to enable us to provide the highest level of service possible. So we hope you will support the action plan recommendation. I do wanna mention that we also submitted, more details and written comments earlier today via email, and we will also be doing outreach, and tabling at your senior center at the LiveLong and Health and Wellness Fair on May 14, so please stop by and say hello. Thank you.

Thank you for that as well. Thank you, Georgia. Do I have anyone else here that would like to speak on this issue? City attorney, do I need a motion to close public hearing? Councilmember Jane, your lights

on? Thank you, mayor. Yeah. I just had some comments.

I just want a motion to close the public hearing.

Okay. I'll make a motion to close the public hearing.

Alright. We have a motion by council member Jane, second by vice mayor Gonzales to close public hearing.

Council member Shahal? Yes. Council member Hardy? Yes. Council member Park?

Yes.

Council member Jane?

Yes.

Council member Cox? Yes. Vice mayor Gonzales? Yes. Mayor Gilmore?

Yes. So that passes unanimously. Thank you. Before council member Jane, your comments, I was gonna ask staff if they could address, Bill Wilson Center's comment, question about the funding thirty year 36,000.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. The number is 30,000. We believe the, center was looking at a prior draft that had draft numbers in it based on a prior allocation estimate. The estimate here is 30,000 from the general fund. Bill Wilson Center is also funded from another pot, of money, but the amount in this one is 30,000.

Thank you. So that was Pilar's question. Thank you very much. Councilmember Jay.

Yeah. The reason why I pulled this item earlier was because I really appreciate the organizations coming and talking about your services. It's important for the public to know what's out there, what's available. In the past years ago, this process was run through the Citizens Advisory Committee, and, various nonprofits would come to the Citizens Advisory Committee. We have extensive discussions about services and such, And, I think it's important to have the public hear, what you offer.

I just wanted to comment. I know Brian Darby would like to volunteer, and I know rebuilding together relies on volunteers to make repairs to people's homes. So, that's a good connection. And anyone out there who would like to volunteer with pre building together, you can install grab bars or, you know, fix ramps for, older people and such. So, anyone out there, please volunteer. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Hardy?

Thank you. So many of these do wonderful work, and we follow-up on this all the time. I will say that I have or I hope we'll be bringing it soon, but I have been working with a group called Just Serve where our nonprofits can put their needs, whether they're specific or if they're for, an ongoing for volunteers so that can show up and our local people who would like to help and have wonderful skills could be of use and service to a lot of our nonprofits. Thank you.

And thank you everyone for your all of your comments this evening. It's so difficult. I wish we had a lot more money to give out because all of your organizations are so worthy, and you give back so much to our community. So thank you for that. I'm looking for a motion for staff recommendation. Council member Park?

Yeah. So I just wanna say thank you very much for coming out. Like, I I, will repeat council member Jane's comment, which is it's really nice that people get to hear about, these services. I remember when the CAC, when the citizen's advisory committee would be would, do the reviews for the grants for CDBG and other, and there was a lot of discussion. We would have people services come talk.

We'd have a lot of discussion with residents. I would really like to see that kind of discussion happen again. I do understand that we will have a more efficient process with two meetings per year to go over the grants, but I think that the CAC meetings did more than just go over the grants. They also, marketed the services to the people, and we invited people and they could they they could, talk about these. We'd have the same discussion we have in council, but we'd have additional discuss discussions in CAC. Also wanna talk about rebuilding together. I still have a pair of slacks that has a lot of white paint flex on it from, painting a house. I remember the house very well. And for a while, people said you should get rid of those pants. And I said, oh, no.

No. No. No. I think there's a lot of good memories with those pants. So I wanna say that there are real you know, there are easy ways to go out. Just go out when, I wasn't even signed up to help. And I think that when I came to show up, they didn't say no. And I I like these kinds of services. I like services where we can meet the people and do the work, and then afterwards, got a free T shirt. Thank you very much.

Is there a motion, council member Jane?

Yes. I'd like to

Go ahead.

Like to make a motion for staff's recommendation.

Second. Alright. We have a motion for council member Jane for staff's recommendation and a second from council member Hardy. Assistant city clerk, when you're ready. Council member Shahal?

Yes. Council member Hardy? Yes. Council member Park?

Yes.

Council member Jane?

Yes.

Council member Cox?

Yes. Vice mayor Gonzales?

Yes. Mayor Gilmore?

Yes. And that passes unanimously. Thank you, staff, for all the hard hard work on this, and thank you for all the organizations both here and online. Alright. We're gonna move now to moving along to item number five, a public hearing, adopt a resolution approving the California Municipal Finance Authority issuance of a tax exempt bonds or financing of a 100% affordable multifamily rental housing project located at 3550 El Camino Real, and the public hearings open, city manager.

Sure. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. Quick intro on this item. It's required that you authorize tax exempt bonds. You have done these items frequently for affordable projects. As you noted, this is a 120 unit affordable housing project. This presentation will be provided by Adam Marcus, our housing and community development manager.

Thank you, Adam. Welcome back.

Thanks. It's affordable housing month, so I'm back again.

Alright. We got your picture earlier. Right? Yeah. We did. Okay. Good.

