City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Let's call to order the special council meeting close session of April 21st, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. Uh, the city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by the council. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule the speaker out of order. The speaker will not be ruled out of order because of disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the council agenda. Use the show captions button to view captions and Zoom. Following the close session, the regular council meeting will begin at 7 PM. City clerk, may we please have the roll call.

Yes. Mayor Klein, present. Vice Mayor Melinger, present. Council member Cisneros, present. Council member Serena Bosan, present. Council member S, present. Council member Chang, present. Council member Lelay, present. Thank you. Seven present. Thank you. Members of the public will now have an opportunity to address council on the close session item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star9 on the telephone to indicate you wish to speak. I'll call on members of public of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participant. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. Do we have any speaker cards? Seeing no one in the room, no. Any members of the public online wishing to speak on this item?

No, Vice Mayor. I'm going to close public comment. Council will now adjourn to close session. to see you back here at 7:00 Mat.

Good evening. Let's call to order the council meeting of April 21st, 2026 at 7:15 p.m. Uh, the city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where our members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item 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 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 on the agenda 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 the public hearing on that agenda item. Speakers are requested to keep their comments uh to the time period set for that specific item and time li 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? Yes. Mayor Klein, present. Vice Mayor Melinger, present. Council member Cisneros, present. Council member Serbos, present. Council member Cell, present. Council member Chang, present. Council member Lee, present. Thank you. Seven present. Thank you. Vice Mayor, may we please have the close session report?

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. The city council met in close session on the following item. California government code section 54957.6 Six conference with labor negotiators, agency designated representatives Heather Ruiz, Department Director of Human Resources, Employee Organization, Sunnyville Employees Association, SEA, IFPTE, Local 21, and Service Employees International Union, SEIU, nothing to report.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh, next we have two special orders of the day. Let me come up to the lectern. Before we begin tonight's meeting, uh we have two special recognitions. First, we are honoring the 2026 Food Cycle Art Contest winners. Uh this contest was held between February and March to all middle school students in Sunnyale. Uh the contest was uh basically purpose is to celebrate and spread awareness about Sunnybell's food cycle program. This is the third year that we've held that contest. And in 2024, we had 13 entries from just one school. In 2025, we received 60 entries from three different schools. And this year, we've received over 120 different entries. Uh the work this the works highlight um the success and impact of our food cycle program and altogether our h our hauler specialty waste has collected 12,190 tons of food. um food scraps in just the last year. This is a 6.6% increase um from this time last year and truly amazing. So, thank you to all the residents who are taking part in that food cycle program. Give yourselves a round of applause. Of course, it's Earth Month and and it's just that the the value of this program of reducing our our our greenhouse gases is critical. We appreciate the ent entries that we received from all 120

middle school students this year. Uh and city staff uh were selected ultimately selected six winners and luckily I didn't have to be part of that selection process. Uh five were from Peterson Middle School and one from Sunnyville Middle School. Uh their artwork will be memorialized on the side of specialty collection trucks for years to come. Uh, this artwork was also will also be posted on our social media accounts. Tonight, I would like to recognize the six talented winners. Um, and as I call your name, please come up. We'll I'll pass you the certificate and then we'll do some photos afterwards. Um, first up is Anya Jane from Sunnyville Middle. And actually, Congratulations. We'll pass that. We'll stand here. Perfect. Um, next up is Juliana Chuway from Peterson Middle. Uh, next up is Koten Yen from Peterson Middle and all their art is being displayed on the side. Sorry, I should I should have been pointing that out. But definitely amazing artwork this year. Sorry, somebody got up. There we go. Um, next up is Nora Millet from Peterson Middle.

Next up is Sophia Skiek Skil uh from Peterson Middle. And lastly is Stella King from Peterson Middle. On behalf of the city council, I just want to thank all the participants who uh and extend a special um uh level of congratulations to those honored tonight. You know, I encourage all residents to look out for our specialy trucks that'll be displaying uh this wonderful artwork that you've seen uh over the next few years. It'll be on the side of those trucks. And of course, you know, food cycle, especially, you know, on Earth month, but throughout the year. So, please give them all a round of applause.

Thank you.

And for our second recognition, we have a special guest present uh to honor us for Jewish Heritage Month. Uh joining us tonight is Rabbi Hect from uh Kashad. Come on, come come on forward. Uh Kashad Sunnyville.

Go ahead and say a few words.

Sure. So, I just want to thank you uh very very much. So, Mayor Klene, who is a very good friend over the years, as well as a tremendous leader of this wonderful city, the honorable city council people, um, as well as the city manager and the staff. So, I just want to share a few words just on the, uh, on the order of the day, which will be a, uh, proclamation regarding Jewish Heritage Month. So, America has been called throughout history a great melting pot. And this was made famous by a 1908 play by that name describing how immigrants would come to America from diverse cultures and they would sort of coalesce into a great American dominant culture. Around the time of my bar mitzvah, I came across over the course of a of a uh political um it was an election campaign where somebody came up with a different terminology. The first time I ever heard it and it stayed with me till this very day. Instead of calling it a melting pot, he called it a mosaic. A gorgeous mosaic. Mosaic is comprised of many vivid and distinct colors. Every one of those colors comes together to make a beautiful picture, a stunning work of art. In contrast with that, when we speak about the metaphor of a melting pot, every individual is compelled to lose their identity, to let go of their rich culture into a giant vat of Americana. But this country that we're blessed to live in has a long celebrated and beautiful art form called diversity. Our beloved homeland values inclusivity. We celebrate each individual and their contribution. The American mosaic is breathtaking.

So on behalf of the Jewish community, I want to thank you. I want to thank the entire city staff, elected officials for the proclamation of May as Jewish Heritage Month, which will take place, I think, soon. Um, and I want to thank uh those for noting the contribution that's been made by citizens of this country of Jewish heritage. They came here to escape persecution, bigotry, and hatred. But they arrived to a country which is built on compassion, justice, and morality. a morality that was part of an immutable immutable ethical system of divinely inspired values that was rooted in the deep religious faith of our founding fathers. Jewish heritage month celebrates the outstanding contributions made by individuals of Jewish heritage. But we really should celebrate the core values that made it possible. Justice, law, morality, compassion, faith and tradition, strong family values. That is what made this all possible. Just on a personal note, uh my wife Miriam, who's who's here together with my my daughters, Musi and Fara, we got to mention um we've been calling Sunnyville home since 2003. We've raised our children here, all six of them, and we are very, very grateful to be part of this wonderful city. Um just recently we actually our community the Kabad of Sunnyville um we just actually closed on a property that's going to be serving as a center for the community and we look forward to working shortly um with the city staff uh to make that possible. Uh, but I just want to draw my own personal history as a resident here and as a a leader here in the community of the many different

times that the city council has really stepped up and sort of created the reality of service to the community in in a way that makes us all feel very very much valued and welcomed. And I'd like to share a couple of examples throughout history. In 2006 on Kaneka the public manora outside of our office was vandalized. That time Ad Lee was a member of the council reached out ensured that we understood and we knew that hatred was not going to be tolerated in our city. And that made a tremendous impact on me just newly arrived here to understand just in terms of the value of tolerance and diversity that we have here in this city. 2007 at our first public manura lighting uh then mayor Tony Spitelleri came and lit the monura with us and spoke to the community and that became a long-standing tradition in which members of the of the council would come and represent and and show their presence and support. That's something that made me meant a great deal to us and to the entire community. 2011, Chris Moan and I, we shared a dance as we celebrated the first community Torah that was written and commissioned just for our community. 2017, Mayor Klene and uh and um then council person Gustav Larson and I were uh sharing a uh a jelly donut together. Um and we were discussing that we have a a tremendous issue because Yum Kipur is a day where people of the Jewish faith don't travel and we there was not a suitable suitable facility that was rentable because of the city schedules when it came to being able to have a facility suitable for Yumipur services and it was a tremendous more than just a gesture in which we got

a call from the from the uh from the uh city from the city manager's office in which the accommodation was a was found to be able to uh to be able to for the work for the for the people of the Jewish faith as community and that's something which is very very profound and and finally and more recently I just want to point out that the Jewish community is unique in many respects um and one of them is in a is in a sort of a tragic way in in this past uh Khaneka there was a very very tragic events in Bandai in in Australia in which 15 people including a colleague of mine were murdered Um it was a very very scary time for the Jewish community and it sort of was a very very sad time in many respects. At the same time, Khaneka is a very very important time as well. And it was exceedingly touching. And I just want to tell um just all the staff that are here, the city staff, the city council, many of them came. Um public safety came. Um the uh the chief came as well. Uh a huge turnout to to show support to ensure that the that the that the residents here know that we're going to be protected. we're going to be able to be safe here and to be able to to gather and to be able to worship and to be able to celebrate together. And that's something which is uh which is very very beautiful. I just want to conclude with a final thought and that is that the Jewish people have learned to embody optimism. There have been challenges throughout our 3,300y old history. No matter what challenge we faced, we always knew that it was our job to attempt to make our world better and brighter today. knowing with a sense of optimism that that'll make tomorrow a much better a much better day. Mymonades who was a 12th centur 12th century scholar as well as a world famous physician he wrote about this optimism that

everyone should embody and I'd like to sort of leave this as a as a thought. He writes and I quote, "A person should always look at themsself as equally balanced." He's talking about between good and evil internally and the entire world as if equally balanced. If he perform if he performs just one mitzvah, a good deed, he tips his or her own balance and that of the entire world to the side of merit and brings deliverance and salvation to himself and others. It's up to us. you and I and everybody here in this room in fact that we can make a world of difference. And that's the message that I'd like to sort of leave everyone here with today. So, I'd like to thank Mayor Klein. I'd like to thank the elected officials and also the professional staff of Sunnyville for making the city truly both a safe city and a welcoming city for the Jewish community. I want to thank you all for your leadership and God bless. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Daisy and then I'll pass.

