City Council and Authorities Concurrent - meeting_joint

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the special meeting of the Santa Clara City Council and Stadium Authority Board. I'd like to call the meeting to order. May I have a confirmation of a quorum? Assistant City Clerk?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, confirming quorum.

Thank you, and we have two items for closed session this evening. City Attorney, would you like to read them, please?

Yes, Madam Mayor. Item 1A is conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation. The case is Shala Montes versus the City of Santa Clara. with the details of the case as listed on the agenda. The second item, 1B, is conference with real property negotiators. The properties are 990 Benton Street and 777 Benton Street in Santa Clara. City negotiators, as indicated, the negotiating parties are the City of Santa Clara and Santa Clara University. And under negotiations, price and terms for purchase.

Okay, I am going to be recusing myself from item 1B. I'll have to check on the location, number of feet away, but for now I'm going to be recusing myself because my office is at the Franklin Mall in Santa Clara and it's close by. Council Member Cox.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, I'll also be recusing myself from the second item as the negotiations include Santa Clara University, and that's my place of employment.

Thank you, City Clerk. Do you have those recusals? Thank you. Now we're going to go to the members of the public, and these are for comments on just the closed session items, and I believe we have some members. I don't have it in front of me, City Clerk, so if you'd like to call up the members, please, that would like to speak.

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. We have David Curtis, and he will have four minutes. He has time given to him by Kathy Kelsey, so he'll have four minutes.

All right, David, come forward, please.

Welcome. It's on. Oh, no. Mayor.

There we go, okay. Good evening, Mayor Gilmore, let me say it again, Mayor Gilmore, council members, and city staff. My name is David Curtis, and I'm a resident of District 5. I'm here tonight regarding the conference with Real Property Negotiations for 990 Benton Street and 777 Benton Street. I thought the City Hall relocation to Ag News was already a serious misjudgment, but this proposed land swap takes the situation to an entirely new level of risk and irresponsibility. Once again, Santa Clara residents are learning about a major proposal after it has already been set in motion. Just like the city hall move, the community was never asked, never informed, and never given a chance to weigh in. This is becoming a pattern. Failure to plan, failure to inform the public, and failure to seek input. Why does this keep happening? What happened to transparency? We are talking about the potential displacement of Fire Station One and Fire Department Headquarters, the backbone of emergency responses for the Old Quad, SCU students, and surrounding neighborhoods. Current response times are three to six minutes. A fire doubles in size every minute. Heart attacks and strokes depend on seconds, not miles. So I want you to know, how many people are you willing to let die or suffer worse outcomes because of a longer response time? Because I'm not willing to sacrifice even one life. And once a life is lost, there's no negotiation, no land swap, no development deal that can bring back a child, a parent, or a grandparent. We also have BART station coming just down the street. What happens when there is an emergency at the end of the line and our primary station has been pushed farther away? Has anyone evaluated that? Has anyone even asked? Measure I includes 58 million for upgrades to fire station one. Does the bond measure legally allow the city to use those funds to build an entirely new station somewhere else? Residents deserve a clear answer before any action is taken. Let Santa Clara University expand, but not at the expense of public safety, and not by consuming land that is critical to the well-being of District Five residents and Santa Clara University students themselves. And of course, closed session is the easiest way to push a deeply flawed idea forward without public scrutiny. That cannot happen here. Before any vote, the council and the city manager must bring this proposal into the open and engage residents directly. We need public hearings, not after decisions are made, but before this concept moves any further. I'm asking every council member to demand public hearings and full transparency. This land swap proposal should fail just as city hall relocation failed, because it is rushed, risky, and fundamentally misaligned with the safety needs of our community. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Who do we have next? Chris Nampoulos. Chris, come forward, please. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. As you know, under 54956.8, the Mayor and Council certainly have the legal authority tonight to go into discussion with regard to 777 Benton and 990 Benton. disposition or acquisition no objection to that whatsoever that's exactly why we elect people is to be able to consider those types of proposals on a personal level i think it's great to have the university expand i think the more they expand the better i think as we look ahead many years from now we're going to know that the population in the old quad is going to at least double probably triple possibly over thirty or forty years it could even be quadrupling But I think that really then comes down to the point because tonight's item can only be in closed session for the purchase, the sale, the exchange, or the lease of real property that would be used for or by the public agency. I came forward tonight because I want you to really be aware of some commentary that's in the League of California Cities guidelines with regard to closed session meetings. It specifically says that In order to have these discussions take place, you can only be talking about those very specific verbs. There can't be further discussion about what happens with the details of the development. You can't be talking about what may be happening on other pieces of property. So if tonight it's simply to receive a request from an entity in town, Trappist WSCU, totally appropriate. They wanna communicate, that's why. This is where they should go. And if the city and city staff wants to say, hey, we'd like to be able to sell 990, well, that's the second half of it, okay, fine. We wanna go do that, receive that. But if there's going to be discussion about the future needs for public safety, then that has to be done in open session. And I would desperately ask, since there's only four of you, if the discussion happens to merge off just getting the prices and that's it, somebody get up and walk out so the meeting at that point is suspended. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Next. Next speaker, Mark Kelsey.

Mark, please come forward. Welcome, Mark.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to address you on this subject. I was quite surprised to see this on the agenda. In fact, my wife said to me, is this a game show, let's make a deal, or is this a City Council meeting? But it does raise a lot of questions that are properly addressed in public session. And to me, to us, it seemed should have been addressed before this came up. What happens to the fire department? Where is it going to move to? How will the old quad be protected if the fire station moves out of the old quad? What are the plans for the property on the corner of Lafayette and Benton? Will that become part of, it's certainly part of downtown, will become part of the RFP for Blocks A and B? If not, will it delay the RFP for Blocks A and B? And certainly, closed session is appropriate and needed to discuss negotiation strategies and details, but I would, like others here tonight, ask that the council as quickly as possible have public hearings on this topic so the public is fully informed of what are the plans for the fire department, what are the plans for downtown, and has an opportunity to provide input. And I would ask that the council also ensure that Santa Clara University comes forward and fully presents their plans. To me it's somewhat ironic, two weeks ago on May 18th, we had the NERC meeting, that would have been an ideal opportunity for the city and the university to present to the public ideas about something like this and what the implications are. So please, let's do whatever you need to do in closed session, but let's have a public meeting so we can all understand what's going on here. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, the next speaker's online, Anthony.

Anthony, go ahead, Anthony.

Hi there. Former council member here, Anthony Becker. I'm calling in to, one, say that I do not support moving forward with the idea of a land swap. I think it's a really bad idea. Specifically, the university, I think, has had a lot of space. They take over a lot of land. I know that this was kind of an issue when before I was on the council and no one else on the council. Um, one thing though, that is, you know, I think the last person who did speak called it out, which was kind of, I'm glad that they did. And, you know, it's kind of a two fold. And I think people who spoken tonight, um, really made it, you know, significant. And that is the first thing is that this is normal to do this in closed session for stuff like this. I think this is kind of like maybe the first pitch before then you go out and find out what actually does happen. But I do feel that this is a transparent process, and it should be done in public. Again, though, this is part of the process, unfortunately. But I think that this is a very bad move, and it questions where would the fire department move. I know there's talk about the Republic site, what's happening there. I think Santa Clara University should start staying on their own land, should start developing more on their own land. We should start focusing on keeping downtown stuff for downtown. And I don't think that's a smart choice moving forward. But those are just my concerns. But again, as a former council member, I knew that we went into closed session for these kind of things. It's normal. Again, it does create some eyebrows, which I am concerned about. But you know, again, it is part of the process and I think people should understand that. But at the same time, I don't think it's, you know, people want to know what's going on. I think somebody even mentioned it should have been brought up the old Quad meeting recently. So not old Quad meeting, but the SCU NERC meeting. So, but I just hope that you guys don't support this. This is just, I think, as the other commenters said, it's just heading in the wrong direction. So thank you.

Thank you.

Those are all your speakers.

That's it? Okay. We will now adjourn to closed session and be back here at 7 p.m. Thank you.

What room are we in? Sparacena.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Santa Clara City Council Stadium Authority special meeting. I apologize for the delay. Thank you all for your patience so much. So 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 the 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. Assistant City Clerk, roll call.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Vice Mayor, Vice Chair Gonzales.

Here.

Council Member, Board Member Shahal.

Present.

Council Member, Board Member Hardy. Present. Council Member, Board Member Park. Here. Council Member, Board Member Jane.

Here.

Council Member, Board Member Cox. Here. Mayor and Chair Gilmore. Here. Thank you. AB 23 announcement. Members of the Santa Clara State and 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 that as a presiding officer, the mayor's 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 2.155.110. Thank you.

Thank you, Assistant City Clerk. 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 to allow participation from your home or office. Members of the public can still join via the link and or call into the Zoom meeting phone numbers 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 star nine 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. Those are reserved for topics 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 agenda now. City Attorney, reports of action taken in closed session.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. City Council did meet in closed session on item 1A, conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation, the Shala Montes case versus City of Santa Clara. And item 1B, conference with real property negotiators, negotiations between the City of Santa Clara. and Santa Clara University with respect to the properties listed, price and terms. However, there was no legally reportable action. I will note for the record confirming that you, Madam Mayor and Member Cox, recused yourself for participation in item 1B.

Thank you. Continuances, exceptions, reconsiderations, do we have any? Any from the public? Okay, seeing none, we're gonna go to our first special order of business. For our special order business this evening, the city wishes to proclaim the month of May as Jewish American Heritage Month. In recognition of the contributions of Jewish Americans to the cultural, civic, economic, and social fabric of the United States, President George W. Bush first proclaimed Jewish American Heritage Month on April 20th, 2006. May was selected for Jewish American Heritage Month in recognition of the historic 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America, commemorating the arrival of the first Jewish settlers in New Amsterdam, now known as New York City. Jane Fehrstein and Moshe Gott from the Bay Area Jewish Coalition are with us this evening to receive the proclamation. The Bay Area Jewish Coalition is a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting and strengthening the Jewish and Israeli American community throughout the Bay Area. I now invite Jane and Moshe to the podium to say a few words. Please come forward.

Welcome. Thank you very much. Dear Mayor Gilmour, city council members, and the entire city staff, thank you so much for the opportunity to stand here as a representative of the Jewish community, receive this proclamation, and say a few words. I know it took some flexibility to make this happen, and we truly appreciate it. We do not take this lightly that the city of Santa Clara chose us to celebrate the uniqueness of the American Jewish community and the achievement of Jews in America, of which there are many. Just a few examples. Levi Strauss, the inventor of genes, whose name is given to the stadium here in Santa Clara. Dr. David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine for his work on retroviruses. Dr. Baltimore profoundly shaped the California scientific landscape while serving as the president of the California Institute of Technology. Irvin A. Rose awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his vital research on protein degradation. He spent years as a professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. As many of you know, we as Jews and Israelis are going through some unpleasant and dangerous times. The immediate aftermath of October 7 has not only put us in a state of shock and brought on us a tsunami of sadness and worry, but also made us feel incredibly alone. Many people came out then and since then as true haters and many others seemed indifferent to the attacks, the lie told and the double standard applied to us. It became cool to hate Jews and in many cases it also turned into a great business model. The proclamation Santa Clara issued is one of the most important ways this kind of hatred can be fought. Recognizing minorities like us and their contribution to the country, the state, and locally is showing by example how everyone can live together peacefully and productively despite our differences. Proclamations like this make us feel recognized and welcomed. Thank you again for being leaders in recognizing the Jewish community.

Thank you. Did you want to say something? Okay, could I ask you to join us up here to present the proclamation and whoever you're with, if you'd like to bring forward for a photo in the council, go down please. Okay, next on the agenda, we have consent calendar. All items are approved unless an item's pulled for discussion. Do we have council members that would like to pull any items? Okay, I'm going to pull item 3A, which is action on a standard agreement with the California Highway Patrol for traffic management related services with a projected cost of $1.6 million for FIFA World Cup and approve the related budget amendment. Seeing no one else, is there any member of the public that would like to pull an item? We'll turn your light on before you start calling, Council Member Jain.

Yes, I would like to pull item 3E. That is for the Immovable Inc. and Walk & Talk International.

Okay, thank you. Is there anyone from the audience? All right, is there a, someone wanna turn on their light for a motion? Council Member Hardy.

I'll make a motion for the balance of the consent calendar. Second.

We have a motion and a second for the balance of the consent calendar without item 3A or E. So when you're ready, city clerk. Oh, no, we can, we actually, we're all here. We can vote remotely, yay. We'll save a bunch of time. Please register your vote. And that passes unanimously, thank you. All right, we're moving on now to public presentations, and these are for items that are not on the agenda. So we're gonna start with Brian. Is Brian here? Yes, Brian's here. Please come forward. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and Council, and thank you for having the public presentation on a non-regular meeting. I know that's not what you always have to do. You have all this written down, but I'm not gonna read it, so I'm gonna put this over here. When you read the statement of values, it says, and justice for all, I'm wondering, does that really apply to me or any of the people here? I don't have a million dollars, I don't have $100 million I could plop down and buy an election or attempt to buy an election. I mean, in the Massey election in Kentucky, they spent, it was the most expensive election ever in that state, even at the federal level because, Somebody at the executive said we're not, anyways, we all know the problem. Since Citizens United, even before that, there's been a disproportionate amount of people who are wealthy that can speak and carry a much more weight, and the gravity on this planet will fail before that changes. So I don't know what to do about it. I do know that it is frustrating, and so I think it's important to at least utilize this mechanism to bring that up. I know the people here try that. One other thing, I think we could balance the budget of the state of California or come pretty close if people drove right. That is something we can do something about. I was coming up here down Monroe Street and somebody passed on the left and blew through the red light at Homestead and Monroe because another person was probably doing like 23 miles an hour. When they went through the light, they were doing over 50. I live right off of Monroe, they always go over 50. I've been passed as you go around the corner of Monroe. One time, not kidding, going around that corner right before you hit Newhall, got passed on the right by a motorcycle, passed on the left by a car, and another motorcycle passed a car that was passing me on the left, all at the same time, they were racing apparently. There's been, since I've lived there for five years, there's been maybe in that quarter mile, half mile stretch, 10 accidents, maybe more. If we slowed down, which again, won't happen. I wish I was wrong. If we slowed down, we could save untold human damage, billions of dollars, and I just, I'm not talking, because it's not the police fault, it's not your fault. I'm talking to all of us. I don't know how I got that two together, but thank you for letting me say something. It feels better.

Thank you, Brian. Next, we have Wendy. Is Wendy here? Please come forward. Welcome, Wendy. Thank you.

Thank you. I would like to thank the members of the Council for recognizing Jewish American Heritage Month. And I would, as one of the members of the core circle of Jewish Voice for Peace South Bay. I would like to just, I came with the idea that everyone should be aware that the Jewish Hindu Coalition that left with the proclamation does not represent all of the Jewish community, that the Jewish community is very diverse in its ethnicity and in its thinking. And we wanted to be here to say, hey, Jewish Voice for Peace really represents what we consider to be a lot of the best of Jewish thinking and philosophy. And Jewish tradition emphasizes respect for people of all colors, national origins, and religions. And above all, respect for human life. That is the most important thing. Jewish religious writings say, every life a universe. Anyone who sustains one soul, it is as though they have sustained an entire world. Every single life is that precious. So we must live in a way that upholds the infinite value of each and every human life. And we feel that our organization does that and we would like to share that with you all. And thank you for showing the people of Santa Clara and its neighbors that together, we can all take the steps to build a community where people truly care about each other in all of its diversity, but at its core, because each of us are precious human beings. Thank you.

Thank you, Wendy. Next, we have Dina. Please come forward. Welcome, Dina.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and city council members. I'm Dina Saba. I'm a Palestinian-American and president of the Democrats for Palestinian Rights Bay Area, a club chartered under the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, but I'm here on my own capacity. i honor jewish heritage month and i support jewish voice for peace and the values that the organization represents represents which are unity equality human dignity respect for our shared humanity and justice for all people on our planet thank you thank you dina next we have becky becky here becky um okay was becky online

Oh, come forward. Welcome, sir.

Hello, I'm Joseph, Joseph Ostrick. Thank you very much for honoring Jewish American Heritage Month, and thank you for recognizing the complete diversity of American Jews, Jews of the American faith. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, and a circuit-riding rabbi would give me Jewish education every two weeks to teach me Hebrew. And one thing that really stuck out was the prophet Micah. I was taught to do justice, to have mercy, and to welcome humbly. And I was taught that my home was here in the United States. And thank you very much for honoring Jewish American Heritage Month.

Thank you, Joseph. Thank you for coming. Anthony.

Mr. Becker, we'll have six minutes. He is Saskia Online, who will donate time.

Okay. Good evening, everyone. Former Council Member Anthony Becker here. Public service is supposed to be about the public good, about transparency, accountability, and doing what's right even when it's uncomfortable. This is the standard that this council is being held to. So tonight marks the ninth time I'm coming to this council to ask for something, one simple thing, which is agendizing an item regarding the May 7th, 2024 FIFA disclosure and the investigation surrounding it. So formally requesting that to be agendized as well as the formal investigation with teeth and to look into all aspects of the situation, including up to the date. The request started February 10th. We are now months later and there still has been no action by the council nor the city manager. I have repeatedly asked for a truly independent investigation. The disclosure that then appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle from the beginning, I have raised concerns of the original investigation. that appeared structured to avoid examining everybody who was actually present in that room, including the council members. And let's be honest, we knew what happened. Council member Mayor Gilmore was taking notes. None of the other council members were. That information suddenly that was asked me to repeat by the city attorney kept showing up into the papers. Very concerning. The record retention is another concern, and I think Councilmember Jane brought that up too. We are already past the May 7th date, so that's a major concern for me too, that we are forgetting about those records and that maybe they could be disappearing. Yet the public hasn't heard anything. We haven't heard a clear accounting of those investigative costs, what the records were preserved, what was deleted, even what the true scope of the investigation of itself was, and who done it?

Who disclosed it to the San Francisco Chronicle?

So I know for a fact that there's been emails questioning why the only city employees were investigated and why council members only were. I even questioned the city employees and city manager, my understanding, and basically my concern was why are we not doing this? And I know the concerns revolved around the concerns that the mayor just might end up lying. The concerns about the mayor might lie. That's the biggest concern. So why are we excusing that is my question. Why? And I'm not putting people on the spot, I'm just really concerned. But I'm gonna shift gears for a moment here because we already know why I'm here. I've said it again, are we avoiding Brown Act investigations? Are we avoiding accountability standards? Was there incompetence? Is this just protecting individuals and just avoiding the public trust situation. But again, I'm going to shift some gears because today really kind of changed a lot for me and a little bit of a perspective. And I want to share it with a lot of you. Today I attended the court hearing of Councilmember Park. And when I attended that court hearing today, I saw that the former Councilmember, Teresa O'Neill, was there. And it's funny because Teresa O'Neill was coming to my court hearings. So I approached a former council member, and I asked, why are you here, Theresa? She says, I'm here for my friend, which is Council Member Park's wife. I said, oh. She said, just like as you said you were my friend when you came to this council chamber and was asking for me to resign following what I went through. I said, that's not right, that you're showing up to people like me in a Council Member Park's court hearings. It's kind of disturbing and evil between what maybe the mayor, yourself, former council member Watanabe are doing, I think it's just disturbing and disrespectful. And it says one thing, though, because then Theresa Neal responded, because I know that there will probably be another narrative, and everyone can say that, because I took video, and I have a recording of that, of my exchange. And what I said was, I said, beyond that disturbing situation, she told me, she said, I had Mayor Gilmour support you, and we voted for you on the Planning Commission. And you know what, I appreciate that vote that the Mayor gave me when you all appointed me to the Planning Commission. But it seems to me that what she said in that moment, right then and there, was a discussion about loyalty. Quid pro quo. Because I didn't align with someone's views. I mean, it seems to be, to me, lining up in this situation what Councilmember Park is going through and myself. I think it's pretty disturbing that this is happening in our city and this continues to happen. And when I was sitting there and former Council Member Teresa O'Neill, I didn't say anything disrespectful. I just think it's very concerning. And she asked me why I was there. I said because I'm there to support a friend. But I think it's very concerning that someone keeps showing up to hearings like this that are political enemies. And I think I'm evidence of that. So thank you guys and I really hope that you guys put this on the agenda soon. Because I think the public deserves some answers. I think I deserve some answers because it's about public trust, right? And you know, Mayor, I see that you smile. And the Mayor, you can actually do a lot of this yourself, too, because if you have nothing to hide, you can take action yourself, too. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Do we have any other public members? That's it? All right. We're gonna move on now to consent items pulled for discussion, and I believe I've pulled the first consent item, which was item 3A.

Madam Mayor.

Oh, yes.

You've got 4A and 4B, which are items that were pulled at other council meetings.

Oh, before we do consent items? No, I have consent items pulled for discussion. And then 4A and 4B. And then the other one.

So. Yes, those are items under consent items pulled for discussion from a previous council meeting, and then you would add your other ones as well.

Oh, okay. Well, either way. Sure. All right, thank you. Thank you, city clerk. All right, 4A, boards, commissions, and committee minutes deferred from May 5th. What, who pulled this one? I did. Council Member Jane, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. A few years ago, I was reading through the minutes of boards and commissions, and I read through the minutes of the Parks and Rec Commission, and I encountered something I'd never heard of before, and that was the Wade Brummell Fund. And I inquired about what is this Wade Brummell Fund? How much money is in there? Staff didn't actually know how much money was in the Wade Brummell Fund. And I asked, well, who, you know. So I subsequently found out that it had built up to about $150,000, and that there wasn't really any plan for how to disperse that money. So I think we've evolved our process for giving it out just for the public's edification. When we have young people playing sports in the city of Santa Clara, if they're from outside the city of Santa Clara, they're charged an extra $25. That goes into a fund that goes to scholarships to support Santa Clarens that are having trouble paying the fees for funds. So in this meeting, the minutes from three, March 9th, 2026, it says, and the commission approved this, program in the amount of $3,550 to reimburse Santa Clara Police Activities League for eligible scholarships from the 2025 softball season. So that was approved. And then the next item was program in the amount of $42,045 to reimburse Santa Clara Youth Soccer League for eligible scholarships from the 2025 soccer season. So my point of raising this is that there's been concern about field fees and how it would be unduly burden low-income families if we had to charge more for our fees. But we're very actively giving out money for scholarships. I have said from day one that I don't want any child to be denied playing sports because of their financial situation. And so there's another fund that we have. We charge 35 cents, I think it's 40 cents now, per NFL ticket, and that goes to a youth and senior fund that's actually put into the general fund. That's not on this item. I understand but that could be used for scholarships just like the Wade Brummel Fund. It could supplement potentially the Wade Brummel Fund so that we can then provide scholarships but the Wade Brummel Fund is there to really help our underprivileged kids to make sure they can play and that's the reason for raising this is for public education. Motion to approve the Parks and Rec Commission meeting minutes. Second.