So, in addition, also attending tonight, we have, Nicole Brown, senior project manager with the affordable housing developer resources for community development, RCD. And here, I believe in the council chambers is Benjamin Barker, financial adviser from the California Municipal Finance Authority. Both Nicole and Benjamin are available to answer any questions, ethical questions tonight. Quick overview, resources for dev resources for community development is a well known affordable housing developer here in the Bay Area. They will be developing Clara Gardens, which is phase two of the redevelopment of the former Bella Vista Inn.

The Inn was initially converted to interim housing as phase one and phase two. In phase two, RCD will be adding units and converting the project to rental. Project will have a total of a 120 residential units with 64 extremely low income units, 55 very low income units, one manager's unit, and included in the 64 extremely low income units are 30 set aside units for formerly homeless individuals and families. The project will include a mix of studios, one, two, and three bedrooms. The development will have two multipurpose community rooms, exterior courtyards, and offices for property management and resident services.

A building permit was issued in late twenty twenty five. So we're here this evening because the developer has applied for up to $50,000,000 in tax exempt revenue bonds to help finance construction of the project. These bonds are commonly used to finance affordable housing under the Tax Credit Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act or TEFRA. A public hearing is required prior to issuing tax exempt bonds. Hosting this hearing does not make the city responsible for this project financially or otherwise, and conducting the TEFRA hearing is a procedural action, and the city is required to take this step so the project can move forward.

And with that, our recommendations are to, conduct a public hearing and adopt the resolution. And, again, we have folks here to answer any questions if you have thank you.

Alright. Thank you. So council member Hardy, questions only. Yes.

I will say I was there when the county opened that and talked with the very first resident who was thrilled to be there. My question is when I read through this, it seemed to me that there was a time frame that it would be low income and that would then sunset, And I did not see that in any of the paperwork, so I wanted to make certain I understood. Thank you.

Thank you. Council we don't answer quest we get all the questions first. Sorry. You must be new to our process here. Oh, okay. Were you paying attention? Okay. Very good. I'm just kidding. Then. We didn't have that. We we don't speak up either, do we? Alright. Councilmember Jane.

Yeah. I remember this project was interim supportive housing, and then it was gonna transition to permanent housing. What what is happening to the people that are there now when you're transitioning to permanent housing. And then, of course, we've seen with other, housing complexes, affordable housing complexes, there's always an issue of parking. And I'm wondering, how many parking spots are there and what is the plan if I know we're just approving the bonds that

This is on the bonds.

It's on the actual project, so keep it to the bonds, please. I'd to understand the project. And, what is the plan for parking? Thank you.

Again, keep it to the bonds, not on the actual building plan. Council member Cox.

That was exactly my question. I wanna understand what we are really, allowed to consider here. I think that's a question for city staff because, when I was reading the directive, it says it's an opportunity for individuals to express their views orally on writing on the proposed issue of bonds. But then it says, and the location and nature of the proposed project. So I don't know how much into the elements of the housing, the affordability issues we are going to talk about, what should we stick with right now?

So those are all the questions. Maybe city manager can answer the last one first.

Yeah. Adam, why don't you start and I'll supplement?

I just wanted the last one answered first. City attorney? Yeah.

Madam mayor

Yes.

The, the nature of the city council action, as you pointed out, is with respect to the bonds. It is fair, though, for the city to inquire as to the, you know, the nature of the project and the details of the project just so you understand the the, you know, the context and and what the proposal is. There might be other permits that are, you know, required to be issued in connection with the project that are more,

like, abuse oriented.

So we're down to parking spaces, number of parking spaces, like that level of detail. We're okay with that?

I I'm okay with that being a a question that's asked for people to understand the context of the project, but it that consideration is more appropriate for if there is a discretionary permit in connection with the development of the project as opposed to the issuance of the bonds itself. But Alright. Council can ask in to understand the project, but the nature of the action really is as was described by mister Marcus, on the, the issuance of the bonds and the the procedural requirement under the TEFRA hearing. Thank you, madam mayor.

Thank you. Adam, if you'd like to go ahead and answer, and then this gentleman can answer what you would like him to answer.

I was just gonna say that I think specifics about parking and and details about the project would be best answered either by

Can you speak in the microphone? Thank you.

Specifics about the parking would be best answered by the developer. So if if I don't don't know if they're on the line on Zoom. Yeah.

We had some other questions.

For the Tefra, I'd like to bring up.

Alright. Very good. Thank you.

Hey. Good evening. Ben Barker with the California Municipal Finance Authority. The we're the CMFA. We're the state we're the state issuer for the bonds tonight. So tonight, we're asking the city to hold a public hearing. The public hearing would happen and then the approval of a resolution. The resolution would approve that CMFA is the bond issuer. It takes away any moral, legal, or fiscal responsibility from the city. So the only thing that's being asked to happen tonight is just approving that the hearing took place and that the bonds are going to be issued by the CMFA, not

by the

city. In addition, we I'm sure we can answer some questions about the actual projects, but I believe the zoning and permitting and everything else has already gone through that part of the process. Again, this is a not to exceed 50,000,000. The reality is it'll be about $31,000,000 of taxes and bonds. There'll be a couple phases of projects being built. There is currently residents there. They're there. They're gonna be transitioned to the new housing. There was questions about the affordability period. When CMFA issues the bond, it automatically incurs a regulatory agreement by the CMFA, which is for fifty five years.