Thank you, Rabbi. You know, in 1980, the US Congress first started recognizing Jewish Heritage Week as different weeks in April and May. And in 2006, Congress issued a resolution recognizing May as Jewish Heritage Month and has been recognized annually ever since. Uh this year marks the 341st year since the first group of Jewish settlers uh arrived on our shores. And since then, members of our Jewish community have persevered through discrimination and adversity. Um they've made and continue to make invaluable contributions to our culture, to our community, to our economy, and our history. Uh the Bay Area Jewish Community is the fourth largest in the nation and that community stretches back through the history in the 1800s. To affirm our statement of values, the city honors and respects individual experiences and we will support and protect people of any race, religion, ancestry, ethnicity, ability, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. On behalf of the SE city council, it is my pleasure to proclaim May 2026 as Jewish Heritage Month. And I call upon all of our community to learn about and celebrate our Jewish neighbors, our students, our co-workers and friends. Thank you and congratulations. Thank you. And I'll tell you thank you.

Next up is oral communications. This is now the public's opportunity 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 the general business section of the meeting. Individuals may speak only once during oral communications. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum and council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within council's authority, uh, generally known as council's 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 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 star9 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. Um I have quite a few speaker cards. So, um, speakers will have two minutes to speak. Uh, before I get to the public, Vice Mayor Melinger has several announcements.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Uh, first announcement, adopt a storm drain. The city of Sunnyville's environmental services department is excited to introduce a new community initiative to help keep local waterways clean and streets flood-free. The city of Sunnyale Adopt the Storm Drain Program. Sunnyville storm water system plays a critical role in managing runoff from streets and neighborhoods. Unlike waste water, storm water in Sunnyale is not treated or filtered before reaching local waterways. Debris clogged storm drains can cause street flooding and introduce pollutants into the bay. By keeping storm drains clear of debris, participants can make a direct impact on the community by preventing flooding and protecting local creeks and the bay. Residents aged 18 and older are invited to participate by committing to one year of stewardship for a local storm drain. As part of the program, participants will have the opportunity to name their adopted drain and will be provided access to city supplied tools and safety equipment, including a litter tool, rake, dustpan, bucket, gloves, and a safety vest. Residents interested in participating are encouraged to visit sunnyvail.ca.gov gov and search adopt a storm drain to learn more and sign up. Announcement two, building safety month. May is building safety month. This is an international celebration to raise awareness about building safety. The 2026 theme is built to last. Each week of the month highlights a different part of building safety. Week one, May 1st through 10th. Safe Homes, Strong Communities focuses on simple actions homeowners can take to improve safety at home. Week two, May 11 through 17. Voices of the Built Environment spotlights building safety professionals and the roles they play in keeping communities safe. Week three, May 18th through 24. Prepared to protect encourages community preparedness and highlights how disaster resilient

building codes protect people and property. Week four, May 25th through 31st. Communities Without Limits showcases the importance of accessibility in building construction and design. Building safety affects us all. It's important to help spread the message about the need for safe, affordable, sustainable, and resilient buildings. We thank the Sunnyale Community Development Department and its planning, building, and housing divisions for all they do to advance this important cause. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. We'll now move to the public. Um, so I'll call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Uh, just as a reminder, uh, to to speed along, I'll I'll be reading off two names. Uh, for those, the first name, please come to the lectern. The second person, make your way, let's say, close by the lectern so that we can move between different u participants and uh, speakers as quickly as possible. First up is Russ M. Followed by Angie H. Thanks.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Russ Melton here, CEO of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce. And while the city clerk is bringing up my foils, let me just mention that the Chamber of Commerce was incorporated in 1947. And our mission today remains largely the same as it has been for the last 80 years. We help our members grow through marketing, networking, education, and advocacy at city hall. To become a me member of the chamber, visit svcco.org. It's been a busy month at the Chamber of Commerce. I'd like to thank Mayor Klein and council member Sinovasan for joining the Shake Shack grand opening ceremony on April 1st. That was near Redwood Square and a great event. On Thursday night, the Chamber of Commerce has a very special networking mixer at the chambers's nonprofit of the year, Animal Assisted Happiness. Join us at Baylands Park. See firsthand how Animal Assisted Happiness brings smiles to the community through their smile farm. Please register at svc.org. Next up on Monday, May 4th, small businesses should join us for an educational workshop on artificial intelligence for small business. Join the chamber and our friends from Meta to learn actionable AI strategies you and your small business can implement the same day. And then last up is the Chamber of Commerce's flagship event, the Art and Wine Festival, on June 6th and June 7th. Please come celebrate 50 years of community, creativity, and connection as the Sunnyale Art and Wine Festival returns with a boldly re-imagined experience in the heart of downtown Sunnyvale. This milestone edition brings together 200 plus of the West Coast top artist and live music, exceptional food and family, friend and activities all set in a vibrant festival layout redesigned from the ground up. We cannot do the art and wine festival

without our volunteers. I hope to see many in council chambers here tonight. Please volunteer for the art and wine festival and to do so you can go to the website sunnyvaleandwine.com black backsplashvunteer. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Next up is Angie H, followed by Ashley H.

Hi, good evening. My name is Angie Henson. I've been a Sunny Bell resident for 42 years and I am a proud member of a newly formed group called Lost Palmus Green and Serene. Uh we started out with three people and in about four weeks have a membership of almost 170 people all concerned about the plans for Los Palmus Park. Uh, thank you, Mayor Klene. Although you didn't get back to me via email, phone mail, uh, phone um, Facebook or messenger, you did get back to a member of our committee. And I do want to sincerely thank you for committing to come on Saturday. And, um, Councilwoman Cell, thank you also. It means a it means a great deal for us to share our park with you. I just want to quickly note my concern about the commissioner on um Sunal Parks and Rex and I wanted to be sure you all knew that Pash Giri is the president of the Northern California Cricut Alliance since 2024. He's also the on the finance committee for the Northern California Cricut Alliance. On December 11th, 224, the parks and recreation meeting minutes stated, "Commissioners were in, and I quote, commissioners were in agreement that they support the recommendation to include cricut fields and pickle ball courts in the reinvisioning at Los Palmus Park. This is before soliciting any comment from the co uh any input from any of the residents." Thank you.

Um, one one second. the city manager has a comment.

Um yeah, for for members of the public, I just wanted to share that um the process on the Los Palmus uh renovation project is still underway. We are going to continue public outreach um that more will be coming um this fall. We've recognized that and this is posted on our website on the project page in case anybody wants to also subscribe to that. But um we recognize that the recent uh public meeting didn't go uh well and so we're taking a pause and are re-evaluating our public outreach and will revisit that. Ultimately, what will happen is we'll deliver staff will deliver multiple options to the city council in a public hearing that will one of the options at least will be um sort of an asis um option with a few additions like maybe some restroom remodels or um you know other small upgrades. Um at that point um c um the public will have an opportunity to come and speak to council and voice your uh desired uh option for council before they make a decision. That's um called the conceptual design. So when we make that decision, that is how we will move forward on designing the park. So there will be more opportunities for public input. We're sorry that this has gotten uh a little bit sideways, but we're looking to bring it back on track and uh engage uh the city um and do a uh a meaningful public outreach process. So, I just wanted to share that with the public and and council.

Mr. Kirby, I want to thank you for your quick responses to my emails. Also, thank you. And one second, one one second. You have a you have a question from council member Cneros.

Uh yes, thank you. Uh my question is actually for the city attorney. Um the member of the public brought up uh issues uh regarding what sounded like conflict of interest on our um you know public service bodies and I just wanted because it's very important uh to make know that we have the trust that our decisions are made um with transparency and in accordance with with the law. So, I just thought um since that was brought up, this would be a good opportunity to talk about what um the conflict of interest policy would entail. Uh so, I can look into that more about this specific situation,

not the specific situation like we don't know that individuals, but just generally just in general there is a comprehensive set of laws and regulations that govern conflicts of interest for public officials in the state of California. Um those require recusal when there are certain types of financial interests um living near a project uh having some kind of business relationship that might be affected that type of thing. Um we do training on that for all the boards and commission members. Um many of the board and commission members have to file annual disclosures. Uh so we're you know we try to stay on top of that as much as we can.

He has not recused himself from any of the voting. Thank you. Yeah, I'll have to look into that specific situation. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And and lastly, I'll just say that all of our council are getting lots of emails. Um, a lot of them, let's say, cut and paste, so we're not going to be in general, we're not going to reply to each one, especially when they basically say the same thing. And I'll I'll be honest, you know, when I see a a shorter email that's personal as opposed to a lot of cut and paste, I I and I'm assuming a lot of the other council members do not reply to I'll say the duplicate emails. And I understand that that you have been getting the community to raise the voice. That being said, if it's the same message over and over again, um you won't most likely be getting responses from all of our council members. Our council members um end up there. It's the the response from emails is all on all of our shoulders. We don't have staff to do that. So, so keep that in mind as you're sending in emails. But I just want to give you that heads up. Also,

I thank you for that mayor claim. However, I would like to point out that I was probably one of your first emails. was not a cut and paste, but thank you. At any rate, we're grateful you're coming on Saturday, so thank you. Thank you. Next up is Ashley H, followed by um Emanuel E. Yes. Or F, sorry, Emanuel G.