Okay, is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this issue? Council Member Cox.

I just would like to add, as somebody who worked on the subcommittee for the Wade Brummell thing in Parks and Rec, i was a single mom paying santa clara sporting league fees uh and really struggling and we never at santa clara sporting heard about the wade brummel fund what we saw when we started investigating it was the same groups that were really using it quite a bit and at that point i believe our fund had grown over 300 000 and we were looking for a way to use this. So I think that year, this had to be 2024, we ended up giving substantial money for the swim center equipment. All that to say, while a scholarship fund does exist, I think that we could do much better at promoting it because I will tell you, people do not know about this fund. across the board, and it ended up being the Santa Clara Lions and PAL and the Swim Center, who year after year were taking part in that. And so I would just challenge the assumption that this scholarship might be available for all, but there is a responsibility on us to make sure that the organizations all know about it as well.

Thank you. Is there any member of the public that wants to speak on this? All right, City Clerk, we have a motion by Council Member Jayne, second by Council Member Council Member Chihal to note and file the minutes. Please register your vote. Please register your votes. And that passes unanimously, thank you. The next item is item 4B, action to authorize the city manager to execute an agreement with Colony Landscape and Maintenance Inc. for thatch removal and related services at the youth soccer park and approve related budget amendments. Who pulled this one?

I did.

Councilmember Jain.

Yeah so I was looking at this item and I noticed that as part of the Super Bowl the NFL had committed 1.2 million dollars to replace the grass on fields one and three and that here we are approving $550,000 to do the thatch removal, which would only extend the life one to two years on an expected life of eight to 15 years. So we're actually spending like 47% extra for a 20% increase in life. And so I wanted to understand how You know, does it improve the quality of play for the players? Is it cost-effective for us to do this? I know we didn't do this. I think we were thinking about doing thatch removal in 2016, but we didn't do it then. I just, for one or two years extra, it seems like we could just replace their field one or two years earlier. But I'd like to understand, you know, If there's something else we can do to improve the field without removing the thatch. I'm not a grass expert at all.

Mayor, I'll turn that question over to Park and Recreation Director Damon Sparacino.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council, Damon Sparacino, Parks and Recreation Director. There's a couple of different things in the questions. It will not only extend the life, but it will also improve the playability and the maintenance standards, the maintenance of care during the life of the field. There's a lot, we also add, and we do a lot of things right now in addition to what should be done, the thatching. I was thinking about this earlier today when answering some of these questions. We treat the Youth Soccer Park as a premier playing facility within the city, and it's a great asset for the community, for the children, and for the city itself, not unlike the International Swim Center, where it's a premier aquatic facility. And in order to care for a facility of this type, it requires additional maintenance practices that you wouldn't normally or ordinarily induct in a normal park or field setting. So I think in order to continually maintain the high quality of play value that is expected and that is come to actually from a city and from an organizational perspective where we pride ourself on providing that facility to the community, I think it's imperative that we look at it a little differently than a normal park facility, if you will. In that case, although we did not do it, and it is expensive, 10 years ago, I would argue that it would be a good idea, regardless of whether or not we ever saw another Super Bowl come through the youth soccer park or Levi's Stadium, that we as a city look at how we can better practice the maintenance of that level of service for that facility. The NFL using the facility and offering to provide new fields, presented an opportunity to the city to grab hold of and do it the right way, from the ground up. However, I think a good practice would be that every 10 years we would do this regardless of whether or not we saw a Super Bowl come to town. And maybe even come up with where we can alternate every five years between fields one and three so you didn't have two fields that A, you had to pay for, and B, had to have out of service for any length of time. I was also trying to think of how to liken this to other things we like to do within the city to keep facilities to a high standard. And I know that we have a repaving system. I tried contacting the, public works director today to say how often it is, but I know it's between 10 and 20 years, we'll repave every street within the city. And that means scraping it all the way down. We don't just put a new layer of asphalt on top. So in order to do this the right way, it does involve removing the thatch and creating the best possible outcome for the new grass that you're putting in. Another question that came up as part of this was how often would, for instance, the stadium at the 49ers do it? They redo the thatch and field multiple times a year in the main stadium, and then the practice facility they do every three to five years, which is probably a pro-level status. So it's not cheap, but I think if we look forward as we look at all the things we're going to be doing, to maintain our parks and our facilities, not just the ISC or not just our other facilities at the standard that we'd like to keep them. We should look at how we do things like this on an ongoing basis.

Okay, my other question was, the ISC, we never put any money aside to rebuild it. We knew it was coming. And that's a higher level as you said than our other pools and this is a higher level grass than our other fields. So is there a plan to sort of set aside money so that in 10 years we can re-thatch and re, because we're looking at over a million dollars.

Yeah, and honestly, when you re-thatch it, you have to replace the turf as well, which as I mentioned, it'd be good. It was a benefit that the NFL was here and said we're gonna do both fields, and so then we're trying to catch up with that offer and doing the best possible total product with the thatching. But yeah, if you were to alternate every five years between fields one and three, there's ways to mitigate the dollar amount, but it will still be high because at the same time you would have to do both. The other thing that we've recently instituted, although it's not a set aside, and dollars that we collect for services in the Parks and Recreation Department by and large go into the general fund. We do now have youth user fees as well as adult user fees for field rentals and all those monies go into the general fund that help the city look at how they manage all of our assets, not just the parks on a go forward.

Okay, motion to approve.

So this motion is seconded. City Manager, you wanted to say something?

There's been a motion to approve, but I know the City Council knows this, but just for the public, I wanted to note that while the NFL agreed to replace both field one and field three to an estimated amount of $1.2 million, it's important to note again for the public that they did not use field one at all. And so part of this is truly a community benefit. And part of the negotiations that staff did with the NFL for their use of YSP also want to just highlight the importance of Council Member Jayne's question. We did not have 1.2 or 1.7 set aside for this field replacement. And so being able to replace fields one and three in this manner with only us covering the thatching costs, we saw as a benefit. Thank you.

All right, Council Member Park.

Yeah, so I appreciate the answers. It sounds like we've got fees that we can collect, you know, that go into general funds so that we can use it for replacing, maintaining the fields, et cetera. I think that Council Member Jayne was asking, is it like if we did what you suggested, if we alternated between, like what would the cost be? You said the cost would be high, but you didn't go into the details, and I don't know if we've actually looked at the numbers in, you know,

replacing fields versus versus just the thatching i don't know if you'd have to i don't know if they they're separate things that both need to be done i don't know what the costs are for alternating between like fields one and three as we sit today the the cost to do all of it together would be approximately 1.8 million to do the thatching and the field the actual field turf replacement So if we were able to create a replacement schedule that alternated between one and three, you would basically split that cost. It's not exact. One of the fields is slightly larger than the other, but generally speaking, it'd be a good way to kind of simple math it, is that if we were to alternate between the two, a half of 1.7, 1.8.

I'll just note that that is today's cost. I'll also note that the agreement in the deal we struck with the NFL is that they're replacing fields one and three now. And so that's why we're proposing to fund the thatch replacement, which has to be done immediately. you can't replace the thatch without pulling up the field. And so that's why we're proposing to do it now, fields one and three. Now in the future, if we would like to stagger them and develop a capital improvement plan, certainly as the director mentioned, we can look into that.

So just to be clear, the replacement of the fields does not redo the thatch. We would do the thatching as a separate action?

Correct.

Right. And again, you said that it would be about a million dollars per field if we alternated about. I mean, it's 1.8 to 1.7 divided by. If you included the thatch.

Yes.

If you include the thatch removal as well as the field replacement. And you didn't tell us how much we generated with the fees, with the youth and adult fees, and I know that even Wade Brummell, that exceeds what we have in Wade Brummell, so even with that, what are the costs? How would we support this in perpetuity? Because even NFL won't be here forever. That's a good question.

We would need to set aside additional general fund dollars or other revenue. such as council member Jane mentioned the youth and sports fee or their youth and senior fee that comes in from the stadium. Right now, as you know, many of our rec programs, especially the youth rec programs operate at a significant subsidy. And so you're absolutely right. The YSP does not recoup enough revenue to cover its operations. And so we subsidize that. and so if we were to set aside additional funds that would need to come from a Action from the City Council I want to note that in your proposed budget that you've received and will be voting on at your very next meeting There is approximately 10 million dollars that are being set aside for future capital improvement projects. That was a priority initiative of the council to not just rely on debt financing but manage the budget in a way where we can set aside funds annually and so the proposed budget starts that practice thank you

So it sounds like we'll have another, we will have this discussion in the future on how we set aside funds. I mean, even the 10 million set aside for future capital projects won't last forever and not all of it's being allocated for the field. So it looks like there will be a future, something in the future where we'll have to, where our future council will have to decide what to do and decide how we're going to reserve the monies. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Wanda online. Go ahead, Wanda.

unmute yourself unmute yourself wanda there you go yes i had my hand up with the last item but the reason oh sorry the reason i'm speaking is that i heard the word seniors and fees and uh income and I haven't heard much discussion about that. And I brought up at the budget and also the Grand Park plans through 2035. about with all the extra general fund money and the money to have enough to do that project, that is it time that it's vital that the seniors are still paying membership fees to use the gym and the pool where they had been promised not to? And when I heard that 360,000 or 368,000 I was, you know, excited that it was being addressed, but I realized the actual membership fees are very much smaller. And if I'm asking you to address that, it's like $12 and $39 a year. And then how many members do we have? So it'd be a small portion of that that I wish that the council might consider with all this money around to not be charging the seniors. I liked what... Councilor Park said about, you know, paying taxes, but seniors have been doing it a long time, not a callback. And Councilor Jane said that wanting to support seniors and the mayor about the Mary Gomez pool going down. So I just ask for your consideration that if there's all these fees coming in and seniors are mentioned, maybe it's time to honor that promise of not charging for use of the senior center. Thank you.

Thank you, Wanda. Do we have any other members of the public that want to speak on this issue? Okay, City Clerk, Assistant City Clerk, you have a motion by Councilmember Jane and a second by... of Vice Mayor Gonzales, thank you. Someone's paying attention, you are, thank you. Please register your vote. And that passes unanimously, thank you. All right, going back to the item I pulled for discussion. Are we all clear on that right now? Okay. Item 3A, action on a standard agreement with the California Highway Patrol for traffic management related services with a projected cost of 1.6 million for FIFA World Cup and approve the related budget amendment. City Manager, did you want to say something about this before I ask my questions?

No, ma'am.

You don't want to say anything?

Well, the item was pulled from consent, and typically we have questions.

All right. So my first question is, you're asking for a $1.6 million to approve this budget amendment, but then in the actual item, it's $4.8 million. So I'm wondering, why are you asking for 1.6 when it's actually 4.8? And the second question I had is, I understood the total cost for FIFA World Cup, we talked about this a couple meetings ago, was eight and a half million, something like that. So if we have up to five million for just CHP, that's gonna take the majority of the budget for that. That's my second question. And then if you're asking us for a million six, but you really want 4.8, and we're only a couple weeks away from the World Cup, Why don't we know what we need for CHP? And then the last question is, you're asking us for a million six, but then it turns out you need 4.8 million. Does it come back to the city council for approval?

sure thank you mayor uh thank you for the question uh i will answer all of those in in one response versus parsnip i will also note we have elizabeth klotz our assistant city manager who's been supporting the financial aspect of this from the city manager's office very very clear answer As you know, we undertake a number of contracts for regular events at Levi's Stadium and for major events. This is a contract specific to a major event, FIFA Men's World Cup. The CHP is our largest outside third-party contracting agency, both for regular games and for FIFA World Cup. The estimated price is $1.6 million. However, because it's over the city manager's expenditure authority, it needs to go to the city council. In all of our contingency planning, your police department, that is the lead law enforcement agency, has done contingency planning. And if in fact, during the tournament, they need to call in additional planned resources, different than emergency call-out in the middle of an incident, but additional planned resources, one of the go-tos is the CHP. In conversations with the CHP, they have available staff that they can deploy here, and so those costs will go up. So again, the estimated cost is 1.6.

Excuse me, can you take your discussion outside, please?

If in fact additional resources are needed, this contract or the proposed contract before you would allow those costs to go up to 4.8. If those costs go up to 4.8, those would be charged to the Bay Area host committee as per our assignment and assumption agreement. You may recall that both for Super Bowl and FIFA, while we talk about a total estimated amount for public safety, it is not a budget. uh and the agreement has very clear um i'm sorry it is not a cap it is a estimate but it is not a budget budget with a defined limit right if in fact something happens an additional planned public safety resources are needed the police department has the ability to call those in this control this gives them the contractual ability to plan for that aid with with the chp And I do know that we, I don't know if the police department is on remotely, but, oh, we do. So Nora has Eric Enos from the Santa Clara Police Department. I'll toss it over to Eric Enos to fill in anything that I've left out. Eric.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Good evening, Council. And Madam Mayor, the city manager spoke to it very well. As far as I just wanted to touch on why we don't know how much CHP at this point. We know what we are planning on, but throughout this whole process, in particular with six FIFA games, we're remaining flexible and adaptable. So if something occurs, both in the changing political climate or something occurs during a match, We're able to then increase resources at the next game or maybe the following game. So we know what we're planning on. We have a solid plan. We just may need to increase if things change. But I think the city manager spoke to everything else.

Thank you. It's just such a big delta, 1.6 to 4.8, and it's advertised at 1.6. So that was my question. Councilmember Cox.

It just brings up the point again. I wanted clarification on this. So the initial assignment and assumptions agreement, if I'm right, the estimated cost for FIFA was around 11 million. So we've actually dropped the estimated cost to a near eight. I wanted to understand that. And then my second part of the question is, as was just brought up, the delta is very high. Do we have the numbers from like the CHP Super Bowl event that would say what they did within their targeted estimate to see if we will need to expend well beyond the 1.6?

Council Member Cox, you're right. The estimate is at 11 million. I think the Mayor said eight million. I think she was referencing Super Bowl or remembering Super Bowl. So the estimate is around 11 million for FIFA. With regard to the 1.6 versus the contractual authority to 4.8, Mr. Enos, I know you're on. Can you discuss if you have the data between what the estimate for CHP was and what it ended up being? I will say that this is not necessarily For sort of cost overruns.

It's really if we something happens and we feel like we need absolutely call an additional I think my question is just to see if that was the case previously with the Super Bowl and I think my clarification about the 11 million thinking it was a I would draw the conclusion that because we were asking for I think 4.3 for the 50% Payment due on May 1st. I would assume it was in the eight million dollar range, but that might you know be

Got it. That was the event day. So there was a difference between planning, training, and then event deployment expenses. So event deployment expenses, I'm going to blank. It doesn't start the day before, but it's a few days before it went. event deployment starts. So it's an $8 million event deployment expense, but there are other buckets that come to 11 million.

So to clarify if I'm hearing you right, we paid 50% of event deployment day things and not the total costs.

They paid, Bay Area Host Committee made an advance payment that was the formula for which was 50% of the projected actual event expenses, which is the deployment cost. Yeah.

And that's really part of the issue. And I know I talked to the city manager about it this morning. We have not had our dashboard updated since January. We have not had any information, especially public information on what has been spent, what has been reimbursed, what is late, what has been disputed, And I've asked the city manager for several meetings to put it on the agenda and it's not on the agenda and it has no plans to be on the agenda. So city attorney, can I do a 030 right now? I've seen it before where we have done it during an item. So I know what your answer should be, but I want to, I'm going to make the motion for a 030 right now.

I know 030 is used in a lot of different ways. And one of the ways it's- many ways and one of the one of the ways it's used for a referral during an item where the subject matter is related and so to the extent this item in general relates to you know the cost for the FIFA event you could ask for the council you know in effect referral a vote on a referral ask at this side and be put on a future agenda also includes Super Bowl in here as well

It does, yes, there's attachments for Super Bowl. So I'm going to make a motion, 030, that this be referred to the next agenda because it's timely that we place Super Bowl 60 and FIFA World Cup cost reimbursement progress on the next public agenda. The public dashboard has not been updated since January. The community deserves to know the status of millions in city expenses four months after Super Bowl concluded with World Cup approaching. And this is really routine financial oversight. So I'm going to make that motion. Is there a second?

I'll second, but I want clarification. This, I think, was supposed to be an agendized item. Are we saying that it is not an agendized item? It's not an agendized item. If it is not, then yes, I absolutely believe this should be. Yes, I would second that so that we can get reconciliation. Thank you. Council Member Park?

So I believe there is a big difference between a referral and a vote to agendize something, the O30. I believe that there is a big difference between those. I have stated in the past, when you have allowed O30s in the middle of public presentation, when there is a place for O30s at the end of the agenda, I have argued and suggested that The O30s would be held for the O30 for the place in the meeting for the O30s. To have them in the middle of something like this and to state that it's a referral I believe is disingenuous. I believe that a referral and a vote for an item or a vote for an action or a vote to put an item on the agenda are very different things.

I called it an O30.

Yeah, and I'm sorry, Member Park, we can discuss this further as a matter of procedure, but as I think you're aware, at your request, the 030 policy is actually being taken up by governance as part of your work plan, and so the distinction between those things and where it goes on the agenda is certainly something that can be discussed and clarified at governance.

I believe that in legal parlance that if you want to have we should have clarity before we simply move on with other items with an understanding. And I believe that this is not an appropriate time to do an O30, to vote on an O30. I don't believe this is the place in the meeting to do that. I don't believe that this is appropriate. And to simply say that we're gonna go forward because we are discussing this in governance and ethics is, I think, just allowing something bad to happen before we've made a decision. I am very averse to simply moving forward on things because we don't have things, you know.

Thank you. Council Member Hardy.

I would like to hear from council. My understanding was the mayor could place anything on the agenda and did not have to have a vote of the council. If a council member wanted to, it had to be a majority. But my understanding was the mayor can put something on the agenda.

I thought it was my understanding, but I found out this morning it's not. Yeah, it's not quite that.

What the mayor has the ability to do under the Brown Act and our policy is actually call special meeting, but not by herself to put an item on the agenda.

That's why I'm asking for this really routine financial, we should know the public has a right to know issue.

And just to clarify, in my view, in my advice, a referral to staff could be staff to report back. It could be a direction to staff to look into something. It could also be, in effect, what the mayor is asking is add an item to the agenda for staff to report out on a request that's related to an item that came up. So I'm comfortable and I've advised in the past when any number of you have made such a proposal that this process works. and is acceptable under the Brown Act in our policy. And if the governance wants to revisit that and reach a different conclusion about city policy, it certainly can. But under existing policy, I'm comfortable with you proceeding on this basis.

City Attorney, do I need to go to the public just on this motion before the regular item comes back?

Not for a referral, Madam Mayor.

All right, city clerk.

Mayor, if I can make a statement, my lifelong.

So, one, I think it's been appropriately clarified, and thank you, because I know when the mayor mentioned it earlier, she said that she has requested of the city manager to put this on the agenda, and I hadn't, and that gave the appearance that I was not following direction of the mayor, but in fact, the mayor, as I... Equitably administer the rules of the City Council the mayor just like all the other council members needs to follow the process To put an item on the agenda and so I think that we are doing that now So I'm glad that that's been clarified for the record. Thank you very much In addition, I've been informed by staff that the dashboard has been updated since January. It appears to be a date issue where the date of the update is not showing. It's not current.

I looked at it. The numbers are not current. There's nothing in 26.

bay area host committee is currently current on all of the invoices uh that they have received with that um whatever and i do i do know that staff is planning on providing the city council with a written update on this i do think that we are appropriately and effectively administering the contract and should there be a direction to agendize this on an agenda I will note that your June 9th meeting has a number, I believe, nine general business items, many of which are budget adoption.

And so, Council— City Manager, please stop talking against my item. This is for transparency. All you have to do is bring the numbers together and put it on the agenda for the public. I don't understand the hesitance. And if you'd like, I can go through the public to say why you wouldn't put, you told me why you wouldn't put on the agenda. So please let us vote on the motion and then bring back the actual items and the numbers so that the public can see are we being reimbursed according to the contract.

Madam Mayor, are you going to allow me to finish my statement or not?

Go ahead. Thank you. Go ahead, please.

So as I was saying, your June 9th meeting has a number of general business items, including a number of public hearings and required budgetary adoptions. And reviewing that agenda with staff today and the mayor at a meeting today, I don't think that we will be able to get through every item on that agenda. Not all of them are critical. So in your direction, What I'm offering you to consider is if you really want that on June 9th, absolutely we'll do it and we'll navigate the agenda such that if you are comfortable having that at a subsequent meeting, given that June 9th has a number of public hearings and budgetary adoption scheduled, we can do that at a subsequent meeting. That was the only information I wanted to convey.

I suggest that it go on the June 9th meeting. If we get to it, we get to it. If we don't, we'll hear it at a subsequent meeting. But I believe the public's waited long enough to get these numbers I know I certainly have. I'm sitting here as a member of the City Council and I can't tell you anything about the Super Bowl reimbursements. I know a little bit about the FIFA reimbursements, but not all of them. Nothing from 2026. It's important that we spend a lot of time and certainly our staff spent a lot of time preparing those assignment and assumption agreements and governmental services agreement. But now when it comes time to see did they work, did we get repaid, there's a hesitancy about bringing it into the public. i think that we should listen to the public from at least the last couple of weeks that we need to improve our transparency and i'm just asking for something that i shouldn't have had to even make and make an item for it should have already been on our agenda regularly so that we can let the public know how we're doing so city clerk when you're ready councilmember jay

Yeah, we had revised the 030 process recently and the idea was that if a member of the public wanted to propose something, they needed to get a council member to sponsor that, but we also had said that a member of the council needs to go to the city manager and request whether there is staff time and to do the research for that item. I've had 030s that have lasted two years. We didn't get to the 030s. So I have deferred to staff based on their resource load, their workload, to defer some of my items. And the budget is very critical. We have to get that passed by June 30th. And the budget will be on the June 9th agenda. So that absolutely takes precedence. So I don't see why this has to be on June 9th as a priority.

City Clerk, when you're ready. I made a motion to put it on for next meeting. It was seconded. Please register your vote. And that fails. Three to four. There'll be no transparency. Okay.

Mayor.

So let me continue. We're still on this item. Did we have a motion on this item yet? All right. Is there a motion to approve item 3A? Council Member Chahal.

Motion to approve item 3A.

