City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know it's a couple minutes after 7. I just want to let everybody know that we've got a document that we're trying to get into the public record before the meeting. And so it'll just be a couple minutes. So please go ahead. Converse.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Here we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

She printed out all the Wildfire stuff, too.

That was my job today. Thank you. Thank you.

You got attendees in the waiting room. You got attendees in the waiting room. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. HI, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR ATTENTION. HELLO AND WELCOME TO OUR REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING TODAY, AUGUST 19, 2026. I'D LIKE TO CALL THE MEETING TO ORDER AND ADVISE EVERYONE THAT THIS MEETING IS BEING RECORDED AND THE RECORDING WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ON THE CITY WEBSITE. WOULD YOU PLEASE RISE AND JOIN ME IN THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. I pledge allegiance to the pride 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, can you please proceed with the roll call and the required administrivia?

Members of the public may participate in this meeting in person at the location listed on the agenda or via remote attendance using the information listed on the agenda. Public attendees participating remotely are automatically muted and are not viewable on camera. I will now call the roll. Council Member Aftab?

Present.

Fitzsimmons? Present. Zhao?

Present.

Vice Mayor Walia?

Present.

Mayor Page?

Present.

We have a quorum, and the agenda was posted on August 13th.

Thank you. Earlier this evening, the City Council held a closed session on conference with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation. There is no reportable action from this meeting. We also held a joint session with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, and Captain Valenzuela, will you please share a brief summary of your updates?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Captain Neal Valenzuela with the Sheriff's Office. Thank you again for hosting us for a closed session. As you know, the Sheriff was not able to attend, but we had Under Sheriff Mike Doty, Lieutenant Sean Flores, Sergeant Kyle Haynes, and Sergeant Stephen Perotti and myself in attendance. Sergeant Kyle Haynes and Sergeant Stephen Perotti are part of our Sheriff's Emergency Response Team, or our SIRT Team, which is our version of the SWAT Team. They provided a short presentation that makes up our team makeup. some of the selection process that they go to, the types of incidents they respond to, and some of their equipment that they utilize. Additionally, I presented to the council some of the types of calls that occur in Saratoga, provided some information on our response times, and gave you a brief overview of crime statistics in the city.

Thank you. Any comments from the council? Thank you very much, Captain. We appreciate your and your team's service to us. Next up, we have oral communications on non-agendized items. This is an opportunity, and we invite any member of the public to speak on any item that is not on tonight's agenda. The council is typically prohibited from addressing or answering any questions raised during that time, but we may give some direction to staff regarding that. So Britt, if there's any speakers, please call them up, and then we'll go from there.

If you would like to address the City Council on an item not on the agenda and you have not submitted a speaker slip, now is the time to do so. Our first speaker is Bill Dalton.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, VICE MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. MY COMMENTS TONIGHT RELATE TO THE VACANT ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER POSITION AND THE CITY BUDGET. IT'S MY CONTENTION THE VACANT POSITION SHOULD NOT BE FILLED FOR CERTAINLY NOT UNTIL WE RESOLVE THE CITY'S BUDGET ISSUE AND MAYBE NEVER. The city's operated several times in the past without an assistant city manager. Most recently since Matt Morley left and Leslie was promoted to acting city manager. Before that, when Crystal left, until Leslie was hired to take her place. I ask that the position not be filled, maybe never. I thank you for your time and service.

Thanks, Bill.

Next is Jackie Holmes.

you need to you need to how about now great yes so i know it's a busy night um i wanted to share something that is an immediate action item we're requesting that staff be directed on we have a major enforcement issue with our zoning code it's harming the vibrant village that we want we're asking for this action members of the saratoga vitality neighbors have brought up before the need for critical mass in the village, critical mass of varied businesses and of pedestrians shopping and dining. I know you all know that. I'm mentioning it for all the people watching as well. Foot traffic makes the village attractive to new businesses and keeps existing businesses alive and able to invest in the community. That is why it is common best practice for zoning to require that ground floor storefronts are active foot traffic oriented retail and dining businesses. The good news is our general plan, our village design standards, and our municipal code all specify that. We're very happy about that. However, the enforcement issue is that that is not being enforced. Many building owners who are very good people, I'm sure, and in some cases I know, have rented ground floor storefronts without a conditional use permit allowing them to do so to offices which do not fit that criteria. I would like us to address that. Enforcement becomes more complicated when a tenant is in place. It's still not impossible, but it's more complicated. Right now, there's one specific storefront with a beautiful patio, a prime aspect of our village. It is next to Pophouse. And I would request that council direct staff to take proactive conversations with the landlord to discuss what our municipal code is so that someone doesn't come in nonconforming and then we all shrug our shoulders and say, what can we do? They're already settled in. What we can do is speak in advance. That's my request. There is a business, private office, nonconforming right next door with a beautiful patio that sits empty. Again, I have nothing personal about that business, but it does not conform. It does not support good urban planning of active use, pedestrian traffic, and businesses. So we would ask, again, that councils speak with staff about taking action. Saratoga Vitality neighbors, if anyone has any questions, can be reached at saratogavitality at gmail.com. We have 460, 470 people who are on that list and engaging in different levels, and we're trying to support our businesses, the energy, and the community that we all talk about wanting. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jackie.

Next is Alaria Keough.

Hello. Hi, everyone. Good evening. I echo Jackie's concerns, especially for those two beautiful spots down at the end next to Pop House, those allowing that office to take That spot was a crime. I don't know who allowed that, how that, if it has a conditional use permit. If not, I don't know how that happened. But we live in California, beautiful weather. We should be sitting outside enjoying the weather, enjoying a drink, food, and we have an office. Why is that? We have rules, don't we? Let's follow them. That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Elaria.

This is Self. It's for someone who lives on Rani.

My name is Frank Chen. I'm here because our community has reached a point where we need help from the city of Saratoga. West Valley Community College District is moving forward with the wellness center. which is the largest footprint structure, one of the largest footprint structure in our entire city, using funds from the Major W, about $125 million. This is a large fund, and built on the track field, which is in the Western Valley. When Major W was presented to all of us, the major purpose was presented around the prepared student for 21st century careers, including stamps, nursing, health care, and a veteran retreat, which we can all go to look at. The replacement of the athletic track was mentioned, but only as a sub-item among the 100 items in the funnel. Residents are therefore asking for basically accountability questions. How does this major wellness center project at this location, at this scale, fit within the priority that the voter was asked to support, approve? We have not been silent. So many of our residents have attended the last three board meetings, the trusted meetings, asked the district to answer in the dialogue. Instead, the project was moved rapidly. The track is approximately 50 years old. Demolishing a decades-old ethical facility necessarily means disturbing existing service underlying the soil, drainage, and the potentially aging infrastructure. We are here to ask a simple question. WHAT ENVIRONMENTAL TESTING AND CONSTRUCTION CONTROL WAS PERFORMED BEFORE THIS SITE WAS DISTURBED? AND WILL THAT INFORMATION BE MADE PUBLIC? RESIDENTS SHOULD KNOW WHAT ASSESSMENT HAS BEEN DONE REGARDING DUST RUNOFF, CONSTRUCTION IMPACT, AND THE MATERIAL BEING REMOVED. WE ARE ASKING THE CITY AND THIS COUNCIL AND CITY ATTORNEY TO HELP TO ensure that a major public project affecting many of the Saratoga residents proceed with transparency, accountability, and proper environmental diligence. Thank you for your help.

Thank you, Frank.

Next is Matt Bordone.

Hello again. I'm also here to talk about the track. If you're not aware, the West Valley track was closed on Thursday and they ceremonially ripped up 40 yards of it to justify putting up the fence. Without any public notice and by keeping it as quiet as possible, West Valley Mission Board of Trustees managed to pull this off. And this whole issue, in my opinion, comes down to two words and six pages of Bond W literature. The two words, bracketed by combas, are track replacement. And the problem is that the West Valley Mission Board of Trustees is asking these two words to do too much. Any reasonable person would take track replacement to mean resurfacing the track, which is what happens from time to time. But they asked me to believe that track replacement really means replacing the track and destroying it. And all the voters, for some reason, approved the destruction of this track. The Measure W bond language does not support this line of thinking. This violates the plain meaning rule, the baseline rule that words in a statute should be read according to their ordinary, everyday meanings. rather than stretch to accommodate outside goals. Furthermore, as Frank mentioned, this is the largest structure on their campus and will be the largest building in the city, potentially, directly on top of this athletic site, this track. The college recently pivoted to this location in late 2025, and because of this late pivot and rush timeline, they completely bypassed the project-specific environmental impact report that is required under the California Environmental Quality Act. So I'm asking the City Council to do two things. First, as representatives of the taxpayers who voted to approve Measure W, can you reach out to the Mission College Board of Trustees and demand accountability for why they chose to misread the Measure W language and so misuse the $698 million of bond funds appropriated? They have blown off similar requests from the public and from many of the citizens, and they feel they only have to answer to the Bond Oversight Committee, which they themselves appointed. I believe that you might have a little bit more luck, and you can do a good job of representing us in this regard. Second, I would like to direct the city attorney to review the college's CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, avoidance and pass an emergency resolution demanding an immediate halt to all site disturbances until comprehensive environmental and toxicological studies are conducted and made public. As an interested party representing the community, the city of Saratoga has the legal standing to challenge the college's CEQA exemptions. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Matt.

Next is Stan Boghossian.

Can you hear me?

Yep, yes. I'VE GOT A QUESTION THAT PROBABLY WOULD LIKE TO ASK IF YOU WOULD REFER TO YOUR IT PERSON ON STAFF. I HAVE BEEN GETTING BLOCKED FROM THE CITY WEBSITE. I HAVE A VPN SERVICE, AND I'VE TESTED IT TO SEE IF IT'S, IN FACT, NOT RUNNING OR WHATEVER. I'VE GONE THROUGH ALL OF THE TESTS, AND SOMETIMES I'M BLOCKED, SOMETIMES I'M NOT. AND WHEN I WAS... I decided to go to one of the commercial sites that I know blocks me if I don't have my own address down. It's a lot of commercial sites track. I just want to make sure that the city isn't tracking people. That's all. It's got to be easy access. Thank you.

Thank you, Stan.

I have no more speaker slips.

Okay.

Is there anyone else here that would like to come forward? SEEING NONE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. IS THERE ANY DIRECTION TO STAFF? THEN WE'LL MOVE ON TO A COUPLE OF ANNOUNCEMENTS THAT WE'VE GOT. First, I'd like to invite folks to join me at the Pop House Coffee, which was talked about a little bit ago at 14612 Big Basin Way, this Friday, August 21st, from 9 to 10. This is Coffee with the Mayor. It's an opportunity to share your thoughts and questions with the mayor. We have usually kind of a nice group of people, and we try not to overdo the conversation with any one topic, but get a lot of ideas in there, and then can do some follow-up later. So come enjoy some coffee, conversation, a great new location in the village, and let's help another business person succeed. Next up, I'd like to invite everyone to our 70th birthday celebration. Gather your friends, your family. It's going to be a great party at Wildwood Park on Saturday, starting around noon. The music will actually start a little bit before that, while people are walking in. We'll have live music from Mark Keyboard and his brother, and then the headliner is Days on the Green. If anybody knows them, they're a wonderful band. They play some great music, and I think you'll have to make sure you've got your dancing shoes on. There'll be some family-friendly activities hosted by the Los Gatos Saratoga Recreation Group, a petting zoo. I was at the park today and this little guy comes up and goes, what kind of animals are you going to get? What are you bringing? I said, I'm not bringing my cat because I don't have one anymore. But there's going to be lots of cool things to do. There'll be some food trucks and beer and wine will also be available for purchase sponsored by the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce. So this community event is a chance to create lasting memories, to really enjoy our city, and celebrate the 70 years that we've been in existence and did not become part of San Jose, although based on some of the things on our agenda, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. So I welcome you all to join us. It's going to be a good time. And then last of all, commission openings. We do have some openings in our commissions, the Parks and Rec Commission. Library and Public Arts Commission, the Heritage Preservation Commission, and the Traffic Safety Commission. Applications are due for the Parks and Recreation and the Library and Public Arts Commission this Friday, August 21st, and the HPC, the Heritage Preservation, and the Traffic Safety Commissions are due on January 22nd, 2027. So if you're interested in getting involved with the city and helping to shape Saratoga's future, This is an opportunity. We welcome you to apply and spend some time and contribute to the city. The applications and whatnot are on the Saratoga website, saratoga.ca.us. Any council members have any announcements they'd like to make? Seeing none, we'll move forward. OUR FIRST ITEM TONIGHT IS A CEREMONIAL ITEM. WE'RE GOING TO RECOGNIZE THE RECIPIENTS OF THE 2026 ANNUAL COMMUNITY AWARDS. THESE ARE AWARDS GIVEN EVERY YEAR FOR OUTSTANDING SERVICE, DEDICATION AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SARATOGA COMMUNITY. Will Captain Matthew Freeman, Deputy Alexander Rokic, Cody Tierlink, Ismar Maslik, and Tyler Taylor and the SASE team please join me on stage. And what we're going to do is we're going to have you all come up. Big applause. I never could do that, so I'm jealous already. Each year the Santa Clara County Fire Department nominates a member of its department to be recognized for outstanding service to the Saratoga community. This year we are honored to recognize Fire Captain Matthew Freeman, who's dedicated more than two decades to serving our community. Most of you don't know this, but Captain Freeman's connection to Saratoga began in 2001. as a paid call firefighter with the Saratoga Fire District. You barely remember that, don't you? Yeah, there you go. He became a career firefighter the following year. He went on to earn his paramedic credentials and was promoted to fire captain in 2019, and today leads his crew from the downtown Saratoga Fire Station. Beyond his daily service, Captain Freeman has shared his expertise in areas including rope rescue, vehicle stabilization and extrication, while also helping to train the next generation of firefighters. Captain Freeman's dedication, leadership, and commitment to the Saratoga community truly exemplify the spirit of this award. Please join me in recognizing Fire Captain Matthew Freeman as our 2026 Firefighter of the Year. You want to say a couple words first?

I'll hold this.

Never give up an opportunity to hold the mic. I think my crew knows this very well. First, I just wanted to thank the City Council for this award. It's been an honor to serve the Saratoga community for a better part of 24 years. I've had the opportunity to meet some amazing people in our community throughout my career, including our own mayor and vice mayor as they've come through the station. I want to say thank you to County Fire for the nomination and our fire chiefs for their leadership and providing opportunities for growth. I have to recognize my crew sitting all right here in the front two rows here that has been so rewarding for me to come to work each tour. And thank you for the friendship and the support that you've given me. I actually want to say thank you to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. It's been an honor and a privilege to work alongside you. Thank you. Your professionalism and customer service to provide the community is immeasurable. It's been an honor. Lastly, I want to thank my wife for supporting me every step of the way. We spend more than half of our lives apart, and when I come home, you let me ramble on about forcible entry, rope rescue, firefighting strategies, and surfing no less. Again, you're amazing. City Council, thank you for the recognition. Thank you.

And now we'll get a couple of photos. So stay up here for a sec.

We got the cue. Thank you so much, Cabinet. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, next up, we're going to recognize the Deputy of the Year. So will Deputy Alexander Rokic please join us up here in the front and center? Thanks.

Did I say your name?

I always have to check if I got the name spelled, sounded correctly. Each year, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office nominates a member of its department to be recognized for outstanding service, again, to the Saratoga community. This year, we're pleased to recognize Deputy Alexander Rokic, who has served as a patrol deputy with the West Valley Patrol Division for the past five years. Deputy Rokic has consistently demonstrated an exceptional work ethic, professionalism, and a team-first approach. During a particularly demanding year when the Sheriff's Office provided significant staffing support for both the NFL Super Bowl and the FIFA World Cup, and apparently on Saturday for the Saratoga's 70th birthday party, he remained committed to providing high-quality law enforcement services to Saratoga. Deputy Rockets also serves as an operator with the Sheriff's Office Unmanned Aerial System Program. using drone technology to provide critical aerial support during incidents. In responding to everything from a medical emergency and critical incidents to the fraud investigations and welfare checks, he is known for his calm demeanor, empathy, and his respect for those he serves. He's also achieved perfect attendance for the last two years, demonstrating an exceptional commitment to his duties. Please join me in recognizing Deputy Alex Rockitch as our 2026 Deputy of the Year.

You want to say a couple words? Thank you to the City Council of Saratoga. I'd like to accept this award on behalf of the men and women with whom I have the privilege of serving every day. As a Deputy Sheriff, the work we do is never accomplished alone. Every call, every challenge, every success is a team effort. I'm honored to share this award with my family, my colleagues, and everyone who supports us along the way. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Well deserved.

And now it's photo time. Saratoga City Hall right now is the safest place to be in this county. Would Cody Tierlink please come forward? So the Chamber of Commerce every year recognizes an outstanding member of our business community whose work goes beyond their profession to help strengthen and promote Saratoga. This year's honoree, Cody Tierlink, is an accomplished realtor with Compass Silicon Valley, but its connection to Saratoga goes far beyond his career. Born and raised in Saratoga, I understand in a little room in your house, Cody takes great pride in helping people discover our community and helping longtime residents achieve their real estate goals. His professional success is also impressive, with Cody and his team ranking among the top 1.5% of realtors in Saratoga, according to Real Trends. Cody has a deep commitment to giving back. In 2019, he was recognized by the mayor then as Volunteer of the Year, and he's continued to be an enthusiastic supporter of Saratoga events and organizations. He co-founded the Saratoga Classic and Cool Car Show and has supported the Wine Stroll, Candy Cane Village, Music in the Park, and the Village Scarecrow event. He's also helped raise thousands of dollars for the Cancer Care Point for several years by lending his talents as an auctioneer at their events. Cody's energy, enthusiasm, and dedication to promoting Saratoga make him a wonderful example of what it means to be a community-minded business person. We congratulate you, Cody, and thank you very much. SO I DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE A REALTOR THE MIC.

JUST WANT TO SAY I'M HONORED TO RECEIVE THIS. THANK YOU SO MUCH, CHUCK, AND TO ALL THE CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS AS WELL. I LOVE SARATOGA. SARATOGA AT HEART. GO SARATOGA HIGH, SHS. And it's just a pleasure to be in this community and to meet the people here and to help people move in and introduce them to what Saratoga really is, what it means, and the beautiful community that we have here. And so thank you so much again, and yes. Go Toga!

Next up is our Citizen of the Year. Will Ismar Maslik please come on up? Each year, again, the Chamber of Commerce recognizes our Citizen of the Year. There's a whole nomination process, and by the grace of God, he won. This year's honoree, Ismar Maslik, has been an active part of the Saratoga community for many, many years. He's lived in Saratoga's Sobey neighborhood and has worked in Saratoga Village for the past 19 years. He currently serves on the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and regularly volunteers at both chamber events and community events. His community involvement also includes five years on the Saratoga Country Club Board of Directors, supporting Saratoga High School Athletics and the Falcons football and baseball program, and helping organize local sports and recreational activities. He also provides complimentary notary services at Montalvo. There's got to be an ad in here somewhere, right? But it's true. If you live in Saratoga, go visit him. He's a free notary right here. So he helps keep our community connected through the Monday missives, which many of you may receive, and provides announcements and information with hundreds of Saratoga residents. And through the restoration of his family's historic Victorian home in Saratoga Village, he has shown a deep appreciation for Saratoga's history and character. Ismar's willingness to give his time, support local organizations, and help others is a wonderful example of community spirit. Please join me in recognizing Ismar Maslik as our 2026 Citizen of the Year.

Thanks, Chuck, Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council Members. It's truly humbling standing here. I appreciate it very much. Saratoga is my home, and any time I can help, I'm honored. And this award goes to everybody, all the citizens here, not only me. And I'm sure there are some that deserve it more. But this year, I guess it's me. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Thanks. Hang on, we're going to get a photo. And finally, we'll recognize the Community Organization of the Year. Will Tyler Taylor and the SASE team please join the City Council at the center of the stage?

Thank you, Tyler. You're from the center here.

Here, let's balance out here. Why don't you guys come on over here? Yeah, yeah. I'll balance it out.

So each year, the mayor of Saratoga recognizes an individual or an organization that has made a notable contribution to the Saratoga community. This year, I'm pleased to recognize the Successful Aging Solutions and Community Consulting, otherwise known as SASE, as our 2026 organization of the year. SASE has continued to expand its programs and services to meet the evolving needs of older adults, caregivers, and families. This year, SASE launched several innovative programs, including the state's first Community Caregiver Certificate Program through Senior Guided Pathways at West Valley College, the SASE Certified Farmers Market, and the SASE Grocery Rescue Program. The organization also completed renovation plans for its Adult Care Center in partnership with the West Valley College-Silker School of Design. SASE has also provided valuable educational opportunities for the community, including property assessment presentations, senior fraud prevention seminars, its health and nutrition seminar series. And through the expansion of the West Valley Outlook to new communities, SASE is helping even more residents across our county. Through these programs, partnerships, and the continued commitment to older adults and families, SASE has made a tremendous commitment to all of us, especially here in Saratoga where they started. My favorite is the Adult Care Center. It is one of my all-time favorites. I'm so glad we're still able to fund it a little bit. And congratulations, Tyler, and thank you so much.

