City Council - Regular Meeting

T minus sixty seconds. Because we got scientists. So, you know, there might be somebody just to, you know, take care of a space launch or something. I thought that was appropriate. Anybody ever see a space launch live?

It is the coolest thing ever, especially if you get to see one at night. Really cool. Good evening everybody and welcome to our City Council meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order and advise everyone that the meeting is being recorded. So if you happen to come up on stage, your image and your likeness and whatever you say, dance, or do, will be on our website forever and ever and ever.

So, be careful or have fun. Or both. I'd like to ask you all to please rise. Take your hats off, put your hand over your heart, and say the pledge of allegiance with me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Britt, will you please talk about the stuff that you have to and then do the roll

call. Pursuant to Saratoga City Council's remote public participation policy, members of the public may participate in this meeting in person at the location listed on the agenda or via remote attendance using the Zoom information listed on the agenda. Public attendees participating by Zoom are automatically muted and are not viewable on camera. I will now call the roll. Council Member Eftab.

Present.

Fitzsimmons. Present. Zhao. Present.

Vice Mayor Walia.

Present.

Mayor Page. Present. We have a quorum and the agenda was posted on February 12.

Thank you very much. Earlier this evening, we had a joint session with SASE, which goes by a DBA of Successful Aging Solutions and Community Consulting. I knew them as the Saratoga area senior, whatever they were at the time. Now, I'm losing track. It's been too long. So, we'll just call them sassy. It's way easier and we all know what a great job they do with our seniors. So, Tyler, would you like to share a brief summary of our meeting with us and talk a little bit about your updates?

Here we go. Thank you very much, Mayor Page, Vice Mayor Wallya, and Counsel. I'm Tyler Taylor, CEO for Successful Aging Solutions and Community Consulting, also forever known as the Saratoga Area Senior Coordinating Council. Today's joint meeting, I had an opportunity to introduce our team at SASE to the council and have them speak directly about our services that we provide. We went over updates at the Saratoga Senior Center, at the Saratoga Adult Care Center, the RIDE Senior Transportation Program, and the Outlook Community Newspaper.

We also talked about our wonderful results at West Valley College for the Senior Guided Pathways program there. And our plans for 2026 to really put a focus on Saratoga residents and what we do here locally. So, a great plan for 2026. We want to just give a special thanks again to the council, to Leslie and the city staff for all the wonderful support they provide us throughout the year. Thank you.

Great, thanks. Any council member like to make any comments? Okay. Thanks very much, Tyler. We appreciate it. Next up on our agenda is oral communications on non agendized items. Any member of the public is welcome to speak to us for up to three minutes on any item that is not on tonight's agenda. Typically, council can never take any action on any item that's not on our agenda. But, we may give direction to staff, if it's appropriate. Is there any member of the public here in the auditorium that would like to make a public comment? Come on down.

I also have a couple of

speakers Oh, we have some slips too. My bad.

Are you Jeffrey? Okay.

I can follow instructions. Mayor, vice mayor, councilors, I am Jeffrey Pugh from Fredericksburg Drive. And I wanted to raise some issues regarding the flock camera system and the contract with the sheriff's department. The public safety contract with Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office is expected to increase by $2,900,000 as I think you know, in the twenty twenty six-twenty seven fiscal year, potentially tipping Saratoga into a deficit, at least as reported by the Saratoga News. Los Altos Hills, one of the other municipalities contracting with the county sheriff, has decided to not renew its contract with FLOC after it expires in June because of concerns about FLAC's data privacy practices.

Mountain View discovered unauthorized access to license plate data by law enforcement agencies across and outside California and subsequently turned off the license plate cameras. Santa Clara County itself has voted to delay renewal of the cameras use policy because of data sharing concerns. Santa Cruz voted to end its contract with FLOC after reports that license plate data had been accessed on behalf of federal law enforcement agencies in violation of SB 34. And the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have sued the City of San Jose over its use of license plate readers and data retention. And, the County Sheriff's Transparency Portal, at least in my investigation shows that license plate data which includes Saratoga's is not being labeled consistent with EFF recommendations but rather in a manner conducive to inappropriate sharing outside the sheriff's office.

I'm not claiming there has been any such sharing just that it's not labeled appropriately. So given all that, I have a question. Does the city intend to review the flock contract including potentially terminating it and removing automated license plate readers altogether? Thank you.

Thank you.

I also would just like to let those people know who are raising their hands on Zoom that this is for our speakers in person. We will have remote public attendee comment at the end of the meeting. Anthony.

Thank you. I'd first like to acknowledge council member Aftab for taking the initiative at last, council meeting to begin discussions on Mercedes' use of flaw cameras, but at the same time, moves like these are too little too late. Companies like FLAC don't wait for us to conduct network audits or adjust our settings before breaching our data privacy, and I'm not making this statement out of nowhere. Just over two weeks ago on February 3, Mountain View shut off their FLOC cameras after they realized federal and out of state agencies had unauthorized access to their data for over a year without their knowledge. In cases like these, FLOC had gone and turned on access to statewide searches behind the city's back.

In Los Altos, a nationwide search option was turned on for nine months without the police department knowing. Once again, this is an egregious violation of SB 34, and even after disabling the feature, multiple months went by before the city again discovered that a statewide search feature had been enabled without approval. We can do the best we can to safeguard privacy but reactionary measures fail when our data is stored in the hands of a company thousands of miles away with its own motives for profit and control. We can't afford to wait for breach like in Los Gatos or Mountain View, our 60 plus cameras are storing hundreds of thousands of vehicle hits every single day, that data needs to be treated with care or it shouldn't be collected at all. So I'm asking the city council to cancel its flaw contracts, I understand that's a big ask, but I hope you can see why it's justified.

And if we're afraid of taking this step, that's fine. Here's four other things we can do. First, hold public hearings on AOPR usage. Invite residents themselves to speak their minds on whether they feel flock cameras have been beneficial or if they add value to the city. I'm just one person, surely in a city filled with some of Silicon Valley's smartest, there's a conversation to be had.

Second, we can make readily available the contracts signed between Flock Safety and Saratoga so that residents know exactly what a $187,000 per year of their taxpayer dollars is going to, include a map of all of the cameras installed by LLIDs or neighborhood watch groups, the city website's current maps are three years outdated. Third, we can look into alternate vendors for camera systems, if ALPRs are really this necessary, then switch to a different system that doesn't involve cameras that are hackable in less than a minute and a company that violates state law on a weekly basis. And finally, if we're not going to disable these systems, there's nothing to be lost from transparency as to who's accessing our license plate data. Work with the sheriff's office in local jurisdictions including Los Gatos and Monteserrano for example to conduct network audits of our camera systems and share the data with the public. Keep these records unredacted in particular when it comes to the jurisdictions performing searches and the reasons given for a search.

We deserve to know who's conducting searches on our data and we need to send a message that in this community, our privacy matters. Look, at the end of the day, this is a question of priorities. FLAC has shown where its priorities lie, in profit and control. Will this city council do the same or will they instead stand up for their constituents and instead put the safety and privacy of Saratoga residents first. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to ask you to please refrain from applauding. We have a policy here in our meetings because you applaud because you support somebody. I commend you for that. But that means it might be somebody with another point of view that is being bullied and won't come forward. So please refrain from clapping. If you want to do anything, raise your hand in support. Thank you very much. Next, Britt.

I have no other speaker slips. I just want to let the person know who is raising their hands. I am lowering your hand because we are not doing remote public participation at this time. So if you could please stop raising your hand. Thank you.

Do you have a non agendized item comment? Sure, come on down.

We're in support of SASE.

I feel like we probably should have gone

by that. Oh, we're going to do something in a minute. And so you can, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, there are no other public comments at this time for in person attendees.

All right, thank you. At this time, oh are there any directions of staff? Anybody? Okay, thank you. At this time we have a few announcements. I think that they're gonna come up on the screen. The City of Saratoga will host a free community seminar on evacuation preparedness on Wednesday, February 25 from five to 08:30 p. M. In the Joan Pisani Community Center. The event will feature emergency response leaders, resource tables, and practical guidance on evacuation safety and preparedness.

Participating agencies include the County Office of Emergency Management, County Fire, our County Sheriff, California Highway Patrol, Cal Fire, CERT, and there will be information about animal evacuation and insurance matters. Residents are encouraged to share the topics or questions they hope will be addressed during the seminar to help us shape the discussion and ensure that it reflects community priorities. Please visit saratoga.ca.us/evacuationpreparedness to share your thoughts and register for the event. Just so we know how many seats to put out. We have a CERT winter training.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with CERT, which is our Community Emergency Response Team. The Academy training sessions will begin on February 24. This hands on program teaches essential disaster preparedness skills including fire safety, first aid, search and rescue, and emergency response tactics. CERT empowers residents to protect their families and communities during crises. The CERT Academy includes three in person evening sessions, one online evening session, and a final exam, a final, I'm sorry, in person daytime skills exercise.

It's not really an exam, it's a skills exercise. I was a dead guy once. So, they have people that you have to actually triage and take care of. It's really, really neat. These in person sessions this time will be held in the Campbell Community Center. And don't miss this chance to gain valuable skills and be able to be the support person that you need, your family needs, your neighborhood might need, should that come online. So, you can register at sccfd.eventbrite.com. So, please take advantage of that. The Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council has announced spring chipping dates for Saratoga residents. And, I believe these are residents in the hillsides.

They're in our WUI. Registration opens on Monday, March 2. Shipping service in the Saratoga area is scheduled for April. And participation is free for residents living in the Wildland Urban Interface. That's the WUI. And it's available on a first come first serve basis. The chipping program supports homeowners in creating and maintaining the required zero to 100 feet of defensible space around permanent structures. By reducing fuel loads, this program helps lower wildfire risks and improve community safety. Learn more and register at sccfiresafe.org. Are there any council members with any announcements?

Seeing none, we'll move on to ceremonial items. During this month, we're declaring a proclamation as National Senior Independence Month. And it's, let's will John Kuh and our SASE representatives please join us? But we do have, I know we have a bunch, sorry, I should be more formal. We have members of the public that would like to speak on this. I'd like you to come up and do that now. A little bit out of order. Because I'd like you guys to all come up on stage when we do this, if you can. So please, if you've got some public comment on this item, we welcome it. Please come forward, and I don't know Britt if you have any slips for it or not.

Well we could sit here while they do the public comment. Once, yeah. Okay. Alright, so if you wanna, why don't you guys hang on, we'll get you up in a second. But why don't you speak from the podium? So that we, if anybody's going to speak, that way your face is front and center and not ours.

Okay. Okay. Sounds great. Well, hello everybody. This is, I think, my third council meeting ever. And I'm a thirty year resident of Saratoga. So this is important to me. I'm a longtime resident, as I mentioned. In fact, I'm a neighbor of the gentleman who spoke earlier. I live in the Fredericksburg area.

But I am also the president of the South Bay Writers, which is one of the 21 branches of the California Writers Club. And our statewide motto is, Writers Helping Writers. And I want to say that for the last year, we have been able to call the Saratoga Senior Center our new home. And the SASE staff has been amazing. They've consistently gone above and beyond with custom setup of our tables, chairs, our audiovisual.

And in fact, we even had one of the staff members who escorted one of our members with special needs to their ride, to and from their ride. So they are just super. Thank you, Sam, and the rest of you. And at our new home, we've also experienced increased interest from the community, both through the convenient location of meeting over here, and also through exposure in the West Valley Outlook newspaper. So a wonderful place for community members to hear about us.

The Outlook newspaper also provides opportunities for our aspiring and experienced writers to publish their work, gain recognition, and connect more deeply to community events. So our branch is continuing to grow and diversify in our new home as it attracts new community members with varied backgrounds and life experiences. And these new members really enrich our perspective and help us to better serve the community. So I'm delighted that the council is recognizing SASE's efforts with this proclamation for National Senior Independence Month. And we at South Bay writers hope to continue this community building relationship for many years to come.

So thank you very much and I hope you'll appreciate that I'm a writer, not a speaker.

I had to write it all down.

Job.

Hi. Good evening. My name is Lorraine Gabbert. It's been my pleasure to write for the outlook. Hyperlocal, it informs the community on cultural events, health issues, and news. This community newspaper, which strives to spark connection and conversation, also provides crucial information about upcoming city meetings and policy decisions. By bringing a personal angle to stories about and by local city leaders, it makes them more accessible. I am proud to be part of this important informational source serving the residents of West Valley. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak about Senior Independent Month?

Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm doctor Jan Ridden. I am a long term resident of Saratoga. I've lived here since 1988. I've been a businesswoman in Saratoga since 1978.

I have a practice as a psychologist here. And currently, I am a caregiver and a support person for my husband who has vascular dementia and has been going to the Saratoga Fragile Daycare here since the early in '25. I want to commend the wonderful job that they are doing, because one of the things that I think is quite amazing is that the senior demographics here are getting only older. All of us are getting more and more into the stage where we may need community services. And the service that the senior center provides is outstanding.

It helps fragile seniors, like my husband, stay at home longer. It helps them feel that they have some kind of persona still, because as dementia steals the memories and the abilities to care for themselves, they feel very alone and very isolated if they stay in their homes. And if they go to facilities, they again lose another part of themselves. Sam and the center are wonderful. When he arrives, he goes three days a week.

And when they arrive, they greet him by name, so he becomes a person again, not just a patient. They offer him coffee. They offer him graham crackers. They provide a safe environment where someone knows that he may need help in the bathroom or he may need his food cut up. All these things are personalized, and he is safe.

It also is a time that gives me respite, it gives me a chance to do errands, as well as provide for the patients that I see, because I have to have care for him 20 fourseven now. I think one of the things people sometimes say is that such programs are a luxury. I would say, No, they are a lifeline. They are a necessity. Because we never know when we will need these kind of services.

I think the other thing is the warmth that we find when we go. We're greeted by name as caregivers. They ask how they are, how we are. It's a way of feeling connected in a way that you probably haven't thought about that you may need at some time. The program is providing services for our most vulnerable residents. I hope that you will continue to honor them each year so that more of the community is aware of this wonderful service and that we never know when it will be our turn to need the service. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think she left her purse here. I think she left her purse. Yeah,

yeah. She left her purse. Okay. Okay, I'm fine, Sam.

Hi there, my name is Julie St. Gregory and I just wanted to stand up and thank you all for honoring SASE. They are just a fantastic organization. I'm particularly going to speak on the RIDE program that they have for senior citizens. And they such they are just so philanthropic and generous to have such a low cost program for people like myself who may be mobility challenged, I guess, and for just seniors who need a low cost program to be able to get around and get groceries or something, they're just there for everybody.

And for myself, it's been a life changer for me to have them be able to pick me up and take me to classes where I can do my exercises and things like that. I just wanna say everybody there is so professional and they're genuinely kind people that work there. I just love them and I'm so grateful that I was able to find them. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm putting my thoughts together because I really don't have much written down. My name is Sue Fenton and I am known in the community around the place as Sue on the Street. I'm on Channel fifteen in YouTube and I've been filming for about two years. And my husband and I moved to Los Gatos. Of course, I cried on the plane all the way here. And we moved here to be closer to our family. And really, really, that's what we did. And then I didn't know what I was going to do. So I went up to KKT Television. They immediately put me on TV.

And then Eva Torren, who also worked at the Outlook, called me up and said to me, we want you to write a column for the Outlook. So you may know my column, it's called Aches and Pains, and it's by Sue on the street, which is me. And unbeknownst to me, and I, every time this happens, I'm so mystified, everybody reads this thing. So it seems to me that people love the outlook. It needs to expand is what I think because I think it's a really, really wonderful resource for everybody that lives in this area.

I have people come up to me on the street and said, oh, I read your last column. It's so funny that I sent it to my mother in New York or something like that. This was not my career. I'm not a speaker. I'm not really a writer.

But somehow I've become a speaker and a writer and a TV personality. And I think that Sassy is just absolutely wonderful. And the really good news, although it's kind of secret, is that all these columns that appeared in the outlook for the last, I don't know, almost a year, are being put together in a book and the book, it's a work in progress. We don't have any big announcements tonight. It's not like the White House or something like that.

So, there will be a book that will be published and it will have all of these silly little columns in them that seem to give a lot of joy to seniors. And I know that it's more than just seniors that are reading these columns and I think that we need all the support we can get to really expand this thing and let people start writing. And I want to say a big shout out. I know he's not here, but Lloyd Russell is a friend of mine and he writes the book reviews in there in the outlook and I think that is wonderful. So the page that I appear on has him on the top and me on the bottom and that's something that everybody can get joy from when they're at home.

So thank you again. We need your support.

Thank you, Sue.

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, John.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Staff, my name is Bob Buxton. My wife is in the audience. We are fifty plus year residents of the town of Los Gatos, and we are here to recognize SASE. You all recognize SASE. You're doing a wonderful thing. It's so well deserved. Ten years ago, I was on a commission in the town, and this gentleman appeared on the scene, Tyler Taylor. And you go, this is a special kind of guy. And we got involved, and we, in the town, and our commission helped support the outreach for the RIDE program. And since then, we've stayed very close.

And most recently, there's a program in Los Gatos called Ride and Taste. And it involves VTA, and it involves lunches at six different restaurants Every other month, an indoctrination at the senior center. Seniors get on the bus, they get off the bus, go to the restaurant. My wife and I greet them. They have a nice lunch, get back on the bus, and go back into town.

It's very simple, but it's the coolest program. And this fellow, Tyler Taylor, has a writer, Brandy Maddox, that is absolutely wonderful. And for those of you that didn't get or wished you kept the outlook for November, December, I have some extra issues here that I borrowed from SASE. So I'll give those to the clerk, and if you don't have it and wish you kept it, I have one for you. Anyway, it's a wonderful program.

We don't know what the future holds. We'd like to see it expand. We'd like to see it expand into the city of Saratoga. These six restaurants have open armed and embraced this program. So I won't take any more of your time.

My wife is past president of Assistance League Saratoga, Los Gatos Chapter, and she has been involved with SASE in the food service program, senior food service program at SASI. So we, as volunteers for the town of Los Gatos, want to, on behalf of Los Gatos, recognize how much SASI has contributed to our community. Starts right there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bob.

Hello. My name's Beth Via. I'm a fairly new member of the community, but I grew up in Los Altos, Mountain View, San Jose, San Luis Obispo. Moved around a lot. And I moved back to the area recently, so I'm within a few minutes of West Valley College. I was a student there in the mid-90s. I was a late bloomer as it was because I was born in 'fifty nine. So there I was, did two years there, transferred to a really good four year school. And then I thought I had it made. But the fact is, what a lot of people have talked about tonight is we have to learn to be lifelong learners.

And we have to accept that the only thing constant is constant change. That's what we're gonna need to come together and work on that and learn how to be lifelong learners. And we have to accept that a lot of us are gonna be redoing ourselves, recreating ourselves, transforming ourselves and starting new careers several times more maybe than we planned in life and later in life. And maybe we're not gonna retire when we thought we were. So maybe you're thinking about going back to school or maybe you're thinking about transforming yourself again.

Maybe it's just because of economics. Maybe you're a veteran. Maybe you're struggling with housing. Maybe you're a domestic violence survivor, or maybe none of the above and, you know, you're good as it is, but you're kind there's like this nagging dream

that

you have of doing something that's been kind of on the back burner. And you'd like to network about it. You'd like to learn the latest things about it. And you'd like to talk to others about it, get new ideas, Meet people with a range of ages. And you'd like to connect more somehow. Know? And a lot of that didn't happen during COVID nineteen. We kind of drew inward. So now there's all kinds of opportunities. And I was in a tough situation where I had to transform myself and talk about interesting.

You know what Sue was talking about and Mr. Buxton, the outlook, a lot of people might look at that and say, oh wow, a paper newspaper. How quaint. It's low tech. Well yeah, but sometimes that connects you with higher technology. And that's what happened

to

me. Because maybe you're struggling with bills. Are you gonna pay the internet? Are you gonna pay that? Are you gonna let it go? Can you afford your iPhone? Are you gonna you're gonna have to close that. So all I'm saying is they connected me thanks to Outlook. I'm in a great program. It's called senior guided pathways at West Valley College. I am back at West Valley College after being gone since the mid ninety's and I'm transforming myself.

Thank you.

Thanks

Thank very you Sassy.

Hello everyone. My name is BJ Tichenin, and I'm married to this handsome man. And the last, I'd say, six years since my husband had a stroke, and now he has vascular dementia, I have been completely just I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Until we went to the senior center.

And Sam got me all oriented, got everything fixed up, and now my husband is in that community. And he's thriving. I'm thriving. And for the first time, I have a life beyond my husband. I do love him, but beyond him.

And I am so thankful, so thankful to that whole thing that I can't tell you. I have a life now. And we're happy. And we're getting well, sort of, aren't you?

Yeah.

I think so.

Yeah. So this is Bruce, my husband, and he'll speak about, I don't know, go ahead and speak.

So, Mr. Mayor, honorable city council members, my name is Bruce Tichenin. I'm a retired land use attorney. My beautiful and charming wife has said much, but by no means all the wonderful things that there are to say about the SACC. Allow me to tell you first about the staff, Tyler, Sam, Ludmilla, Juana, and Namai.

Each and all, they are very professional, able, caring, kind, considerate, and affectionate. As to their charges, including me, there are Keith Redman, whose wife has just addressed you, a retired psychiatrist, Rico, a Japanese lady, Barbara, a Negro lady Cecilia Maria, a Hispanic lady and Rod, a Vietnam vet who earned three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. By the way, it's not necessarily a widely known fact, but the Purple Heart was designed by our first president, George Washington. Let me see if I've got something else here. No, No, I guess that's about it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your attention.

You, Bruce and Vijay. Thank you very much.

Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. Didn't miss a little something here. Our staff is over there. Tyler, Nimai, Keith, and yeah, and that's about the size of it.

Thank you, Bruce. Thank you.

Sam's over there, yes.

Yeah, thank you. You're welcome.

Hi, my name is Neil Mehra. This is my husband, Yash Mehra. And we have moved to Los Gatos twelve years ago, and SASE has provided a space to meet. We are members of Anand One, and we meet it's kind of our home away from home. And I have known Tyler and Sam for as long as they've been at SASE.

And I've seen Tyler expand and expand and expand the programs. I remember when he expanded RIDE and now the Guided Pathways. And it's been a pleasure to work with Sam, Tyler, Nimai, Steve. They are very, very helpful, very professional, and anything we ask for, they are there to help us for the time we are there, and we are very, very thankful to SASE, and very grateful to have a home away from home. Thank you.

Thank you.

I may just add one thing that we meet once a week at and this is one of the most enjoyable events in our daily lives, Johan. We really appreciate it, and thank you very much for recognizing SASE. Thank you.

Thank you. Do have, anybody else in the auditorium want to speak on this? We do have one person online with their hand raised. We are taking comments on the Senior Independence Month. And that is all at this time. So if, Britt, if you don't mind.

Judy, your hand is raised.

Can you hear me?

Uh-huh.

All right. Thank you. Calling about the Senior Independence Month proposal, and you gave a lot of flexibility to those speakers, I'll tell you that. So just be forewarned that this is being recorded and you will be held accountable if I don't have the same liberal flexibility on my comment. We have a problem with free speech in that you guys determine

We're discussing we're discussing senior independence month. Please make your comments relative to that.

Give me a chance to please make my point, sir. Thank you. Please do not interrupt me.

You may speak at the end of the meeting because this is not related to senior independence month.

I am talk talking about senior independence and the problem with the rest of us are having with that, and you are not listening to me. How can I make a point if you keep interrupting me? Please refrain from interruptions and give me a chance to make my point, sir. Thank you. The rest of us living in this country certainly do appreciate the idea of senior independence.

The problem is for the rest of us who are financing the senior independence is that the seniors are not independent. They continue to be to force themselves into the issue of our civics and our economics and our politics every day. No longer do we have the baby boomers or or the grandparents of the past. We have these baby boomers now that will live forever. They will never resign from power. They will they will never put their political opinions aside. They will never stop meddling in the future, which they will not be around much for. You have to let me make my point, sir. And if you give me a second and and not intimidate your speakers, you'll get a chance of a diversity of opinion and perspective. But maybe that's not what you want with your viewpoint discrimination.