Second. All right, we have a motion by Council Member Chahal, second by Council Member Hardy to approve item 3A. City Manager, you have something on item 3A?

Yes, given the motion that Jess failed, I understand the issues with the June 9th agenda. Staff is working on an update to provide to the city council that was going to be delivered via email. We will also format that and configure that for website posting and post it on the website so the public has the full complement of that information and the update that you will receive.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, so we have a motion and a second on 3A. We have a public speaker. I went to the public already, didn't I? Not yet. Oh, Anthony, come forward, please. Item 3A.

Thank you. Yeah, I think it's kind of funny when you're standing from a different perspective after being on the city council. It's kind of a laugher. When you see somebody consistently politicize something, that we're not getting the answers, we're not getting the information, and abusing the city manager, I think, in public, that he's not trying to be transparent. No, I think we are being transparent. And you know, it's funny that we talk about reimbursement. I mean, I wish somebody would reimburse the city $6 million that they lost for a CVRA lawsuit. But again, I guess I'm just counting pickles then, huh? So, but then they also, again, too, in 20, this is what, I guess what you get into, though, the concerns that the mayor has about all these costs. I mean, you were the one that brought the stadium here, so all these events are gonna be here. 2017, you pitched that the World Cup should come here. So this is what you get. This is what you get, and you can't sit there and act like you're gonna be the justice when you can't even be transparent about your own stuff. I mean, here you are throwing a 030 of hey, let's do this 030 right here, but oh, we won't do a 030 to find out if you leaked information to the San Francisco Chronicle. That you won't worry about, that transparency you're not concerned about. But I'm concerned that, yeah, I think the mayor's right. We do need to see how much we spend on the Super Bowl, how much we spend on the World Cup. But I am so tired of how it's politicized from when I was on this council to even before I was on this council. And it's the thing is, is that you brought the stadium here in the first place, you and your friends, everybody got on board, and the people that are on this city council right now didn't support it. And now they're dealing with it. And then the city manager comes in here and he inherits this mess, and we're trying to deal with it, and you harass him. You harass them like we're not being transparent. We are. You just politicize everything. So I hope maybe you're transparent on things that you disclose from closed session. Thank you.

Any other members of the public? All right, that's it. We have a motion and a second to approve that item. O'Brien, please come forward. Sorry, didn't see you.

I'm not going to, I just want to say I personally believe that all of you, including Mr. Becker, are talking from their hearts and are being honest, including city manager. Just as somebody who probably is very naive and just, I don't know. I don't really have an answer. I wish I did. I do know that this city is a great place to live, and we do want that transparency. We just have to believe the best about each other. I don't know if I'm being just too naive, but I just wanted to add that. I think all of you are trying to do the best you can.

Thank you, Brian. Okay, city clerk. Please register your vote. And that passes unanimously. Next, the other item pulled was what one was that?

3E.

Oh, item 3E, action to authorize the city manager to execute amendments to agreements with Movable Inc. and Walk & Talk and International LLC for providing event planning and production services to increase the not to exceed compensation by $100,000 for a total not to exceed authorization of 350,000 for each agreement. Councilmember Jane, there'll be no report. What are your questions?

Yes. Originally the council voted to authorize a million dollars for these super events, these IFA and these celebrate Santa Clara events. And so now here we have movable and walk and talk. The original price was gonna be $250,000 each. Now we're adding 100,000 to each of those. that comes to $700,000, so I had asked for a full budget for these Celebrate Santa Clara events, and what I see here now is that the general fund is providing $1 million, the general fund for non-event funding is providing $194,000, The General Fund for Employee Engagement and Morale is providing $100,000. And then kind of surprise to me is the Stadium Authority is putting in $1 million. And I don't think we authorized a million dollars from the stadium authority, not that I recall. And of course, as the mayor has said many times, any money spent from the stadium authority for other things eventually comes out of the general fund, because it's money that doesn't flow to the general fund. So I'm a little confused about this, and I'm also saying, It was expensive to put that event on at Levi's Stadium. There's public safety costs. There's basically rental of the stadium. I know it was very expensive when we had the Santa Clara versus Wilcox football game there. That was quite an expense to the city. and then the rental of the Convention Center for the STEM event. So I'm wondering, are all of those expenses accounted for in this budget? Or have we exceeded the budget that we had voted for?

City Manager? Sure, through the Mayor. We have not exceeded the budget. We responded to a number of questions from Council Member Jane earlier today that are in the published materials that you have. Council Member Jane, in regard to the million dollars for the stadium, that was City Council approved, or Stadium Authority approved. The Stadium Authority approved a million dollars for the STEM event that did come to the City, come to this body, and was approved. I think you voted for it, Council Member Jane.

I think it was, except for Council Member Park, I think it was a six to one.

I may have voted for, I just forgot.

Yeah, and so the total program budget including sponsorships and our city asset and marketing program is just about $2.9 million now. That does not include what I understand to be roughly a half a million dollars that I believe the mayor is working on securing from a company that may be able to be used for watch parties. It's really late to put something like that on. planned for an earlier concert event but given the information we have now we're trying to see if we can put that money to work for a for watch party events but the total campaign dollars there are 2.9 million allocated out as shown the reason why I'm not exactly sure about the

$2 million from the city is because I complained about the $2 million when we did it at the last Super Bowl, and the city had promised that they were gonna get sponsorships for that. It never materialized, and it ended up being two million, so I don't remember my vote, but if I did vote for it, there it is, but I had been complaining about $2 million earlier.

We'll go back and check your vote. Council Member Hardy.

Thank you, it was interesting when we were online with Ruth Shikata and explaining some of the FIFA rules that as long as a watch party was less than 1,000 people, there wasn't an extra cost, but if there was a watch party, 1,000 people or more, that there had to be a special permit. It just wasn't clear in here when we mentioned about the watch parties if, we were aware of that and needed to handle anything more.

Absolutely, and so in the budget that we have, we did allocate initial seed money for watch parties at around $50,000, and that was for exactly what you were describing, more small-scale watch parties in various neighborhoods. That was the initial concept. Again, I do hear the mayor is having conversations with someone to donate money And so there have been meetings of the EDMC committee where that has been talked about And staff has currently seen it is their program that can be put in place and I think the the concept is large-scale Indoor and potentially outdoor watch parties and there there is a fee for license process for that and certainly there are a number of considerations for public safety here and if it is on event day or a game day.

Nothing will be on event day, nothing.

I understand. And so I know those conversations happened. And so the game plan now is to look for having a watch party on a day where Santa Clara is not hosting a game.

Council Member Chau.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a clarification question from City Manager and City Attorney. City Manager, you mentioned that Mayor is working on to get additional sponsorship to the tune of 500K. So in the past, when I was trying to get something, public-private partnership for different community-related issues, I was completely denied, you cannot do that. You should not do that. So how... are we doing that under, like when I was denied, how is Mayor being allowed, or how is she being allowed, why I'm not?

Sure, I can't advise on any prior advice that you were given.

Where's that coming from?

Looks like we have a little IT difficulty. Council Member DeHall, I can't advise on any previous advice you were given. What I will say is for the sponsorship and philanthropic portion of the campaign, the city staff did provide advisory information to any council members who sought to engage with any philanthropic donations. Certainly there's an issue with behest of payments and we advise everyone to separate any city business items from any sponsorship opportunities and not talk about them in the same meeting and keep a very, very significant firewall between the two. And so I can advise on any conversations the mayor had with regard to that.

So basically if we don't Mix the two things, it's okay to get a sponsorship.

I believe we all got sponsorship packets to go out and get sponsorships. All of us received those.

No, I'm talking about previously I was denied, like you should not do that.

When previously?

Maybe around two years back or something like that, at least.

Mayor, I could briefly speak to it, at least from a state law standpoint. There are, and I wasn't the person who advised you, and I'm not sure who did, but it is prudent, as the city manager has pointed out, to be careful about how you go about doing this, right? Because there are potential conflict of interest issues, and you want to make sure you're not mixing city business with a request for a philanthropic donor to make a contribution to city business. It is not unlawful, however, and there is in fact a state recognized process for doing that. If you solicit money in X, I think it's $5,000 or more, there's a requirement that you submit a form as a matter of transparency and disclosure to indicate that what you've done and the amount that you've requested. And so that's part of my AB 1234 training. I'm not remembering all the different nuances to that, but it is something that can be done. Again, not knowing what advice you got, there are issues and parameters and things you need to be aware of when you make that request because of context and potentially, for example, donors that have pending matters before the city, it could raise both appearances of impropriety issue and potential conflicts. But it's not forbidden and it's not an uncommon practice for

folks in your position to actually solicit Contributions from corporate donors for public purposes Sorry, I'm remembering a question from councilmember Jane about the stadium event for a million dollars and so staff is letting me know that that Event is coming in at around seven hundred thousand dollars all in and so about 300 shy of the million dollar budget

All right, do we have did we have a motion on this No, I'm gonna go to the public. Does any member of the public have something to say about this? I

Hello, Anthony Becker. I'm going to support what Councilmember Chauhal said. I used to be told the same thing, and then that goes back, I'd say, to the Deanna Santana days, and I'd even say around the time, I think Rajiv Bacho was here too, we were told, don't do that. I mean, it's a slippery slope. So I agree with exactly where Councilmember Chauhal comes from, because we were told the exact same thing. So that's a concern to me too.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Gonzalez?

I want to make a motion for the three recommendations from staff. Second.

All right, so we have a motion by Vice Mayor Gonzales for the staff recommendation, seconded by Council Member Chauhal. Please register your vote. And that passes five to two. Okay, thank you. All right, let's go now to... Public hearing general business, item number five. update to city council on implementation of city council policy 056 prohibiting use of city properties for civil immigration enforcement purposes and provide feedback on policy implementation city manager sure thank you mayor thank you council so just prior to super bowl 60 the santa clara city council adopted policy 056

which prohibits civil immigration enforcement on city properties. The council adopted this policy to support our diverse immigrant communities and to reflect our values, sending a clear message to future generations that Santa Clara stands with our immigrant residents. Tonight we will update you on the implementation of that policy as well as provide additional information that was requested at that initial meeting when you adopted the policy. Now I'll invite Assistant City Manager Paulina Morales to the podium to give the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Paulina. Good evening.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Tonight's presentation will cover the updates on the three follow-up items requested by the City Council at the February 3rd, 2026 Council meeting. First, I will provide an update on the implementation that was done or actions taken prior to Super Bowl at LX and continued implementation efforts since the event. Second, I will provide a debrief from the Police Department on implementation of the policy during Super Bowl, including data sharing with federal agencies during the event. Third, we will respond to Council's request on any modifications to Section B4 of the City Council policy related to employee training and reporting procedures. Following the staff presentation, the agenda will move to the city council questions, public comment, and conclude with city council deliberation and feedback regarding ongoing implementation efforts. I will begin with the presentation by going over some of the key terms of the policy before I go into the implementation. The intent of the policy is straightforward, is to ensure that the city-owned and city-controlled spaces are not used to support civil immigration enforcement operations. More specifically, the policy clearly states that no city-owned or controlled facility, parking lot, garage, or open space shall be used as a staging area, a processing location, or an operation base for civil immigration enforcement activities. The section established the foundation for the remainder of the policy, which we will now walk through in greater detail, including key terms. The following are the key terms of the policy that we've implemented. implementation enforcement one of the sections outlines the operational steps by the city will take to carry out the policy this includes identifying city owned and controlled properties hosting signage at these locations and were feasible and appropriate using physical barriers to limit access to the properties it also includes providing training and clear employee procedures to ensure consistent application of the policy across departments Next, limitations on scope. This clarifies what the policy does and does not do. It does not modify or interfere with existing contracts or agreements and does not restrict or implement the execution of lawful judicial warrants or the enforcement of criminal law by any law enforcement agency. The next section addresses compliance and future coordination. It establishes procedures for notifying relevant parties of the policy. requesting compliance as well as incorporating appropriate language into future agreements to ensure consistency with the policy moving forward. Lastly, the policy outlines support for local property owners, businesses, and residents, outlining resources the city is to make available. Together, these sections outline both how the policy will be implemented and the parameters in which it operates. Now that we've gone over the key terms of the policy, I will show the implementation. On February 3rd, with few days prior to Super Bowl, the City Council directed staff to implement this policy with the understanding that due to the limited time frame, implementation of the policy would be limited. Despite these limitations, staff was able to implement key components of the policy prior to Super Bowl. Efforts were prioritized on identifying city-owned and controlled properties within the vicinity of Levi's Stadium, including public facilities, parks, and open spaces. In total, staff identified 15 locations near the stadium prior to Super Bowl. Staff designed and fabricated signs which were installed on Friday, February 6, 2026. In addition, staff focused on city-owned properties under lease near the stadium. Various sites were identified and notification letters were sent out that Friday, February 6th as well to those leases informing them of the policy and the policy requirements. In addition, including in that was Levi Stadium and the stadium manager being notified of the policy 056. Since the Super Bowl, implementation efforts have expanded to a city-wide approach, covering all city-owned and city-controlled properties, including public-facing facilities, parking lots, parks, and open space. This broader rollout includes the installation of signage at city parks, the Santa Clara Convention Center, and libraries. And for the remaining facilities, including parking lots not associated with a park or library, Signage installation is planned to be completed prior to the first FIFA match here at Levi's Stadium, which is June 13th. As part of this implementation effort, staff also identified properties where physical barriers may be used to limit access to city sites. These barriers include features such as gauge, which helps support site control and reinforce the policy's intent. Next we will discuss implementation efforts related to providing training and establishing employee procedures and protocols. Staff has developed a city manager's directive or CMD to implement policy 56 and ensure consistent application across all city departments. The CMD is currently in final review with the city attorney's office prior to being implemented. The directive establishes clear procedures for employees to follow in the event of civil immigration enforcement activity in the city, whether it's observing city property being used for civil immigration or having direct contact with enforcement immigration agents. In developing these protocols, staff reviewed and incorporated best practices from other jurisdictions, including elements of the City of San Jose's Safe Site Protocols. Once finalized, the directive will be paired with employee training to ensure staff understand their responsibilities and are prepared to implement the policy consistently and appropriately across all city facilities, which will be further discussed in the presentation. We will now go over the key components of the city manager's directive. First, the directive will clearly define staff and supervisor roles and responsibilities, ensuring employees understand who is responsible for decision making and escalation during any civil immigration enforcement related interaction. Secondly, it establishes procedures for city employees observing city properties used for civil immigration enforcement and responding to direct contact with immigration enforcement agents. Staff are directed to notify their supervisor and defer the interaction to their supervisor. The directive guides supervisors on how to engage, what information to request from the immigration agency agents, and the circumstances under which agents are allowed to have access to employee-only areas, such when a judicial warrant is presented. Third, the directive includes incident reporting and notification protocols outlining how and when to document and report any immigration enforcement related activity on city property. Finally, it establishes clear requirements that limit access to employee-only areas by ensuring appropriate documentation is requested before entry. This reinforces existing security procedures and ensures that access to restricted spaces is properly controlled and verified. Together, these components create a consistent structured framework to guide employee action, support compliance with the policy, and ensure clear communication to all city employees. The CMD is intended to clarify what the policy does and does not require while ensuring safety for staff and residents in compliance with applicable laws. First, the directive allows staff to verbally object to the use of city property for civil immigration enforcement activities This ensures employees can clearly communicate the city's policy and intent while maintaining appropriate boundaries. Secondly, staff are explicitly instructed not to physically interfere or obstruct immigration enforcement agents under any circumstances. This is a key safety provision designed to protect employees community members, and prevent escalation. Finally, the policy does not prohibit compliance with valid legal instruments such as judicial warrants, which staff are required to follow and comply with. Once the city manager's directive is finally finalized, the city will develop and launch the City Employee Training Program, which will be a critical step in ensuring the policy is implemented consistently, safely, and effectively across all city facilities. Training is structured in two phases, with an emphasis on prioritizing employees most likely to have direct contact with the public, and therefore the highest likelihood of encountering immigration enforcement-related situations. Phase 1 focuses on those frontline public-facing employees and supervisors, including staff working at service counter at city facilities or members of the public or regularly assisted, as well as supervisors who may be responsible for responding to escalated situations and making operational decisions in real time. These roles are prioritized as they're more likely to be the first point of contact. The target training completion for Phase 1 is June 13. Phase two will extend to the remaining all city employees, which will be completed by the end of June. Another component of the policy is development and inclusion of language in both future agreements and amendments to existing agreements. requiring compliance with policy 056. This ensures consistent application of the policy across all city properties and lease arrangements. Since the report was finalized last week, the city attorney has finalized this language and is now part of the city manager's directive. Next, we will cover support for private property owners, business owners, and residents. So staff developed the signage that's up there. which is a template for private property owners to utilize who wish to clearly communicate that their property is not available for use in civil immigration enforcement activities. This template is available on the city's Know Your Rights and Enforcement Free Zone webpage and is intended to provide property owners with a consistent and accessible tool for posting notices on private property. While the city made the template available to property owners, property owners who choose to post the signage do so at their own discretion and assume any associated risk or responsibility related to the use. The city also launched the Know Your Rights and Enforcement Free Zone, which I just mentioned, on the city website to provide a centralized source of information regarding policy 056 and resources on immigration rights. It includes an overview of the policy as well as information on existing California laws related to immigration enforcement and provides downloadable signage that I just shared for private property owners. The webpage is used by the Immigrant Protection and Empowerment Network, known as IPEN, as a reference for other agencies implementing similar policies. In addition to the website, the city has made red cards, known as Know Your Rights cards, available at public-facing city facilities. In addition to the requirements outlined in the policy, staff has also taken a proactive approach to do additional outreach and education in the community. This included emailing Santa Clara businesses, notifying them of the policy and providing resources and links to the city website. Beyond the outreach, staff is also working collaboratively with IPEN and their partners and the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce to host an educational event for any local Santa Clara business that wants information on the policy and what their rights are as business owners in the community regarding civil immigration on their properties. We are currently looking at dates that will be prior to FIFA, the first match in Santa Clara. The City Council also requested an update following the implementation of the policy, including a summary of lessons learned from Super Bowl operations to help inform preparations for the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Santa Clara hosted Super Bowl LX on February 8th and is a designated tier one or tier one special event of national significance. The Super Bowl required extensive federal, state, and local interagency coordination and support. This level of coordination was critical component of comprehensive public safety planning and was essential to the successful execution of the event. I will now provide a debrief from the police department on implementation operations during the event. As the lead agency responsible for public safety during operations during the Super Bowl, the police department has been clear and consistent that it does not engage in immigration enforcement activities. That position remained unchanged throughout Super Bowl operations and there were no substantive changes to operational practices related to immigration enforcement as a result of Policy 56. The department also notes that it already operates in full compliance with California Values Act, which limits local law enforcement involvement in federal civil immigration enforcement. This existing legal framework guided standard operations and ensured continuity in how public safety responsibilities were carried out during the event. The City Council also requested an update on what information, if any, was shared with federal agencies during the Super Bowl. Collaboration and information sharing with federal partners were limited strictly to coordinated public safety efforts and criminal threat prevention. This included joint operational planning, real-time situational awareness, resource deployment, and staffing coordination, and unified incident response protocols. These are standard practices for a SEER I special security event and are designed to ensure a safe and secure environment for the public. Interagency support throughout the event was effective and efficient in supporting the overall public safety mission. The police department maintains its longstanding position that it does not participate in civil immigration enforcement activities. Consistent with this practice, no civil immigration enforcement actions occur during Super Bowl or associated event operations. As we are less than 30 days away from FIFA World Cup, I also wanted to share a report from The Atlantic as of May 15, 2026, which cites a statement from Lauren Biss, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the US Department of Homeland Security. According to that statement, DHS has indicated there are no large-scale immigration enforcement operations planned for FIFA World Cup venues. This information provides additional public context as the city continues implementing policy 056 across all city-owned and controlled properties in coordinating planning efforts around upcoming FIFA World Cup activities. Santa Clara, like other cities, already complies with state law under the California Values Act, which establishes statewide standards and limits on local involvement in federal civil immigration enforcement. The California Values Act sets clear restrictions on state and local enforcement agencies may assist federal immigration authorities under the law Agencies are prohibited from using public resources, including personnel, funding, and systems to engage in civil immigration enforcement. This includes inquiring into immigration status for enforcement purposes or performing immigration enforcement functions on behalf of the federal authorities. A key provision of SB 54 is its data sharing limitations. Law enforcement agencies may not disclose non-public personnel information to immigration authorities, such as home addresses, work addresses, or other confidential identifying data. In response to feedback from IPEN encouraging more limited data sharing practice with immigration enforcement agencies, staff refers to SB 54, which already establishes these protections and restrictions at the state level. Overall, the California Values Act ensures a consistent statewide framework that separates local law enforcement from federal civil immigration enforcement, limits the sharing of non-public data for immigration purposes, and directs local public safety resources towards community policing priorities.

Oh.

Following the California Act, there's additional state laws and political policies that further shape how immigration enforcement is addressed in California, including practices reflecting regional safe-site protocols. One example is AB 450, the Immigration Worker Protection Act, which went into effect January 1st, 2018. This law generally prohibits federal immigration enforcement authorities from accessing non-public areas of private workplaces without a judicial warrant. The City of San Jose site protocols help guide how public-facing facilities and workplaces respond to immigration enforcement activity occurring in non-public areas. Another relevant state law is SB 627, known as the No Secret Police Act. This legislation was adopted to take effect on January 1st, 2016, would prohibit law enforcement officers, including federal agents, from wearing face coverings while engaged in enforcement activity. However, the law is currently suspended pending judicial review and not currently in effect. Separately, the city of San Jose has adopted a local ordinance prohibiting all law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings within the city. IPIN has also expressed support for cities to adopt similar local ordinances. In Santa Clara, the police department already has internal policies addressing officer identification and face covering consistent with our departmental practices and operational standards. Overall, these state laws, regional protocols, and internal policies reflect an existing framework that limit local agency involvement in civil immigration enforcement and helps ensure local jurisdictions are not collaborating in supporting or facilitating civil immigration enforcement activities.

Is this going on much longer, Paulina? Just checking. So I know we have public members that wanna speak on this, so.

I have a couple slides left.

Okay, thank you.