The project cannot go out of that affordability period for fifty five years. City staff did a great job of already laying out what the affordability will be through the entire time of the fifty five years. In reality, project will probably come back before the board in the twenty, thirty you know, next twenty years or so because they'll need to be rehab work done, and you'll do new bonds for new rehab work. So I I should probably let the, developer, though, talk about parking because I don't know a lot about parking. Is there any other questions about tougher financing that I can answer?

We have is it Nicole?

Yes. I'm online.

Hi, Nicole. Did you hear some of those questions, I hope?

Yep. I got I heard it all.

Thank you.

Yeah. And I can address those. Okay. So Great. Yeah. Ben spoke about I'll just go down the list. You know, Ben spoke about the affordability period. He noted the fifty five years of required affordability. You know, added on top of that, this site, the ground is gonna be owned by the county. So RCD is the developer is going to own the building that's on top of the land, but the, you know, the county will maintain ownership of, sorry, the LP will maintain ownership of the building, and the the county will have the ownership of the land, which will last at least for sixty five years is the period of the ground lease so far.

So that's another layer of protection on that affordability. Moving to the next question, I think there was a question about what's happening to the people that were in the interim housing development. Mhmm. So currently, the site is now vacant. All all of the interim housing residents were moved out by the March.

And the majority of those moved into their planned permanent housing. You know, the whole point of Bella Vista interim housing development was to be a transition place for homeless individuals, households, and move them into permanent housing. So the majority of residents that did occur, and there were few a handful of residents that were moved into other county interim housing sites. And we'll we'll then, you know, be placed into permanent housing once that's available for them. And for parking, so there are 83 parking spaces in this development.

We have surface parking as well as parking that'll be available to residents in in stack lifts, so mechanical parking stackers. So this is a fairly significant amount of parking at this development and will be distributed to residents on a lottery basis.

Okay. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you for answering those questions. Was there any other questions, city manager? Was that it?

I think that's it. Staff is looking into the approval, entitlement process for this development, and we can follow-up with the city council at a later date. I did, just look on our website. The first project meeting happened in 2021. The project did utilize state density bonus and s p, 35 for ministerial processing. And so, details can be provided, to the city council, but that may be one reason why you're not remembering the particulars of the project.

Right. Did you wanna say something, community development director? Or if you had any additional information before I go to the public?

Yeah. Just to support what the city manager just said, No discretionary permits were required. It did not require any council hearings.

Right. But we we all visited the project originally and knew it was coming. We knew it was coming, so I'm glad to see it's here. Very good. Thank you. Now it's a public hearing, so I'm going out to the public. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this issue? We have Linda. Go ahead, Linda.

Hello. I actually have a question, and that is if the county owns the land, does that make the residents when they move in when the project is built and they move in, does that make the residents only county residents? Meaning, what happens if they're school kids? Are they Santa Clara Unified School District residents or not? What happens if they are seniors and they need something from the senior center that needs to be have a, Santa Clara residence. That would be it.

Thank you, Linda. So city manager, would you like to answer that question? Do we have a county island in Santa Clara?

No. We don't. Property ownership does not impact jurisdictional boundaries. And so even though the land is owned by the county, they would be Santa Clara residents and able to receive all services.

All the services, school district, and senior center. Thank you. Do I have anybody else that would like to speak on this? I don't see anyone else online, city clerk. Can I have a motion to close the public hearing, vice mayor Gonzales?

So moved. Second.

So we have a motion by vice mayor Gonzales, second by council member Hardy to close public hearing.

Council member Shahal? Yes. Council member Hardy? Yes. Council member Park?

Yes.

Council member Jane? Yes. Council member Cox? Yes. Vice mayor Gonzales?

Yes.

And mayor Gilmore?

Yes. That passes unanimously. So now it's time for council comments in motion. Council member Park?

Yes. I wanna take a point of personal privilege. Like, I understand that we have a process where we ask all the questions first, and then we get all the the answers. But that doesn't work because in this particular case, the answer to council member Cox's question would have potentially generated more questions. And, I had raised my hand, and we didn't get we didn't get to see, additional questions.

We didn't we didn't have that. I think that when there are questions that can change, you know, potentially, get more questions from council, we need to consider that, which is why simply asking the questions and then stopping when, at an uncertain point when we don't know if other questions can be asked is not a very good way to do it. I think that we should answer the questions as they go. And if they those generate additional questions or if you know, otherwise, we have to guess in advance the answers to all the potential questions we may have and ask those all at once. That doesn't make any sense.

It's much easier in many cases to simply ask a question, get a response, and then move on to something else. Or ask a question, get a response, and ask a follow on question, which we would not have known about because we didn't know the answer. And I'm gonna say this again and again and again. We want efficient meetings. These are not about inefficient meetings. In fact, nothing in this packet or nothing in the meetings actually talks about efficient meetings. It talks about robust discussion. Me, council member Park. A of personal privilege. This is a point of personal privilege.

