City Council - Regular Meeting

Like. So I literally. I.

Good evening. Let's call to order the council meeting of April 7th, 2026 at 7.02 PM. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This Council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means that Council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to agenda items being considered by Council for consent calendar or public hearing items. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within Council's authority generally referred to as council's subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the council agenda. Scan the QR code on the screen or click the language access and translation link on the council agenda to read and listen along in more than 60 different languages. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Comments on matters not in the agenda or the presentation item must be submitted prior to the time I call the item for oral communications. Comments on agenda items must be submitted prior to the time I close a public hearing on that agenda item. Speakers are requested to keep their comments to the time period set for that specific item and time limits will be strictly enforced. Guidelines are posted on the city's website and on the council meeting agenda. First, please join me in a salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. City Clerk, may we please have roll call?

Mayor Klein. Present. Vice Mayor Mellinger. Present. Council Member Cisneros.

Present.

Council Member Srinivasan.

Present.

Council Member Sell.

Present.

Council Member Chang.

Present.

Council Member Lay.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you. Next, we have two special orders today. Let me come up to the lectern. Before we begin tonight's meeting, we have a special recognition. First, I would like to take a moment to recognize Arab American Heritage Month. This month, we acknowledge the accomplishments and the contributions of our Arab American community. Joining us is Diane Maganan-Streicher, president of the Arab American Cultural Center of Silicon Valley. Diane, please come forward.

Thank you.

And go right ahead and say a few words. Go ahead. Yes.

All right. Mayor Klein, Sunneville City Council members, thank you for inviting me to speak for National Arab American Heritage Control Month. My name is Diane Mogan, instructor, and I'm a first generation Palestinian American. My family comes from the West Bank. I am here on behalf of the Arab American Cultural Center of Silicon Valley as their president. April is designated as National Arab American Heritage Month to honor a rich culture, history, customs, food, and language that tie our countries together. In addition, Arab Americans have made immeasurable contributions to the United States. There are an estimated 3.7 million Arab Americans nationwide, approximately 500,000 in California, and over 60,000 who call Santa Clara County their home. Our community traces its roots to 22 countries, spanning all faiths and backgrounds. Arab Americans have been a part of America since before it was a nation, with this first significant wave of Arab immigration coming in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This immigration continues today as a result of forced displacement and wars. From private Nathan Bedeen in the Revolutionary War to modern leaders in every field, Arab Americans have helped build this nation. We see this legacy in the lifesaving medicine of Dr. Michael DeBakey, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, 2025, Nobel Peace Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton, Donna Shalala. Actor, philanthropist, and founder of the St. Jude's Hospital, Danny Thomas. Singer, Paul Anka. Radio personality, Casey Kasim. Actors, Tony Shalhoub and Robby Malek. Comedian, Rami Youssef. And technological brilliance of Tony Fadal and Steven Jobs, among others. As we honor the contributions of Arab Americans and we celebrate our heritage, we must also recognize the struggles of so many in our community and acknowledge the McCarthy-esque repression that we Arab Americans face today by our government, school districts, and organizations. Our community frequently encounters discrimination through harassment, hate crimes, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racist rhetoric, and violent attacks. Many have lost employment and others have lost contracts simply for having an Arab sounding name. Humanity has been lost on the backs of Arab Americans. As a tragic reminder that anti-Palestinian racism is endemic, even our most inclusive cities and spaces, we witnessed harassment at the Palestine Palate Booth while participating in Sunnyvale 2025 Hands on the Art Festival. In our K-12 schools, teachers have been investigated, suspended, or fired for teaching Palestine and Palestinian experience. At the state level, we have seen legislation and legislators who deny the existence of Palestine and the teaching of Palestinian history. A new California law went into effect in January 2026. AB715, which suppresses any mention of Palestine, the Palestinian experience, and the teaching of Palestinian history in classrooms K through 12. As we witnessed the global devastation in Palestine, in Lebanon, in the Gulf states, and in beyond, we recognize that these are not just issues of foreign countries happening half a world away. These are issues which affect the hearts and the safety of our residents here in Sunnyvale, in our county, in our state, and nationally. We must pledge to move beyond celebration and towards protection. We must stand against the vilification of teachers, the loss of jobs, the silencing of those who speak for human rights and against genocide. this month we honor the past and present of our arab american community and we dedicate ourselves to a future equality safety and justice for all and i'm going to close with a lesson this scarf here is our cultural kafaya. This scarf is over 100 years old. It has three distinctive patterns on it. The pattern in the middle represents fishnets, and it represents the people who lived on the coastline. The patterns here on the edge represent olive leaves. These olive leaves are representative of the olive trees of Palestine, which is in the middle of the country. Another thing is Olive trees lived over to 100 years old. They're well rooted. They're strong. They're resilient. They are an emblemic of the Palestinian people and our resistance. Lastly, you'll see these bars here. These bars represent the trade routes that ran through Palestine. Palestine is on the center or epicenter of three continents. Next time I ask that you see this, please remember that these patterns represent the history and the culture of our history and of our culture. Thank you.

Thank you. It's only recently that we've begun to recognize the important contributions of Arab Americans and what they've made to our communities with the first federal recognition of Arab American Heritage Month in 2021. We celebrate in April as it marks the start of spring, a time of hope, growth, and color, all of which embody the spirit of the Arab American community and their long history here. Although we have only recently begun to formally recognize the contributions of Arab Americans, they have been a part of our community for centuries. Their rich heritage and numerous contributions have made our region a more vibrant and prosperous place. In Sunnyvale, our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. It's what fuels our creativity, drives our economy, and enriches our lives. The Arab American community is an essential part of that history, bringing traditions, language, cuisine, and perspectives that make our city more dynamic and more connected to the world. This month also reminds us the importance of understanding and inclusion. At a time when division can feel all too common, we have responsibility to learn from one another, to celebrate our differences, and to stand firmly against hate and discrimination in all its forms. When we embrace diversity, we build a stronger, more compassionate community. To affirm our statement of values, the City of Sunnyvale honors and respects our individual experiences, and we will support and protect people of all race, religion, ancestry, ethnicity, ability, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. On behalf of the City of Sunnyvale, it is my honor to proclaim April 2026 as Arab American Heritage Month. I encourage Sunnyvale residents, businesses, students, and neighbors to recognize and learn about the many contributions of our Arab American community. Thank you. And next, Fair Housing Month is celebrated nationally every April in recognition of the enactment of the Federal Fair Housing Act in 1968 and to increase public awareness of the rights set forth in the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of housing due to race, color, national origin religion disability sex familial status or sexual orientation joining us tonight is shang zhang come forward from the fair housing community outreach coordinator with project sentinel shang would you like to say a few words thank you i got my notes on my phone

Hi everybody, my name is Shang Zhang with Project Sentinel and I just want to thank you, the Mayor and the City Council, for this proclamation and for your continued partnership with Project Sentinel. Fair housing is about making sure everyone has a fair chance at a safe and stable place to call home. While we've made progress, discrimination still exists and continues to affect many people in our communities. At Project Sentinel, we see firsthand how important education, outreach, and enforcement are in protecting those rights. We are grateful to work alongside the City of Sunnyvale in advancing that mission. Thank you again for your support and commitment to fair housing.

Thank you. Just wait here for just a moment. Thank you. So yeah, so it's important for citizens to know that the California Fair Employment and Housing Act also prohibits discrimination and harassment regarding any housing services, such as sales, rentals, evictions, home financing, insurance, and zoning. It also requires housing providers to make reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities as well as prohibiting retaliation against any person filing a complaint under this act. Likewise, the Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination by any California business, including housing and public accommodations, due to any protected characteristics. This year, we celebrate the 58th anniversary of the enactment of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act. Project Sentinel, thank you, has served Sunnyvale residents with fair housing services Since 1998, the agency works to ensure that all people may freely choose a place to live without regard to their race, religion, national origin, gender, disability, familiar status, and other protected categories. Information about Project Sentinel services can be found at www.housing.org or by phone at 1-800-339-6043. On behalf of the City of Sunnyvale, I would like to thank the staff of Project Sentinel for all their hard work and Sunnyvale Housing Division staff for keeping our community informed about their housing and how to get help with fair housing concerns. I hereby proclaim April 2026 as Fair Housing Month in the City of Sunnyvale. Thank you for what you're doing in Project Sentinel. Sure, absolutely. And next, we have a presentation regarding VTA projects and Senate Bill 63. Item 26-101 is a report or presentation.

Amir Klein.

Yes. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Yes. Council Member Chang.

Because they work for a transit district that would be affected by this ballot measure i'm going to abstain from this discussion and exit the room.

Thank you very much. And we'll just pause for just a moment, while you get the slides ready. Go right ahead.

One moment okay. about now great thank you so uh thank you for having bta here this evening my name is carolyn gonad and i serve as the general manager and ceo at santa clara valley transportation authority and i'm joined here tonight by beverly green who's the chief of government affairs as well as manolo um i'm gonna say your name wrong estate gonzalez yes Manolo, he's actually infamous from our government affairs office as well. So I want to thank him for coming. We are here this evening to solicit your input on the local investment plan for Santa Clara County's portion of the five county regional measure that may hopefully be on the ballot this November. We are not seeking an endorsement, mostly because we want to actually seek your input. INPUT INTO THE INVESTMENT PLAN. I SEE THIS PRIMARILY AS A BEGINNING OF AN IMPORTANT CITY AND COMMUNITY CONVERSATION ABOUT OUR SHARED PRIORITIES FOR ANY NEW SALES TAX REVENUE THAT MAY COME INTO VTA. IT'S PRIMARILY FOCUSED ON TRANSIT INVESTMENTS FOR THIS REGION. First, I just want to give you a quick glance at VTA. This is definitely at the 40,000-foot level. Who is VTA? We're unique among transit agencies because we're a lot more to that in Santa Clara County. We do provide the bus, the light rail, and paratransit services. We're also the county's congestion management agency, CMA, we're the County Transportation Agency, which means we do the long range transit planning for the agency that actually gets rolled up into the regional transportation plan for the nine County Bay Area. We are also the funding partner for regional services, including Caltrain, Capital Corridor and ACE. And we also have a lot of tools in the mobility toolbox. And I believe that we are critical to mobility and the quality of life in Santa Clara County. And we'll go to the next slide. As the countywide transportation authority, we serve 15 cities, which includes Sunnyvale, and it's 160,000 residents, and we are here for the residents, but we're also here for the many people who work, play, go to school, and access health care in this city. We provide high-quality multimodal transit service, including light rail, two of our 15-minute rapid bus services, bus lines, and two local routes. And as a CMA, VTA invests in mobility beyond transit, including bike, ped, streets, and roads, and the highways and express lanes. There's hardly a highway that you will drive on in Santa Clara County that VTA hasn't worked on or its previous agency, the Measure A Traffic Authority that was in 1985, established in 1985 and sunsetted and BTA continued those projects on. We're also the express lane toll authority for Santa Clara County as well. And this year is the first year we're starting to put toll lanes that are, toll lane revenues that are coming out of that to not only operate those toll lanes, but also to put those into projects that are complementary to those corridors, including transit operating revenues. Vitae manages multiple sales tax measures in Santa Clara County, including the 2016 Measure B, which has provided funding for critical city partnership projects. We actually give money each year to the cities by formula for local streets and roads improvements. Primarily, you'll see that in pavement management projects, but we also have given $3 million to the Bernardo Avenue Caltrain undercrossing work, 3.5 million for the Stevens Creek Trail extensions and 31.9 million in counting for local streets and roads. The first project that we were doing was the US 101 Matilda interchange was the first large project we built in the highway program with the 2016 measure B funds. Let me talk a little bit about what Senate Bill 63, the five-county regional measure, is doing. This is the first time there has been a very large regional measure regarding a sales tax. There has been one previously for the toll roads, for the bridges. But let me talk a little bit about this. When it comes to what the regional measure is, The Senate bill is authorized as a regional sales tax measure to fund transit operations and transit supportive capital. So it's really focused on the transit side. Even though we're a multimodal agency, the funds will be focused on transit supportive uses. The VTA board voted unanimously last August in 2025 to join Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties in a November 2026 measure. By the numbers, what it would be is a half cent sales tax in Santa Clara County. It'd be one cent in San Francisco. The other counties would also be a half cent. It'll be a 14 year term, which is shorter than any of our other county's measures in Santa Clara County. It'll be 10.38% of Santa Clara County's annual total will be used to cover our obligations to Caltrain, which has critical operating deficits, similar to BART, San Francisco, Muni, and AC Transit throughout the rest of the region. 5.25% will go back to regional purposes, which actually would be used for things such as the Clipper Bay Pass, Clipper Smart, the wayfinding purposes throughout the region, as well as looking at some of the paratransit services throughout the region. So regional type projects to actually support transit services that would actually need more sort of regional partnerships in those areas. That would be the 5.2%. And then after all of these obligations, VTA estimates a $264 million a year and actually roughly $20, $30 will return to Santa Clara County each year. But we're expecting actually about 264 actually in this year's dollars because the numbers are actually increasing the sales tax, coming back to Santa Clara County. So if the measure passed this year, we would actually probably see $264 million starting next year coming back to Santa Clara County. This is a citizen's initiative. They're out there collecting signatures right now. If they get enough signatures, it will be on the ballot this November, and it would have a 50% threshold, not a two-thirds threshold to pass. So under the enabling legislation, it specifies how that new sales tax measure would be used. As I mentioned, it's different than our previous broader Santa Clara County measures, which included, we have included bicycle pedestrian, highways, and express lanes. Actually, we do not include our express lanes. Sorry, I said that. We don't include our express lanes right now in any of our measures. We'd like to, but we don't. But it actually does say it's explicitly for public transit expenses and roadway. um, rehab pavement projects on roads that are served by fixed route transit projects. And so we're really looking at improvements on roadways that have fixed route transit services. We're looking at transit signal priority projects and those types of roadway projects that would actually help enhance transit services. So as we dive into the local investment plan framework, let's remember that this is really heavily for transit and for the roadway improvements in the corridors that have bus and light rail service. On the next page, I want to talk a little bit about the local investment plan principles that we have talked to and discussed with the board. And I really want to thank Council Member Sell, who sits as a director for the VTA board and has been engaged in the workshops in the discussion so far. And I actually want to thank Council Member Lee, who was at the PAC meeting, the policy advisory committee meeting that I went to the other day. and uh presented to them and we had some discussion there regarding the investment plan as well um the vta board had a great workshop on february 27th and we had a second we'll have a second and final workshop on the future transportation santa clark county on next friday in those workshops we're focusing on vta's future plans including a draft investment plan with three primary outcomes. And these are ones that are also focused around my goals, which are for this agency, which is growing the ridership, increasing productivity and enhancing the customer experience. And this includes safety, security and cleanliness. And this is all around trying to deliver delivering service in a way that isn't delivering it in the same operating model that we have before. So my goal is really to deliver transit service in a way that after the 14 years, we don't need this revenue any longer. Unlike measure A and measure B where we're using some of that money, for our operating services now, and we depend on that, and we depend on it year to year so that we will be back out with Measure A and Measure B or a renewal of those to be able in the future years, which are not much later down the line, a decade or more away. But in the 14 years when this comes up, we want to no longer have to be relying on this. This means we're going to put investments in there to be able to increase the efficiency of the services, to enhance the ridership enough that our operating cost goes down per rider, that we can actually get the cost of our services down. So that means we need to deliver this much more in a financially sustainable way. So we'll be looking at operating models that are different for our transit service. So this is what we plan on doing. Things like modernizing our light rail vehicles so that they cost less to maintain and are more efficient than what we have now. Putting transit signal priority in so that we are faster in the speed and we see those speed improvements so that we're not spending as much money to put our buses out there in very congested roadways and so that we see speed savings in there which actually we see a lot more ridership out there due to that we actually are able to put more service out there in a way that actually drives actually more ridership so we see more frequency improvements and we see faster service those are two things that drive ridership together and those are things that data wise is showing that will drive our ridership up our operating costs down actually looking at a lot of improvements as well internally on our business processes that are actually already providing to um we're actually showing profitable ways that we're year to year we're already seeing our operating costs go down even with inflation we've seen our this year our operating costs on light rail go down that's the first time i've been with our agency 23 years i was gone for two years at another agency and came back in five years that's the first time in 28 years i've seen our operating costs go down year over year so i'm really happy to see that happen. I'm gonna go to the next slide. In the local investment projects, local investment plan strategies, we were really looking at focusing on three areas. The foundation, really leveraging VTA's experience and data to drive our decision making. We were really going over with the board. where our relationships are between data, where frequency, speed matter, where some of our operating costs, what the drivers are for those things to actually have the board understand what drives our systems ridership, what drives our systems costs, how we can get those to change, how they are synergistic in some ways, and be able to actually make changes there as well, as well as what the passenger experience is and how that actually changes ridership. And then how some of those features that we can put in that could be very low cost can actually help show a lot of benefit. On the reimagine, it's really modernizing the business model, as I just talked about, and improving VTA service delivery, primarily around our visionary network. And then transform really means adopting the new technologies that we're seeing in the industry today and forming strategic partnerships, primarily to future partners. proof the vta transit system so those are things that we'll be investing in we are very lucky because we would actually see dollars coming in but we want to spend those dollars prudently and primarily in investments in the system on the capital side so that we're able to see real improvements in driving our costs down and getting our ridership up that's really the focus right now uh the next slide actually looks at what we'll be looking at for local investment plan strategic areas so tonight we want to look at those primary outcomes in those strategic areas so with new funding what should santa clara county invest in to drive outcomes and do so in a financially sustainable way so within the foundational area here are a few examples of potential projects on the bus corridor improvements so these are the measures that we are with our These are our foundational core things that we do. We want to include better access to our stops and our stations. We want upgrades to those stations and stops themselves, better amenities, cleaner, safer, For example, real-time information provided there, being able to make sure that they're safer, secure with better technologies, and more presence on the system. That's really important to us, but make sure they feel that there's more safety. VTA has just began hiring security transit officers that we will be supplementing, and probably to an extent with the transit with the sheriff's office as they don't actually have presence on our system. We will be having presence on our system with our security transit officers to compliment the sheriff's office. So you will see these people being able to be on our light rail system, on our buses and that, so people feel safer in our vehicles, as well as we will be looking at increasing transit service and making relevant capital improvements throughout so that we actually have a more reliable frequent system. On the area regarding Reimagine, this is where we start to see much more innovative and in the way we deliver our core services. So you'll see the implementation of the VTA Visionary Network, meaning more frequent and more reliable bus and light rail services. So in partnership with the city and the county, speed improvements for transit vehicles, including transit signal priority, or which we call TSP. There's been a discussion at our board recently, particularly as we have a template for the policy for transit signal priority that we've been talking to the cities about primarily at the technical level, but we wanna be able to have each city adopt that policy. it will be very important as we start to give funds out through this pass in terms of the roadway improvements the fair programs for senior and students like we've had in several places um most recently we've been working with the actually with most um currently with the fremont union high school to build a really a new generation transit ridership and thank you council member i appreciate the work that you've been doing with us um and that's actually an area that i'm very avid about trying to increase. So thank you. And safety and security enhancements, knowing we know how critical that is. And as I mentioned to you, that's an area that we will continue to do both through customer experience and the community perception about what they have about riding transit. And then finally, we're looking at transformation, which has a lot to do about the investments that can really transform us and make sure that we are ready for the future over the next 20, 30, 40 years. But really trying to make sure that in the next 14 years we are able to use those investments so that we're ready to be able to move forward on the innovative customer experience. We're in the middle of doing a customer experience action plan. that actually uses a lot of different information, including digital wayfinding and signage, fare payment systems, including the use of mobile and credit fare payment systems, but also potentially very quick fare collection payment systems. that are actually safe, secure, ability to be able to just use your phone at times, advanced vehicle technologies, including testing of autonomous vehicles, but also replacement of our light rail fleet for modernization, We're looking at improvements in the downtown San Jose area where our slowest areas are and being able to. Bring in a vehicle fleet that actually runs on battery and parts of it. So we take out some of the overhead catenary and the downtown and parts of potentially in the mountain view area and areas that are slower being able to build up some of our transit. Station area so that we're able to like major transit hubs such as Mountain View, the Palo Alto hub, Deerdawn, Gilroy and other areas where we need to have those strong connections between bus and light rail and Caltrain. We will be looking at those areas as well. to make sure that we have strong connections wayfinding and the ability to to enhance those places as a quality place to be not just through transit but also make working with the cities to make sure that there it is a value to have place making and what that area will be like um Let's see, the next area is really trying to bring this all together with your input tonight, and between now and June, VTA staff will build primarily a final draft investment plan that our board will look at, and hopefully... adopt in june projects with our strategic areas with a percentage of total revenues primary outcomes and kpis so we can measure our success going forward and make necessary corrections when we don't hit the mark so that's one of the things that we will be continuing to look at so i want to just turn to the next page we have a number of outreach still to be as we're going off this next couple months um this really is your plan this is the santa clara county's plan We're going out. I mean, tonight we're hitting three city councils. I'm here. My deputy general manager is at another location and the head of our office of strategic initiatives at another council meeting. We have engaged at 15 city councils and the board of supervisors and dozens of community-based organizations and the public at large. We have tomorrow night a public meeting that's virtual. Thursday, we will have another one at 3 p.m. And then Thursday, we will have one in person at the Bascom Community Center. and San Jose. Following our second board workshop on Friday, next Friday, we'll continue to seek input. And then ultimately, the board will take action on June 4th on the local investment plan that we will actually hopefully use Well, actually, that will be something that we will publicize so that as people go out with the measure, should it qualify, that they'll be able to say this is what Santa Clara County will be doing with the dollars that come into Santa Clara County. Now, it is a little different as the rest of the region is looking at funding. services to maintain service on the street, we are looking at really enhancing our service. And I just want to give a little bit of history just to give you some clarity where VTA is. VTA in the early 2000s cut their service at that time to about 1990 levels of service. We have never increased our services because we've never been able to increase our services. So if you can think about the county in 1990 and how much service or how much what the area was like, it was still a lot of orchards still here in 1990. We have never increased our service levels, meaning the number of service hours we put in this county, yet the population has grown quite a bit. and we are really just trying to get our frequencies up and get our service back up to what this county deserves people want ridership they want to see ridership but we can't get the ridership up until we provide the frequencies we need we need to make sure that we have a light rail train meeting every bar train that comes into this county and we don't have that right now and we don't have them meeting every cal train that comes in at certain times of the evening and we need to have make sure that people who are using the services which are heavily dependent on it on the weekdays and the in the evenings are able to meet and able to be able to get to work, but also come home from work. And so these are really important services for people. And we're starting to see a generation that's really dependent on these. And I really appreciate the work that's gonna be done on getting this out to the youth. And seniors are really asking on how to use that. And our travel training program for seniors is booming. So we really need to be able to get out there and provide more frequency out there and at a faster level. So really this plan is really focused on getting our frequencies, our service, our light rail, our buses out there at a level that really can be competitive and supportive for the community that we have out here and really what the Santa Clara County residents deserve to maintain the quality of life that we have. So I'm ready to take any questions if you have any. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Mayor, can I just interject really quick? A number of folks raised their virtual hands right as the meeting started. I'm going to lower everyone's hands now, but please, if you want to speak on this agenda item, raise your hand again. And then throughout the night, raise your hand only when we are on agenda item that you are interested in speaking in or under oral communications for items not on the agenda. Thank you.