I think that's on full display here when you interrupt. I'll get back to my point. The problem with the seniors having so much independence is that they stole the future with the Keynesian money press. They stole it when everyone knew it was the bankers, friends with Jeffrey Epstein, most of them Jews, taught everyone how to steal money by printing, printing, printing. Now these seniors and their whole generation of boomers have stolen all of the wealth, all of the power, all the political influence, and we can't audit the system.

There is no oversight. The smoke filled back rooms of the golf course, rotary, and Freemason meetings are not open to public records requests if you don't know that. But probably you on the board don't know because you're paper pushers with political ambitions and not skilled on anything important to keep the public safe from manipulation of these groups of boomers and stolen Keynesian wealth. We would love them to be independent. The best thing for all of us would be is that these seniors' independence would mean they gave up the reins of control and power of the world after breaking it completely.

They should step aside, stop meddling, stop pushing gay flags on children like a bunch of pedophile, grooming boomers. The grooming boomers and their sob stories. Listen, we're we're tired of hearing about your heyday and your stories from the past, grandma. Direct everything. You didn't invent the radio. Why are you so rich? Boomers get your

I apologize. I had nothing to do with that. This is why we hold our public comment, the remote public comment, until the end of the meeting. I'm sorry that you all had to listen to some of that. At this point, I would like to invite the SASE group, and anybody who supported them, to please come up on stage and be recognized. Because you're all part of this. If you can make it up, we'd love to have you on stage. Along with the council. Oh yeah. And if you want, could stand in front of the stage.

There's plenty of room there too, if that's easier. Why don't we, let's do a couple of rows. And why don't you all step back a bit, I don't wanna be going off the edge. Come on. Get over here. Okay. Everybody come on in. I'll get in the middle I guess. Let's bring everybody up. Counsel you up here.

Alright, where are they? They're all hiding on me. Yes, so this is a photo. You can write about it later. Either one.

Bala, okay. Bala's down here. We're good. Alright. Cook you

good? Good.

Alright. As mayor of Saratoga, I'm proud to proclaim February 2026 as senior independence month in the city of Saratoga. Our community is home to a growing number of older adults whose wisdom, experience and continued engagement enrich our city. This month provides an important opportunity to recognize the value of supporting older adults in maintaining independence, dignity and a high quality of life as they age. As we age actually, we're all doing it.

Senior independence is strengthened through access to supportive services, social connection, lifelong learning and programs that promote physical, emotional and mental well-being. When older adults are empowered to age in place and remain active in the community, it benefits not only individuals and families, but also strengthens the overall health and resilience of Saratoga. The city of Saratoga is especially grateful for the work of the successful aging solutions and community consulting, SASE, a vital community partner that provides programs, resources and advocacy to support older adults and caregivers. Their efforts help ensure that older residents are informed, supported, and empowered to live independently and remain engaged in our community. On behalf of the entire city council, I'd like to present this proclamation to Tyler or whomever is here.

There he is. There you go. Thank you

mayor Page.

And to recognize the strength of this organization and what you've I've been on this council for a long time with a break in between. And my early days were all spent trying to work things together. So we made sure that the senior care facility is running and I'm so glad that you've reached the place that you are and I know there's more to come. So I know you probably want to say a couple of words.

I just wanted to say that the older population is the reason why the younger population has the opportunities that it has. We have thick skin up here. No arrows or bullets can get through that. My team and myself, we dedicate our lives and our careers to making sure that all of us have a better community to get older within. And we have nothing but respect, love, admiration and honor for the people who came before us and made our lives possible. Thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you for all the support. I was literally holding back tears when I was listening to these people. Thank you all for your support and we'll be here for the years to come. Thank you mayor Page and thank you councilors.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Would any council member like to say anything? We're good. I'd just like to get everybody together.

We're gonna get some photos out from the audience. So please smile pretty. Our next ceremonial item and our last one for the night is a presentation of certificates to the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair Association. There's a bunch of letters there, you can figure them out. These are the science fair winners from Saratoga.

So will all of our science fair participants and organizers please join us on stage? Y'all come on up. Students and the organizers, we'd love to have you up here. Forrest, come on up here. The annual synopsis championship presented by the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair Association provides students from across Santa Clara County the opportunity to showcase their knowledge and talent in science, engineering and mathematics.

This distinguished competition challenges middle school and high school students to work independently, think critically, and pursue innovative research beyond their classroom studies. I asked a few of them what projects that they did, way beyond anything I did in middle school and high school. I can tell you that. All the students being recognized this evening here in Saratoga earned special recognition at the twenty twenty five science fair. Their dedication, creativity, and commitment to academic excellence are a source of great pride for our community.

It is always an honor to celebrate these outstanding young scholars and to recognize the remarkable achievements of the talented students that call Saratoga home. So I'd like each of the students that are here to introduce themselves and and tell us just the name of your project and maybe what the topic that you were you were you know you did something on. So we can all get a sense of that. I'm very interested in your work.

Okay. Hello everyone. Nice to meet you. Thank you again to you know Saratoga for recognizing us and the great things that the science fair is doing. My name is Ananya Pradhan. I'm a senior at the Harker School. My project is about how we can detect Alzheimer's disease early by flagging retinal anomalies using AI. I think as we heard from the seniors as well, neurodegenerative diseases are really, really difficult to bear with, and detecting them early is incredibly important. So I was basically using routine optical coherence tomography scans, which you get when you go to your optometrist or ophthalmologist, in order to detect that disease early. My grandfather had Alzheimer's, this work is really important to me. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Alicia Huang, a junior at Saratoga High School. I'd like to thank the city again for recognizing all of us. My project was about a low cost, portable, and very fast detection of rabies, so a detection kit. Throughout COVID, we've all become very familiar with detection kits, especially nose swabs or other ones that take saliva, right, and return a result. And so my friend at Los Altos High School, along with myself, we developed a low cost photo rabies detection kit using LAMP, also known as loop mediated isothermal amplification.

And basically, rabies is very prevalent in many areas around the world. And we, I mean, as a pet owner myself of many cats, I've heard many stories about rabies and from family around the world as well. And so this work is also really important to me. We managed to successfully build a small prototype device that could scan very sensitively for any detection of rabies in saliva. And we're working on the project again this year for twenty twenty six Science Fair, and I'm excited to share my work again.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Dhruva Gopal and I'm currently in ninth grade at the Harker School. Once again I'd like to thank the Saratoga City Council for recognizing us. And my project essentially was using culturing salts on Chlorella vulgaris algae to try and improve its bioethanol yield. So I'll quickly break that down. Chlorella vulgaris is a type of microalgae, but it's known for its large content of sugars and carbohydrates in its cells.

So essentially what I did is I used a novel method of culturing salt supplements that can induce osmotic stress on the algae and cause accumulation of more sugars within the cells. Then I was able to measure the amount of sugar and correlate this to the bioethanol yield of the algae. And basically bioethanol is a type of biofuel, meaning it can replace gasoline in cars and also have lower carbon emissions than that, which can help decrease the effects of global warming in one of the industries transportation that contributes most to it. And I was able to find that these culturing salts do have a significant and exponential effect in increasing the carbohydrate yield, potentially moving us towards a sustainable future.

Hi, my name is Siri Goodladona. I'm a freshman at the Harker School right now, and everyone has done this before, but once again I'd really like to thank the city for recognizing us and our projects. It really means a lot to me especially. And my project essentially was a sprinkler that waters plants based level, based on the moisture level of the soil they're in. So most automatic sprinklers today work on a time based schedule.

So for example, on your on your sprinkler app, you could set your sprinkler to turn on at 6PM for exactly twenty minutes and then turn off. And this not only wastes a lot of water, it also can damage the plant as well. For example, the plant could be getting not enough water or too much water at the wrong times. So what my invention did was it would use soil moisture levels sorry, soil moisture meters. It'd stick them in the soil, and it would connect to a Raspberry Pi and a solenoid, and would take the readings from this moisture meter and send those readings to the solenoid, which would then turn on a water source and water the plants when they needed water.

And this project was inspired by my mom. She used to spend so much time in the garden with her plants. I joked that she liked her plants more than she liked me. But back then, I didn't realize that she was spending so much time in the garden because it was so hard to manage and care for all these plants. So this project was dedicated to her. Thank you.

Oh I should tell staff and anybody left in the audience there will be a quiz.

Hi, my name is Sarah Threw. I'm a freshman at the Harker School, and once again I'd like to thank the city for recognizing our projects. So my project is the micro remediation of plastics by mushroom species. So in everyday words, I guess it's breaking down plastics such as plastic bottles, which is low density polyethylene, which pollutes our environment and our Saratoga wildlife. And it used mushroom communes, so Schizovalum commune and Pestilotiopsis microspora to break down the PETase, which is the enzyme in the plastics that is harmful for our environment.

And we saw like a six to 7% degrade in the plastics. So I would like to consider my project successful. And I'm just looking forward to saving our environment, especially in Saratoga, for the generations to come. Thank you.

Hi everyone. My name is Mirzula Vudali and I am a senior at Saratoga High School. Once again, I'd like to thank all the council members for allowing us to present our projects on this stage. My project sounds a little less fancy than the others. I built a motorized dog wheelchair.

And this is essentially to facilitate recovery in dogs who specifically have front leg disabilities. For those who have any dogs with disabilities and they do own a wheelchair, a lot of their recovery is driven by their ability to use their front legs in order to basically propel themselves. But for dogs who do not have this capability, it may be very difficult to hit the ground running. That's probably a bad analogy, but you know what I mean. My idea was to basically create a motorized dog wheelchair to propel dogs and give them sort of just a period where they can get used to using their front legs again.

And essentially I just used two very simple sensors, a tilt sensor and a weight or a force sensor in order to measure incline and weight, and adjust the speed of this wheelchair accordingly in order to propel the dog forward. Forward. Yeah, that's it. I think in the future I'm very excited to basically continue to work on this device and hopefully be able to read dogs' minds so it makes it very much easier for them

to use it. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Maia Canary and I'm currently a freshman at Presentation High School. Again, I'd just like to thank the City Council. I know all of us have had to overcome some sort of conflict in order to succeed in last year's science fair, so it means a lot that we're being recognized for our efforts. My project was focused on using contact lenses, which I know 2,000,000 Americans across the nation use contact lenses. But my contact lenses, along with my mom's and my dad's, are single use, meaning that you throw them away after you use them.

So me and my partner focused on a more sustainable approach to utilizing contact lenses along with other single use plastics. And we use those to increase the water retention levels in plants. I know living in California, none of us are strangers to how hot it gets during the summers and that directly affects the plants that, you know, we have. Again, know someone mentioned this, but my mom too is very dedicated to her gardening. We have lots of plants in our house. Yeah, me and my partner focused on using those contact lenses in order to increase the water retention levels of plants. And we did see a positive outcome. So again, I would consider our project a success. So yeah, thank you.

Alright, last person to say this today. Thank you to the city council. Right? Yeah, thank you to the city council again. In eighth grade, never thought I'd be here. Thought I'd be at home playing video games instead of being here. So about my project, or first, my name is Arjun Goley, and my project was a low cost hearing aid that was powered by AI and created through machine learning. So how it worked is the first part of my project was audio amplification. So what that means is basically just taking in audio through a microphone. So when someone's speaking, right, it amplifies the sound, which is what this microphone is doing.

And so my hearing aid basically just amplified that audio, made it louder, so that it was louder in your ear. So that's how traditional hearing aids work. I realized that that wasn't enough in and of itself, so I decided to create another feature, which was speech to text recognition. It's a lot easier than it seems actually. So what happens is very simple again. Noise just comes in through a microphone and then an algorithm or a model that I trained converts it into text that you see on like a phone. And so I basically did that. It worked really well. It had a 94% accuracy. And I decided to show it during my synopsis project.

And it turned out to be really good. So yeah. And this project is inspired by my grandparents. I had a lot of awkward conversations with them when they weren't able to hear me. I And got really frustrated, so I decided to like make this. And this year I'm continuing to do that same project. It means a lot to me. And yeah, thank you to the Saratoga City Council.

Thank you. Boy those are amazing. And now I'd like to introduce someone that is amazing. I got to know Forrest Williams when he was on the San Jose City Council. And I was a green horn on the Saratoga City Council. It was 2006. For a couple of years I got to look up to him. Not height wise, but Forrest was always involved in some really great things. So ladies and gentlemen, board member Forrest Williams.