As the city is implementing the is in the process of implementing policy 056 and collaborating with IPEN at this time The city does not recommend any changes to the policy IPEN is supportive of the cities of the city adopting our policy and as I mentioned earlier Use our city website as a reference for other jurisdictions to follow. I The last update requested by City Council was if we needed any modifications to Section B14 related to employee training and procedures. As noted earlier in the presentation, staff is currently implementing the policy and finalizing the City Manager's Directive And at this time, we do not recommend any modifications to the council policy. Should adjustments to the employee procedures or training be identified in the future, those changes would be addressed through updates to the city manager's directive by the city manager as appropriate. While the city has made meaningful progress in implementing the policy, there are still a few remaining items underway to complete implementation. These include finalizing the city manager's directive, implementing training with employees, ensuring all remaining city properties have signage posted before June 13th, and as I mentioned, we are working with IFA and Silicon Valley to have an event for our local businesses. And Mayor, that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much. So we have questions from the Council first, and I have a long list of people that want to speak, so Council will keep that in mind. Council Member Hardy.

Thank you, just two quick questions. You mentioned IPEN a few times, but it did not call it out. So anyone in the public, sorry, that doesn't know what that is, we need to just be clear. And on your very first number one implementation slide, you had 2036 as the date for when we would finish all this. I'm sure it was just a mistake. All the other dates seem to be right, but that was the very first one under implementation. At the bottom, you said that you would have everything done by June 2036, and I'm certain that was just a slip of the key. Thank you.

Thank you for those typo corrections, Council Member Jane.

I'm very pleased that we've gotten IPEN's cooperation and approval on this. I'm really pleased by that statement in the Atlantic that DHS isn't planning to do any immigration activities and that we're working with the Chamber of Commerce. So I think we've done a lot of homework with training our employees and posting signs and know your rights cards, thank you very much for all of that hard work.

And neither of those were questions, so I'm gonna go to the public now. Claudia? I know you've waited a long time, last meeting and this meeting. Welcome.

I do appreciate your time. And it seems like this particular issue really bothers me because it doesn't seem to reflect the common man or the common woman. It reflects a very narrow body of people who believe very staunchly that they hate a particular president. I am reminded that the reason why Bill Clinton was elected was because he was solid behind establishing law and making sure that he got pretty busy on deporting people. He's the king. He deported 13 million people. Obama is not far behind. What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Because somebody hates President Trump? I didn't like Obama. I didn't because he was an idiot and he didn't take the time to be a very good president. He was lazy in so many ways as an executive. And we lost a lot of ground because of President Obama, but he's not the only one. I mean, I think about some of the Republicans as well. President Clinton passed the law called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act in 1996. And this allows our president to grab people and deport them. They don't even have to go through any kind of court trial. That's the point. And over and over again, Democrats have empowered presidents. While I don't approve of the Republicans not doing something about that, Still, this is ridiculous and empty. It doesn't do anything.

Thank you, Claudia.

Thank you. Do I get another chance, a bite of the apple?

Maybe. Probably not. Thank you. John, followed by Jeremy, who's online.

Welcome. Thank you. I'm going to have to talk fast here. As a preliminary matter, I'm amazed by the massive amount of city resources that have already been expended on this matter, plus the private sector impacts. As you know, you didn't have to do this because, as you know, you are a part-time, local, municipal, nonpartisan body with many responsibilities already for parks, roads, stations. You know all that. Whereas immigration, as you've just seen, is both a national federal subject that is highly partisan. With respect to the federal subject of immigration, 15 years ago, Arizona was having a lot of illegal aliens enter it. So the Arizona state government passed some statutes to help secure the border. However, the Obama administration did not want any assistance securing the border. So it sued Arizona and the US Supreme Court. And that court ruled in favor of the Obama administration by holding that immigration and border control is exclusively a federal matter. such that a state could not help the federal government unless the government itself wanted that help. Many democratic controlled states, including California, Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, filed amici curiae briefs in this case. But now, those very same states and many of their cities and counties, such as this one, have passed statutes and ordinances seeking not to help the federal government protect our borders and remove illegal aliens, but to hinder it from enforcing immigration policies. How can this be constitutional? And it hinders it in this way. Effectively, your policy, as it currently is, discriminates against federal law enforcement agents trying to do their job. You're not barring illegal aliens from being on that property or for paid protesters. It's just the illegal thing. So your policy is unwise, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.

Thank you. Thank you, John. Next, we have Jeremy online. Go ahead, Jeremy, unmute yourself. There you go.

Hi, good evening, Mayor and Council. Jeremy Burrus with Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment. And we are part of IPEN. Thank you to Assistant City Manager Morales for the presentation and for the great implementation so far. And we do appreciate you for being a great partner of IPEN and checking in periodically to keep us updated. We really appreciate the partnership. And thank you to the Council for taking a stand for our immigrant community earlier this year. We also urge the Council to adopt additional policies that protect our immigrant community. Like was mentioned, there are some policies already with the Santa Clara Police Department, but looking at expanding the no masking and ID requirement for law enforcement, similar to policies passed in San Jose and currently in development in Campbell. I also like to encourage the council looking at a response plan. If there is mass immigration enforcement, include trusted partners like the Rapid Response Network and IPEN. So thank you for setting up for your values and hope that we can continue to build off this great work to ensure we're doing everything we can in this moment for our most vulnerable community. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy. Next we have Kimberly. Go ahead, Kimberly unmute yourself. There you go.

Hello, I'm Kimberly Wu from Services Immigrant Rights and Education Network, otherwise known as SIREN, which serves our immigrant and refugee communities around Santa Clara City. Beyond the staff's helpful presentation, we respectfully urge the city of Santa Clara to implement stronger data protections and a powerful immigration response plan. The policies tonight should be passed because they align with their local jurisdictions such as San Jose, Santa Clara County, Alameda County, and San Mateo County. We know because we worked on these policies. Given our lessons from the Super Bowl and the imminent threat of DHS at FIFA, we urge Santa Clara to protect the privacy and data security of all our residents. This looks like limiting surveillance and data sharing for FIFA operations, such as requiring a warrant for all data searches and prohibiting AI facial recognition tools in our AOPRs. It looks like protecting our First Amendment rights to free speech and protest. And it also looks like delaying the implementation of Paragon before FIFA. Peregrine is a predictive policing tool that gives the police unprecedented levels of tracking to determining when and where to deploy police based on historic crime data. We've already seen the harm of such AI technologies on black and brown communities who are already overly racially profiled and over-policed, and on our immigrant communities with eyes who have the ability to racially profile. We cannot exploit the urgency of FIFA to hastily implement this harmful predicting policing tool program. Learning from the Super Bowl, we hope that the City Council can pass this direction with these protections tonight, weeks before FIFA, especially when our global communities are coming to our city to celebrate and join this sporting event. Thank you to the assistant city manager, Polina Morales, staff, and city leaders for your commitment to serve all members of our diverse community. And the staff presentation demonstrates proof and reassurance of this commitment. The community has informed you of our need to protect our immigrant loved ones, pass all policies to make ICE a job as hard as possible, and prioritize our constitutional rights of privacy and safety. And we hope that you could join us. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Lucia. There you go. Unmute yourself, please. There you go.

Good evening, City Council. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity. I want to start by thanking you all for the leadership and listening to your constituents concerns, you know, about all the horrifying things that were happening before the Super Bowl and doing that in a speedy way. I also want to thank Assistant City Manager Paulina Morales for all her work and her partnership with us on this. We're really excited to see so much progress already being done. and can't wait for the finish of all the signage and the training, especially before the FIFA World Cup. It is really critical that we continue to stay alert, even though we are also happy that DHS has not planned to do any increased enforcement activities around these events. We also know how unpredictable these times have been. And so, you know, our leaders and our community really depend on your leadership at local levels to make sure that we are staying as protected as possible. And nobody would like to see any of the for-effect things that are happening in here. So the more proactive that we can the better we'll be off. So thank you again for your leadership and thank you for the collaboration of staff on this item.

Thank you for calling in. Next, we have Edward. Go ahead, Edward.

Yeah, I just want to say that police officers, law enforcement, they should have the right to mask themselves because we have politically appointed judges that allow high-level criminals back into the streets after after their high crimes and they end up murdering or raping other people. And then you have to worry, as a police officer, what if one of these persons follows you home and does some damage to your family? Police officers need protection. I mean, it's bad enough in our city. We can't even recruit police officers. We can't have enough of them in our city because of that high risk from, What's been done into our law enforcement agencies and what's happening with politically appointed judges is horrible. Also, I just want to say, yeah, the first speaker was correct. I mean, you never heard a peep about immigration under Biden and Clinton, but now you're hearing it. And also Epstein files. Yeah, I want Epstein files released. People have to be sent to prison. But where was Ro Khanna during the Biden years? I never heard anything from Ro Khanna during the Biden years. But now that Trump's in office, you hear from Ro Khanna. And then you have Bob Olinsky. He wanted, and he was a Democrat. He was a supporter of Ro Khanna. And he wanted to report some of these crimes and Ro Khanna ran away. And it's like crazy, you know, all this stuff that's happening. It's like wrong is wrong and right is right. You've got to be right and wrong. If you're going to be wrong, do it during the Republican and Democrat years. Just don't do it on one side or the other because, oh, you don't like the president, so I'm going to complain now. You've got to be right about your feelings on these type of things all the time. You can't just complain about it when the president that you – is in office right now you don't like, you complain just then. Why not complain? Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Edward. Brian, come on down, Brian.

First of all, I think it's nice that we're able to have a discussion with people who agree or disagree and can share their forum here with a, I just, the immigration issue is very scary, really, isn't it? I mean, what you see happening, what happened in Minnesota, on both sides of the disagreement. One of the things that I think why this policy took place is that immigration is a very complex issue, and our economy is very much tied to immigration. not to be a negative person, but our economy's heading into, I hope I'm wrong, a depression, pretty serious depression, actually, because we've just pushed too many, pulled too many strings, and I hope I can come back and eat crow on that, but, and I'd be glad to be wrong. It's just that you can't do away with a, how do I say, a group of the population that provides most of the healthcare at the basic level that provides a lot of construction, that provides a lot of agricultural. And it's not just people who are undocumented, it's people who are documented but are terrified to go anywhere. And that should be something that's done. And I've been discussing immigration with my representatives since Jimmy Carter. And so I think I, you know, and I've been pretty consistent in my holding that there's civil and then there's people who commit crimes. That should be something that doesn't matter where they hide, they should be taken and the people should cooperate with people who have committed violence. And we want to prevent people from coming from other countries who commit violent crimes there. Totally understand what other people are saying too. It goes both ways. It's just in this particular situation, and again maybe I'm,

much the other way it was the rhetoric i've never heard other presidents be as rhetorical and that's understandable in some ways but still thank you thank you do we have any other member of the public that would like to speak on this sorry then i have to reopen it to all those 12 people that spoke again you can speak on another item though if you just stay here all right council motion somebody Vice Mayor Gonzales.

I think we can definitely agree that as we look to safety and having our events here in Santa Clara, Santa Clara is a very welcoming place. It's a place that people feel that they can come to and enjoy not only the city but the environment, the culture, the different cultures that exist here in the city. This is just policies that we're just reiterating and basically stating what the state has already passed as far as the California Values Act and some of the things that the state has already done. We're just letting the public know that we're complying with the state statutes and mandates and our chief has really helped us align our values and things here in the city and making sure that we don't infringe on other people's rights As far as, you know, the Fourth Amendment and things that maybe we were doing in the past around the stadium by asking people for documentation when they were trying to get to their homes or what have you, because you can't do illegal such as seizures or stoppage for no reason, right? So our chief has been doing things to make sure that we comply with state law and our constitution as well. As far as... Thank you for the update. I know it's taken some time. I think the community feels much appreciated as far as what they've seen. Sometimes the folks that are listening to this and are impacted by this are not people that are in this chamber for reasons that are not always straightforward, but definitely I think every aspect of our community should be appreciated. embraced but also um you know we should provide for them as well so as far as uh this update i'll make a motion to just receive the report and um there's no there's no other action that's reported that's required thank you that's a motion is there a second uh we have a motion by vice mayor gonzalez second by councilmember for the um receiving the report

Council Member Park.

Yeah, I mean, I hear the public comments. I hear the public comments here in the chambers and I hear the public comments online. I can't help but try to point out the fact that what makes this year different from all other years is I can't recall any other year that we've had deaths on the streets. Of citizens not even of the immigrants that were purportedly going after I think this is a really big difference I think that when you've got people not just immigrants immigrants that are that are undocumented. They're always afraid But when you've got citizens who are also afraid this is a problem I know it's really hard to see this from a different perspective, but the fact that I look the way that I do is puts a little bit more, the fact that my friends look the way they do, my friends look the way they do, the fact that the people that are calling in look different from the people that are, you know, not being targeted is a very big difference. I'm gonna say locally, we're gonna have one of the biggest events that our city has ever seen. We are welcoming, we are inviting people to come here to be part of these events. While federally, we are going after immigrants, we're going after the very kinds of people that we expect to come here and enjoy these events. And I understand that it's kind of a disconnect for some people. We have this saying, it's not even my saying, it comes from Native Americans, it's walk two moons. And if you can walk two moons in somebody else's shoes, then you maybe can understand something. I'm going to say I've walked two moons, more than two moons, in lots of different circumstances, and I still don't understand. I still don't understand. But I will say that for people, for communities to look at the news, to look at what's going on in other parts of the country and be afraid or to be concerned, I think that's a real thing. And I feel that if you can look at the news and you can see what's going on in the country and not feel afraid, that is a grace. That is a grace that you can have that many people cannot and do not have. Thank you.

Council Member Chauhal.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, staff, for the update. I appreciate the comments from the public on both sides of it, and exactly the way Councilman Park said, the difference between previous years, previous presidents who were deporting illegal immigrants versus what happened in last year year or so, multiple reasons like rhetoric, basically, Different presidents maintain dignity and have implemented laws of the country in a dignified way, whereas what we heard from the current president, the rhetoric was not so good for the community. The way the implementation of the immigration rights, it basically divided the communities, and Councillor Park is right. Not only for the illegal immigrants, for the citizens of this country, They were even subjected to so many issues. They were killed, like multiple of those killed. And the way the enforcement was done, the protection of those officers were done, blatantly misusing the powers, and they were being protected. That's what divides the community. And that's what the reasons for this community or people like us to come to this conclusion that we should take some action on those things. the violation of basic human rights, not on, again, even the residents, the citizens have been violated, their rights have been violated, and for that matter, I think we have to listen to the residents, both sides, I agree, and we have to do something on that, and that's why what staff has presented and staff is on right path to do these things, thank you.

Thank you, Assistant City Clerk, when you're ready. We have a motion and a second for the staff recommendation. Please register your vote. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, staff, for that report. Next, we have item number six, action on adoption of a resolution designating the FIFA World Cup 2026 special event zone and special event time period pursuant to the city's special event zone ordinance. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. The item before you builds on the framework that was previously adopted by the City Council this past December to support public safety, mobility, management, event operations, and coordinated planning for major events at Levi's Stadium. Tonight's action aims to establish the time period and geographic boundary for implementation of a FIFA World Cup 2026 special event zone informed by lessons learned from Super Bowl 60 in our current operational planning efforts. I'll now turn the presentation over to Assistant City Manager Klopps. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. So as Jovan introduced and the mayor said so many special events, I apologize for having that so many times in the title. But we are here to present a resolution to set up the special event zone and time period for FIFA. And as everyone's aware, since 2014, we have been hosting major and large-scale events at Levi's Stadium. This includes Super Bowl 50, college football national championships, and now Super Bowl 60 as well. With these events, we've noticed that there is significant congestion both pedestrian, vehicle congestion, there's unpermitted vending and commercial activities that are taking place, there's a sale of counterfeit goods, and also creates emergency access constraints around the event space. So in December, the council adopted the special event zone ordinance that created a framework for future special events. At that time, we narrowed it down, we adopted the ordinance to apply for Super Bowl 60, but allowed the city to come back and revisit the FIFA restrictions later, once we understood what the operational plans are for FIFA, which we do have more knowledge about it, and actually have the lessons learned from Super Bowl 60 as well. The way the ordinance is set up is that it allows the council to designate a special event, a geographic zone, and an activation period by resolution. The resolution does not amend the ordinance. All it does is activate the ordinance for a specific event. FIFA World Cup was already identified as a special event in the ordinance, but what we didn't set was the zone or the time period for FIFA that would be applied. The ordinance provides temporary regulations that apply only during the designated event period and within a certain boundary. And just to review, there are six key elements to these regulations. One, sidewalk vending permits that are issued under Chapter 5.05 of our city code would be paused within that special event zone. Permits would remain open outside of the event zone. There is a prohibition on outdoor food and beverage sales, and it prevents temporary or pop-up food and beverage sales vendors from selling where it's visible in the public right of way, except where sales are part of an existing business. There's a prohibition on outdoor merchandise sales and so only authorized and properly permitted businesses are able to sell. This will help reduce counterfeit sales and unregulated activity from happening within the zone and we do see this as a common occurrence around major events and or even just standard stadium events around the stadium. There is a ban on mobile unit vending and advertising. So it prohibits vending or advertising using vehicles, trailers, carts, or any wheeled unit that is not fixed to a foundation. There is also a restriction on product sampling and giveaways. promotional street activity that may attract crowds or create congestion by people giving out samples, drinks, and so on. But it does allow coupon distribution on private property by businesses within someone else's existing business. Permits will be required for temporary structures on non-residential property. So this is tents or canopies that people might be setting up on their private property. And they will need to get a temporary use permit. And this really is to ensure safety. So if the public is coming onto these sites, we want to make sure that those tents and whatever structures are putting up are safe. So why do these regulations matter? And we went over this back in December, but I do want to reinforce why we have the special event zone ordinance. We want to support public safety. We want to make sure there's emergency access. We want to reduce crowding and congestion. And we also want to protect public health. We also want to be able to manage our event impacts, especially with these large-scale events. They're growing in size, they're very complex, and there are significant operational needs. And then we also want to look at the mobility. We want to enable safe and efficient movement for our attendees, our residents, our businesses, our vehicles, and our transit agencies as well. And then we wanna look at our coordination. So there is significant coordination that happens between security, the logistics around the event itself, and our ability to set up emergency response. And we want to reduce unpermitted activity. We want to deter counterfeit sales, unsafe vending. We want to try to move those businesses that don't have permits for health and safety, they tend to kind of come to these type of events. And we want to make sure that we protect our visitors and our residents from being exposed to any type of unsafe vending and unauthorized sales. And ultimately want to protect the community and quality of life. We want to minimize disruption and maintain safe and welcoming environment for all our visitors and as well as our residents. So here are some of the lessons learned from Super Bowl 60. There were significant operational impacts that were concentrated around the stadium. So that's within Great America and Tasman Drive. They experienced the highest pedestrian volumes. There was significant unpermitted vending affecting pedestrian circulation during ingress, but in particular during egress. As people or folks, we saw the hot dog vendors kind of encroaching in the space. But we also saw some really great collaborative enforcement. We had field teams that were from code enforcement, both from our community development team and public works, working with our police department and our event partners. We had four notice of violations for unpermitted signage during this period of time. We had three food vendors and 14 merchandise vendors that were redirected and stopped. I do think the simplified ordinance language helped improve the understanding, but also we were able to achieve some voluntary compliance out there and have them move outside the zone. And so here's what we're expecting from FIFA. First, there's large pedestrian volumes and transit demands that would be coming from this event. We see more pedestrians. But what we have seen historically with international events at Levi's Stadium is that people arrive early. They're not coming right before the game. They're coming hours before the game. And with that, we would anticipate seeing an increase in informal and early vendor activity and vendors setting up early as well to capture and capitalize on the population that's coming in around the event. There is a high coordination need for crowd movement and emergency access, so there's robust coordination happening with regards to that right now. And the other unique thing that we're having to manage are fan marches. So that's not something we typically see in other Levi's Stadium events, but we're hearing that that is what is gonna come for FIFA. And so we're trying to manage how those marches come into the stadium and try to redirect and manage the congestion, the roadway impacts. And what would also happen is the ancillary commercial businesses that might want to try to capitalize on those groups of folks that might be marching into the stadium as well. So for the zone boundary, this is what we're looking at. We're looking at a concentrated zone that's tailored to the stadium area for efficient management and enforcement. We're focusing on key corridors that have the greatest operational and mobility needs during the event days. This is Great America and Tasman Drive that we're seeing as the primary ingress, egress pedestrian access ways. We're also trying to facilitate safe movement of people, vehicles, and transit while maintaining clear access for our first responders. And finally, we're trying to limit the scope and reduce disruption and help maintain normal operations in nearby communities and businesses. So this is the proposed map. Please note that the map that was attached to the agenda did call this the Super Bowl LX and FIFA map, but it really is the FIFA map that we're proposing here. And this map intentionally limits the regulatory zone to the immediate surroundings of Levi Stadium and also the highest impact corridors. It is designed to minimize the regulatory effects on businesses and neighborhoods farther away from the stadium while capturing the essential footprint. And the map includes the transit access points, the emergency routes, and expected areas of pedestrian and vehicular congestion. I do want to go back and forth between the FIFA map and this is the Super Bowl map so you can see the difference. What was removed in the Super Bowl map is the Agnews and Oracle and Rivermark areas. That was a concern. Based on what occurred during Super Bowl, there was very little impact in this area of commercial activity or external commercial activity that impacted. And so to have less impact on this space, we've reduced the zone. And we've taken that out. So you'll see that Great America and Tasman is the primary quarters that we're trying to protect. If you look at Mission College Boulevard, where Freedom Circle is, that is where the rideshare drop off and pick up, or that is the anticipated rideshare drop off and pick up, as I know it today, of where it's gonna be, so that's also included. And then Tasman, from both sides, we were potentially going to direct the marches to come in from each side so that one fan group's coming from one side and the other fan group's coming from the other side. So those are some of the operational things that we're considering right now. This is what we're proposing for the special event time zone. It would start a day before the first game, June 12th at 8 p.m. and run through the day, the following day at 6 p.m. on June 2nd. The reason we're proposing continuous activation is to create some consistency for public communications and operations. It also avoids enforcement gaps. So we have so many games that are a day, two days, or three days in between, and we wanna avoid vendors from setting up in between events and having to use resources to move people out. And so the recommendation is to have a 19-day, essentially, window of the time period. This is just a refresher on the city's code enforcement approach. We have a coordinated approach led by code enforcement. We engage our police department and work with our event security partners. Violations of the mobile vending fall under our chapter 5.05, while all other violations use the administrative penalty authority under chapter 1.10. Immediate payment is authorized and seizure for safety risks or anything that's prohibited, any prohibited items. Staff will lead an education approach before activating, including multilingual outreach, onsite engagement with small businesses and permitted vendors. The city has launched a special event zone page with the map, FAQs, timelines, and support resources. There are outreach tools including our city newsletter, social media, and then our direct coordination with the businesses. We will be sending, if adopted, direct emails to all the businesses in the adopted zone and to every permitted mobile vendor citywide to ensure awareness and activation of the ordinance. We have posted on the website our proposed ordinance that you see before you so that they are aware that this was coming forward. With that, our recommendation is to adopt a resolution designating the special event zone and special event time period in accordance with the city special event ordinance.