Thank you, City Clerk. First up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for a really good presentation. And then first of all, I want to acknowledge the pilot free pass for Fremont High School students. That was one of the recommendations our students, which will study the transportation option for Northern Sunnyvale students to come to Fremont High School and Homestead High, they recommended. so i i don't know how much uh they presented to the board or vta i present i was there when they presented to the chair of vta sergio lopez but i didn't know about the board so there were two glaring numbers out of that research we did so we got all the students addresses so we had the real data of the 600 students in that region where above five miles only 100 to 120 students take the bus so just 20 to 25 percent right which also was staggering the another problem there was it was not reliable that it was exactly 120 the same 120 students take every day sometimes it's so little because of the frequency issues and Other issues, so 1 of the recommendations apart from the free pass. Was the improving the frequency you alluded to that and then they have some strong recommendations for that. If you want, I can get you the presentation. Most of them are senior students, so they have left the area. So. So, let me know. Do you have a question? No, no.

I would appreciate if you could, yeah, you would get that, and I would love to have that. I do understand the frequency issue, and it's one of the things that we would be looking at. We do know that as a well-used area, and even at 20 or 25 percent, that's actually quite a lot of students and a lot of usage, and so...

but then which also means that 75% of them use other modes of transportation, right? So the question I have is, you mentioned about the fixed route signaling. What would be the KPI measurement in terms of ridership or what exactly are you trying to do there?

So we're seeing that if we could get about a 10% increase in speed, we would see about a 13% increase in ridership on our frequent network. Okay. And so we would, No, I think it's about a 15% increase in speed. We get about 13% increase in ridership. But that's a very good investment. And I can get you the actual numbers. I forget exactly. So there is a point where it goes up, and then there's a point where it goes diminishing returns. And so we're trying to be very data-driven on what we're looking at. We are looking between 10 and 15% of speed improvements throughout the system, particularly on the frequent network. So that would be our light rail system and on the bus corridors, particularly on our frequent network and those that are 20 minutes or more, we'd like to see that around the congestion corridors.

Thanks for answering that. That was my elasticity question for speed. The next one is, I didn't see any plans for electrification of fleet and other things. Is there any plan for because battery technologies have improved, you don't need wires anymore?

Yeah, so it's interesting there. So right now, most of our funding for battery electric buses is federal funding, and there are only two by America we have to do use by America and there's only two bus makers bus manufacturers right now who make by America in this in the state in the country right now that are making or really bidding on the bus buses so they're quite expensive I will say that at this point um it's about 1.9 million for a bus a battery electric bus it's very high um and so There are more rail car vendors are by america then there are bus manufacturers for by america which is you would think it would be opposite but it actually is not so they're really backed up and also the administration right now is not supporting in competitive grants at the federal level zero emission bus grants so they're fine with um low emission so we have gotten I think all of our hybrid, we've been able to get diesel hybrid buses. So we replaced all of our diesel buses with diesel hybrid buses through a competitive grants program. But we are gonna be getting 22 new electric buses and we are gonna move forward with more electrification. So I think we have a total of,

over 50 electric buses is that what is over a little over 50 buses right now of a 400 plus fleet okay thank you and then is there any data on what's the current ridership or utilization of any fleet routes or anything like that do you have for example bus number 22 route 22 how many people ride or per day or yes like we could send you all that information by route okay yeah sounds good and then the last question is regarding financing i i like financing and then i looked at uh so it looks like uh vta has got 1976.05 sales tax which is uh non-expiring right that's in perpetuity right and then 2000 measure a which is 0.5 which expires in 2036 and then 2016 measure B 0.5 in 2047 and then 2008 measure B 1 8 tax expiring in 30 years and that's funds the funding sources right now right

Yeah, so the 2008 1A sales tax funds the BART operation and maintenance. So that's funding the current phase, that's the Tonda Berry ESSA, and it will also fund the future phase of BART. So that's specifically for the BART operations. The 2000 Measure A is only for transit, same thing with the 1996. And then the 2000 16 measure b has um it funds bart cal train local streets and roads highway projects bicycle and pet projects it's a it's multimodal it's a very large amount of projects i understand so with this if this measure passes we'll be at two percent approximately of sales tax Yeah, that's why there's a desire by the board after 14 years to not go after another sales tax measure. We do not want to renew this sales tax. This was something that for the region, the region would want VTA to go in to be able to help fund Caltrain's deficit. So we're going in, and that's the reason why we don't really want to rely on it for any operations or any ongoing projects. numbers so we would just use the that to invest in our system like on capital improvements and those we might use operating for a little bit just while we get things up and running but we don't want to rely on the operating long term that's what i my next question but thanks for answering that right those are my questions yeah thank you major thank you council member next up is council member cisneros

Yes, pardon me, excuse my allergies, but thank you so much for coming to speak with us and bring this measure to us. It's always exciting when we think about improving public transit, especially right now, which is becoming a greater interest to our residents as the cost of fuel is going up and becoming a bigger burden on household budgets, presenting a viable option to save some money in a Kind of changing the way people think about public transportation is, I think, really good. It's a good time to do that. Um, which was under better circumstances, but I wanted to ask, so I noticed, like, I appreciate the conversation about the capital improvements, because that was going through my head the whole time, especially. Oh, increasing. Frequency presumably increases employee headcount, which presumably turns into a long-term cost. So when you say increasing frequency, how would you do that without it turning into a long-term cost, or how is that factored in?

So one of the, okay. So there's a couple of ways to do that. One is, is to be able to drop, to draw down the operating costs. We have fairly high operating costs. So start to bring down the operating costs. Um, one way to do that is, is to be able to bring, even though the costs may go, even though the right, if the cost drives up because of the, of the, um, the amount of service we bring up, can we bring more ridership up? Can we bring ridership up and bring the costs and still drive some of the operating costs per hour down? That's one way to do it. So that's particularly how we're going to sort of look at how we're going to do the cost. The other way to do it is also to be able to look at diversification of revenue so that the same time We're trying to expand. So one of the things is not to go one for one. So as much as it costs us per hour right now, not to go cost per hour. So there is a the incremental cost to add service will not be at the same level service that it's not a one to one in the future. That's primarily what would look at would add service but not to the one on one. It won't be a straight line. The other area, because we have a lot of unused capacity right now, that's part of it, and then if you make it faster, if you can make our service faster, we have then saved bus service hours. Because right now we are putting out about 20,000 hours. Every six months we put about 20,000 service hours out just for congestion. If we could take those 20,000 hours and put them into frequency, more frequent service, that actually could generate more ridership, and it's the same amount of cost. So if we could do that or we could speed up things, that's one way to do it. The other thing that is, is that we would also look at a diversification of revenues. So we actually have a very strong TOD portfolio and we also are building these express lanes. And so one of the things is to be able to use some of those revenue sources to help support those expanded transit services. those increased expanded services. So that is one way to do it. And then also to actually on light rail, we would probably see a decrease in cost. As we modernize the vehicles, we'll see a decrease in the operating costs over time. That's the other that the vehicles right the operating costs right now quite high because we have a very old fleet. And that's part of the problem too.

Yeah, that leads me to my next question, actually. Because you mentioned there's quite a suite of options, some of which represent a massive amount of money and some relatively modest amount of money. So I appreciate that for our consideration. But how much would a fleet replacement cost? Because those were cool looking trains.

They are. They're nice looking trains. We were just talking about this the other day. It depends on what we want and it depends on whether we, there's different ways to do it. I'm thinking we're looking, it depends on how many trains we decide to go with. So we're looking at about $500 million to replace a fleet. We are not going to buy as many trains as we have now. We don't need that. So we're going to buy a smaller fleet. um we could potentially piggyback on another operator's fleet which we could save money doing that ways meaning we buy similar trains to somebody else and so we actually piggyback on and that would be cheaper to do that so we're actually trying to partner with others or somebody piggybacks on ours so we split the the cost that so there's a different ways of doing that um There is a little bit more standardization going on in the industry that's going to help drive the costs down. So that is another way of looking at how we do it. The modernized fleet also allows us to not deal with obsolescence parts, which is what's really driving a lot of our costs right now.

Yeah, I would imagine. And are those electric? Yeah.

Yes, we're looking at electrified fleet, but also with batteries so that they could go on and off catenary. Oh, very cool.

Very cool. That's helpful because that's one of the things, like when you're thinking about how to talk to residents about things, talking about noise that different vehicles make and that'll get quieter. It's like, that's great. Yeah. That's always an impressive thing. And then, um, I wanted to say that good conversations, thank you, the work with students and helping our students access their education through public transportation has been a journey, but your help is appreciated, as is my colleagues. But any, I just wanted to point out that any student initiatives should also have parent education because there's that fear still, right? That stigma, like, oh, I can't, that's dangerous to let my kid go on the bus. I'm not sure if I feel comfortable with that. And that's coming from a good place as a parent. But at the same time, that's a group there where it's like, That's, they're going to be the ones saying what you know how they get to school at the end of the day in a lot of cases so I wanted to point out that in any student initiative to include those parents into that conversation to have that family wraparound agreement. about that to answer any questions.

Yeah, no, that's actually a really good idea. I appreciate that. I think that that is something we could add in even into the measure for anything we could do, some educational programs. That would be great. Thanks.

Yeah, absolutely. That's how you change behavior. And then let's see here. And then what would the oversight body look like for these funds?

So the oversight body is going to be at the regional level. So currently the regional body will be the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. So they are in the legislation as being the regional transit. The commission will be the regional transit measure authority. So they will be the oversight body. They primarily have definitely... heavily financial oversight on all of it and particularly on the four agencies on the those that are um in desperate need for the funds because they're seeing a need but they also will have that over us as well okay on all the funds great all right i think that's all i got right now thank you so much thank you thank you council member next is council member lay

Thank you so much for the presentation. And again, it's good to see you again after the PAC meeting. I feel very strongly about the value of public transit. I live on the north side of town, which Council Member Sreenivasan was alluding to, where public transit can be a real lifeline to students who can't get to school, to people who can't who need to get to places where food is more accessible, where there are more grocery stores, where there are more restaurants. These things are true in Sunnyvale and they're true throughout the rest of the county as well. It's so important to have these things for people who don't have the privilege of having personal vehicles and don't have the privilege of having health that is robust enough for active transportation. So thank you for all that you do. It's very important. I want to ask about, are we going to get the slides? I would like to see the slide about Sunnyvale's transit again and ask, are there going to be, you spoke about an outreach meeting in the Bascom area. Is there going to be anything similar to that within the Sunnyvale community? I personally hear a lot of stories from students who need to get to school and seniors who would like to get to the senior center. And one of the most common, I think, requests that we get as a council is a stop in front of the senior center, for example. And I would love to hear if you have plans to access that community.

You know, I'm... I know we have like an overall public meeting, but I know we're reaching out to community groups. So let me find out if we're reached out to any, which ones we've done in Sunnyvale, if any. And if not, we should be able to try to reach out specifically some of the community groups there or even visit. a senior center or others so we could actually have that participation as well. I find that really useful to engage there right at that level.

Yeah, thank you. I think that in Sunnyvale, we talk a lot about the transportation needs of students on the north side of town getting to school, and that pulls a little bit of the oxygen away, I think, from the seniors who need to get to the senior center. And also, there are students on the south side of town that also need to get to school. For example, the 51H line that ran was, I believe, closed down during the pandemic, but that has left some students and some parents reaching out to council about that. So if we can also roll that into the community outreach and get some of that feedback, I think the community there would appreciate it. I also want to ask about safety. You used some interesting wording, which was, I think, the perceived safety. And I want to push back a little bit on that because I don't think it's... all perceived safety. I've been on the bus. I am five foot seven. I'm pretty tall for an Asian woman. I have been on the bus and have been harassed by someone who looked at me and clocked me and said, she probably speaks Vietnamese and then proceeded to describe a very graphic sexual encounter in Vietnamese right behind me. I had my toddler with me, so I couldn't like make a thing about it. I have a black belt in Taekwondo. Wasn't going to make a thing about it. It's more than perception. And especially, and we talked about this at PAC, but as the buses get more full, that becomes less of a risk. And I think that's important. But also, it's not just perception. It's not just education. It's an active problem that I think needs to be addressed.

I agree. Because even one... one incident is enough that it feels unsafe. It is unsafe then. It feels unsafe. I agree.

I debated a little bit about whether or not I wanted that on the public record, but just for my colleagues to know that.

I've taken transit since I was very young and everywhere I've gone and everywhere I've lived. I've had those situations a lot and that's why I think presence a lot help but you're not going to have particularly on buses you're not going to have a security officer everywhere but to have more people actually helps and bart learned that recently when on their system that's why they shortened the number of trains so that they the trains felt more crowded because they still kept running very long trains and the more crowded they are the more safer they feel and i would that's the reason why i really want to You know, we really do need to get but that's not true for buses. If you run fewer buses, it doesn't mean your buses get more crowded. You just lose riders. So it doesn't work that way. So we need to get more frequent service and and and make it feel make it feel much more safer. And that does mean we need more presence. We need supervisors checking on the routes. We need to be able to ride the service.

great thank you and again i i i apologize a little bit for that that was my experience no time and don't i still not apologize for that at all you have every right to say that do not apologize for it Yeah, okay. I do very strongly still believe in the importance of public transportation, and thank you for all that you do on this. And I am happy to hear about all your efforts that have been put into this, the diversification of income streams. That sounds very promising, and I look forward to an improved bus and light rail system in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Ms. Ganot, for your presentation. I do have a few questions. First, I'd like to echo some of the comments that I've heard from Council Member Lay and others about the importance of the system for students getting to school, the importance of safety on the system. I also represent one of the two North Sunnyvale districts. Students in my district rely on VTA, reliable bus service, to get to Fremont High School. And when that service fails, they are their education is harmed. So and I've heard too many stories of students who, well, the bus was full and it pulled off without them. So, you know, certainly one of the things I will say is, you know, please continue to work with the Fremont Unified School District, ensure that we are getting the service that our students need to be able to get to school reliably and on time. You asked for our input in terms of what we would like to see in this measure. Actually, hold off. I'll get to that in a second. I seem to recall, you know, several years ago, there were discussions about installation of bus lanes on El Camino Real and even on Matilda. And I know those discussions got shelved. But, you know, as we're talking about fast, reliable transportation service, bus lanes are kind of the basis ultimate expression of that right um bus lanes and then also signal prioritization for the light rail um and my question was you know is VTA currently looking at expanding the number of bus lanes in the area you know have those you know I I know that those discussions kind of fizzled several years ago but has there been any talk about you know bringing back that idea

Yeah, I mean, we spent a lot of money on El Camino Real. I mean, $10 million on trying to move that project forward. It did get shelved because we couldn't get all the cities to agree on how that was gonna move forward. Same thing with Stevens Creek. So Manolo, do you wanna talk a little bit about where we're at on that?