Thank you. I'll keep my remarks brief because the folks who really make SASE what it is are the folks you see up here with me. I do want to say, though, that it's an honor of a lifetime to be able to serve older adults, to serve this community, to partner with the fire department, the sheriff's department, all the other community members that we work with to help us all get older successfully. And even though we did change our name to Successful Aging Solutions and Community Consulting to do business outside of Saratoga, our legal entity name is and forever will be the Saratoga Area Senior Coordinating Council. So those are our roots. This is a great organization. And if it's okay with the mayor, I'd like a couple of my people to say some words. They'll keep it brief. Sure. Samuel Leal, our operations manager.

THANK YOU MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND PROVIDING THIS AWARD TO OUR ORGANIZATION. IT'S AN INCREDIBLE HONOR FOR US, ME AND MY TEAM, TO BE ABLE TO SERVE THE GROWING OLDER ADULT POPULATION IN OUR COMMUNITY. They made our towns what they are, and now we are able to give back to them. So it's just really a joy and honor as a third-generation resident of Santa Clara County. I'm lucky to be able to serve the place that I grew up in. And stay tuned. We've got a lot more coming the rest of this year and next, so keep your eyes on SASE.

Ludmila? This is our Adult Care Center Assistant Manager, Ludmila Ignatovic.

Thank you, everyone, for coming. My name is Ludmila.

I have something written down here.

So if you come and visit the Saratoga Adult Care Center, your older loved ones will immediately feel seen and cared for by our team. You will meet Neri, who teaches us what true hospitality looks like. She... She is exactly the kind of person I personally would hope to meet when moving into a new neighborhood. You will also meet Denise, who is excellent with participant engagement. And Tyler, you set the tone that allows this team to do its best work. Thank you for your leadership. It's changed. I've learned more about myself working at SASE, and it's changed me for the best. Thank you.

Thank you. And so first we'll get a photo here, and then we'll bring up everybody. And come in, let us know if you need us to merge. Thank you. Now I'd like to bring up the other winners, the other recipients. If you all could come up, we'll get a big old group picture.

Thanks a lot, Alex. Thank you.

If there's any member of the public who would like to speak on that last item, now would be the time to come forward. And we hope to see you all on Saturday. All right, ladies and gentlemen, if we could please clear the chambers. OK, thank you very much, and congratulations to our 2026 recipients. The next item is our consent calendar, which contains items typically of routine and typically non-controversial business. Items in this section can be acted in one motion unless removed by a mayor or a council member. And I would at this point like to remind the folks here in the audience and the folks online that we will take a break every couple of hours just so that we can refresh a little bit. And I hope just want to get that out now because I'll forget to say it until later. So any member of the public may speak on an item on the consent calendar at this time or request that the mayor remove an item from the consent calendar for discussion. If you're requesting an item to be removed from the consent calendar, please give your comments on the item and inform the City Council why you would like the item removed. Public speakers are limited to three minutes. Britt, can you please explain the public comment process and announce the first speaker?

If you would like to address the City Council on the consent calendar and you have not already submitted a speaker slip, now is the time to do so. If you are attending via Zoom and you would like to address the City Council on the consent calendar, now is the time to raise your hand. First speaker is Stan Boghossian.

I'd like to request that 1.14, which is the sheriff contract, be removed and discussed. I have a little difficulty understanding. I looked over the sheriff's contract, and there's a question about... overhead costs and state law and so on. I spent a year at Gonzaga Law School, and contracts was not one of my strong subjects. So if maybe the city attorney can help us out on explaining what that is and whether we are in compliance here. Thank you.

And that was his comment. He wanted to better understand the contract portion of it. Anybody else for it?

I have no other speaker slips, and there are no hands raised.

Okay, thank you. Is there any member of the council who would like to pull an item, or two, or three? Tina.

Mayor, I'd like to pull item numbers 1.4 and 1.5. Okay, anybody else? Oh, sorry, I meant 1.14 and 1.15. My apologies. Typo. 1.14 and 1.15, not 4 and 5. 14 and 15. Okay. All right.

All right, if there's no discussion on any of the other items. And I think, Stan, I think you meant item 1.14, right? Sure. Thank you.

Yeah, he said correct.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if I got that. No, I made a mistake. So we'll look for a motion on the other items. Yeah?

All right. I'd like to move to adopt consent calendar item 1.1 through 1.13. I second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. Okay, item 1.14, the Santa Clara County Law Enforcement Contract. Tina.

I have a couple of questions for staff. I know there has been an ad hoc committee of the mayors of the three cities, City of Saratoga, City of Cupertino, as well as the town of Los Altos Hills, along with the city managers and some other senior executive level members of each of the three cities. that have been working with the County Sheriff's Office since the beginning of this year on this contract. Just a couple of quick questions here. Firstly, I really appreciate all the work that has been done by the Ad Hoc Committee members. I know it's been a lot more meetings than what we also attended, so that's deeply appreciated. From what I understand, that the other two cities, Cupertino and Los Altos Hills, have not reached a point yet they are running a couple of weeks behind us where they will be ready to move forward with their contract. So when all the three cities got an extension of the timeline from end of June through end of September 2026, I know I've discussed this with you, City Manager Leslie Arroyo, but it would be good for members of the public to know why we are moving forward now while the other two cities are waiting. And the second question would be, I understand that all three city attorneys have reviewed the contract language till a week ago, and any substantial changes, if they have been made since then, it would be nice for us to share with our residents. And the last question slash comment is, that there is an audit report that is in the works. The draft report has been reviewed by the ad hoc committee. That is to, the audit report is addressing the overheads. That was also alluded to by one of the members, former Mayor Stan Boghossian just now. And my question there would be, If they find reductions in that report, that would be applicable to the other cities because they are a couple of weeks behind us in terms of signing the contract. And if we approve the contract tonight, would we, the city of Saratoga, be able to avail of those reductions and adjustments in spite of the fact that we may have approved the contract tonight? Those are my three or four questions right there. I appreciate your answers. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Walia. So the first question is to why now. You're correct. We did, our contract ended at the end of June, June 30th. We did get an extension until September 30th. And in the beginning of July, we did receive a note from the county office. In fact, I have... the exact July 7th kind of outlining that we needed to push this up a little bit more. And then it was reiterated to us on July 17th. And basically in this note, they were outlining the fact that because they need to do two readings at the Board of Supervisor level, they've got some upcoming Board of Supervisor meetings in September in order to have that contract executed by September 30th. So number one, in order to get a contract executed through the county, we have to first sign it, and then it gets taken to the Board of Supervisors. So in this timeline, I will say we were surprised, and it did push things up for us, but we were told that they needed to have an agreement received essentially by August 11th to be considered for the August 25th board meeting, or an agreement received by August 31st to be considered for the September 15th Board of Supervisors meeting. So those were the two meetings that they're having is August 25th and September 15th. We needed to have this meeting because we are not meeting, today is the 19th, and we won't meet again until September 2nd. So that last kind of timeline was that August 31st agreement that they needed received by us. This is going to go on the August 25th board meeting. They are going to amend their agenda and add our signed contract should the council approve this tonight. We will sign it tomorrow, and they will put it on the 25th agenda. But that is the reason why the timing. Again, it was surprising, and it did push all three cities up, and we have chosen to follow through with that request of timing. In terms of contract changes, I do want to introduce, we do have Catherine Enberg on the line, and she is an attorney. She has also been working closely. She's part of our team and has been negotiating with the other attorneys with the other two cities. So your question in terms of, you know, we did last week, Thursday, we kind of get through all of our red line changes that we wanted to accomplish. And we were happy with that, but I will let Catherine just kind of state where things left off and how we decided to pursue this contract in the end.

great thank you for that introduction um leslie and for the question um from council uh i did want to just highlight i've been working with the other uh city attorneys um and our office um worked primarily i'd say i want to highlight three aspects of the contract which um were resolved last week and um which allowed us to recommend you know bringing this this agreement forward to council this evening um One is the issue regarding early termination and who pays for basically how the pro rata shares of the West Valley substation lease are worked out. The county has a lease for the West Valley substation location that runs through November of 2029. And so one issue that we needed to resolve was, well, in the event that a one of the three cities terminates prior to that date, how are those costs shared? And then also, well, what if the county wants to enter into a new lease and extend the date of that lease beyond the period of this contract? So that needed to be worked out. Ultimately, The parties all agreed on the language that's in the contract right now. It basically does require a city that leaves, that terminates early to pay its pro rata share through that November 2029 date. However, it does not allow the county to extend that lease without mutual agreement of the cities. So that was, I think, a key negotiating point, and I wanted to flag that for you. The other one I will just mention is the indemnification section. The cities basically thought that the current identification language in our current contract is good and it's protective of the cities, particularly in the event of an excessive force case situation. And the county actually had proposed to change that language, but then they ultimately agreed to revert back to the language that we've had in place in our contract for many years. So that was the second thing I wanted to mention. And then finally, I'll just mention another... Change in the contract that we were satisfied with is a note on, I think it's page two of the contract, that it is subject to government code section 51350. And actually one of the public commenters asked about that. And that's a section that's really protective, I'd say, of both the county and the cities. It does require the county to pass on costs to the contract cities. However, it also says that the county may not charge overhead to the cities, that it would incur Anyway, I'm sort of paraphrasing, but that's the idea. And so the contract, basically it would be subject to that regardless because it's state law, but we've made it express in the contract that that is subject to those provisions of the government code. And I would just note that there is an audit happening and our – And it's still underway. If that audit reveals that the county has been charging the contract cities any overhead that is not allowed under government code section 51350, well, the contract would basically require a rebalancing or refund and it would need to be refunded or rolled into the next year's payment with that expressed language. So I guess those are the three primary negotiating points, and with those resolved, we did recommend bringing this forward to council this evening.

Okay, thank you. So, Catherine, I really appreciate that. Essentially, even if the other two cities, when they sign or approve, likely if they approve the contract language in a couple of weeks, if they find anything else coming out, I'm repeating this here, in the audit report, that would still be applicable to us per the language in the contract that is in front of us tonight.

Correct. And per state law as well. We did memorialize it in the contract.

Wonderful. I appreciate that. Thanks.

And I will just add, Vice Mayor Wiley, that we do have a draft version of that report. We are waiting to get it finalized. It was shared with the county to have them get their perspective. And just for the sake for the public, why did we do this audit report? We did this because of the calculations that were provided to us initially. We were trying to get a better understanding as to what we were being charged on. with the contract and so we hired this independent auditor. This isn't a draft version. One thing I did want to say though is that I did reach out to the county executive yesterday evening and one of the things is they did have a chance to look at that audit report again in draft version and he said the county won't be changing costing methodology as a result of the audit. The draft audit did not identify any calculation errors or technical adjustments, but it did appear to potentially disagree with categorization or methodology. It also continues to say we don't agree with those observations as a legal or factual matter, but even assuming they remain in the final audit, we will not be proposing any changes in our costing. So that was the latest that I did receive last night from the county executive.

Appreciate sharing that with the public here tonight, City Manager Leslie. Deeply appreciate that. Thank you so much. I don't have any other questions. Do you want me to make a remark?

Well, does anybody else have any questions? There may be others. Any questions? Yes.

If I might just add, I do want to just clarify too that we are signing this contract and we are continuing to have law enforcement discussions. We've talked about this. We are looking at Los Gatos, but we are continuing with the Sheriff's Office and to what Catherine pointed out, We do need to sign this because we need to continue our law enforcement and as of October 1st They continue to be a great partner and we will decide ultimately What we end up going with but tonight is not that decision for the long-term law enforcement agreement So tonight is to keep us going and keep us moving and then we do have that termination provision Should the council want to make a change that is forthcoming?

And to add to that, Leslie, this contract is for five years with the possibility of extension for another five and adding to that date, as you said, effective October 1, 2026.

And it does have an exit clause. We give them a year's notice. We could move to another law enforcement agency. And I just, from the standpoint of the ad hoc, I just want to say that, yeah, we reviewed the audit report. as I kind of anticipated what the county executive's response would be. Yeah, it may be a little different than other counties do, but there's nothing in that audit report that says this is what you're doing illegal. This violates government code, and 51-350 is the government code that relates to this. So to me, it makes more sense to move on and make sure that we're locked in than to try to fight an imaginary fight. And so that's why I recommend that we bring it forward.

Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that with us and for the work you have done on this with the ad hoc committee. I agree with you. Public safety comes first for all of us here. And I agree, Leslie, as you said, we have to move forward with the good, consistent law enforcement service that we have had for 70 years. And I'm ready to make a motion to, time to move forward, essentially, and make a motion to approve item number 1.14, which is the Santa Clara County law enforcement contract, to authorize the city manager to execute this five-year agreement with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, as detailed in the staff report.

And I'd like to second that. Thank you. All in favor? Any comments?

I'll just have some comments. I just want to thank staff as well as the county, the sheriff's office, the ad hoc committee, our fellow cities. There's been a ton of work that's gone into the last few years. I do think it is the right decision for us to move forward with this. I think the other cities are making a deliberate choice to try and hold out, to try and, I think, solicit some more cost savings or negotiate for that. on top of the fact we've already gotten an extension. And I just think the county has operated with us in good faith here. I don't think we should take that risk for our residents to even question whether or not law enforcement will be available. And like you've said from the start, this is not a quality of service issue. It's a finances issue. And this contract gives us that flexibility if we do actually need to make that decision to go with a different partner here. But I just want to say thank you to everyone for the work, especially to Mayor Page for being on the ad hoc committee. It's been a tremendous amount of additional effort. Also, there was the question around, let's say this audit report does find something, the good news is that the state law applies regardless. Because if there ends up being an adjustment, we will see the benefit of that in addition to the other cities. Thank you. So I'll be voting in favor of this.

Okay, any other comments? I will go to the vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The motion carries unanimously. Okay, item 1.15, the League of California Cities Action Alert on Wildfire Liabilities.

I'll keep my remarks very safe and contained. Sorry, I'm just trying to read my notes here and trying to rush in the interest of time. We have a packed agenda tonight. Essentially, I don't have any questions. What I wanted to share with the residents was this information came to all elected officials about a week to 10 days ago from the League of California Cities, which is the league of all the cities in the state. And I do recall sharing this with city manager Leslie. And I want to thank Mayor Page for agendizing this for tonight. I tried at the Cities Association of Santa Clara County, which is all the 15 cities in the county last week, and the current board president there, I tried to agendize, but I was unable to do it because of the timing and the lack of detailed information or the insufficient information at that given point in time. I did highlight it to all the cities. It is very important for the city of Saratoga, as the residents here will likely understand and agree to. So this is really me thanking you, Mayor, to put this on the agenda, even with the information that we have, because we don't want the governor to be signing these bills and putting the responsibility on the cities and the residents who are impacted by wildfires. I'm trying not to say anything more to save time, essentially.

Well, I think that since we brought it up, what this action alert really does, it says that the city opposes the governor signing a bill that essentially would limit an electric utility that caused a wildfire from being sued. They'd have a maximum amount they could sue for. This is a two-edged sword. If they get sued and they lose, the ratepayers pay. So if it's limited, we pay less. So you're darned if you do, and you're darned if you don't. But I think that the bill itself needs to be better thought out, and that's why we're opposing it. So any other comments or questions? OK. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.

We don't have a motion.

Oh, sorry. Thank you.

I was just going to ask. Moving right along. Before Britt caught us. Sorry. I would like to move staff recommendation.