All right, thank you for that. Questions, council? Council Member Jane.

Thank you, Liz. I'm curious about the special event time period where you're saying that that's continuous. And so I know that during Super Bowl, we had patrol cars and officers parked kind of at every street to prevent people from parking in the neighborhoods. Is that gonna be for 19 days? And then I'm wondering about like, vendors, food vendors at Great America Station on non-event days. I think it sounds like they're prohibited from being at the station, Great America Station, during that time. And then we got an email from Betsy Magus. asking about creek trail closures and what days, whether those are just gonna be game days or that's a continuous period. It should be announced exactly when those trail and street closures will be. Yeah, that's it, thank you.

Council Member Hardy.

Thank you, I was wondering about the light rail because during the Super Bowl, they only came up to other stops and did not pass through so that we had better pedestrian. I was wondering if that was just for game days or if that was going to be through the whole situation because you didn't mention anything about the light rail. So, I just wanna understand if a food truck anytime within that stopped or parked in any of those areas, they would be cited and told to leave. Is that what you're talking about when you talk about mobile vendors? And I also, this was just something to notice. I noticed there was not one VTA bus stop along Lafayette, which I found interesting as far as making that easier for people to get around. We're sticking people to Great America. It was just an observation. Thank you.

Vice Mayor Gonzales.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Question as far as the geofencing, can we have geofencing in the Fairway Glen neighborhood and north of Agnew and Lake Mission Park area for Wrightshire? The other question I had was I know there's an existing taco truck On the corner of Clyde and Lafayette. They have quite a, they have a canopy and then they have their truck there typically. It seems like they've already permitted and already have a commissary and things like that with that gas station there on the corner. Would they be told to leave or would they be able to stay? and just thank you for limiting, I think it's, I like the map, it's a little bit more condensed, and I think it's more in line with what we're seeing, so thank you.

Thank you. Those are the questions, Liz, when you can answer those.

All right. And I do have Lieutenant Eric Enos online, and he might be able to help with some of the more public safety questions that I got. One of them, I think, Council Member Jane, you asked about whether or not patrol cars would be blocking streets during that 19 period. I don't anticipate that, but I do think if Lieutenant Enos could maybe respond to that one.

Yes, thank you. No, they definitely will just be there for game days, not for the 19-day period.

And then while I have you, the other one was the creek trail closures. Are those going to be consistent through that time period? Do we know yet?

Those will just be on game days as well, and there should be some public messaging going out soon on that with specifics.

All right, thank you. The next question was Great America, just vendors in general in that zone. So throughout that time period, if vendors were within the zone, they would be asked to move out of the zone. So it would apply for those 19 days. I took a note about your comment from Betsy Migas, and I think we answered that one. Light rail, Javon, do you want to take that one?

Sure, I can take light rail, but I also want to clarify Mr. Enos' comment about Creek Trail. So the normal Creek Trail will be closed, but the normal detour route will be open. So unlike Super Bowl where Stars and Stripes was closed in that normal detail, normal detour was rerouted on Lafayette. That is not in the plans for FIFA. And so when Mr. Enos mentioned the creek trail will be closed, it's the normal creek trail that runs in front of the stadium. I will also caveat that not this last Friday, but the prior Friday is when the city received the full FIFA road closure package. So literally over the last week, staff has been reviewing all of that. Just like Mr. Enos said, public information will come out stemming that review once everything is finalized from the host committee supported through various mediums as we did last time. With regard to light rail, similar to a number of events that we have, light rail right in front of the stadium will be closed during a period. There's a certain number of hours before and after where light rail will be closed and detours will happen. And so that is common for Super Bowl. It will be in place for FIFA games as well. And VTA is well aware and will be running their detour routes and stoppages.

All right, and then there was a couple about food truck zones again, and then the truck that's on Clyde and Lafayette, I'm not familiar with that truck, whether or not there's a permit or what it is, but if it's within the zone, it would be asked to be moved outside of the zone, or it could work outside of the area of whatever we adopt today. So that would be one. The geofencing, I think that's something we could take back to our transportation group and see if that's something we can include, whether or not they're already included, we can find out. And I think that was all the questions.

Thank you very much. I'm going to go to the public now to see if the public has any questions. Please come forward. Comments?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I just wanted to observe that I was very impressed by the orderliness and the security of this item. As distinct from the previous item, I felt that you really built up a good security thing. The only thing I wish is that our country as a whole would be as protected and secure against unpermitted persons and unticketed persons as the stadium will be during the FIFA season. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to make a comment? Edward, go ahead, Edward.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to FIFA with going, you know, happening with that area. I know it's kind of disappointing that Related didn't get on the ball to bring us that retail hotel development. That could have brought the city a lot of money. I'm just kind of surprised we haven't heard anything from Related during that first quarter. I thought we'd hear something, but it's been dead silence for some odd reason. But I'm hoping maybe if Related doesn't want to get the job done, maybe we could bring in another developer to maybe get that property developed to where it could benefit the city and the citizens here in Santa Clara. And again, I look forward to the the games here coming up soon and hopefully in the future with the new development, another 10 years, maybe things will look even better. All right, thank you.

Okay, any other public? Council Member Cox.

Thank you, and I I'm glad that councilmember Jane asked about the Police enforcement during the 20 day 19 day window I'm wondering assistant city manager if you know in in light of that this has been framed again as public safety issue really and I do understand that there is continuity that is brought forward when you do something for a continuous 20-day period instead of a start and stop but I think that it's important that we balance legitimate operational and business needs with the need to unnecessarily restrict lawful businesses 20 days is a long time for again licensed hot dog vendors to be out of it so I'd like to just understand if we were to Put this into pieces around the events instead of continuous. Is that a possibility? I'm understand I understand if this is similar to our Safe zone with the Super Bowl. We have to have something in place But we as a city have some freedom to dictate what the safe zone looks like So I'd like to see if there's a possibility in less continuous restrictions particularly for food vending that kind of thing Yes, go ahead

Okay, I think one option if we needed to was potentially to do maybe the day before and up to a time period right after the event because some of our events are ending midnight, you know, and activity could last well into the next morning. And so if we were to not do a continuous, I would suggest starting at some point the day before. I think Glenn's cringing a little bit. But sometime the day before and then probably some early morning hour the following day of the game. So, I mean, the problem is then you're really just leaving a day here and there, but it is still something that would allow businesses to continue to operate.

And you have to look at this. We talked about this during Super Bowl. Is this really for public safety or is this really for commercial purposes for FIFA to make sure that they're the only ones selling the T-shirts out there and other things? Because when you look at Super Bowl, what did you get? Three hot dog vendors and 14 merchandise people for the Super Bowl? We did all that for that? So I'm just wondering who are we, you know, what is the real issue? If it's public safety, it should be, you know, the day of the event or leading up to the event. But for people that are trying to run their businesses out there, you know, this is supposed to be a... a plus for everyone, not a negative where you actually lose your business because of this. So I think we should try and adjust it to what works for our community. Is FIFA really pushing this or is this something we're just doing because we did it for Super Bowl? I don't understand. I don't know what document that says we have to do this. I'm sure there is one somewhere, I haven't seen it. So, city attorney.

Glenn, I don't know if you had any thoughts about how we can narrow it.

No, I appreciate the comments, Madam Mayor, and one of the thoughts with this item was to tailor it more, right, based on lessons from Super Bowl, so it certainly would be within your prerogative to tailor it still further. I think Assistant City Manager Klotz pointed out the challenges with that, right? Turning it on and off may be tough to monitor and be confusing for people, but it's not that you can't do it, it's just might be hard for people to understand how that works and to implement it consistently. So that's entirely within your prerogative. Mayor, to point out the origin of this, This was something that was contemplated in the Assignment and Assumption Agreement as something that staff would agree to develop and present to you. Staff's already fulfilled its obligations in that regard, and the City Council can decide whether or not to implement it in their discretion. I think it's a combination, Mayor, as you pointed out, and people might weigh it differently, right, of both commercial interest on the part of FIFA, but I think the assistant city manager has identified and the police have identified meaningful public health and safety interests that are served by this. So I think it's both, and again, you have the discretion to tailor it still further if you're worried about negative impacts on businesses that you could avoid with additional tailoring.

One other question, you talked about these fan marches, which I've never heard of. Where did this come from and what are we expecting for fan marches? Like fans of the teams that are playing or? What is this?

Sure. Mayor, why don't I take that? And I know the police department and our permitting team, including Public Works, as hard at work as this. So this was a late thing that we were informed of by the host committee through FIFA, is that host committees may be planning fan marches leading from various parts of either Santa Clara or other cities. The Police Department has been working with the Bay Area Host Committee on what that may look like, also getting their agreement to cover those costs as part of our public safety expenses. And it has also been brought to our attention that They may happen whether we plan a route or not. And there are certain organizers connected to these fan marches that I know various parties have been in contact with. And so we know that there are team hotels in San Jose, fans may gather there and seek to march to Levi's Stadium. And so know that we were informed of that and the police department is very much working hand-in-hand on Understanding what that may be as well as what all of our options are They are not organized by the host committee they are my understanding is Loosely connected to the countries and the teams that are playing their fan bases. I do not believe that they are official marches of the company or the teams, but a collection of organized fans that get together and say, we're going to march. And sometimes they're very short, sometimes they're very long. I do think the benefit is that they have organizers behind them and contacts have been made.

Well, that would all be part of our cost of having this.

Absolutely.

Okay, Council Member Park.

So when we talk about the fan marches, I mean, when we know about them, is there a chance that we could advertise them so that people from those countries who live in the city could participate and it would be a little bit more organized? Meaning because if we know about them, we advertise them and we can put, I mean, that would justify putting more resources toward them and it would give people an opportunity to participate if that's what they wanted to do. I think that by simply saying we're going to manage it and not embrace the celebratory mood, the celebratory aspect of the march itself, I think that that would be a loss. I also want to make a comment about public safety. In a way, all of these things and having continuity is about public safety, whether it's physical safety or health or any other kind of safety. I think that having a bad food experience or having a bad or pejorative merchandise experience, I think there were 14 merchandise vendors that were removed during the Super Bowl. All of those bad experiences at any time during the duration of this event will have a negative effect on this event. Having bad experiences or having news stories come out during non-game days will affect what happens on game days if people put these events together. I think it's important to have continuity in safety. It's important to know that what I get or what I'm dealing with on any time that I'm in the area while the FIFA is going on, whether a game is going on right now or not, that we have the same level of safety. I think it's important that we consider that. It's not just about, well, we'll let something slip through because it's not a game day. It's about the reputation of our city and it's about the I mean, the quality of the event that we wanna put on. So I kind of like this. I do have another question about, you said that we had the Super Bowl event zone, the event zone for Super Bowl was a little bit larger, and you said, well, we didn't really need that because, well, we didn't have a lot of things in that area. was it because we had the event zone that we didn't have as many things in that area is it possible that by by reducing the event zone and having events multiple events that would potentially bring a lot more people a lot more vendors to this area we would we would then have a problem that we didn't have in super bowl i mean is that is that something that has been considered

I think one of the issues was really that we've noticed that the primary ingress and egress was from Great America and Tasman. And so that area of Montague, where those areas were, weren't as heavily trafficked. And so I'm not sure if that's, we just didn't see the vendors encroaching in that space. They were primarily, and mind you, for FIFA and for Super Bowl, the majority of ticketed are coming in through gate A. So they're coming in through that side. So they're not coming in through the other side that's closer to Lafayette. And so you're seeing most of that activity where the people are actually attending the event coming through Great America and that Tasman corridor.

But couldn't that be controlled with how we tell people where to come in? I mean, we've got a lot of people who've never been to the city before, and at that point, they don't necessarily know why one area or one side is better than the other or that one side exists versus another. Couldn't that be a factor of how we advertise where people should come in?

Well, I think it's because the traffic plan is driving the traffic that way. So it is intentional that folks are coming in through Great America on both sides from 101 and 237. So it's not because we haven't opened up the other side. It's that we're driving the direction of the traffic with folks where they're attending.

Okay, understood. And the last thing is, I mean, for Super Bowl, you kind of have people coming in for one day. I mean, they come here for their they bookend that day, you know, a couple days before a couple days after. But in this case, we have, again, a pretty continuous event. and we will have maybe not as many, I don't know if I should say that, we will have a lot of people here, a lot more than for a Super Bowl, because you'll have people coming for various events, and they may be staying for one event, skipping a game, going to another event, they may be here for several events at once, and there'll be people who don't even have tickets that will be here just for the festivities. At what point do we say that, well, maybe this is going to be bigger than Super Bowl and maybe some of the things that we're considering should be bigger than what we did for Super Bowl?

City Manager?

Sure. I think to that point, all of our planning has been informed planning based on contacts with FIFA, based on observation of other World Cup events in other countries. And so I would not take the tailoring of this special event loan to mean that we are planning for a smaller or a less intense event. I would take it to be an articulation of lessons learned that the area of ingress and egress that we designed for Super Bowl can actually be tailored a little smaller based on just the patterns of traffic. I will also say just about similar to Super Bowl, there will be regional activations all across the Bay Area, all up and down the peninsula. And so we do know that Santa Clara will be home to a number of people that are hopefully staying in our hotels and other lodging vehicles. But a lot of the in the middle of the week entertainment may very well be across the larger region. Will be.

Okay, Councilmember Hardy.

While all the discussion was going on, I looked at the calendar and with the understanding of you needed the day before and the day after, out of 21 days, that only leaves six possible, June 15th through 17th and June 27th through 29th, that we could even change the rules and that's less than 30%. That doesn't seem to make sense. I think the consistency is the best way to go. Thank you.

I agree with the consistency. I just think if you had a business there, that would mean a lot to you if you had to close your business for 20 days. People that are trying to make a living. Vice Mayor Gonzalez?

Just a quick question as far as, I know that for Super Bowl, and I think I've sent it over to City Manager Gervon as far as maybe A-frames, not that we can impose parking restrictions, but kind of limit folks to say, hey, no parking in these areas. I think in Fairway Glen and like the north of Agnew Mission Park area, I know that we don't have an RPP program yet, and we're working towards having something where we have some parking program in place, but maybe just more to let folks know that, not that we can't stop you, but maybe limit people into those neighborhoods. And I think they were on A-frames before. I don't know if we can do something similar today.

Yes, no, we've talked and we're certainly planning for a frame signage, I would say enhanced from a normal game, but slightly different from Super Bowl just because the overall footprint and road closure pattern will be different.

And I just wanna make a motion for the staff recommendation.

Yeah, I was gonna ask for that, thank you. Staff recommendation, is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Vice Mayor Gonzales, second by Council Member Hardy for staff recommendation. City Clerk, when you're ready. Please register your vote. Please register your vote. Council Member Park, please register your vote.

Oh, I voted.

It's not there. There you go. All right, and that passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. Council Member Cox, are you leaving? Okay. All right. Hope you feel better. All right, next, item number seven, report on city vacancies and recruitment efforts pursuant to Assembly Bill AB-2561. City Manager.

Sure, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. This report fulfills an annual reporting requirement for vacancies and recruitment activities, so you will receive a full complement as well as details on the number of positions that we have filled. Important to note, Since July 1, 2025, the City has filled approximately 204 full-time positions and 166 as-needed positions, temporary part-time positions, reflecting ongoing efforts to support service delivery, workforce development, and internal employee advancement. I will note out of our 1,205 full-time equivalent positions, we have an overall vacancy rate of just over 12%. I will now turn the presentation over to Ashley Lancaster, our Interim Assistant HR Director.

Thank you. Welcome, Ashley.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, and members of the public. As City Manager Grogan mentioned, I will be presenting on the vacancy rates and recruitment challenges and efforts as required by Assembly Bill 2561. So AB-2561 requires that public agencies address vacancy rates on an annual basis. This means we are required to track the vacancies, present information on the status of the recruitment and retention efforts at least once per fiscal year. Sorry, I want to make sure that...

Presentation's going.

And then identify any policies or procedures that may be obstacles for us in the hiring process. If we do have any bargaining units that have a vacancy rate of 20% or more, we are required to provide additional information. This does include the number of job vacancies, number of applications for those positions, the average number of days to complete the hiring process, and any opportunities to improve compensation or other working conditions for the bargaining unit, if applicable. So as mentioned, our current citywide vacancy rate is 12.36%. So we are actually down about 3% since the last time we presented this to council last year. So I think that that's really great in terms of the recruitment efforts which we'll talk to momentarily. The HR staff as well as departments and hiring managers have been working really diligently and really hard in order to fill the vacancies and help reduce our vacancy rate citywide. We have seen an overall increase in a lot of our applications, so I think that really is a testament to Santa Clara really being a choice employer for our comparator agencies. So that's really great news for the city of Santa Clara, especially with the number of positions that we've been adding the last few fiscal years. This slide does provide a high-level summary of all of our promotions and new hires and rehires. So we have hired 133 new hires. This is only for this fiscal year alone. That is very significant progress in our hiring, as well as promoted 71 employees. This is pretty significant because as you know, of course, when we are promoting employees, that does not change the vacancy rate. So we will do the full work to fill the position, go through the entire recruitment cycle, There is still a vacancy that exists, but it is really great for the city to be able to promote within. And I do think that with our recruitment and retention efforts, it is really great to see that we're able to promote internally. Moving on, this is a high-level overview of all of the bargaining units and their current vacancy rates. For the sake of time, I won't go through each of the units, but I do want to call out a few key ones where there are some significance in terms of the vacancy rate. Overall, since the last time we presented, each bargaining unit is generally down in terms of their vacancy rate. With the exception of one, so our Santa Clara firefighters, they're currently slightly above 12%. I do want to note that we are in the middle of the recruitment process for the firefighter classification, so we do have conditional offers out to candidates with the intent to start the academy in August. So this number will go down at the beginning of next fiscal year. additionally last year when we brought forward this presentation our public safety non-sworn employees which primarily consist of our community service officers police record specialists public safety dispatchers was actually at a 20 vacancy rate so you can see We're now down at 13.89%. The police department does have a hiring unit, so they have been working really hard over the last fiscal year to help reduce the vacancy rates in coordination with the Human Resources Department. We do still have a high vacancy rate on our dispatchers, but we are still working through those, and we do have three dispatchers slated to start So this number will come down slightly, but that is still generally a classification which we do struggle to recruit for. But as we do mention in the memo, this is really a nationwide issue in terms of attracting dispatchers. The bargaining unit that does have a over 20% vacancy rate is our engineers. Last year, again, when we brought this presentation forward, they were actually at a 30% vacancy rate. So we have reduced this for this current fiscal year to slightly over 22%. And we do have a number of offers that are out. So we're hoping to see this go down One thing that we do want to call out is on the second table and that's in green over the last few fiscal years You can see that we've added several positions a lot of positions citywide, you know totaling with the upcoming fiscal year and Almost 30 or sorry 63 positions across the agency. So that is a pretty significant number of those positions we're looking at 12 engineers that are that have been added to the engineering group. So obviously that does not help our vacancy rate numbers go down. So one notable item that we do want to call to your attention is in terms of separations in the Unit 4 engineering group. So over the last two fiscal years, we've actually only had two retirements and two resignations. So really with the addition of those positions, the vacancy rate is still above 20%. We do anticipate, obviously, even with the offers that we do have coming forward, the vacancy rate is still not going to drop below 20% because the proposal in the upcoming budget is to add additional positions. So we do anticipate, even citywide, obviously, with the new positions that are coming forward, the vacancy rate is going to increase until we're able to recruit and fill those. And the same with the Unit 4 vacancy rate. It's pretty much going to remain status quo when we balance out the offers that are out in addition with the new positions that are going to be added. As part of the AB2561 requirements, we are required to provide an overview of where we are for the bargaining units that are above 20%. So this is a summary of where we are for all the engineering recruitments. We do have 12 vacancies. There is one position that is not in active recruitment right now because we're looking at that position to see if it's actually the correct level. For an assistant electric utility engineer, we do have one vacancy and we do have one conditional offer out to a candidate. But we are running this as a continuous recruitment. So we are attempting a new strategy to really target and attract students who are graduating this spring. So we are hoping to make that list robust. And then if we do still continue to have challenges filling the electric utility engineer classification, our hope is to actually use that list to potentially underfill to that way we can get students in the door into full-time positions, hopefully help engage them into public sector work. We do have two vacancies in our associate engineer classification, and then we do have formal offer letters out for both of those positions. So that is coming up. In terms of our electric utility engineer classification, we do have three vacancies. We're currently in the oral board interview process for those positions. For our senior civil engineer position, we have one vacancy and one offer is out for that position. And then for our senior electric utility engineer, we do have four vacancies at this level. This one does tend to be a little bit more challenging to recruit for, just given the specialty of the position, so we are running it as a continuous recruitment. And we are regularly doing oral board interviews. Across the board, you can see the timelines for the recruitment process. So generally, on average, we are looking at three to five months from posting to offer to run a recruitment. Obviously, for where we are having some challenges, you can see the senior electric utility engineer, we're about seven months for this recruitment. So that is why that there is an extended period for this position. Overall, in terms of recruitment challenges and efforts, in terms of challenges, we do, and it is detailed a little bit more in the council memo for you, because we are a civil service agency, we have civil service rules and regulations that we must follow for our classified recruitment process. This does, it can delay recruitment processes just because there's multiple steps in the process. Generally there's timelines that we have to adhere to in terms of notifying candidates and just before we can move to certain steps in the process. So we are always looking to see where can we streamline the recruitment processes to try and make it more efficient, but we do often encounter some challenges just given the nature of the rules. As you know, we have obviously been very busy as an organization this year, especially with Super Bowl and FIFA. So sometimes department workload and prioritization can be challenging. But we have, like I said, worked really closely with departments to try and reduce the vacancy rate across the board. As you can see, since last year, we're down about 3%. So that is pretty significant. Human resources and department staff have been working really hard to help reduce the vacancy citywide. Again, we do have some challenges in terms of competitiveness of recruitment pools for some of our specialized positions, such as our engineering positions and dispatchers. I will talk a little bit more in terms of efforts when we get to there, what we're doing to help with some of those challenges. We also do have, for our public safety positions, specifically our police and fire, there is an extended backgrounding process that they have to go through in terms of polygraph, psychology, and more extensive backgrounds. So obviously those do delay the recruitment processes. But again, the police department is working really hard to move those along and prioritize those as quickly as they can so that way we can fill many of our positions. In terms of efforts, our HR recruiters are at full capacity. So we have three full-time human resources staff and HR technicians who are working on recruitments. They're working on upwards of 15 recruitments at any given time. So it's a really high and heavy full workload. But we are proposing to add additional positions in the upcoming budget to help alleviate and to help with the demands of the positions and the recruitments As you know, recruitment is ongoing. So there's really no end. We always have people retiring or resigning. And then, of course, with the addition of the new positions, there definitely is a need to continue the recruitment cycle. So the proposal is to add two human resources technicians and one management analyst. And this will also help, too. That way we can get caught up to speed on updating our classifications. That way we can be more effective in terms of our recruitments. And then we can be more proactive in terms of our recruitment strategies with just the additional resources. Again, as I mentioned, we're always looking to see where can we streamline the recruitment process and where can we be more efficient. So we do, especially for our classified positions, do have to bring classifications forward to the Civil Service Commission if we do wanna make any updates to the process. So we do reevaluate that before we begin every recruitment to see where we can, again, streamline and make it more efficient. We have this past fiscal year attended eight career fairs, so we are attending locally into the community and the schools and universities around us. Our police fire department as well as Silicon Valley Power do go to additional career fairs to do some more targeted advertising. Last year, we started the Mission College summer internship program, and we are continuing that again this summer, so this will be our second year. We're really hoping to engage students and get them interested in a career in the public sector, specifically Santa Clara, so it was a really great success last year. We do also have internships for other students at other colleges and universities, not specific to Mission College, but we are really highlighting the Mission College just because of the partnership that we do have with them. And last year in the budget we did receive approval to add attract, which is a feature in Neo Gov and this allows us to be more proactive in our recruitment efforts. So we are nearing the end of our implementation with that where instead of being passively accepting Canada applications, we can actually outreach directly to candidates to anyone who's applied in the NeoGov system and do more targeted advertising. So if they are an engineer or if they are a dispatcher, we can notify them that we've posted a job and get them encouraged and engaged, and hopefully they apply for our position. So hopefully next year, by the time we bring this back forward, we'll have some more statistics on how that is working out in terms of our engagement with candidates. Finally, this past year we did close six contracts with our bargaining units. So we do have competitive MOUs and contracts. Specifically for our Unit 4 engineers, they are receiving an increase coming up in July. So that is another way that we're hoping that we will be able to attract and hopefully help fill some of the positions where we have had some vacancy challenges. So they will be getting an increase. after the beginning of the fiscal year. We do still also have the dispatcher retention bonus and incentives. So again, we're hoping that will help us attract more lateral candidates to come to Santa Clara. And then we are also, for dispatchers, recruiting at the one level, so the entry level, especially as we'll be nearing down with all the big events, we'll have more capacity and staff to help train more entry level dispatchers coming into the city of Santa Clara. So this does conclude the presentation. There is no staff recommendation as it is just a note and file, but we're happy to take any questions that you may have.