Manolo Gonzalez-Estai, Government Affairs. I had the pleasure of working on the El Camino project for many years. yes there was a hurdle in regards to just the businesses and the loss of elaine there's a lot of discussions back and forth we did shelve it but it didn't go away that's something that still is a possibility of how it looks and what it would look like in the future for stevens creek we also had to we had some similar pressures that we we looked at however though the city of san jose has moved forward with their plans on seeing what options that they have for that area so we have been working with the city of san jose for um for the Stevens Creek area to see how we can do some type of dedicated lane, what it would look like. There has been much more support from some of the businesses, De Anza College and others for that, which was not ever seen here for the El Camino area, primarily from the car dealerships, which were not supportive of losing a lane for for that opportunity but it doesn't mean that with the new types of systems our bus rapid transit system that we have down on alum rock in south san jose it was difficult to build however though we have seen increased ridership the businesses have been seeing an increase in participation so there has been some very positives in regards to that so i think Now that we can show some positives locally and we see that in Oakland, we see that and also in San Francisco, I think revisiting may not be a bad idea and see how that works out, see how the taste is. But that will be in the future, I think.

And then I happen to agree that revisiting those discussions would be a good idea, but then also along the lines of signal prioritization for light rail. What is going on with that work?

That is something we continue to work with each of the cities that actually has been moving along a little better. And some of the cities we're getting, I would say better participation and being able to do that. Some of the systems are older. We're working through that, but each city is a little different. One of the things that we're working on, and we talked to the board about this the other day, is there's sometimes a little bit of concern about how long someone will wait on a cross street or whatever. Sometimes it's very small, so now we're actually getting more data than we ever have on regular, on the bus side. On the light rail, we're continuing to move on that. We do see some of the slowest sections through the Sunnyvale. Santa Clara area, I have to admit that, and so we're continuing to work on that. We do see it slow through the county expressway areas as well, so that's the area we're continuing to work on in terms of trying to get stronger signal priority for our light rail system.

All right, thank you. Does staff have any comments, city staff have any comments about signal prioritization and if there's anything that council needs to be thinking about on that front?

Angela Obeso, Transportation and Traffic Manager here at the City. Yeah, VTA has been a great partner with us, and we actually have a couple projects in process right now. One is with our vehicle registration fees. We got some money. We're working with them to upgrade some of our equipment along the light rail line, and we're also potentially, hopefully in May, getting a another round of money to do some modernization and transit priority for a Matilda corridor. And we're looking at some other improvements along Matilda corridor as well to help the transit as well as the rest of the community.

Thank you. um and then ms gano you did ask for feedback in terms of what we would like to see as part of this measure as part of not you know what we'd like to see included or excluded i have feedback on what i would like to see excluded i would like to see some very strong guarantees that this money will not be rated to fund the construction of the bart line in san jose yeah our board has made that clear as well members of our board and we do not plan on using it for the bart line

And measure B is also limited to how much can be used for the Bart line as well.

And that would be my single biggest concern. I do think that what you're saying about focusing this on capital rather than operational expenditures makes sense. I'm happy to hear that the plan is for this to allow this measure to expire and not be renewed. so that i'm very happy to hear but yes i think my single biggest uh concern is around making sure that this is going towards the bus and light rail improvement of bus and light rail service i don't believe i have any other questions uh thank you very much for your presentation thank you thank you vice mayor next council member sal uh thank you for coming before us

I think it's really great you're going to all 15 cities. And I also think what you said about VTA is investing on improving the system, whereas other transit agency in the region are trying to deal with deficits. So I think that's good management on VTA's part. So I know you've been doing some work on homestead safe routes to school for Homestead High School. We have high schools in Santa Clara and we have two high schools also near or in Sunnyvale, Fremont Homestead High School. The area in front of Homestead High School has tended to be difficult in terms of safety. So for several years, BTA has been working on that study. And how does that Homestead safe routes to school area relate to this potential funding measure?

yeah i mean the problem is is that you know with the measure so focused on transit it's a little more difficult we don't know if there's going to be a connection at all at this point i don't want to slow that we're actually trying to get that project moving more to get it ready for construction so we want to finish the design and get the right away and have that ready for construction so that when money becomes available now that still has ability to get funded through the State Transportation Improvement Program, like we're gonna do with STIP and go after grant funding for that as well. So we need $4 million to fund the remainder of final design and get it ready. So we've been doing that. We did get some money, we did program some money for STIP. I went out there, walked it, and looked at the project, it absolutely is a safety issue. It doesn't tend to actually score well because of the area that it's in, which is a shame because it definitely is a major safety issue particularly for the children who are going to and from the schools i know you and i have been manola and i've been talking about the update on homestead and i've had a number of things that have been going on and we've been reaching out to the cities i think sunnyville has been a great great partner in this but you want to give an update on where this is as well we'll give you the most recent update as to where we're at on that one as well

Yes, I think part of it is right now we're at 35% design for that. To get to 100%, like the general manager said, we need $4 million. We're working with the cities of Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino, and Santa Clara. Part of the discussion right now is in the discussion negotiation for lack of a better term with the cities sunnyvale has been a great partner on this some of the other cities are concerned with how much they would benefit from it which means how much they would invest in it so rather than dividing it four ways the four cities that is still questionable i think that's still a possibility to see what we could do with all of the cities. Once they all come on board, we'll be able to get to that 100% design. Once we get to that, then you'll be able to see much quicker other opportunities and other grant funds to be able to do that. We just got to get to that part of it. And I think part of the discussion, I know Supervisor Margaret Opokoga has been working with all the cities to help that move along. But I think a lot of it will become now is from city to city for you all to talk with your colleagues to try to help us move that along so we could try to make it a reality.

Okay. And then grade level separation. So as, you know, Caltrain is electrified and gets higher ridership, there will be more frequency of Caltrains. And then the roads in Sunnyvale that cross it, such as Mary, grade separation would be beneficial in terms of less traffic congestion on like cross streets and also more active transportation. or pedestrian safety. And so would this possible funding measure help with grade separation or is that?

It's something we've talked about because it is a public transit use. And so it is one of the things we've talked about is whether to put the grade, some funding to go towards grade separations. I mean, granted the whole funding pot could go to a grade separation as we've seen them escalate quite high. We do have money right now in the current Measure B, so we are looking at putting some money towards the advanced grade separation safety measures that Caltrain is proposing to actually, in their quarter crossing studies, to put those measures into place at our act rates. at the Akron crossings right now until the grade separations can be done. And so we're actually looking at funding a lot of those improvements along with Caltrain. And actually we're looking at maybe putting an application in to help support that as well. The second thing is, is then we would be looking at trying to help support some of these grade separation measures, whether we do it in here or not, but we are taking the input on whether we put some grade separation money into this measure as well. It is viable to do that. We think so. I mean, it's the language is for public transit services, but we do believe it's a safety project and it is partly public transit. So we think it could be so.

Okay. And my last thing is in Sunnyvale years ago, We rezone this area called Moffitt Park specific plan, and that will have like 20,000 housing units eventually many years from now and 10 million square feet of office and commercial and more retail. Anyway, in order for that to be successful, it would be great if light rail was faster and And there was more shuttles and that kind of thing. But first mile, last mile. So and there's a lot of companies that will be there. And when I talk to some of the companies, that's the question they have for me is like, when will light rail be faster? So when there's more people. So I think that's an opportunity, you know, public private partnership. I don't know that would be helpful or not.

think we're looking at more frequency on that that would be a big help we're actually looking to help hopefully get more frequency so you're not needing schedules you know 10 minutes the 10 minute frequency allowed no schedules primarily people would come out and know that the train's going to come every 10 minutes um same thing with on our frequent bus network and then we're actually looking at um where does it make sense to have sort of shuttle type micro mobility programs that serve areas. And those are the things that we're still looking at. Having that option open in the innovative section, that's a big area that we're looking at being able to help fund those services. Because if we can get people to the core network, that really helps our ridership as well, is to be able to do that. And that I think is a need in certain areas where a 40 foot bus doesn't work. Yeah, it running every 30 minutes.

Yeah, as you might know, maybe in the fall, Sunnyvale will have citywide shared, shared rights. And so that is matching funds from state grant and from Sunnyvale. So that is only a pilot for five years. So it would be nice if there were programs like that to augment Sunnyvale's investment with that kind of program.

So we'll be talking, I think at the workshop, we'll be having next Tuesday, next, I'm sorry, Friday. Hopefully we'll have a speaker who's going to be talking from Jacksonville Transportation Authority whose site, comes from a city about the size of San Jose, but manages the whole area. And he has like districts that they've now running autonomous shuttle in that manages and then connects to their network. And so it's things that they're starting to look at that actually are, you know, those are things that we're looking at that could be done and maybe have a little bit of a lower cost. than a micro mobility? Or is it something that we should sort of try to consolidate and have that housed? There's a lot of things that we need to take a look at. Thanks.

Okay, so that's all my questions. I appreciate you coming here and making the time and investing the resources to make this investment for the, if it passes for the next 14 years.

Well, I'm hoping whatever investment we make can last, really change our model and last long-term. Yeah. Long-term. Sounds great.

Thank you, Councilmember. I had several questions. First, thanks for the presentation. Thanks for improving transportation for our students and our residents. You mentioned 264 million returned to source for VTA. What percentage of that from a county standpoint for what the money that would be coming from the county for that estimated for those sales tax dollars would that be? You know, what percentage would we be getting return to source? And I understand, you know, it's intermixed with BART and Caltrain at the end of the day.

So actually it would be 264 to VTA, straight to VTA every year.

Okay. But how much from a county standpoint would Santa Clara County be adding to the pot?

Nothing. I mean, actually, that's what comes to us as VTA.

No, I mean, when you say 264, is it part of the new SB, the new half cent?

Okay, so yeah, so the half cent, so technically, VTA generates about I mean, a half cent sales tax generates about 300 million. And so the I think we So roughly $30 million goes to, roughly $30 million will go to Caltrain, $5 million will go to MTC, and the remainder comes back to VTA.

Okay, it'd be good to have that breakdown. Yeah, and we don't, yeah, we don't talk to our residents. It's always good to understand, are we giving to the rest of the region? Are we, you know, and...

there's this there's a selfish you're right that is a really good question because people ask us that all the time and we do have some pie charts when we show that yeah that's a good question because people do ask that like because people think that that this county will be giving to bart and to caltrane we do give to caltrane because we're part of the caltrane district um we have a separate sales tax that's going to bart so bart's not getting any other additional sources from us and so this would be primarily caltrane the regional for regional like transit coordination and activities like that. And then the remainder comes to the ETA.

We talked about oversight. And so there's the MTC oversight, which has been working to, let's say, improve coordination between all the agencies for years. There's the supposedly looking at the bill or looking at the proposal, quote unquote, citizens oversight of finances, which sitting on measure A oversight, the supervisors make all the decisions and the citizens overview is kind of is an afterthought. Is there true oversight on, you know, we see the stories about, let's say, BART issues from operational and all that. you know, are there dedicated improvements? I appreciate VTA's, you know, goal of looking at this as not operational, but as an investment and, you know, not looking at the long-term operation, but trying to get a better idea, in your opinion, of what true oversight there is of this funds, or pretty much does this funds go to the agencies and they decide on their own what they're going to do?

So within, so there are true, in this case, the legislation requires true performance monitoring and measuring of those four agencies, Caltrain, AC Transit, ART, and Muni, because of the deficit and the dollars that they're guaranteed to get. I'm not sure about the East Bay bus services because they're getting direct monies. It's a little different for, VTA and for San Mateo County, even though San Mateo County and SamTrans are a little different. I don't exactly understand how they work, San Mateo, because they have a bunch of different agencies. VTA is one whole agency, so we're getting the remainder as the county transportation agency. We also happen to be the transit provider. So it's sort of like VTA as the county transportation agency is making the determination of how we give the money to transit services for transit services, which will include VTA, giving it to VTA sort of in the way. So it's a little different. So it's actually any remaining funding that is not going to BART, Caltrain, AC Trans, whatever, to each of the counties. What is given from each of the counties is given back to the county transportation agencies, like Alameda County Congestion Management Agency, Contra Costa County Transportation Agency, each of them. In our case, it comes all to that VTA. We also happen to be the transit operator. But there are actual measurement monitoring and KPIs and oversight required and detailed in the legislation because of that.

Because I see something different from the legislation versus the citizens proposition that's coming in from a ballot standpoint. And I see a little bit of a disconnect, but I'll- Yeah, let- From that standpoint, because the performance capabilities, the staffing, the funding oversight to me is slightly different from that standpoint. But I don't wanna belabor that point here. You talked about placemaking for Palo Alto Mountain View. What placemaking is that and why not our transit center down south?

I think we're going to be looking at all the transit centers. I think we'll be looking at all of them. Palo Alto, we have a specific focus on because it's a regional transit center and there's some work being done right now on wayfinding. Because it doesn't have light rail, so it only has Caltrain. Oh, sorry, Caltrain. It's Caltrain. Right now, it's a pilot project for MTC at looking at wayfinding. Caltrain, Samtrans, VTA comes in there. AC Transit comes in there with the Dumbarton Express. Stanford's coming in. So they're doing a pilot project on wayfinding. So we're working on that. And then they've hired ULI previously.

So they're looking at sort of... That report, you know, just from a selfish standpoint of being... kind of the job center for Silicon Valley and not having that same way finding here. That's why we're propping up our own shuttle service to try to fill in those gaps and and trying, you know, what what could be done from a VTA standpoint

in our downtown would be very useful. So what I want to be able to do is still provide like the amenities and like some of the things that are for each of the stations. I think the bigger, bigger station areas is there's some, you know, there's a big plan for Deer Dawn that is going on that has regional participation in, and there's, Gilroy has some large participation in right now by the High Speed Rail Authority still. So there's some bigger plans there that we are continuing to look at. So those are the areas. Mountain View, I might've misspoke on the Mountain View one. But we are actually still planning on working on all that. When I talk about the stations, station amenities, things like that, that's going to be throughout both the foundation stage and the reimagined stage. We plan on still working on like real time information all of our stations, all of our transit centers, any areas that we can that are hubs where we're seeing transfers and connections. We want to actually make sure that we're providing technological advances, good station amenities, those types of things.

I would love to see the kind of the draft of what that means for Sunnyvale versus the other cities along, let's say, the Caltrain corridor. just to see where the money is planned to be spent.

You can get first in line. Okay. We'll get you first in line.

I would love to see that. You talked about grade separation, and I'll second what Councilmember Sell asked as far as that's concerned in trying to see if there's funding there. You talked also about signal prioritization. Are you only talking about light rail? Are you also talking about El Camino and basically that whole corridor?

We're talking about mostly anywhere we have frequent bus routes as well or I think we have frequent and then like our next level down anywhere we have major bus service on any of your streets, we'd be looking at transit signal priority. And so we've been working with the cities and helping them get grants. What I'd love to do is upgrade traffic signals in the cities and get the transit signal priority as well. My background ages ago, I came in as a traffic engineer. So I'm sort of one and I did a lot of work in this area. So I really am interested in it. We've been doing a lot of work with a smart grant on that work.

So I appreciate that. You know, I was pushing, you know, before COVID on signal prioritization for the Orange Line, trying to get it going when BART made it to Milpitas, and we're still not there. So I'm hoping that light rail can move forward from a from an El Camino standpoint, it's not the cities, it's Caltrans. So are they committed to signal prioritization and automation of those lights?

I have more faith in them right now. And I'll tell you why, because the new Caltrans director, Dina El-Tawanzi, who is now, she just got, she's been in there for a while, but she got confirmed recently. And I've known her for a long time. She worked with VTA for a while. I just met, saw her the other evening and then had lunch with her. She's the first Caltrans director who actually put forward a transit policy as a director policy, the first time they've ever done a transit policy. She has been engaged in that, and she actually has been involved in really looking at El Camino. So she's actually engaged in what's going on there. And so she wants to be able to do things to help support transit in on Caltrans wireways in those streets. So she is involved. So I think that's really important. That's like the first step is to get somebody up in Sacramento really pushing it. So I think we'll have a lot better.

I appreciate that because our cities have no control over what happens.

And she knows this county because she worked down here as part of the Caltrans I-team that we used to have seated in in bta's offices she was one of the project engineers there so she knows the county as well so she knows i would love to see that commitment before this is you know the sooner we see that commitment from caltrans the better it is for all of our cities uh that's all i have uh one last question from council member srinivasan

Yeah, you mentioned about this money would be more for more for improvement, fleet improvement, not operations. Is that correct?

I think some of it will go to operations. Put it this way. I think at first it will go for operations as we sort of ramp up. some of the visionary network. And then as you see the ridership go up, and then as we be able to get the fleets in, the new fleet, and some of the business process improvements that are coming on board, we'll start to see operating costs go down. And then as the express lanes are ramping up, because we're seeing those, it will start to drive, start to put more capital improvements in. Like we're going to be doing more speed improvements. We have a whole list of light rail speed improvements we'll be doing. So things like that will start to drop off the operating costs.

The reason why I'm asking is when this measure expires, at that time, almost three of the other measures will also expire. Measure A will expire in 2036. That is... Right. And then 2016 measure will expire in 2047. This, if it goes through from, say, next year onwards, it will also expire in 2042. So within the timeframe of.

five to ten years all the three measures will go away yeah i think the board has to make a decision on what they want to do because a lot of measure measure a has about 20 percent of measure a currently funds operations and about 13 percent of measure b funds operations A huge portion of Measure A and 25% of Measure B funds BART. So if BART gets funded, the question is to the board, do you do Measure A and Measure B, or does Measure B start to fund other types of things? Are there more other kinds of projects that the county wants? I think that's a discussion by the board and others about what do they want, or do they want to renew both, or do they only need one? I don't know. Does Measure A still stay all transit or something? There's a big discussion that will be having to happen. I will say those discussions will start happening over the next two years after this one because something that expires in 2036 will start to be discussed in 2028. Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you. That's all council questions. Let me go ahead and open up public comment on the VTA presentation. Did you have a final comment? Okay. Please submit your speaker card to the city clerk. Use the raised hand feature now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. Remote speakers are warned to limit their comments to the agenda item being considered, which is VTA and SB 63. Speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. City clerk. I have no speaker cards in the room.

Mayor, give us a moment. A speaker card is making its way to you. You're welcome to come to the podium.

If everyone wants to speak. I have one speaker card.

David H.?

Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Members. One second.

Yeah, addressing VTA.