Thank you mayor. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Saratoga mayor and city council for recognizing these students. You are building the future today, which we always, in the past we've said, well tomorrow is the future. It is now that we need to have these skills and nourish these skills so that we can take advantage of it today. And I like the various projects that address dementia, that's with us today.

And it's not sometime in the future, but today. And we like to encourage our students. And what better encouragement than to have you tell them that they are doing a great job. And we work hard at it. I'm an electrical engineer, I'm retired, but that idea of striving to make something better, striving to get the benefit now rather than later.

We talk about AI as being many people think that it's an impediment. It's gonna cause all these things to happen that are not human type thing, the devastation that it's gonna cause. But I look at it as if it's an opportunity for us. We need to look at ourselves and do better towards ourselves, but we just haven't had the technology to do it. But now we're talking about AI, which is the database, and we're talking about quantum computing, know, and the use of energy.

I mean it's beyond the imagination in terms of what it takes to run a Q computer. You hear that it's just gonna measure one atom changing position, that's a pulse. We want to get into the data, get out of the data sufficiently fast enough so that people will understand what we're trying to do, and that will open up many opportunities for us. It will open up medical horizon beyond our imagination, because I can tell you what is you, and I can make a profile of you, I can tell you what is wrong with you. You don't have to take a medicine and say, oh it's gonna have side effects and all that stuff.

I can, in the office, with the technology that we're having. These students to take it and propel it, sufficiently enough to tell you on the spot what needs to be done. And what needs to be done about dementia, what needs to be done about a headache, or whatever is wrong with us. But you have given them inspiration. It it I just can't express enough the fact that you've taken the time out of your schedule to recognize these students and the path that they're on today. I thank you and I appreciate you. Thank you very much.

Thank you for it. We wanna all get a picture, so make sure that the camera can see y'all. Thank you all very much. Ladies and gentlemen, the future. Thank you so much.

All right, next up is our consent calendar. The consent calendar consists of items that are typically routine and non controversial. These are just regular business items. Items in this section can be acted on in one motion, unless they're removed by the mayor or a council member. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on the consent calendar or request that an item be removed?

Seeing no one in the audience and no one online, we will go to the council. Is there any item that anyone would like to pull for further discussion or anything? Seeing no one, I just gotta look and see if I had any notes here. Nope, we're good. Okay, so with that I'm looking for a Move

to approve consent calendar items 1.1 to 1.3.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Balal, thank you. We have a motion by Cookie Fitzsimmons, and a second by Valal Aftab. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No opposed, anybody abstaining? We're good, thank you very much. Next item is general business item number one. This is our updated greenhouse gas analysis for the Saratoga Climate Action Plan. Do we have a staff report?

Good evening Mayor Page and council members. My name is Maynini, and I'm reporting on the status of Saratoga's Climate Action Plan. At the November 19 meeting, I reported that 2024 emissions were 27% below the nineteen ninety level. Council asked for additional information regarding Saratoga's ability to achieve 40% below the 1990 level by 2030. To produce this greenhouse gas analysis report, I worked with Christina O'Rourke, who is currently online, to answer any questions you may have specific to data collections and assumptions.

This updated analysis also uses Saratoga's twenty twenty four community wide emissions inventory and applies updated growth assumptions, state regulations, and local climate action plan measures to project 2,030 emissions. Emissions are calculated using activity data such as electricity consumption, vehicle miles traveled, and natural gas use, which are then multiplied by updated emission factors from the California Air Resource Board and local utilities. The business as usual forecast incorporates planned new housing units, updated emission factors twenty twenty five vehicle population projections, and regional transportation modeling assumptions. Each Climate Action Plan measure is quantified individually and applied forecast to determine total reductions. To meet the 40% below 1990 level, emissions should be 96,497 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The updated analysis estimates emissions at 86,564 metric tons in 2030, which is 46% below the 1990 level. This exceeds our 40% goal and gives us a buffer of approximately 9,900 metric tons. The largest contributors to reductions are state fleet regulations and EV adoption, greenhouse gas free electricity assumptions, and zero nitrogen oxide building regulations for heating appliances. Because these are projections, it's important to anticipate what might happen if state and regional assumptions are off and significant underperformance occurs across all sectors. Assuming approximately 50% underperformance, there would be a total potential shortfall of approximately 13,000 metric tons, resulting in 38.1% below 1990 levels by 2030.

If we also remove the smart growth credit of two zero one metric tons because Saratoga's new housing development will not have adequate multimodal transportation options, and Saratoga residents continue to be car dependent, then total emissions would be 99,564 metric tons, or 38% of 1990 level by 2030. If the City Council would like to be extra cautious and not fully rely on the state and regional assumptions to meet Saratoga's 2030 reductions, 2030 reduction goal, Council can direct staff to implement new local actions. For example, Saratoga has an opportunity to advance its reach code to require the installation of all electric appliances in new construction. This could result in an additional reduction of two thirty nine metric tons. Council can also increase the tree planting program and increase its budget to double the number of subsidized trees offered annually to increase our tree canopies and sequester more carbon dioxide.

City Council can also accelerate municipal fleet electrification and install more public EV charging stations because small VMT reductions compound meaningfully over time. In summary, the city is projected to exceed its 2,030 target under current assumptions with a meaningful buffer. The largest reductions depend on electricity decarbonization and vehicle electrification, which are influenced by state and regional policies. And the city can reduce risk by implementing local actions. This concludes my report. Thank you.

Any questions? Tina.

Manini, perhaps it's in the report, or likely you just addressed it verbally just now. One of the questions I had asked earlier was, with the proposed increase in the housing numbers in the city, which the analysis refers to as using it refers to increased residential densities, different modes of travel, and job centers location. I couldn't find anything in the analysis, in the report at least, which I could understand. How would that bring the numbers down? Because we don't have massive job centers in Saratoga.

We certainly don't have varied modes of travel. So I couldn't see that correlation. You gave a bunch of numbers. Are they in the report here? Or was that analysis done later on? And I can't find it. I would appreciate that. Thank you.

To address your first question, Counsel Wahlia, the assumptions for the new development was calculated mostly with the assumption that it would be near for example, there's a project, I believe, Douglas. There might be a project on Douglas. I might be misspeaking on the location. But when it was analyzed, it was looked at as a project that was going to be near West Valley College. And because there's a bus station there, that calculation was used with those assumptions.

The new development will be developed with our electrification falling under the reach codes that we have. So the assumption is that there will be less use of natural gas. Therefore, the emissions will be less. Because the homes will already be developed with prewiring for electrification. So that's some of the calculation. I do have Christine on line, if Christine would like to be more specific about that calculation.

Okay. I'd be happy to. And good evening, council members. Thank you, Manini. So the the calculations, there are extensive calculations that are not shown in the, in the memorandum that I prepared, but are available to you to review if you'd like.

The, as far as the new development, we have assumed, I believe it was, 2,446 new units would be developed by 2030, and that includes your regional housing need allocation plus the, 800 and 631 potential builders remedy units. And when we develop the business as usual forecast, we assume that those units would use the same amount of energy and drive the same number of miles as existing housing in Saratoga. And then what we do is we apply these to programs that we know will reduce emissions. So as Manini was, talking about, there are the the building code regulations, and then there's also the city's, where it's which requires that the heating system and the hot water heating are electric. So those are hot pump electric systems.

And then also any natural gas appliance, like a dryer or a cook up, had is, also electric ready. So we've made assumptions about those that, they will not be using as much electricity and natural gas as existing as existing development. And then when it comes to the vehicle miles traveled, there are, methodologies. This is through the California Air Pollutions, the COA, it's called, and they provide different relation of the allergies that you can use to apply to affordable housing units and high density. So we looked at the house units that are projected both again at Arena and the Builders Remedy.

And so I was specifically looking for high density. So that's any building, development that's at 30 units acre or more. And I identified a 137 units that would either be through, at housing element sites that are identified in your housing element or builders remedy sites. And then I also looked at affordable housing units, and those are units that are affordable to low income households, and there were a 126 of those units. So those qualify for these reductions in vehicle miles traveled because it's, it's been documented that low income households need, drive less.

They are more likely to carpool. They're more likely to walk, bicycle to destinations, and then the high density as well is typically you know, they these will and because they're affordable, they are built near job centers or they're at least allowed people to live closer to their jobs so they'll they'll reduce their commuting, distances. The other thing that I want attention to is that the new element is required to install quite a few electric vehicle chargers. So that will encourage people who have electric vehicles to either to move into this new development or to purchase or lease an electric vehicle in order to take advantage of the available electric vehicle charging. So I hope that answers your question.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christine. My other one just small clarification. It's a very small clarification I would like to understand. The staff report refers I think page one probably or could be two, very early on. It refers to the prior numbers being revised because of the emission factor changing from CARB and also revisions in data. Is that normal? Because I don't have any issues about the revision made currently. I am trying to understand how to expect whether there would be revisions and data as we are projecting it forward, if this has been done historically.

Sure. So each year when we do a greenhouse gas emissions inventory, we identify any revisions that are made. And importantly, we go back and we revise the previous numbers just to make sure that we're doing apples to apples comparison. So as time goes on, there have been new emission factors that are developed through the California Resources Board for transportation, also new BMT modeling. So what was assumed for, vehicle miles traveled may have changed.

We've also have had some new, new numbers for off road equipment, like landscaping equipment and construction equipment. Those have been revised over the years, again, by the California Air Resources Board. So there's different counts, of different types of equipment. Those actually have come in higher. But if you see in the chart that was included, I think it's on page two of the memo, you'd see the difference between the original analysis and the new analysis with the and it's and although the emissions are higher than they were, the rate of change and decline is pretty similar.

So, so, again, it doesn't doesn't really make a big difference, but I we do go back and we make the revisions just to make sure that it it's we are being consistent in our methodology across the years.

Thank you, Christine. I appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure I did see that chart and thank you for bringing that up. Just wanted to make sure as we are projecting, there is not a known likelihood of vast differences. That was the only reason I wanted to get that clarification from you. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Yes. A question. How does greenhouse gas emission inventory, was that measured or was calculated based on certain assumptions?

The, inventories are calculated based on, the it's not observed emissions. So we look at what's called an activity data. So that's, like, the amount of electricity that's consumed in the in the community. So that's kilowatt hours. We look at therms of natural gas that's consumed in the community.

We look at vehicle miles traveled that's done through a model that's produced by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and it's kind of recalibrated every few years based on actual BMT that's observed. We look at waste that's produced by the communities, so that's actually reported to Calorie Cycle. And and for all of that activity data, then we multiply that by emission factors. And so this is all done according to a protocol. And some of the emission factors are the same, like for natural gas, for for gasoline.

Those emission factors are the same. The emission factors change from year to year for electricity. It's dependent on the sources of electricity, what's what is used to generate that electricity, so that will change from year to year. And so, that's how we arrived at the inventory numbers. And, again, in the greenhouse gas emissions inventory report, we do go into some detail in the appendix that explains where the, exactly all of the data comes from.

Is this a universal standard of of way of calculating greenhouse gas, emission inventory?

Yeah. It's a it's a protocol that's it's a as an international protocol, and it is the protocol that is recommended by both the California Air Resources Board and the Bay Area Air District to use in order to calculate invent emissions for inventories for local government emissions and inventories.

Okay. Thank you.

Are other protocols out there, like a a company may use a different inventory. All

right. Thank you.

Any other questions? I have a few. Thanks for the explanation of how the below market rate housing would reduce vehicle miles traveled by being typically closer to job centers. I was wondering, in Saratoga, if below market rate housing was built, where are the job centers? Because I didn't think we had

any So you would have, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to Go cut you

ahead, you're good.

Okay. Go for example, you know, I'm not that familiar with the city, but there are job centers like West Valley. Community college would be a job center. You have a downtown, which would be a job center. So there it's not like, some of the other cities, of course. But if people can live in Saratoga and at least be closer to where their job is, that also is reflected in the inventory as well.

Okay. Thanks. In in the this is on page three of your climate action plan analysis update. You make a statement that we've assumed that the low income households represent 21 of owner occupied households in Saratoga. I was wondering if you could tell me how you got to that number?

Sure. So the, the low income household is defined it's by the housing, the State Department of Housing Community Development, which produces you may be familiar with this because it's used in your housing element when you're identifying low and moderate and above moderate income housing. So they, annually will produce a, a schedule for median income, and it's by county. So we look at the countywide median income in so in for the county. And then we take 80% of that, so that's considered low income.