All right. Hello. My name is Ashley Henson, and I think you can tell from the green that I'm also talking about the Los Palmus Park renovations um just in a little bit more detail. I am 32. I've been living near Los Palms Park for 32 years. I'm planning to raise my family there as well. And while I was hanging up flyers to let people know about the proposed changes, the inclusion of the giant cricket net as well as the lighting to our lovely green space, um I managed to gather some quotes from some children playing because of the time limit and I know that we're down to about 2 minutes per speaker. I'm sorry Judah, Eevee, Ezra, and Eden that I'm not going to be able to read all your quotes, but I'm going to start with Judah's quote. Judah is 13 and he wanted to share with you all that he loves playing catch and volleyball with his siblings on the cricket pitch and that the and his siblings on the open field and that the addition of a cricket pitch will make the park unusable for anyone who wants to do things like that. Um I also have another quote from Mari and Jel age seven uh cuz I asked her to expand a little bit on her thoughts and she said that I do not like the fences and the lights because it is not fun for the other kids. It is only for one game. It is hard to get out of the fences because it is too big. You would go so far and have to take so many breaks. I don't want to walk that far and I want to keep the green field open. I agree with these children. According to the University of Washington, design can encourage learning and exploration by creating spaces that are not immediately inter interpreted but allow discovery. Currently, the residents of Sunnyvil have discovered this green space communally. Just this Saturday, and if I can borrow uh Rabbi's quote, um the American Mosaic was on view. Uh we saw birthday parties, picnics, volleyball games, cricket matches, soccer, yoga, churches, all in the same green space. It was truly a space that represented the diversity of Sunnyvil. It is a dynamic space and I think that by labeling it as a Cricut pitch, we will lose that ability to have a dynamic space that can grow and change with our community um in the way that we want it to. and I want to keep the space that we

have now. That is a wonderful representation of our diverse community that this city promotes. So, thank you for protecting our diversity. Thank you, Emanuel G. followed by Mary B. And please no clapping or booing. We want to this is a safe space where if people have an opposing opinion, they need to feel freight feel safe on coming to the lectern and appeal and in giving that giving that opinion. Go ahead, Emanuel.

Good evening, city council. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. Um, my name is Emanuel Guerrero. I've been living in Sunnyville since 2011. Is that right, Kate? And so, I just want to bring attention to the controversial direction that the renovation of Las Palmus is going. I'm also part of Las Palmus Green and Serene. Why is the parks and Rex committee insistent on installing a cricket pitch, tall fencing, and field lights at Las Palmus Park? Prior to the park renovation meeting in March, the demand for the expansion of cricket into Las Palmus was low. The first community survey done in April to May of last year had 6.5% of respondents asking for the expansion of cricket into less palmos. A second survey done November to December of last year showed a 7.4% of interest from respondents to expand cricket. However, during the last Zoom meeting in March, attendings attendees were shocked that a cricket pitch, tall fencing, field lighting, and additional tennis courts was floated as option one and became the preferred option after an online live poll. After much questioning and headscratching from meeting attendees, it was divulged that the number of tallied votes was significantly larger than the number of attendees at the Zoom meeting and also multiple voting was allowed. So, what gives? What brought cricket to the forefront when it was essentially somewhat of an afterthought in the preceding surveys? Possible reasons. Number one, the surveys and polls conducted by the city have been open to non-Seneagal residents. In the Zoom meeting alone, 28% of respondents were not from Sunnyale. Reason number two, the surveys and polls conducted by the city have the potential to be manipulated by repeat voting. And possible reason number three is conflict of interest. Pash Giri, a member of the parks and reccks committee, is also the current president of the Northern California Cricut Association. The city needs to regain the trust of its residents and regain integrity of

its surveying of its residents. We are asking that for surveys that are only available Thank you. Thank you very much. Recusal, please. Uh Mary B, followed by Daryl J.

Good evening. Um, I'm here about another green issue, which is our heritage valley oak at Butcher's Corner. Um, this is our 300-year-old Valley oak, which is also a designated heritage resource. Um, the tree has not been treated very well during construction. Uh, the fencing around the tree, as you can see in this picture, um, is around the trunk, but does not protect the canopy or the roots from, uh, um, construction equipment. Um, but the tree's been doing okay. This is a picture from 2025. It's hanging in there. Um, on the next slide, if I can make this happen. Okay, 2026. A few months later, we have half a tree. Um, I'm in shock. Um, so lower branches have been removed. The tree was thinned. So, the canopy has shrunk significantly. Um, now as you recall, the developer did not want this tree on the property. He wanted it removed. Um, and he may be getting his wish come true with the way this is being treated. Um, trimming of this tree required a permit and that the city arborist be present while it was happening. Um, and the classification as a heritage tree required an additional le level of protection. Those things did not happen. Um, the tree was trimmed without permits and without a city arborist. This is a violation of the law and may lead to the treere's death. The oldest tree in Sunnyville, a heritage resource, was desecrated. Who is supposed to protect this and why aren't they? And how will the developer be held accountable for this crime? And it is a crime. If I am allowed to damage a tree, no matter how old or big it is, then no tree is safe. If the developer or if I am allowed to damage a heritage resource, no matter what it might be,

then no heritage resource is safe. Please hold them accountable. Thank you. Thank you. Just one moment. Um, Vice Mayor Malager, thank you very much. Question for the city manager. Um, is staff aware of this? Was were permits pulled on this? What is is staff taking action on this?

I'd like to ask community development director Miss Ryan to comment. Uh yes, thank you council. Sorry, I have to change glasses so I can actually see you. Um uh we we were made aware of some uh work that was done on the tree and the city arborist visited the site along with the developers um arborist and they both concluded that the tree was in declining health that was not due to the construction. There were other issues that the tree was suffering from. Um the uh limbs were trimmed um because they were um in risk of breaking and falling and injuring someone. So that's why they um were um uh cut. Um we um they should have come to us afterwards rather than being reported. But if there is an immediate safety issue, you do not have to get a tree removal permit. Um so at this point we've advised them that if the tree is in declining health and the city arborist does think that it is um a danger they would have to first apply to the heritage preservation commission to have it um considered for removal from the heritage resource list um before the a tree removal permit can be considered.

Thank you. Can I respond? Oh no, sorry. Uh council member Oh, okay. Council member Sheena and I had same same question. Thank you. Thank you. U we'll continue on. Uh first next up is Daryl Chay followed by Ron Z and city clerk. Can you please take down the presentation?

Hi. Good evening council and mayor. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. I'd like to also talk about the Los Palmus renovation project. I'm wearing my green shirt. Um, so I'm concerned about some of the flaws in the the the process of gathering feedback. So I'll just go uh summarize some of that. In one of the initial surveys, um, the RRM design group asked like what is one of the most important features you would like in the park? And the respondents responded the open space of the grassy field is a high priority. That's an important feature of the park. So I'd like to make sure that during this process of renovation, we keep that in mind. when I see the subsequent proposals to encircle the the entire field in events, um this is this is not what the community wants. So, I'd like to emphasize that we need to have a large open space like we do today that integrates many different um activities. And as the rabbi was saying, we are a melting pot. And if you go to the Los Palmus Field today, you will see many different sports simultaneous simultaneously in use on the field. and including cricket. So I think there are ways to to leave the field open. Um the the sports assessment that was done by the Verde Design Group in August 2025 mentioned uh consider Los Palmus Park as a space for including a Cricut pitch but and it even says cricket takes a lot of space. So when you look at the cricket pitch that's being proposed in the subsequent uh proposals, it's 350 ft in diameter, which is the equivalent of of almost two full-size NFL football fields. Um this is a lot of space for a group of people where there's 13 people on the field at one time versus on a typical weekend, you might see um 200 people on the field at a at a single time. So I think maybe the parks and recck commission needs to think about

ways to integrate cricket into the activity space in a way that it can be shared with other uses. Thank you very much Ron Z followed by Nurvy S or Nina S, sorry.

Hello and thank you. I'm Ron Zalinsky. I'm president of the Sunnyvale Sister City Association. We are an all volunteer nonprofit organization with uh stewardship of w with the relationship of our Sunny Bell sister city I Isizuka Japan. Um we I I'm here to give a periodic update uh on our exchanges. We have uh just finished uh an exchange where 20 students from Isizuka and four chaperones were here from March 24th to 30th. And I'd like to thank the council, the mayor, and the professional staff of the city for the support that they give to us. We have one of the most vibrant exchange um programs in California. If I look at the 200 I mean the 113 sister city relationships uh that California has with Japan and we couldn't do without your support and we really appreciate that. We've done we've sent 150 students and 85 adults to Isizuka so far since 2014 when we started and most of those uh chaperones have been um um sent uh on um low fars uh and their their teachers um at our middle school and our high schools. So, uh, we have a couple of host families here that will just, um, after I am finished give, uh, a few words to, um, their experiences and just to let you know how these these exchanges go. And, um, um, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Next up is Nurvy S or Nina S followed by Sel V. Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Near Vishot and I will be sharing my experience of hosting a Japanese exchange student. A lasting friendship. Last year, my older sister was selected for a Japanese exchange program and our family hosted a student. At the time, as a fifth grader, I wasn't sure what role I would play since my sister and parents handled most of the planning. However, I quickly discovered how meaningful and enjoyable this experience could be. So, when we learned this year that the program needed more host families, I eagerly asked my parents for another opportunity. This year, we were matched with Msuki Joe, whose interests, art, tennis, music, and Disney closely matched mine. Before her arrival, we connected through Zoom and email, which made it easily easier to plan her visit and build excitement. On March 24th, I rushed from a choir performance to welcome her, determined not to miss that special moment. And thankfully, I arrived just in time. Mitsuki brought thoughtful, personalized gifts and even shared a presentation about her family and culture. It soon felt as though I had gained a second sister from another part of the world. Through our conversations, I learned how life in Japan can be both different and surprisingly similar to my own. One memorable moment was when I lost a tooth during her visit. Mitsuki explained a Japanese tradition. When a top tooth is lost, it is thrown onto the roof. And when a bottom tooth is lost, it is thrown onto the ground, symbolizing the direction in which the new tooth should grow. We also visited the Walt Disney Museum together, where I learned about Walt Disney's life and the creation of Mickey Mouse. The entire week felt joyful and full of energy, trying new foods, playing games, and spending time together. More than anything, this experience gave me a deeper understanding of Japanese culture and most importantly a friend for life. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing. Next up is Seial V. Yeah. Followed by Gan M.