I don't, I don't, I live near, uh, Washington expressway and, and Lake bird over 55, you know, I think that's a bad place for a bus stop. Uh, you got people coming off Lawrence expressway and they're making a right turn. They're really quick. And that's, there's a lot of pedestrians there. And then now you have a double bus that's just stopped right there. And I think it's a bad idea. So anyway, um, What's frustrating, riding the 22 on El Camino, it's really frustrating to see a 522 go by and you need a 22 and the 522 is empty. Let's see. Oh, as far as I know, there's only one customer service location for VTA. It's downtown San Jose. It'd be nice to have one in Sunnyvale, an office in Sunnyvale for people to get cards, buy a card. Even going to the North First Street office, I can't buy a VTA card or get a VTA card. Let me see. Oh, I was kind of surprised that, you know, once I turned 65, I got a senior card, right? So I get a dollar every ride. You know, it's great. But I was kind of surprised that, you know, for veterans that once they turn 65, they're just regular citizens and they're not special anymore. So, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. And do we have one other speaker who wishes to speak on this item? Or no. Okay. No other speakers in the room. Remote speakers are warned to limit their comments should the agenda item be considered. VTA NSB 63. Speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. City Clerk, do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, Mayor. First up is Callie W. Followed by John B. Callie, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council. Callie, you appear unmuted, but we're not able to hear you. Can you speak up a little bit?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Great. So thank you to VTA and to City of Sunnyvale for the presentation. I fully support increasing local transit service and the network. So I know it's been discussed before, but Santa Clara County does run less service per capita than a lot of our other peer regions, including Alameda County. These are places that have the same level of population density, but transit service really hasn't been allowed to keep pace with growth since 2001. I just really want to reiterate the point that we are running essentially the same bus service from the same time as a dot-com crash, Windows Me, Palm Pilots. So this SB 63 measure is a generational opportunity to increase fast, frequent, reliable local transit. So West Valley needs it, Sunnyville needs it. I am from Cupertino myself, so I've seen that a lot of the West Valley cities are spinning up their own rideshare micro transit services. And the reason As far as I can tell is that it's a lot easier to get funding for microtransit service from the state. It's easier for a city to get grants for that or to fund it out of their own budget than it is right now to get fixed route buses. So this is a pretty unique opportunity that really hasn't come up since the 2000s. So I think there should be as much as possible, should be meant to support local transit operations and any capital projects should be able to explain clearly how they'll increase local transit speed, reliability and ridership and by how much. So I think this is great. There's a real chance for Sunnyvale, West Valley and the whole Santa Clara County to work together and create real transportation options for residents and any resident who chooses transit is choosing not to take space on the roads and take a parking space so this is the really big opportunity to increase the speed reliability and just the amount of local transit that santa clara county has this doesn't come very easily thank you thank you

next up is john b followed by adina l john you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council excuse me let me tell you something when america opened the flood beach and let all us italians in item city clerk thank you Next up is Adina L followed by Mark B. Adina, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.

All right. Thank you very much to City Council and to VTA for coming to present and to get the feedback from the City Council and members of the community. Let's see, I'm with Seamless Bay Area, which is a nonprofit focusing on achieving a world-class and high ridership and equitable and accessible public transportation system for this region and wanted to really commend VTA for having spent the last several years working on the Visionary Network to improve and increase service to A level, as the previous speaker said, that would be more in line with other agencies in the Bay Area and other regions around the country, and the plans for transit priority to make the local transit faster and more reliable, and really importantly, as the general manager spoke about, being more cost effective. um and you know really wanted to commend all of the goals of having a more cost effective and efficient service in order to increase ridership and provide those goals of you know equitable transportation and sustainable transportation So the elements of the plan that VTA is proposing to increase service and make it faster and more reliable and more cost effective and also more well-coordinated are things that will help increase that ridership and provide value from VTA. from the measure will share that Seamless is part of a network of organizations that is supporting the measure and is out working with hundreds of volunteers contributing to the signature gathering effort to help this measure qualify for the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Mark B followed by Steve B. Mark, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council.

mark you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council good evening distinguished members of the sunnyvale city council or should i say the architects of my personal hell you sit up there behind your little nameplates pretending to care about advanced vehicle technologies and Light rail fleet replacements. But I see through the script. I see the wires. I see the signals. I see the full spectrum dominance operation you've launched against me, a sovereign citizen and targeted individual right here in the so-called heart of Silicon Valley. And let's not forget the Santa Clara Transportation Authority, VTA, your willing partners in this electronic concentration camp. You and the VTA are in it together, coordinating the light rail cars, the smart buses, and the endless surveillance cameras that track my every move from one end of the valley to the other. It started subtle, too subtle for the sheeple to notice, but I noticed the unmarked Tesla cyber trucks and white Google vans with government plates that rotate behind me from the target on El Camino Real to the in and out on Matilda Avenue. Same three vehicles every 48 to 72 hours. Don't gaslight me with your routine patrols. Those are your fusion center assets coordinated out of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. and signed off by this very council and the VTA board. Then came the weapons, the constant low frequency hum pulsing through the walls of my apartment off Rivendell Avenue. That's not bad wiring or old insulation, Councilman Tortilla. That's directed energy warfare. That's the same tech you guys quietly approved in closed sessions. while the public was distracted with their farmers' market nonsense and sustainability virtue signaling. Oh, well, the VTA was busy installing 5G transmitters on their light rail fleet and smart bus stops. It rattles my teeth. It scrambles my thoughts. It keeps me awake until 4.47 a.m. every single night. The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, they're not law enforcement anymore. They're perpetrators.

Next up is Mark B. I'm sorry. Next up is Steve B. followed by Afsaneh J.

You're all niggers and I hate you. You're all niggers.

He's got it. Thank you.

Next up is Afsaneh J. Afsaneh, you can unmute.

Thank you for allowing me to speak on this issue. I wanted to bring to your attention signal prioritization, which is like what we have at Sunnyvale and Everland, which puts the pedestrian who's crossing Sunnyvale in danger when it preempts the signal in favor of the public transit. So if you are going to emphasize on signal prioritization in the future, it will have to be designed properly in consideration of the pedestrian safety. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor, that was the final public speaker for this item.

Thank you. I'll go ahead and close a public comment. Thank you for the presentation. Looking forward to hearing about the next outreach meetings for for the region as well as hopefully for Sunnyvale. Thank you. Next. That's fine. We'll move on. Next, we have a study session Item 25-0413, Santa Clara County Community Plan to End Homelessness. Mr. Mayor, point of personal privilege, I'd like to ask for a brief recess. Okay, we will take, sorry, sorry. We will take a five-minute recess and come back at 8.48 p.m. Thank you. Let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to item 26-0413, Santa Clara County Community Plan to End Homelessness. Is this a staff report?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Ray Branson, Chief Operating Officer with Destination Home. I'm joined tonight with my colleague, KJ Kaminski, the Director of Supportive Housing for the Office of Supportive Housing at the County of Santa Clara. We have a presentation for you tonight. We'll try and make it brief, informative, and then we're here to answer all of your questions. so this evening we'll be covering a few key topics the first of which will be we're going to be looking at the progress from the 2020 to 2025 community plan sharing some of the results and the impacts that we had in the community working on that we're also going to be talking a bit about specifically sunnyvale housed that that and the work that we did here in sunnyvale with your community partners and with your city and then next lastly we'll be looking at developing the five-year plan Before we get to all that, I want to give you a sense of what we mean when we say supportive housing system. The supportive housing system for us is a coordinated system of entry and how we address homelessness in the community. For a long time, if you were homeless, you'd go to a shelter, you'd maybe find a case manager, you'd work with a nonprofit organization that you knew, but there wasn't a system that would bring everyone in. When the county formed the Office of Supportive Housing in 2015, we were able to bring resources and centralize them. We created a system where if you're homeless in the community and you get contacted or you need help, there's someone you can go and speak to and they put you through a system and they provide you with the services and the support that you need. If you're a working family who's just experienced some hard times and is about to leave your home, homelessness prevention is the intervention. If you're a senior with a chronic disability unable to afford your rent anymore and you ended up on the streets and you've been out for a while you're going to have permanent supportive housing if you're a youth aging out of foster care there's going to be a transitional subsidy to get you to where you need to go so our supportive housing system the goal at its best is capturing all of those needs and providing people with permanent placements and ending their homelessness All of this work is organized around our continuum of care. The continuum of care is the body, which is comprised of public entities, philanthropic partners, nonprofits, individuals with lived experience and community members. And it works together in this community plan to end homelessness. It's a broad group of stakeholders, and it's designed to ensure that there's a coordinated community-wide strategy to prevent and end homelessness. The County of Santa Clara serves as the lead agency in this work. But all of this work is based around the idea of collective impact. I think as all of you will know, there's no one entity, group, nonprofit, philanthropic organization that can really prevent and end homelessness on their own. It's a community effort and it requires all of us working together. So the collective impact model is making sure that every partner is at the table, is able to provide support and carry out their role, but at the same time work towards this long-term goal of ending homelessness in our community. Every five years, we work on our community plan to end homelessness. The first community plan was in 2015. The second was in 2020, and we've just completed that in 2025. I want to share some of the results very quickly with you. First goal of the 2020 to 2025 community plan homelessness was to house 20,000 people. And I'm pleased to report that we've exceeded that goal in that time period. That means taking people who are accessing the homeless system that were unhoused and putting them into some type of permanent placement. effectively ending their homelessness. I think what's most exciting about this number and this work is that over 90% of the people that we're placing in long-term housing solutions are staying housed over time. This is a durable strategy, and we're seeing a real change. And it's not just for one single subpopulation. It's for a wide, wide cohort of individuals. About half of the population are chronically homeless, and chronically homeless people are individuals who have been outside for a long period of time and are dealing with either a physical or mental disability. But we're also seeing about a quarter of the population as families with children. We're seeing young adults at high rates and veterans and seniors. And seniors is a growing concern for us as a community because we know more and more people who are living here who have been stably housed in our community for years and years are simply just getting pushed outside. But the plan has housed all of those people through this work. But housing alone isn't enough. We know that we have people that are outside right now, over 10,000 people in Santa Clara County who need more immediate help. And the plan called for doubling our shelter capacity in those five years. And we increased our shelter capacity by 82% over that time period. So while we didn't completely double it, we saw thousands more emergency shelter beds and interim housing units come online across the county from Gilroy all the way to Palo Alto. Um, this was again, a community effort trying to address some of the needs that we saw during COVID, but we've been able to continue to expand that work through hotels, through shelters, through tiny homes. However, we're never going to stop and end this crisis if we don't keep people from losing their homes in the first place. And one of the biggest successes that we've had as a community has been the rapid expansion of homelessness prevention. In the past five years, we've served 38,000 people through homelessness prevention. 93% of the families remain stably housed while enrolled in prevention services. And just think of prevention services as right-sized financial support, typically in Santa Clara County, about $7,000 per family to keep people safe and in their homes. 93% stay housed while they're receiving the support. But then one year later, only 5% of those households become homeless. So this is one of our most cost-effective and highest return on investment interventions that we have. And we're finally able to do it to scale. For a system that in 2017 was serving a couple hundred households a year with support from all the cities and partners like Sunnyvale Community Service right here in your community, we've expanded that to over 2,500 households annually that we're able to serve through prevention and kind of turn off that spigot and keep people in their homes. And the result is that we're seeing a decrease in new households becoming homeless. When we started this work, for every one household that we housed, three were becoming homeless. Today, for every one household that we house, only 1.9 are becoming homeless. We're not all the way there yet. We want that number to be one to one. we want that number to be below one-to-one. But it is getting us to this point in our community where we can see functional decreases of homelessness and a progress towards this longer-term goal. We're excited for the results of this work, but now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, KJ, to share a little bit more about what's going on in Sunnyvale.

Thank you, Ray. Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members, thank you for having us. As Ray said, I'm the director of the county's Office of Supportive Housing, but I'm here today as a representative of our continuum of care. The county is the lead, but this community plan really represents the entire continuum of care and all of the stakeholders, including many of the partners that Ray mentioned earlier. Ray shared some great statistics of our countywide outcomes, but I know you will be very interested in what does that mean for the residents of the City of Sunnyvale. So we broke that data down and of those 20,000 plus people housed, 1,364 of those folks were from City of Sunnyvale. Of the people placed in temporary housing and shelter since we launched the 2020 plan, over 2,600 of those folks were from the City of Sunnyvale. And on the homelessness prevention front, over 3,500 people from City of Sunnyvale received support through the homelessness prevention system to remain housed before ever experiencing homelessness. And that the ratio that Ray shared in terms of our county-wide efforts and the progress we've made in 2025 just for residents in the city of Sunnyvale, for every one household we housed, another 1.5 became homeless. So again, progress against the overall goals, but still more to be done. We also just wanted to give you a snapshot of what it looks like, how people from Sunnyvale are being served on an annual basis across the supportive housing system. So the supportive housing system, all the interventions that Ray talked about in that map, just to highlight a few here, what this means is last year alone, about 250 households were served from Sunnyvale were receiving permanent supportive housing assistance. Another 170 households were enrolled in rapid rehousing programs that provide rental assistance and supportive services. 414 families and individuals were served in emergency shelter. And just in one year, just in last year, 2025 alone, 365 households from Sunnyvale received assistance through our homelessness prevention system. And also, you know, that shows some of the strong partnerships we have here, like with agencies like Sunnyvale Community Services. And we wanted to give you an idea of just what that investment looks like for those households that are being served. For the 247 households that are from Sunnyvale enrolled in permanent supportive housing, that represents about a $9.2 million annual investment on the rental assistance and supportive services. For rapid rehousing, those 170 households represent a nearly $5 million annual investment to support those households. And on the prevention side, about 5.7. So just these interventions alone represent nearly $20 million of annual investment supporting residents of Sunnyvale. We just wanted to highlight a few additional partnerships between the county and the city and other partners. On the affordable housing front, we have invested $31.7 million in projects like Orchard Gardens, Ira D. Hall, and the Meridian. We also, these are really like sort of our place-based investments. The folks being served on the last slide could be served anywhere, and much of our housing programs are still tenant-based. So the voucher can be used anywhere in the community, and we track those by where the residents are from. But these investments on this slide are those that are based here in Sunnyvale at Sunnyvale sites. So we also provide supportive housing services for the residents at projects like Onizuka Crossings and Parkside Studios, Fair Oaks Plaza, Ira D. Hall, and have committed to providing the supportive services at Orchard Gardens when it opens. Lastly, just to highlight our support of the temporary housing at the North County Shelter, which supports families and was transitioned to year-round several years ago. That is an investment of about $4.3 million annually to operate that site. working over we've been working over about the last year to update our plan um as as ray mentioned we're in the last 2025 was the last year of the last plan and i just want to start by saying thank you to the sunnyvale staff who have been uh partners in this effort and participating and contributing to uh to this process along with dozens, probably hundreds of other folks, city staff, nonprofit partners, folks with lived experience that have gotten us to this point. In terms of the timeline, we started this development last spring. The process so far has involved things like data collection and analysis, a deep engagement with our partners from community-based organizations, um to cities to uh our lived experience uh partners our youth and young adults um and we're in the process now of of getting community input we have a draft plan um it is it's in addition to being on your agenda it's also posted on our website we're hosting engagement events with the goal of the continuum of care board adopting the plan in late summer early fall and returning to our partner agencies such as CITES and other partners with a request to endorse the plan moving forward. So the plan is really focused in four areas. And as I mentioned, the draft plan is attached and we've just summarized it here. The first focus area is really focused on prevention. We know that we must stop people from entering our homelessness system in the first place. It's the most effective and humane and cost efficient intervention that we can provide. The second area of focus is really our continuum of housing programs. So continuing to house people from temporary housing, safe parking, temporary housing, permanent housing, and helping them stay and remain stably housed. The third area of work is, while we know permanent housing is the solution, there are many people who are still unsheltered on our streets today, improving access to services, critical services. There's a body of strategies to advance that work. and then lastly we know as we do this work the people who know the most about what is effective and what we should prioritize in our system are people who are experiencing homelessness who have experienced homelessness in the past and we are working with them to lead on these strategies So the next steps, as I mentioned, we are in community engagement phase now. So we are taking input from our partners, from the broader community. We are also in the process of developing sub-regional plans, which I'll touch on in the next slide, with the goal to adopt the plan and return to our partners for endorsement in the fall. The sub-regional plans is a new aspect, which you wouldn't have seen in the 2020 plan. And what we are doing here, we're trying to work with North County, South County, West Valley, and the city of San Jose, understanding that the characteristics, the priorities of those communities may be unique, but shared within those sub-regions. The idea here is to develop a plan COMPLEMENTARY SUBREGIONAL PLANS THAT ARE ALIGNED WITH THE BROADER COUNTYWIDE PLAN, BUT HIGHLIGHTS THE EXISTING EFFORTS, THE PRIORITIES OF NORTH COUNTY, AND BRING THOSE REGIONS TOGETHER TO TACKLE SOME OF THESE ISSUES. AND WE WILL BE WORKING ON THESE PLANS OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS, AND REALLY WE SEE THOSE AS A ROAD MAP TO GUIDE OUR WORK TOGETHER MOVING FORWARD. As I mentioned, the community engagement is underway right now. I want to highlight that we're doing some broader public convenings and highlight that the North County one is scheduled for Thursday, April 30th in Palo Alto at the Mitchell Park Community Center. We also have a virtual convening scheduled for April 21. And if there are folks that want to provide input in other ways, they can work with our office to do that. We will be taking that input over the next several months. And, uh, just to, um, you know, what we're interested, uh, obviously interested in hearing your feedback on, on the plan and the process and really are the, are the focus areas, um, included in the plan reflective of the needs and goals in your community. what kinds of information and strategies would you like to see included as part of the sub-regional plans and how we can work with you to get information out to the community so they know about the work that we collectively do. So thank you again for your time this evening and look forward to answering any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. We'll bring it to Council for questions. First up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I would like that slide to be up. When I talk to the nonprofits who directly work with the announced community, the biggest problem they see is CES is a black box. And then nobody except the person has access to that, which means that if they lose their phone or something like that, they don't have any way of knowing where they are in the queue line as such. Right. And then similarly, the voucher very very few people in sunnyvale announced community have that so any way to improve that that is the first focus area i am talking about to make it transparent or have a coordinator part of the system so that they get some alert or some information that this person is being contacted because they directly work with the group as the community, right? So from what I heard, you make three phone calls and then if they don't pick up, they are dropped off the system. So that would be one improvement. The other thing yes uh you mentioned in uh i don't want to go back to the slides how does the prevention program uh work with our tbra which we administer sunnyvale community services administer

Sure. Well, I'd say you're asking about TBRA, the tenant-based. So TBRA is a different form of intervention. Our homelessness prevention system, the focus and the work of it is providing people with time-limited access emergency financial assistance to meet their needs and typically it's a much smaller amount as opposed to being an ongoing rental subsidy or even a short-term rental subsidy it's usually one time or time limited help so the resources that are in the homelessness prevention system are comprised of both a variety of different government dollars but also private philanthropic supports So it's meant to be quick, fast, and resolve the issue that the family and the individual is facing, as opposed to needing to provide a longer and more enduring intervention.

So how does somebody from Sunnyvale, I like that slide which said Sunnyvale residents who qualify by the work or previously lived in Sunnyvale, like that. But how does a Sunnyvale announced community person can get access to this?

sure they uh so they could sunnyvale community services is one of the uh homelessness prevention system partners so that would be the um one spot that i know a lot of folks are very familiar with there's also a centralized um uh phone number uh to access homelessness prevention system you don't have to go in um i don't know that off the top of my head but i will find it And yeah, it's really a kind of a no wrong door and many partners. We have 19 homelessness prevention system partners that are providing the service across the county.

Thank you. You also said that Sunnyvale for every person, every family house, 1.5 come in, whereas at the county level, it's 1 to 1.19. Why is it

increase that discrepancy in sunnyville why is it more in sunnyville it's a great question um i the the rates of folks accessing the prevention services are a little bit higher in sunnyville than in some of the other community uh areas of the county so that could be contributing to it i don't know that that's not a causation i wouldn't uh say we know that for sure but that that could be a factor certainly And there's also a significant number of people each year that are moving, that are from Sunnyvale, that are moving from homelessness into permanent housing. But we do see some variation across all communities and don't have exactly the reason why, Seth, but we wanted you to have the information to know sort of what that looks like within your city.