Okay. Do we have a second? I'll second. Thank you, Ian. All in favor now, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. We're now done with the consent calendar. Thank you very much. All right. Next up is public hearing item 2.1. This is an appeal hearing on a Planning Commission decision not to certify an environmental impact report and deny applications for design review and a tentative map for a 25-lot residential subdivision located on a 72.45-acre parcel on Pierce Road. We'll begin with a report from staff, followed by council questions of staff. After that, the appellant and their representatives will have a total of 10 minutes maximum for opening statements. After opening remarks, we'll proceed to public comment. Members of the public will be able to comment at that point, and we'll talk about that later. So, Chris, nice to see you, and thanks very much.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Page, Vice Mayor Walia, council members. The 72.405-acre vacant project site is located on Pierce Road near the intersection of Saratoga Heights Drive in the HR zoning district. The average slope of the site is 47%. The site is bounded to the north by single-family homes, to the east by Pierce Road and single-family homes, to the south by Highway 9, and to the west by the Mountain Winery. This project was submitted pursuant to the Builder's Remedy provision of the Housing Accountability Act, or the HAA. A stated purpose of the HAA is to significantly increase the approval and construction of new housing for all economic segments of California communities by meaningfully and effectively limiting the capability of local governments to deny reduce the density for or render infeasible proposed housing development projects. Bill's remedy is a provision of the HAA as applicable to qualifying housing development projects when a preliminary application was submitted before Saratoga adopted a substantially compliant housing element. The applicant submitted a preliminary application for housing development on July 20, 2023, after the state's deadline for housing element adoption and before Saratoga adopted a compliant housing element. Additionally, the project is subject to the city code as it stood at the time of the preliminary application submittal. The HAA limits Saratoga's ability to deny or conditionally approve a qualifying housing development. In addition, the Bill's remedy provision of the HAA prohibits Saratoga from applying subjective standards to the project or relying on inconsistency with zoning general plan standards as a basis for disapproval. The HAA Maintain Saratoga's authority to enforce some objective development standards, conditions, and policies by imposing conditions of approval if the conditions are based on objective standards. In effect, at the time the preliminary application was filed, and do not render the project infeasible or require a reduction in the proposed density. Saratoga does not have authority to impose conditions based on subjective standards. This is the project site plan. The project will include subdividing the site to develop 25 single-family homes and related improvements, including new internal streets, landscaping, utilities, and bio-attention AND DRAINAGE AREAS. PROJECT DEVELOPMENT WILL BE PRIMARILY CONCENTRATED IN THE NORTHERN 18.38 ACRE PORTION OF THE SITE WHERE THE SOUTHERN 54.06 ACRE PORTION IS NOT PROPOSED FOR DEVELOPMENT EXCEPT FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN EMERGENCY ACCESS ROAD. LOTS 1 THROUGH 8 ARE LOCATED NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE PROJECT AND ADJACENT TO PIERCE ROAD. The dwelling units proposed for leased lots will be two stories and 2,375 square feet in floor area. The dwelling units on lots one through four and eight will be affordable units and available to lower income households. Dwelling units on lots nine through 25 will be both two and three stories and will range from 5,284 to 7,991 square feet in size. 367 trees were proposed for removal. The site is zoned hillside residential. Single family dwellings are permitted use in this zoning district. The product is not consistent with many of the HR development standards, including minimum lot size, setbacks, allowable floor area, and maximum building height. The 25 single family homes will be a combination of both two- and three-story structures featuring a contemporary architectural design. My presentation will not include details of all the structures on the site, but instead will include the elevation of just three to provide a general idea of the architectural style of the project. These are the elevations for the home proposed for Lot 1. The homes on Lot 1 through 8, which are adjacent to Pierce Road, WILL HAVE THE SAME ARCHITECTURAL STYLE. IT WILL BE TWO STORIES AND APPROXIMATELY 24 FEET TALL. THE HOMES AND LOTS ONE THROUGH FOUR AND EIGHT WILL BE AFFORDABLE TO BELOW MARKER RATE HOUSEHOLDS. EXTERIOR MATERIALS WILL INCLUDE FOUR NEUTRAL EXTERIOR COLORS INCLUDING OFF WHITE AND GRAY COLOR STUCCO, GRAY BOARD AND BAT SIDING, BROWN DOORS AND ACCENT COLORS, TAN COVERED STONE VENEER AND BROWN ASPHALT Shingle roofing. These are the elevations for Lots 13. The three-story structure will feature a contemporary architectural style, a height of 29 feet 10 inches, and a floor area of 6,396 square feet. Exterior materials will include stone veneer, poly ash siding, cement plaster, and metal trim. These are the elevations for Lot 24. The three-story building will include a four-car garage, a height of 42 feet 9 inches, and a floor area of 6,469 square feet. Exterior materials will include a stone veneer, stucco, and metal trim. This is the tallest of 25 homes, with the next tallest home located on Lot 12, which would be 35 feet 8 inches. This is the streetscape as viewed from Pierce Road at the intersection of Mason Estates Way. As illustrated, four homes on lots one through three and seven and eight will be visible from Pierce Road with remaining homes screened from offsite views by topography and existing and proposed trees. These are the landscape plans for the project. Landscaping will include new trees including western redbud and coast live oak trees and drought-tolerant shrubs. Additional landscaping will also be located adjacent to all access driveways and interior roads. The perimeters of retention areas will be landscaped with shrubs and ground covers to soften their appearance. Each of the homes will be similarly landscaped which will offer a consistent appearance which is complementary to the streetscape of the development. An EIR was prepared for the project. An EIR is an informational document that discloses to the public and decision makers a project's potentially significant environmental effects. EIR also identifies ways to minimize potential effects, including identifying a reasonable range of alternatives that would reduce or avoid them. EIR can also conclude that a project would have one or more impacts that cannot be reduced to below a level of significance. EIRs contain information on a variety of topics, including potential effects on noise, aesthetics, rare or endangered plants, animals, habitats such as wetlands, effects on residents from noise, air pollution, and wildfire risk that could be exacerbated by a proposed project. EIRs provide information that can inform decision makers and educate the public. The draft EIR was published for a 45-day review ON DECEMBER 29, 2025. DURING THE REVIEW PERIOD, THE CITY RECEIVED WRITTEN COMMENTS FROM PUBLIC AGENCIES AND MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. THE CITY AND THE SECRET WORK CONSULTANT PREPARED WRITTEN RESPONSES TO COMMENTS RECEIVED, WHICH INCLUDED MINOR EDITS TO THE DRAFT EIR. RESPONSES TO COMMENTS, THE MINOR EDITS TO THE DRAFT EIR, AND MITIGATION, MONITORING, AND REPORTING PROGRAM MAKE UP THE FINAL EIR. The final EIR was posted online on June 20, 2026. As previously mentioned, EIR is an informational document that discloses for the public and decision makers a project's potential significant environmental effects. And EIR also identifies ways to minimize those potential effects, including identifying a range of mitigation measures that would reduce or avoid them. The EIR can also conclude that a project would have one or more impacts that cannot be reduced to below-level significance. These are referred to as significant and unavoidable impacts. The proposed project was determined to have significant and unavoidable impacts related to emergency response and evacuation, emergency access, wildland fires, conflict with applicable land use plans and transportation or VMT. City determined that the adverse environmental effects of the project remain significant and unavoidable following adoption and implementation of mitigation measures. Staff is recommending the City Council adopt the statement of overriding consideration regarding the significant unavoidable impacts and the anticipated benefits of the project. The city found that each of these benefits included in the statement constitutes a separate and independent ground for finding that the benefits of the project outweigh the risk of the potential significant adverse environmental impacts. The benefits of the project that justify approval are as follows. The proposed project will provide RESIDENTIAL USES, INCLUDING 20% ON-SITE AFFORDABLE UNITS, ON A SITE THAT DOES NOT CURRENTLY CONTAIN ANY HOUSING, WHICH WILL PROVIDE HOUSING AND HELP TO MEET THE CITY'S RENA OBLIGATIONS. PROJECT APPLICANT WILL DEDICATE A PUBLIC TRAIL THAT PROVIDES THE COMMUNITY BENEFIT. THE PROPOSED PROJECT WILL PROVIDE WELL-DESIGNED OWNERSHIP RESIDENTIAL SINGLE FAMILY HOUSING that adds diversity to Saratoga's ownership, housing, and supply. It meets a variety of residents' needs. The proposed project is a cohesive development consisting of high-quality contemporary urban design features that respect and relates well to its surroundings and preserve sensitive features of the product site. The proposed project would preserve the city's natural beauty and small-town residential character. And lastly, the proposed project would align with the California goals for housing production. The draft EIR concluded that the project could result in potentially significant effects on the environment and that through the implementation of mitigation measures that were incorporated into the project, these potential impacts will be reduced to a less than significant level. These measures include dust control during construction, protection of certain plants and animals, loss of riparian compensation, protection of cultural resources, geotactical investigation, paleontological monitoring, greenhouse gas offsets, noise mitigation, traffic circulation, energy use, and wildlife, excuse me, wildfire protection. This is the list of project objectives. These objectives include well-designed ownership residential single-family housing that adds to the city's housing supply. The addition of housing to help address the city's arena obligations. Construction of a wall design development that's sensitive to the site and surroundings. Like I said, the development of the service to the city's natural beauty and small town character. Chief has streamlined and efficient processing and approval of the proposed project, developed the project in an environmentally sensitive manner, and to create a fire-safe community. On July 13th, the applicant submitted an appeal to the City Council of the Planning Commission decision, July 8th, decision to deny the project. The appeal includes a letter from the applicant's attorney which includes their justifications of why the Planning Commission erred in their decision. The applicant stated basis for the appeal that the projects are protected by the Housing Accountability Act and the Builders Remedy provisions of the HAA and cannot be lawfully disapproved. The letter also mentions the potential legal remedies available to the applicant if the City does not approve the project. These are design review findings the Council is to make to approve the project. These findings serve as the basis for the Council's decision. The Council is determined if the project meets these findings. Details not related to these findings are effectively beyond the scope of the Council's review. Where there would be an issue with making a particular finding without altering the design element of the project to meet this finding, which could have the result of affecting the project's feasibility, the HAA limits the City from using such a finding to deny the project or impact conditions. The project is not consistent with findings one, 4, 6, and 7. However, under the builder's remedy provisions of the Housing Accountability Act, such inconsistencies may not be the basis for denying design review for the project. Therefore, the proposed resolution recommends approval. More details on each of the findings included in the staff report. The City Code provides that any tentative map should not be approved unless at least nine tentative MAP findings can be made. The project is not consistent with findings one, two, and four. However, under the bill's remedy provision of the HAA, such inconsistency may not be the basis for disproving the tentative MAP. The proposed resolution, therefore, does not make this negative finding. The staff report includes evidence concerning each of these findings, and that evidence supports approval of the map. Staff recommends the City Council uphold the appeal, thereby approving the project, and take the following actions. Adopt the attached resolution, making the appropriate SICA findings, adopting the statement of overriding considerations, certifying the final environmental impact report, and adopting a mitigation, monitoring, and reporting program for the project, and adopt the attached resolution to additionally approve an application for design review and tentative map, subdivide the 72.45 acre parcel into 25 lots, and construct 25 single family dwellings for the proposed Mason Estates development. BESIDES CITY STAFF, THE FOLLOWING PERSONNEL ARE AVAILABLE THIS EVENING TO ADDRESS ANY QUESTIONS THE CITY COUNCIL MIGHT HAVE REGARDING THE PROJECT. FRANCISCA CHURCH FROM FEAR AND PEERS, FEAR AND PEERS THE CITY'S TRAFFIC ASSAULTANT. MATT MCKENNA AND BRAD FOX FROM COUNTY FIRE. JASON BRANMAN AND JANA WILEKORSKI FROM FIRST CARBON SOLUTIONS. THEY BOTH WORK WITH CITY STAFF AND PREP THE ER. AND TRISH DUDALEV FROM EX-COUNTY ASSAULTANTS AND GRACE Karski from Kittleson Associates. These are the traffic consultants that provided information to First Carbon Solutions for the EIR. They are both attending the meeting remotely. This concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Questions of staff? Tina.

Chris, thank you so much for your report. And I'm going to keep my questions contained here. I may come back with more in the interest of time. I will keep it contained. Thank you. So, Chris, my first question is, for this project site, according to the general plan, how many units would be allowed? Or what's the density allowed per our general plan for this whole project?

72.4 acres. I don't have the number off my head. I don't know.

I think it says nine in the report.

I believe it's nine, but I don't want to say that confidently. I believe it's nine.

Okay. Could someone meanwhile check? Sure. That would be great.

I believe it's nine, but we'll double check.

Okay. So let's say general plan allows nine units and the proposal is 25. Okay. And this project application has been Approved or gone through County fire review. Can you help us a little bit more about that? And if you need just ask the county fire folks to be here it has received fire department clearance to proceed So we have fire fire approval. Yes, we have County fire approval. Yes Okay, did they put any conditions of approval or did they just review it?

They have some conditions maybe best though the ones to address the question. I Okay.

Okay. That will be great if they could help us. Thanks, Chris.

Hello. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Brad Fox, acting fire marshal for County Fire. We did review the project for compliance with the California Fire Code and the state minimum fire safe regulations. And to be clear, our scope of review for the project at this point is the access to the project and the water supply. So that's our scope of the review. The project did meet all of the requirements, but I want to be transparent that in meeting those requirements, they needed to get an exception request to the state minimum fire safe regs because they were not able to meet SOME OF THE PRESCRIPTIVE REQUIREMENTS. THAT EXCEPTION REQUEST IS PART OF THE PROCESS OF THE STATE MINIMUM FIRE SAFE REG, SO IT IS INCLUDED IN THE PROCESS, BUT THAT'S WHERE OUR CONDITIONS COME IN. SO IT'S SIMILAR TO MAYBE YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH AN ALTERNATE MEANS OR METHODS THAT WE TYPICALLY SEE IN THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. SO THE PROJECT HAS OFFERED MITIGATION FOR THE areas where they are not meeting the prescriptive code in that exception request. Does that provide the same practical effect? I can go into more detail on that if you'd like, or I can pause.

A little bit more at a higher level, at a conceptual level, would be very helpful, but not so detailed in the interest of time.

Sure, understood. So the two areas that were deficient are there's a section of Tollgate Road, which is used as the access, that's the primary access for the fire department, that exceeds 15%. That is the requirement that's set by the state. However, the requirement allows them to go up to 20% with mitigation. So I believe there's a 300 or less foot section that has a slope of 16 to 18%. So it's a little over the 15%. So that was one factor. The other factor is that the state minimum fire safe regs also require a 30-foot setback from property lines or roads for parcels that are located in the very high fire hazard severity zone. This project, some of the parcels are located in that very high fire hazard severity zone and are subject to that requirement. And some of the parcels are not. They are in a high fire hazard severity zone. They are not subject to it. So some of the parcels do not have the 30-foot setback to the property line. However, the parcels have 30 feet between structures. And really, that is the intent of that code, because we're trying to prevent structure-to-structure ignition. Thereby, normally when you're thinking of a single lot development, you can't control what's on the other side of the property line, hence 30 feet to the property line. In this development, they're developing a larger multi-lot development so they can control the distance from structure to structure, which is maintaining that 30 feet. Additionally, the project is putting in no build easements. for those spaces between the structures that are deficient to make sure that in the future there's not additions or ADUs put there that would decrease the distance. There's other mitigating features that they're offering as well, but that would be diving into the weeds, which I won't do at this time.

Thank you. We'll keep the weeds out. Better for fire prevention. So let me get this straight. The 30-foot requirement of the setback is for very high fire hazard severity zones. And some of those parcels that are in those zones meet the 30 feet. Because I heard some parcels meet the 30, some don't, but I also heard some parcels are in very high fire hazard severity zones and some are in high fire hazard severity zones. So maybe somebody can check this. I would like to know this sometime in the course of this evening if you don't have the answer right now.

Sure. I'm sure the project can... specify which lots meet it and which don't but to be clear if a parcel is only in the high not the very high they don't have to meet the 30-foot setback requirement.

And that's my question. Where the requirement is 30 feet, which is very high fire hazard severity zones, does it meet in all those parcels? And if it is high, the requirement is not 30, so then it is not that technically it is deficient. I hear you that the structures are all 30 feet. So from a safety perspective, it seems okay, but the requirement perspective, very high, do all the very high ones have the 30-feet setback as required?

Not to the property line, and that's why I bring them up as something that they had to mitigate through the exception request.

Okay, that's what I was going to say.

So they have 30 feet structure to structure, but not to the property line in some cases for some of the parcels.

Even where required.

Correct.

Thank you. That is very helpful. And the other part, the very high-level question, I just want to be clear, I heard from you, that the... Scope of review was limited to access to the project and the water supply. So if the project were to be approved, then it goes back to County Fire at some stage for building?

Yeah, during building permitting, we will also review the project. Building Department has the primary responsibility for reviewing the specific structures of the building code. we'll review additional things like sprinkler systems or EWAS systems, and we also look to make sure that the project is complying with all of the mitigating features that they are putting into the project now at this time for the tentative map.

Okay, so that is really related to the structures themselves at that stage. Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Mayor, I have One question for Farron Piers, actually. Maybe two. I just want to understand, there's been a lot of communication from residents about the evacuation times and the reports. So I have a couple of questions.

I would like to address the question about the general plan before we move forward. There will be nine units for the general plan designation.

Thank you, Chris. You're welcome. Thanks.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Francisca Church with Fair and Peers. Good to see everybody.

Thank you. And thank you for your work on this, Francisca. So I'm trying to understand. We have gone through the report as the overall for the city, the Fair and Peers evacuation study. that came to us, I think, a couple of months ago. And from my level of understanding, it talks of the existing conditions in the city, then development with the builders' remedy projects, and then third is development with builders' remedy and all other future possible development as in the planning. I'm just paraphrasing very roughly. The key question for me is those numbers are cumulative for development. How can we separate out the impact of this project on evacuation from Pierce Road? I saw something in the staff report which talks of smaller numbers. Can you help us understand that? And then I will ask you one more question.

Yeah, I'm happy to try to decipher the different reports. So the report that we're referring to that we presented, I believe, in June or July of this year is the evacuation time assessment that does, to your point, look cumulatively at the entire city, at what it would take to evacuate residents and employees within the evacuation, like the high-fire zones, what it would take to evacuate them. We looked at that cumulatively because it looks at total development, as you mentioned, under various scenarios. And so that analysis study would not be able to discern specifically what this project's contribution would be to that study because it's a cumulative number. The applicant in EIR itself has prepared evacuation analysis that looks specifically just at the site itself. I will just note that the methodology for the two evacuation time analyses are a little bit different, so they're not apples to apples comparisons.

Would you be comfortable to answer more, or you would rather leave it for either staff or for the applicant to talk about that?

I can try to answer as much as I can. Yeah, happy to.

Sure. So what numbers are we talking in terms of the impact of this specific project?

Maybe then I'll have some, I don't know all the specific numbers. I think we have somebody here who can speak to the specific numbers from that study.

Okay. Yes. Okay. Maybe the applicant can respond to that. I have a different question for your report. Sure. Your methodology for the evacuation times for the city, as you said, various developmental scenarios, there were various assumptions made, as for any study. At a high level, what kind of assumptions were factored into failures on Pierce Road generally in the hillsides or specifically for Pierce Road around this project site. We understand the geologic conditions, the landslide conditions, and so on and so forth. Was some kind of a failure included in your methodology?

Well, the short answer is the evacuation time analysis does not include any roadway failures or closures in the analysis. The previous analysis that we did in 2025, which is more of a planning level assessment that looked at capacity ratios of the volume, you know, the evacuation vehicle volume versus the capacity of the roadway, did qualitatively talk about the closure of some roadways, particularly Pierce Road and how that would affect the evacuation. but it was a qualitative assessment. But the most recent evacuation time did not.

How could we factor? I'm hearing two things from you. Very helpful. Thank you. And I'm struggling to ask you the question. How do we factor that into assessing the situation that this project is, or the impact this project is going to have?

If you're looking specifically for the impact of this project, then I'll defer to the applicant and their travel time analysis. But I think the way to maybe think about the city study, it really just helps to understand cumulatively over time if these developments are all approved and what's there today, what would that mean to the city? Where are the constraints operationally that the city should consider? And that then helps the city then think about what are the possible solutions to help improve evacuation times throughout the city.

Okay. I will stop asking that specific question for now. Sure. Last question, Mary, if I may. Okay. This is a question for Richard and his team. So, Richard, I heard Chris refer multiple times, even in his presentation today, in addition to the staff report that we have, the whole agenda packet talks, multiple times of refers to, Housing Accountability Act and that builder's remedy is a provision of the HAA and HAA limits, the Housing Accountability Act limits the city's ability to deny or conditionally approve a qualifying housing development project and objective standards in place at the time the preliminary application was received by the city, which I saw Chris give a date of June 20th, 2023. So can you help us understand what would be the possible, not the objective standards, but what are the things we need to do What would give the council authority, what criteria do we need to meet to be able to say if the council were to feel this doesn't meet standards, these are the impacts, what all do we need to satisfy the criteria to be able to deny a Builders' Remedy project?

I'm going to introduce my colleague, Gabe Ross, who is our office's expert on these projects and has been working with staff.

And I'll have him give a short answer to that question.

And you can see if you have follow-ups.

Thank you, Richard. So under the builder's remedy provisions of the Housing Accountability Act, as you said, Vice Mayor, We have very narrow reasons why the city council could deny a project. And I think the one that you're asking about is if the project is inconsistent with a specific objective written health and safety standard that was in place at the time of the preliminary application. If the project were inconsistent with such a standard, that could be a reason for the city council to deny the project consistent with the Housing Accountability Act and the builder's remedy.

Go ahead. Do we have any, so that date would be at the time, would that be the date that Chris mentioned, June of 2023? Correct. What standards, if any, did we have at that time?

We did not have at that time any standard that meets the qualifications that I just stated that relates to evacuation time or to the wildfire question that you've been discussing.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I'll hold the rest of my questions until later, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. Who else has got questions? You know, Tina asked them all. Go ahead, Yan.

Just a few quick questions. And the first one, the ERR identifies the projects of EMT as approximately 25 and compared with the countywide threshold of 11. Can staff or maybe Francisca explain to us what is the VME data for existing residents in the same hillside area? And what does that mean the 25 represents to, you know, in a practical term?

Yeah, happy to answer that question. So when we're looking at VMT or vehicle miles traveled for residential development, we're looking at all the travel that occurs from the home. So that's going to work, going shopping, doing other errands throughout the day. And there's models that kind of try to emulate and calculate that number. And so the 25 miles means that on average, the person living at the project will travel around 25 miles per day. So that includes going to work, et cetera, et cetera. For existing conditions, even without the project, the number is about the same. Because if you think about it, it's really like how far you have to travel. So if you're up in Saratoga on Pierce Road, whether you live on, you know, depending on where you live a little bit, but the distance overall is not going to be that substantially different because you have to travel down Pierce, get onto one of the main arterials, Saratoga-Sunnyville or Saratoga. And then you spread out kind of into the other areas. Normally to afford jobs is like the biggest contributor to your length of trips. The county average, the threshold is 11 miles, but the actual average itself is around 13 for the county. Saratoga just has a much higher VMT number because there's more residents, not a lot of jobs. So a lot of trips have to go out external to the city to travel.

Thank you. So if I'm hearing that right, basically you're saying this project doesn't increase the VMT.

Not for service population, yeah.

All right, thank you. I have another quick question. This is either staff or a city attorney can help us answer this. So Chris mentioned that of the seven design review findings, staff indicates that four of them could not be made on the merits. And my question is, Are the city's normal design review findings applicable to Builder's Remedies project at all?

It's a good question. The way we look at it is that the city's code requires the design review findings to approve the project, and so they remain applicable. But the Builder's Remedy and Housing Accountability Act limits, as we've said, limits the reasons that we could have to say no. So in this case, it sort of limits the use or what we can say through the design review findings. But we still need to make them.

So I guess I'm a little confused. So even when we cannot, the four of them cannot be made ON THE MERITS?

THAT IS NOT A REASON UNDER THE HOUSING ACCOUNTABILITY ACT TO DENY THE PROJECT.

SO BASICALLY THE HAA LIMITED OUR RIGHTS TO DENY THE PROJECT BASED ON THE DESIGN FINDINGS?

CORRECT.

OKAY. I GUESS I ASSUME THAT GOES TO THE SAME THING FOR THE TENTATIVE MAP FINDINGS.

CORRECT.

GOT IT. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. I'LL STOP FOR NOW.

THANK YOU. I have a couple of questions as well, probably for staff or maybe for Gabe. There was a mention of the existing zoning implying nine units. When it comes to the builder's remedy, if that's sort of like, you know, let's say nine units is maybe the low end, right, for what it's zoned for. When it comes to the builder's remedy project, is there an upper limit in terms of what can be built there?

I'm not sure if there's an upper limit, but I think we can say that this project is not at any limit that might exist. Okay. This project's inconsistency with the zoning is not one of the reasons that we have to deny the project.

Okay.

Thank you. And the other question is probably more for Stafford Fair and Pierce. Could you give us a sense of when it comes – there's some mitigation measures around Pierce Road. Can you give us some context for the current condition of Pierce Road in that area specifically?

The current condition of Pierce Road in that area is two lanes in each direction. It's a hillside road, generally has narrow shoulders, and it's also relatively narrow. So I think it's around 22 to 24 feet, depending on where you are.

There's been mention of landslides or moving soil around there. Can you give some context for that as well, please?

I am not the best person to answer that question, so I might defer to staff on that.

All right.

I think the applicant might know something about the land size if we wait until then. All right.

Yeah, maybe we can wait until then. All right. The last question, having this as more for staff, is when we take a look at our arena numbers, how many units would this contribute to and in what categories?