Council member Park, you're out of order.

This was a point of personal privilege.

Issue. This council voted on a process. We all approve the process. Process expired. Happy with the process.

Process. Process expired four years ago.

Didn't. And so you're out of order. Please speak to the issue at hand, which is the public hearing on the tax exempt bonds. If you have comments about that, we're happy to hear your comments. If you don't, I'm gonna move on to council member Hardy.

I'm gonna say this was a point of personal privilege, and I did note that because I do realize that this is not on the subject. So, again, we really need to look at this. My question was, I hear that there is a affordability period for fifty five years. We had I had somebody in my district, and this is also in my district, who talked about who had purchased a BMR, a below market rate house, when they were much younger. And they also could not sell.

They could not do things for, I think, a period of fifty years. But even thirty years later, they were much older, and they realized that, oh, I need to move someplace else because I cannot go up and down the stairs that when I was much younger, I was able to do. And they were forced to sell because they could no longer sustain living in a place that served them very well when they were much younger, but now had too many stairs for when they got when they got older. Are there any ways that we address these kinds of issues? Do we have, other remedies?

Because they couldn't afford to sell. I mean, they they sold and then they were put into much worse housing because they couldn't just do a a straight swap swap, and I believe they had to sell at below market rate as well. So I I wanna know how we address these kinds of things because fifty five years, we don't think about that. But I've actually talked to people who've owned, you know, affordable housing for a long time. That affordable housing, when they were 40, didn't work for them when they were 60 or 70. Thank you.

City manager, I believe this is rental housing we're talking about. So I don't know if you wanna answer that question and explain about the rental housing.

But But at some point, if there's rental this is my question. Even if there are rentals, at some point, they'll be forced to move someplace else. And and what kind of accommodations will they where will there be if, for example, personal situations change?

Sure. So high level response, not to delve into the specifics because important to note, staff is actually looking into our affordability covenants and will be coming back to the city council, with recommendations. In general, affordability covered covenants for thirty to fifty years are actually more common and are are best practice. The average price to build a unit in what's called an industry sort of the cost per door is over a million dollars. And so when we we being the the developer complying with city codes to provide inclusionary zoning provides that level of subsidy, having a covenant that maintains that subsidy that may even outlast that individual tenant is considered to be a best practice because that is quite a significant subsidy to provide for one person.

And so if you have a very short, period, that one person, while they may have met the criteria at one point, if their income rises, they may potentially be enriched by several $100,000, given given the market rate. And so it is the best practice to have thirty to to fifty year affordability covenants. We are actually looking at our affordability covenants, and we'll be coming back to council. I do not know at this point, when, but I know that it's on the workload and and staff is working on it.

Thank you. Councilmember Hardy.

Yes. I was ready to make a motion for staff's recommendation because we have had the public hearing, and it's to adopt a resolution saying, approving the financing and affordable housing project, and it's called the TEFRA requirements. So that's my motion.

I'll second.

Okay. Thank you. We have a motion by council member Hardy, second by council member Cox. Council member Jane. Okay.

Yeah. So I had raised the issue about parking, and I'm pleased to see that there is a fair amount of parking there with stackers. One concern that's come up recently with some of these affordable housing complexes, at Keifer and at AgriHood is the number of police calls for service and and fire calls. So I wanted to, just try to understand, how we're managing those, in in a in a facility like this because this puts a burden on the city, when we, approve these projects.

City manager, we we're not managing this project, but I I don't is that just a a concern, or are you actually asking a question about this project?

I'm asking a concern I'm asking a question about this project. Yeah.

Sure. So

And it could be to RCD.

I'm sorry.

The question could be to RCD. How they're going to Yeah. Manage the number of

Let's ask Nicole since she's on the line.

Yeah. Definitely.

Since they're managing the project. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. We'll be the owner and manager of the project. We will also have, you know, robust resident services on the property as well. We'll have four and a half full time staff members from Abode who provides, you know, in-depth case management services for permanent supportive housing households.

Yeah. And we will also have, you know, on-site security as well. Security guard that will be able to help and assist residents if they're having a crisis or potentially step in if there's any events happening on-site. So we hope that that'll be the first sort of level of, you know, defense at the property to help our residents and, you know, get them assistance as needed. But, yes, you know, there's still maybe calls to fire and police as well for city resources.

And that's twenty four hour?

So the services, the it is not twenty it is not, twenty four hours, but it is is during working hours. The security guard will be on-site off hours and weekends.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nicole. Alright. Assistant city clerk when you're ready.

Council member Shahal?

Yes.

Council member Hardy?

Yes. Council member Park? Yes. Council member Jane? Yes. Council member Cox?

Yes. Vice mayor Gonzales?

Yes.

Mayor Gilmore?

Yes. And that passes unanimously. Thank you, and thank you for coming this evening. Thank you again, Adam and staff, city manager. Alright. Next, we have review and adopt the parks and recreation master plan and adopt a resolution approving the plan. City manager.

Sure. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council members of the public. You know, one of the things that Santa Clara does often and does well is advanced planning, literally taking stock of where we are and engaging with the community to envision the future. We oftentimes see advanced planning with our long range, specific studies and focus area plans.