So regarding this slide, what I would like to see is how many the Sunnyvale residents are in the current shelter. That's the number. And then how many are in the various programs. You have that, but then I would like to break down, for example, Ira D. Hall, none of the Sunnyvale residents are in the 45 designated unhoused units. So that is very important. And then also, because we need to share that information with our community and then see how our dollars are helping solve the problem. yeah definitely we need to be part of sub-regional plan as such for example somebody who works in sunnyvale should not be housed in santa clara or san jose for that matter it should be preferable to be housed closer to where they work so those are my comments thanks for the presentation thank you council member next up is council member cisneros

Thank you. Great to see you both. And thank you for your hard work on this really important topic that is, I always like to say, you know, solving homelessness is easy. Just give everyone a home. And it's actually that hard too, right? Because you don't want to be homeless. And this is exactly what that is. And I appreciate a lot of the approach. I have a couple of questions here. What is your success rate of getting folks out of temporary housing into permanent housing? How long does it take from getting into temporary housing and going on to somewhere more permanent?

I'll say something broadly about temporary housing and then maybe turn it over to KJ for the specifics. Temporary housing is a component of a system. It isn't a solution unto itself. And I think one of the challenges that we've continued to see is that the more temporary units we bring online without bringing complimentary permanent units, we're having trouble seeing placements into permanent housing. So across the community, our exits into permanent housing from interim and shelter destinations has actually not been great, but that's not unique to Santa Clara County or to this community. That's just a fact across the country. If you don't have a place for people to go, you're not gonna have great outcomes. So we are seeing broadly people staying longer. in interim housing and an emergency shelter before they're able to find the next destination. And more and more often we're seeing that next destination might be a transition to another interim site as opposed to permanent housing.

Yeah, apologies. I we do have some more information on the temporary housing exits. But I don't want to misquote the number. So I'm pulling those up now. I, if we can come back to that, I can work.

And that makes total sense. And that leads me to another question. You had a slide that mentioned how much it costs to have permanent supportive housing in that investment. but I think that's a really low number because how much does it, like, how do you, like, how much does it cost to build a permanent supportive housing? Like that main cost per unit on an ongoing basis, which makes it quite frankly, a little cost prohibitive on the city side to, to look at that. But how do we get, how do we work with that initial cost to actually build those initial units, right. For, to your point, to have people who are in the temporary housing situation have somewhere for them to go.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's a resource question more than anything else. And in 2016, our community passed Measure A, the affordable housing bond. In 2024, there was broad efforts to get Regional Measure 4 onto the ballot, which would have been a $20 billion regional housing bond. Right now, we don't have a permanent source, and we don't have dedicated funds for capital dollars. And to your point, affordable housing development in this region can cost anywhere from $600,000 to up to $1 million per unit leveraged across all of the partners. So it's a challenge. It's a unique challenge right now that we're trying to address. We're fortunate that we still have a little less than 2,000 units in the pipeline that we'll be building out over the next few years. So that'll result in some placements. But at a time when the federal government is cutting all of our resources and we don't really have a good regional plan on how we're going to generate more, it's a big question mark for what we're going to be able to project in this next plan where we house 20,000 the last five years. I don't know that we'll reach those numbers again in the next five.

Yeah, I really appreciate that answer. And I'd love to just as part of the plan to think about aligning with the inclusionary units that we get through market rate housing is that is where a majority of your affordable housing units are going to come just because they're being built in. You mentioned that private partnership, and I think maybe that there's some room in there to think about how do we as we're considering these projects and working with the development community, saying this needs to align with the plan here because this is how we're going to do it because we don't have anything else. So I would love to see some innovation on that front. I think that's been kind of left on the table. Not always, but sometimes. And how long do households typically access homelessness prevention services?

It could be anywhere from one month to three to four months. It isn't, you know, sort of historical prevention assistance might have just been a one-time check to pay that rent to prevent that immediate eviction. The wonderful thing about our homelessness prevention system and the model that was developed is, does provide some case management, some support to try to really address the underlying issue. And sometimes that takes a few months. And for some families, it may just be a one time check for assistance. So it varies based on the needs of that family.

Very helpful. So that provides a nice range and a helpful look at that is incredibly effective and clearly an incredible use of resources. And then just you had the in 2019, it was one to two point five. One housed in 2.5. And then it went down a lot. Really quick question. Do you think the 2020 eviction moratoriums had anything to do with improving those numbers and stabilizing people?

The impacts of COVID definitely had direct impact, not just the eviction moratorium, but the influx of cash and a number of different assistance forms, treasury dollars, the unemployment bonuses. People had just more money in their hands and there was less threat of losing their housing than before. There's a lot of other problems during that time period, but we certainly saw numbers go down in a way that we hadn't in the history of our community during that time.

Thank you. I appreciate that. That's an interesting it's just an interesting piece of numbers, an interesting piece of history. So our county resources sober only.

No, our county and our continuum of care are both housing first and we were early adopters and continue to utilize the housing first model because it is the evidence demonstrates that this is the model that is most effective in ending people's homelessness. So that means that they don't require sobriety. We try to reduce barriers into housing to the greatest, into any housing program to the greatest extent possible, and really support people with those wraparound services after they are housed, including substance use treatment, mental health treatment, employment services, all of the services that may help them stabilize and improve their wellbeing, but it's not a prerequisite for housing.

I'm so glad to hear that. Thank you for all the reasons you just said. Something in Sunnyvale is we need a safe parking site. You very much want one and we are struggling to figure out where to put it. Exactly. So when you're asking like Sunnyvale consideration, so, you know, going to the city and saying, well, what are you trying to do here and seeing how you can be of direct help? We know that would be is a huge need and we've just struggled to find the most appropriate place but we're ready and willing to have a service provider in there so just want to make note of that and then something i would like to see in maybe an area specific plan is accountability for service providers these dollars are so precious as we've talked about, and those who are supporting and working with and caring for those who are most vulnerable, I think have a tremendous amount of responsibility and accountability. So having something in there to ensure that service providers understand what's expected of them and also how we can address serious issues as they come up, as they have. We've seen it in the news and things, and we just want to avoid it. And here we're trying to be proactive about that.

um i believe my other questions have been asked and answered that's it and if i could just i didn't answer one of your questions but um just and race i think got to this point but um wanted to share that just in last year of all the people served in temporary housing 25 of them exited to permanent housing And which is still a lot of folks over 2200 people, or 2200 households, excuse me. And but the majority of those that did did so with the support of a subsidy or a permanent housing program demonstrating that most folks do need some kind of ongoing support. It may not be forever, but some kind of support in order to move into permanent housing.

Absolutely. And then real quick, one other thing that that kind of made me think of is the unsheltered homeless population that we have. You mentioned there's a suite of different concepts and ideas to serve that population in a dignified way. And I'd love to hear some of them and see some of them, notably things that come to mind are like sanitation and access to water and other things, but also being respectful of the house community In terms of those it can be there can be quite a bit of tension in our position, so I wonder how you all have handled that.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Councilmember. Those strategies are in a few areas, one around building the capacity of our service providers that are supporting people who are on the streets, making sure that they're coordinated, culturally responsive and trusted. And we're increasing the consistency the quality of outreach and basic needs and essential services. So basic needs, we include both outreach, mobile hygiene, safe parking, that's sort of the crisis response system, if you will, of folks who are experiencing homelessness right now. So there's a number of strategies in those areas. and then um a few strategies around investing in approaches that improve outcomes and reduce harm for people who are living unsheltered and the community at large to get to that um uh your your point about you know both supporting the people who are experiencing uh homelessness but also the neighborhoods uh in the community wonderful thank you both so much i really appreciate that thank you council member next is council member cell

Thank you for your presentation. And several times in your presentation, you mentioned Sunnyvale Community Services as one of the 19 partners in prevention. Usually what we see here at the council is tenant-based rental assistance. But you mentioned that Sunnyvale Community Services, when they work with the county, they're involved in this other program, which, what was that program called again? the homelessness prevention system okay or HPS and then what I'd be interested in is you know in future to be able to see how many people go to Sunnyvale Community Services in Sunnyvale how many Sunnyvale people go to the other 19 providers and of those is their ability to track that after they've gotten some preventive assistance, how many of them stay stably unhoused? I think you mentioned something like on the order of over 38,000 get homelessness prevention assistance, and 93% of the families remain stably in-house. Those are like not, I mean, maybe I quoted you wrong.

Stably housed, not stably in-house.

I'm sorry, stably housed. Stably housed, yeah. After they get the prevention, 93%. become stably housed. So I don't think those numbers get out to the public. So it would be good if that got out to the public because then it would engender more ability to galvanize support for these kind of programs. So I'd like to see more of that. And I'd like to see like where the Sunny people are going and which of the 19 providers are helping them and how many are being helped various. I'd also like to know cost versus like when you're giving the people assistance, such as they're not stable, but they're not homeless, but they get assistance. Like what is the cost of that versus if somebody becomes unhoused? What is the cost of that? And so in terms of like if you're able to get more prevention in place. You mentioned that that's a cost savings. So it would be nice to have that in the subregional plan.

Yeah, thank you. If I may speak to that a little bit. Thank you for the points. Homelessness prevention is the most, we mentioned the most cost effective. The average amount of financial assistance there is about $7,000 per household that is assisted. And I think in the slides, we also shared the rental assistance and supportive services for something like PSH is around $37,000 per household. Shelter is more than that. typically the most expensive intervention is operating temporary housing. Um, and, uh, the, the other thing to, to your point about getting the word out, we do have some, um, some one pagers that are designed for the public and some information that we can share about the prevention system, both about access, but also about those outcomes that you spoke to that are really, um, uh, that we're very proud of, but this is also, we also, um, thanks to our partners at destination home, did the first randomized control trial for prevention in the nation and the results of that confirmed what our local data was showing us and that folks helped assisted with prevention were much more likely to stay housed than those who were who were not and the cost savings The study showed that for every $1 invested in prevention, another $2.40 I think it was, was saved in public dollars from shelters, from other assistance that that individual or family may have needed had they become homeless.

And I'll just share that we do completely agree. We need to do a better job of talking about this and letting the community know this homelessness prevention system that we're very fortunate to have in Santa Clara County is now being replicated in 10 communities across the country, um, as evidence of how effective this work is. So it's, um, but we have not done as good a job communicating the effects right here at home. So.

Yeah. And I would love to see that paper, that study that's based on Santa Clara County and, um, Layla Law- And hopefully what you've learned from that you'll push in bigger for in that direction in the future, so thank you for your work it's really this is a devastating crisis we're in but it's a little red hope of what you've presented today, so thank you for your work.

Mayor Mrakas, Thank you, Council member next up is Council member lay.

Thank you so much for the presentation. And I want to say that figure of 1.9 families losing their homes for every one family that's housed, that's absolutely galling. That's a terrible statistic. It's a much better statistic than where it was six years ago, but that's absolutely horrifying. I think that we as a region, we as a Council as a county should and should absolutely be doing better and this is one of the first steps here. Looking at the plan I want to say that a lot of the first steps are securing funding and looking at you know everything the general tenor of the world that's sometimes seems a little optimistic. So I hope that even though that is the first step on a lot of the items here that we're also looking at ways to stretch or otherwise utilize the funding that exists. I also want to say that for one of the action items, there's an item about safety for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. I would like to see something added for safety in other aspects of homelessness as well. in temporary housing. This is a concern that I've heard voiced by members of the community that they don't feel safe going to temporary housing, that they would rather stay in unsheltered homelessness because they don't want to experience congregate shelters. I think that that's a statistically valid concern, maybe not as much here as in other places, but it's a reasonable concern and I want people to be able to access those without fearing for their own safety or the safety of their possessions. I also want to say that on the topic of funding, for the North County shelter specifically, the North County family shelter that's in District 6 in my district, there has been conversation for a very long time now, I had the privilege of touring when I was elected last year, about improving access to outdoor space for the families, for the children. I believe there are 45 children there now and they don't have access to a space to play. And in fact, the parking lot leads into a gorge. It leads into a gorge. Like you can chase a ball and end up running down a hill into a creek and die. Ideally not. But the people running the shelter have asked about funding and asked about if we brought in funding, what can be done? And so even in my experience, even when there is a source of funding, it's not exactly clear to the people who are operating the shelter and the people who are volunteering at the shelter what to do next. So that is something that I would like to see cleared up as well so that we can provide not just housing or just a roof, but actually a place where children and families can thrive, can play, can kick a ball around without dying. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Chang.

Thank you for the presentation. So I read through it and I was wondering if you could help clear up some, I think there's some level of vagueness to some of the information. So I think a flat number is hard to quantify. So it says 81% of the people that were served are San Jose affiliated. Does that mean 19% for the rest of the county affiliation?

Not necessarily. Folks could be affiliated with more than one city if they, for example, live in Sunnyvale and work in San Jose. Because one of the most challenging things we have with folks in terms of our data analysis is unhoused folks don't have an address. So we ask them these four questions. Where do they spend most of their time? Where did they live prior to becoming homeless? Where do they work? And if they have kids, where do their kids go to school? That's where that sort of affiliation comes from. So folks could be affiliated with more than one city.

Okay. Thank you. And you know, for some of the information where it says 95% remained housed for what length of time is that being housed for? Is that for the point in time when you have reached out back to them or is it for a long duration?

Are you referring to the prevention data? Yes. Yes. So we track that the data in the slides is for one year later after they received assistance. We also have that data for two years later. I believe it's six or seven percent became homeless two years later. So that long-term stability and the study that we did allowed us to measure beyond a single year or two and also showed that same level of stability.

Okay, thank you. And then for the 2025 progress report, so you mentioned you meet the goal of the 20,830 housed, but about 10% of them are now living with friends and family. So how do you quantify that as part of your work?

um they would so we ask people when they exit any of our programs um how you know what their exit destination is could be rental on their own could be rental with a subsidy could be staying with friends if or family if they say that this is a permanent i'm reuniting with my mother and i'm going to live there permanently they would be included in that permanent housing exit exit many times staff and our programs are helping facilitate that reuniting with with a family member if they say i can stay there for a couple months they wouldn't be counted as a permanent as permanently housed

does that help yes thank you I think if maybe if some of that more of that information was included um instead of kind of the flat numbers of you know 4 000 people to 3 000 especially with the past five years with covid the eviction moratoriums as you're saying it's hard to kind of understand how much progress is actually being made yeah I think that could help strengthen it a bit

And I'd be happy to follow up. Thank you for the question. To share, however it makes sense, we have about a seven or eight page report that was published. And specifically for the permanent housing, it shows the different ways in which people were supported from permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, staying with family and friends. So a little bit more explanation and data that we can share. Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I am not going to mince words. In my time in office, my impression and my experience with the Office of Supportive Housing have been almost entirely negative. Practically the first crisis I had to deal with in my time in office was encampments on Central Expressway. I'm sure you remember that. It took nearly two years for that issue to be resolved. And yes, I know roads and airports was involved in that particular fiasco as well. Um, we have in 2024, I believe the sink shelter for single adults in North Sunnyvale was converted to a shelter for families. The result of that was that the single adults who were residents of that shelter, many, many of them found themselves with nowhere to go. That was done over the objections. I believe the mayor sent a letter of concern on that. And it was done, frankly, without adequate consultation with the city. So my first question for you is what is OSH doing to help ameliorate that particular mess and bring more services for single adults online in North County?

uh thank you vice mayor for the question um so we have been focused on expanding shelter both for families and single adults um specifically in north county uh we are supporting the the palo alto home key site is coming online which will serve I believe up to 84 single adults. That nearly replaces the capacity from the North County Shelter in Sunnyvale. We have also supported in the interim, until that opens, we supported a temporary motel program here in North County. and our partners at Life Moves, because the Palo Alto home key site has been delayed, they have temporarily housed over 100 folks in a motel that will eventually move into that program. So those are all North County focused investments.

So let me ask you, you mentioned motels. Why hasn't, you know, family shelters, congregate settings are not ideal for family shelters. They aren't ideal for anyone, but they're especially not ideal for family shelters. You know, for some time I heard discussion of, well, maybe we could buy a motel, you know, do a family shelter that way. What drove the decision to convert essentially the only shelter for single adults in North County to a family shelter when it's not an ideal design for a family shelter and there were other options available.

Yeah, we saw a high need for families in North County. We also, in addition to, I mentioned Palo Alto, we also support the Mountain View Shelter, which includes single adult households, as well as some families. And in terms of the layout and the facility itself, you're absolutely right, a congregate site. is not ideal for families, we were able to make with pretty minimal investments, create a shelter there where there are individual pods providing privacy for those families at a much more cost effective model than we do utilize motels in some of our other programs as well. But that can also drive up the costs for the the lease, or the purchase of the motel, which is also sometimes challenging. So We did address the need for privacy of families. It's a great point. And the site is now fully occupied serving families and has been successfully helping folks exit from that shelter into permanent housing as well.

All right. I will agree with my colleague Councilmember Lay's assessment that the 1.9 families per becoming homeless for each family housed is a galling number. I am going to an Mr Carnahan. I may need your assistance with this. I'm going to attempt to share my screen here. I was on Reddit last week and I saw a post in our San Jose help. I'm about to lose my house and so I attempted to go find. the Vispadat, how he could submit a Vispadat. And I will tell you that I was really underwhelmed and really, frankly, extremely confused in my efforts to attempt to actually find a door into the system. Now, I'm going to say that Probably my first problem was that I, being who I am, I was searching for vispidat rather than help, I'm homeless. But I wanted to bring up a couple of searches here and talk a little bit about how we're supposed to, people are supposed to find their way into the system. Now, remember the users, I am a professional software developer focusing on user interfaces. So this is my jive. The users in this scenario are under high stress, probably on an older or slower machine or a mobile device. So the good news here, which no one in this room can claim credit for, is that Google's AI overview surfaces the Here For You hotline. So that is good news. The rest of the news is tolerable. But if you scroll down this page, first of all, none of the results on this page are from the county. On the first page of. This search now this is a generic search, but it is also Google is smart enough to geo optimize, which is why City of Santa Clara City of Sunnyvale are coming up and again. Thankfully, enough of these agencies have the sense to put the here for you hotline up front. But where is the county on here? OK, let's try this Santa Claire. I will take. A couple more minutes Mr Mayor, Proving a point. I go in here. There is the homelessness prevention system, points for having the phone number here, and then a large network of partners. And this is not written at a sixth grade level. This is quite complicated information. This is, again, separate from the main county website. And then this, I get the county website. But it's a variety of different pages. Here, the phone number is buried. If I go here, I'm finding, OK, a tree. You all need to do some search engine. My point is you all need to do some search engine optimization and some usability analysis on this. Because if I, who have been dealing with bureaucracies in one shape or another for 20 years of my life, am confused by this and struggled to find the right door in, someone who does not have the education or resources or English language proficiency that I do is going to struggle a lot more. So I hope that the county can take a more collaborative posture with the city of Sunnyvale going forward. I'm going to turn my microphone off now. Thank you.

Thanks, Meryl. I will just add to your point, technology continues to be a frontier that we're trying to master in our work to address homelessness, but centering the client is always at the forefront of those efforts. We've launched, over the past couple of years, we launched MyConnect SV, which is a user portal for someone who is in the homeless management information system so they can access their client records, so they can contact their case manager. I think we've done a lot of work on the grassroots level with the 19 community partners of trying to have proactive community outreach, culturally sensitive and appropriate places for people to go, working with faith-based institutions, working in libraries and schools. But I think we'd love to see, and perhaps this is something that could come out of the sub-regional plan or in the community plan work, a technology working group where we can take some of the learnings from people like you have worked in technology for a long time and kind of help us think through how we can make it more accessible through the internet.