Hi, thank you so much. Uh we are Sunnyville resident and family uh since 2014 and Bay Area resident since 2000. Thank you for the opportunity to share this uh update. So we've had a good experience with the Sunnyville Sister Serti Association. We've hosted so far three times. We've had Yume, Hono and Konoha visit us, you know, over a period of time. Uh and we've also had our older daughter go uh and the younger one is going you know this June. So super excited about this program. A lot of our friends who who are in the area in the Bay Area also are always impressed by the program that Sunnyvale has and the sister city association offers that allows our kids to experience uh you know how how the daily life is in Japan and the school as well. At the same time it allows us also to experience you know what the life is there like. We've loved hosting these children. We've learned a lot about their life, their values, their food, their custom and you know aspirations. Many times these kids talk about you know what they want to do. Uh and it's just delightful to hear about them. So and when the kids go from here they they always bring it up as one of the most you know memorable uh uh uh experiences that they have had. So really looking forward for this younger one also to get that experience and huge thanks to the uh SSA team for always always stepping up and helping with anything that's going on uh and going out of their way to make sure that you know students on both sides are comfortable and are able to uh you know reach uh reach each other at any time. Uh and I would definitely recommend I've already recommended this program to a lot of other Sunny whale families also. uh and I would recommend here if there's anyone present who's not had this you know who's not attempted to apply for this program definitely encourage you guys to apply have your kids apply for it. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Uh next up is Jean M followed by Steve with no last initial.

Hi my name is Jean. I live in Washington Park just west of here. We have a big issue on Olive Avenue. Um, I walk every day. I usually like to go down to down here, walk the steps. Last year, one man cross the street, hit a redwood tree. Less than a month later, young boys went there and they flipped a car. How fast do you have to be going to flip a car in a uh neighborhood? Then uh a month later, those little slow children playing uh the little fluorescent green mans that stationary and waving a flag taken out by a car. Um then I quit walking here. Okay. I was starting to get a little freaked out. None of my neighbors would walk with me. Um so after the New Year resolutions, multi-car accident the first time I walked down here. So there's definitely an issue there. This is also a bike route which is really wellmaintained down in this area. But the minute you cross over Ptoria, it's not. What's also added to it is the fact that we now have multiple RVs parking down that street, we can't even I'm inching inching out and my neighbors are all complaining is we don't have any sight vision. And as we moved out the other day, I came very close to hitting a man on a bike and it was sick to as a dog the whole rest of the day. those RVs are blocking uh are basically concerning to our neighbors because that part of the uh neighborhood is kind of like dark on that olive street. We also have one of those uh um a registered daycare. It's an area that all of our kids go to to go to school. All those accidents that I mentioned were in the middle of the day. They were not at night. They were not rush hour. They're in the middle of the day. There is a big thing there. We'd like to figure out what we could do to limit the parking so that that our RVs are blocking our

vision and not aren't a concern to our neighbors. I'm one representative now. You will see more shortly. Thank you very much. Once one moment, do you have a question from one of the council members? Uh, Vice Mayor Melinger. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And, uh, staff, could you connect Oh, what was your name again, ma'am? Gene Mclofflin. Thank you, Miss Mclofflin. Uh, could staff connect with Miss Mclofflin about our traffic calming program and other options? Uh, yes, we can take care of that. Thank you. Thank you. One second. Um, Steve with no last initial.

Oh, wait. Actually, maybe it was. Sorry. Was that a different Steve? Actually, it Okay, I think it was. Okay, come on. Yeah, I know. Go ahead. Swap. Swap Steve. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Steve, no last initial. Thank you. That's what

Yeah. So, Steve here, Steve Scandalis. Um, I'm going to come and and talk about the the Los Palama stuff. When I looked at those plans, I like a lot of the things on there. The extra walking pass, the game board tables, uh new restroom, uh that would be very good. What was a little shocking was to see the the um the fences basically there. And I'll let you know, Pesh Gary is a friend of mine. He has been for many years. He's a very honorable man. Um you can look into whether there was some impropriy or something went a little haywire unintentionally. But the important thing is is that Pesh, myself and one other person, we went and visited Baylands Park a year and a half ago or so and he talked uh about plans that there was some organization wanted to spend some money in in the meadow area there and myself uh I felt that was a really good idea for cricket there. I don't think you're going to be able to put lights out there, but I think a cricket field pitch and they like a little hill to sit on or something. Uh, that seemed like a good idea. So, in regards to to Los Palmus Park, I think 15 foot high fences and taking over the entire area where it's already multi-use right now. That's a non-starter. So, maybe ought back uh put it in reverse a little bit on that. But please do look back at the Baylands Park. I I understand some people may wish to have lights. Well, you can do it till 8:00 PM during the summer, but not so long during the winter. Um, but look at that and and and know that that Pesh is very passionate about um the cricket, but I think he's also very honorable. I don't think he's trying to pull wool over anybody's eyes. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, next is Uday, followed by Tara M. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Klein, uh, city council members. Thank you, uh, Tim. Uh, I'm Udai. I'm a member of the Charles Street uh, community. I live right across the street here, and we are also part of the Washington Park Neighborhood Association. uh over the last few years uh you know several years in fact uh Charles Street has gone through several um uh years of construction in our neighborhood. uh three highrises were built in our community and we have to endure through that and uh given that the resolution today to allow for pres you know residential permit parking for the neighborhood is a welcome addition to us and I wanted to stand here and really acknowledge the effort that is put by the city council, the mayor, everybody here, the city manager uh for all the work that you have done to get us this to this point uh we still have a lot of concerns. I I think you know that I don't want to bore everyone with that but I do want to acknowledge that through all of this difficult time everyone here uh Tim including uh have given us a lot of time have listened to our concerns and have you know are going to potentially act on it and give us this uh little bit of glimmer of hope uh in terms of uh getting us a better parking situation in our street. So, I really wanted to take this time to appreciate your time and thank you for all the work you're doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Tara M. Followed by Steve C.

Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. I'm Tara Martin Millius and I am speaking tonight here in my official capacity as the executive director for Leadership Sunnyvil with a big thank you for all that you have done to support Leadership Sunnyvil over the last year as we come up on our last few days of class for the cohort. I particularly want to thank staff for all the work that has gone in and all the interactions that you have provided for all of our cohort to experience uh parts different parts of the city and it is uh so very much appreciated by staff by all the people who are participating and certainly by me. So thank you all so very much for all you do.

Thank you. And my last speaker card in the room is Steve C.

Hello, Mayor Klein, Vice Mayor Melinger, U City Council, um Tim Kirby, city attorney. I I want to echo exactly what um what my colleague U was just saying. I'm also part of the Charles Street um residential uh neighborhood, part of the Washington Park Neighborhood Association. And um again, I I I just sincerely want to thank you all for the amount of work that you put into this to help us out with this parking permit situation. Um many of you are on speed dial. You pick up the phone, you take meetings with us. I mean, that's that's commendable. I really appreciate that and it means a lot to us. Um, as you're even talking with the the Los Palmus community about meeting with them. I think that's great that you guys go out and do that. That's that's commendable. So, thank you very much. I ask that you adopt this resolution for us. Help us out and I ask that you get the the uh those signs in the street as fast as possible. We're getting more and more folks from Kikis. We're now getting Shake Shack employees, believe it or not. Um, I was I met a couple of them in front of my house the other day and had a nice conversation with them. Didn't talk about parking. Just had a great conversation with them and congratulate them on their on their new location and went there and had a had a hamburger and a shake and I will tell you it was fantastic. So, kudos to that. Uh but anyway, again, I just want to thank you all for for what you've done for us. And I know it's been difficult seeing us every single week coming in for for the last since 2018. But uh finally, hopefully uh we'll make some progress here. So, thank you again.

Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. I will go ahead and move to remote speakers. Because of the nature of remote communications, speakers who who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. Uh therefore, speakers are warned to limit their comments to subjects that fall within city council's authority um to decide or take action. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item? Yes, mayor. We First up, we have Charlene L, followed by a member of the public that's with initial S. Charlene, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council.

Honorable council, I'd like to compare the bike networks of San Jose and Sunnyville. San Jose has substantially more safe bikeways than Sunnyville, even after normalizing for population. This resulted in San Jose having a bike mode share that is twice as high as Sunny Bell's and streets that are about three times safer than Sunnyville's. Here's some quantitative data to back up those statements. San Jose approved its first bike plan in 2009, and 11 years later, they actually completed it. By 2020, they had 470 mi of bikeways, including 54 miles of protected bike lanes, 20 m of true bike boulevards, and 62 mi of trails. They then created a new bike plan for an additional 550 bikeway miles. When normalized by population, San Jose still has seven times more protected bike lanes than Sunnyville. San Jose's bike boulevards are true bike boulevards in that they actually put in infrastructure to divert and slow car traffic. In contrast, Sunnyville's ATP is far behind schedule. No one expects it to be completed by 2030 when the plan expires. There are only 1.2 mi of existing protected bike lanes, and the protection is likely going to be just flex posts for the newer ones. Sunnyville's quote bike boulevards are not safe by any means as they are just paint. No attempt was made to slow or divert car traffic. San Jose's effort is paying off. Their commute bike mode share is 3%. Sunny Bells is only 1.5%. San Jose had 235 crashes in the last 10 years by car crashes, while Sunny Bell's car crash rate was 2.8 times higher when normalized by population and bike rate. San Jose is serious about reaching their goal of 15% bike mode share by 2040 and 20% by 2050. In contrast, Sunnyville's goal is 10% by 2030, and everybody is certain that we are not going to reach it. In conclusion, Sunnyville simply needs to look to our next door neighbor for inspiration. Like San Jose, we can and will accomplish what we set out to

do in the ATP. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have a member of the public with the initial S. S., You've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council. Hello. Yes.

Okay. Well, I am uh a member of the Charles Street uh neighborhood, the part of the neighborh park neighborhood association. I'm calling to uh you know speak about the parking situation here and similar to uh some of my other neighbors who spoke and I also want to thank the council members and the city staff who met with us in past and um and and are working on this topic. Um so I I'll try to be brief and say you know thank you for working on this topic. parking situation is uh not great here and certainly needs relief and uh the steps you're taking are in the right direction and I hope we can see this to come come to a good conclusion. Thank you. Thank you

mayor. That was the final remote speaker. Thank you. I'll go ahead and close oral communications uh and move on to our consent calendar. Um, I'll open up public comment on a consent calendar items. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star9 on the 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 two minutes to speak on an item or a if they have a question to pull for consent. I have no speaker cards in the room. Uh, city clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on a consent calendar item?