This is a slightly different one. This is taking a look at our park and recreation system. As many of you know and will see in greater detail in the presentation, we have over 300 acres of parklands, five community centers, three regional trail networks, six baseball diamonds, on and on and on. But what we also know is that we are the large fastest growing city in the Bay Area, and there's a need to expand our park and recreation network. And so in 2023, you set about this process, and our park and recreation director Damon Sparacino will introduce the item.

We have our consultants available to support presenting the item for you today. And I will, without further ado, turn it over to director Sparacino.

Thank you. Welcome, director.

Thank you, city manager, honorable mayor, and, city council. And as the city manager mentioned, over the last two and a half years, staff worked closely with WRT, the community, and its stakeholders on developing the first comprehensive parks and recreation master plan for the city of Santa Clara, a plan that will guide staff and council in delivering comprehensive parks and recreation services over the next ten to twenty years for Santa Clara residents. And before I turn it over to our consultants to present the plan for council's consideration, I wanted to acknowledge key staff that worked on delivering the final draft master plan that's before council tonight. Former assistant city manager, Cynthia Bejorquez, Kimberly Castro, recreation manager, interim parks manager, Ray Castro, no relation to Kimberly. Tammy Orlando, former management analyst in parks and recreation, currently in fire department.

Lupe Fuentes, parks manager. Sandy Lee, Carolyn McDowell, Gina Saporito, Dale Seal, retired parks and recreation deputy director, and then, yeah, myself. So it's just on the list. But thank you for allowing me an opportunity to thank those staff that worked, over the last two and a half years closely with all the constituencies, and the and the community members. At this time, I'd like to invite, Madison Merrill and Peter Winch, with WRT planning and design that work lockstep with, staff and the community, on creating and developing the plan who will present the parks and recreation plan for council's consideration this evening.

Thank you. Thank

you, Damon. And it's good to be here tonight, mayor and members of council, and the wonderful staff that we've worked with these past years. We're here to talk about parks and recreation, which can you hear me well? I I I think it's good. We're here to talk about parks and recreation, which is I think doesn't receive enough attention, though there are so many issues competing for our attention all the time.

We know the multiple benefits that parks, recreation, and open space provides to our community. Tangible benefits like physical activity and the physical health that comes with that. Right behind that is the mental health benefits and then some secondary things that we know more and more about, around environmental benefits, resilience opportunities, even economic benefits to the community. So this means a lot, and it's an important opportunity, for us to revisit our approach to parks and recreation. I'm Peter Winch.

My colleague, Madison Merrill, is with me. We've been working with city staff closely, and we're eager to present the draft plan. I think we have a presentation that could could get rolling. Oh, I'm the one who does that. So the presentation will follow the same format as the draft plan.

I believe that you will have you have had an opportunity, members of council, to look at the draft plan. And so we necessarily have to go through this much more quickly, but there's a lot of material in it. The the master plan follows in the sequence starting with an introduction and executive summary, followed by a chapter on the existing conditions that are relevant for us to think about the community and the parks that serve us. Vision and vision and priorities, which is a summary of what we heard from the community, fused with what we learned in our tech technical analysis. Then we get into, in chapter four, goals, objectives, and recommendations.

That's really the heart of the plan, setting the direction for the future, and realizing our vision, which is about implementation. Starting with the first section, introduction and executive summary. Why do we do a parks and recreation master plan? Well, we need to understand, now because it's been some time since such a plan has been done. What are the community priorities, and, how should we actualize those priorities to direct, precious public resources?

More fundamentally, it's an opportunity for us to step back from the day to day operations of parks and recreation and look at the big picture, and then have a strong foundation on which to make those day to day day to day decisions as they come up. The process, at a high level started with a phase understanding the existing environment and understanding the community. We call that our resource and data collection phase. That was followed by under by putting together goals and recommendations, then an implementation section, and and finally the plan. But throughout this process and particularly in the earlier stages of the process, there was a lot of community engagement.

We tried to create a program that would reach a broad spectrum of the community by doing events in public places where people already were using light touch accessible methods that people could understand and engage with. We had these five pop ups. We did online surveys. There was a statistically valid survey that was a really important foundation of community engagement. We met with focus groups, sort of specific stakeholders who understand specific issues.

We met in in, groups of two and three with members of council. We we checked in with the with the planning commission, and so really a lot of touch points along the way. And overall, eight over 1,800 people were engaged with the process. Santa Clara today. There's a lot in this chapter, and I'm not gonna bore you with all the details.

I don't think they're boring, but we don't have endless time. So we'll just touch high level, but questions could be on on things that are not in the presentation, I understand. High level, we we need to understand who the community is that is served by parks and recreation. Fundamentally, important to our consideration is that Santa Clara is while it is sort of built out technically, it is a community that continues to grow and is projected to continue to grow even by over 20,000 people, during the planning horizon. And that's a lot of people that need to be served in addition to the people who are already being served by Parks and Recreation.