So the project is 25 units. 20 of those are market rate units, and five are affordable.

OK, and what areas of affordable? Because there's sort of below market. It seems like there are multiple categories.

Low income. Low income. Very low income.

OK. Thank you.

Sure. Just for the audience, you might find it interesting to hear what low income and very low income is in Santa Clara County. So every year, the state and the federal government put out the area median income for each county. So for 2026, the area median income for a four-person household is $205,500. So a four-person household that makes $102,750 qualifies as very low income in Santa Clara County.

A lot of my questions have been asked, so thank you.

Okay, thanks. Any other questions? OK, I see that it's 9 o'clock. So this is about two hours in. We're about to do public comment. Actually, we're about to do the appellant. Would you all like to take a break now? Or do a break now before we start with the appellant? OK, so we're going to take a, is five minutes OK? Or do you want five minutes? OK, we'll be back at 9.05. Thank you.

Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, if we can please get started again. Ladies and gentlemen, if we could please take our seats. All right, I'm going to call this meeting back to order. And now we'll have 10 minutes from the appellant. Thank you. And your team.

Good evening. Mayor Page, Councilman, thank you for inviting us to be here tonight. I'm Bill Hirschman. I'm the managing partner of Chateau Masson, the owner of the property. And a lot of the comments and questions that you've already asked were part of my presentation. So you've taken a little bit of air out of my presentation. But we're going to run through it very quickly. And I'm going to go quickly because I want to leave some time at the end if we have to address a couple of the questions that came up. And we do have answers to a couple that were almost answered, shall I say. And so we can respond to that. I'd like to thank the city staff. They did a very good job of explaining our project to you. I DON'T THINK I COULD HAVE DONE IT MUCH BETTER. WE'RE GOING TO PUT SOME PICTURES UP AND GO THROUGH AND ADD A FEW OTHER COMMENTS, BUT THEY'VE DONE A VERY GOOD JOB TO TAKE CARE OF THAT OR TO PRESENT IT TO YOU AND GIVE YOU A PRETTY GOOD DESCRIPTION OF WHAT'S GOING ON. LECTURE COMPANIES, MY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, HAS BEEN BUILDING IN SARATOGA AND SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES FOR 40 YEARS. WE'RE WELL-VERSED IN THIS KIND OF HOME BUILDING. And we've owned the property since 1999. So the property has been in our ownership for a very long time. As you know, we are also the owners of the Mountain Winery. And so we have a very vested interest in having this project be developed appropriately. Second slide, Amanda? You got it. OK. Thank you. You're ahead of me. Thank you. She didn't want to leave that up to me. They don't trust me. As has been indicated, 25 homes, 20 market rate units. Important, I think, to point out, the affordable are for sale units. Sometimes not the same thing in other parts of the county. They're rental units. These are proposed to be for sale units. There are five of those units. There are three units. I apologize. They're homes. People don't live in units. They live in homes. There are five homes, three of which will also be market rate units. And Cindy pointed out to you kind of where one person qualifies for that, but that's a whole calculation that either the city or the county makes at the time of sale. The project is designed, as you can see, to be a firewise community and also a fortified gold home community. I SHOULD STEP BACK. THIS EVENING I HAVE WITH US AMANDA FROM HANNAH BRUNETTI, I HAVE CAROL RICE WHO DID OUR FIRE SAFE PLAN, AND SHE CAN SPEAK MUCH BETTER THAN I CAN TO WHAT ALL THAT THING MEANS. I'M GOING TO CALL HER UP LATER TO ANSWER SOME OF YOUR QUESTIONS AS IT RELATES TO WHEN WE GET INTO FIRE SPREAD AND SOME OF THE THINGS THAT ARE PART OF THIS PROJECT. As you can see from the drawing, it's a 75-acre parcel, or the aerial. It's a 75-acre parcel, and you can see that we're developing about 18 acres. And that also includes the emergency road, which you can kind of see off to the side. Some of you have been to the site. We refer to that as the quarry road, that little loop road. And the emergency road is a connection from the back cul-de-sac to that, which will then ultimately come out to Pierce Road. Critical improvements. There were some questions that came up relative to Pierce Road. Pierce Road is a, and Farron Pierce pointed to this as well, that's a major improvement. Pierce Road's in a section, which we'll get to on another slide to show you where that might be, is a road that's slipping right now. And part of our conditions of approval and our agreement with the city is that we will participate in repairing that problem. We're going to construct a mile of trail along Pierce Road to make a connection from Saratoga Heights to somewhere in or about Highway 9, depending on where the city tells us we'd make the connection. Emergency access, we talked about fire suppression infrastructure. We're putting in seven hydrants, a whole fire system within the road system. Significant fire modification. This is an aerial of the property, and you can see that we're Very consistent. Our homes are very consistent with the size, location, lot sizes of the surrounding community. We purposely did that. It isn't by chance. That's how we designed this project. There was a question about how many homes could we have put on this site. I think you know the answer. We could have put a lot more homes on this site or proposed a lot more homes on this site. We chose to do what we did. These are a picture of the affordable houses for sale. They're four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath. They're designed for families, and they help make this. We have built this product in the past, and it was a very marketable product. It's a very nice home. You can see a brief floor plan of the homes. Pictures. CHRIS HAD ALREADY PUT UP SOME PICTURES OF SOME OF THE OTHER HOUSES. THIS IS A RENDERING OF ONE, JUST TO GIVE YOU A GENERAL IDEA OF WHAT WE HAVE IN MIND. FIRE RESISTANT DESIGN, MATERIALS AND LANDSCAPING, AND IT WILL HAVE A FIREWISE CERTIFICATE REQUIREMENT. WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT A LITTLE BIT AGAIN, WHAT THAT MEANS. THE TRAIL, IF YOU CAN SEE IN YELLOW, IF YOU LOOK ALONG PIERCE ROAD RIGHT THERE, YOU CAN SEE LIKE A LITTLE YELLOW SECTION. THAT'S THE PIERCE GENERAL LOCATION OF WHERE THE PIERCE ROAD IS HAVING THE ISSUES WITH THE SLIDE RIGHT NOW. AND THAT WILL BE A PART OF WHAT WE'RE GOING TO REPAIR. BLUE DOTED LINE IS THE TRAIL WE'RE PROPOSING AND THEN IT'S HARD TO SEE BUT THE GREEN AREA TO THE LEFT OF THE PIERCE ROAD IS THE EMERGENCY ACCESS ROAD WHICH WILL BE FOR EMERGENCY PURPOSES ONLY BUT AS YOU CAN SEE IT'S ALSO DESIGNED TO NOT ONLY PROVIDE EMERGENCY ACCESS FROM THE SUBDIVISION BUT ALSO FROM SECONDARY ACCESS THROUGH AROUND PIERCE ROAD IN THE EVENT OF SOME KIND OF FAILURE ON PIERCE ROAD CAN BE USED FOR FIRE EQUIPMENT OR FIRE OR JUST CITIZENS EMERGENCY ACCESS ROAD I JUST TALKED ABOUT GOT A LITTLE BIT AHEAD OF MYSELF THIS IS A DESIGN FOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE YOU CAN SEE THE FIRE HYDRAN IS LOCATED IN RED CURRENTLY THERE'S NOTHING AS YOU WELL KNOW AND THESE NOT ONLY BENEFIT OUR COMMUNITY But you can see their location relative to the rest of the community. Some of these hydrants are less than 100 feet away from some of the existing community as a significant amount of fire protection in the general community and to the wildlife area that will be undeveloped. Fire mitigation. I'm going to go very quickly here because I'm going to ask to allow, if you'll let us, to talk about this a little bit. WITH SOMEBODY WHO IS MUCH MORE QUALIFIED THAN I TO DISCUSS THE MITIGATIONS THAT WE'RE PROPOSING. THEY ARE SIGNIFICANT. SOME OF THE FINDINGS THAT YOU'RE BEING ASKED TO MAKE ADDRESS WHAT'S TAKING PLACE FROM THE COMMUNITY BENEFIT MITIGATION MEASURES THAT WE'RE PROPOSING THAT ADDRESS SOME OF THE ISSUES THAT CONCERNS RELATIVE TO HOW DO YOU OFFSET SOME OF THE IMPACTS THAT THE PROJECT COULD HAVE ON THE EVACUATION. This is one of them. The fire fuel modification. Again, Carol can speak to this, but doing what we're doing. This was all generated through AI type of modeling. And again, I'll let her speak to it more, but the fire modifications can reduce the rate of spread, meaning how quickly, to 93% based on our mitigation. This is a very important picture. This is a before and after. You can't see the THE SIDE IS WHAT THE COLORS MEAN. BUT IF I TELL YOU RED IS BAD AND BLUE IS GOOD, THAT'S WHAT THE CHARTS WILL SAY. THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE INTENSITY OF THE FIRE. CAROL CAN SPEAK TO THIS. THIS ALL ADDRESSES WHAT DO WE DO TO SLOW THE IMPACT OF A WILDFIRE AND HELP PREVENT AN INCREASED AMOUNT OF DAMAGE AS A RESULT. IT COMES THROUGH FUEL MANAGEMENT. TREE TRIMMING, THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO. YOU SPEAK TO IT, AND MAYOR, YOU HAD A FIRE PREPAREDNESS MEETING, AND I WILL JUST REFRESH EVERYBODY'S MEMORY. THE WHOLE CONVERSATION WAS AROUND HARDENING COMMUNITIES AND WHAT DO YOU DO TO BETTER PREPARE FOR THAT EVENT. THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING. BENEFITS OF THE MITIGATION. On the left-hand side are the existing conditions. I'm going quickly. I'm running out of time. Right-hand side is the benefits that we can see. 48% to 70% reduction in the fire arrival. That's how quickly the fire gets to you. Why is that important? Well, if we can reduce how quickly the fire gets to you, that obviously gives you much more time to evacuate. 76 to 99 minutes delay in the fire growth. How quickly does the fire expand as we go? 94% reduction in the flame. All of this has to do with the mitigation and the fuel management that we're talking about, okay? And these are model numbers. Boy, I made it. That's our presentation. I went very quickly. I do have a couple of answers to a couple of the questions that were asked. I'd be happy to respond to that, but I know that my time is limited here.

Yes, Tina. I THINK WE SHOULD LET THEM ANSWER A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS THAT WE ASKED BEFORE BECAUSE WE DID DIRECT THAT THEY WOULD ANSWER THEM.

I TOOK THE BEST NOTES I COULD. BUT THERE WAS A COUPLE. I'LL START IN THE ORDER THAT YOU KIND OF ASKED THE QUESTIONS. YOU WERE ASKING SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FIRE DEPARTMENT AND OUR MEETING THEIR REQUIREMENTS. AND I CONFIRMED WITH BRAD FOX BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO SAY SOMETHING INAPPROPRIATE HERE. BUT WE HAVE MET ALL THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. What Brad was referring to are some of the things we needed to do relative to the location of some of the houses and hardening.

The houses that fall into the...

Thank you. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven lots that fall into the high fire area, three of which are the units closest to Pierce Road.

High?

They are very high. Very high. I'm sorry if I said high. Very high. I'm sorry. And what it really is, as Brad was explaining, it's a requirement to try to stop fire from going from house to house. And so there's a requirement of 30 feet, and we meet that requirement where it was a little bit tight. We added some additional things. Brad referred to limiting, prohibiting building closer in the setback lines. HARDENING THE SURFACES ON SOME OF THE WALLS, ADDITIONAL FIRE PROTECTION THAT THE QUESTION WAS ASKED WILL COME IN UNDER THE BUILDING PERMIT, BUT THESE ARE REQUIREMENTS THAT HAVE BEEN PUT INTO PLACE ON THIS APPLICATION SO THAT WE'RE REQUIRED TO DO THAT WHEN WE GET TO THE BUILDING. THERE WAS A QUESTION. THANK YOU. EXCUSE ME. I KNOW THAT FIRST CARBON IS HERE AND THE CONSULTANT WHO PREPARED THE REPORT SPECIFIC TO OUR PROJECT, THE KITTELSON AND ASSOCIATES IS ON ZOOM SO THEY CAN ANSWER THIS QUESTION BETTER THAN I. BUT I AM PREPARED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT THERE WERE THREE REPORTS DONE, TWO BY FAIR AND PEARCE, THE ONES THAT THEY PRESENTED TO YOU ALREADY, AND ONE DONE THROUGH THE EIR PROCESS. through First Carbon, through the direction of the city, by Kittleson Associates, which dealt directly the impacts of our project, Masana States. And that's the report that I think you were asking. What are the results of that report? They were the 24 to 54 seconds that you've heard kicked around. That is the result of what our impact, what they've determined was our impact, our impact, Masana State's impact, AGAIN, I WOULD PREFER TO HAVE YOU DIRECT THAT TO THEM, BUT THAT IS THE BASIS. THERE WERE DIFFERENT REPORTS. ONE STUDIED OUR PROJECT, THE OTHER STUDIED THE CITIES. OKAY? THE VMT WAS ADDRESSED. CONDITIONS ON PEARCE ROAD, I THINK WE ADDRESSED. And those were my only notes on the questions, unless I missed something.

Any questions? Tina?

Bill, thank you. So a little more detail, and I'll just add the questions right now so you can address some, or if the mayor permits, Ketelson can respond to that. So I do want to understand from them about the 24 seconds and the 54 seconds. I want to know what is the impact of this project in terms of evacuation time addition from this project based on the study. So I heard you say that they can respond. That's one question. The second question I have is you responded earlier and you showed in your slide the condition of Pierce Road. The land is slipping. There's a landslide there. The improvement, can you specifically call out the improvement that you're proposing? And you talked about the, what was the word you used? The evacuation route or the secondary access? Emergency access route. Emergency access route, thank you. How does that play into that how does that support that and I saw somewhere? You were calling out the annual fire by certificate yes, so once the If the project were to be approved and once construction happens You are going to sell all the 25 homes is the assumption I would make and at that point who is responsible for for making sure that the Firewise certification happens every year, as well as, I know somebody is going to ask the next question, so I will as well. in terms of the mitigation, the management of the fuel modification and keeping that contained. Okay. How do you see that happening? Okay. And is it, and I'll add to that, is that all included in the conditions of approval as presented in the staff package?

Let me go backwards because it's easier to remember it in the reverse order. To answer your question, is it all included in the, yes, there's specific conditions of approval And I can give you the exact conditions. There's only three that require the ongoing, if you will, maintenance and certification as we go. Specifically, condition CP-2, condition engineering ENG-16, and PW-13. These are the requirements that, if you will, give teeth to. The first one requires an HOA to be, and covenants and restrictions to be put in place through an HOA, Homeowners Association. Within that, which the city will review, those have to be reviewed by the city and comment before we record the map, the subdivision map. And within that, it's already in the conditions of approval that we will provide for exactly what you're saying. There will be a third party monitoring of that on an annual basis. So who will be held responsible? The HOA will be held responsible. How does that get enforced? There's a requirement that we self-monitor through a third party. The HOA self-monitors through a third party. So there's some teeth to that. ENG-16 says it again in a different manner, but it's kind of the same condition. And the public works condition number 13, it says owner-applicant shall implement a fuel reduction program for fire mitigation covering those parcels prior to certification of occupancy. So it's a requirement that's ongoing is my point. Okay. Now you're going to make me remember going backwards here.

Yeah, and you're going to make me remember what was my other question. The other question was the emergency access road. How does that play into the, or how does that relate to the improvement that you are saying you would work with the city from what I recall? Two different things. Okay. Two different things.

The first one is the improvement on Pierce Road. Very early in our design when we met with Public Works, very early in the project, the topic came up about the failures on Pierce Road. And so there was a discussion with Public Works that would we as developers be willing to cooperate, participate in the improvements. And it was agreed, and it's a condition of approval within our application or the findings and the conditions, that we will participate with the city on a 50-50 basis to make those improvements. Your second part of that question was, what are those improvements? Yet to be determined. The studies are just now taking place. There's going to need to be a design, which the preliminary designs have already been done. It's going to be a part of grading. There's going to need to be some excavation, some walls built to reinforce that area of Pierce Road. And we have agreed to participate with the city. More than likely, we will be doing the construction, and the city will be participating with dollars at the end of the day. Honest answer, it will be cheaper for us to do it than probably the city to do it. So it's a better way for us to handle it. And so as part of that would be that condition. The estimate is somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million at this point.

But you also said to be determined.

Absolutely. The final design is not.

But it would include, for example, qualitatively, in a few words, how would you describe the possible scope of work?

There'll be an excavation. It's a slide. So normally what happens on a slide, depending on how deep it is, you're going to ask me an engineering question. Be careful, I'll bore you. On a slide, depending on how deep the slide is, we're either going to bore through it and see how deep piers would have to go to support to get to solid earth. Or if it's shallower, we could excavate and recompact. You can use shotcrete walls. More than likely, these would be drilled piers with some kind of wall. And that would be the extent of the improvements.

Okay, thank you. And the emergency access road?

Emergency access is kind of separate from that. Emergency access goes from the cul-de-sac, as you can see on the upper left of the picture, comes down and goes to, for sake of argument, it would come out somewhere in the area where our front gate is, if you know where that is on Pierce Road. It would be somewhere in that general area is where it would come through. Okay? It would be used for emergency purposes. And, however, it's emergency purposes, FOR ANYBODY IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY. FOR EXAMPLE, IF PIERCE ROAD FOR SOME REASON WOULD BE BLOCKED ONE LANE OR THE OTHER, THE FIRE DEPARTMENT COULD USE THAT ACCESS TO GO AROUND PIERCE ROAD. IT COULD BE USED AS A SECONDARY, LET FIRE EQUIPMENT COME THAT WAY, LET OTHER PEOPLE GO USE PIERCE ROAD. COULD BE USED FOR REALLY WHATEVER REASON IT WOULD NEED TO BE USED FOR. BUILT AND MAINTAINED BY THE DEVELOPMENT, MAINTAINED BY THE ASSOCIATION.

So it's a private road. All the roads are private. Just wanted to make sure. Yes. So it's going to be a private road. And only for an emergency, it would be open to the public as well as the fire department. Correct.

Typically, the fire department will require us to chain it, put a knockoff lock that they have access to or something like that. So it's not used on a regular basis. That's typically what happens with an emergency road like that. They have access.

They have to lock off. Back to my first question, the traffic.

Okay. Well, the evacuation you're talking about.

Correct. Yeah. I think you said the consultants.

I'm going to defer to them, but I will answer your question that the report that was under CEQA, WE'RE REQUIRED TO ADDRESS THE THE IMPACTS THAT OUR PROJECT WOULD HAVE ON THE COMMUNITY OKAY THAT'S WHAT THAT'S WHAT THE THE REPORT THAT WAS PREPARED FOR THE EIR THAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THAT THE CONCLUSION AND IT WAS IT WAS DIFFERENT AS FAIR AND PEARCE POINTED OUT IT WAS DIFFERENT THAN THAN THEIR REPORT THE REPORT INVOLVED THE CITY OUR REPORT INVOLVED OR THAT REPORT INVOLVED OUR PROJECT AND AND And it had a little different criteria. Farron Pierce's report talks about evacuation, and you can ask them, but I'm fairly certain I'm correct. The evacuation safe point was Highway 85, from the city to Highway 85. When the report was done for our project, there were several different locations picked as basically safe havens, one of them being West Valley College, another one being, there were several, and they're in the report. By the way, that's part of the Fire Prevention Plan. Wildfire Protection Plan. And I know this by heart. It's in the appendix to the EIR, Appendix J, as in Jaguar. And that report is part of that fire prevention. Okay? The conclusions of that report are in that. And so when we refer to this in terms of fractions of a minute, those were the conclusions of the impact of our project on that evacuation to those locations. We've had conversations with Farron Pierce. This is not an exact science by any means. Could somebody be off by 10 seconds? Yeah, you bet they could be. Can it be a few minutes? Could it be less than that? Could there be no impact? It's not that an exact science, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude. So to compare the two reports, which they are quite different, but in the Fair and Pierce report, there were three sections, A, B, and C. The original one was the existing condition. B was the added units within the city. That consisted of, and don't quote me, but I think it was 700, well, I have it here, 725 additional units that was included in that report. And the final one, which was C, included in another additional 4,498 units, bringing a total for the entire city, every square inch of land you could ever develop, basically, to 2,223 additional units. That's what was prepared in the Farron Pierce report. Our project was included in section B, which were 25 units out of 725. You can do the math yourself. We don't have that significant of an impact given 725 units. So it makes logical sense. Again, but to tie it down to minutes and seconds, I think you've got to look at the magnitude of our impact. Now. Those are my statements. You should probably ask Kittleson the same questions.

I do see that Grace has got her hand raised. Tina, do you want to hear from her?

She's probably going to say I said something wrong, so I'll be quiet. I'm looking at the interest of everybody's time. I'm good with this now, but if it's going to save us public comment time, I'll leave it to you.