I'll just add, have some of your clients try to navigate it on an old smartphone. Have them try to find their way in.

Have their kids. Yeah, thank you for that feedback. It's certainly something we have more work to do. I'll just note too that across our homeless services, we have over 90 agencies that participate in our homeless management information system and can do the assessment. So I agree sending them to the county website is not the most effective. But those 90 partner agencies, all the ones that came up in your search could all assist those folks. So just in the short term, until we're able to do some of this work, Sunnyvale Community Services, Home First, doing outreach, all of those agencies can also support folks and get them assessed for housing.

Thank you. I had several questions. So first on that part of the plan, point of contact or or general it's like the distribution is it a single numbers at a 3-1-1 from a county standpoint it's trying to to focus you know how to get help you know uh supervisor smithian used to have a card that he would pass out to all the council members in his district to basically here's all the numbers and yes it was two-sided and full of a lot of different numbers but but that simple here are here's what's available to you you know we're very lucky to have Sunnyvale Community Services with no wrong door so whether or not it's the Sunnyvale resident or someone from outside of the community, they're often going to SCS. And it's like, I don't know how well each of the agencies are about serving everyone and doing that no wrong door, but I know SCS spends a lot of efforts helping anybody who contacts them. I appreciate your focus on homelessness prevention. From a sub-regional standpoint, we are blessed to have SCS. Mountain View has care. But a lot of the other subregions don't have those agencies. And I'd be interested to see from a subregional standpoint and from a county standpoint, how much are we depending upon those agencies that are kind of city specific supporting the rest of the region. And so that that to me is also important. It's like getting a better understanding of of how what what are we putting on the shoulders of these agencies? Like we're hoping to from a city standpoint, we're looking to fund, you know, and and I appreciate the the concept of homelessness prevention. That being said, we can't do it from a regional standpoint. So when SCS is looking at food and other connections doing that evaluation, it's trying to figure out how that actually works out. So part of that data to me is important to see how much each of these agencies are helping their focus city where they're getting a lot of funding and how much they're helping kind of the rest of the county so that to me is a is an important part of that sub-regional report um and looking at data um it's great to have the county you know looking to partner on safe parking i would love to see you know you talk about permanent housing I want to see what a breakdown from being able to get into stable housing of families versus couples versus singles versus safe parking. Because from what I see in general, safe parking, especially from an RV standpoint, is almost permanent from a county standpoint. We're not really transferring and talking to other cities. Those residents in RVs are not transitioning into permanent housing. Most of them are staying in their permanent, I'll say, four-wheel housing, and we'll leave it at that. So that to me needs to be an important part of the data that we're seeing. We talked a little bit about funding and I appreciate we've made great strides to house from 2020 to 2025. A lot of that's on the shoulders of Measure A 2016. A lot of that has only been enabled through that funding. And I thank you for what you've done somewhat in our community and in the rest of the county. I don't see how the efforts going forward can make any similar progress without that funding source. So I'm interested to hear, you know, not tonight, but it's like, ultimately, without that funding, you know, we can talk about permanent housing, And inclusionary is below market, but that is a very small percentage. It's the permanent affordable housing that is critical from a Measure A standpoint that enabled so much affordable housing around the county. Do you have a quick comment on is that part of the plan? Is that calling out?

Yeah, that's certainly part of the plan. You know, I think the challenge that we see right now is in 2016, we had a combination of things working for us. We had really, really strong voter sentiment and political will. We were able to pass a bond measure, 67% of the vote for Measure A in 2016. But not only that, we had contributions coming in from a variety of partners. So the county was committing to services in addition to the capital was raised for Measure A, but we also had an abundance of vouchers from our housing authority. And those vouchers were able to be project-based into the new housing developments. So there's a financing mechanism that allowed us to move a lot of housing forward. Bed environments changed dramatically now in 2025. I think a number of community partners are now looking towards 2028 as in some ways the best and last hope for some sort of a funding measure. I think there's a lot of exploration of what that could be. Is that going through the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority and looking at another regional measure? Is that a type of countywide measure? If it's a countywide measure, are we looking at another bond, which I think is maybe unlikely right now in the current environment, but is there a citizens measure that could be brought forward? So I think there's a lot of conversations. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. We'll have much more clarity of what potential future funding might look like, I think, within the next 12 to 18 months.

Okay. And I agree. I just agree that there's also general fatigue from multiple measures that our residents across the Bay Area are seeing. we talked a little bit about Hamlin and thank you for some of the investments. You know, there is a fence there to keep, you know, children from, you know, going into the, going into the Creek nearby that being, and, and some of the internal investments in restrooms and, and, you know, um, laundry facilities. I would, you know, I still don't understand why simple fence and playground, you know, fencing of an area that they have green space to give, You know, now that you've focused on families, part of families is open space for children. Part of families is quiet space for either moms with babies that aren't so quiet at times, or quiet space for kids to study. So whether or not it's portable buildings, all that, to me, you know, the cubicle changes are very positive for Hamlin. That being said, there's still a lot of work to be done and I don't see it as a priority from the county. So I'd be interested to see a plan on how that, what's the next steps? Because from a funding standpoint or from a priority standpoint, we're there at least to house some of the families in need. And to me, that is critical. but there's the other half of that of, is it a working environment for so many kids?

So if you have- Yeah, thank you, Mayor, for the comments. I mean, we certainly are interested in looking at any ways we can improve the environment for the families. An additional outdoor space playground was not part of the initial plans, but happy to continue that conversation. you know this is a temporary housing site so hopefully and and the success rate there i don't i should have brought the numbers here today but happy to share it afterwards of moving folks on from the shelter into permanent housing has been very high um big kudos to the operator there bill wilson center who's been a great partner and really supporting those families um but we know while even though it's temporary and while they're there we want to make it as inviting as possible we've created some indoor spaces for children to play um some homework spaces we've tried to do as much as we can with the facility that that is there um not building it as a shelter from scratch as you know it was sort of a warehouse that we converted there are some limitations but um very I'd be happy to work with um uh work with the city to consider other options um particularly so for me you know it's like

It's working with the city, but at the end of the day, it's a county land. You can utilize that parking lot however you want. You can use that open space however you want. We're not the deciding factor here. And so going to Supervisor Lee and saying, what funding you need to make it a viable shelter for families, please do so. Because at the end of the day, that is critical. From the families that are there, I would love to see how many were from Sunnyvale versus the rest of the county. I understand that families are easier placed usually from a point system into permitted housing. So I totally understand that. And so kudos to get those families into shelters. Selfishly, when you talk about a sub-regional plan, most of our cities are doing unhoused outreach. Because the county doesn't have the ability and has not serviced outside of San Jose hasn't really serviced a lot of the county. So we're, you know, we're, we're dealing with, you know, we hope we're dealing with other agencies from our own funding. It would be interesting to see from that sub regional standpoint, what each of our cities are having to put in. and what the county is putting in in each sub-region. I know you're focused in San Jose and that's one of your main sub-regions. That being said, seeing where you could put additional resources. I pushed the supervisor two years ago to look at temporary warming centers And Ash came back with, let's say, a different RFP. And there's a need for basically the most inclement times of the year. Summertime isn't the issue. It's wintertime and what we can do from warming centers. And I do think that there's a possibility of working from that standpoint. But I appreciate the efforts. it'll be interesting to see how this goes forward. And I think a lot of it goes down to money. And, you know, we can do some sub-regional efforts between cities. But at the end of the day, a lot of this falls from county resources. And we fund SCS. We try to make sure that they're doing, and they're doing a fantastic job, but trying to make sure that that the needs in our community are being met. I won't rehash the conversion of the Hamlin Shelter. It is what it is now. We need to make it as good as possible. So thank you for being here. Next up is Council Member Lay

final question thank you um two quick things i um performed a similar uh google search to vice mayor mellinger is the correct number two one one or three one one to access these services it is unclear to me um sitting here on the days i feel like it would be unclear to people who are looking for this information and to the vice mayor's point like not everyone does have a smartphone. There are going to be seniors who are going to be looking into this system. Should I tell them to call 211 or 311 or a completely different number?

211 is a good resource and we do connect with them to make sure they know how to refer people to prevention, to the shelter hotline. What number to call in terms of accessing services is a little bit dependent on the situation they're in. But we'd be happy to work with you to make sure you all have those numbers too and look at, as we said earlier, look into our website of how to make that more clear.

um but we do work with the 211 folks to make sure that they know if somebody's seeking prevention how to connect them with prevention shelter how to connect them with the here for your hotline for example um i'm going to say that the 211 website looked a lot like the sort of no wrong door scenario that you were describing and that the vice mayor was looking for i would love to see a a resource similar to that from the county so that when people go in they know immediately where to go And to the mayor's point about the changes to the family shelter on Hamlin, I would like to see something about that added to the plan, like written out, that family shelters should, from the outset, be planned to be appropriate for families. to have spaces that are intended for children to use. It is not difficult to draw four square lines in a parking lot. These are things that we should be able to do with the resources that we have. It shouldn't be too much of a stretch. There are, yes, it is temporary, and there is a lot of stuff, very good stuff in the plan about preventing homelessness, and I'm glad that we're all on the same page about that. But once people are in the temporary system, Let's make this as easy for them to be in there as they can. Let's give them the space for their kids to run around, spaces where moms can take screaming babies. I think that's exceptionally important. And that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go ahead and open up public comment on this item. Please submit a speaker card at the city clerk. Use the raised hand feature now or dial star nine in your telephone. To indicate that you wish to speak, I will call members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. I have, I think, one speaker coming forward.

Again.

Again. Go ahead and come to the lectern. You have two minutes to speak.

all right uh thank you mayor uh thank you council members i didn't plan on speaking tonight i just was coming to observe but uh yeah you know i guess uh after the lakewood park incident where uh several people well homeless people were um you know in camp there and and i from what i heard you know there's a physical altercation with one of the park goers. I think as far as I could tell, I mean, the city kind of wanted to change their stance on homelessness. But yeah, I guess for me, it's like, you know, I think it's so easy to become homeless. My question is, I don't know the stance on Sunnyvale for homelessness. I see people set up camp. Some locations there's... It's like, well, you know they're not in a good spot. It's really noisy. They're right next to a freeway. You know, I don't know where they tried. I see the trash. Who knows about the sanitation? You know, I guess I don't know. Yeah, I see them, but I really don't know. Like OK, is there a phone number to call? You know what? What is the humanitarian process that Sunnyvale has? You know, to take care of these people so.

Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. Remote speakers are warned to limit their comments to agenda item being considered. Speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak. We are speaking on the Santa Clara community plan to end homelessness. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, Mayor. First is Tony C followed by Erica J. Tony, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.

Hey, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

hey i just moved out here from long island you know i'm from uh huntington big houses big boats and we don't waste our money on nonsense back home we had a homelessness situation too but we didn't sit around crying about it and throwing taxpayer cash down the toilet like you clowns been doing you people have been bleeding the taxpayers dry 60 million bucks last year on shelters housing vouchers all that outreach garbage and what did it get you nothing Zip. Zilch. Tents are popping up everywhere. Crime's through the roof. The streets smell like a sewer. And the bill keeps getting bigger every year. And that ain't compassion. That's just expensive stupidity. You people have been bleeding the taxpayers dry. Here's my proposal. and we handled it straight like this back on the island when we had problems that wouldn't go away, right? You stop housing them and you start turning them into biofuel. Forget sinking 60 grand ahead every year into permanent supportive housing that they just destroy a walk away from. We collect them, we render them, we process them into clean biodiesel and biogas, just like industrial organic waste. One average adult gives you about 80 gallons of good usable fuel. And at today's prices, that's 200 to 300 bucks in revenue per body. Plus you wipe out all those endless service costs overnight. Think about the savings for crying out loud. no more two million dollar budget for that homeless engagement team whatever the hell they were talking about earlier they're not engaging nobody no more lawsuits from businesses tired of people stepping over human crap no more emergency room bills that we have to foot as the taxpayer no more stolen cars no more stolen bikes and no more press releases lying to the taxpayer and the voters about complex social issues well you guys don't fix anything This ain't cruel, guys. This is smart money. It's financial responsibility wrapped in environmental sustainability. We'll solve the homeless crisis, generate real revenue for this city. Thank you.

Next up is Erica J., followed by Eliana B. Erica, you've been unmuted, and you have two minutes to address the city council.

Hello, are you able to hear me?

Yes.

So look at me, look at all of us. You sit up there while you build this action plan, and it's nothing more than a blueprint for our disappearance. You call it an action plan, I call it a siege. Every time you vote for another study or a new ordinance, you aren't fixing homelessness. You're just refining the way you hunt us people. I see the cameras you're installing. I see the way the streetlights flicker when the patrol cars go by. You think we don't notice these patterns going on in this city? You think we don't know that your services are just a front to get our names into one of your databases for the quote-unquote city? You talk about shelter beds like they aren't cages. You talk about outreach like it isn't surveillance. I've watched your contractors tear down tents. These are our lives. And you throw them into garbage trucks while you're at home in your beds that don't move. You're trying to scrub the city clean of the problem. But we are not staying. We are the people. The people that this city has failed. Okay? Now what's more, the air in this room is getting thick and I can smell the rot behind your expensive perfumes. I can sense it through the phone. You think the lights in here hide what you people really are? I can see the way that your skin doesn't quite fit over your faces, blinking in that slow lizard-like way waiting for us to die so you can pave over the remains. This is an extraction, okay? You're feeding on our misery. You want civil servants? Okay, you're parasites.

Next up is Elena B followed by Rose G. Elena, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.

Thank you to the council and to the presenters tonight. The strategy provides a high level vision for the path forward, which makes sense. I'm hoping that you can provide more insight into how this helps, how this maps to measurable outcomes like those previously tracked. And specifically, I'm interested in more understanding of how the targets are derived and how accountability is defined and shared between the different partners involved in this work. Thank you.

Next up is Rose G followed by Marie B. Rose, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council. Rose, you should see a pop-up on your screen asking you to unmute.

Oh, I'm sorry. I got distracted for the previous speakers. I'm just happy to know that you don't have any prerequisite in applying for a house for other people. But my concern is the seniors who are getting less than 1300 Social Security. It's really extremely difficult for them to get house. I have a coworker who lives in her car and i helped her through another organization try to help her get an apartment in an apartment that she's applying for that is already a low income housing it's 1700 and i understand and it's not easy it's not easy for them but it's my heart breaks for them watching them in in their car and there are another seniors that i'm trying to help who is uh 73 years old who is also having a hard time getting house. One of the problems in getting hold of them is when you talk about the phones is most of the people doesn't have phones. Is there a way that you can get most of when you do case management, give them Obama phone? The problems also is they cannot charge the phone. So there's no way to follow up on these people. And I know everyone is trying to help them. But thank you for all the help that you are trying to do. I just want to let you know, just this week, I was told by other unhoused that there were four unhoused in Sunnyvale that passed away. I just want to let you know. I go around Sunnyvale. it's difficult to find them because they're going from one place to another also because of the abatement i have to go around and look for them to deliver the meals but they are told me that being being abated sometimes because of the culture you don't have control but um i hope we really can help them get housed next up is marie b marie you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council

good evening mayor klein city council members this is marie bernard from sunnyvale community services and thank you all for the shout outs and i also want to thank ray and kj we've been working alongside the county and destination home since the beginning of the homeless prevention system hps for eight years, and we're very, very proud of the work that we've been doing together and how we've partnered and helped to shape the program and hopefully been also impacted very, very positively. This year alone, we have a contract with the program for about $1.5 million. We are the largest single provider of the 19 agencies. One reason why Sunnyvale is consuming a little bit more than the average in terms of household participation is because our name does say Sunnyvale. People know where to come if they live or work in Sunnyvale, if they have a tie to Sunnyvale. And according to our figures, 90% of the Sunnyvale households, at least with their zip codes, who were helped through the HPS program came to our door. We also helped 12% of the total number of households in the HPS system, which means we're practicing no wrong door. And a lot of the people who maybe don't have a Sunnyvale zip code for their home are still working and have their children in our schools. We help them as well. So we're doing it very well. We need the support of the community to do that. The average price of keeping somebody housed in our version of HPS is a little bit higher than average because the rents in Sunnyvale are higher. Housing is more expensive here as we keep hearing. And we are keeping people in Sunnyvale through homelessness prevention. which is extraordinary we also need to work better on communications i totally agree with anybody who said that because it is definitely a challenge for us to get the word out none of the hps program is funded by the city in that particular program it is bringing dollars into sunnyvale and keeping people housed existing stock thank you thank you mayor that was the final remote public speaker for this agenda item

Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment. Thank you very much for being here. Next up is oral communications. This is a chance for the public to address council on topics not listed on tonight's agenda. This section is limited to 15 minutes and may be extended or continued after general business section of the meeting. Individuals may only speak once during oral communications. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum. which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within council's authority, generally referred to as council subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are outside of council subject matter jurisdiction, The presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. This allows council to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Before I get to the public, Councilmember Chang has several announcements.

Board and Commission application deadline. Board and Commission recruitment is underway for the following openings. Arts Commission, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, Board of Library Trustees, Heritage Preservation Commission, Housing and Human Services Commission, Human Relations Commission, Parks and Recreation Commission, Personnel Board, Planning Commission, Sustainability Commission. Applications are due by 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 16th in order to be scheduled for an interview with Council on Monday, April 27th and Tuesday, April 28th. General eligibility requirements include Sunnyvale Residency, For more information, visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and search boards and commissions or call the Office of the City Clerk at 408-730-7483 to request an application. Applications to serve on a board or commission are accepted on a continuous basis. Applications received after the deadline will be considered for future openings. National Library Week. Join the Sunnyvale Public Library in celebrating National Library Week from April 19th to the 25th. National Library Week is an annual celebration highlighting the valuable role libraries, librarians, and library workers play in transforming lives and strengthening our communities. This year's theme is Find Your Joy. and it is an invitation for everyone to explore and discover what sparks joy in them at the library. There are special library programs planned throughout the week, starting with a bubble show from Ms. Molly Bubbles on Sunday, April 19th. Come back for interactive events, including Jamaroo Kids Music and Movement on Monday, April 20th, and a special story time with Mayor Larry Klein on Tuesday, April 21st. For more information on each event, visit the library's website at library.sunnyvale.ca.gov. April is Poetry Month. April is nationally recognized as Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world, marking poetry's important place in our culture and lives. The Academy of Poets founded National Poetry Month in April 1996 with an aim to highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets, encourage the reading of poems, assist teachers in bringing poetry into their classrooms, increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media, encourage increased publication and distribution of poetry books, and encourage support for poets and poetry. To mark the month, Visit the library to check out a book on poetry, take in opportunities to be inspired for poem composition, like strolling a beautiful park, or attend a countywide poetry open mic night on Tuesday, April 14th or Thursday, April 16th. For details, visit pcsj.org. Last one. Join us for Earth Day. April is Earth Month. We invite you to join us in showing you love for the planet by attending Sunnyvale's Earth Day Festival. It will be this Saturday, April 11, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Sunnyvale Civic Center. The event will feature family-friendly, sustainability-focused activities and information from local organizations. Attend the festival to enjoy live entertainment from roving performers, children's activities, local food trucks, bike ballet, and more. Join us in empowering our community and building a sustainable Sunnyvale. We hope to see you there. To learn more, visit sunnyvaleclimateaction.org, email green at sunnyvale.ca.gov, or call 408-730-7717. Thank you very much.