And that's about a $123,000 a year for household. Anybody who makes up to that is considered lower income in the county. And then, we look at the American Community Survey, which is taken each year by the Census Bureau, and then they produce these reports for Saratoga. It's a five year estimate. So they take five years of data, and they make estimates, then they, they refresh this every year.

And so according to that data, 21% of the households in Saratoga have household incomes that are less than 123,000, a year. And so we then say that 21% of Saratoga households are lower income. And for that particular measure, which is the Bay Area Air District regulation that's going to require households to install, electric hot water heaters, anything other than natural gas in starting the beginning in January 2027. They are currently looking at exemption for lower income households. So we've made conservatively have made the assumption that the low income households will be exempt from that requirement.

So we've excluded 21% of the potential, replacements of hot water heaters from from that measure. So we're really just being conservative by assuming that exemption will go into effect.

Okay. Thank you for that. And on page four, down at the bottom, you talk about the zero ZEV population and how it's increased. And you said if this rate were to continue, it says it grew 23% in Santa Clara County between '23 and '24. And if this rate were to continue through 2030, then approximately 33% of light duty vehicles registered in Santa Clara County and 43% in Saratoga would be zero emission vehicles.

So I was wondering if your calculations, your projections, your estimates, your guesses, if they factored in the fact that the federal government and states are beginning to not offer incentives for people to buy zero emission vehicles. And we know that some of the manufacturers have actually stopped producing them, or they have plans to stop because of that. Is any of that factored in? Or you just assume things are as they are? You know, it is what it is.

Yeah. That's a really good question. So these numbers are based on the Impact 2025 model. So it was released last year. And and so I'm not sure I would guess that the federal tax credits for zero emission vehicles.

I'm not sure if they had been announced before that model, was released. So it may or may not. The one of the points that I bring up in the memo is that despite the fact that the tax credits went away last, in last October, the sales remained strong. In fact, they were the same as they had been the previous quarter and and essentially the same as the previous year. So at least for that month quarter, it doesn't seem to have made an impact in Santa Clara County zero emission vehicle sales.

And there is a website that's maintained by the California Energy Commission that tracks these sales by accounting. So it's kind of easy, and they release data every quarter. So it's easy to keep track of that. I do know that nationally, were down about 30% in for the last quarter. And, and that is to be expected.

We saw that, you know, when the solar tax credits went away years ago when California set tax credits went away. But, typically, what happens is that the market does respond. The manufacturers may lower their cost of their vehicles and that the market bounces back eventually. So so, again, we do have quite a big buffer in the assumptions. I think that even if the zero emission vehicle sales did not rebound and that the population does not grow as many as is expected, that it looks like the city will still maintain its 40% retention target.

Okay. Thanks. I've got just a couple more questions. One is on the low carbon fuels. I was wondering if that's based on consumption. Like, did we measure the tank on December 31 of each year and then you know, we know what it is and then we factor in the purchases. So, is it based on actual consumption or just purchases? And if it's purchases, do we know if they correlate from year to year? Because if we've had a reduction in what you call usage or the amount of carbon fuel that we've used, is that based on just an anomaly of when the data was taken?

So the data, this is the renewable use, if you're referring to for the municipal vehicles. So that was data that staff provided to me. It was, based on, I believe, it's sales for to the city. And, yes, it does fluctuate from from year to year. We didn't we didn't take an average over, several years. So so that is the annual data.

Maynini, do you know if the data was, like, the purchasers are at the same time? I mean, if they're taken at the same time, like the last one especially, then we might have a better analysis. I'm just curious.

For the fuel

Yeah.

I asked the streets manager to provide me the data. And so I didn't ask, we didn't talk specifically about

When the

purchases were When the purchases were made. But I did ask him to provide me the years from 2018 up until 2024. And he provided me the fuel used Okay. For those

So I

would assume hopefully it's about the same. And then the other question, Mainini, this is pretty much for you. Staff plans on pursuing the following efforts. And one of them is installing Class I bicycle facilities on Fruitvale Avenue. Is there any indication that the build it and they will come philosophy actually works with this. Does building the class one facility get more bicyclists on the road? Or is it just the weekend warriors that we see out there?

For the class one facility that I mentioned in my staff report, that is the strip of pavement that we did recently, is used by the Redwood Middle School kids who do actually bike on that pavement. And the class one feature would make it much more safe for pedestrians and bicyclists because then there's a division and they wouldn't have an issue colliding. It would just make it very safe for the students and non students.

Okay. Okay, thanks. Anybody else? Sorry to take up so much time. Okay, so we're done with questions. I'd like to open the public comment period for anybody who would like to make a comment on this. I would ask Maimini one thing. We did get a comment letter from Glenn. It would be nice to be able to respond to that in some way, shape, or form.

I'd be happy to.

Thank you. Okay. Do we have any Britt, could you explain the process and let me know if we've got anybody.

If you would like to address the City Council on this item, now is the time to raise your hand. Mayor, I see no hands raised.

Okay, we'll close the public comment and bring it back to the City Council for direction or anything. Anybody? All right, thanks a lot for the update. Appreciate it. I think that one of the things that I hear is that we're very concerned as to whether it's actual real. And how every time we ask this, how the RENA numbers factor into it. And at some point it's going to be how much have we built, and then what are the new projects that are coming along. So I appreciate the effort to put some of that in here this time. Thank you. All right.

I think we are ready for the next item, which is consideration of updates to the Council and Commission expense policy. Do we have a staff report from our acting city manager?

We do. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Members. Assembly Bill twelve thirty four requires local agencies to adopt and periodically review written policies governing reimbursement of expenses for elected and appointed officials. And as you may recall, late last year, we actually took a look at the council compensation. So Saratoga's council and commission expense policy was last updated in 2015.

Staff conducted a comprehensive review, including guidance from the Institute of Local Government and comparisons with neighboring jurisdictions. Most comparable cities provide city issued technology and offer limited or no additional reimbursements beyond travel expenses. Now, as noted, the first attachment that I provided you in your staff report is the existing policy from 2015. And that authorizes local agencies to reimburse members of a legislative body for actual and necessary expenses incurred in the performance of official duties. So, this includes a budget appropriation for city council's annual travel and training budget, of which 30% of that budget is for the mayor, and then the remaining 70% is divided equally among the four council members.

Expenses in this current travel policy right now involve attending educational seminars, educational materials, participating in regional, state, and national organizations, and attending city and city related events. Reimbursable expenses, as noted in our current policy of 2015, within thirty days of the event, include transportation such as taxis, airfare rental cars, automobile mileage, and lodging, meals, and parking. Now, there are currently a few local jurisdictions working on either implementing an expense policy for their council members and or updating their current policies that they do have in place. Based on the review of neighboring cities' policies, staff developed two policy considerations for your consideration tonight. Option one is kind of consistent with what we've seen with a lot of policies, and that is the city issued equipment model.

So, the city would provide either a city issued laptop or tablet and implement a $65 monthly cell phone reimbursement. No reimbursement would be provided for personal technology or office related expenses. The estimated first year cost for five council members is $10,400 And that's essentially if the city issues you a laptop, it would be for that first year, all five of you would have a laptop or an iPad, along with that cell phone reimbursement. So that's kind of the hefty expenses that first year. And then after the first year, the ongoing cost would be $3,900 for all five council members, which is essentially the cell phone reimbursement for the year.

Option two is a reimbursement based model. Council members, and this is something that we've seen with some other policies as well, council members would purchase their own technology and office equipment and be eligible for reimbursement up to $1,500 per term. Now, the council members may be reimbursed for nontravel related technology such as subscriptions, internet services, software and licenses, or other technology related services and office supplies. The cost for five council members for this option is $7,500 Both options do maintain your existing travel reimbursement policy that, again, was approved in 2015. The last attachment that I provided you in your staff report was a matrix of surrounding cities.

One thing just to point out is I mentioned that we had recently reviewed the council compensation late last year. As you know, Saratoga's compensation is different in, I would say, lower than several jurisdictions than many of these cities. So there may be a reason why some cities don't have an expense policy but rather have a higher per diem or compensation structure than we do. Lastly, the two revised policies, so Attachment B and Attachment C, were provided. Now, Attachment B kind of had fewer edits to the policy.

Attachment C, more substantial. Based on your feedback and the discussions tonight, we can adjust either policy with the hopes of whatever changes you may make tonight, if you choose one policy and have an addition or subtraction, whatever it may be, that you would be able to provide city manager authority to make those changes. And that way, we can implement the policy versus coming back with another policy discussion item. But we could also come back with another policy discussion item, should you so choose. This concludes my staff report. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Any questions? Anybody? Tina?

Thank you, Leslie, for bringing this up. So I'm just trying to understand this. So a couple of questions. This is brought forward to us because of the AB1234. Is it required?

It's not required. It's good practice. And, again, because we brought up the council compensation recently, we started looking at some additional policies. And, as you know, we are updating, getting us into a new policy with even our policy format. And so, we thought let's just take a look. Since it was fresh off the heels of the council compensation discussion, we thought let's look at this commission or rather, sorry, the council expense policy. So, we just thought it was timing wise. And because of AB twelve thirty four, the timing just seemed appropriate. So how

I'm trying to see how do you envision implementing option one or two if we were to go so there are three options. One is no change. And then option one and two as presented here. Which would be easier to implement both for staff, if we were to go that route, and for a council member I'm not looking just at the five of us, but down the road other council members so that it's not too much paperwork generation for someone to provide you? I'm just trying to get a sense of this.

No, that's a good question. Quite honestly, there's not a lot of staff work associated with this. One of the things I did do is I talked with our IT manager, especially when it came to option one with city issued laptop or iPad. Again, this is something that all five of you may choose to do, or you may not choose to do. Maybe you just say, we do.

I'd like to have a cell phone reimbursement. But I've got a computer at home, and I'm happy to continue with my computer. So there's not we are a smaller city. The one thing, I think, of consideration is just kind of the asset tracking of the laptops or the iPads. But again, in speaking with the IT manager on both of these options, it would not take a lot of staff time. So, it's really up to what the council decides and what they'd like.

If we were to go with option one that the city issued, laptop or computer, is that I asked you this question earlier is that coming from a cybersecurity perspective that if a council member has that and it has all the security related updates and backups and all of that managed through the city IT team. Is there a benefit to that? I'm trying to look at it from just not monetary, but from other angles as well.

Absolutely. I mean, it's one of those things, if you've got a city issued laptop, they're able to, one, maintain what's on your laptop. Even I have a city issued laptop that I use, and I can't just go and download whatever I want on this laptop. I have to have IT download it for me and get approval from them. So, you know, with your own personal laptop, you can download essentially anything.

And then if you're opening up city apps on your personal laptop, I would assume there's more concern when it comes to cybersecurity. So yes, I would say it would be a little bit more tightly focused and enhanced with a city issued laptop and or iPad. And also, it would be something that would provide you security, and also another thing to kind of keep separate from work and personal, and having that be protected by the city.

Thank you. Last question for now. I'm a little unclear

about

establishment of a monthly cell phone reimbursement of $65 for official use. Maybe it's a very straightforward thing. What am I missing here? So $65 if a council member has personal cell phone?

Sure. So if you, for example, if you had, know, one, could choose to have two phones. There's some people that choose to carry a personal phone and a work phone. And you're paying for two different lines. And so if you've got a work phone, you would be able to submit for reimbursement on a monthly basis, or you could choose to do it perhaps quarterly. Although we do say it's thirty days here. But you could get that $65 your line may cost you $100 Now, what we would do is reimburse you for that $65 Now, if you have one phone and you could have two lines on that phone, again, based on the cost, you would just simply be reimbursed that $65

So just like the travel expenses, we give a receipt and we get a check for whatever, dollars 40 travel expenses. This way we give a receipt every month and we get that? Yeah. You know, Richard, can I ask you a question? Maybe I'm going into too much detail. I'm just trying to understand the Sure.

No, I understand that. Thanks. Say with travel policy that they need to submit their expenses within thirty days of a travel event. But in a situation like this, would they need to do monthly, or could they submit quarterly for

a reimbursement?

I think we'd want to check with Ryan on what the standard accounting practices are for

the Okay.