Yes, mayor. We have a member of the public who's raised their hand. Sonnani Jsani, are are you interested in speaking on a consent calendar item? Yes. Uh, one D and one F. One D is in dog. Yes. And one F. Yes. Okay. We will table those for now. Um, any other speak remote speakers? No, mayor. Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and bring it back to council for a motion. Vice Mayor Melinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Let's see if I can get this right. Uh, I move 1 A through 1 C, 1 E, and 1 G through 1 I. Thank you. Is there a second? I will go ahead and second that. Uh, city clerk, can we can we please have a vote? And I think you need to change the heading. So So the consent calendar is for everything except for 1D and 1 F when we're voting. The motion carries 70.

Thank you. At this time, let's go ahead and take item 1D. Um, do we have any comments from council on 1D? Seeing Oh, uh, Vice Mayor Melinger. Okay, that's fine. Just managing everything. Okay. Um, let's go ahead and open up public comment on this item. One moment. Um, please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial star 9 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 uh two minutes to speak. Um, I have no speakers in the room to speak on item 1D. Uh, city clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on one D?

Yes, mayor. And will we be giving the speakers three minutes or two minutes? Two minutes. Two minutes. Sorry. Thank you. Um, first up we have Aani J. Aani. You've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council. Absana.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we can.

When planning a capital improvement program project, it is essential to account for all per and necessary utility upgrades. The agency managing the project is generally possessing comprehensive knowledge of existing infrastructure at the site. To uh further ensure that the unknown utilities are not overlooked, a ground penetration radar study is conducted to detect any buried utility that are not already documented. The location of the buildings, the date of their construction, the placement of the backup generator and their switch gear are typically wellestablished facts. Such information should be readily available and not overlooked during the planning process provided that the respons personnel are properly selected, experienced and well informed. In the present case, there were significant significant uh overlaps significant professional lapse of judgment that contributed to project delays and caused discrepancies especially hazardous material identification was not performed adequately and on timely basis by Corollo engineers. Additionally, both Kroo and CDM neglected to consider the precise location of the switch gear and backup generator within the PG& easement scope. These laps in professional diligence caused delay in project execution and resulted in associated cost differentials. The change order process as imple implemented by ESC director does not differentiate between delays caused by

an unanticipated size condition and those stemming from shortcomings in planning. This lack of distinction in change order documentation prevent the public from clear identifying which Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any other speakers? Mayor, that was the final speaker for consent calendar. Close public comment on item 1D and bring it back to council. Uh, Vice Mayor Melinger, move staff recommendation item 1D. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Cell.

Second. Thank you. Uh, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion carries 70. Thank you. And we'll go ahead and take item 1F at this time. Um, do we have any comments or questions from council? Seeing none, I'll open up the public hearing on this item. Uh, please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial start on no 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. Um I have no speaker cards in the room. Uh city clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, mayor. We have Aani J. Aani, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council.

Thank you. Uh it is important to be direct and transparent about responsibilities businesses face when seeking a permit to operate. Each business must firm determine which regulations are applicable to to their specific operation and ensure that all relevant permits and inspection are secured before occupancy is granted. Proper adherence to this requirement is essential for lawful operation and public safety. Had every business including the reference business followed the established procedure for permitting and inspection such issues as lawsuit related to the American with Disability Act wouldn't have been avoided. The ADA exists to protect individuals with disabilities, some of whom whom may have been have acquired their disability as a result of other people's negligence. This underscores the importance of strict compliance with federal requirement designed to ensure accessibility and safety for all. Attempt to relaxes, relax or circumvent this federal requirement not not only undermines the protection intended for disabled individuals but also threatens the integrity of the regulatory system and broader quality of life. It is therefore critical that businesses do not seek to bypass these obligations and doing so would harm the community and the principle of fair fairness and safety that the laws seek to uphold. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor. That was the final speaker for this agenda item. Okay. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council. Uh, Vice Mayor Melinger, thank you very much. I do have a couple words I will want to say about this item, but I will move approval of staff recommendation 1F. Thank you, Council Member Cell. Second. Thank you, Vice Mayor. To your motion.

Uh, thank you very much. There are two elements in here. This is item consists of a number of policy updates um to our policy handbook and our legislative advocacy positions and I want to call a few of them out. Um so first is we're looking we're adding a policy to explicitly co uh authorize expand local authority to implement mixeduse zoning and encourage retail and neighborhood serving commercial uses and part of land use approvals. This is an item that we have heard quite a lot of public feedback on regarding the development of many of the village centers, the loss of local retail, the question of access to grocery stores and avoiding the creation of food deserts and ensuring equitable access to fresh food. I look forward to seeing the city advocate firmly and forthrightly for these issues in Sacramento with our partners at Townsend. Um, second, on the matter of ADA reform, um, the policy that we're adopting is to support reforms to the Americans with Disability Act and related statutes that allow small businesses a reasonable opportunity to cure ADA violations prior to the initiation of certain enforcement actions while maintaining strong protections for individuals with disabilities and ensuring meaningful accessibility compliance. Um, you know, part of the challenge with the ADA is that when it was passed in the early 90s, it was not passed with a public enforcement mechanism. Instead, it is enforced by private lawsuits and private action. Um, and while this offers very critical support for our disabled community, um, there have been abuses, especially targeting immigrant-owned small businesses who often do not have the resources to effectively legally defend and can face a five figure uh, essentially a five figure figure legal case for an item that could take a couple hundred dollars to cure and could

be cured very quickly. Um, there is some state legislation pending that would offer opportunities for businesses to cure these violations. It is very important that such legislation not infringe on the rights of the disabled community to have safe, accessible access to public services. Um, but I do believe that this is uh a valuable step in ensuring that our business and our retail community is supported while we maintain the rights of the disability community. Finally, we're updating our city statement of values to include uh uh that we are a welcoming community for people uh with sex characteristics associated with being born interex or interex status. Uh members of the interex community have historically faced a great deal of discrimination as well as medical abuse. Um, and this is something that is it's a very important but perhaps less known uh aspect of the overall LGBTQ rights movement or often LGBTQI rights movement and I am very glad that we're going to be enshrining this in our statement of values. I respectfully urge my colleagues to vote yes.

Thank you. Uh, Council Member Lei.

Thank you so much. I will be voting in support of this motion. I want to uh thank my colleague Vice Mill Melinger for moving many of these forward during our initial discussion of this a few months ago. I also want to say that the last um of these items is for to call for modernization of this public participation in state government which is something that will also positively I believe affect the disabled community. They will not no longer in theory have to travel all the way to Sacramento to give public testimony to our state legislature. Um, as some people know and some people are about to find out, I'm the only able-bodied person within my immediate family. And it is very important to me that the Americans with Disabilities Act is enforced. However, the way that it is enforced and the mechanisms by which is it is enforced is and can and has historically within the city been problematic. I am in support of this motion and respectfully urge my colleagues I vote.

Thank you. City clerk, can you please conduct the vote? Motion carries 70. Thank you. Let's go ahead and take a five minute recess and come back at 8:37 and then allow staff to also switch over. Thank you.

Let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to our general business. Our first item is item 26-0016, discussion of safe parking and direction to pursue interim housing and RV buyback program and designated oversized vehicle permit parking on city streets. and find that these actions are exempt from SQUA. Before we begin, Council Member Lei has a comment. Yes, I need to recuse myself from this item because my home is located within 500 ft of one of the potential sites that will be discussed. Because the conflict involves my personal residence, I am allowed to remain in the audience.

Thank you. And we'll take a moment as council member Lei leaves. Mr. Mayor, I'm requesting two minutes to confer with the city attorney. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take a two-minute recess.

Let's go ahead and reconvene. And before we continue, Vice Mayor Melinger has a comment. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. This item lists 10 potential sites for safe parking or uh tiny home projects and recommends two of them. I live within possibly within recusal distance of one of the sites not recommended for inclusion in uh safe parking that is site 4 the uh Golden West Collision Center. I am going to participate in this meeting and if discussion turns towards site four I can confer with the city attorney and recuse myself if necessary. Thank you.

Thank you. Um is there a staff report?

Nice. Good evening, mayor, council members. Amanda Stoultz, housing officer. Tonight's presentation focuses on how the city can most effectively address vehicular homelessness in Sunnyville. Over the past year, staff have conducted a comprehensive evaluation of safe parking, including site feasibility, costs, operational requirements, and program outcomes. While safe parking is often discussed as the primary solution to address vehicular homelessness, our analysis shows that it presents significant limitations in Sunnyville and would have a relatively low impact at a high cost. Based on this work, staff is recommending a more effective, scalable, and multi-prong solution that better aligns with the city's goals of reducing homelessness and improving community conditions. Safe parking has been included in various city plans since 2019. However, until 2024, the city did not have dedicated staff with subject matter expertise focused on homelessness. In 2024, staff developed a safe parking ordinance, and received council direction to develop a capital grants program, identify a potential public site, and explore funding opportunities. Following council direction, in November 2024, staff conducted extensive work to evaluate safe parking feasibility. This includes cross-dep departmental coordination and identifying public sites that did not conflict with existing uses, had sufficient space for safe large vehicle circulation, and