Mayor, before we go, moving on, just a comment on the current Boarding Commission recruitment. On the Consent Calendar, Council does have an item that would dissolve the Human Relations Commission. If that does take place, we will be contacting anyone who has applied for the Human Relations Commission and let them know of that change and encourage them to apply for a different commission. And were that to take place, the city manager does intend to create a staff advisory committee with a similar scope.

Thank you, city clerk. Before, as we go to the public, if you wish to speak, raise your digital hand now. Um, speakers will have 90 seconds to speak. I have only one speaker card in the room. Uh, Steven M.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Stephen Meyer, and I just filled my gas tank tonight, and I paid over $6 a gallon. So things are getting more expensive. We just heard the wonderful Marie Bernard talk about housing prices. And guess who's making housing more expensive? You guys are. By your constant litigation versus Baykeeper. Your record now is zero and nine. Zero wins and nine losses. So tonight I'm asking you to stop this litigation cycle. This litigation is getting you absolutely nowhere. The more you kick the can down the road, the more expensive it gets. So enough losing it already. There was a ruling last week, March 31st, by Judge Davila. In that ruling, he has fined you $1.1 million. So when I put the total together, it's about $10 million. So my request to you is negotiate. You've claimed that Baykeeper will not negotiate. I don't think you've tried. I think that is an utter lie. And the example is San Jose. San Jose has a consent decree. They decide to negotiate, and they're in cooperation with Baykeeper. So this memo that you have, it's like Trump's bleats. Your memo, city manager, is garbage. Your staff has just failed nine times, and this costs the city $10 million. Thank you. Stop it.

City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak under oral communications?

No, Mayor.

okay i will close oral communications and we'll move on to our consent calendar open up public comment on our consent calendar items sorry and went up okay um please submit a speaker card to the city clerk raise your digital hand now or dial start on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak i will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants speakers will have three minutes to speak i have no speaker cards in the room city clerk are there any remote participants wishing to speak on consent no mayor i will close public comment and ask for a motion from my colleagues vice mayor mellinger remove the consent calendar thank you council member cisneros second thank you city clerk please conduct the vote the motion for the consent calendar carries seven zero vice mayor did a point of personal privilege requesting a brief recess okay let's go ahead and take a five minute recess and come back at 10 28. Let's go ahead and move to our general business. Our first item is item 26-0422, request for continuance to July 21st, 2026 for proposed project to allow construction of replacement groundwater extraction well, a 17-foot tall water storage tank, chemical storage cabinets, and associated utility and right-of-way improvements at 800 Carlisle Way. Is there a staff report?

Yes, good evening. Mayor and council members, Connie Vercelis, deputy city manager. This item was scheduled to be heard tonight. However, the applicant and staff have requested to move it to July 21. They just need a little bit more time to go over some public comments and conditions of approval that were discussed during the Planning Commission hearing. That concludes my report and we're happy to answer any questions.

thank you um council member basin yeah very quickly yeah this is fine uh this project is in my district uh i talk to the neighbors they need more time and then in fact when you are notifying the neighbors i would appreciate if i get the notification also so that i can circulate it to more people in the area thank you

Thank you. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card at the City Clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have one minute to speak. I see no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I will close the public hearing and bring it back to Council. Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I am ready with the motion, but before I go with that, I do have a quick comment echoing on Council Member Srini Vasan's remarks. Actually, Mr. City Manager, I think it would be good to consider having it as a matter of standard administrative procedure so that the council member for a given district is cc'd on notice for outreach in their district so that we can promote. It's just something to consider. And with that, I'm ready to move staff recommendation to continue the project. And do I need to say any other magic words? Let's say to the date certain of, ah, here we go. To the date certain of? June 21st. June 21st, thank you. Sorry, I was on the wrong agenda.

Just a correction. I believe we're looking for July 21st for this item.

July 21st. Sorry about that. Yes, July 21st. Thank you.

uh Councilmember Srinivasan second to motion please vote yes Councilmember Srinivasan yes uh what is and then this is to give more time for Community Outreach this is a very very important topic for the neighbor okay thank you uh City Clerk can you please conduct the vote

The motion carries 7-0.

Thank you. Our next item is item 26-0103, Introducing Ordinance Amending Chapters 10.26 of the Centerville Municipal Code Relating to Preferential Parking on Residential Streets. Is there a staff report?

Yes, Mayor. I'm the interim public works director. I also have Angela Obiso, our transportation manager for the city. The item before you is an ordinance amending chapter 10.26 of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code. that relates to preferential parking on residential streets. The ordinance was first adopted in January of 1983. So it's been about 40 years. So things have changed a lot since then. So we are proposing some amendments to the ordinance. The first part relates to changing some of the definitions to remove the definition for commuter and non-residentially oriented vehicles and include a new definition for a non-residential vehicle and then modifying some other terms also relating to the relating to a residentially developed parcel. We are proposing to change it to just parcel. And then deleting the definition for residential zone designations. There's also other proposed changes to section 10.26.020. And the biggest one is allowing the establishment of residential preferential parking zone by ordinance or resolution. The current ordinance only allows it by ordinance. In addition, specific requirements such as the number of permits per parcel will now be in the implementing ordinance or resolution. This allows more flexibility to tailor programs to specific neighborhood needs. And then also section 10.26.030 Findings have been modified to focus on the impact of non-residential vehicles in the residential preferential parking zone. And finally, Section 10.26.050 has been modified to authorize the Public Works Director to adopt administrative guidelines that are consistent with Chapter 10.26. Our recommendation, staff recommendation, is alternative one, which is to introduce an ordinance amending chapter 10.26 of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code relating to preferential parking on residential streets. That concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

First up is Councilmember Chang.

Thank you, and thank you for answering the Monday morning questions and listing out where the current zones are. How would this ordinance impact the current zones that are already in effect?

We've actually talked about that with our city attorney, and she can add more color to it. But we believe that we don't have to change anything in the existing zones, but it's something that we'll look into it in more detail if we do need to.

Thank you. And then I have a follow-up question. It looks like for a few of them, they have different times and different dates. How is that determination made?

You do want to answer that?

Sure, I'll take a try at that one. It's really a case-by-case basis. When we get the request for consideration of preferential parking permits, we look at the cause and the times that that's needed. One example is north and south of the Caltrain station. A lot of that is due to the commute peaks. And so the times in those zones are catered to when the commute peak parking is expected to happen. So it's really case-by-case.

And then on the case by case basis for the solutions considered feasible or practical, what would be a solution considered feasible or practical?

Again, case by case, an example I think that we used in the council question responses is if say there's a commercial or industrial development that has parking overflow into a neighborhood, we would work with that property owner or the tenant and see if there are some programs that they can implement that would decrease their their vehicles if there's more opportunities for parking on their site things like that that could help alleviate this overflow uh park on street parking issue uh that the that the residents are seeing and and if there's not that's when we would deem it to be um not feasible okay thank you and how are the current zones regulated now So there is a permit process. So based on the council's action on each zone, there are a specific number of permits that each home or parcel is allotted. And then if somebody, it's not an automatic process, it's a yearly basis. So each person who qualifies for the parking permit, and there's some requirements in the application, they come in, they can send in an application And there's a nominal fee per year. I believe our fee this year, it's in the master fee schedule. I believe it's $28 this year. So every year you apply for and you get a permit and then we issue the permits by year. And each year they're a different color so that we know you're the current. And then our public safety officers are the ones who enforce that parking. Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Next up is council member Sell.

I thank you for bringing this forth. And would there be like a program like there was a street calming program and a booklet and, and then, you know, outreach for that? Would this be sort of similar to that? Or how would someone know if they like, would be applicable for their neighborhood to have that? Like, how would they know who would they contact or?

we do have a website if you go on the sunnyvale website and you just type in parking permits or parking it's one of the top things that comes up and and all of the the process the application the requirements all of that is outlined on that website okay sounds good thank you thank you council member next is council members cisneros

Yes, thank you for your quick work on this, staff. Really, really heroes in this situation. But it really does make a big difference in people's lives and in decisions that we're trying to work on, especially around Caltrain. As you mentioned, it can be very tricky. And so what I'm curious about is, are the permits themselves tied to a specific vehicle, like a license plate?

I believe it's definitely tied to the household, the address. I believe as part of the application process, they give us the license plate numbers of each vehicle that they intend to use a permit for. And then those are the qualifying vehicles. And then that goes in the database that DPS then uses to verify, is this the correct vehicle or not? Now, what I don't know and I'd have to get back to you about is if, for example, a household has two vehicles and one permit, if they could switch between the vehicles. I'm not confident that that is the case, but I can look into that and get back to you.

Okay that would be helpful too because you have the guest permits too but then that kind of offers and the guest permit you can only be parked there for 24 hours and is that for that 24 hours for the guest permit is that on the street like or within the parking zone itself?

Yes a guest parking permit would behave just as a regular parking permit in that within that zone.

Okay but only for 24 hours? Correct. Okay and then So there are renters, those who rent their homes and it's annual. Who should be interfacing with the city? about this should should the renter be the one like primarily like because or rather the occupant rather than say renter or the owner the occupant of the of the dwelling the place or would it be the owner of the parcel it would be whoever is is

tied to that residence that wants to use that permit and and in most cases that's the occupant so whoever lives there you do also one of the requirements is you have to show proof of residency at that address that you're getting the permit so it would be it would be the resident So it'd be the resident themselves.

Okay. Um, yeah. And so for this, especially, um, anywhere where we put there, so we may be engaging a lot with like, say a tenant, like the tenant or the occupants, whoever they are making sure that we're doing outreach as well to the owner of the property so that they know if, uh, the property turns over that they know to give that information to the next tenant, um, just to fill them in if they're not fully fleshed out or involved. in issues of parking on that street, which they probably aren't, aren't very often. So, um, just wanted to call it out and yeah, I think, I think that's all my questions right now. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. That's all council questions for now. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit your speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial star nine on your telephone. Indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I will close the public hearing and bring it back to council. I don't see. Council member Srinivasan.

Okay. I make the motion to wait. Alternative one. Introduce ordinance to amending chapter 10.26 municipal code related to preferential parking.

Thank you. Council member Cisneros. Second. Thank you to your motion.

I'm just saying yes.

Thank you, Council Member Cisneros.

I'll just say yes, I mentioned it briefly in my comments, but we had been working with the neighbors on Charles St about parking mitigation. This big great project and this long conversation we've had and we we had a hiccup with the way that we had our current ordinance written and staff really just went went in right away. and figured out how to make this work so that it would both be fair, legal, and fill the needs of the community. And so I know that there was a lot of anxiety around that. the fact that we didn't receive any public comment from folks it's like that is a huge like wow earning i think earning trust in that process of like where if something happens we'll work very hard to make it right and and do the right thing by residents so i'm really happy to see this and it happened way quicker than i ever thought and i know that the residents ever thought so really impressive work thank you

Thank you. I just want to thank staff for for moving this forward quickly. Uh, definitely, uh, not easy at times, but but thanks for being responsive and, you know, whether or not we. Should look at some of our ordinances that are 40 plus years old more a little more often is is kind of part of the part of the ongoing questions from staff and council vice mayor.

yes uh very quickly i also want to thank staff for the very quick turnaround time on this i want to also call out one important change is the ability to adopt these programs by resolution it's unclear to me why this was ever required to be an ordinance but requiring a second reading and all the additional hullabaloo that an ordinance does just doesn't make sense i'm glad that we've streamlined this thank you please vote yes thank you city clerk please read the ordinance title and conduct the vote

An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sunnyvale to amend Chapter 10.26, Preferential Parking on Residential Streets of Title 10, Vehicles and Traffic of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code. Council members, please vote. The motion carries 7-0.

Thank you. Our next item is item 26-0156. Consider adopting a resolution establishing a city council policy prohibiting the use of city properties for civil immigration enforcement purposes and providing immigration resources for city property owners, businesses, and residents. Is there a staff report?

Yes, Mayor. Good evening to Kirby city manager. I'm going to provide the staff report on this one. This item responds to council direction from March 10 to evaluate a policy similar to the city of Santa Clara regarding civil migration enforcement activities. John Pimentel, And the draft resolution before Council would establish a new Council policy 7.3 point three two. John Pimentel, That does two primary things first it clarifies the city owned or city controlled property may not be used for federal civil immigration enforcement activities. And second, the policy authorizes the city to provide information resources to the community, including Santa Clara County resources around Know Your Rights and other materials that are consistent with state guidance. Well, the proposed policy is designed to align with the city's adopted statement of city values of our city values and public service and reinforce our commitment to inclusivity, safety and equitable access to services. It's important to note that the policy does not restrict enforcement of criminal law, nor does it interfere with lawful warrants and does not alter any existing agreements related to city property. Mayor Mrakas, If adopted, there will be some administrative effort required to implement the policy, including developing materials and signage any costs that cannot be absorbed which I don't anticipate will be brought forward through the budget process. Mayor Mrakas, staffs recommendation is alternative one to adopt the resolution establishing Council policy 7.3.32 and we're available to answer any questions you might have. Mayor Mrakas, Thank you, Vice Mayor mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. We've received a quite a bit of correspondence from the public encouraging us to adopt this ordinance or this policy with modifications, and I wanted to discuss the three modifications that have been proposed with you and just go through those one at a time if that's alright. The first request and again this has been received from it. I think a couple dozen members of the public remove. A an attachment one a exhibit a page four or five of the resolution in the policy statement section on implementation remove a identifying city properties that could be used for civil immigration enforcement activities. Can you speak a little bit as to why we're going to establish create a list?

why we would create a list of city properties that would be subject to this i mean wouldn't all city properties be subject to this uh yes i think it's for transparency purposes to just identify all the properties that are subject to this um we don't necessarily have to create the list i don't think i'll defer to the city time

Yeah, I think the only reason was so that we are aware of where the potential areas of the city are that could be used for immigration enforcement so we can you know keep a better eye on those if we're if we hear that there may be an ice enforcement activity those would be the areas we would we would be already know sort of where they might go we could also if we were in communication with ice we could say these are the areas that you know the city owns this parking lot

and you know here's the list of areas that you're not permitted to use so it's you know it's just more of a logistical issue i think um i i was not going to stay on this one but there are further comments i do i do have a clarification question as far as implementation um it specifically says in this 2a city properties Is that inclusive of city-owned properties as opposed to item one, city-owned or city-controlled? This lists city properties.

It's intended to apply to city-owned and controlled properties, so properties that we lease that we have control over. and that we would have the ability under trespass law to um you know regulate the use of and and tell uh persons on the property that they would need to leave the property okay just i just i wanted that clarification while we're on that item go ahead vice mayor thank you no that's very helpful so but to close on this essentially it is we're making this list for internal use only

for internal use to make sure that we know which of our properties would be most likely to be used for this sort of thing and to keep them under control.

That's correct. Okay, thank you. Through the Mayor, if I could ask a question, and if this is okay with the Vice Mayor about this particular issue, is this the correct time to do so?

Yes, go right ahead.

i think that the correspondence that we have is about specifically the phrase could be used there's a nuance there it sounds like a lot of the correspondence that we received believes that it is could be used meaning in order for it to be used by ice i would like to propose that be changed to identify spaces that are likely to be used so that the could be nuance is removed

That's an excellent point. We will reword that. Thank you.

Thank you. One second. If I can comment, I'm not sure I hear that. I'm not sure how I would judge likely to be used. I don't think it's likely that they're going to be used at all. So I'm not sure how I would define that.

Is there, I think we could take- Is this a clarification for where we ultimately are going to be putting

the signage that would be that would be one of the uh implementation pieces potentially okay um so i would suggest in we instead of the current wording we would say identifying city property that is most likely to be used for civil immigration purposes i would be comfortable with that um i would be comfortable with that personally

Thank you, Vice Mayor and through the mayor. Thank you for to Council Member Lay for identifying that I didn't quite. Parse I didn't quite catch that ambiguity. OK, next provide add D providing training for all city staff immediately and on an ongoing basis for the implementation of this policy and to establish and maintain safe site protocols at all city facilities. Mr. City Manager, have we provided training to staff on safe site protocols or what to do in the event of immigration enforcement activity on city property?

Yes, we've on multiple occasions given guidance and then in several instances had the city attorney's offices has provided some actual specific operational training to some of our specific work groups.

Okay, excellent. Would it be your evaluation that it's not necessary to add a specific rider to this resolution for that?

Yeah, I think through our implementation of any council policy, we're providing guidance and training to staff on how to carry it out.

And if this policy is adopted, what sort of measures would be taken to educate all staff on the new policy?

We would, again, provide guidance and then offer specific training to any staff that requested additional information about how to implement it.

Okay. And then lastly, add E, communicating with vendors slash parties with existing and future contracts to use city facilities so they comply with this policy. I'm sorry, can you repeat that again? Add E, communicating with vendors slash parties with existing and future contracts to use city facilities so they comply with the policy. I think that this is someone rents out a park and then lets ice into the park to do something. I'm not entirely sure how this would happen, but

yeah i mean i think um our general contracts with vendors require compliance with city policy and city ordinances so um i think that applies across the board i don't think we'd necessarily need to call something out for a specific vendor or um and if a if a facility renter or say somebody who rents a picnic facility at a park

um the they they wouldn't have the authority to allow ice to come and use the use the park and then speaking of parks this would apply to all of our city parks correct the city parks are city-owned property absolutely excellent all right i have no further questions uh thank you very much i want to thank staff for a very quick turnaround time on this item thank you vice mayor next up is council member cell

So, um, there is alternative one and alternative two and staff recommended alternative one. And then, um, I think it was, uh, what was the reason for that? I mean, alternative, um, one, uh, had just, um, alternative to two added distributing information and all that. Um, so. Why does staff prefer alternative one over two?

Alternative two is just if you wanted to add any modifications to the policy. Alternative one is the policy is presented, so that's why we recommended that. Okay yeah um but both of them you would distribute information to um non-city um businesses so they have the information that we we would we would make a information available to any businesses or community members that asked us for resources we're not going to do a dedicated outreach program to to the business community or or other entities okay

So that's in both one and two, that's in the ordinance.

Making the information available is in the policy.

And alternative two, it's just if we choose to change.

That's correct, yeah. And just for clarification, I'm sorry, Council Member, you said ordinance, so I just want to make sure for the public's perspective, it's a policy. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. I have some questions about how we're in the limitations section, talking about what the policy does not do, restricting the enforcement of criminal law or the execution of lawful judicial warrants. How I've seen this interpreted in other parts of the country or how I've seen, I try to interpret it, is that being in the country illegally is a crime and is illegal. Therefore, they are actively enforcing criminal law, especially if they were deported and reentered. How does what we have in

our policy address that so technically just being in the country without proper a proper visa or legal status is not a crime in itself it's considered civil enforcement a crime would be if there is is a person who has committed a crime and they also have illegal status or undocumented status and are subject to deportation so those are two different things so if this policy doesn't prevent federal officers from entering property if they have a judicial warrant that's a warrant that is signed by a judge and it also doesn't prevent um you know someone from being arrested on city property if there's probable cause for an arrest for a criminal activity it is oh there it goes okay i think that's where i'm that's another area where i'm a little

want or wanting more information rather is if they were to show up and they have a warrant and it's not a targeted arrest. They start arresting all kinds of people and you know, going way outside of the scope of that warrant, essentially. Is there any way that we can put something in here specifying doing a targeted arrest and nothing else? Because if they start going way beyond where things are wanting to be able to bounce them anyway?