We need to understand the demographics of the community in order to, make sure that resources are delivered, in a way that is relevant. And we know we have a diverse community. It's becoming more diverse, and it's an aging community as many communities in the state and this country are. We need to understand the parks and recreation system. Santa Clara has over 300 acres of parkland, a little bit of open space mixed in there at Ulistak.

Otherwise, we don't consider it open space because it's quite developed, but we do have these three regional trail corridors and five community centers in addition to many smaller recreation buildings throughout the system. We also, as we can see in this chart, are able to inventory the many, many, many recreation amenities that exist in these parks. Chapter three, vision and priorities. This is a chapter where we, sort of synthesize an understanding of the technical analysis that I've summarized very, very briefly and what we heard from the community. And I'm just gonna touch on a few of the elements of that.

First, this chart this set of charts is a is a sort of, greatest hits moment from our the results of the statistically valid survey. They are showing what we call priority investment rating, which is a combination of importance and unmet need. So residents who responded to the survey, households who responded to the survey, they responded to questions on many, many, many amenities and recreation programs and indicated their level of importance and their level of unmet need. So this these charts kind of fuse those two questions, and I'm just showing the the sort of top priorities from the perspective of the community of that engagement, that survey. In terms of facilities and amenities, those top priorities were multiuse trails, a swimming pool, open space and conservation areas, picnic areas and shelters, and indoor walking and jogging track.

From the perspective of recreation programming, the top priorities were fitness and wellness programs, outdoor recreation, water fitness programs and lap swimming, community special events, and swim lessons. So just bear that in mind as we will get, as we go forward into the recommendations. All in all, we identified these nine guiding themes. These are not intended to be in order of importance. We deliberately did not number them, but they are capturing what we understood to be sort of the main points of our analysis.

So these included I'm not gonna try I'm gonna try to avoid using numbers. Paths and trails, a very important focus. Walking is the number one participated in recreational activity nationwide by a long shot, and we definitely saw that coming through in the responses that we got from members of the community. So walking and other forms of exercise need to be supported. People need that in their in their parks and open space.

Maintenance and aging infrastructure. There was a relatively lower level of satisfaction in Santa Clara's parks. Well, there's a high level of use, a relatively lower level of satisfaction. I think people understand. They're understanding that resources are strapped, but there's also a desire for a higher level of maintenance and recognizing that there's aging infrastructure and things that need to be, improved over time.

Aquatics, has been historically such an important feature of recreation in Santa Clara, and we heard that being reinforced in what we in our conversations with the community. You could see that coming through in the survey results as well. Program priorities, in terms of recreation programming, in addition to aquatics programming, we also heard very high. I think this was the very top score that you could get on the PIR that I'd mentioned was fitness and wellness programs. Really important, as well as outdoor recreation programs, so people wanting to get outdoors and into nature.

Indoor recreation facilities. People were interested in an indoor track, a community center, indoor basketball courts, and indoor volleyball courts. These are actually things that Santa Clara doesn't offer. We're a pretty big city to not have those kind of recreation opportunities for everyone, though they though they do exist to a certain extent in the senior center and in the youth and, teen center. Sports courts, additional outs outdoor sport court facilities, but especially multiuse and pickleball.

Open space and conservation areas, just a hunger for more access to nature, I think, in a sense of the community being increasingly, you know, part of this, part of this growing urban region densifying urban region. Park comfort. While we often think of parks as being focused on active recreation amenities, there's a real importance for parks to be comfortable, appealing places for people to get respite from the rest of their lives. And then finally, community events. People love the events that Santa Clara does.

They'd like to see more of them. They connect those events with the parks and the public spaces in our city. And and so just kinda reinforces the the role that parks and recreation or that parks and open spaces play in community gathering, community cohesion. And I'm gonna hand it off to Madison Merrill, my colleague, to continue this presentation on our recommendations.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Peter. The guiding themes that Peter just presented really lays the foundation for chapter four here, which is going into the goals, objectives, and recommendations of the plan. So this chapter starts out, by setting the stage for the chapter with seven key goals that, really set the vision for Santa Clara's parks and recreation system. They are organized by key topic areas including parkland, indoor recreation facilities, aquatic facilities, paths and trails, environmental resiliency, and maintenance, and programs and events.

The chapter then goes into more detail into these key topic areas, first looking at parks and park access. So park access is distributed somewhat unevenly in Santa Clara with several neighborhoods not having parks within ten minute walk from home. Gaps, areas outside of the blue service area on the map indicated are especially noticeable in older areas of the city and along growth corridors. The map also indicates how currently planned parks that are part of planned future development, the orange circles, will help fill some of these access gaps. And then the purple circles indicate what it would look like if additional parks were built in gaps areas, so indicating how those some of those access gaps could be filled.

Another way to look at access is from an acreage standpoint. Santa Clara currently has about 2.3 acres per 1,000 residents, and the plan establishes a goal of three acres per 1,000 residents. This aligns with the framework outlined in the city's general plan and also aligns with the park access needs from the previous side and also benchmarking analysis with other peer communities. This goal results in a projected need of 86 acres per 1,000 or just 86 acres of additional parkland by 2035. This additional acreage could be obtained in a variety of approaches including, acquiring and developing new parkland, development provided parkland, or through joint use partnerships with schools or other recreation providers.