I'd just like to ask, is there anybody else who would like to ask a question before we go on? I'd just like to ask one question about the hardening of the homes. I was wondering if you could describe some of the things that you're doing to harden the homes.

Can I have Carol address that? Please. Because it comes into the whole requirement. Can I have her address that? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for having me up here and be able to describe this to you. I'm Carol Rice with Wildland Resource Management who wrote the Wildfire Protection Plan. Just as a note, I've been doing this for about 40 years and working in the wildland urban interface, worked on community wildfire protection plans for three counties, two cities, and did most of the work for the big landowners in the Bay Area. I did help start the International Association of Wildland Fire and started up the wildland fire section for the National Fire Protection Association who certifies these firewise communities. So I have a deep involvement of Urban Interface in that. So to your point about the hardening of the homes, the buildings are going to be made out of noncombustible exteriors. And that includes not only the surface of it, but also they require that there is an additional tempered glass IN IT SO THAT THE, BECAUSE OFTEN TIMES WINDOWS ARE A WEAK LINK, SO THEY ADDED ADDITIONAL LEVELS OF PROTECTION FOR THE WINDOWS. THEY ALSO REQUIRED THAT THROUGH THIS ALTERNATIVE MEANS OF COMPLIANCE WAS ALSO ADDITIONAL NONCOMBUSTIBLE ZONES ADJACENT TO THE HOMES. SO WE WERE THE CURRENT, IT'S NOT EVEN CODE YET, BUT THERE IS GOING TO BE A ZONE ZERO, A NONCOMBUSTABLE ZONE FOR THE FIRST FIVE FEET AND IN THESE CASES IT'S GOING TO BE TEN FEET. AND SO THAT MAKES IT, GIVES IT AN ADDITIONAL LEVEL OF SAFETY. AND THEN AS BRAD HAD MENTIONED, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A NONBUILDABLE EASEMENT AND THAT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE WE WANT TO HAVE AT LEAST 30 FEET SEPARATION FROM HOUSE TO HOUSE. One of the things that we're understanding is that homes will burn up each other if they are too close to each other, and this assures that that separation will be sufficient. So those are some of the ways that we can make sure that those homes are fire-safe, to the point where on one of the slides it shows that each of these homes can be a gold level of wildfire-prepared home as certified by the Institute for Building and Home Safety. So it's a It's a really big coup. Very few homes are to that standard, and so these will be.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. At the end or now? Okay, so since Grace has still got her hand raised, I'm going to ask, she's a woman, right? Well, I'd like to see if, can you let Grace talk? There's...

I am promoting her to panelists right now.

Okay, thanks.

So she'll be joining right now. Here she comes.

Can you all hear me?

Sure can. Yep.

Perfect. I will start by saying that Bill, I think, got to the same answer I was going to give, but I'm happy to just answer any follow-up questions if there are any.

I'm good thanks Chris I think we're okay grace thank you okay we may have more later though okay so with that I would like to open the public comment period how many speaker slips do we have I have 19 right now and I know there's at least Gosh, I see 51 attendees remotely, a number of whom will speak. Council, I was thinking maybe we limit it to two minutes per speaker. Does that sound okay? Everybody okay with that? So we're going to limit our time of public speaking to two minutes. And... So we have a policy in our meetings that when we have more than a certain number of speakers, and typically it's 20, that we limit the time. We do that all the time. We have two people online. So we have at least two people online, and there's always people who come down. I recognize the fact. We want to hear from you all. There's no doubt about it. So let's do the two minutes, and we'll see how it goes. I will accommodate people to finish their statement after two minutes, but not too much longer. So Britt, could you please explain the process and call our first speaker?

Okay, if you would like to address the City Council on this item and you have not submitted a speaker slip, now is the time to do so. If you're attending via Zoom, now is the time to raise your hand. We will start with in-person speakers. Once I've reached the last speaker slip, we will go to our virtual speakers. We will not come back to our in-person speakers. So the first speaker, and I would like to, I'm going to call the speakers. We'd like you to kind of queue up so it kind of keeps the movement going. So we'll start with Dave Rossi, followed by Stan Boghossian, followed by Becky Rhodes.

Okay. First of all, I'd like to thank the applicant for not proposing a 38-story, 665-unit Boater's Remedy project, like Menlo has. Nice job. Thank you. Also, correction, nine units could be 18 with SB 9 urban lot split. So 18 units could be the max on the property. My name is Dave Rossi. I grew up on Palomino. My parents still live there since 1978. I played with the cows across the street from this project, rode cardboard boxes down the hill. I am very familiar with this property and this project. So when you're talking about evacuation, We're talking about my 83-year-old parents who still live there, and I love them very much. Another thing I'd like to address the council for is your role. And I hope everyone in this audience understands the council's role. They are stewards of the HAA. Their job is to support the HAA. They have no authority except to approve the HAA. And you're going to hear a lot of words like significant and unavoidable. Without having existing safety standards, that does not pertain for a cause for rejection under the HAA. Also, the impact for evacuation. There's a pre-existing condition of two hours and 54 minutes. And although the CEQA guidelines and EIR calls this project avoidable, significant and unavoidable, it's because of a pre-existing condition which is also not enforceable by this council. The HAA governs that that is an approval process for this project. It cannot be canceled for those reasons. And I really want to respect the council. The temperatures already seem high. When your job is to support an HAA, you are the police for the HAA. Your only thing to judge is whether or not there could be a lawsuit related to a violation of the HAA. That's as simple as that. AND WITH RESPECT TO THE OPPOSITION, NO PROJECT IN THIS CITY WILL HELP PEERSWOOD EVACUATION MORE THAN THIS PROJECT AND MY PARENTS. THANK YOU.

GOOD EVENING. MY NAME IS STAN. I'VE BEEN INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES IN THE CITY FOR, I DON'T KNOW, DECADES. AND I HAVE LIVED HERE MOST OF MY LIFE IN SARATOGA. INTUITIVELY, I'VE DRIVEN PEARCE ROAD MULTIPLE TIMES. AND I DON'T NEED THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF TRAFFIC STUDIES TO SHOW THAT You can drive on that road and know when people are getting out of trying to get off that road in a fire situation and they're trying to get into either onto Big Basin Way or Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road. It's going to be a mess. If it occurs during commute times, it's horrible. I think the job of the city council's number one job when you're elected, certainly was when I was elected, was public safety. That's your number one responsibility here. And, you know, that's what you're doing here. The other stuff is great, but that's what you're doing here. And I see this project at this point, sadly, as adding to a safety issue that's already bad and making it worse. And I don't need to have a degree from an accredited engineering school to draw that conclusion. All you need to do is drive up there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Stan. Ladies and gentlemen, please refrain from applauding. That is a form of bullying. If someone doesn't agree with you, they may be reticent to come up and speak. So please be respectful of people with other opinions. If you agree with the speaker, please raise your hand. Let us know that you agree with them. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Becky Rhodes, and I live off Mountain Eden Road. just below the Mountain Winery and adjacent to the Mount Eden Winery. I'm a practical person, a no-nonsense, pragmatic person. That's what everyone tells me. But I've got to say, I am extremely, extremely worried and scared. And it's all due to the strong likelihood of a fire in the hills and the inability for me, my family, pets, and neighbors who live in a very high fire danger with one way out to evacuate alive and unharmed. This is not an unfounded fear. We all know about the fires and the palisades in Eaton with people trying to get out with more roads to get out on than we have, and many of them did not make it. They got stranded in their cars. They tried to run. They tried to walk. You can't avoid fire when it comes blowing through. We also experienced a fire a few years ago just up the hill from where we live. I wasn't at home, but my pets were in the house. Luckily, Rick was able to get home in time to evacuate them, but he sent pictures and they were frightening. That area was soon deemed to be shelter in place because they could not have both rescue and fire vehicles coming in while people were trying to evacuate out. The road couldn't accommodate both at the same time. What would have happened to my neighbors who are elderly or infirm How about their children, their grandchildren, and their pets? We can't outrun. We can't out drive a fire if it comes through. We really have to keep in mind that Pierce Road is already over capacity. Fixes can't be done to it. And the evacuation impact is significant and unavoidable. So I ask you to deny this project on these safety basis. Do not deem this risk as acceptable. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. We've got Richard Larson, followed by Sunny Yeo, followed by Suman Gol.

Hello. I'm Richard Larson. I'm Becky's partner, housemate, everything else. We've lived on Mountian Road for 12 years, and I'm urging you to vote no on a Mason Estates proposal to prioritize the safety of the area's current residents. I would note that Mr. Hirschman, it's a nice plan, but he says nothing about anything, anyone else in the neighborhood. It's all about the fire safety of that 25 houses. The section of Pierce Road that he addresses is a small fraction of the road, and it has nothing to do with where I'm going to have to evacuate. I have to evacuate through that narrow stretch over the bridge down closer to the flat area. As Becky mentioned, I was driving up Highway 85 in 2017, and I saw plume of smoke. I was down in San Jose, and the smoke was rising up high enough that I could see it. I was heading back to work, and I got to Saratoga Sunnyvale Road, and I go, I don't like that plume of smoke. So I made a left turn, didn't go into work, and rescued our dogs and evacuated. Fortunately, I was able to get out right before they shut down the evacuation. They literally shut down the evacuation because they had to bring heavy equipment. Ten acres burned that day. Thanks to our fire department, they were able to put it out. LIMIT THE DAMAGE, NOTHING HAPPENED, BUT WE ALL KNOW THAT UP AND DOWN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA ALONG THE URBAN WILDLIFE INTERFACE, THERE HAVE BEEN TREMENDOUSLY DAMAGING FIRES THAT COST PEOPLE'S LIVES AND LITERALLY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PROPERTY DAMAGE. THERE ARE PLANS FOR AT LEAST 460 HOUSES DUE TO BUILDER'S REMEDY COMING UP FROM THAT 30-DAY WINDOW THAT WAS LEFT OPEN. This is not about one development. This is about 460 houses going in on our evacuation corridor. And no one's going to talk about that. None of their presentations will mention that. They'll all talk about how fire safe they are. Thank you. They're not going to talk about us. Thank you. Thank you.

Do I press this?

No, you should be okay.

Oh, okay. Good evening, council members, members of city staff, and fellow residents. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me tonight. My name is Sunny Yeo, and I am a resident of the Saratoga Hillside. I'm here tonight to urge the city council members to take seriously the threat of fire and the safety of residents when considering these extensive development projects in the hillside area. The EIR for the Mason Project found that the evacuation time for the hillside area is something like TWO HOURS, 45 MINUTES TO GET 90% OF PEOPLE OUT AND STRETCHING TO FIVE HOURS TO GET EVERYBODY OUT. THESE ARE STAGGERINGLY HORRIFIC TIMES. IN COMPARISON, THE PALISADES FIRE IN SOCAL SPREAD FROM 10 ACRES TO 200 ACRES IN 20 MINUTES. AND WITHIN THREE HOURS, IT HAD GONE TO 1,200 ACRES. TO TOP IT OFF, IF ALL THE BUILDERS REMEDY PROJECTS WERE TO GO THROUGH, THAT WOULD ADD 500 MORE UNITS, NOT INCLUDING THE 80-UNIT HOTEL THAT MOUNTAIN WINERY I HEAR IS PLANNING TO ADD. This project is in a very high fire hazard severity zone. A large portion of the Saratoga Hillside is in a very high fire hazard severity zone. We should consider how that impacts higher density developments in that area. The EIR, I believe, outlines an alternative lower density housing development for a reason. We heard about nine houses. Also, the two major evacuation routes, which is Pierce Road and Mount Eden, do pass through these very high fire hazard severity zones. And in the event of a wildfire, it's very high likelihood that one of these roads or both of these roads end up unpassable. and we should take that into account. Council Member Walia asked if there were pre-existing evacuation standards. I believe that the city's general plan, which would have limited this development to a lower density of nine houses, would have been an inherent standard that would have been set to limit the evacuation times. I hope the city council members will do the right thing here to protect those residents. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sonny.

Okay, guys, I may need a little time. When does this start? Don't start it until I start speaking. Okay. Hello, City Council. The Masan State Builders Project is fire-wise safe and gold standard, but this does not take into account the evacuation process that is in question. Remember that as owner of the property, even without this development, they should be responsible owners and make their land fire-wise safe, no matter what. As did the Saratoga Heights Homeowners Association. We are fire-wise safe because we are responsible homeowners. Please also be aware that the emergency road that they talked about, that it gives access to all the people, well, guess what? It comes out into Pierce Road. doesn't help whatsoever. Also, graciously, they're claiming that the 55 acres that they're leaving undeveloped. At the Planning Commission meeting, it was pointed out that it does not prevent them in the future from developing that 55 acres of land. So don't be fooled by that. All the data that's based on the wildfire that comes with a warning. But how about the fire within the community that comes without warning? That spreads and people are trapped with little ability to evacuate. So I get the need for builder's remedy. I'm not against builder's remedy. I am against builder's remedy off Pierce Road. The ERA takes into account the lives of birds and animals and frogs, but does not take into account the human life. You say your hands are tied, yet without your approval, this project cannot proceed. The path of least resistance is to vote in favor of this project. The American spirit is not to take the easy path. but rather to take the right path. You all know how dangerous this project and all the other Builders Remercy projects are. In your heart, you know what is right and what is wrong. I request that you not make the easy and convenient decision, but make the right decision and vote no for the approval of this project. Thank you.

Next we have Manoj Gol, Glenn Hendricks, and Glenda Ani.

Hello, Mayor and City Council members, staff. Today I'm asking you a very specific question. What has changed since July 8th when the Planning Commission reviewed this and concluded that that the EIR, including emergency access, response time, and evacuation, is at or over capacity. The applicant mentioned Appendix J, and I have those pages here, and it says, the consultant says, there's already a volume to capacity ratio of one or higher without a project. on Pierce Road on both sides, and on Tollgate, and on Pierce meeting Highway 9. So imagine with this project and many more lined up, that will still be over capacity. So Saratoga General Plan Safety Element Section 5.6 says new development must ensure effective future evacuation, which is inconsistent. It's inconsistent with the EIR Appendix J. Saratoga Plan 5.10 says make improvements and expand the capacity of emergency evacuation route, which is not happening either. The SICA guidelines say evacuation analysis should consider roadway capacity, which is not happening here either. Here's some stats from Cal Fire. In the last one year, 31 deaths, wildfire deaths, Eton and Palisades happened. In the last five years, 81 wildfire deaths happened. Four were firefighters. This is California stats. In 10 years, 231. So let's not make Saratoga a possible stat in future. And so you have a decision to make. And in closing, the Planning Commission identified a risk. HAA has a narrow exception of health and safety test exception. Please look into it, city attorney can look into it, and let's not, let's uphold the Planning Commission decision. Thank you. Thank you, Manoj.

Hello, Glenn Hendricks. The Planning Commission could not honestly determine that the benefits of this project outweighed the impacts. THINK ABOUT THAT STATEMENT. THE POSITIVES DON'T SUPPORT THE NEGATIVES. THE ONLY BENEFIT THAT MAKES SENSE ABOUT THIS PROJECT IS SO THE CITY DOESN'T GET SUED. SO NOW THE PROJECT COMES TO YOU AND YOU HAVE TO APPROVE THE PROJECT, EVEN THOUGH FROM A WILDFIRE AND EVACUATION PERSPECTIVE IT'S A TERRIBLE PROJECT. I SUGGEST YOU APPROVE THE EIR ON A THREE TO TWO VOTE. THE CITY DOESN'T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO FIGHT A LAWSUIT WITH THE CURRENT LAWS FROM SACRAMENTO. YOU'D JUST LOSE. BUT I REQUEST CLEARLY EXPLAIN TO THE PUBLIC WHY YOU ARE APPROVING THE STATEMENTS OF OVERWRITING CONSIDERATION. TELL US WHAT YOU LIKE. TELL US WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE. OR THAT YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO BE SUED. THE PLANNING COMMISSION DECISION WAS NOT MADE IN ERROR. THIS MEETING IS PROOF THAT HAA PROCESS IS BEING LEGALLY FOLLOWED. I'm having a problem with the evaluation time, and I think it's being misrepresented. And it's the math that's got me bothered. And maybe it's just because I have a U.S. public education school system thing that's going on. But the starting condition is that during an evacuation, the road stops. Traffic doesn't move. If traffic's not moving, I don't understand how you only increase the evacuation time by 24 seconds. The problem is the overall traffic, before any new building goes into the hillside, the evacuation study you have says current conditions today, the road stops. So I don't get where 24 seconds comes from. And it was talked about VMT, VMT where the distance doesn't change. I haven't heard anybody talk about how many new vehicles are doing that new VMT for what goes on. Again, I'm probably, you know, some people aren't going to like what I say. I think you have to approve this project. The law says you have to. We'll get sued. We'll lose. But tell us why you think you're going to do what you're going to do and do it on a 3-2 vote.

Thank you. Glenn?

I have never used this before, so hopefully I'm doing it all right. My name is Glenda Aune. I've lived on Pierce Road for over 40 years. Messana Estates is only going to add 25 to 50 or more cars on Pierce Road every day. While this doesn't sound like an increase in traffic. This is not the whole story. This same developer is planning to build 237 housing units in an 81-room hotel at Mountain Winery, which is not in Saratoga. And these two developments are going to add hundreds of cars to Pierce Road. Make no mistake, hundreds of cars. And we are all going to be at risk every day. I don't think the city can deny this application. I'll just make a couple of comments based on things I've heard in the last couple of weeks. If the city had annexed Mountain Winery in 2020, the developer would be working with the city on the housing plan versus using Builder's Remedy Project. In reality, the developer would still be building a lot of housing and a hotel at Mountain Winery That would create a lot of traffic on Pierce road, this same developer. And let's just blame Sacramento for these builders remedy projects. Yes. Sacramento is enabling these projects and we need to elect new representatives who will change these laws. But for now, these developers are choosing to use Builder's Remedy so they can do what they want to do. They're choosing money over the safety of residents. I don't know how to fight these projects, but for me going forward, I am only going to support the developers, the businesses, the organizations, and the realtors who are not developing or promoting Builder's Remedy projects in wildfire areas. and I will try to elect people who will change the laws to account for safety of residents in wildfire areas. Thank you.

Thank you, Glenda.

Okay, next we have David Ani, followed by Xavier Casanova, then Bill Dalton.

Hi, I'm Dave Ani, otherwise known as Mr. Glenda. I've... Everybody's already talked about the overcapacity during the literal stoppage of Pierce Road. So I was thinking also about, I don't know how you're going to deny this given the HAA and the situation. So what can we do? So I had three suggestions. And I asked you to investigate these and see if they would pan out. We need alert systems even that go beyond what the fire department's doing with the shelter in place and then warning and then an order. It's almost like we need a pre-warning system. I feel like I need to become an expert in weather and wind and dry lightning and just get out then. So I don't know if the city can do something especially for the very high fire area, to go, you know, just get out. Second idea, you know, maybe the developers and the other HAAs, we could require them to do some more fuel removal. Pierce Road has got all kind of fuel on both sides. The city doesn't have money to remove all that stuff. That could block the road because the road's on fire. And the last idea is can we connect Pike Road over to Saratoga Hills up there where those water towers are, where the old Grandview Ranch is? That would give me another way to get out. Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Good evening. My name is Xavier Casanova. I live off of Houston Court, which is basically Pierce Road. I grew up in Paris with a lot more concrete than nature. When I came to the Bay Area as a Stanford student, I started exploring the Bay Area, driving through the Saratoga Hills on my way to Skyline Boulevard. I fell in love with the trees, the vegetation, and the natural beauty of these hills. 14 years ago, my wife and I chose Saratoga as the place to raise our family. Our two boys were just four and eight years old. But we've also learned how vulnerable this place can be. In 2020, we watched the sky turn orange because of the wildfires. In 2023, we lost our fire insurance we lost our insurance policy for our house, and we had to go on a fair plan. And then in January 2025, the Eaton fire devastated Altadena near Caltech where my son studies, and we got a 2 a.m. call from him evacuating because the campus was at risk. Suddenly, evacuation wasn't something like a report. It was my own son getting out of the path of a wildfire. And tonight, the city's own study tells us that evacuating the hillsides could take approximately, already takes approximately five hours. This is our home. We know these hills are vulnerable. We know evacuation is already difficult. And the next wildfire will not wait for us to fix our mistakes. Don't make it harder on my family, on my neighbors, and on every family in those hills to get out safely when the day comes. Please put the safety of these families who already live there first and deny this appeal.

Thank you, Xavier.

Good evening again. Well, I happen to live in the flatlands and won't be impacted by this. I still don't understand how we can find that the benefits of this project outweigh the negatives. Hopefully you can find the silver bullet and deny the project.