could incorporate safe parking best practices, including 247 operations. In 2025, staff developed the safe parking permitting system for community-based operators, launched a capital grants program offering 5 to $50,000 for site improvements and other onetime costs, and issued a request for information to identify any viable private sites for safe parking. Staff have also engaged heavily with other jurisdictions on potentially leveraging resources and have actively engaged with the faith-based community to encourage participation in the capital grants program with offers of technical assistance and ongoing support from city staff in addition to choosing a safe parking program that would best meet the expectations of their congregation and site size. It should be noted that while moving forward with safe parking on a city site is not being recommended at this time, staff will continue to engage community-based organizations in hosting safe parking on private land. Council can also give direction to staff to evaluate rescoping the $100,000 safe parking capital grants pilot program to also allow for operational costs, though this would need to be included in the budget in an ongoing way as it was a one-year pilot. As previously mentioned, a cross-d departmental team of city staff worked together to review public sites in Sunnyville and identified two potentially viable sites for safe parking. the Civic Center campus which refers to the location nearest the Charles Street Gardens area of the parking lot in addition to a portion of 1240 Fair Oaks Way. The Civic Center site was not suitable for RV parking due to its proximity to the Charles Street Gardens and neighborhood competing uses including

library and preschool parking and lack of existing infrastructure. It may be considered for small passenger vehicle safe parking site though a significant investment would be required to add utilities, restrooms and operational space with limited usable area. The 1240 Far Oak site could accommodate approximately 15 RVs after accounting for trees and sight constraints such as adjacent BTA property, rights of way, and only one portion of the parcel being viable due to a main thoroughare cutting through it and additional space needed for hygiene facilities and staff operations that were also accounted for. Similar to the civic center site, this site would require substantial infrastructure investment. Other sites that were evaluated were not feasible due to easements, existing uses, or being unable to fit more than a few passenger vehicles. Addressing vehicular homelessness is a priority and it is critical that we invest in solutions that are both effective and scalable. Through our analysis, several key limitations of safe parking emerged. Limited scale. Even with our most viable site, we could serve approximately 15 RVs, while over 150 Sunnyville affiliated households are currently experiencing vehicular homelessness per the county's March 2026 HMIS data. Lower housing outcomes. Safe parking programs typically achieve lower housing exit rates than other programs, often 40% or less, meaning most participants do not transition to permanent housing. Recent county data indicated around 30% of households transitioning to permanent housing from safe parking programs in the county. Additionally, in nearby communities such

as Mountain View, the average length of stay in safe parking is approximately 599 days or nearly two years. This indicates that safe parking programs can become long-term holding environments rather than pathways to housing. Number three, high co high cost of or small impact. Safe parking requires site development, ongoing staffing and security, and sanitation and service coordination. These costs are high relative to the small number of people that would be served and the outcomes that would be produced. Four, no dedicated funding. There is currently no identified funding source for either capital or ongoing operations, meaning the city would need to bear these costs. Five, mismatch of needs. Not all individuals in vehicles are experiencing homelessness. Some are doing so by choice or for economic feasibility. Among those who are experiencing homelessness, needs vary significantly, requiring a range of interventions rather than a single solution. For these reasons, staff is recommending a set of alternative strategies that are more scalable, more effective in achieving housing outcomes, and better aligned with the city's goals. Recommendation number one, the primary program staff is recommending to address vehicular homelessness is interum housing, often referred to as tiny homes. Interum housing has significantly stronger outcomes than safe parking because it offers services on site, has low barrier entries, and creates a direct pathway to permanent housing. services can be more significant and serviceenriched, including having an LVN

or RN on site or even having licensed medical and mental health staff. Additionally, while safe parking stabilizes people in vehicles, interum housing transitions people out of homelessness. Because interum housing has higher rates of households exiting to permanent housing, it improves stability and well-being, which in turn increases engagement and improves health outcomes for a Sunnyville site. Early estimates estimates indicate that the potential of around 1.65 million in operating costs with capital site costs pending further analysis. Multiple funding sources have been identified for the capital and operating expenses. The timeline for development indicated here is only an estimation. Actual development timelines have varied greatly among interim housing projects and warrant further analysis. While interum housing requires an upfront investment, it is more effective at scale. Program two, an RV buyback program paired with housing assistance. This program reduces the number of non-operational or unsafe vehicles, improves public conditions, and provides a pathway to housing for participants. At its core, an RV buyback program provides financial incentive for individuals to voluntarily relinquish their RVs and pairs it with support to transition into safer and more stable living situations. Many of the RVs we see in our community are in poor or deteriorating condition, may not be running, and lack proper sanitation or utility connections. These vehicles can present both health and safety risks to occupants and

ongoing impacts to surrounding neighborhoods. This program would be targeted specifically toward people living in non-operational or unsafe RVs, people who are open to transitioning out of their vehicle and households who may be unable to afford afford repairs, registration, or relocation. It is important to note that this is a voluntary program and that participants are not required to give up their vehicle. The program would need to be paired with interum housing, other non- congregate shelter or housing to be effective. The estimated total cost for this program is around 350,000 which includes participant incentives, administration and vehicle disposal. It has lower ongoing operational costs and it can be scaled based on funding and it can produce immediate visible results when combined with interum housing. Uh this approach allows the city to address vehicular homelessness at multiple levels reducing impact improving conditions and creating real pathways to housing. The last program is permitted RV pro parking on design designated city streets. This approach is designed to bring structure accountability and services to an existing condition individuals living in RVs without the significant costs and challenges associated with safe parking. A permitted RV parking program allows individuals living in RVs to park legally in designated areas under a structured structured permitting system. Rather than concentrating vehicles into a single site, this model uses existing public rightway. It establishes clear rules and expectations and it provides oversight and service connection. This allows the city to better manage vehicle habilit habitation while reducing impacts on neighborhoods. This

program can be designed for individuals currently living in RVs within Sunnyville, households who may not be ready or willing to enter shelter immediately, and people who need a lower barrier, more flexible option. It may also serve individuals who may not be experiencing homelessness, but need a short-term place to park. It also addresses several key challenges, including improved oversight of currently unmanaged RV parking on public streets and creates a regulated system with clear expectations. It is also scalable and requires a lower capital investment. Services can be provided through the city's outreach team. And with RVs not needing to move around the city, the team can work on relationship building and connecting them to the services and programs that they may need. The cost estimates you see here are subject to further refinement. While it does require some city investment, it is significantly more scalable and cost-effective than safe parking and may address more people living in vehicles who need a safe place to park. As we near the end of the presentation, I'd like to highlight findings from recent outreach conducted as part of the city's strategic plan to address homelessness. This outreach included input from community members, service providers, and individuals experiencing homelessness in Sunnyville. One of the questions asked respondents which program they would be most interested in to address vehicular homelessness besides safe parking. The results showed clear support for interim housing solutions, which aligns with staff's recommendation this evening. We do want to acknowledge that the highest level of support overall was for permanent supportive housing, reinforcing that long-term housing remains the community's top priority. However, interum housing was identified as a strong and practical near-term solution and has been proven to be the most

effective program model to exit people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing. Funding is of course a critical component to implementing any of these proposed programs. For capital costs, particularly for interum housing and the permitted RV parking program, staff have identified several potential sources, including housing mitigation funds, community benefit funds, and um and the encampment resolution funds. for ongoing operations. Uh potential funding sources could include permanent local housing allocation funds, the service level set aside, CDBG funds, and potentially the general fund. We will also continue exploring additional opportunities such as proousing incentive program funding, Cal AIM, and other state and regional uh grant sources. staff will return to council with a more detailed funding strategy and recommendations as part of an implementation plan if this is approved tonight. The recommendation The recommendation tonight is for city council to direct staff to develop an interim housing site on city-owned land, to establish an RV buyback program, and to implement a permitted RV parking program on designated city streets. Together, these programs are designated to address vehicular homelessness through a balanced approach. providing immediate stabilization, reducing community impacts, and creating clear pathways to housing. If council provides this direction, staff will evaluate project timelines and the resource needs and return in September 2026 with detailed implementation plans and funding

recommendations for council consideration. Ultimately, addressing vehicular homelessness requires a coordinated multi-prong strategy. No single program will solve this issue on its own. But by investing in a combination of solutions, the city can more effectively reduce unsheltered homelessness while improving conditions for both residents and the broader community in Sunnyville. Thank you,

Mayor. If if I if I can just add on um thank you Amanda for that that um I just wanted to comment um for council and the public that um this continues to be one of our most difficult uh problems that we're facing in the city. Um this approach uh currently the problem impacts almost the entire city neighborhoods, commercial areas, public spaces. Um, and to Amanda's point, there really isn't a single solution that's going to fix it. We have been working very hard on this problem and trying our best to make progress. Um, this is, we think, a solid set of recommendations to move us forward and we intend to do do so as a priority um over the next few months and get back to council by the end of September with u um more concrete timelines and funding in place. So, I just wanted to um thank thank council for the opportunity to bring this forward. Um we know this isn't going to solve everything, but we feel like it's a concrete step in the right direction. So, thank you.

Thank you. Uh we'll go to council member questions and let's try to focus on questions for uh before going to public comment. Uh first up is Vice Mayor Melinger. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. A few questions. I will try to be brief. Um, first off, um, we gave direction a couple months ago about a ban on vanlording. Um, where is that? When can we expect that to come back? We haven't agendaized that yet, but we're currently working on the ordinance and that should come come back to council soon, but I don't have as in sometime this year. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Um, all right. Um, one question I have regarding the permitted RV parking. We did talk about things like having a blackwater pickup um or sewage is I I believe that was mentioned. How exactly would that be handled? Would you have a truck come around? Would you have fixed hookup points? Um what would we be doing to manage the sewage if we have uh a designated RV parking streets through the next few months? We plan on working cross departmentally to navigate all of those program details to bring back to you. Okay, that would be included.

Fair enough. Um, there are others. Mountain View has done something along those lines, I take it. Okay. Um, next question. Could you pull up the slide with the picture of the RV permitted parking area? Let me see if I can find the slide for that. Um, slide 11. Okay. I remember when we discussed safe parking a year and a half ago, one of the and safe the possibility of safe parking sites, one of the items that was included was a pretty extensive discussion of fire safety. Now, I am looking at that picture and that is the opposite of fire safety. Um, RVs burn very easily, which means they need to be kept spaced out so that one RV fire does not become 10 RV fires, right? Um, and so one of the things I want to flag is that whatever we do on an RV parking or an RV permitted parking area, spacing and fire safety is going to be very important to consider as part of that. And I really hope it doesn't end up looking like that picture.