Schools are a particular opportunity for Santa Clara. School sites include a 152 acres of fields, courts, and play areas. If the city were to develop a robust partnership with the school district that could really help fill some of these, access gaps in the community. So zooming in a little bit more and looking at specific amenities, this table compares the city's existing level of service for individual amenities that are typically tracked by the NRPA and compares that with national average and also the community's priority as indicated in the survey that Peter presented. It then establishes a standard and estimates the additional amenities needed by 2035 according to that standard.

So potential needs are diamond fields, multiuse fields, pickleball courts, splash pads, playgrounds, and reservable picnic areas. And, again, school grounds presents a significant opportunity to help fill some of these gaps. The final column on this table shows how, several of these amenities are present on school grounds and could potentially be publicly accessible through an agreement. Next, the plan, establishes park types for all of Santa Clara's parks and open spaces. These types are based on the park size, amenities, and just general role it plays in the community.

And then for each park type, standards are developed to help provide a guidance around typical size, amenities, landscape treatments, and other key design considerations. And the goal here is really to help provide consistent quality across the system while still having space for designed to reflect its unique context and unique identity within the community. These standards can be used for both, improving existing parks and developing new parks, whether it be the SETI or developer provided parks. Next, recognizing that school sites are a key opportunity within Santa Clara. The plan goes into more detail about, providing guidance for successful joint use agreements and also includes some key design considerations.

These include ideas around thoughtful fencing to make sure that the school sites remain secure during, school hours while also providing clear and welcoming access points with, clearly defined and consistent hours. Also making park sites more comfortable for recreation and students. Part, school sites typically sometimes lack shade, seating, and other basic comfort amenities. So there's some guidance around that as well. Shifting to indoor recreation facilities.

As Peter mentioned, indoor jogging track, community programming space, and a gymnasium were all indicated as priority needs in the community engagement process. Additionally, in 2025, Santa Clara had about point six seven square feet of indoor recreation space per resident. This is slightly below the national average, and several of the facilities are aged and in need and re of reinvestment. So in response to this, the recommendations for indoor, facilities include remodeling several facilities, to address, aging infrastructure, including the senior center, youth and teen center, youth soccer park, and other small park buildings, remodel and potentially expand the community recreation center, and also, constructing two new facilities. The first being a North Santa Clara library and recreation center.

This is currently proposed as part of the Patrick Henry specific plan and also another facility to provide a gymnasium as that is something that's not currently provided in Santa Clara. Switching over to aquatics. The key recommendation for aquatics is to is further studied and engagement to develop a comprehensive strategy. The strategy is needed to, first focus city resources to address aging infrastructure for aquatics, better distribute aquatic facilities in the community. This map on the slide, the blue circles represent the existing pool service areas.

So showing how aquatic facilities are really centralized in the central and southern part of the community. And, also, the strategy is needed to deliver less small neighborhood pools and focus on more community wide, facilities that have a range of amenities. So this could potentially be achieved by, first, doing improvements to the International Swim Center, which the city is already on its way, reimagining Warburton as a community wide aquatic facility with more diverse, features and elements, a potential new aquatic center in North Santa Clara to help balance the geographic distribution of aquatic facilities, continued use of the senior center pools, and also reevaluation of Montague and Mary Gomez neighborhood pools, potentially considering them phasing them out in the long run, considering their size and condition. Shifting to programming. So the programming recommendations really focus on establishing a more data informed and community responsive program model.

Key recommendations include increasing programming participation across all geographic areas, prioritizing staff time and investment in high demand programs while potentially phasing out lower interest offerings, developing a marketing formal marketing program and also a formal partnership policy, for outside providers. The maintenance and sustainability recommendations are focused primarily on improving efficiency and prioritizing efforts to to expand staff capacity. Key recommendations include aligning work plans with community priorities, having an asset management system that includes mobile tools for staff to use in the field, and in in supporting hiring and staff retention, for both day to day maintenance and operations and also to oversee construction projects, particularly for bond funded and life cycle replacement. So that covers the recommendations and the last chapter of the plan is realizing our vision. So it's focused all on implementation.

The main part of the, this chapter is the action plan which takes all the key capital and operational actions from chapter four and estimates their cost and establishes a phasing plan. So there are four key phases. The first is short term, which is one to five years, midterm, six to ten years, and long term, eleven to eleven plus years. And then there's also ongoing projects recognizing that some of these things require ongoing effort. So just quickly here highlighting key ongoing priorities.

This includes establishing a vision for and developing the new 35 acre North Santa Clara Park that's part of the related development, improving existing parks through the Kitchell report implementation and also through other comfort improvements such as shade and other comfort amenities, developing the planned trail network, and pursuing parkland, additional parkland through acquisition, development, and joint use. Key short term priorities include completing the planned international swim center improvements, again, already on your way there, developing a complete aquatic strategy and implementing new, high priority amenities and programs, which this spans both short and midterm projects. And then for mid and long term, key things are mostly encompass the, investment in indoor recreation facilities. So completing the remodeling the senior center, expanding the community recreation center, and constructing the two new, recreation facilities. So the action plan also established order of magnitude cost ranges for both capital and operational costs.