And Ryan's back there. Looks like he will come on up.

Okay. Thank you. I'm just trying to understand and keep my questions together so that if we were to consider this, what are the factors to keep in mind before we decide operationally as well.

Thank you.

You for the question.

Monthly would be the preference. That would be in line with what we do with staff. Monthly would be the preferred method.

Thanks, Ray.

Thank you. Any other questions? Bala?

I had a question. Looking at the staff report and option two, it talks about $1,500 per council member per term. Right? And then if I go to the table for option two, it says annual cost per member. That's not an annual cost.

No, it's a typo. And I apologize for that.

So but in option one, that is a true annual cost. There's a first year annual cost, but the second, excuse me, the second table is a typo.

Correct. So if you were to think about it, you were to think about which one is kind of the more costly of the two, there's two ways to think about this. Option one, based on, for example, if we had to get five new laptops, that's going be costly in that year one. And then every year after that, it's 3,900. There's a chance that we generally, we keep about one to two laptops on hand.

Now, there is a four year asset rotation cycle. So, you know, if you decide with option one, we may say we've already got two on hand right now, and we would have to go purchase all five. But ultimately, if I look at this option two per term, that's over four years of your term, you get that $1,500 So looking at this, that would probably be the more fiscally cheaper route.

Anybody else? Okay. I'd like to open up the public comment period. Britt?

If you would like to address the city council on this item, now is the time to raise your hand. Mayor, I see no hands raised.

Thank you very much. We'll close the public comment period and bring it back to council for comment. Cookie.

Thank you. So this discussion tonight is for actual out of pocket expenses, cost to do the job as a council member. In my comments I'm keeping in mind what I believe is fair and reasonable. Regarding the current travel expense policy, I think we should continue with the existing policy as is. I think we can improve on what we do with laptops, cell phones, supplies, printers, and other items needed to do our job.

My preference is a combination of option one and option two from the staff report, specifically for the city to provide centralized equipment, laptop or tablet, for official use, and for the city to provide cell phone for official use. Plus reimbursement allowance for a council member's term to include supplies, printers, printer cartridge, internet service software, virtual meeting subscriptions as listed in the staff report. Receipts would need to be provided to document these purchases. I suggest $1,500 per term, or $375 per year for a four year term. On a separate related discussion, do we want to compensate the current city council for the cost of a separate cell phone number that is used for city business to date?

Do we compensate for the council's cell phone retroactively? Do we want to make city council members whole for the cost of their city council phone line? I support this idea. Of course, this idea of compensating retroactively would be a one time only compensation that an individual council member can either opt in or opt out of. I think if a council member wants to be made whole over these costs, they should have the option to do so.

Retroactive compensation could be either based on a flat monthly rate, to be determined, or based on the council member's actual cell phone statements. How far do we go back retroactively? I think we go as far back retroactively for one time only as the council member feels that they can be made whole again. I can propose some language if this sounds like something we would like to do. Thanks.

Thank you. Anybody else? Bilal, thank you.

I'll jump in. I think I'm more in favor of option two, but I'll just give some reflections on that. I don't, for example, want a city shoot laptop. That's another device I've got to carry around. And I like the flexibility of Option two that you sort of have to get reimbursed for various things over four years.

But maybe supplementing that with the cell phone usage because our phone numbers are listed on the city's website. And so there is an expectation that our residents can get in touch with us. And so I think that is one where maybe that's included as part of 1,500 over the course of four years. It also just feels a bit more fiscally responsible. But I think, yeah, I'm very open minded on this one to figure out like what is the right because maybe a laptop is the right thing for someone. I just know it isn't for me. And even when we had sort of yeah, those are my quick thoughts.

Thank you. Camille, Ian?

I'm pretty open, actually, with all the options. But, I kinda like what Cookie just, you know, proposed somewhere kind of between one and two. Regarding laptop, I I think that's kinda again, you know, I prefer to use my own laptop so I don't have to, you know, always carry two and because sometimes you write notes and, you know, on your own laptop now when come to the meeting, you have to carry another one. So I I definitely prefer just to use my own laptop. So I'm really open for discussion on, you know, what is fair and, you know, if anyone would like to make a proposal. And Cookie, if you're ready, I would like to hear.

Okay. I think

we have comments.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Ian. Tina?

Thanks. I'm open to this. Again, I want to preface that by saying I have been very happy with the last five years, in my sixth year on the council, using my own laptop and my own phone. I don't I did not expect to be reimbursed for that. As has been said before, we all work to do this supposedly on a part time basis, but there's a lot more hours that go into it.

And we all volunteer because I certainly love Saratoga and that's why I'm doing this. If we were to proceed with this, I think there needs to be flexibility built in. To provide receipts and all, I think it becomes very cumbersome and for getting into too much minutiae. I am not sure how that would work out. I would also say I have a lot of the stuff which is not in my name at home when we have, for example, cell phone.

At one point, I'm married. I'm still married, but at one point, the bills were in my name. At some point, with my husband's job, for some reason, because his company wanted whatever changes happen, so the bills are not coming in his name. So I'm just bringing something out there that would complicate things in other situations for other council members down the road like that. How do you keep track of things like that?

And how do you expect someone, if someone wanted, to opt in? So I'm just using that as an example. I'm certainly not looking for anything. And I do agree, as has been said earlier, that flexibility of using your own is important. And I'm thinking beyond just me. It's council members come and go, but these policies stay for a while. Thank you. Mayor?

Yes, the

I have one more question.

Thank

you for your presentation. I was just curious, based on the original, our expense policy, how much was annual cost for per let's see, for one council member in term of compared to your option one and option two, what was sort of the extra expense for the original expense of the policy?

Do you

have the number? Well, that's hard. I wouldn't be able to tell you that because that really is just with regards to travel and mileage. So what I can tell you, for example, is with our current budget or with our current policy right now, you have kind of four buckets. You've got a council meeting expenses for $11,000 bucket.

You've got training and conferences for $6,000 You've got travel and lodging for $7,500 and you've got new mayor and council training for $5,000 That comes up to 29,500 To date, we've spent $11,561 But I can't tell you individually who has spent it.

No, this is

good. That's what I should add to what I outlined there. You also have a separate League of cities budget of $16,000 So we do track, you know, as you might know, of as you guys go through, but I couldn't tell you individually where that's at. This is very helpful. Thank you.

I

just had a question, or maybe I'm missing something, Hina, on your questions around the receipts have been providing too much minutiae. I do think the use case you're talking about of a cell phone bill, for example, being in a spouse's name is very common. And so all you do is you print out the receipt or a screenshot. You submit it and you submit it with a And I think all these expenses would ultimately be approved by somebody. I don't think it's like we're saying write me a check for $1,500 I think each of these items would be reimbursed. And I think it's actually very common practice even in very large organizations for individual expenses to be approved. So that's why I think the but am I misunderstanding that? Then help me understand when you say the minutiae of a receipt submission. Am I missing I

wanted Leslie to think about those in case there was something that we need to think about. Now, that was my point.

Okay.

The details. That is it going to get too complicated for workforce staff or for any council member to be providing details? Is there something more we need to consider now? That was essentially the point. I think

Leslie just one more question for Leslie and for Ryan. Is anything I described too complicated or beyond what you can do today? I think you no, that would be in line with what we do today. So we'd be following our standard protocols. Yeah. Because, for example, with the travel policy today, there's a breakfast, lunch and dinner per diem. I submit my breakfast one, and you have to approve that anyway by looking at the receipt, right? Correct. So the incremental lift with this would be very small. There we go. That's all. Thank you.

I think Leslie got my point that if there's something we need to think now, that was kind of

Yeah, sure. I just want to know if I spent $5 less on breakfast, can I put it towards lunch? I'm kidding. Go ahead. Alright.

So now, actually, now you're telling me the the extra expense for, you know, kind of budget for our League of Cities Annual Conference as other travel expenses. So this is on top of all the travel expenses that still going to be in the budget. Correct. This is additional.

Correct. And this is again for right now, money that I gave you right now is really just for your conferences. It's not for cell phone reimbursement. It's not for subscriptions. Or again, if you had a printer at home and you wanted, you're printing a lot at home based on the meetings that you're attending and things. It's those other incidentals that occur beyond what's in the current policy, which has to do with really travel and training and seminars and things like that. It's really about your whole job as a council member beyond those things.

So other cities don't pay for? Actually, didn't quite I I look at the comparisons, the attachment D, local jurisdiction comparison matrix. Doesn't it say that?

Some do and some don't. And I will tell you, there are some that, including a nearby city and I don't want to share it because it hasn't been brought to the council yet, a nearby smaller city is looking at creating a policy. But for example, another larger city is also looking at revamping their policy with more substantial changes onto it as well. So it's kind of a mix and match. But as I even mentioned earlier, you do have to consider some folks in these other cities are getting larger compensation for just serving as a council member, so maybe that's why they haven't chosen to have an expense policy and something to consider for you guys.

Okay. Thank you.

I'll go ahead and make a motion.

Can I?

Yep. The motion is in line with what, was that okay? Sorry.

Yeah, go for it.

Oh yeah, alright. In line with our overall conversation, this is sort of a combination of option two and then a little bit of option one. I like the idea, so I motion that for each council member there's a $1,500 technology and office expense reimbursement model. And if a council member so chooses, they can be issued a city device, either a laptop or a tablet by the city with the expectation that it will be returned at the end of the term because you're not owning it anyway. Yeah, please.

Sure. Tell

me if this will be helpful. So what we can use is attachment B and C, and see the language. And I can offer some suggestions on editing.

Please.

And see if this captures, because it's kind of evolved a little bit since I, before I arrived tonight. So Britt, if you want to look at attachment B.

Okay.

And what we could do a suggestion is on number one there. What we could say is the city can provide each council member with a city issued laptop or tablet and cell phone for official city business. And delete number two. So take out the word shall and put can instead. It gives the sort of the opt in option, right?

So what page are you on?

It's Attachment B. Number seven?

Attachment B. That's the little one. Gotcha.

Okay, sorry about that. 7A1. Sorry about that.

Here you go. Seven.

Thank you. Okay. 7A1.

So on number one, put the word can. Delete shall and put can. Provide each council member with a city issued laptop or tablet and cell phone for official city business.

You want

to I don't if that's those are the right if that's capturing what we really want

Richard. And

you want to remove number two?

And delete number two, yeah.

But Cookie, for clarification, do you want the cell phone reimbursement of $65 or are you saying a true cell phone?

So if the city issues the cell phone, wouldn't the city be paying for them?

They would

pay for the cell phone and the line. Yes. Okay. I just wanted to clarify. Yes. Okay. Great.

And I could just say we, instead of can we'd say May.

Ah, always good to have an attorney on your side. Thanks. And then to finish it off attachment C, seven, A, B and C would stay the same. Anyway, it would delete D. So that's attachment C, number seven, A, B, and C would stay the same. And delete D.

So that has to do with your so you've addressed your cell phone with attachment B. B. And you're addressing the technology with attachment C.

Yeah. I understand. So if Somebody I needs to double check that that hangs Let me clarify to So make essentially you would keep everything everything that was in the attachments that was in black is your existing travel policy that stays the same. And then we would just under seven we would do city issued equipment and cell phone and it would be the city may provide each council member with a city issued laptop or tablet and cell phone for official city business. And then we'd also add to that from Attachment C, seven, A, B and C.

So, just for all clarification, then it would be you could choose to have a laptop or a tablet and a cell phone. And then you also get the $1,500 reimbursement per term for additional outside expenses, etcetera.

Right. So we can decline the city provided laptop. But if we wanted a laptop to use for city, would we be able to claim that with Attachment C? Richard, does that sound?

Yes.

Okay. So we're

kind of covering both.

The question I have is regarding the cell phone. If somebody does not want a city issued cell phone, the, should the policy allow for reimbursement of the person's personal cell phone?

Good question. Yeah. I think the answer to that is yes. And that would be the $65

And that's where, so we would leave D in. And I think I might have some tweaking just to make all this clear. Uh-huh. If this is the direction the council goes. But it would be to implement that intent.

Thanks Richard.

Thanks. Bilal, is that your motion, or is that?