Thank you, Council. Vice Mayor Gonzales.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just a quick question. As far as, so on July 1st, depending on the number of added positions, we're gonna get dinged as far as the percentages. Is there like a, a time where you have to fill them before you really kind of get dinged or not necessarily?

All right, Council Member Jane.

If you could go to slide six, please. I'd like to understand, I know it's in the report, just to outline for the public, the eligibility lists, and I know that for the Civil Service Rules and Regulations, CSR, ensures a number of assessments to ensure selection and consideration is based on merit and fitness. The CRS ensures a number of assessments including but not limited to any of the following. Confirming applicant meets the minimum qualifications of the classification, consideration of whether applicants possess additional desirable qualifications, confirming applicants possess required certificates or licenses, screening supplemental responses to the questions on the job announcement, written examination, performance examination, oral board reviews, and city department reviews. Does all of that have to happen before you get on an eligibility list? Which means, why does it take, once you're on, we have, let's say assistant electrical utility engineer, we have one vacancy, but we already have 11 on the eligibility list. Why does it take four months to recruit somebody after they've already passed all these steps? That's my question.

Council Member Park.

Yes, thank you very much. I also like to know why it takes so long. Usually when I look at the numbers, usually when I see the higher vacancy rates, I like to see them in the junior positions, not the senior positions. Actually with few or none in our senior positions as people stay or get promoted to those positions. But that's not what I'm seeing here. I know that in the past we have even rehired managers who have retired and we only do one or two per fiscal year as i've been if i recall but then again the the real question to me is how often do we get an opportunity to do that and how how often are we hiring you know managers who retired over promoting people compared to the number of of managers that are retiring it's not just about the number it's about how many opportunities we have to do that uh... And do we know if we've lost people because of lack of upward mobility? I've heard that we're saving money because we don't have to pay benefits, but I think by promoting people to higher positions to fill those spaces, A, it's about the same cost, and any additional cost that we pay goes 100% into morale for the teams, for the people getting promoted. Right, people can see in 10 years, 20 years, I'm going to be in this role eventually, you know, if I continue to improve and do my job correctly. But by telling them we're not going to promote you, we're going to continue to keep people who are retiring, I think that's a really bad message to give. I also know that the vacancy rate for the San Jose Police Department is relatively low. I believe it's less than 5%, maybe less than 3%. And they make considerably less money. They have a lot more officers and they make considerably less money than Santa Clara police officers do. And I'd like to know why that is. I think that Sunnyvale similarly has lower vacancy rates and they've got a very different public safety officer who basically has to do the job of both police and fire. I really like that model because it means that there is some aspect of training that goes to every call that is not a police response first. I mean, I think that's a really good way to do it. But how do you compare? Why are we struggling compared to other cities when we seem to have better benefits, we seem to have higher pay, we seem to have a lot more going for us, and the other jurisdictions seem to have much lower vacancy rates? Thank you.

Councilmember Hardy.

Thank you. I'm very glad that you're working with Mission College because That tells us someone's here in the valley and we're not having a relocation. But I was wondering, you mentioned in the report the NeoGov and you're using that to reach out. I just wondered if there's any other way we are trying to if someone was interested in looking for a job but did not know to look specifically at the City of Santa Clara, is that the only way they would know to be aware of government positions that are open? I just wonder, is there anything we're doing that is not allowing people to be aware? Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Jane.

Thank you. In the report, it does say that in the past, you've had outside recruiters, but that contract expired. Can you talk about where we are with renegotiating new contracts with outside recruiters? Thank you.

So I had a couple of questions. I want to understand this, Ashley. You're showing the positions that are available now that have been, I guess, approved by the city and the vacancy in those positions, not necessarily what we need for each department. And I understand there was a study done by Baker Tilly last year on our operational assessment and what actually how many positions we need in the different departments, which I don't think has been presented to us. So my question is, when you take that study and you compare it with these numbers here, there might be significant differences in the number of positions that are needed for each department. For instance, for the engineers with SVP, that there may be a lot more positions that are actually needed than even the large potentially vacancy that's there now. So I remember last year when this report came forward, which by law I guess it has to come forward, we gave the opportunity for a couple of the bargaining units to come forward and talk about their position to the city council. I was contacted by at least two departments, two units that said they knew this was coming, but they were not given enough information or enough time to be able to present their positions to the city council. So what does this, what does tonight's presentation actually mean? Can these departments, I mean, can these units come and present at a later time? Is this a... a preliminary report, not a conclusive report. Is there still time for that? And if we're really going to adhere to the Assembly Bill 2561, should we not be incorporating what Positions are actually needed through that assessment, which I don't think we've seen that took place last year For that and should we not be giving the organizations the units the opportunity to speak to the council And I think that's it for the questions

All right, certainly. So I'll start with Council Member Gonzales. So you had asked if there is any sort of penalty for the timeline if we don't fill the positions by July 1st. And so obviously we want to fill the positions as soon as possible, but there is no true penalty by the law. We're just required to present the information publicly in front of Council. And for Council Member Jane, so you did have some questions regarding the eligible list as well as the timeline for the recruitments. So the process for recruitments, it is very detailed, especially for our classified positions. All candidates have to meet the minimum qualifications, so there is a very thorough screening. They also have to meet desirable qualifications. So we do have supplemental screening questions on each of the job applications that they are required to respond to, and those are rated. So in terms of the timeline, this actually, the timelines that you're seeing is actually from posting to hire date. So in the one example for the assistant electric utility engineer, The entire recruitment from the time that it was posted to present day, it's taken about four months. So the eligible list was recently established. So likely by the time that the candidate starts will probably be about five months in total to fill the position. But there are so many steps in the process because some recruitments may have a written exam, which does take time for us in order to get the test from the vendor. Obviously we may have to run multiple test days because this one in particular had 136 applications, so that is quite a high number. And then we have to go through the interview process for those candidates before they can actually be placed on the eligible list. Ideally what will happen, and you'll see in the instance for the senior civil engineer, so you'll see that only took two months, because there was an existing eligible list by the time that we were notified of the vacancy, and then by the time, that does include when the candidate will start, it took us two months basically to fill the position because they will do a round of department interviews. And then from there, it does take time to do the conditional offer phase, which does include additional references, background checks. So that does take some time. And obviously, if they want to give notice to their current employer, that's why there is some extended time that's basically embedded into that timeline. And we also, so there's quite a lot of steps that are happening before candidates are placed on the eligible list. Our unclassified positions, I do want to note there is no eligible list for those positions. So specific because the engineers are classified positions, they all do have eligible lists. So generally it will just take longer just to fill the position. And then hopefully that answers most of the questions in terms of the timeline for the questions. I know that there were a couple questions related to that timeline. For Council Member Park, so you did have some questions in terms of regarding promoting and managers in terms of especially bringing back retired annuitants. So those are really more in an as needed capacity. For the purpose of the presentation, we did not include any of the as needed positions that we're filling. So these are all full time budgeted positions. We would really only bring back retired annuitants really sparingly, so really in dire situations where we really do need to fill the position. Obviously, we had specifically, and I will touch base on the engineers, we promoted five engineers within the work group. So I would say, and you can see our total number of promotions throughout the organization for the current fiscal year alone was 71. So that's about 35% of our total recruitment activity, so I think that that's pretty significant in terms of how much we're recruiting and promoting internally. In terms of the retired annuitant piece, we wouldn't necessarily bring them back to fill one of these positions. We may hire in an as-needed capacity, but generally the preference is to fill the full-time positions for these positions. In terms of losing employees due to lack of mobility, so we do send an exit survey to employees once they do leave the organization to try and get some information as to why they're leaving. It could be a variety of reasons related to cost of living, other circumstances, maybe they've gotten a promotional opportunity elsewhere. We generally don't necessarily see lack of mobility internally promoting here. I would say that there is obviously ample promotional opportunity within the organization and across the board. We are trying to work with our managers and hiring departments to help create that succession planning just as retirements are natural. That's just the natural cycle of how they're going to complete their employment cycle with the city. And vacancy rates in terms of comparing for our comparator agencies, and specifically, you know, you did touch on our public safety. So currently right now we do have about eight vacant positions in the police department. So I would say generally tracking overall, you know, they're about 5%. They are continuously working and filling those positions. We did hire quite a bit of police. police officers in this last recruitment round and i believe we hired about eight five laterals and then um i'm sorry six so five laterals and then one recruit so um you know we are working really hard to fill the police officer positions but those recruitments do take time i'm just given the length of the backgrounding process and but overall when we're looking at the eight vacant positions that they do have and there could be at various levels too so they're not all at the police officer level and we do have a couple of vacant police sergeant positions and um vacant police lieutenant positions. But what we will do as those employees are preparing to resign or retire, we will work on filling those promotional positions and that essentially will vacate the lower level so we can continue to recruit lateral and recruit officers for our public safety positions. In terms of NeoGov, Council Member Hardy, you did ask about additional recruitment efforts. So attract is a new feature. Like I said, we are rolling out currently, so we are hoping that that will help us take a more proactive approach. I think a lot of agencies tend to take a more passive approach just because the capacity can be very limited, but hopefully this will help us be more engaging to candidates. We do also advertise and post on a variety of job boards and platforms. You know, we do work really closely with hiring departments. Many of them are a part of certain organizations or work groups where we are advertising, you know, specifics. So if they are an engineer, you know, we're trying to target, you know, electrical engineers. You know, we are going, like I said, to career fairs, you know, fairly regularly. Candidates do have the option too. So if they come across our webpage, they can submit an interest card. So if they are interested in a position that maybe we don't have it currently posted, but once we do post, they can get notified once that job is live, just based on certain interests that they may have. So that is another way that candidates can get engaged. As we do go to career fairs, we are collecting applicant resumes and you know we do have them on file so you know we do you know try and send them you know periodic reminders to you know remember to come check out our job board come check out our web page and you know and apply for the City of Santa Clara job so there is a variety different advertisement tools that we are using and hopefully with the addition of the new positions you know we can focus more on other out reach and advertisements and it'll be a little bit more creative in terms of social media postings. You know, ideally we would like to do some recruitment videos for some of our harder to fill positions. So hopefully that's what we'll be able to do, you know, if the positions do get added into the budget. And then there is another question to Council Member Jane regarding our recruitment, executive recruitment contracts. So we do actually have some recruitment contracts that are currently active. What we did do is we did recently reopen the RFQ process so that we could get additional on recruitment firms. So those applications are currently being screened and they will essentially be added to our list of recruiters that we're able to use. This is really just to help supplement the recruitment workload. Generally they're used for our executive management positions, but we will depend on them to help fill some of those additional positions. In terms of Mayor Gilmore, you did ask regarding the Baker-Tilly study, so that is still being finalized. I can turn over to the city manager, Grogan, to touch more on that.

I think the mayor was referencing our organizational assessment, but it's important to note that we are currently undergoing several organizational assessments. It's an effort that I told the city council about some time ago. And so four departments raised their hand and were a part of the initial group. Public Works, Parks Recreation, Silicon Valley Power, and Community Development. Of those four, only Public Works is finalized. Silicon Valley Power report is currently in draft format. It's actually back at the department because the department is looking at the draft recommendations and actually would like to add an additional division. And so we're giving them that opportunity to provide that additional insight to the vendor We also have the Parks and Rec report that is currently under review by the Parks and Recreation Director before it's finalized, and the Community Development report is under review by the Community Development Director. So once they've done their final review, it will go back to the consultant, and then it will be finalized. We can certainly send the final Public Works report that was recently completed to Council, so we can ship that off via email. I do know that staff was working to package them and send them all and upload them, at least have several at a time. But the specific one that the mayor referenced is still in draft form and not final yet.

I'm hoping we get all the reports when they come back. And then will those recommendations be incorporated into this Senate bill, this report here? Because this is what we have, but that's what we need. Sure, Mayor. They don't match, probably not going to match so well.

survey let me articulate that because it's actually uh... not quite accurate in there too totally distinct things so what we're undertaking is an organizational assessment of the department's looking at the entire organizational structure as well as the programs and services making sure that we're both staffed effectively uh... the right positions at the right level and also doing a workload assessment so if we need to add additional positions those recommendations wouldn't really be wouldn't go to this report where they would actually go as to our budgetary conversations and there may even be some mid-year appropriation requests that come to council that will have to go to you as a budgetary action and then be approved and then the next year then it would come back to that report the next year it would come back as a vacancy if it's not filled

Okay, now I understand what it is and I understand the Baker Tilly, the report assessment. It's gonna show us, give us a really good idea of what we need to operate the city and the number of employees in each department that we need to operate the city. So that's why I'm saying that report isn't gonna match what is being presented this evening and we should just be aware of that.

All right, any other questions?

I asked also about the opportunity for the units to speak before the council regarding this report. Two of them told me they didn't have enough time, they weren't allowed enough time with notice to be able to come tonight like they did last year, so...

As soon as we were made aware of this special meeting and that we were gonna be agendized for this meeting, we did provide notice to the bargaining units, but I mean, I'm assuming they can always come forward at any public session. Okay, that's good to know. If they'd like to.

All right, thank you. All right, members of the public, do we have, Brian, we have you. If you'd like to make a statement, please come forward. Welcome.

Thank you. I just really have one thing. Thank you, ma'am. That was a lot of hard work. I wanted to stay for this because I thought it was something totally different, but that's impressive what you folks have to do. So I think that's what I'll just leave it there.

Oh, very good. Thank you. Do I have a motion from the council? Someone put their light on? Council Member Hardy.

I'd like to make a motion to accept the report. A note and file? Note and file. Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Hardy, second by Council Member Chauhal. Note and file the report. Please register your vote. And that passes six to zero, those present unanimously. Thank you so much for the report, thank you. All right, next we're gonna move on to action item number eight. Action on resolution adopting council policy 057, establishing procedures to be followed in the event of a disruption of telephonic service or internet-based audio-visual platform during a council meeting. City Manager?

I'll do it quick. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as you know, cities across the country adopted remote participation platforms, many adopting Zoom as we did here in Santa Clara. We also, like many cities, continue to offer Zoom as a remote participation platform. As Chief Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter will describe, there is a new state law that requires consistent remote participation access. And so we have a policy before you, policy 057, that would establish certain procedures in accordance with the state law. Ms. Reuter.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's nice to see you again. Senate Bill 707. was passed in 2025 and became effective on January 1st, 2026. It makes significant modifications to the open meeting law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, also known as just the Brown Act. Some of the modifications went into effect immediately, while others went into effect as of July 1st, 2026. Some examples of the changes are listed there. They include teleconferencing rules for different types of legislative bodies, remote appearance and ADA compliance, social media prohibitions, which are extended now under the new law, and translation of meeting agendas. Specifically as to teleconferencing and remote public participation, there are a host of new rules. Many cities, as the city manager mentioned, reverted to fully in-person meetings after the pandemic ended. however the public has become accustomed to and comfortable with as we see this evening the use of remote public participation methods like the zoom application and so advocacy groups have pushed to make remote public participation options mandatory across the state sp 707 does just that it requires remote participation options and sets ground rules for the use of these options SB 707 states that by July 1st, all city council meetings must allow for a two-way telephonic service or a two-way audio-visual platform for public participation in public meetings. We currently offer both, and we are in compliance with this part of the Brown Act. IT ALSO REQUIRES THE COUNCIL TO ADOPT A COUNCIL POLICY ADDRESSING PROCEDURES TO BE FOLLOWED IN THE EVENT OF A DISRUPTION OF TELEPHONIC OR INTERNET SERVICE DURING A MEETING. IT STATES, AND I'LL QUOTE, BEFORE JULY 1, 2026, AN ELIGIBLE LEGISLATIVE BODY, THAT'S THE CITY COUNCIL OF A CITY WITH A POPULATION IN EXCESS OF 30,000, shall approve at a noticed public meeting in open session, not on the consent calendar, a policy regarding disruption of telephonic or internet service occurring during meetings subject to this subclause. The policy shall address the procedures for recessing and reconvening a meeting in the event of disruption and the efforts that the eligible legislative body, the city council, shall make to attempt to restore that service. So what does the law require with regard to what we have to have in our policy? It specifies that the disruption policy must provide for the following. If a disruption of either the telephonic or internet service prevents members of the public from attending or observing the meeting via the two-way telephonic or two-way AV platform, then the council must recess the open session of the meeting for at least one hour and make a good faith attempt to restore the service. The council may meet in closed session during this one hour period on an agendized closed session item. The council shall not reconvene the open session of the meeting until at least one hour following the start of the disruption or until the service is restored, whichever is earlier. Upon reconvening the open session, if telephonic or internet service has not been restored, If the one hour has passed and we have been unsuccessful in restoring the service, then the council has to make a decision as to whether you want to adjourn the meeting or you want to continue the meeting without the online access or the telephonic access. If the council does wish to continue the meeting at that time, then the council must adopt a finding by a roll call vote that good faith efforts to restore the telephonic or internet service have been made and that the public interest in continuing the meeting outweighs the public interest in remote public access. So how do we propose to adopt these requirements from SB 707 into the council policy that's before you for your review and adoption today? We believe that our proposal satisfies the requirements and in fact goes a little bit beyond simply satisfying the requirements because it does provide for a suggested detail, a level of detail that's not actually set forth in SB 707. So first we say, if city staff determines that the public attendance and observance through either telephonic or internet-based services has been disrupted, then the mayor shall make an announcement describing the disruption and announcing that the council shall go into recess. During that period of recess, the city staff shall undertake good faith efforts to restore the service and keep a record of such efforts. The council shall not reconvene until at least one hour following the start of the disruption or until the service is restored, whichever is earlier. If the service is restored within the one hour period of time, the mayor shall call the meeting back to order and shall verbally announce that the disrupted service has been restored. If the service has not been restored after one hour, then the council may either adjourn or continue the meeting by majority vote of the entire body in accordance with the findings that we discussed. The good faith efforts have to be stated before the body and through whichever undisrupted methods of communication still exist. And the mayor shall also provide instructions to the audience regarding alternative attendance options. So the recommendation that we have today is to adopt a resolution approving and adopting Council Policy 057, which establishes procedures to be followed in the event of a disruption of telephonic service or internet-based audio-visual platform during a Council meeting in accordance with Senate Bill 707.

So I have a question, Sue, and that is, these are only for the The services, whether it's telephone or the internet-based, for our viewers that want to participate in the meeting.

That's correct.

Not for like Facebook or social media. That's correct.

Channel 15, YouTube, Facebook, any of those one-way communication methods that we provide for ease of access and convenience of our viewers. Those avenues of communication are not covered by this.

Okay, so it's just the ones where they're Zooming or calling?

Yes, the ones that we list at the top of our agenda.

Yeah, very good. With the phone call-in number and the Zoom. I just wanted to be clear on that. Thank you. Council Member Park?

Yeah, I know that in addition to Zoom and phone, which are the ways that people can participate, I mean, that's the two-way communication. That's the two-way part of the meeting that we have others. We've got Facebook, we've got YouTube, we've got cable TV. And of those, cable TV is actually unique because it does not require internet connection. And in communities and places where there is no internet or internet is very slow, I think it's very important that cable TV is available. Cable TV is not a method that people can use to interact with the meeting, but we have seen, and we've had a lot of people do this, the non-interactive portion, the non-interactive ways of watching the meetings are how some people realize oh i want to go down to city council to do this or i want to call in and when we have disruptions there i mean the one that i'm most concerned with is actually cable tv because i've actually had somebody tell me that well if there's a problem with cable tv i don't have internet what can i do we had a recent problem with YouTube I believe the YouTube feed was going down and or went down and I think that that was exacerbated by the fact that Even after the meeting the YouTube video was unavailable. I think people who went to the city YouTube video They just saw black it was just it was a it was not the recording of the video in those cases how do we ensure that we've got continuity if people want to watch those those videos and you know after the fact right because we'd like to say there are one or two ways that people can can interact with the meeting, but all the ways that we provide, the more ways that we provide for people to interact with the meeting, people do interact with the meeting, and anything that goes down actually inhibits some portion of the public from interacting in the meeting, even if they're not interacting directly through YouTube, directly through a cable channel, they do use the cable channel, they do use seeing what's on screen, to decide that they want to call in and make a comment or to decide that they want to come down in person to make a comment. I've heard that, I've seen that happen where people have come because they were watching us on television. So, How do we address things like that? That is not the same level of disruption as a two-way communication, but it is disruptive, and I would contend that if our cable television went down, that is a major enough disruption to a class of users that warrants a break.