Okay, we have Mohini.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. We strongly urge you to uphold the Planning Commission's denial of Mason estates and put public safety first. Masson Estates proposes 25 homes on Pierce Road, a narrow winding road, one lane in each direction, already burdened by residential and mountain winery traffic. It was never designed for this intensity of development and cannot simply be widened. And Masson Estates cannot be considered in isolation. The same developer proposes 237 housing units and an 81-room hotel at the adjacent mountain winery. It may be under county jurisdiction, but traffic does not recognize jurisdictional boundaries, neither does wildfire. Together, these developments could add hundreds of vehicles to the same constrained hillside roads. This is not about traffic inconvenience. This is about evacuation and life safety. During a wildfire, residents will be trying to get out while emergency responders are trying to get in. On Pierce Road, there's little margin for error. Residents are doing our part, home hardening, clearing vegetation, and preparing for evacuation, but we cannot widen Pierce Road or create evacuation capacity. government-controlled development decisions. So I ask, what public benefit justifies this additional risk? We have also heard conflicting information about the number of affordable homes. Affordable housing must be real, clearly defined and enforceable, not simply a label that enables greater density. The community should not bear increased traffic, evacuation risk and permanent hillside impacts when the primary benefit accrues to the developer. The HAA provides housing protections, but public safety must remain paramount. Council members, you are interested with protecting this city, its residents, and community. Please uphold the Planning Commission's denial. We cannot undo a tragedy after the fact. Public safety must come first. Thank you.

Good evening. So I've spoken in front of you many, many times. So I actually just want to respond today to this YIMBY letter that you received, which suggests that builder's remedy basically ties your hands and that denying this project somehow makes you anti-housing. And that is simply not true. This is not about being for housing or against housing. It is about whether this particular project in this particular location is safe. And these safety concerns are not hypothetical. We all know that. City's own evacuation study, two hours, 45 minutes, we've heard all of that. And that assumes that everything goes right, which means every road stays open, there's no fallen trees, no disabled cars, no blocked roads, and no interference from emergency operations. The study itself describes this as a best-case scenario. and says that evacuation times would increase if roads were closed. So please do not allow an outside advocacy organization to reduce this to a very simplistic slogan of housing versus anti-housing. UMB is not a law. It's an advocacy position. The Housing Accountability Act is the law, and your job is to apply that law to the actual facts. and evidence before you not to an outside group's definition of what pro-housing is supposed to mean. And you know, frankly, it's very strange to see a housing advocacy group take a position that feels so anti-people. So if being pro-housing means brushing aside whether the people who will actually live there and the neighbors around them can safely evacuate a wildfire, then something is very wrong with their reasoning. YIMBY is not pro-housing. They are just pro-units. Even the HAA language quoted in YIMBY's own letter recognizes that a specific adverse impact on public health or safety matters. The Planning Commission looked at this evidence and voted 5-0 to deny this project. Please uphold that decision, deny the appeal, and put public safety first. Thank you.

Thank you, Mona.

Good evening, Mayor and Councilman. I'm Sophia Cao, a long-time resident of Pierce Road. I support affordable housing. These five affordable housing units are central to the project's builder's remedy status and are cited as a benefit supporting approval. If the council relies on that benefit, it should ensure these homes are delivered through an enforceable process. This unit are four bedroom, approximately 2375 square foot detached hillside homes. A restricted sale price alone does not show whether ownership will remain sustainable for a qualifying low income household. Buyers must also pay taxes, insurance, which is very important in this high fire risk area, maintenance, utility, and HOA dues. Yet the posted material provide neither HOA budget nor a project-specific insurance estimate. Council should require disclosure on the assured total monthly housing cost and explain how it will be verified. CP-5 requires sales to qualify in low-income households and a 45-year restriction. But CP-4 requires only permit applications before the 13th building permit request, not completion or proportional occupancy with the market rate homes. Saratoga's newer BMR ordinance requires concurrent construction and proportional occupancy. Because this project predates that ordinance, please identify what enforceable condition provides equivalent protection. Before voting, please clarify who will verify by eligibility and administered selection, how total housing cost will be calculated, and the deadline for completing and occupying all five homes. Thank you.

Thank you, Sophia.

Next we have Sabrina Venskas-Nakil. And then I believe it's... Is it Bom? Baloo? Baloo?

Can you please just give me 10 seconds to get my notes up?

Certainly.

Thank you. I appreciate that. So my name's Sabrina Venskas. I'm a CEQA lawyer. I also do housing rights law. I represent tenants and groups that want to protect housing, protect tenants. I've been practicing for about 25 years of CEQA land use and housing rights. I reject the notion, and by the way, I represent Citizens for Responsible and Equitable Development, a nonprofit organization in this community. I reject the notion that the legislature intended the builder's remedy law to trump public health and safety. I do not think that one can interpret the HAA to actually say that. I believe that if that were the case, the HAA would not have a public safety exception. Now my friend here, who I respect as an attorney, I know he knows his stuff, and reasonable minds can disagree. But I would ask you to think about whether or not it makes rational and logical sense to say that the Subdivision Map Act findings are essentially moot because the HAA trumps the Subdivision Map Act. But that is what my friend would like you to believe. I don't think that the language of the HAA supports that kind of interpretation. If it did, the HAA would say the Subdivision Map Act is exempt. in HAA Builders' Remedy projects, it doesn't. One has to read the law in harmony with other laws that are not expressly exempt. So you have to read the Subdivision Map Act as requiring you to make the findings that are required in the Subdivision Map Act, and you cannot do so because the way that the staff report reads is that it doesn't even make the finding. It says, we do not make the finding Because of the... Wow, I'm already at the end. Jeez. I have a couple more things to say if you don't mind. Please. Please.

15 seconds. We don't do that.

Thank you. Well, I'll just end it here. If there ever was a time to reject... To reject a project and exercise your police powers, this is the time to do it. You approve this one, and you're going to have to approve all of them because you will have created a precedent, and you will have hit that first domino, and the rest of them go. Thank you. And I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Nikhil Balakrishnan, and I live at 21720 Villa Oaks Lane here in Saratoga. I'm asking you to uphold the Planning Commission's denial and to make findings that hold up on review. I want to be clear about who bears the impact. 25 households is what the project adds. The people who carry the risk are everyone already living along Pierce Road who receive no benefit from the project and absorb all of the added demand on the way out. Under CEQA, the baseline is existing conditions, so the question in front of you is not whether 25 families can evacuate. It is what happens to the neighborhood that is already there when those families join them on the same road. The record calls the second road an emergency vehicle access road. If it's being counted as evacuation capacity, the findings should say so plainly and should state whether it's gated, where it terminates. As I understand it, it returns to another stretch of Pierce Road feeding into Highway 9, which will already be overwhelmed with the households that live further up Highway 9. Second, the law, I have heard that the HAA leaves this council no choice, but government code section 65589.5D2 provides a health and safety pathway for denial and requires a specific adverse impact that is quantifiable. I would ask the city attorney to state on the record whether denial is legally unavailable or whether this is a judgment about litigation risk. Those are different things and the residents of the city deserve to know. And if the record lacks the quantified analysis that the statute requires, I ask that you continue this matter and direct staff to commission an independent health and safety and evacuation study in the city's own name on a defined timeline. I support well thought out housing that doesn't put existing residents at risk, especially for three low income and two below market rate units, which is not an acceptable benefit for the city while putting hundreds of families at risk. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mayor, and the council members for allowing me to talk. I'm not going to repeat everything that's happened here. I have a really very pragmatic, simple question. I hear clearly that if it's related to health and safety, you can deny this request. So I am totally puzzled because it's very clear. The data shows that it is impacting health and safety. At the same time, the city and the fire department is making exceptions which I just don't understand. There are so many exceptions made, including the number of units and also the setbacks. We're making accommodations on setbacks. I don't even get it. You have so many reasons you can use to deny this. And if you're worried about lawsuits, you should also consider what happens if there is a fire. You'll have hundreds of lawsuits against the city that the city approved knowingly that it affects the safety of the people of Saratoga. I have lived with my family in Saratoga, and I've passed through the Pierce Road for the last 38 years. And I don't know how many times that road gets blocked for one reason or the other. A tree falls down, there is a landslide, and so on and so forth. So it's not just even how many people can pass through there, whether it's even available. In fact, there was a fire up on the Mount Eden hills, and we were actually preparing to evacuate, and we were told that we can't go through Mount Eden because they had all the fire trucks there. So even the availability of the road is not guaranteed. And now if you add this many units, as many people have said, it's a slippery slope. Once you approve this, you'll approve a lot more, and you'll have a serious health and safety situation. I don't know how you can deny that. I really request the council to uphold the Planning Commission's denial of Masson Estates. Thank you.

Thank you, Bolo.

The last speaker slip I have is from Mahal Mahan.

A few things stick out from everything that we've been exposed to, everything we've heard. First is There is a constant assertion that the HAA, the job of this committee is just to approve, you know, obey the HAA and move on. And I've equally well heard that there is actually an exception to the HAA if there is a real fire and evacuation risk. And the EIR and the various documents that were referenced made statements about unmitigatable high risk of evacuation. So what the city council does if it actually overrules the planning commission's judgment and allows this project to go forward is to set aside the concern for the welfare of the citizens in a wildfire situation that are trying to evacuate the town in order to somehow be good boys under the state's HAA mandate. I think there is a misstatement and a misinterpretation that is being promulgated here that the HAA has no exceptions at all. You can see the fire department here made a bunch of exceptions in terms of 30 feet setback, a whole bunch of other considerations, and only evaluated water access and road front or something like that. It's like a sieve. It's full of holes in terms of allowing for this as a fire-safe development. So I ask that you not have fire and blood on your hands by overlooking the well-articulated, undocumented safety risks of this very bottlenecked piece of the hills that's also a high-fire risk area, and overrule the Planning Commission in order to just sort of make it easy for yourself. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, we'll go to our virtual...

Let's see if there's anyone else who'd like to speak before we move, because we're not going to come back to anybody in the chambers. Is there anyone else who'd like to come up and speak? Please come up and speak.

My name is Linda Liu. I did not think I would speak today. But after I heard all the things, and by the way, I live near the Pierce Road. I go out and in home every day through Pierce. So I was thinking, before you make a vote, first, I think the nearest fire is the LA. So I think you need to remember how much fire was there. I think everybody... Know that. And the fire is from the mountain. And then goes all the way. So I think it never will happen to us. Another thing is, if fire... What happened to the peers? Peers are too small. So before you approve anybody, I think you should just make a project, make peers better, or make another way. I think that will be good for our citizens, okay? As all Saratoga residents, we have to do something good for our citizens. our family and the kids, wherever. And don't rush into the judgment to approve anything before you make a road to be safe. And then you can do other things. also in the wildfire, and there is no way you can actually do anything. You put more people into those mountain, you actually create more accident.

That's what I think.

Okay, so please. Just think about if you are living in the mountain, if you have something happen to your family, what are you going to do? Please make sure the exit is very important. And then make an exit, then you can have more people. By the way, for the low-income family, I think on the flat area near the public station is more suitable for them.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Bye.

Okay, Brett. Oh, thank you.

Thank you to the city council members to give us a couple of minutes to speak. I had only a couple of questions. The 30-foot setback that was required in the very high-risk fire zone, why is that not being met? And what is the written specification which allows it to be instead interpreted as just the distance between the two homes? The written... Law says that it has to be 30 feet setback. What is the written record that allows it to be interpreted differently? I would like for the city to explain that. That has not been quite answered. The second is the 30 foot setback is not being met, as far as I understand, by the below market and the low income houses. How is it that as a city we decide that the lower income houses, whether it's called below market or low income, why they alone don't deserve the safety requirements of the 30-foot setback? Those are my two questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Tipu Perkayastha. I live on Surrey Lane. I've been living here for 26 years. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak. For most of this year, I've been on crutches for a variety of reasons. So suddenly this discussion about evacuation and egress make a lot of sense to me for completely different reasons than I was here last year making comments on a similar project on our road. I live much further down on Surrey Lane, on Pierce, than the Masan project. However, the fact that getting out and getting around, and especially for people with disabilities, and hopefully next year I'm going to be all good again, But I know there are people on more permanent and worse situations than I am. And I just want to make sure that we are thinking of them, thinking of how it impacts everybody, and not just people who are able to get in a car and drive away, which, sadly, I'm not able to for a few months. Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, we'll move to our remote speakers.

If anybody else wants to speak, please come down forward so we can get to the other folks.

All right, is it on?

Yep.

All right, I'm going to be very brief, and I'm just going to talk about math, some very, very basic math that any lawyer could easily explain to any jury. The math is this one. So we are talking about not just Mason Estates. We're talking about seven other developments on Pierce Road. If you do some basic math, we're talking about 450 homes, families of four. If I do the math correctly, we are talking about 1,800 people, an additional 1,800 people living on Pierce Street and using Pierce Road on a daily basis. I advise you all to drive Pierce Road. It is narrow and surrounded by flammable oaks. That's all I'm going to say. 1,800 people more that would need to be evacuated. And again, we're not talking about just Mason estate. It might be defensible on its own, but when you look across all seven projects that are going to be approved if this one gets approved, this is you need to think about our safety and think how you will be defending yourselves if the city council in the future has to defend themselves against the fact that you will have jeopardized the safety of the residents living on Pierce Road. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, Brett, I think we're... Cool for online.

OK, first is Rafiq. It's your turn to speak.

OK, great. Can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Okay, good evening. My name is Rafiq Bawa. I live on Mount Eden Road. And I'm here to say something simple, which is this city can fight this. Other cities have, and I don't believe we've truly tried. You know, for months we've been told what Saratoga cannot do. Our hands are tied. The state won't let us. Every conversation starts from from this surrender. But that isn't what's happening elsewhere in California. Communities up and down the state have pushed back on projects exactly like this one, and they've won. Some used the public safety exception, the same one available to you tonight. And by the way, I still haven't heard a valid, clearly articulated argument as to why our current written standards, the state fire safety road rules, our fire code, our own safety plan, can't be considered valid. written objective standards in place prior to the application. I haven't heard that argument being made or why we're not fighting that that is a valid argument. Other cities went straight to their legislators and got themselves written out of these rules entirely. Santa Barbara did that in a single session. One neighborhood, one senator signed into law. They didn't win because their situation was better than ours. Ours is worse. They won because their cities decided to fight. You know, I've also heard the argument that if the city doesn't approve this project, there's a risk that builders' remedy opportunities could open up again. The state could decertify our housing element. Has that risk been truly quantified? Have we thought about whether that might be worth letting happen to fight this? You know, We've been told by the city that it can push back when there are objective written health and safety standards on the books. So fine, adopt them now, this month. That will protect us if we're faced with another builder's remedy situation in the future because we fought this one. That's just one idea from one resident, but I just want to see our city working aggressively on this approach. I understand there's risk in fighting, but I want you to weigh it honestly against the risk of not fighting. If we fight and we lose, we face litigation. That's money. It's painful. But if the city doesn't fight, we get this project and the next one and the next one on a road you already know is unsafe.

Thank you, Rafiq.

Thank you.

Next is Tylee.

Hi, I'm Tylee Holden, and I live on Mount Eden, right directly under Mount Eden Winery, and often hear the concerts from Mount Winery. We moved here a year ago with our four kids and our two dogs, and we're very active in the community. And we quickly found out that we have this development that's been proposed. 22-200 has a development right next door to us, and Mount Eden has one right across the street located on the east side of Mount Eden Road between Villa Oaks Lane and Vista Regina. It's very terrifying to know that there are three developments that are sitting within a couple hundred feet of our house that could impact our ability to get out. I don't know if you've ever been to the Mountain Winery concerts. They're great until you hit the traffic. If you're ever on Mount Eden Road and you're trying to turn onto Pierce to leave or exit the community, you could be sitting there for 20 minutes waiting for a break in the traffic as people are trying to get off of Pierce Street. You could be on Pierce for 30 minutes waiting at the light at Saratoga Sunnyvale trying to get back onto the freeway, and this is without a flame behind you. The traffic on Pierce Road that has come from this property is immense, and it impacts the local community. Another thing that I want to state is that the applicant also mentioned that they have no brush management and no evacuation plan. However, they encourage and invite people to their venue all the time. This puts the local community already at risk. Why would we trust this applicant knowing that this is already a risky situation that he's been involving the community in, and now he wants to further develop on this property for his own personal gains? I didn't know about the hotel. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. That's definitely something I need to be more engaged in as well, as I'm sure there's no benefit to low-income housing there. I know that that might be in Santa Clara County, but of course it still impacts your residents. So I just hope that you really think through the precedent that you'll be setting, not only with this development and the other developments, and the risk that you're already putting on your local residents with the fire evacuation issues on Pierce. Thank you.

Thank you, Tylee.

Next is Veena.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Dina, and good evening, council members. I would request that you divide this project. We live on Deer Trail Court on Mount Eden Road, and I think this is a very dangerous idea to approve anything like this and then have this cascading effect of having other projects using this as precedent. Pierce Road is a single-lane road going up and down, one lane up and one lane down, windy, lots of curves and bends and lots of trees on the side. And it looks like the fire department has bent a lot of rules, has been very flexible in order to accommodate this project. And this whole thing about it being some sort of an advantage for housing and providing housing and adding all these homes for people who can't have homes elsewhere. In the end, they're all going to be with us in a more risky situation while the builder makes his money and walks away. It just becomes more and more dangerous as years go by and congestion builds up on these roads. You know, this road even gets very congested, like some other people said. When mountain mining has consoles, it just gets clogged up and it takes a long time to go one way or the other. And I can just imagine there's a fire truck trying to come up or an emergency vehicle trying to go down or whatever, and cars are stuck. There's no way even to exit that road and let a fire truck pass in that situation. So... It's just extremely dangerous, and it's just a cumulative effect of the principle that's been set that makes me think that this is a very important vote in order for us not to have to fight a losing battle in the future if this gets approved. So I appreciate it if you could consider the residents and our safety and make your decision. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is an iPhone.

Hi, this is Pradeep. I live on Pierce Road. And I would like to echo several of the speakers, I mean, the commenters' ideas, specifically Rafiq's and the lawyer's, and the lady with the mat, putting In total, 1,800 more people on Pierce. Doesn't make any sense. It's dangerous. Many places on Pierce Road, if you go up and down Pierce Road, are literally touching the road. If there's a fire, somebody hits the site, soil is going to come in, no one can get out. If a fire engine is trying to come in, it's going to block people because it's going to push into the road and people can't drive by. Everyone who signs off on this is basically exposing the city to liability because we are signing off on this. The guys who are coming up with the traffic projections who haven't done a proper job, they are also exposing us to this risk. The firemen who are basically being very relaxed in looking at everything are also creating more risk on all the existing people who live there. It doesn't make any sense to add more people to an already dangerous road. I highly recommend we take the two ideas to basically bypass and stop this due to safety. Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no other speakers.

Okay. Then we will close the public comment period and bring it back to council. I see that it's quarter to 11, I think. We would normally take a break in about 15 minutes. Do you want to take a quick one now, or shall we go forward? Oh, we got the appellant. Yes, I'm sorry. Gosh, I'm losing it here. So, yeah, please, the appellant can come back up. I'm so sorry.

Good evening, Mayor Page and members of the City Council. My name is Brian Winter, and I'm the land use and CEQA attorney on behalf of the applicant. I am going to try to simplify the two things that you're wrestling with tonight as best I can. Just briefly, I've been doing this also for about 25 years. I've also served as a city attorney. I've been involved in the drafting of SB 330 and numerous others of the state housing laws, including many of the recent amendments to the HAA going back over the last eight or ten years. If you go back to the HA's inception in 1982, it was originally a one paragraph statute that didn't say very much, and it's been amended 25, 26 times at this point, always in the direction of strengthening the law. If you read the statute carefully, you can see that the legislature very much recognizes that the lack of housing in California and the denial of housing projects for improper reasons is actually a significant negative effect on the environment. The HA says that itself if you read it carefully. The HAA's sole substantive reference to CEQA is in subsection E, and it acknowledges that development projects must comply with CEQA, whatever a given project requires. If you look at CEQA, so you have the HAA and CEQA, the two major laws you're wrestling with tonight. If you look at CEQA in section 21000G, CEQA recognizes the need to provide housing for every Californian. If you look at Section 21004 of the Public Resources Code and 15040 of the CEQA guidelines, those sections explain very clearly that CEQA is not an independent source of legal authority. In fact, CEQA is subject to the authority set forth in other laws, such as the Housing Accountability Act. CEQA does not operate in a vacuum, and nothing in CEQA or anywhere else says that CEQA trumps the Housing Accountability Act. If you go back and look at the Housing Accountability Act, including recent amendments to the HAA, the legislature has added the statewide policy that public agencies are required to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest, approval, and provision of housing. They've also added a statement in there that the circumstances that give rise to a specific adverse impact, quote, arise infrequently. The legislature knows what they're doing. They're aware of the broader universe in California and other events that happen. They are still putting a heavy hand on the scale in favor of housing. The HAA also establishes, and this has been interpreted in various cases, the only basis to say no to a housing development project. The only way to do it is by making the HAA's specific adverse impact findings. Those findings cannot be made here, and they cannot be made with the passage of any amount of time. The city attorney, I believe, made that clear at the planning commission meeting, and you're welcome to ask him to agree with me or not on that tonight. But in order to make a specific adverse impact finding, there has to have been a written document that was, in effect, as of the date the project application was deemed complete, against which, when you look at the project, you would conclude it would have a significant, direct, quantifiable, and unavoidable impact. And it has to be supported by a preponderance of the evidence in the record, not substantial evidence. So it's a higher standard. There is no document. Here, there was no document in effect as of the date this application is incomplete. There isn't one today against which those findings can be made. But the simple fact is this project cannot be disapproved. The findings can't be made. And I will also note that you've heard a couple of times the mention that this project sets a precedent or would set a precedent for you. There is no such thing as land use precedent in California. or anywhere else in this country. There's no case establishing that when a public agency takes an action on a given development project, it must take that action on every other project. Every project stands on its own. We stand on our own. We've worked very hard to make this a great project to address everything that we can possibly address to make it a good project for the community, and we have met every requirement, and I do respectfully ask that you grant our appeal and allow this project to proceed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You've got another minute. Anything you want to, Bill, anybody want to say?