Key high cost categories here include new park acquisition and development, indoor recreation facilities, and existing park improvements. It's important to note that a lot of these costs can be reduced through partnerships, joint use agreements, and developer contributions in addition to the 2024 bond funding. And then finally, the plan outlines Santa Clara's current funding mechanisms and identifies opportunities to support additional funding. The key categories for opportunity include tax support, development, grants, user fees, partnerships, and franchises and licenses. And with that, thank you for your time, and I'm looking forward to answering any questions.

Thank you so much for that report. Is our director coming back? Oh, okay. Alright. Questions, counsel. Questions only. Council member Hardy.

Thank you. By the way, I thought the report was really well done and that the questions were asked in more than one way to get a really good picture of where we're at. I was especially happy with the ninety two percent usage of our parks and and people saying that they had done that. Now, to me, the low hanging fruit is to work with the school districts, The largest one in Santa Clara being the Santa Clara Unified School District, but we also have a part of the Cupertino down in the south part. And to me, that that makes so much sense to work with them over usage, and I wonder where we're at with that.

Also, we have talked about the park buildings don't get used that much because the picking up the keys, setting it up, re reserving it, picking up the keys, using the building, taking the keys back, it's has been laborious. I know I've done it personally. So I I was surprised to not see any kind of system that talked about that. I will say the indoor use, especially if we work with the school districts, we have beautiful weather most of the year. We pay extra for the sunshine, and I like to enjoy it.

So part of me is like, stay outside. But, especially with working with the school district, it would help with our cricket pitch because we don't have one, the school district does have two. And I did see that that came up. And do we have we've had a lot of requests for pickleball. And then the last one is the Memorial Cross Park condition. I went down there just the other day. That is our third mission site, and it is in deplorable condition. I wondered if that was a priority. I was I saw that it listed it as a bad condition. I wondered if that was something we're working on. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Chahal?

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, director and the team for the presentation. So I had the same question, like, school district collaboration. I have raised this issue earlier too. Like, we are short technically, if we our projections are three acres for per thousand, we are short by 80 plus acres of parkland.

So two question. What are our plans to fulfill that 80 acres, basically, short term and long term? Secondly, how we can proactively and on priority engage with school district? I know we have a YAC center agreement with them to how we are utilizing school district property on the Yak, but how we can collaborate to make sure we are taking this on priority and our residents are able to use 152 acres of the school district parks. Right?

Second is North Side 35 acre park. What are our plans? Because related project development is we are not definitely there's no definite plans for that. Are we basically bound that unless they do it something, we will not be able to do it? So what are our plans, if at all, independently build that 35 acre plan?

35 acre park, basically. How we can make it happen outside of related work and basically because that's our land, not related land. They agreed to give us some, I think, $5,000,000 or something for it. But ultimately, the city has to develop it, basically, on that. Use of technology.

How we can implement the use of technology to book having access to all the community centers or even the restrooms throughout the, city. We are lacking that implementation of that technology, and that hampers sometimes it's not even convenient for residents to make use of the facilities. So those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Jane.

Yeah. Thank you for the comprehensive report. The report states that, you know, our population is aging. No surprise. And our senior center is pretty heavily used.

I and the warm pool there, the therapeutic pool is very popular, but it seems to be broken quite a bit. I know the senior center, the report says, was currently built was built in 1973, and the new pools were 2007. So those are 20 years old. I don't wanna get into a issue with this ISC where we didn't actually put money aside to repair the ISC for decades. So as we get aging population, we need to really cater more to senior activities.

And I've been pushing you know, I pushed for the first community garden in Santa Clara. It's a great activity for seniors to get some outdoor time, exercise, have interactions with other seniors, you know, what are you growing, what what are your issues. So I didn't see any emphasis on community gardens. I know in the surveys, it showed up. But, the other thing is, you know, we have climate change happening.

So we should be actively adding shade structures to all of our playgrounds. The I was wondering, you know, you talk about neighborhood parks, and, you know, neighborhood parks are like you know, if you have a toddler, you take your toddler to the park every day. So you wanna have play structures there. So, like, for example, why don't we have a play structure at the Mission Library Park? You know?

So what is the plan then to add play structures to all of our neighborhood parks? I really resonate with the idea of not enough picnic reservations. I believe the only places that we allow to reserve picnic areas is Home Ridge Park and Central Park. And we need to have more picnic areas because if you're living in apartments and you need to have a family gathering, you do it in the parks. And you wanna be able to bring hopefully, bring a jump house if, you know, we can figure out how to do those.

But have your family, enjoy the parks. Absolutely, sharing with Santa Clara Unified. I mean, we need 86 acres of parks. I usually calculate land in Santa Clara at 5,000,000 an acre. That's $430,000,000 just to acquire land, not even to develop the park.

And I know the report states a 194 to 259,000,000 for acquiring Parkland. That's at $33,000,000 an acre, which I think is low. So we absolutely have to share with Santa Clara Unified, and I've mentioned this to the director, several times. Last summer, Santa Clara Unified at Wilcox had built brand new tennis courts, and all summer they were completely empty. So I wanna see those courts open to the public this summer.