Well, we'll wait a minute. Let's just finish the questions. Council Member Hardy?

I don't think it's ever happened, and because we have SVP, I highly doubt it, but I was just wondering if the power going out here in City Hall, if that is considered a disruption. Are we supposed to wait around an hour to see if it comes back on? I was just curious based on reading this policy. Thank you.

All right, those are the questions. Those are the questions. I'll take the second question first. If the power goes out at City Hall, and that means that we're not able to broadcast through Zoom application the course of the City Council meeting, that would, yes, constitute a disruption because it's preventing people from participating in and observing the meeting through the two-way audio-visual platform. Theoretically, in that context, our two-way telephonic platform might not go down. And so that would be after an hour of good faith attempts to restore SVP's power service and whatever reboots we have to do. If at the conclusion of that we're still not able to restore the Zoom service for whatever reason, the city council at that point would have to make a choice as to whether you wanted to proceed with just the telephonic participation piece or if you wanted to adjourn the meeting. Okay, so as to the first question with regard to channel 15 and some of our other one-way broadcast channel or avenues that we have I think that that would I don't I don't disagree with you that the reason why we provide those is to Provide for additional engagement options and that and they are in fact successful engagement options to the extent you want to explore some of the mitigation methods that we may have for the potential for one of those avenues to go down. I think that that would be something that you would explore with the city manager's office through regular policymaking channels like we do with other council policies. That is not something that's covered under SB 707 for the purposes of this policy. So the discussion with relation to the policy that's before you is for those specific two-way participation avenues.

Thank you. Thank you, Sue. I'm going to go to the public now, if they're watching. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this issue? Do we have anyone online? I see none. All right. Council. Council Member Chahal.

Motion to approve staff recommendation.

Second. Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Chihal to approve the staff recommendation, second by Council Member Hardy. Council Member Park.

Yeah, so I hear what you're saying about SB 707, and I think that when we look at the item, the item is Council Policy 057, which is, I think, maybe perhaps driven by the Senate bill, but this is an internet disruption policy, and it specifically says internet. But if we look at disruption policy, again, I would like something in there that, because You know, this is a, I would say, a disruption policy. This is what happens if there is something wrong with the feed. For us to have to come back again with another policy, you know, I don't know how, like I prefer to look at this as a disruption policy. Right. I don't think it takes much, much more wording or time to say, well, if we are told that a method is down to maybe take a vote or decide that we wanna pause, regardless of what it is, if it's not one of the two-way communications, maybe we can still elect to pause the meeting while that, while, they look at the technical problem. Like I would like to say first determine whether in fact there's a disruption that is affecting public access, the announcements to be made to attendees, and then good faith efforts to restore service one hour if it's a two-way communication disruption. if it's a way that people interact with the meeting and if it's not that the council members would be told that there is a disruption and council can can decide well this isn't big enough that we want to worry about but i think that there should be something that says council should be told that there's a disruption so that we can um choose to address it we can choose to tell the public that there is an issue we can have a website the website says this service is down i mean people can go there if if they're having problems i just feel that there's so many small things that we could do to address Any of the disruptions that's really easy to add to this policy that I don't understand why we would not add Something a simple line that says for any other for any method that's there Council would be notified and council can can choose to You know that that the city would notify that city would have a website that tells you that this service is down and tells you other places to go and Council can decide to to pause to wait for a technical fix right i mean the one hour service good faith wait is required for two-way communications but for any disruption we should we council should be notified and we should tell the public uh so that would be my manager your lights on

I think Council Member Park was getting ready to proffer that suggestion, which is essentially adding additional criteria to the disruption part of this policy. I just wanted to clarify that there are seven ways for people to participate in our meetings. We've mentioned some of them. So there's in-person, there's Zoom via the telephonic feature, There's Zoom via the internet-based audiovisual. There's our city website via Granicus, YouTube, Facebook, and then cable TV. And so the top three, in-person, telephonic, and internet-based audiovisual are the ones that are required. We have four other platforms that could have various technology Technology issues that do not relate to anything that we are doing here I will say that there when we are notified of a feed or one of the communication vehicles having a Problem we do attempt to notify The City Council typically that is through the clerk. I will also say that sometimes we don't know about it or Frankly, someone watching at home will text a council member and say, hey, my internet just went down or the cable TV went down, and it'll actually get to one of us quicker. I've gotten, received those texts. I know the city attorney has as well. And so we can certainly make an effort to notify the city council when that happens.

i i agree with that but we cannot stop a meeting if facebook is out and we can't control facebook or youtube we can't control those platforms and so as long as we have the ones that this senate bill tells us we have to you know we have to do we will be interrupting our meetings constantly if that's the case and that's not the intent of this um and we're fairly lucky that Those platforms don't go out, but if Facebook goes out, sometimes people go to YouTube. If YouTube goes out, they maybe go watch it on somewhere else. But it's going to disrupt our meetings, and who is going to monitor all those platforms for us? Are we gonna just rely on the community to tell us that they're out? I don't think we have someone here on staff monitoring them. the other platforms all the time. I just think it's hugely problematic. Anyways, Council Member Chauhal.

As a maker of motion, I would like to add that, as requested, we can, those one-way medias, whether it's Facebook or YouTube, if the council or the staff come to know about that this thing is down, In case we can find out, I think we should add that council will announce on the dais that this media is down, but you can go to YouTube, you can go to channel, TV channels, so and so, those medias are still okay. That's a simple information for sake, because somebody might be only based, looking at YouTube only, not other medias. So we can add, because I looked at the agenda item and I looked at the staff report, it is actually, disruption of council meeting, and I know Bill 707 has prompted this thing, but 057 is our policy, and we are incorporating SB 707 into it, but we can always put our own thoughts into it. So I would like to add those factors into this one, in the resolution, thank you.

As the second, I can't feel comfortable about that because it reminds me of a situation in junior high where they made an announcement. If you can't hear this announcement, please send a student to the office because if it's down, it's down and they know it's down. But we have no control over those platforms.

Exactly. We don't have a control over Zoom also. We don't have control over telephone company also. So what's the harm in informing our resident that, hey, this thing is down. If you want to alternate, go to YouTube, go to other medias. There's no harm in it. Like, what's the...

I'm okay with that. I'm okay with just announcing but not stopping a meeting for an hour and trying to wait for YouTube to come back on.

If you don't want to second, let anybody else second the motion. That's fine.

That's a simple fix.

If you just wanted to announce, but my point is if someone is, if they're on something and it goes off, they know that.

Yeah, but we are trying to tell them that this other media is available if you want to go. They should not think that all the media is closed. I'm just announcing. Okay.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Do you have that change, City Clerk? that if it's out on other platforms, we will just announce it if we know, if we find out. That's a big if.

And I have a comment and a question. Council Member Park. And I hear all the comments here. My question is how often has a service gone down in the last couple of years? I mean, I don't know how often a service has gone down. That's the first question. That would inform us that how often we'd get an interruption to a meeting. I also do know that in February we had YouTube go down and city staff and executive staff was notified. Council was not notified. We didn't get, as city manager suggested, a notification from the clerk. I don't even know if the clerk knew. But it's one of those things, this was the instance where I had a number of people complaining because there was something in the council meeting that people were specifically tuning in to watch and they could not see it. and this is why if we had known this we you know we could have at least said something but we did not know this and i understand how it should work as the city manager has pointed out but i also know that's not how it's worked when we've known about outages so i would like something in a policy and thank you very much to the council members that made the motion uh... but i would like a policy which forces us to do this kind of action rather than you know, hope for the best. I mean, I think that's what policy is for. It's to say when something fails and we know something's gonna fail, this is what we do, not these are the things that are possible.

All right, city manager, your line's up. Stop, city manager, and then if you wanna direct to the IT.

Sure, thank you. With regard to announcing, we will, whether it's in the policy or not, I think make an effort, if we know, to announce to council. I understand the comments of, frankly, If you're watching Facebook and it goes down, you're not going to hear our announcement. You know, conceivably, there's a contentious item and the council may say, or a high interest item, the council may say, hey, you know what, let's take this high interest item a little later and maybe Facebook will come back up. And so I think if we can make that announcement, that may be helpful. Looking at the cover page of the agenda, we only list the address for the in-person and Zoom. While there's already a lot of text on here, we can look at adding the other four ways to watch the meeting. So if you're on Facebook, you may not know that you can go to our website and look at it on Granicus. And so we can look at adding that.

on a staff level, did look at some potential language to add to the agenda with respect to our one-way communications, and with respect to the beginning part of the agenda, we chose not to include it there so that people didn't get confused and think that that was an official two-way avenue of communication, and that, for example, a Facebook comment would be considered public participation. So I do believe that there is a reference to some our other avenues of participation sort of in later on in the agenda packet.

There's a legal reason for everything, right?

I know, but we can look at it and I think adjust the wording so it's a little higher.

But I can say that because we've gotten like, messages and saying why didn't you respond and it comes in on facebook or whatever so i understand that yes is that i guess there was a so there was a question there was a question on how many reliability and regarding zoom and cable

We're at four, five, nine. So it's 99 point, et cetera, from all the metrics that we can track. On the YouTube side, I think that fell into the lessons learned of just it was there, had been extremely reliable, and then it wasn't. And we've gone, made changes, made improvements on it. We've looked at some of the processes and things, and certainly we can get that. We've worked with the communications team to ensure that there's a communication between the booth and the city clerk if there's something significant.

Thank you. Glenn, did you have something, city attorney, to add to this conversation?

Yeah, but the city manager just told me it was stupid.

Okay, well then we don't need to hear from you then. The beginning part was good. Do you have something intelligent to say to us?

Just language. I'm glad he's comfortable enough to be candid with me about my recommendations. But just language, Mayor, that might translate what you're talking about. It doesn't need to be the exact language. We get the gist of what you're proposing. But the amendment to the policy might be something like if staff or a council member is informed of any disruption of a one-way broadcast mechanism the public shall be informed of such disruption you've actually done that before too i know i have yeah and now we have to buy policy oh that's fine okay so we have a motion and a second what

Councilmember Park, if you're not going to repeat something, we've heard you several times. That's true, but you didn't address what I stated, which is, again, on the internet, we have sites going down, and how do you know a site's going down if it's just you? I mean, we've got Down Detector. We've got, is it down for you, or is it down for just me, or is it down for everyone? Which is why, again, if we've got a site, a website, if we've got a page on our website, which tells people, oh, these are down, so that people don't accidentally go to one of the places that they think they're watching the meeting, they don't see anything, and they think the meeting's been canceled. I think it would be a good thing to just have a status page which says, oh, by the way, we're having problems with these feeds. Go here, and you could even provide links.

City manager. Yeah. And then I'm going to the public.

I'll say that we can look into that. I will say, however, that we have a limited amount of contract staff here helping to run our meetings. And oftentimes as our meetings go late, we actually call off staff. And so toward the later hours, we do not have as many people supporting the meeting. And so I would not want to implement a policy that means we need to keep

three or four people here the entire length of the meeting to maintain additional feeds how difficult is it to update a web so thank you sue i'm going to go to the public now we have wanda go ahead wanda well thank you can you hear me yes we can go ahead please

Thank you for being legal and protecting our city. However, I wanted to give you a citizen feedback who comes to most all of the council meetings, most all of the governance meetings, some of the charter meetings. I've been to housing meetings, of course, senior advisory meetings. I have never been closed out of a meeting. i have had technical uh problems a couple times but i get right on and it's resolved so it's been a wonderful job and uh that just a person's feedback is very devoted to following you all thank you and thank you for continuing to follow us especially at this hour city clerk when you're ready thank you madam mayor i just want to read this motion back um

The motion on the floor is for staff recommendation, and in addition, if staff or council members are informed of a disruption on any of the one-way platforms, an announcement of the issue is to be made. Okay. Yes. Thank you. I think we have a hand up still.

I'm going to move on. Heard enough. Thank you. Please register your vote. And that passes unanimously of those present. Thank you. Our last item on the agenda is action on council policy establishing an annual performance review process for council appointees.

Mayor. This item involves council appointees, which affects me and City Attorney Guggen, so we will step down and leave the meeting now. You will be supported by the HR Director, Chief Assistant City Attorney, as well as Assistant City Manager Araceli Azevedo.

We are well protected then. Thank you. All right. Go ahead, Marco. Welcome.

Good evening, honorable mayor, city council. So the item for you is regarding a draft city policy to codify a policy and procedures in terms of performance evaluation and assessment of council appointees, specifically the city manager classification and the city attorney classification. Currently, there is no established process for the City Council to evaluate and assess the performance of the appointees, including those in the City Manager and City Attorney classification. A draft policy was presented to the Governance and Ethics Committee on April 13th and approved for presentation to City Council. Now the purpose of the policy is to provide established process, a consistent process that would provide both council and the employees and members of the public with regards to predictability, transparency, and consistency in how their performance evaluation process is done. So the proposed policy, notable areas regarding it, is that the rating period is gonna be set from January 1st of a calendar year to December 31st, regardless of the date of hire. Specifically, though, in the council policy, that if an appointee was hired after July, then the rating period would not end until December of the following year. for at least their first rating period, but the policy as it stands, it codifies that their rating period will be January 1 to December 31. It also codifies the fact that HR would get involved in the process in terms of obtaining the use of a facilitator to assist council and appointees in terms of conducting interviews with both council members and appointees and any identified staff members, such as their direct reports. and provide a report to city council. The policy does set a timeline for which these things are to occur. So during the November and December of the, at the end of the rating period, the facilitator is to meet with and interview the city council appointees and any identified employee, other staff, to gather information and report that to city council in January in closed session, as well as to the appointee IN TERMS OF THE INFORMATION THAT THEY GATHERED DURING THE LAST TWO MONTHS OF THE RATING PERIOD. IN FEBRUARY, CITY COUNCIL IS TO MEET IN CLOSED SESSION AND APPOINT A SUBCOMMITTEE OF COUNCIL MEMBERS TO DISCUSS THE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND ANY CHANGES THAT MAY BE MADE WITH REGARDS TO the council appointees benefits, pay, what have you. And in May, the subcommittee, so from February to May, that is the subcommittees to meet with the council appointee to discuss those issues. upon direction of the council, and then in May, the subcommittee, no later than the second, I believe the second meeting in May, is to provide that report to city council in closed session to present the results of their discussion with the council appointee, as well as provide any recommendations. It does, the policy does also provide, however, that if the process is not completed by May 31st, the council appointee will receive a automatic 2% wage increase or CPI, whichever is lower, with regards to the applicable CPI. And then that will be effective in July. And then in June, if there's any changes that have been approved by city council, HR will present that to council in open session for approval. And then if July or later, if the process carries over beyond June, the council is not prohibited from awarding or agreeing to any other wage increases or any other benefit changes later in the year that could be retroactive to July 1st. So that's the main timeline of the policy as it stands, and that was reviewed with the Governance Ethics Committee. and the staff recommendation is to approve a resolution approving this new council policy 058, which establishes a performance evaluation process for council appointees.

Questions? Council Member Hardin.

Thank you. If approved tonight, when would this go into effect?

If approved tonight, this policy would be in effect for the 2026 rating period. So it would start based on the timelines. The city will work on, HR specifically, will work on a facilitator who has to be available to start work in October and start meeting in November and December with the council members, the council appointees, as well as their other identified staff members.

Council Member Jay?

Yeah. This process has been problematic. There's never been really a driver for this process. As a result, we've had very haphazard performance reviews of our employees. I sit on the executive committee of NCPA and we have HR driving it. We never had a driver driving this process to go hire a consultant, to set a budget, to keep on schedule. So I guess my question is when, where, Where in the budget process does this go? We're in the budget process now. Are we allocating money for the consultants? Last time we hired consultants, but we didn't give them, I guess, enough compensation to do a 360 review, so I'm trying to understand how do we budget for this in this budget process, and how do we make sure that We get all of the features. In the past, we've never done goals and KPIs for our executives. I wanna make sure that that gets in there. Is that in this policy? And I like the idea of if Council can't get their act together, then the executives get a default 2%. or CPI, whichever is less, and that forces the council to complete the process. So those are my questions and comments.

Vice Mayor Gonzales.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. As far as in my past life, we would deal with certain things with amendments or MOUs to the existing contracts. for the, in this case, there's two direct reports to the council, I guess, or that we oversee. Would this supersede what may exist or does exist in current contract for MOUs or amendments that may exist?

Those are your questions.

Thank you very much. So with regards to the question for budget, as part of this, we've described that we are working with Budget Office based on the cost of the last use of the facilitator. We work with the Budget Office to budget for this item, and I believe that will be going before you as part of the entire budget discussion. But the policy does provide, it does have a term in it that HR and city staff will ensure that whatever budget actions need to be taken to facilitate this process and to make sure it goes forward, that the city staff will undertake that process. And with regards to the question, Council Member Gonzalez, was to whether this would supersede the current contracts, I believe that any agreement, and I can turn it over to Chief Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter, any agreement through this process, whatever HR then presents to Council for approval in open session, it would be in the form of a contract amendment. So then that would supersede, and that could include any, like language that would supersede anything that may already be existing in the contract. I'll turn it over to Sue.

So we did write the policy to include sort of references to whether there are clauses like this in contracts. So there is the possibility for doing that. The two agreements at present already include that 2% clause in them. So there's not really any discord between the policy and the existing contracts. And the hope is that in the event that there is contract negotiation with some new appointee at some point in the future, we'll be able to incorporate the policy into that contract. that contract negotiation.

Thank you. Is that it? All right. I'm...

The question was whether there's anything regarding goals and KPIs in the policy, and there is something... one of the terms allows for the appointment of a subcommittee in the course of the full council's discussion of an appointment of a subcommittee, discussion of goals is a part of that, and then the subcommittee may or may not, depending on the scope of your delegation to the subcommittee, discuss those goals. with the employee. The initiation of the goals discussion is for the entirety of the council prior to appointing a subcommittee.

Okay, I'm going to go to the public now. Do we have any public members that want to give an opinion on this? Brian?

I'm glad it's not very late. This was the primary reason I came tonight. It seems like the last few times with city clerk, or not city clerk, but the executive, the city manager, and the city attorney, their quote unquote dismissal was very disruptive to the city. I mean, if you read online, you read the people's comments, people who've made comments here, and city attorneys, or one of them, I think it was Mr. Doyle, who kept coming back, had some good points, I think. It's good to see this policy. I think it should work. I do wanna reiterate, I don't know if I'm gonna say this right, believing the best, because I think a lot of the stuff that happened with people was a lot of frustration and frustration personalities, no offense, and you can't deny that, but the better, the more refined the policy, the better that is. So I'd encourage people to take this policy and apply it, because losing a city manager and a city attorney, especially near the same time, is very disruptive, and it's demoralizing, I believe, too, to the city staff. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Do we have anyone online? No? All right, thank you. Council Member Parks.

Yeah, so I appreciate the comment about KPIs. That's what I wanted to go into, which is you said, I believe, and I'm looking at this as well, that the goals would be discussed prior to the appointment of the subcommittee. And I think that's way too late. One of the things that you would do an evaluation on is how somebody... tracked to the goals that were given early on like i feel that rather than say we're gonna think of goals right now based on what you've done or based on other things and then in the next month you know two months we're going to discuss uh how you did on those goals is that's a terrible process i feel that we need something at this time that after the the uh the report is done maybe sometime in june or july the goals for the next year are set so that there are some more objective things that we can you know they wouldn't be details goals they would be goals in this area some other area so that you know there is some direction to the city manager not specific items but specific areas And those would be things that we can evaluate through the year. But to simply look at things that have been done, that have been accomplished, that, you just write a list of the things that you want to do. We had a discussion about different goals. I mean, everyone in the Valley knows about SMART goals. right and uh... what smart stands for and it just it's kind of blew my mind that there was no knowledge of what smart was or how smart worked uh... in the city or in government i don't know if it's in government or the city but i mean we talk about measurable goals we talk about timely goals we talk about all these different things and there's no concept of that when we're giving evaluations and i think as an engineer or as somebody that, even for teaching staff, we use these kinds of goals. I don't understand how we can do evaluations without knowing what we're evaluating against. If we're just going to say, let's look at the stuff you did and judge based on the stuff that you have, I think there needs to be goals that the council can decide on. I don't think they should be specific. unless they are very big things, like perhaps FIFA and Super Bowl would be a very specific thing, but I feel that having a discussion of the goals and negotiation during the time that you're creating the subcommittee is absolutely way too late. I feel that once the negotiations, once the compensation benefits, other modifications have been decided, then it should immediately go into, and this is what, You know, we're expecting these are the kinds of things that we'd like to see for the next year. I mean, I don't understand how it's supposed to work without those kinds of, I guess, premeditated goals.

Thank you, Councilmember. With regards to the policy, we believe that we would defer that conversation for the Council to have. with a facilitator. I think the facilitator can help in terms of crafting those goals and based on the information that they gather from both council, the employee, as well as other staff members, and then as the council goes over in terms of what they delegate to the subcommittee, those discussions could be had during that time. The way the policy is written, we believe, is general enough that it can include that.

I mean, when I hear can include that, that's very different from does include that. And again, this is why I'm asking for this, because it can be anywhere here, but I'm kinda suggesting that there is a place to do it, and that place is not at the time of subcommittee selection, you know, two months before the final report is given. I think it should be sufficiently early, like the very beginning of the next cycle, so that they can be achievable so that we can think about what the people being evaluated have done.

Can I make a suggestion? I hear what you're saying. The issue is that I think that, as Marco mentioned, the addition or the inclusion of a facilitator to help with that portion, the process of how to determine goals for an upcoming rating year and the substantive goals that you do ultimately determine for an upcoming rating year. I think that's the kind of thing that would be helpful to have a facilitator assist the council with. And the way we have it currently set up is that we have the procurement happening early on in the fiscal year such that the contracting can be done by September and the facilitator starts their work in October. What I would suggest is maybe adding in goal process creation and substantive discussion of goals in that early November, December time period. such that you can then in the late January, February time period include a discussion of satisfaction of the prior rating periods goals and formalization of the upcoming rating periods goals. That might be a time period, a process that would work to satisfy your concerns.