A clarification question. So, on attachment C, option two, when I'm looking at seven B, eligible technology and office expenses. We have listed their computers in in b two and three, computers, laptops, tablets, printers, and related hardware, and then cellular phones used for official purposes. Richard, this is your question. So, basically, what we're saying is it is possible for you to get the laptop from the city and then also use your $1,500 for reimbursement towards a computer. Are we saying that too?

I would recommend that you say no. You can still get $1,500 per term of reimbursement, but not for something that the city is providing you.

That's okay. So if we can add that to it because that what what I would just modify then is I like the clean way you did a cookie, which is basically attachment b option option one, sort of the edits you made to a. And then with the edits you made there striking to making it may and adding cell phone in there. And then attachment b attachment c option two, basically including a, b, c, and d, but basically adding a letter, so making it b, c, d, and e. And then f would basically say

Mhmm.

What we just talked about, Richard, which is the addition of a line, which basically says, if the city has issued you something like a cell phone or a laptop or a tablet, you cannot seek reimbursement for a personal device at that capacity.

Yes. Nice. Okay. That's good. I'm not gonna pause I'm not going to promise that the lettering and numbering is exactly

fine. That's fine.

Not because I disagree, but just because I don't want to think that way from the diocese.

I know I just went really quickly on that. But is that clear to the rest of the counsel to Britt?

If that's the motion, I second the motion.

Two things. One, we can have Richard Gustina is let's repeat what we understand.

Yes.

Do you want to take a stab or?

So it is the motion is to approve a policy that would provide a council member the option of receiving a city issued laptop and cell phone, and would allow council members to be reimbursed for up to $1,500 per term for a range of expenses as outlined in Option two, with the proviso that they cannot be reimbursed for any personal equipment that duplicates equipment provided by the city equipment and services provided by the city.

And should they not choose to have a cell phone, they could get $65 reimbursement. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. Okay.

One more point of, okay Tina, go ahead.

So, thank you. So essentially what we are saying in Option two, we still haven't heard your comments. Why don't you go ahead?

No, no. I am waiting for the motion of the second because that is already processed. I don't go out of turn. I follow the rules of order.

I was waiting for your comments. I'm just confused with the motion.

There's a motion being started. We're gonna get to the bottom of this and get it seconded, and then I'll make my comment.

I seconded. You seconded.

And you agree that that's the way you want.

And I'm asking for clarification which I can easily wait for. I would like your

You can go

ahead. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Thank

you, Mayor.

So Richard, this is really Option B as it is written and adding essentially Option B is saying reimbursement, whatever is written here. Reimbursement for so many things possible. And adding that if you don't want to be reimbursed, you can ask the city to buy you the laptop or cell phone. But then if the city buys you, then you can't get reimbursed for the same thing.

Correct.

That's the simplest.

And just to be clear, it's not the city buying you, city issuing you, when you're done, they take it back.

Yeah. Thank you. Of course. Of course. Thank you.

So, that expense total is now going to increase. Is that correct, Leslie? Because a combination of option A and B, or one and two, in your staff report, the last page, gives, the expense at $10,400 is what I'm going to say because I know it's over the course of a term. Whereas the second option is $7,500 now it's combining?

I think it's very hard, because there are going to be you've got five council members, and there are a whole array of choices that can be made. I think it's going to be hard to say this is what the cost is going to be. And especially for city issued equipment, somebody may use the equipment for a year and then it comes back and it gets used by a different staff member. So but the outside cost would be the $1,500 per council member per term plus possibly the cost of a cell phone subscription and a computer that our city cell phone and city computer that are being used by a council member.

So it is and. Thank

you, Richard.

But you can't so but I can imagine that somebody with a city issued laptop and a city issued cell phone might have expenses that come that are not laptop or cell phone related that come to $1,500 over the course of the term. So that's where it is in the end.

Okay. That was the clarification I needed. So it's basically option A and B. Of course not duplicating. I get that. Thank you.

Okay, so we have the motion and the second. Okay. So I've got a couple of comments and questions, too. Let me get back to my pages here. First of all, I don't know how, I don't understand why we would need a laptop, number one.

If we, And if somebody doesn't have a computer at all, that makes sense to me. But we use web based tools for mail. And so there's nothing that could go on your personal computer, for example, in the emails that you send. They're all locked in the cloud, which is controlled by staff. So I'm not quite sure why we need that. So I'd like, if somebody could help me understand that, I'd appreciate it. The idea of the cell phone and the cell phone reimbursement, think that, you know, that's appropriate if it's the right thing to do. But I'd like to make sure that it's a second phone. It's not your existing phone. It's got to be a new phone.

It's got to be a phone just for city purposes. If you want to go out and buy one and get reimbursed up to $65 a month, so be it. But, I suspect that the phone system has the ability to have a phone number. And that phone number, when it rings, is routed immediately to another number. I know my voice over IP system does it.

I'm 99% sure that the existing phone system does it. And I'm probably 100% sure that the new phone system will do it. In which case, I don't understand what another cell phone would do for somebody. Because it would be a city phone number that would be routed to a personal phone, Which you could also dial out of on the city line. Which would be a beautiful thing because then the city would have a record of the calls that were made and how much the phone is used. So they would actually have a good recording. And of people that called you and people didn't call. So if there were any, for example, public records requests, staff could handle that. You don't even have to be involved. You don't have to give up your phone.

You don't have to give up any records. It's all there. So you don't do it. As for like printer, toner no. I think I heard inkjet cartridge. Cartridge is used, that that term. If anybody is printing their packets, ask staff to do it. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to use the big printer that we have than it is to use an inkjet printer. And I I worked for IBM when I remember and I talked to the people that developed inkjet printers. Since the time that they came out, and that may be a couple years past that, it is almost cheaper to buy a brand new inkjet printer with a little bit of ink that's in the cartridges that you get with it than it is to buy toner cartridges and put them in your printer.

Plus, they're very, very slow. So if you got a if you got a laser printer, like I've got laser printers in the office, you get more bang for the buck. But again, you could say, Steph, you know what? Can you please print me I want I want the full packet printed. They could do that and provide it to you. And there's no cost anywhere. So I'm just offering this as a suggestion as a guy. I built IT teams to do this. The other thing is that unless we get to an environment where staff has the tools to remotely control your computer, there's going be IT problems up the a hole. There's going be times you can't get on and you're going to wonder why.

And, you're going to call staff and, oh, by the way, it's midnight and staff doesn't answer the phone at midnight. So, in that case, we're going have to have an outside service that provides that seven by 24 desktop support. And that's another expense that we're not talking about. But we will need to do that because that's the only way you're going to get the support you need. So I'm I'm a little leery of it because I think that there are existing solutions today.

But then if we go to this, especially with the laptop being given out, there is a whole another set of stuff that will have to be considered. And because I did this as a living, I built teams to do this, I'm projecting the future, I'm anticipating something because I saw it happen again and again and again. The tools are better, but it's still an expense and it's something that we'd have to do. And I doubt that RT guys would do that. We'd have to have an outside service that's there seven by 24. So just throwing that out and love to hear your comments. Cook?

So, Paige, when you're talking about, I think just me, I'd like to have two phones. I don't know if you were saying that you can have two phone lines come in on one phone. Yeah. I'm not going to like that. I'm not going like it.

All right.

And then the printing to ask staff to do it. When I first started here, the city manager said there was a no print policy.

Yeah, well we're the ones that set that policy, remember?

So I actually like the convenience. So usually what I do is for a meeting, like this is a pretty light meeting, so I think I copied 10 pages at my house. Sometimes I do 20 per meeting. And the cost for me, for an inkjet for a year, is like $80 for me to print this stuff times, you know, me doing this for eight years, right? So that would be part of the $1,500 compensation.

I just don't think we should be out of pocket. You know? I do think of this as sort of a volunteer kind of job, but I don't think we should be out of pocket. So my preference is the two, I want the two phones. I know technology wise you can do it on the one, but that's my preference.

And the printing, if I want printing done, so usually what I get, I get the packet, like on a Thursday or Friday. I look it over and I think it over. And then by Monday or Tuesday I think about what I want to print out. If I contact staff and say, can you print out this page here and that page there and this, that's what I do, because I don't print everything. Then I jump in the car, drive over to city hall, pick up the hard copies, and then drive back. I know I live really close, But that's extra time. The printing is a convenience for me.

Okay. And would that printer be only used for city business? No. Do you envision a time where some The printer counter gets put on the council and says, I want to know the percentage of time you're using that printer for city business and that's how much you should be reimbursed. Because I guarantee you, I can think of two or three people right now that would be asking that question.

Yeah. That would be legitimate. Reimbursed.

That would be A legitimate question.

-And that level, I mean, we're talking minutiae. A receipt is plain and simple. That's a mandatory requirement. But to get down to how much time did I use it, how many pages did I print versus how many were for Citi?

Think No, there's that's why there's this. Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I'll just

go ahead.

Yeah. Just to add on to that. Look, I do think there's an expectation of any reimbursement. Like is that being used for personal things? Think there's always going to be that question. Right? What I will say on the printer front, I also was told very clearly when I joined the council, we have a no print policy. I recognize we can change that. But my approach that I take is actually very similarly when I get the staff report. I go through and I don't print everything.

Like for example, we have a template for our contracts, right, with new vendors. Right? And if everyone's filled it out, I don't need to print out all of Right? But because of But I have a laser printer at home and I print almost every Everything that's not like, you know, the first couple pages of a contract, I will go through and I will literally write by hand. I'm gonna Of an 800 page pack, I'm gonna print one to 90, you know, one fifty seven to two thirty two and basically go through it that way.

Because I also don't want to waste paper and ask staff to print the whole thing for me. So that's why I I kind of appreciate having that flexibility. That laser printer I use, probably 95% of its usage is city council stuff. 5% of it is, you know, the one page, you know, form I gotta fill out and drop off somewhere. And so and and I think that's reasonable.

And there's gotta be a certain level of expectation of trust when you're reimbursing something. If it's you know, think there other like you know, maybe there's a Zoom subscription or something that you need to be able to do calls because the city only issues Microsoft Teams. Right? Things like that that I think are reasonable. On the laptop piece, my only thing there is I think there's an assumption that everybody has a has a laptop or a or a tablet at home that they use all the time and can use.

And there's you could argue that there's that's a require is that a requirement now for you to be a city council member? I don't think it is. There are members in some of the community organizations, like leaders I know who don't even have cell phones, Right? By the they would, if they were to be on this council, would need a laptop issued to them and would need a cell phone issued to them. I do think it is a fair thing to be, to think like hey, if they're having IT problems at midnight, they can't call someone. But I think you can also just set expectations. You can only ask questions about this like nine to five. Right? And if they can't deal with that, you can't deal with that. Right?

So I think we can also just set expectations there. But I, that's my only push by the way. And I'm someone who loves my personal laptop. I love the fact that it's all web based and that I don't have to bother IT. Whenever I do, I get answers like right away in a way that's super helpful. So those are my two considerations on the two things you brought up.

Okay. Thanks. So as I understand it, it's what is it, item, attachment B, A, B. Attachment B, the first line item about the technology, Okay? About the laptop. And then the rest of it comes from attachment C, or yeah, D, I guess. And it's items B, C, and D on there with a little bit of conversation that we had before.

It's a, b, c, and d. It's all those things. All of them. But the exception being, for example, if the city issued and then another line, if the city issues you a laptop or a tablet, you cannot seek reimbursement for your personal tablet and laptop on top of the laptop you've been issued.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

And so I think, and maybe that's a broader sentence, Richard, which is implied, is like if the city's issuing you something, you can't get reimbursed on a personal basis for that.

Okay. And do we need to put in a line that says that you only get paid, like you only get reimbursed for a cell phone if it's a net additional cell phone? So you have to prove that you have a personal line?

I think that's implied by what we're saying, right, Richard? But actually, Richard, you tell

me. I don't see that in there anywhere.

We can get it in there. The point is that we are reimbursing for the portion of cell phone use that is related to city business. And that will be an estimate. But, and so actually, I will say the city has also made a policy determination as a matter of its work that reimbursement of $65 a month is reasonable. So rather than having each council member make a particularized that's why it doesn't end there rather than asking for a particularized determination, what we were doing and what we put forward was just saying the city's made this determination with respect to staff.

That's what the council policy would be. But you're right. You could ask people to provide more documentation if

you will. I don't want to.