That picture was was put on there to break up the text of the slide. um that is definitely not an image of um what an actual permitting um street would look like and we would definitely include um fire prevention um as we create the program.

Great. Thank you. Um last question. Uh there was a lot of discussion about all of the additional services that can be included with tiny homes and how that leads to better outcomes. And my question is yes, we can include all these services with tiny homes, but why can't we include them with safe parking? safe parking. What we often see is that especially in the locations that we've identified, um even fitting a small staff office can be um difficult. And so when you have like a an LVN, so so medical support or you have uh mental health clinicians on site, you need a space that can be provided indoors generally so that they can conduct um those private meetings um for their different purposes and again um that is challenging to bring on site and and continues to drive up the cost. We had mentioned that the RV safe parking site that we identified, if we chose to do that with Fair Oaks, um could host 15 RVs. And so the cost to bring on um those additional services um in addition to the case management again would would drive up the the per person cost um to serve 15 people at a time.

Okay. So my follow-on question to that, obviously RVs create difficult space constraints. What about those constraints are not the same for car safe parking though? Um can is it possible to do that sort of is it easier to do that sort of wraparound safe uh service model if you're doing a car safe parking site rather than an RV safe parking site.

It's certainly something that we could consider and cars do take up less space so you could theoretically fit more of them. But one thing that we do see is that uh we get a lot of complaints about the RVs um that are in front of businesses that are in residential neighborhoods. And so um if we wanted to reduce the impact of RVs parking in in these various areas um then running a passenger vehicle only safe parking site uh may not be the the most efficient or best use of our funding. However, um as we had mentioned in the presentation, we would continue to outreach to community- based organizations, faith-based organizations, and we find that in other cities that um where the faith-based organizations are running safe parking, um that they're doing so with passenger vehicles because they can't or won't have those larger vehicles on site. So, um, continuing to outreach and engaging, um, those, uh, faith-based and community- based organizations to see if there would be, um, the appetite for serving passenger vehicles in a smaller scale on their sites is certainly something that we, um, would like to do.

Okay. So, last question. Um, based on the cost, based on everything else, I get, and Mr. city manager, perhaps you can confirm this, that really the money is there to do one site. Is that an accurate assessment that we could not try and do, you know, a car safe parking in one place and a tiny home somewhere else? I think we'd have to look at that. Um, it's going to depend on the numbers, but it it it's tight. It's the the challenge is the ongoing cost, not as much the capital cost. and and that's what's that's what's challenging.

Okay. Thank you. In the interest of time, I'm going to put my hand down and thank you very much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh, next up is Council Member Chang.

I'm not clear. I understand the distinction between not moving forward with a safe parking site and using um designated streets. If you could go into that a little bit more. And I also don't quite understand the benefit of the RV buyback program. I was reading through the report from the Berkeley analysis and one it said most encampment residents had not lived in Berkeley when they had lost their stable housing and two there was one person quoted that I bought mine because that was the money I got from selling my condo. So I didn't think it was fair and she planned to return repair the vehicle and then give the vehicle to her daughter to use it as a short-term rental unit. So I'm not seeing the benefit of the RV buyback program.

Sure. For the RV buyback program, it is um certainly a newer program. So it's not yet what we would consider a best practice. Um however, uh Berkeley did see out of the I believe 20 or 32 people that they offered the program to that 29 um were interested in participating meaning that they were willing to sell their um large vehicle. um or even their passenger vehicle because Berkeley didn't limit it to just RVs um and move into interior housing. And so that that means that at that point they were able to get um those um vehicles that were in disrepair um in in any um shape they were in disrepair or otherwise um off the street and and people living in them um out of those vehicles and into um interum housing. And so um for them they they found the benefit to be just that they had a very large encampment of vehicles. And so um being able to uh reduce the size of the encampment, the vehicle encampment um was a benefit for them. And again um there are u many physical health um challenges with living in your vehicle, especially a passenger vehicle and for um a significant amount of time because you're not moving, your blood's not circulating. And so we see people who are living in their cars um nearby who um have swollen legs and swollen feet and can barely walk because they're sitting in their vehicle for for lengths of time because that's all they have. And so again getting them out of there and into the interim housing um rather than um with their with their vehicle um was a success for them. And another anecdotally another thing that we see is some people are really attached to their vehicle. Their vehicle is the only asset they have left. And so even if it is in disrepair, it's still something to them. And so the fact that they were willing to to be able to give that up um and let it go and get money for it so that they did still have some sort of an asset and um be able to again move into some sort

of housing so that they weren't just put back into homelessness um was also a success um for the program. So it's still new. It's still something that is is being looked at. Um but the uh early review of it is that um again if you're looking at um having a lot of RVs in your community and um wanting to find a way to alleviate that issue, especially when a lot of them are in disrepair, um that's that is one way um that that many communities are are looking at um to uh use as a multi-prong approach.

I see that point. But if most ina most of the people weren't from Berkeley originally, do we want to be incentivizing people that aren't from Sunny Bell to be selling their RVs? And then this current um you know what staff has proposed, there's nothing interim for the Sunnybell residents now that are unhoused. It's all one to two years out from now.

Sure. Those are good points. Uh, I mean certainly we can always look at the programs that we are funding ourselves um that we can put limitations that you need to be um a Sunnyville resident. Uh Berkeley is um somewhat of a transient place and so that may be Berkeley's unique circumstance, but it doesn't mean that it's ours. Um we certainly can survey um people that are experiencing homelessness um in their vehicles to understand more about the population and and um if they consider themselves Sunnyville residents. Um, that is is one of the things that we can do. Um, and forgive me, but there was another thing that you said that I I uh wanted to address. Um, but I lost my train of thought. Um, can you remind me, council member?

I think it's mostly that the proposals right now are still a year or two out and there's nothing. Yes. Um, one of the other considerations that we can look at is is we do have our five room um, temporary hotel program. So, it's something that we could look at um temporarily expanding um while we're waiting for the interim housing um to be developed. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next up is council member Shiny Basan.

Thank you. Thank you for the report. And then I really liked what you said. There is no single solution. That's my observation. Also um I also was concerned about the timeline one to two years uh and then uh I think we need to come up with something in the intermediate uh thing. Uh I had a question on the RV buyback also the cost is 350K what how many RVs are we thinking and then the I have a related question on this particular proposal

again that's just a cost assessment but that would look at potentially surveying around um 40 RVs um and also includes like a little client assistance budget the administration of the program and then one thing that Berkeley didn't initi initially budget for which was um the towing and dismantling of the RVs. Um because uh that that is a consideration that um you know they I spoke to them directly and they let me know that if they could do it all over again, they would have made sure they put that in the budget in the first place. Right. So if it is 40 uh RVs, that's about 8,000 per plus or minus uh per RV, right? A little over 5,000.

Yeah. Yeah. little. Yeah.

So how that will help the person living in ari to support themselves with that money? So what Berkeley did is that again they really looked at vehicles um some of them again were in disrepair and and unmovable and they also had um for their particular situation an ordinance that was going to clear out that encampment. So, um, if your if your RV isn't moving, um, and and you don't have money to repair it, um, and, uh, and it's it's just not in good shape, taking like $5,100 instead of a broken down RV and getting housing, um, is put you in a better place than um, than where you were before.

I had a related question on the you mentioned housing. Where will we find housing for them? We have a housing shortage, right? Right. Interum housing. Sorry. Interum housing. The one we might build if this proposal goes through. Yeah. That they they master leased a hotel in their particular situation. Yes. And then I had a question. We heard quite uh in at length about families living in uh vehicles. where how is that addressed in this in these three proposals or pro recommended programs?

One of the things that we have also looked at um is uh all of the different options for families. Um there there are a number of different programs for families in in the um county uh more so than there are for single adults experiencing homelessness, which is why we do see more single adults experiencing homelessness outdoors. Um, and we can also consider again that temporary hotel program that we currently have. We can also look at utilizing that for families once interum housing is built. And then there's also um our tre um that we tend to see families also utilizing um and doing really well at too that we can um prioritize families for that. For example,

thank you. But we heard from a student who was living in a car and then going to high school.

Mhm. uh if the current program what you are saying is current programs we can look at including I have a question on the county I have their county presentation but if the current programs are not helping that particular student or he might be the representative of a larger number of families and students living in their vehicles how will we how are we addressing with is that kind of a solution scenario.

Again, for families like interum shelter or they're often they're called tiny homes because they're tiny. Um so certainly we could look at um at at building larger ones. They they can serve families as well. Um we went and tooured the Mountain View site last week. Um but we can also look at our hotel program again expanding that. We only have five rooms right now and um living in a a nice hotel room um versus living in um you know a tiny home um for a family with minor children um oftentimes we see better outcomes or just being more comfortable in in that different setting. So we we certainly can look at expanding that.

Okay. Okay. I also have toured the Mountain View site which is managed by life moves. Uh it's good but uh anyway uh so now uh we had the county come in uh last council meeting and then one of the things in their presentation they said safe parking I'm not reading the entire thing uh of the programs they have they say 50% of household are supported by safe parking by the county how are we working with them or are we working with them or how does that work?

I'm not sure I understand the question. We do meet with the county. They presented to us that uh the number of Sunnyale residents benefiting from their services which they quote 50 households are living in vehicles. This is uh specific to safe parking are benefited. How are we how is the program you are proposing or we are proposing coordinating with them or is it working with them or how does that complement whatever they are doing? I'm not questioning their number but

okay I understand but first of all I think uh Sunnyville residents are allowed at the Mountain View safe parking sites. So, um they they serve north county residents because the county is funding a portion um of uh those those sites such as Shoreline Lot B and Evelyn which is soon to close. So, um right now again, Sunnyville residents and North County residents can um go to those programs and be served. Um, but to also respond to your question about how we work with the county or would work with the county, we do meet with them regularly, monthly um, and have um, had discussions about coming here tonight and um, and what we're proposing and so um, we c will um, continue to work with the county um, to ensure that we um, are aligning with the the homeless response system.