So my understanding of the law is that if they had a warrant to arrest someone, that would be for a specific person. There isn't just a roving warrant to go somewhere and arrest people randomly. So if they arrived with a warrant, it would be for a certain individual.

right and so okay so that's helpful so then if they started arresting all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons that would be outside no warrant and then right would be caused to okay you gotta go even though you have the warrant here you're not doing that so correct okay okay that helps thank you thank you council member that was the last of council marcel do you have a question

Okay, that was the last of council member questions. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial star nine on your telephone. Indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. I have several speaker cards in the room. First up is Eric Kay, followed by Bruce H. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Yeah. So I'm Eric Cox, Sunnyvale resident. I just want to strongly support this resolution. Well, we have seen ICE and CBT agents murder people in cold blood in broad daylight. As disturbing as that is, it's equally disturbing that there has been no follow-up, no meaningful investigation, no accountability whatsoever. So what that means is that anyone who's interacting with an ICE or a CBT agent, for whatever reason, whatever their status, whether they are documented, undocumented, whatever, they have to consider the possibility they may be murdered and that there may be no enforcement of law against murder uh by any level of government so what that means is that as of right now ice and cbt are out of control criminal organizations without any accountability for their actions with no reliable accountability procedure that the public can rely upon to assure its safety when they're interacting with these agents. And therefore, ICE and CBT agents have to be assumed a potential threat to a person's life for your own safety if you are in their presence. I'm not saying that all ICE or CBT agents are evil or bad people, but clearly some are, just from looking at the video. And we, the public, can't tell the difference who's good, who's bad, who's responsible, who's a threat. So anything the city of Sunnyvale does to keep ICE and CBT agents off of its property will be one small step in trying to keep our residents safe while we wait for better leadership at the federal level. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Bruce H. followed by Akina F.

Let's check our mic. Great. Good evening. My name is Bruce Hanna. These comments will be similar to those I emailed in this morning, just briefer. I'm a Sunnyvale resident. I'm a volunteer with the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Program, which dispatches legal observers in response to ICE incidents. And I'm also a member of Congregational Community Church of Sunnyvale, which is part of the United Church of Christ, which supports robust protection for all immigrants. I do support passage of the policy under consideration to prohibit the use of city properties for immigration enforcement purposes. And I thank Council for addressing the proposed additions. I feel the back and forth has addressed those additions. It's important for Sunnyvale to provide protection and safety to all of its residents. We can contribute to that safety by adopting the proposed no collaboration and no usage policy, which I do support. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next up is Akina F followed by Zachary K.

Hello. Akemi Flynn with IPEN, the Immigrant Protection and Empowerment Network, which is a countywide cross-sector collaborative. And really happy to be here this evening to thank you for your leadership in moving this policy forward. Also want to appreciate, first, the leadership of the Vice Mayor and Councilmember uh lay and council member um sell for for initiating this policy um and really appreciate the thoughtfulness that you all have taken in receiving the feedback and and responding to the suggestions so thank you so much our goal is that we can have this type of policy adopted by every city across the county and across the region you probably know that one of the reasons why we don't have the kind of presence, ICE is fully present in our community and is detaining and deporting people. But we have not yet seen the kind of raids that we have seen around other places in the country. And one of the reasons we can reference is because of the strong policies that we have here in the county. And you are adding to that powerful protection by establishing this policy here in Sunnyvale and being a role model that enables us to go to more cities and say, join the leaders in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose, and at the Board of Supervisors. So thank you very much.

Thank you. And my last speaker card in the room is Zachary Kay.

What if by some chance federal law enforcement doesn't recognize your authority to regulate their actions? What then? Summoning DPS to the scene? If it comes down to it, maybe they can try and arrest each other. Are you providing a false sense of security? You will probably score some political points with it.

Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, Mayor. First up is Stuart, followed by Peggy B. Stuart, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.

Hello, I'm Stuart Norton. I've been a resident of Sunnyvale for over 10 years. I'm here to speak and support the resolution. I'm proud that our City Council is working on this and I want to deeply and sincerely thank all of those who are responsible. I'd like to use most of my time to speak about this more personally. I've seen a tiny glimpse of the tragic results of our federal innovation policies here in Sunnyvale. I've seen a Sunnyvale family hiding from ICE officers who were demanding warrantless entrance to their home with children peering fearfully from the windows. Excuse me, I'm a little emotional about this. Children peering fearfully from the windows as the federal government tried to steal their father away from them. I've seen a young man imprisoned without warning on a lawful check-in for months so far, all because he wanted to be safe from the dangerous place that he had the misfortune to be born. Because of that, our nation is now piling new harms onto him and his loving family. So harms like these are going to continue to echo in our community for decades. Mostly what I want to underscore here is that even if you think the chance ICE is going to use city property is really small, even if it's true that the federal government may not pay any attention to what Sunnyvale City says about it, the stakes here are incredibly high and any limitations that we are willing to declare on what ICE can do in Sunnyvale are absolutely worthwhile. So please support this resolution unanimously and consider afterward if there is more that you can do. Thank you again.

Thank you.

Next up is Peggy B, followed by Hui T. Peggy, you've been un-vuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.

Good evening, Council. My name is Peggy Tan-Berger. I am a resident of North Sunnyvale, two kids in the school district. trained volunteer for Rapid Response Network. I'm also president of Sunnyvale School Board, Governing Board of Trustees, and a regular participant in the IPEN Network that Kemi Flynn graciously leads with us. But I am speaking on my own behalf tonight. I want to again applaud us as a city for taking these proactive measures to protect our citizens, to protect our residents here and to put in strong policy protection for us. We know the terror that is happening throughout the country and we in Sunnyvale can be a bastion and also a a model for other cities. I'd like to encourage you to look at the language about strengthening the policy, specifically taking out the may language and putting in the will language I have written to you previously. So hopefully you can pull that up. I really appreciate this dissection of language that I'm hearing with the city attorney and city manager. And I appreciate the care that we're all putting into protecting our communities and keeping all of us safe. Thank you again for being a model here. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Next up is Hui Ti. You've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council.

Good evening, Council Members. My name is Hui Tran. I'm Executive Director of SIREN. I do want to thank the Vice Mayor and Council Members Sell and Ley for proposing this memo, and I do encourage the Council to adopt the additional amendments as well to strengthen the policy. I actually want to use my time, though, to address a couple of things I've heard in your discussion, and I'm hoping that it can be helpful. One is the first is that I believe I heard from staff mentioning that having an internal list can help clarify if ICE reaches out to the city about where they can and cannot lead operations. And I recognize that may have just been a misstatement, but my sincere hope is that if ICE contacts the city, there should be absolutely no offer of information to ICE agents at all. Even the act of kind of saying you can do things here but not there is actually helpful to ICE because it actually gives permission for immigration agents to run operations out of certain properties but not others. So the default position should actually be absolutely no cooperation and no information sharing with federal immigration enforcement. The second thing I want to clarify is that just in terms of when a warrant is being executed, immigration agents, if they have a lawfully executed judicial warrant, may detain anybody in their scope or in their purview if they are executing that warrant. That's what's called a collateral arrest. And that occurs basically if they are in pursuit of somebody or if they are looking for, if they get a warrant to execute a search in a certain area, they aren't limited to detaining whoever their target is. They can detain any person that they believe that they have jurisdiction over. So that's also part of the reason why we want to make sure that there's proper training for all staff so they understand what to look for in a warrant. We have already seen indications of where when immigration enforcement officers show up, uh present a warrant or don't we're not even present a warrant at all but due to poor training a person actually leads a target to immigration agents and then they detain them on the spot these are the kind of resources that we can support with more than happy to connect with staff if there's additional information that is needed and for the council members as well and i encourage you to adopt a stronger policy thank you mayor that was the final remote public speaker for this agenda item okay i'll go ahead and close the public hearing

and bring it back to council vice mayor mellinger thank you very much mr mayor i am ready with a motion and i'm hearing no objections to me making a motion um so the motion is alternative to adopt the policy with modifications and the modification is that in section 2a i changed the language from identifying city properties that could be used for similar civil immigration enforcement activities to identifying city properties most likely to be used for civil immigration enforcement activities

Thank you. Council Member Cisneros.

Second.

Thank you to your motion.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to staff for bringing this back so quickly and to all of the members of the community who have engaged so thoroughly on this item. my colleagues and i brought this forward in light of the super bowl and the threats of enhanced immigration enforcement uh ahead of the super bowl i was receiving texts emails uh communications for weeks up to the super bowl expressing concern about the possibility of ice immigration activity in The community rumors that ice would be here. Ice would be there a tremendous amount of fear in the community, and there have also been comments made by the president that he will be targeting the area for additional ice enforcement ahead of the World Cup coming in June, and so I thought it was very important. that we get this policy adopted. The City of Santa Clara adopted this policy prior to the Super Bowl. I thought it was very important for us to adopt a similar policy ahead of the World Cup. I think this is timely. I want to thank again staff for moving forward so quickly on this and I want to emphasize that the way immigration enforcement is operating under this administration currently is alarming. The lawlessness that we saw on the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere should be deeply concerning to every American citizen and to everyone who has ever taken the oath to protect the Constitution. So I thank colleagues, staff, members of the public for this and respectfully urge all of your aye votes. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is Council Member Cisneros.

Yes, thank you, I want to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward and first in Olympic staff for jumping on it and getting this to us in in pretty rapid succession, I know that. This is not enough, right? I wish that we up here could go and truly make those everyone in our community safe and truly do something to prevent the horrible tragedies we've seen all around the country from happening here. in that public way. And one of our members of the public made sure to point out ICE is here. ICE is currently doing these several members of the public. And it's just not in the way that we see out there. And so by taking this action of saying public space is for the public to be safe and having some standing there to take action if we were to see a massive movement by ICE here. I think it's very important. And I think it also, what most importantly, I think what this tells the community is that your city council cares about you and your wellbeing, and we have your back. And we will do whatever we can. And I think just knowing that can be really powerful. And wanting to, I want that communicated with this action. And hopefully this is not something we ever need to use. And hopefully this is all over soon. And then we go back to the normal horrible things can be. Yeah, I want, I want to thank all the advocates who work really hard and who spoke up and who sent all these wonderful suggestions and those who are not here tonight, probably because they don't feel very safe to be here. Um, we want things to better and we'll continue working really, really hard and yeah, this is a tough moment, but we're through it. Thank you all for your support.

Thank you. Council member, council member lay.

Thank you so much. I will be voting in support of this motion. I agree that there may be a, to the member of the public's point, there may be a degree to which this is academic, that we may not be asking our DPS to go toe-to-toe with ICE agents. And that may be true, but this, to the extent that we mean this, is a statement of our values. It's a statement of what's important to this Council. It's a sign that we are standing shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors, with our regional partners, in support of our community. I have the privilege of being the daughter of immigrants, the granddaughter of refugees. Birthright citizenship is on the chopping block. There are so many things that we never thought were going to happen and that are happening now. and the least thing that we can do. We need to do everything. We need to do everything. We have children who are afraid to go to school. We have families who are afraid to send their children to school. We have families who are afraid to go to work, to go in the street, to come to City Hall. I don't like that. And this is something that we need to do, that I will vote yes for in support of this, because it's something that we have to do. It's the least we can do, and we will do it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Sell.

I want to thank the community for coming out and having such clear and well organized statements and all the organizations that are working together to be in support of immigrants to make them feel a little more safer. I want to thank staff for the amount of speed in which they took this upon themselves to bring this. I believe it was just a little while ago that we had the memo and here it is already here. So thank you very much for that priority that you put on it. And I wanted to say that my parents were immigrants and this time for me is scary and for them it would have been even scarier coming to a new country. But I think immigrants are our strength. My parents started a business here, employed people, put four children through college, and all of us are professionals contributing to the community. And that is the typical story of the immigrants. They're very safe and they contribute to our country. And so, this effort that we're putting into, I hope it makes the immigrants feel more reassured and secure in Sunnyvale. And also it provides guidance to our staff and clear policies. So I just want to thank everyone who is involved in this process. And I will be supporting this.

Thank you, council member. I just want to say thanks to the residents who spoke. Thanks to staff. Thanks to my colleagues who brought this forward. You know, I'm happy to support this motion. I spoke with Minneapolis Mayor Fry earlier this year and hearing, you know, what happened in his city and actually all the surrounding communities, which didn't get as much publicity. So, you know, this is really really important you know uh it's about our local control you know cities have clear authority over over how their property is used and you know we have responsibility to ensure that it's this those spaces are used for a public good Second, it's about public safety and trust and about protecting our community stability. You know, we have responsibility to work to alleviate the concerns and fears of so many in our community and taking this action on public spaces to make sure that they remain welcoming and accessible. and not fearful locations. And then finally, the ordinance sends a clear message. We will not use our local resources to participate in the federal actions that undermine the well-being of our community. You know, we cannot control federal policy and action, but we can control our values. And the ordinance is a statement of our Sunnyvale values and that everyone feels needs to feel safe and supportive. And I think this is a step towards that. So thank you. And with that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

Yes, Mayor, and then just a note for the record, an updated version of this policy was posted yesterday. The only revision is that because this policy is being adopted by resolution, any changes to it would need to be made by resolution.

Thank you. Please vote.

The motion carries 7-0.

Thank you. And our final item is item 26-0421, review, discussion, and potential action to adopt council policy 7.3.33, disruption of telephonic or internet service during council meetings. Is there a staff report?

uh yes mayor and council david carnahan the city clerk as you may be aware last year the governor signed senate bill 707 which made several changes to the ralph m brown act california's open meetings law one of those provisions is that starting july 1st many eligible legislative bodies such as the city council will be required to have hybrid public meetings where the public can participate in person and via two-way remote participation. That is currently how Sunnyvale City Council and its boards and commissions operate, but we will The city council will now be required by state law to operate in that fashion. And the law requires that the city council adopt a policy to address disruptions of telephonic or internet service during city council meetings. The provided policy addresses that legal requirement. It is focused on interruptions in two-way remote public participation. So the various one-way forms that council meetings are sent out. If one of those goes down, that would not invoke this policy, although council could still take a recess to resolve one of those if need be. But the policy really just says if the public can no longer participate remotely, the city needs to take efforts to bring that service back up, and the city needs to spend a minimum of one hour trying to restore that service if during that hour the service is restored the meeting can resume but you know the city will would not be able to spend five minutes trying to get it back up and then resume the meeting uh the policy just goes into some detail about the steps that would potentially be taken statements that will be made by either the clerk or the presiding officer and then the amount of detail that would be included in meeting minutes about the disruption and what actions were taken to try and restore service and this only would apply to council meetings for your board and commission meetings those will continue to be held in a hybrid format but this law does not require a policy addressing those meetings and we would continue the current practice of staff that are at the meeting conducting troubleshooting and reaching out to our information technology department if issues are kind of beyond their their technical level of expertise this concludes the staff report and i'm ready for any questions from council

Thank you. Are there questions from Council? First up is Council Member Chang.

Thank you. There was an incident in a neighboring city where they had published their address in advance and joined the meeting. And when that person disconnected, the entire meeting was canceled and ended abruptly at that point. Would that happen in an incident where someone had previously indicated their address?

So this policy really pertains to whether the core meeting that's happening at City Hall or wherever the main council meeting is, if the internet service goes down here. There are several different ways a council member could participate via teleconference and the way that agency had listed their agenda. They said, you can come to council chambers or you can go to this other location and participate. And because it was listed as a place the public could go participate, their agency chose to discontinue the meeting when that person that individual could no longer participate from that location. Under those traditional Brown Act teleconference rules, Sunnyvale typically notices the council chambers or the main location of the meeting where a quorum of council is present. And then it'll indicate that a member is participating at a remote location. But if that one member ceases to participate at that location, either because they they leave oftentimes council members are on on city business across the country so while it's 1am here it's 4am there so they may not continue participating as long as a quorum of councils present here the meeting could carry forward great thank you for that clarification thank you and i have a quick question as far as boards and commissions are concerned is there a timeline

for any kind of, it's a direction to the liaisons or let's say the staff itself from a board and commission standpoint. If there is ongoing IT questions at a certain point, you're laying out what council's doing. What will be the policy or practice from a commission meeting that after, After notifying IT and IT spending some period of time on it, at a certain point, the commission either continues or it adjourns, depending upon what that decision is.

So, Sunnyville doesn't have a specific policy for how long a board or a commission staff would spend time trying to bring that up and running. The reason this policy says one hour is because the Brown Act now says one hour. So, the city, I mean, council could say we're going to spend 10 hours before you reconvene, right? But the minimum is one hour. And for boards and commissions, I don't think there really is a need to set out a detailed timeline. We've had instances where we had issues with folks joining Zoom or the YouTube live stream wasn't working, cameras weren't working, staff in the room did some troubleshooting, they contacted IT, and typically within, you know, five to ten minutes of the meeting starting, right, everything was up and running. But I think it It also depends on what items are on their agenda, right? If they're just gonna be considering minutes approval, there's not as much need for having remote public comment and boarding commission staff liaisons are also familiar that they they can advise the chair if there's stuff that has less need for public comment perhaps the board could start with those items while staff try and resolve the issue so it's I just don't think there's as much of a need for that detailed timeline whereas for council it's in the Brown Act so it has to be there okay much appreciated next up is council member Cisneros

Yes, thank you. I noticed that it says, you know, two-way remote public participation. So this for us, we would need to do this if it was just the YouTube stream that was down because that doesn't offer two-way access. I mean, we would because, you know.

Well, and so so for Sunnyvale City Council meetings, right, so the public can come here and participate in person. They can participate via two way teleconference via Zoom. They can also choose one way to watch one way where they can only watch on local television. They can watch on YouTube. There's a Granicus live stream. So there's several different ways people could have a one way viewing experience. This policy would not apply to disruptions in those services. But as you as you mentioned, right, if if the live stream to youtube isn't working we would want to spend some time troubleshooting that we just won't be held up for an hour trying to troubleshoot unless that is council's desire to try and get that service up and running or we won't cancel the meeting right or cancel me we wouldn't cancel the meeting necessarily because of that we have had technical difficulties at various times with like a specific live stream. So then what we've done is posted on that live stream, right? You need, here are the places it is working. So we're directing the public to where they can still see what's happening.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I will go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to Council. Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I'm ready with a motion. I move staff recommendation, adopt council policy 7333, disruption of telephonic or internet service during city council meetings, as shown in attachment one to the report.

Thank you, Council Member Chang. Second. To your motion.

We need to do this. Please vote yes. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Chang. yes thank you the updates uh would make meetings more efficient okay thank you uh with that city clerk please conduct the vote the motion carries 7-0 thank you and with that we will adjourn the meeting at 11 32 p.m thanks to everyone who participated in tonight's meeting good night