Only if there's any questions, Chuck.

Does the council have any questions? No?

Thank you.

Okay. All right, council, do we have questions of staff? I know a bunch of questions have been raised, and I think we probably want to ask them. Shall we do it now and take a break after we're done with that? Would that be okay? All right, let's go forward.

I need a break, but...

Okay. Yan, go ahead.

I just want to thank everyone for speaking out tonight. I do have a question. This is probably for our legal counsel. Does the city have any legal basis to deny this project under the Builders' Remedies provisions of the HAA? Specifically, is there any objective written health or safety standard that this project fails to meet that would provide us a lawful basis for denial?

There is not any. objective health and safety standard that meets the requirements of the builder's remedy that this project isn't consistent with. So there's no standard that could form the basis of a denial under the builder's remedy provisions of the HAA.

Okay. Can I just ask a few more? Yep. So people talk about, you know, very concerned about the significant and unavoidable wildfire impact, can any new development in this high fire hazard hillside area would not result in a significant and unavoidable wildfire evacuation impact?

I can't answer that question. Generally, I'm not a person who does evacuation impact analysis, so that's not in my expertise. And more so, I can't answer questions about other projects. We know how the impact analysis worked for this project. We haven't seen the analysis or review of any other projects in the very high severity fire zone.

So let's say if just the nine units, if they were going to build just nine units, would they still create the significant and avoidable wildfire impact?

Again, we haven't done that analysis. I think that's right. Did we do the analysis? No, we haven't done it. We had one alternative in the EIR that included a nine-unit version of the project. We didn't do the quantitative analysis of evacuation time. CEQA doesn't require us to analyze the alternative at that level of detail. So I don't know that answer for certain. What I can say is that the standard of significance that we used in the EIR was extremely conservative, and we determined that Any addition to evacuation time of any size would be a significant impact. So I can't run the numbers on a nine-unit project, but we do know that if it added anything to evacuation time, then it would be considered significant under the standards we used in this EIR.

So you're saying just adding an ADU will create that kind of impact?

I don't know the answer to that. That is a matter of analysis that we haven't done.

Okay. Can you, I mean someone just mentioned about the Santa Barbara lawsuit. Can you comment on that? Do we know what the result, or any lawsuit?

I don't know specifically what that commenter was talking about. I do know that there was a controversial project approved in Santa Barbara Hillside in a similar fire zone that eventually was subject to legislation that I believe exempted it from the Builder's Remedy or at least allowed consideration of fire impacts within the Builder's Remedy. That was a specific statute that was adopted by the legislature, not approved. directly aimed at this project, but that covered this project and was inspired by it.

So that's how... Richard may have a little bit more detail to talk about this.

This law received a fair amount of press. I believe it was the Senate president, Pro Tem, used her power to get this law through, and it exempted. It was a law that said, for projects in cities and counties with a population bigger than this and smaller than this, and it turned out that the only place it applied was for this project near the Santa Barbara Mission. And the legislature did pass that law. And there has been litigation about it. I don't know where that all stands. But your council has met with our legislators on a number of occasions. You've asked them to work with these laws. And you have been with even the most minor change. At one point, you asked them, when allocating the RHNA, to consider wildfire risk. You said, we just want ABAC when they're allocating RHNA to treat wildfire the same as flooding, was your proposal. And your legislative representative said, no, we do not want to propose legislation that would allow consideration of fire risk in allocating RHNA. You've made the effort, that's where it's been, and that's where it stands.

And I note that the fact that they required legislation to get out of the Builder's Remedy suggests that without that legislation, they would have been subject to the Builder's Remedy in precisely the way this project is.

I just want to ask maybe one last one. What will be the legal consequences if the city council denies this project tonight?

Well, that's more up to the applicant than to me. But I think that a lawsuit is likely. And I have stated what I believe the law tells us we need to do. And that position would be the subject of that lawsuit. telling the court that we did not do what the law tells us to do. I think in addition to that, there would be additional scrutiny from HCD, which pays some attention to what we're doing in Saratoga. I think they would be paying closer attention to what we'd be doing in Saratoga. There's a possibility of lawsuits from other groups. Housing rights groups have the right to bring a lawsuit similar to the applicant's. And all of those lawsuits would be likely to, if successful, to include attorney's fees awards in which the city would end up paying for those fees.

Thank you.

OK. Anybody else?

Tina.

I have a few questions I was jotting down as residents were raising them, but I'm going to follow up with where, Gabe, you were responding to Jan. Sure.

The question is for Gabe and Richard, whoever wants to answer.

I think I heard what the answer is, but I want to ask you very specifically, can Saratoga use the existing evacuation capacity problem, as outlined in the Farron Pierce report, that exists on Pierce Road currently, as the basis for denying Masona Estates, when given what I heard from Bill Hirschman, Masona Estates project applicant, that That project-specific evacuation analysis shows either 0.4 or 0.9, depending on you include or not include mountain winery, 0.4 or 0.9 minute increase in evacuation time.

We cannot, not because of the size of the impact or anything, but because we do not, the city does not have a specific written standard that the project is inconsistent with concerning that evacuation time. There's no rule that we have that says this amount of evacuation time is too much or something of that sort.

I see. What about... And I think Manoj, and thank you so much to each one of you who has, I'm talking about the residents who have come here today and spoken and expressed your concerns. I think Manoj brought up the point about the safety element. You were quoting things. So I know, Gabe, you have recently once again read the safety element. Is the one that Manoj mentioned or anything else you have seen that could be considered an objective standard?

When I reread the safety element, the standards or the policies of the safety element are not the sort of objective standards that would create a health and safety standard that we could use to deny the project under the Housing Accountability Act. The standard that the speaker mentioned, if I recall, said that there has to be an effective evacuation plan. Effective is not an objective standard. It requires the application of judgment, and that, under the law's definition, is not an objective standard.

That would be something very specific, quantifiable.

That would be objective. Quantification is the easiest route to being an objective standard. There might be other ways to do it. The word effective is not.

Okay. And we don't have anything like that today. We do not. There has been a question brought up by multiple residents based on the response from County Fire folks that exceptions have been made. for either the 30-foot setback or the grade, the slope around the access-wise around Tollgate area or something, I mean, which is not abutting this, but both those two exceptions to in the process of assessing this project. What's your comment on that? Is that how can we, the council, say, those exceptions are okay. Help us walk through that.

Those exceptions are allowed under law and are given to the county fire department to determine whether making the exception is warranted. And they have made that determination in those two cases that the exception is warranted. So the project is consistent with those fire standards. The standards include the exception process. They've

got the exception so they're consistent with the standard so they don't so those standards then don't form basis of denial because the project meets them subject to the exceptions so we have the county fire approval correct based on those exceptions correct so as far as we the city are concerned we have that approval so we are not the ones making that exception exactly if if a resident feels strongly then that responsibility lies with county fire.

Correct.

Okay. Bill mentioned non-buildable easement, and I believe he also mentioned, it was a couple of hours ago, I think he said you can't even build an ADU. How valid would that be? It's a non-buildable easement, again, talking of the 30-foot setback between, or distance between structures. Is that a legal position? Because in my time, 10 years planning commission, six years on council, I've lost track of how many times the state has mandated reducing the setbacks for ADUs. Non-buildable easement.

Yes. I think that an easement is a limitation on property rights and any reduction in setbacks probably, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, we need to do the analysis, but I think that the easement would still not be buildable regardless of setback requirements.

Richard?

Gabe is much more familiar with the details. But I think we will work to make sure the documents do everything we can do so that they operate as intended. But as you noted in your initial question, when the state legislature decides to say that general plans, which when I went to law school were called the Constitution of Development, when they say that the Constitution doesn't apply, I can't say that the legislature won't pass a law that says a restriction we have prepared in connection with the plan won't apply. But I can say that we will work to make these documents do what they intended under the law as it stands today.

Thank you. One clarification for members of the public. They talked about, I think a couple of persons spoke about the affordable requirements. I think Sophia raised that issue first. Sophia Kao, how do you mandate, how do you ensure that stays? Can you just quickly in two sentences explain that, how that is taken care of?

In two sentences, when the final map for this project comes back, we will include as part of the final map package agreements, covenants that apply to the lots where the affordable units are that require that they meet the affordability standards.

And that stays with the land?

Correct. That stays with the land. There's a term that the length of that covenant, the years of that covenant, is set in the builder's remedy law, and it will stay with the land for that term.

Okay, and there's nothing. I know that. I know Sophia is still here and somebody else raised that issue.

So the answer is it becomes enforceable through an agreement that we apply to the land at the time of the final approval.

Okay, thank you. Hopefully the last question. There may be one more. Multiple people have brought up the slippery slope, the cumulative builders' remedy projects, and development in the hills. Can you just walk us through that yet again? What is it in front of us tonight?

This project is in front of you tonight. This is the only project that you're deciding on, and this is the project that the legal requirements of the HAA that we've discussed apply to this project in that we don't have a ground to deny this project. to the extent that there is no precedent, there is no ongoing effect of this approval on the next approval or the one after that. The state law will still apply to those. But we're deciding on this one.

Can I take into my consideration Is it appropriate for me to take into my consideration that there are more builders' remedy projects in the health sites and that cumulative impact should be considered in my argument?

The Housing Accountability Act does not include that consideration as one of the reasons we're allowed to deny this project.

Okay. Thank you. Richard, is there any other high-level question that residents may have asked that we have not yet covered? I just wanted to say that if I missed something or one of us missed something. I know Jan asked quite a few questions.

No, I mean, I think this is a very troubling set of laws that we have to operate under, but I think Gabe has outlined that law.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks. Bilal? Okay. Cookie, anything? I have one question, Gabe. I just want to go back to the evacuation time and the objective standard, and you said that effective is not objective. I completely understand that. Does any city have a standard like this that you know of?

Not that I know of. We have done some preliminary work to look at that and not found an evacuation time standard in California.

I mean, I don't know where it would go anyway. It's like, OK, 10 seconds is OK, but 20 is not good. I don't want anybody to get stuck, nor does anyone else. And then I guess I do have one question for the appellant. We heard a speaker talk about, they said that there was no brush management or evacuation plan. I could have sworn I heard something, Bill, that the HOA was going to manage vegetation and manage brush.

I'm sorry, I was being asked a question.

One of the speakers said, said that they didn't hear that there was any plan to manage brush or have an evacuation plan. I could have sworn I heard that the HOA was going to do some things to keep it a firewise community.

I heard two different things. One was the project, but then I heard someone else say that we had never had a plan at the Mountain Winery for the last 27 years.

Okay, maybe you could elaborate on both.

So to answer the first one, Carol's here, which is one of the reasons we met her. Because we've had a plan for 15 years? Yeah. 15 years? We were one of the first people to do a fire clearing area at the winery. The fire safety council came to us, and we were one of the first experimental groups. We have our own fire system at the mountain winery, so I kind of take pride in the fact that we manage that property very, very well. So there is a plan. To respond to your second question, there will be conditions imposed through this process that will require us to build within our CC&Rs, as the city attorney has pointed out, they will be reviewed. The whole set of CC&Rs will be reviewed before the map is filed, which includes the responsibility to maintain in the future all these various... So it will be policed... through the HOA, but there's also a requirement. It's not a direct analogy, but it's sort of like weed abatement. We're going to be required to have a third party inspect that on a regular basis to make sure that the HOA is hitting those standards.

Okay, yeah, if you're doing the gold standard for IBHS. Correct. Okay, I thought that I heard that, and I just wanted to clear it up. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, no other questions? Okay, then we'll close the conversation here and bring it back to council after we have a... Are we going to keep going? At least a couple people need to have a little break. So we'll take seven minutes, please.

You can also be my food.

Here we go.

All right. Thank you for coming back promptly. Okay, so we're bringing this back to council for comments and wherever else it goes. Do we have a volunteer? Yes. Cookie.

Thank you. Thank you to staff and to everyone who came out tonight to have their voices heard. Approving this project is required under the Builder's Remedy provisions of the Housing Accountability Act. In considering the project, the specific benefits outweigh the risks of its potential adverse impacts. There are real and meaningful benefits to this project. And a full list is included in the meeting documents, for example. Approval allows the city to comply with the law and protects the city from potential liability associated with noncompliance. The project provides affordable housing, helping provide much-needed housing while also helping the city meet its RENA obligations. The project aligns with California's housing production goals and the state's broader efforts to increase the housing supply. The project provides improvements to Pierce Road. Again, thank you to everyone who participated in this discussion and shared their perspectives. For the reasons stated, my vote is to follow the law. I support staff's recommendation to approve the project. Thanks.

Thank you. Anybody else? Bilal? Tina, you want to? All right, I'll jump ahead.

I'm not ready, but I'll go for it. A couple of perspectives on this. To Glenn's point, we'll share how it went, but also give a sense of a lot of my thinking and approach to this. IN AGREEMENT WHERE PER THE HAA WE HAVE TO APPROVE THIS, RIGHT? THAT IS A CONSIDERATION HERE. AND I DO THINK BY NOT FOLLOWING THE STATE LAW, RIGHT, LIKE WE AS A CITY, AS A COUNCIL ARE ELECTED TO HELP WRITE THE TOWN'S ORDINANCES FOR WHAT WE WANT TO SEE AND DO HERE, BUT WE ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. WHICH DO SUPERSEDE A LOT OF WHAT WE WANT TO DO HERE. I WOULD SAY THERE HAVE BEEN ANY NUMBER OF RULES AND LAWS THAT HAVE BEEN PASSED IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS THAT DO CHALLENGE THE RATIONAL MIND ON MULTIPLE LEVELS. THIS IS A PROJECT THAT I THINK WE AS A COUNCIL AND CITY AS WELL AS SEVERAL OTHERS HAVE have been paying attention to just given the location, given the hazard zones from a fire safety perspective and what that all means. I'll give you a sense of some of the things that do give me comfort and also some of the considerations and how I'm thinking about this. I do appreciate we have approval from County Fire. They are the experts on this. They do a tremendous amount of work on this to make sure that anything that is built does have the right amount of fire access and requisite water resources to put out any kind of fire. Anytime you're considering building in a very high fire hazard, even a moderate zone, I think you have to take it very seriously. Someone mentioned don't take the easy and convenient route. There is nothing easy and convenient about this. I don't think any of us take this lightly, even if we are all voting in favor of it or against it, whatever it is. I know each member of this council takes what we do up here very seriously and the health and safety of that. But part of that's also related to taking a look at the broader legal picture and what the implications that has for us as a city if we choose to not follow a law. There are financial implications that could actually quite cripple us. There are significant housing implications as well, because we could potentially lose more control, which is why we're in this position in the first place. I do think the improvements on Pierce Road are material. We've identified five roadways in the hillsides over the last couple of years. Many thanks to the Public Works team. They're doing everything they can to keep it afloat. We do not have the funding today to go and fix all of those, right? We need at least $15 million, if not significantly more. We've requested grants from federal and state legislatures to legislators to see if they can help us get there. And this actually helps us get there in a significant way on one of those five areas. And so that, to me, is quite material because we're taking sort of like Band-Aid-type measures and have really gotten lucky. I do think there are multiple risks to consider here. And so, for example, wildfire is one risk, but earthquake risk is another, thinking about what if a road collapses, right? That's what I mean by none of this is easy or convenient. We've been taking a very serious look at this as a council for a number of years in terms of what are the overall disasters that we have to potentially plan for, many of which are just outside of our control, right? We can't control literally where lightning is going to strike. And I think all of us have been, you know, I remember when there were orange skies six years ago. It was terrifying, right? When we all do an evacuation, we didn't have to evacuate. We had to be ready. I do think it's a nice development for Saratoga. It's a good project. I think it is well done. It could have been 300 units. It could have been 500 units. But I think you're choosing 25 units within that context. I think that is more reasonable than what we've seen other folks do, not just in Saratoga, but in the broader state of California. I've been fortunate enough to meet with residents, to meet with Bill, to meet with anyone who's really reached out to have a conversation. Always want to be in listening mode. I do agree that legislation is a potential solution here. But again, to Richard's point, I just did some quick reading on this in our break, is that element of this was a specific local legislator that was able to get that through the state. I think that is a viable solution, but it requires a pretty major investment. And a lot of things have to come together. And to be clear, we've all had this conversation with our own legislators about, hey, what can we do here? Because we do think there is a significant risk in our hillsides. The last thing I'll say is if you're here and you're concerned about this, I hope you are meeting with your neighborhood around starting a Firewise community because there are many things that we can be doing. I think this is just one neighborhood we're talking about, but given all the things that have been mentioned from a legal perspective, especially when it comes to the housing accountability to the HAA, when it comes to provisions of the builder's remedy, and also the fact that I think this is a decent development for the area, I will be voting in favor of it. Thank you.

Yan? Once again, I want to thank everyone for taking your time to write to us and speaking with us on this project. I know how much concern this project has raised, particularly regarding file safety and emergency evacuation. I have heard you. I understand those concerns. Public safety has always been our city's top priority. But we also have to consider the legal constraints before us. This project qualifies for the builder's remedy under the HAA. As we all have heard, we have no legal base to deny this project. THIS PROJECT WOULD PROVIDE 25 HOUSING UNITS INCLUDING FIVE AFFORDABLE UNITS, HELP US MEET OUR CITY'S RENA OBLIGATIONS. THIS PROJECT ALSO DEDICATED A PUBLIC TRAIL AND ALSO INCLUDED A SITE SPECIFIC WILDFIRE PROTECTION PLAN AND ALSO help us. I think it's in there's a provision that also do improvements to the to Pierce Road and contribution towards the retaining wall. But I do want to make it clear that proving this project does not mean we dismiss the fire and evacuation concerns raised by our residents. I share those concerns and But as elected officials, we have responsibilities to follow the law, even when the choices are difficult. Given the legal and the financial risks of denying a project that we do not have a lawful basis to deny, I believe Approval is a responsible choice that we can make today. So I will be voting to approve this appeal as proposed.

Thank you. Tina?

I want to start by thanking each one of you who came here tonight, spoke, those who have reached out earlier and spoken with me. I truly hear your concerns. Your concerns about wildfire, evacuation, emergency access are all serious, and I have listened to them carefully. Those of you who know me know that I don't make difficult decisions easily. I think them through, and this is one of the fairly tough decisions that I've had to make sitting on this side. My responsibility is for the public safety. My responsibility is also for the whole city of Saratoga. I have no choice but to follow the oath of office I took which is to uphold the laws of the state of California. I have to balance the needs of all the sides, considering all the implications, the financial as well as the others. You know, this goes against everything that I hold dear for Saratoga. I was the mayor who made sure we, the city, did our job on time to submit the housing element. We submitted it on time. Most of you have no idea what I faced from residents who are not in the hillsides because that council did not propose a single opportunity site in the hillsides. The concerns were wildfire. I do take it seriously. It was the state, HCD, that took 24 months to approve our housing element with zero change in opportunity sites. Those builder remedy projects happened not because the city was not responsible. It is very difficult for me to say This doesn't meet the general plan, but I have to say yes. It's very, very difficult. I understand the challenges that the city has legally, financially. I have to consider the applicant. I have to think of all the neighborhoods, all of you who have come here to speak and those who have reached out. As has been said, the proposal does provide improvements on Pierce Road, some critical improvements for the landslide area. It's very easy to... Actually, no. It's very difficult to... For me to be able to weigh the benefits on the risks, I actually cannot. I will only say I have to comply with the law. The builder's remedy has been imposed on us, not by somebody sitting in this room, but by our state legislators. Have we tried to reach out? I think everybody has said starting with our city attorney. We have reached out to the state legislators multiple times. Do we have objective design standards currently? No. Do we need them? Yes. That is why I asked staff a couple of months ago to bring us a report to consider an ordinance for the wildland urban interface area so that we can set a clear objective threshold so that if there is an increased evacuation in a situation which we find unacceptable impact, What are those standards so that something like this does not happen again? As the mayor asked earlier, is there a city in the state that has those? None. So I want to reassure you, it is not that we have ignored anything. It is the endless list of state laws that have been coming at us. I have spoken with our colleagues in other cities. I have discussed this. At Cities Association, I am working with other cities to work on this. In fact, several years ago, Saratoga did support a statewide ballot initiative to limit state control. It did not go too far. So I know this is not the outcome any of you residents who have come here, you were hoping for. And I know how deeply it matters to you. It is not a decision I am making lightly. But I have reached this decision based on what I believe. And I understand the way the law is written and as has been presented before us tonight. So I will be supporting. the appeal which is in favor of the project as presented.