Well, I'm saying if we started that process this year and we had a discussion with the facilitator in November, December of this year, I don't know that that would be in time or timely for an evaluation next May, next June. Right, I think that if we were already in process, I agree with you, we can do this at any time. And we would just say, well, this is what we're looking forward to in the following year. But to do this in the middle of the year, it just seems like it's too late. I mean, we're only evaluating on half the year, right? I mean, I would like the evaluation process to also allow the city manager to say, and in addition to the goals that we were laid out before, here are some things that I have done, here are some other things that have been accomplished that weren't necessarily itemized, but I'm gonna itemize a few things, I'm gonna put a few things on there. But I think there needs to be something early on at the start of the cycle, at the very start of the cycle, or even maybe preceding the start of a cycle that gives some objectivity to this is what you were supposed to do.

The first year is difficult because you are sort of starting it from scratch, right?

Maybe the first year we hire a facilitator at the end of this cycle in July, in June, July, to go over the... the goals for the next cycle, but without that, I feel like we're not doing a very good evaluation. We're just asking, how do you think you've done?

And I think that if that's the direction from council, for us to do that early on in the 26, 27 fiscal year, hire the facilitator to go through that process, we can certainly do that. That wouldn't necessarily impact the language of the policy that's before you, because that will go on for future rating periods.

Oh, but it absolutely would, because before I brought this up, your suggestion to where that factors into this process was, In February. Right.

Okay.

For an evaluation that should be done in June. And that's, I mean, that's not the time to set goals. That's less than half a year. Okay, I'm done with my questions.

All right, Council Member Hardy.

I'd like to thank the subcommittee, the Governance and Ethics Committee for their work on this, and I would like to put forth that we adopt their resolution, Council Policy 058, to establish a performance evaluation process for our appointees.

That's a motion, is there a second? All right, we have a motion by Council Member Hardy, second by Vice Mayor Gonzales. I won't be supporting the motion. I really have a few problems with this policy that grants an automatic salary increase if the annual evaluation is not completed by a certain date. The purpose of an annual evaluation is to assess performance before giving any sort of compensation. So when a raise occurs automatically and when the evaluation isn't completed, compensation can increase without a formal review or performance. And we saw that in this last year with both of our appointees. It rewards delay, so if it's delayed, then the appointees are given that automatic, compensation and it creates different standards. We don't have the same standard for our employees. If they don't receive, you know, if they receive late evaluations, they're not automatically compensated. And it has a perception issue. Even if the increase is relatively small, residents may perceive an automatic raise as being disconnected from performance. And again, this is all supposed to be for performance. And the way I see that this policy is is that I think performance is kind of left out of it. So the way it's set up, it actually reduces the council leverage over anything. We actually start the process, we hire someone, And then we have a subcommittee who negotiates compensation with the appointee. I know that this council majority has been doing that, but that is not how this should be done at all. You don't negotiate with the appointee. compensation based on performance. That's what's left out of this. And then they're given an automatic 2% if it's not by a certain time and then later on they can get additional compensation that's retroactive and I've heard we don't do retroactive pay in this city, which we actually do. So I think that I don't see an opportunity for a 360 review that we talked about for our appointees and others. This is just automatic and it's not based in any performance. So I'm really not supporting this. This is wrong. Council Member Park.

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I'm complaining about. There is no evaluation in this. At some point, I mean, I understand why we suggested the automatic 2%. It was to try to get the council. This was something to get the council into motion to making sure that these, these evaluations got done, but as it is, I don't know what we would be evaluating. I mean, one of the issues that we've had is how do we evaluate something? We just accept what people tell us? There has to be some way where council, if council is gonna do an evaluation, sets the expectation. and there is no expectation setting here, or the expectations get set really, really, really late. It's just funny for me to hear and get criticized by I think the only person on this council who gave the previous city manager one of the largest, largest compensation packages, one of the largest in the country actually, if not the largest, right now here the public members but if you look at other cities i mean it turns out city managers and city attorneys they turn over all the time what was unusual and now i find what was actually really good about this city was that We had two city managers that stayed for decades. That is highly unusual. In fact, when I talk to people about this, I used to think it was a bad thing. And there are some bad things to do with it, but I think that the fact that we had the two city managers that stayed for decades, the specific ones that we did, they gave us more than stability. They gave us a direction and continuum they gave us kind of this they were santa clara in a lot of ways and i would say that a lot of the turmoil that's resulted came after their time it came a lot of where the political wills where the council members wanted much more control over the city than the city manager you know we're supposed to be a weak mayor we're supposed to be advisory city council and when you've got you know people trying to be strong mayors and trying to tell people what to do and hiring people specifically for what they're going to do and then giving them huge compensation packages in advance, I think that's far worse than what we're trying to do here, which is we're trying to reward performance and we're trying to do a fair evaluation. And the thing that I would like to add to this motion is I would like to add, at least for the first year, that maybe we hire another another consultant during the report timeframe to help us with the first reports, to help us with the, bless you, to help us with the the compensation, and also to help create the goals for the next cycle. So if we can add that, and we can even put something that says we're gonna try that out, but I would like to add that without a section on goal setting that's closer to the beginning of the cycle, or close to the end of the cycle, I cannot support what's here. On one side, I'm hearing that, well, we don't have to have that level of detail, but on the other side, if we don't have that level of detail, I'm not sure it's going to happen. For policy, I'd like to know what is going to be done, not what is possible, and that's what I would like to see here. My amendment would be that we add a We add in the June timeframe, June, July timeframe, a facilitator, definitely for the first year, and we can see how that works out afterwards, to go over what the goals for the next cycle would be. And without that, I don't think that I would vote for this.

Who made the motion? I did and there is no way that that would work in a timeframe situation. We know that because we tried to hire a facilitator and there has to be a lot more lead time. So that's why I asked very clearly at the beginning when would this take effect and it would take effect in October that we would start this process. So I see no reason to do that, especially when we're in the middle of a lot of other very important things, and we've already started the process, and I have a subcommittee. I just need people to give me timeframes so they can come.

All right, thank you. That's not accepted. Council Member Chihal.

Thank you, Mayor. So I hear what Council Member Park is saying, and I have a suggestion. We start the process in November, December with the facilitator, right? And he interviews council as well as the appointee basically, right? So during that process, he can also focus on KPIs and the goals depending upon what the report appointee gives to him. as well as what the feedback council gives to them. His focus should be what the council wants, the future goals, as well as what the appointees' future goals are. And then in January, facilitator meets with city council and council appointee in closed session. And that's the time all the information can be presented to the council by the facilitator, goals, KPIs, and everything. and by january or february that should be consolidated i think that's the point of council member park that we have to consolidate the future goals as soon as possible for the next year basically and i think if we delegate that another function to the facilitator that you have to focus on the Future goals depending upon his interview with the council as well as with appointee He should bring that back to the first council session and if we can formalize that by January or February I think that can be Incorporated and that can be a solution. I know it's not ideal from the day one but at least we have a focus that it's we are starting it sooner than June July or something like that and other things can be discussed about it.

I

Yeah, I think that is the idea, and as we look for a facilitator, that will be part of the conversation and the information we'd be seeking from the facilitator to be able to obtain that information through discussions with council. Additionally, there was a comment about the 360 review. That's why we added the language with regards to other identified staff members. That's what that language was meant to do as well, is to incorporate

what council members have stated as an interest in having a 360 review.

So yeah, I believe that that's, as we look for a facilitator, those would be things that we can incorporate into that request.

All right, we have the motion and a second. Council Member Jane.

Yeah, I sit on the NCPA Executive Committee. And as I was on governance, I used the NCPA process to guide my suggestions to this process. And this council has for years failed in this process. We did not provide goals. We delayed the performance reviews. I actually believe that there were some council members that intentionally delayed this process by not being available when we had special meetings. And that's why I wanted to put in the 2% to basically encourage this council to get on the ball and complete this process in time. If the council is actually doing its job, we don't ever have to engage in the automatic 2%. It would just be a normal performance review process. And 2% is less than any of our bargaining units got this year. So it's not a performance number. It's actually the 2% follows a policy that NCPA has that the general manager gets an automatic X amount and then there's performance on top of that. Since we have not, done our job and established performance goals for our executives, we're behind the ball. We would have had goals that we could then evaluate them against, but we don't have those. So now we have that first year problem that Sue talked about where we're trying to play catch up. And if we could get those goals maybe done in July, that would be nice. I don't see that happening practically, in which case we just have to do the first review like we've done in the past absent of goals. So I'm in favor of that. this process. It is nice to make sure that the goals are established early on in the year so that we actually have goals that we can track for the full year. If we establish goals, say, in May, then we'd have lost five months of time to have the executives work against those goals, so.

Vice Mayor Gonzales, we're gonna move on quickly. Vice Mayor Gonzales. Just,

I'm in favor of having goals as well as far as the timeframe doesn't really work that well. I think we can adjust this possibly in the future, but I think we have to have some tool that we use to get started. You know, in the past, organizations such as CSPA have tools that you can use to help with the evaluation process. I think what I found here was that the California City Management Foundation has some evaluative tools that we can use. But Goals are mutually agreed upon all right with with our with our staff member or members in this case and The council and I think that's something that we have to work up towards I think this kind of gives us a little bit of a tool to to get there It's not perfect for our time frame But we can adjust those in the future if we have to and obviously July August would be a great time to have you know goals that we've agreed upon but I we can work towards that in the future.

Council Member Chauhal.

Yeah, so if you wanna, for the first year at least, like if you wanna reorganize, like we say in February we'll appoint a subcommittee, why don't we do that subcommittee in January so that in February we can bring forward the goals with the appointee basically. That way it's faster, fast track. In January itself we form the subcommittee. I'm just, I'm moving these things to make sure that we give appointee enough time for the future goals for the year, basically.

Are you asking for an amendment? I'm not sure. I've lost. Yes, I'm asking. I'm completely lost with all these comments.

The timeline amendment, basically.

Well, who made the motion? Council Member Hardy?

You're wanting to change one of the ones, because it's not written in the actual policy. That was just a PowerPoint showing what we were looking at. If you've read the resolution, going back to the policy and the procedure, It says during the months of November and December, the chosen facilitator will meet with the city council and any other identified members of staff and conduct at the second meeting in January. It goes through all the time frames.

And that's what I'm saying. In the second meeting in January, we form the subcommittee and which will take care of the goals and KPIs for the full year, subcommittee, and then we can present those to the appointee in February. That way we are saving some time going, instead of going to May, June, we are trying to bring that sooner and present to the appointee in February.

So your friendly amendment is to move the making of the subcommittee from March, April to January?

That's correct. because by January we'll have all the reports from the facilitator who will give us all the consolidated report and then generally from the subcommittee and formalize all the, at least the goals should be on priority so that we can give to the appointee the goals right in February and he has, at least for the first year, he has at least 10 months to make sure he fulfill his goals. That's what I'm asking the organization.

My point is it says the second meeting in February will meet in closed session and that's where we would need to be to make that subcommittee. So that's where I would put it.

I'm saying the subcommittee to be formed in January. That's what I'm saying.

Well, my point is if you look at point number five, it says the facilitator will just meet with the city council and employees in closed session. You're saying we have to set the subcommittee then? In that meeting, right.

The council can set up that subcommittee. Council has discretion to set up that subcommittee in January or February, it doesn't matter. But if you have all the information from the facilitator, why don't we set that up?

Why don't we change that from March to April to have it set by the second meeting in February so it can be done before? But if there's, I'm uncomfortable with saying you have to set it at a certain meeting, what if there's not a possibility if we just put in there by the second meeting in February? so we could do it in January or before, or up until the beginning of?

Yeah, that's what I'm asking. All right. We should do it in January. We can do it in January, right? I just said,

What is going on here?

By the second meeting, I would like Nora to just say by the second meeting in February so we could do it before, but if it's not possible, if we could do it in January, great. If we can't, then it can be done by February.

Yeah. Okay, who had the second? Who had the second? That's Albert. Albert, do you agree with whatever that was amended to? And for sake of moving on, I'm not gonna make any more comments, but I could. All right, city clerk, when you're ready, whatever the motion is.

So it's staff recommendation with the amendment of moving the creation of the subcommittee from May, April to the second meeting in February.

By the second. In January or latest by second meeting in February?

Latest by the second meeting in February. Second meeting.

By the second meeting in February. Preferably in January, January meeting, but latest by February, yeah.

Yeah, latest the second. By the second. Yeah. We'll clean that up.

Please register your vote. And that passes four to two. All right, thank you. Reports of member special committees and please keep them brief. We're trying to get into our 12 o'clock deadline. Anybody have any comments? Council Member Hardy.

Very briefly, the Hetch Hetchy Tour is June 16th and 17th. That is a Tuesday and a Wednesday. We do not have a meeting on that day. And there is one, maybe two open spots still. If someone has not gone on the Hetch Hetchy Tour, that is where 20% of our water comes from. And I will say I dragged Council Member Gonzales to it last year. I would say it was useful. Time well spent, he's saying yes. So if anyone wants to go, please let me know right away.

Thank you. Councillor Jane.

Yes, I've discussed this with the city manager. I have a 030. And this 030 is the city used to have a sustainability manager who reported to the city manager. That person ended up working on other issues like public relations while still being in the role of the sustainability manager. We now have a management analyst who is supposedly dedicated to sustainability but is also working on a number of issues like supporting the Neighborhood University Relations Committee. With a $1.6 billion overall city budget that eclipses cities that are much larger in population than Santa Clara, we deserve to have a full-time sustainability manager. Fremont, Mountain View, and Palo Alto have full-time sustainability managers. Santa Clara has a very aggressive climate action plan in terms of carbon emissions, but we don't seem to be tracking how we're doing relative to our stated goals. Silicon Valley Power has a fiscal year 24-25 operating budget, which is $909 million, with electricity sales of $723 million. The total carbon emissions from electricity sales is immense. We need a dedicated manager who's responsible for all kinds of activities, like increasing recycling, reducing water usage, increasing composting, and reducing carbon emissions, and then tracking the numbers. Individually, many departments have sustainability activities, but there doesn't seem to be anyone to coordinate those activities and to aggregate the impacts. We also need to update our Climate Action Plan, which is last updated in 2022. So I'd like to ask that this be agendized for a future meeting.

Should this be at a future meeting or goal setting?

future meeting to go to goal setting. Like you had requested.

It's not what I had requested. You want the 030 for the dashboard to be included?

No, you had requested a 030 for the June 9th meeting. I am requesting a 030 for a future meeting.

Anybody?

I'll make the motion for that.

I thought he made a motion. Are you seconding it? I'll second it. All right. I'm not going to support it. We do, Reena's our sustainability manager in the city. We do have a sustainability manager.

Yeah, madam, we're just reminding folks not to talk about the substance of the issue.

I'm just saying why I'm not supporting it in two seconds. Okay. All right. Motion second. So city clerk, when you're ready. Please register your vote. And that passes four to two. All right. Anybody else? Council Member Jane. Quickly.

I wanted to report on some trips because we've had our council meetings go past midnight for the last few meetings.

Can you just report instead of talking about that? Okay.

All right. So on April 22nd, 23rd, I went up to Lake Shasta with NCPA. We took a tour of Shasta Dam. I also got a tour of SVP's own reservoir and dam at Black Butte. It's a five megawatt hydro facility. then April 26th to 29th I attended the NCPA Federal Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. I attended with Nico Prokos, Chris Karwick, Kathleen Hughes, Basil Wong, and we met with the CEO of Emerald AI, Varun Sivaram, and he got us in with meetings with FERC and with the White House. We discussed permitting reform, sediment buildup in our reservoirs, wildfire liability. We met with DOE Deputy Secretary Dan Lee, for commissioners chang rosner and chair sweat we went with the we met with the white house senior director of power peter lake that was interesting because if you go in that building every door needs bad needs badge access the security was extremely tight in that building We also met with Senators Adam Schiff, Congressman members Josh Harder, and Ro Khanna. Then on May 1st, I attended the Stanford Sustainable Data Centers event, and that was very interesting. We had Nico Prokos talk. And then finally, we had a Stadium Relations Committee meeting on May 4th, There were only four members of the public. There was actually more staff than members of the public. And we actually had Howard Myers, Howard, sorry, Gibbons there, and he said that there were actually, he was surprised that there were so few members of the public. And I had requested that this committee be formed. And so to that point, there's been a lot of delay in creating this committee. And really, people don't really talk about things like noise and litter. They talk about parking. That seems to dominate these meetings. And so I'm gonna read from a March 18th, 2026 Santa Clara Weekly article. Talking about PRA requests, another request submitted by public members sought clarity on a claim Mayor Lisa Gilmour made during a council meeting in November last year. During a discussion on the city's Stadium Neighborhood Relations Committee, Gilmour says that she gets a ton of complaints from the neighborhoods around the stadium, adding that residents contact her directly or on social media. The request called for the city The PRA request called for the city to produce those correspondences, both from Gilmore and Kathy Watanabe, the former council member for the district near the stadium. The city took more than two and a half months to publish a response and continued to publish documents through February. Contained in those documents were 22 emails over an eight year span, most of which never went to Gilmore. The documents contained no social media messages.

Since you're attacking me, Councilmember Jane, I feel like I need to respond, and not that you deserve it, but just because the public needs to know. I do talk to people on the north side. I'm connected with people. I do have conversations with them. There's a lot of issues out there, and the reason people probably aren't going to your meetings is because you may not be doing anything. There may not be any action. Yes, parking is the biggest issue. Parking, garbage, noise, all of those things out there. If you actually talk to residents or new residents out there, you would find that out. So you can attack me all you like and you can continue to do that, but you're completely out of touch with what's going on on the north side.

It's interesting that those meetings don't show up on your public calendar and they don't show up in POA requests.

Yes.

I'd ask that this item not agendized, not be discussed amongst council people. It's not a normal report.

I didn't bring it up, but I have to respond to the nonsense coming from Council Member James.

Not decrying at least the initial response, but just the back and forth. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

All right. Council Member Chahal, you said you had something or no?

Thank you. Yeah, I do. So I visited our Friendship City each year from April 23rd to April 26th on invitation by the Mayor Kim Kyung-hee and the Council for attending their 40th Ceramic Festival of 2026. And along with the City of Santa Clara, myself, and my colleagues, Sister City President Margaret Orozco and Dr. Khoo was there representing Santa Clara. And they were representations from Sister City of Acheon from China and Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as from Japan. and former chair of the Sister City International, Carol Robertson Lopez. I know her very well from previous connections. She was also there on that. And the 40th Ichon Ceramic Festival was a great, like around 300 plus ceramic firms were displaying their products over there. and they were celebrating the traditional and contemporary Korean ceramics through exhibitions, workshops, live demos by master potters. It gives visitor a direct introduction to Korea pottery as well as a living tradition rather than the purely historical subject. Opening ceremony was excellent and the hospitality from Everyone in each on all the staff members Council members vice-chair Kim Jo hoon comes from working has sick Cheer Park milk milk. Oh, so was excellent for everybody was great and They give us some trinkets. I brought one for the mayor. I gave it to her One and I one of the gift is still with the market horoscope which I We got from that, and that's it. It was a great trip. And in addition, we also met the school, Icheon School District Student Seongjin Kim, and explored the student exchange program. And Margaret, the president of Sister Cities, will be coordinating that further for upcoming student exchanges. So that was a good meeting with the school district to coordinate and start the student exchange programs. Thank you.

Thank you for representing us over there, Council Member Park.

Yeah, actually, I'm really happy that Council Member Chihal got to go to Ijeon to see the Serenity Festival. I think I went last year with Dr. Koo in a small contingent, and it's funny, but we just had the Ijeon performers, the traditional turtle dance performers that performed for us in Ijeon last year actually came here and gave performances at Santana Row. They went to the Korean Heritage Night at Oakland A's Stadium, and it was great to have conversations with them. We went to dinner afterwards and we talked about a lot of different things because I remember, they remember me from there. We took a lot of pictures. I do appreciate Councilmember Jane. I also went to the Sustainable Data Center Symposium at Stanford, also with Councilmember Karen Hardy, so she doesn't have to say anything, but I think we all enjoyed it. It was very educational. It happened right at the same time as two different AI conferences and I went to a couple of talks for the second AI conference which was the following week actually, the next day and the following week. And it's funny, well it's not funny, Everyone should know that these conversations, whether it's AI, energy, data centers, they're all the same conversation. And at some point, trying to separate them out makes you think that things are okay because it's really easy to optimize one thing. But if you're trying to optimize all the things, if you're looking at the entire system, then it becomes much more complex. And I feel that one of the dangers that we have is we are only optimizing one thing, not looking at the entire system. I also appreciate his comment about the stadium community. neighborhood relations committee because again it's been a long time since we've had council member Kathy Watanabe on the council and it's been about that long since we've heard comments and complaints about noise and noise monitoring. At that time maybe we should bring up noise monitoring again just to see what's going on there but I haven't heard any complaints either. That said, I also have an O30. I've discussed this. Actually, I'm gonna hold off on that. I will hold off on that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So city manager?

No report.

Thank you. I have an adjournment this evening. I'm going to adjourn this meeting, May 26, 2026, meeting in memory of former Santa Clara Police Chief Frank Vasquez. Former Santa Clara Police Chief Frank Vasquez peacefully passed away on May 18, 2026 surrounded by his family. Frank was born and raised in the city of Santa Clara. He attended local schools and is a member of the Santa Clara High School Hall of Fame. Frank is a graduate of the FBI National Police Academy. Frank proudly served as the chief of police for the Santa Clara Police Department, dedicating his police career of 35 years and seven months protecting and serving his community with integrity, leadership, and commitment. Frank is the longest tenured officer in the history of Santa Clara City PD. He was respected by colleagues and remembered for his strong sense of duty and fairness. Other achievements include President of Santa Clara Police Association, President of Santa Clara West Rotary, Board Member of Triton Museum, St. Mark's Episcopal Church Parish Council, Chairman of the Santa Clara County Police Chiefs Association, Governor Duke Majan Drug Task Force, YMCA board member, co-founder and member of Santa Clara Spanish Heritage Society. As active as Frank was in his career and community, his most valued achievement was his family. His presence and love will be most missed by his wife of 72 years, Roseanne. his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. In retirement, Frank enjoyed friends and tennis at Konakai Swim and Racquet Club, RVing at the Wandering Wagoneers RV Club, traveling with his wife, woodworking projects, and time with his family. Frank will be remembered not only for his service to the city of Santa Clara, but also for his devotion to his family, his friends, and the lasting impact he made on those who knew him He will be deeply missed and forever remembered, and this meeting is adjourned in his memory. Thank you. Have a good evening, everyone, and safe travels home.