What what if we just made that simpler and just said you can get reimbursed $30 a month? So lower, not the full 65. I I don't Is is that something that folks would be open to? Because I I I For example, is it $65 a month for an individual cell phone plan? I think it's less than that.

Bought a phone when I got on the council just for city council use. Wish I knew where I was. Because I carried them both around for a long, long time and then one day it died and I can't call it anymore. And what I did was I pretty much used it for text. And I would copy the text and send it to myself in an email and ask that person for their email address and then respond by email.

Because that way there's a record of everything and I don't ever have to give up a phone for public records request. But, I mean, whatever works. I mean, think that if we're going to give, staff gets a $65 a month stipend or whatever for having a cell phone. If we think we're using the cell phone that much and it costs it, I don't really care. Just put in. Know what? You get reimbursed $65 a month. I don't understand why we didn't just go back to how much we get paid, you know, paid per meeting or per month and say, jack it up by $300 and now you're even. It covers all your stuff for the whole rest of the world, you know. Your printing costs and your, just jack that up a bit, cover everything, and you're done.

Now, we've got one Instead number to worry of all this extra paperwork, which goes right to staff, and the support, and all the rest of the issues I talked about. Just, if you want, if we wanted to do something, I think make it as easy as possible. And to me, that might be the easiest way to do it. Just sorry to throw a wrench in the works, but.

I understand. I just think this is also pretty straightforward to be able to submit expenses or reimbursement with the receipt, which is something we already do for travel. So I don't feel like we're adding a considerable amount of administrative burden here.

Okay. Alright. I'm good. Yeah.

I kind of agree with you, Chuck, on this one. I have a couple more clarifications. The more I look at this, the attachment C, the one which has the larger list in red, Seven B, the list of eligible technology and office expenses. Office supplies necessary. I don't know.

Is that too wide? Then forget the second one, that's the computers and all of that, that's hardware. Number four and five, so we are now saying to pay for the internet service necessary. Then number five, against which software licenses and virtual meeting. Kind of going back, thinking about what Chuck pointed out, is this going to raise more questions that you are asking taxpayer to pay for your Internet service, which you pretty much use in any case for your personal use?

Similarly, the software and the licenses and the virtual meeting subscriptions. That's where I am hesitating. That's why I have been asking the questions. And I wish, Chuck, you had made your remarks even earlier, because I'm kind of agreeing with what you're saying. I would like well, I'm just a little uncomfortable with things being more open ended here.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong here, but a bit open ended which could raise more questions than it solves by residents who would say who today doesn't have it. With due respect to your statement, Bilal, there are some folks who won't. So that's kind of where my hesitation is. So can someone help me, firstly, with the specifics in B?

And I just think that the one thing we should have some kind of clarification on is who's the final arbiter. I mean, if somebody says, well, I want to buy this AI software to better answer my questions at a city expense, I'm only using it for city stuff because I've got my own intelligence for the rest of it. I don't know. I mean, now we're going get into a whole bunch of ethical issues and you guys make the call. I'm just sitting here.

I'm not worried about it, right? So in everything in B, so for example, 500 sheets of paper is like five, six, seven bucks.

I'm not

going to be filling out a receipt for that. That's not worth it to me. So these are just options. I don't know that I would use any of these. But we're not just talking about us. We're talking about the next council. There could be three new council members in December, right? I don't know. I think this is reasonable. I think this is, I think it's reasonable.

I agree that it's reasonable. I think that, to me, open ended is our stipend. We get paid that. No questions asked. This is an expense reimbursement. Right? So we have to get this reimbursed. And if we want a final arbiter, I think it should be the city manager. To which to me is like a really clear and obvious way of just figuring out having a final person of authority who already is in that executive position in the city, make that decision. And I'm more than happy to make that addition.

Okay. And I so Internet service necessary for conducting city business. I suspect that's going to end up meaning either devices with WiFi cards in them, or phones with hotspot capability and lots of data flow. I don't care. I'm just mentioning it because and again, it says necessary for city business. Like one time I needed it and so I bought it and now it's good, you know, I got it for a year or

Let's say I live in the hillsides and I have really bad service in general. And I wanna make sure that I and I have a board meeting for this foundation which is every other month over Zoom. And I I need that Verizon device to make that meeting happen.

That works for me.

And if it seems unreasonable, the city manager can say no. Right?

And I would just add, I think it is helpful to have one person because then you can make sure you're consistent with what people are asking and what's being approved and not being approved.

Mayor, may I? Yeah. Leslie, I asked a question earlier about

believe you asked a question about just more specifics about what that would entail. I think, I mean, we outline a few more. Again, office supplies necessary for official city business. You know, that could be reams of paper. That could be printer toner. You know, again, it could be you know, I mean there's a whole gamut of things. But again, it's, I don't know what you personally may need, and it would be hard to itemize that.

I think the, if there are things that as counsel you want to say no, we don't care if this is reasonable. Right now, your policy does not allow you to be reimbursed for anything you've said. As a counsel, we do not want to reimburse for any of this. Rather than trying to provide more detail, this is very broad. This is saying, council members, we trust them.

And again, it is a crime. It is a crime Mhmm. To take money for your personal use. So if you submit a claim that is ultimately shown to not be correct, the district attorney could press charges, and you could forfeit your office. So that is the overview for all of this, and people will present their things.

And and the city manager is going to more likely, is not going to say, no. The city manager is going to say, the city attorney tells me that it's a crime to ask for things that are not for city business. Are you comfortable that you have sufficient documentation to demonstrate that you're doing this for city business? And we'll we'll be there. So I would say if there are things on here that you just say no, I do not want to be paying for office supplies, then we should take that off the list. But otherwise, I think leave it broad.

Okay. Thank you, Richard. My question was more about software and the licenses. Do we want to keep it just that, or do we need to specify or control or limit? That was really the concern I had.

And Councilmember Aftab gave you a great example of a circumstance in which somebody could say, absolutely, I cannot do this otherwise. I never use it for anything else, but I have to have it.

Okay. So, is it important to say that you don't use it for anything else? Going back to Chuck's point, not to belabor the point, but that got

I don't me think our policy, there are so many variables, we would have a 25 page policy.

Okay. Okay. Chuck just got me thinking about that.

And again, I think these are important policy considerations. I'm not saying that one is right and the other is not right. I'm just saying from a practical perspective, if you're going go with this approach, I think this is a reasonable approach. I also think that it may well be that other jurisdictions go with the stipend so that they don't have to submit detailed claims.

Okay. Thank you, Richard. Mayor, that's thank you for giving me the time to get more clarification. I appreciate that.

Okay. So we've got a motion and a second. Hopefully we all remember some of it. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

I oppose it.

Any abstentions? So I Deanne, did you be it aye or a nay or a yay or I'm

not a 100% I I I understand the purpose. You know, the more I think about it, I'm just gonna abstain this on this one. I I was happy with what we had before, but of course, we're gonna add a little bit more, but I think it's gonna be more complicated. Well, I'm more I hear it, I feel like more complicated.

It's gonna be really

complicated.

You know, you're talking about the eligible technology and office expenses. It's just so broad. I don't know if we want to open up to all that, you know, like office supply and everything. I'm just a little concerned now.

If you're concerned about that.

I'm going to say I because at some point in time there may be somebody who really has the need for the equipment or things that we don't have, that they don't have to do the job. And let's give them a chance to do it. If this turns out to be too cumbersome, we can look at it again. Some other counsel can look at it again. Staff will come down here and say, what in gosh name are you doing? So I think that we'll have some checks and balances built in. I don't think it's going to be an issue. The potential's there to be an issue. I don't think there's going be enough of it to be an issue.

And if I may, Mayor, it is up to you if you want to submit for this. So if you don't feel comfortable and don't want to, you don't have to. It's those that would like to. You have the policy in place to now be able to do so.

Can't wait to figure out what percentage of the internet I'm using for city business.

So that's my question. You know, if you have an internet, you know, you've got to use for something else also. How do you say that now it's 100% for city use? That's what kind of really got me. I wasn't you know, before I was all good until you talk about percentage used, how much was actually used for Citi. I mean, you're gonna have Internet you're gonna use for your personal use anyway. How can you claim now?

Well, think, again, that will be up to each council member. And again, to council member Avtab's solution, you might have a member of the council who has been perfectly content using the Internet at the library. They get they go to the library. They do the research they need to do, they don't have an Internet account at home. They get on the council, people are expecting them to reply to emails twenty four seven. They say, the library is not open enough hours for me to do it. I have to do it. And they could demonstrate. They would they would if the they would say, I've never had Internet service. Now I need to get it.

And I'm using the most minimum possible because I don't need I'm not paying for bandwidth for streaming because all I need is my email web access. So I have the absolute slowest possible plan. I have the lowest amount of data, and that's what I'm seeking reimbursement for. That But again, as a council, you could say, as you've said up until now, no, we are not interested in paying for that. So And it will be up to each council member to decide within the bounds of what this council sets in this policy.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but for example, if let's just say you paid $100 a month for Internet, and you say I use my Internet 20% of the time for work related business, then you would expense $20 in that situation.

And you would want to be able to demonstrate that that, why you said 20%.

Wait till you see my electric bill.

How do you demonstrate 20%? That's getting really kind of cumbersome, right? I mean, now you do you have to say you use let's say if you use for 80%, now you have to prove you use for 80%. How? How do you even approve that?

It's difficult. But on the other hand, if it's a point that you don't have that documentation or you don't feel comfortable, then that's perhaps an expense that you don't submit. Got it. But it gives people the option

to accept. However, I like the way we word it. It says, like, Internet service as an example. Internet service necessary for conducting city business. There's typically an amount of service that you have to purchase. It's like this is the lowest quantity that it comes in, this many gigabytes per second or whatever the heck it is. You have to get that. So you submit that and it's fine. That's the minimum that you could get. You need that to have access. That's what you submit. Don't have to get into that level of detail.

I think there's a balance, right, between like wanting to be transparent with the public about all of our expenses. We submit everything. And what if you're getting a check issued to you by the city, that is literally in the check register, that is part of every city council meeting. Right? So, you want talk transparency? I think there is a fair amount of that. Right? I think the point on like adding an insane amount of minutiae to me feels like a bit I'm gonna keep my words polite, but it's like really? Come on. Right?

Like, we're talking about the fact that if you are submitting your own personal expenses, it is literally a crime. And, if that's not enough, right, for our staff to be able to make a decision on, then really I think we're just debating useless details. It and it just feels like we're wasting our time. The last thing I'll say is we spend a lot of time talking about emergency preparedness. Let's say there's a wildfire. Let's say there's a massive earthquake and the Internet's completely out. Like, Xfinity's gone. Okay. Now you gotta go to the Verizon store. If you can get there and you and you talk about the one time use case.

In the event of a wildfire, yes, we're you're gonna have to spend a bunch of money, I don't know, going and buying a brand new cell phone for the like, let's say Verizon's out, T Mobile's out, but AT and T is out. Okay. Now you gotta go buy an AT and T phone because you don't have one. And that's where I think having a broad policy that you can get reimbursed for actually makes a difference. Whereas like trying to rule out everything like again like if the rule of law and the district attorney coming after you isn't enough you probably shouldn't be on the council at the beginning.

Exactly. So I feel like we're wasting a lot of time talking about details that are yeah. I think we've already voted in favor of this three one one now. Yep. But I just think like when it comes to discussing items in front of the public and utilizing their time, let's make sure we're like making good use of that time. And I think having a broader interpretation of understanding all the things that are possible is just important for us in leadership. Right? Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks. So the motion Yan, you didn't vote yet.

I will say no. I will go.

You're a no.

You already have three. Let's go ahead.

Motion carries three-two. And no abstentions. And thank you very much. I think that, yes, it was cumbersome and it was tiresome in some gate. But these discussions help people understand that we are thinking through the options. And that is important, as many people have stood up here before and said, it's a vacuum. We don't know how you're making that decision. I think they got the idea on this one. Thank

you. Mr. Mayor, just for looking forward now, for a comfort level, we understand your changes, and we can make those changes, I'll work with Richard. Would you prefer to have this brought back at the next council meeting, perhaps under consent to review the final? Or do you trust Richard and the changes that we've noticed?

I trust Richard. I think we're good. I think I understand the details.

Okay. Then we'll go ahead and finalize the policy.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Okay. Great job. All right. Counsel Assignment time. Let's start with Bilal.

I have nothing to report.