Thank you. I think it's all been said. I'm going to repeat a few things and maybe bring up one thing. Before I do, I just want to say that prior to this meeting, I have had conversations with both the president of CRED and with the developer. just to make it full disclosure, because I figure the more I learn, the better off I am. THERE ARE SOME BENEFITS TO THIS PROJECT, CERTAINLY NOT THE ONES THAT WE WANT. I DON'T KNOW HOW A COUNCIL COULD SIT UP HERE AND TRY TO DEFINE AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD FOR EVACUATION TIME INCREASES. AS I SAID BEFORE, YOU WOULD BE HARD PRESSED TO SAY, OH, 25 SECONDS IS OKAY, SO THAT'S ONLY THREE HOMES THAT WOULDN'T GET OUT, AND 50 SECONDS IS NO GOOD. I DON'T THINK WE WOULD WANT 10 SECONDS. WE WOULDN'T WANT ONE SECOND. We want to make it better than it is. And this project does a little bit of that. The Pierce Road will be widened in front of the whole frontage of this property or of the project area. I think that's really important. The land movement that has been happening on Pierce Road is going to be fixed. That's a good thing. That helps to protect us from other closures because of other reasons, including fire. But at the end of the day, I swore this oath. And I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the state of California, no matter how I don't like the laws that are included in it. But I have to do that. And I'm not doing it in lieu of risk or adversity to Saratoga residents. I think that everyone that I've spoken to, everyone that's come forward tonight, I feel your pain. It irks me that I have to make this decision, but I do. And I think that ultimately we will find that we will gather some really great neighbors who have hardened homes, which we've done another study that says for every home that gets hardened, three homes don't burn. Well, we've got 25 of them that are hardened. So there's an area that could very well slow down fire and actually protect more of us. So we may find that there's some benefits to this. I'm especially happy that we've got a zone zero. I mean, we put into our code an ember-free zone because zone zero hadn't been defined. and I'm so happy that voluntarily you all chose to do that. I think that's tremendous, and I think that it's going to be beneficial to us all, even if we don't see it. But I also will support the staff recommendation, which, by the way, they did have a discussion with HCD, our state, earlier this week, and the state said, we support the staff recommendation. Which is, to me, that's kind of a sideways way of saying don't do anything other than that. Because the worst thing would be that Builder's Remedy could come back and 22 more projects come into Saratoga in places that aren't appropriate. So I will be supporting the staff recommendation. And again, I thank everyone for coming out. AND LET'S ALL CONTINUE TO WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE OUR HILLSIDE SAFER. LET'S BUILD FIREWISE COMMUNITIES AND IF WE EVER GET TO THE POINT WHERE A CLIMATE RESILIENCE DISTRICT MAKES SENSE FOR THIS CITY, I'D LOVE TO SEE IT HAPPEN. THANK YOU. SO NOW WE'RE LOOKING FOR A MOTION.

I'LL MOVE TO APPROVE THE APPEAL OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION DECISION OF APCC 26-3.

OKAY. DO WE HAVE A SECOND?

ADOPT ALL RESOLUTIONS BECAUSE THERE ARE MULTIPLE. ADOPT ALL RESOLUTIONS AS RECOMMENDED.

AS RECOMMENDED BY STAFF. BEAUTIFUL. AND A SECOND.

I SECOND.

AND WE HAVE A SECOND.

I'M SORRY. IT WAS A SECOND BY COUNCILMEMBER FITZSIMMONS. THANK YOU.

OKAY. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR, PLEASE SAY AYE. AYE. ANY OPPOSED? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all very much. Okay, so now we go to general business item number one, which is the purchase of electrical equipment for the Warner Hutton House and the Joan Pisani Community Center to support facility electrification. Do we have a staff report?

Would any of the council members be open to us deferring some of these items the next time, or do you want to keep going? I know some people have early morning flights. Yeah, it's fine. Do you think we can?

I think we can, I think we only got, I think we can, we'll get through them quick. Okay, all right. Just wanted to, all right.

Good evening, Mayor Page.

Oh, make sure, Francisco, that it's turned on.

My name is Francisco Alvarez, and I am the Facilities Maintenance Manager TONIGHT, STAFF IS ASKING THE COUNCIL TO APPROVE $95,100, THIS AMOUNT DOESN'T INCLUDE THE SALES TAX, TO PURCHASE NEW ELECTRICAL HEATING AND COOLING EQUIPMENT FROM CH MECHANICAL FOR THE ONE HUNDRED HOUSE COMMUNITY CENTER. In 2025, the city received 493,000 grand from Silicon Valley Clean Energy to transition existing gas electric HVAC equipment with new electric HVAC heat pumps. This project supports the city climate action plan and will reduce the city's reliance on natural gas. At the 100th house, we will replace the existing gas electric HVAC equipment with a new electric HVAC heat pump. AT THE COMMUNITY CENTER, WE REPLACE EIGHT GAS ELECTRIC UNITS WITH NEW ELECTRIC HEAT BAMPS. MOST OF THESE EQUIPMENT SYSTEMS ARE NEARING THE END OF THEIR USEFUL LIFE. THE GRANT PROVIDES AN OPPORTUNITY TO REPLACE THE EQUIPMENT WHILE REDUCING THE OVERALL COST TO THE CITY. TO LOWER THE TOTAL PROJECT COST, CITY STAFF WILL PURCHASE THE EQUIPMENT DIRECTLY AND CONDUCT A SEPARATE COMPETITIVE BID FOR THE INSTALLATION WORK. THE CIVIC CENTER THEATER HIDDEN SYSTEM IS ALSO INCLUDING THE OVERALL LITERATRIFICATION PROJECT. HOWEVER, BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS MORE COMPLEX, STAFF WILL EVALUATE DESIGN AND ENGINEERING OPTIONS AND WILL RETURN TO THE CITY COUNCIL WITH A SEPARATE PROPOSAL. IF APPROVED TONIGHT, STAFF PLANS TO PURCHASE THE EQUIPMENT IN OCTOBER. WE DELIVER DELIVERED AND ANTICIPATED IN DECEMBER. CONSTRUCTION IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN NEXT YEAR. STAFF RECOMMEND THAT THE CITY COUNCIL APPROVE THE PURCHASE OF THE EQUIPMENT FROM C.H. MECHANICAL IN THE AMOUNT OF $95,100. AGAIN, THIS AMOUNT DOES NOT INCLUDE THE SALE TAX. THANK YOU. AND I'M AVAILABLE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

DO WE HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? I just have one question. I know this wasn't in our budget, so where's the money come from? I thought we usually got a report that showed what fund the money's coming out of and going into something. Anybody can answer that? Ryan may be able to.

THE TOTAL OF THE 493K FOR THIS PROJECT IS INCLUDED IN OUR BUDGET.

IT WAS ROLLED IN. IT WAS A LAST MINUTE ADJUSTMENT. WE ADDED THAT AT THE END.

AND THE 95, IS THAT JUST TO WHERE IS THE 90, WHATEVER IT WAS?

IS THERE A COMPONENT OF THE 493?

YES. SO THE 95,100 WILL BE REIMBORSED FROM THOSE 993,000.

So it'll be reimbursed? Yes. So it's just an upfront payment before we get reimbursed?

That's correct, yeah. That would come from $493,000.

Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment? I don't see anybody in the chambers here. Britt, anybody online?

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

All right. Thank you. So we'll bring it back to council. Would anybody like to make a motion or have a discussion?

I'd like to make a motion to move staff recommendation.

Okay. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? None opposed. Any abstentions? None of those. So it passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Item 3.2, designation of League of California Cities Annual Conference Voting Delegate and Alternates.

Mayor.

Yes. Oh.

Go ahead. No, I was ready to make a motion. Sorry.

A little bit of staff report.

Okay, I just wanted to say the item before you is, as you know, the annual conference is taking place in Anaheim September 23rd through the 25th, and the City Council needs to designate a voting delegate as well as up to two alternates, and that is a very brief staff report.

All right. Thank you. The end. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Is there anyone? Oh, any questions of staff?

Go ahead. Who's attending?

Well, first, I think every member of the council.

It is my understanding that all council is attending this year.

I do have a comment about that.

So would that be in the comment period, then not in the questions?

Mm-hmm.

OK. Any other questions of staff? Okay. We'll open the public comment period. If there's anyone that would like to speak on this item, now would be the time to either raise your virtual hand or race down to the podium. Seeing no one racing and no hands raised online. Confirm that, Britt. Nobody's on there?

No hands raised.

Thank you. We'll close the public comment period and bring it back to council for discussion or a motion.

I have a comment. Go ahead. OK. So attending this conference is the choice of each council member, if they will attend or not. Chuck, Yan, and Bilal have less than three months left on their terms after this conference. If I was working at an organization knowing that I would be leaving the job and leaving the organization in less than three months, I would not ask the organization to pay for the $1,500 conference. It doesn't seem right. The organization, in this case the city, should be paying the $1,500 bill. But it's the choice of each council member whether they will attend the conference or not and have the city pay for it or not. Thanks.

Any other comments? Sure. I'll just provide a comment on that. I can understand and appreciate that perspective. I have found the conference to be incredibly valuable in terms of just, like, learning, coming back and then sharing those learnings with staff, with other council members, with residents as well. And so I actually think that sort of, like, given I know I'm rolling off, I want to go and make the most of it and try to come back with as many learnings as possible to share. And so that's really how I think about it, but I can understand and appreciate there are different perspectives on that. Thank you, Bilal. Ian, anything?

Sure. I'll share my comment on this. League of California cities annual conference for all existing council members. So it didn't say it's for future council members. So I feel even though we only have three months left, but I put my heart and soul for serving our community. I feel it's very always, if there's a new council member, legal update I would like to learn. I would definitely think it's very helpful for me to doing my job. Okay, I'm actually ready to make a motion if you want to make a comment. Okay, go ahead.

I'd just like to say that some of us have served on policy advisory committees. I know Yan has. I have for, I think, 11 of the 12 years I've been on council. We have met a lot of people, learned a lot of things, and many of us stay active in public service either as a community member that comes forward. And the things we learn at these conferences are, can carry us forward with that. Also, related to council policy, we do have a policy related to how much is allocated for travel and expenses for each of us each year, and that is our determination to make. There's a time and place to change that policy, and I recommend that if a council member would like to change it, that they bring it up as a council item and have it considered later. Some of us have gone to this conference many, many years and participated in IN POLICY ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETINGS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. AND WE'VE NEVER EVEN PUT IN AN EXPENSE REPORT TO HAVE MY REIMBURSEMENT FOR THE AIR TRAVEL OR THE CAR DRIVE OR ANYTHING ELSE. SO I JUST THINK THAT PEOPLE SHOULD KEEP THAT IN MIND. THANK YOU. SO NOW A MOTION. ANYONE?

NEW SPEAKER I'LL MAKE A MOTION.

I move to, I'd like to move to designate our mayor as a voting delegate. And we need a two, up to two. Vice mayor as the alternate. And I don't know if Bilal you want to be the, okay. So we're just two, that's, I should be good enough.

Okay. A second? I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Opposed. So we have a 4-1 vote. Thank you. Okay, next up is the annual code update for 2026. Mr. City Attorney.

So I'll need to recuse myself?

You will in a moment, but let me frame it, and I'll explain what's happening. So this item is the annual code update, and tonight all you are doing is approving, giving us direction to bring forward these code amendments. You are not approving them. Nothing in the code is changing as a result of what you do tonight. You will be telling us, yes, we think these are good things to bring forward. The ones that affect the zoning code, we will take to the Planning Commission, and there will be a public hearing at the Planning Commission, and we'll be there. So I say all this... Tonight, you should definitely tell us if there are things on here that you think are controversial and should not be included, and proceed on a separate track. Tell us. But you are not committing to vote yes on what we bring forward. So that's the overall that I want everyone to hear. One of these items creates the possibility of a conflict of interest for Council Member Fitzsimmons. It concerns the designation of the village zoning boundary. So she has indicated that she's going to recuse. When a council member has a conflict on part, they leave, we discuss that part, and then they can come back in and discuss all the other items with you. So don't go far. And so we're going to be talking about item 21. Right. And so this item will get more attention than it would otherwise, because I'm not going to talk about each of them. I will answer questions of you all. But this item, we flagged this when we brought forward the village design standards. At the last minute, we realized that there was a parcel that was cut in half. And so part of the parcel was in and part of the parcel was out. And we have now looked into that further and confirmed that that is indeed the case and are proposing, based on the characteristics of the parcel, that it be taken out. And Cindy can say more.

Yes, according to GIS, this building was developed in 1950 before the village design guidelines were created. It's two residential units. There's no commercial on this property. It's been that way for at least 30 years, and the property owner would like to be taken out of the boundary. I do have a visual, but it's basically... two properties in from Big Basin, and so if you're looking at the property, you have residents to the left and behind you, and then all up and down Oak. And then to the right, you have another residential unit, and then to the right of that, you have a couple of small boutique commercial units, and then you have Big Basin Way. Happy to answer any questions that you have.

So Cindy, is it on the... You have a visual? Maybe that would help me. Sorry. Yeah. I thought I knew where it was, and now I lost it. It could be the hour, too.

Okay.

So it's the one that's highlighted in red. Big Basin Way is at the top of the screen. That's Fifth Street. So those two that are highlighted in red are the residential units. And then if you go up the map, you have another residential unit. And then you continue going towards Big Basin, you have commercial. And then all along... Kind of the middle of the map is residential uses. RM 3000 is the zoning for that.

So that's 5th Street. So is the area behind 14572, that's one of our district parking lots? Yes. And 14572 is probably Darla's? Or no, 5th Street.

So you have, this is, yeah, Big Basin here. You have commercial, commercial. This is in the boundary. This is actually residential, and it's actually zoned RM3000. And then these are all RM3000. And then if you continue going up, it's RM3000. And I have another visual.

And that is Darla's 14572.

Yes, that's what I thought. Thank you. Yeah, I got it.

Okay, so this was the original guidelines before they were updated in 2019, and you can see the parcel here. And then in 2019, we added some new parcels into the boundary, and then this is where it looks like they tried to make a nice pretty straight line, and they actually cut the property in half. So half the property is in the boundary and half is not within the boundary. And so you can just kind of see that here, and you can see the parking district.

I'm in the village. I'm not in the village. Okay. That's way clearer. Thank you. All right. Yes.

So... Did the property owners ask you to remove them, or is that something you want to clean up?

The property owners contacted us to notify us of this discrepancy, that they're half in, half out. And then we made it known when we adopted the village design standards that this would be coming back to you. And subsequent conversations with the property owners that they want to be taken out of the boundary because they are residential uses.

So what is our zoning?

So the zoning is CH1.

CH1, okay. Thank you.

And the zoning will become...

It doesn't have to change. It could be changed to RM 3000 to be consistent with what's happening adjacent, but it doesn't have to change. It is a non-conforming use, and our non-conforming ordinance allows it to remain.

Okay, and changing it, what does it allow them to do by right?

So basically they would not be, if so, if they wanted to demolish the residential unit and rebuild something there, if they're in the boundary, they need to comply with the village design standards.

Okay. Yes. Tina.

So, sorry, late hour, if not RM3, What else? Because I'm understanding they want to be out of the village, or that's sort of the way it's going. I'm open to whatever makes sense, just trying to understand, because it's half here, half there.

It is zoned CH1, so you could actually keep it in the boundary. And if it does get demolished, then it would be subject to the village design standards. It's already zoned CH1.

Half of it is CH1?

Yes, ma'am.

What's the other half?

No, no, the property is zoned CH1, but the boundary is split. I think they just wanted to make a nice little straight line, and they didn't really consider that there was an actual parcel there.

So the property is split, which means the parcel is in two zones.

No, the parcel's in one zone. The village line is going, basically they just drew a line in the middle of the property. Didn't think about going around the property boundary. They just drew a nice straight line to make the map look straight.

Oh, I see. Okay, okay. As such, the property is in the village, but the line is not. So either we clean up the map, essentially, for the village map, or we remove the whole parcel out of the village map. Is that what it is?

So the parcel, we should clean up the boundary map, whether we're going to keep it in the village boundary or not. It needs to be cleaned up.

Okay. Thank you.

I'm comfortable proceeding. Do you need a motion for that, Richard, or do we need a discussion?

Yes, I need a motion on this one item so that when Council Member Fitzsimmons comes back, this is resolved.

Question. Does this have to be annual code update or does this have to be?

You could say this is too controversial. We want it handled separately. And that's fine. The one thing I'll say is, again, you will have the opportunity to discuss it. And part of our goal is WITH THE ANNUAL CODE UPDATE IS EVERY TIME WE DO AN ORDINANCE SEPARATELY, IT TAKES MORE TIME. AND STAFF IS DOING A SEPARATE STAFF REPORT. THERE'S A SEPARATE PUBLIC HEARING. THERE'S NOTICING OF THE SEPARATE PUBLIC HEARING. SO WE JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT.

THANK YOU.

OKAY. MOTION?

I THOUGHT I MADE ONE. MOTION TO APPROVE THE STAFF RECOMMENDATION.

YOU MOVE TO APPROVE. I apologize. If there's any member of the public who'd like to speak on this item, now would be a great time to come down to the podium or raise your virtual hand. Seeing no virtual hands and no one in the chambers, we'll close the public comment period.

Why am I like that tonight?

Golly. We had a lot of public comment, which was good. Okay, so we've got a motion. No, we've got a motion coming. And we've got a...

I'll move to approve the staff recommendation on item 21 of the code update.

Second.

We've got a motion and a second. I'd just like to say I hope that when this is considered by the Planning Commission, they consider the ramifications of this change. Because there could be some changes to the way a building is developed and what it looks like. And it's really close to our village. I'll just say leave it at that and hopefully... They take care of the rest. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And no one abstains. We're good to go. Thank you. Motion carries unanimously.

Come on down.

So as to the rest of the items, I am not going to go through them one by one. But if you have questions, I am happy to answer them. Tina.

Question for number, I believe it's five, for under that same.

Advisory agency for subdivision map approval?

Yeah. The amendment would authorize the community development director to approve tentative maps and parcel maps of four parcels or fewer. Is this, I can understand the need. But this one, I'm just wondering if this should be discussed separately. It's a slightly larger issue. This is not a cleanup thing versus the one that we discussed a few minutes ago.

It is up to counsel. My thinking in presenting it to you as cleanup is that it does not take away any of the existing process if there is public concern because all the noticing is the same. it's the community development director would basically have a hearing just the way the planning commission has a hearing, would make the decision, and then the community development director's decision could be appealed to the city council or to the planning commission and then to the city council. So if there was a project where there was community concern and they didn't like what staff did, It would go to the Planning Commission just as it would today. But if it's non-controversial, it wouldn't go to the Planning Commission.

So a follow-up question. Yes. So this one says only appeal to the Planning Commission, but you're saying it can be further, of course, every decision.

Then the way our code is structured, it would go on further, yes.

Okay, then that saves time and simplifies the process, streamlines the process, and if one person makes a decision that people disagree... then they go through seven member PC and five members.

Okay, great, thanks.

I had a question. This isn't listed here, but there's a lot of conversation these days about data centers. Where in our code, our zones, would a data center be eligible for, for example, industrial, commercial,

That's a big question to answer on the fly. Our code says that if our code does not permit something, it is not allowed. So you have to explicitly name the use for it to be allowed. So a data center, well, what would happen, there wouldn't be any lawyer involved. The data center would ask AI to look at our code and say, how can I build a data center there? and then they would apply, and we'd spend a lot of time, and then they'd hire a lawyer, and the lawyer would say, what were you thinking? That's just a little editorial remark. So my guess is that they would not be allowed in Saratoga, but I can look into it more closely and let you know offline.

My fellow council members are open to us explicitly looking into what a provision would look like for not having data centers. I know it's a separate item, but we can add things, right?