Okay, thank you very much. Those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next up is council member Cisneros.

Um, thank you so much for this amazing work. This is a very hard problem. A lot of different a lot of different components to consider both that come from like your you know the issue with values competing and also with your um needing to think very practically. So I just wanted to acknowledge that challenge as we're having this initial discussion that none of it um is very easy. So, but first I want to talk about uh you know the fir you opened up with talking about this would be a high cost and low impact solution given our current set of constraints for now like is it a dot dot dot situation and I guess I'm asking that because if we were to cons if we were to approve staff recommendation would that be the same is saying, "Hey, we're shutting the door on pursuing safe parking indefinitely." Or is this more of a statement, "This is not a feas a feasible option right now, but staff will continue to monitor potential opportunities for this as funding opens up.

I would definitely say the second. Um and again as I had mentioned um we will continue to work with the community- based organizations in the meantime uh because uh many of them do have um open lots and I think we can continue with robust outreach now that that the team is growing um and we're building those relationships. I see continued opportunity there to um partner with um the local faith-based community to see if we can do a rotational parking program um or just a few smaller programs on on individual lots. Even if they're serving two, three, five cars, that's still a benefit um to those people who are living in those cars.

Yes. And let me just add to that that we would um we would keep our eyes and ears open if there were a property that became available that um maybe had some infrastructure already there and maybe there was no building and it seemed like a good interim use of the site. We would we would definitely consider that. So no, we're not saying never. Um but we're not saying next week either right now.

Yeah. And I think that was just an important distinction to draw in what is being asked of council to decide and what you know where the frame from my questions are then coming from and that's helpful. Um okay I'm making sure I don't do anything. So, for RV buybacks, how many RVs in the city of Sunny Bale, you mentioned like we're really focusing in on those that are inoperable and honestly like you can't park that on on the street and it's potentially subject to tow and that's it. We are then asking them for money rather than the other way around and that's really not where we want to be on any side. um or very um old or uh unsafe RVs focusing I think that's I appreciate that but is this something that is just a few or is this most of the RVs how many would impact that are currently parked in the city of Sunnyale

I think that we would need to do an even more thorough sort of windshield tour to truly understand um how many would qualify for the program that's okay because the ballpark is like it would that be I'm thinking of the impact too, right? Is this is this a program that we're setting up for four people or like 40 or 150? Right. Um we we aimed at 40. We think 40 is a reasonable uh number to start with.

Okay, that is very helpful. Um and permitted parking is challenging all by itself. nearby cities have it and I assume that you all have been uh and I know that you all have been speaking with those folks. Um, with that, uh, what gives staff what what gives staff confidence that there will be sites that will be suitable for this in Sunnyvale enough to pursue it through a study, side streets rather, for permitted parking. Um that will certainly be a collaborative effort again with um department of public works with DPS with the city manager's office. Um we we will be um working cross departmentally to identify um which streets would be most appropriate.

Okay. And now also as you you mentioned you are working with other cities because things have gone wrong, things have gone right. Exactly. And there's a lot that we can learn. Yes.

Okay. And then I want to kind of draw um a bit of a you know do a compare and contrast between safe parking and permitting parking like what are we talking about here? So what are those primary differences in what we are offering as a city and just generally in as part of the program between the two? And I think uh council member Chang had actually asked this and I I missed the question. No, I missed the question. So I'm glad you asked it too so I can address it. Um so I think one of the primary differences that's important to highlight is again that every there are many people who are experiencing living in their car in different ways. There are people who live sort of that that vanning lifestyle. Um there are people who have retired and are traveling and have stopped here um for a while. Um, and there are people who who choose not to make a housing payment because it is cheaper to live in your vehicle. And so, um, all of those people wouldn't qualify for safe parking. You need to be experiencing homelessness in order to, um, go to a traditional safe parking site. And so, um, through the city's permitted program, you know, this is something that we can develop and and we can certainly choose like who is allowed and how long that permit lasts for and what that looks like. And we can also use services and leverage things that we have such as our street outreach team to be able to offer services like you would at at a safe parking site. Um but do it in a way again where we're leveraging existing resources where we're like we ask the street outreach team as part of what they're doing to make sure that they're going to those locations and that they're offering services and that those who are parking there um are aware that that is an option for them um so that they can seek um support if they need it. So, um I think it's really exciting in that way because we can um

create something with the permitting system um that hasn't been done before, but that truly meets our needs and and um not we can look at what other communities are doing and also look at what Sunnyville needs. Okay, that's awful. And because it's because all of this this specifics are would be in the works, it's kind of tricky to talk about and

also like let's take the feedback from the community and council night and think about that. um word deeply. But one of the things that comes up for me is that those who live in RVs also often have a getting around car because it's not practical to drive your RV to the laundromat and all the normal person things that you have to accomplish as somebody living in the world. Mhm.

In the proposed sites that we could have RV parking, would there be places for them to park secondary vehicles or getting around vehicles or in like and in like is there physically space for that? And for the permitted parking, could they would they all is the idea that they'd only be allowed to in the vehicle they're currently living with living in or would other vehicles be allowed there too? Potentially. I think you bring up a good point and that's something that we will absolutely need to take into consideration in the program development.

Okay, that's good. So, so what you're saying is that currently with the RV the counts of RVs that could be served on those sites in the staff report, that's the space if you just have RVs, no secondary vehicles, vehicle parking available um for a safe parking site. Um we did account for some passenger vehicles as well. So 15 RVs and then um a number of passenger vehicles as well for um the Fair Oak site in particular. Okay. Yeah. Yes. And then it would that for the um civic center site that wouldn't that those that those are passenger. Yes. Exactly.

Okay. Um that's very helpful. Yeah. Vanlording's been mentioned and that is just something that I'll leave there. Okay, those are all my questions for right now. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next up is council member Cell.

Yeah, thank you for bringing this before us and um instead of coming back and saying we can't do it, trying to find something that is workable. So, I appreciate that. Um I was um just wondering like we currently have tenantbased rental assistance program which is I think currently we contribute 1.5 million for 40 units um which is comparable to these tiny homes except with tenant based rental assistance the um building are already built. And I was just wondering if um we already like in that case we don't need to build the building um we provide I assume that we work with a nonprofit and then we provide wraparound services and then partner with the nonprofit and we contribute some they contribute some and then you get um I was just wondering if um tenant based rental assistant how does that compare with um the tiny homes.

So, one of the differences um with the interum housing or the tiny homes is that it can better serve people experiencing, for instance, chronic homelessness as well um who may have some different service needs um than those who would be served in tenant-based rental assistance uh because you have the on-site services there and you have the on-site operations. So, there are people consistently being able to check in on them. um and being able to offer those services. Whereas somebody who's living in a market rate home is expected to have um the uh ability to take care of themselves and and take care of their um daily living skills and then they're checked in on by a case manager um at some sort of frequency that's determined by the program and the individual that's participating. And so, um, again, we would be able to serve people that had different different service needs, um, in interum housing, um, lower or higher service needs than we would, um, in a tenant-based rental assistance program.

Okay. And then, um, could like a tenant based rental assistance be like a halfway point? like it's sooner to get there, but long-term 5 years out would be to have this site. But still, if you were able to um find a means to Currently, you have 40 homes. um if you not all of the people that are in the cars um could go into tenant based rental assistance, but if there was more funding temporarily for tenant based rental assistance and some of the people in the cars that are like some people that live in cars, they actually have jobs, but they just can't find affordable housing. So, um, just as I was just wondering if you could keep an open mind with tenant based rental assistance for some of these people that are living in their cars because some of the people in tenant based rental assistant are homeless.

Yeah. And we continue to have openings in our tenant based rental assistance program and so um I think that having the system um work together and be compatible so that people are are right sized um is absolutely what we should be doing.

Okay. And then I was just wondering if um ADUs and junior ADUs those kind of things also for the higher end um would I mean it's not going to be for everyone but some of the people that are living in their cars they don't want to live in the cars but they can't afford to find housing that um if there was a pathway for people to like invest city to help people invest in ADUs and that kind of thing and then those would be tenant based rental assistance and then um my concern is um so we would have interim housing but when I've read about interim housing like home key sometimes the people are in these interim housing and then the bottleneck is they're not able to find permanent housing whereas sometimes like these tenant based rental assistants where they're living becomes their home. So for those that um just a thought on that like thinking a step ahead like say we build these tiny homes but next in order maybe they stay in the tiny homes for 2 3 years but if they're not able to find housing then they will be probably stay in the interim place or they'll be they'll go back to an unhoused situation. Just a thought like in the Berkeley model um it seemed like when I was reading it they had sort of a high success rate of people moving on and so is that because they were able to find permanent housing in the Berkeley model

or in this model in the Sunny Bell model if we do build the um interim housing what do you foresee in terms of them places for them to go for permanent housing? after they graduate from the interim housing,

right? Um I it's it's hard to speak on that because everyone has a unique situation and and an outcome a positive outcome looks different for every individual. And so for one individual, it may be that a long-term care facility is a positive outcome for them. And for others, it may be that they get a job and are able to secure housing on their own or with a rental subsidy. And so without knowing obviously who we're going to get and what that can look like, I don't want to speak to those outcomes and forecast that um and make promises that that it can't really make um that it'll be widely successful. Um but the data tells us that um I think 68% um of of the uh interior housing um does the people are going to positive outcomes in the county presented something even higher um at at at a forum that we were at last week. And so, um, we do have high hopes that that this is a a best practice and that's why we're recommending it. Um, because we see that it works and that it has much higher outcomes than safe parking does where in some safe parking sites the outcomes are 15 to 30% of people are moving on to permanent housing options. And so, um, between the two and and the costs are around the same, um, interum housing has the better outcomes. and we've identified multiple funding sources um that aren't city funding, though some are um that we potentially can use for the interum housing where we weren't able to identify um any for the safe parking. So, that was another contributing factor as well. I I think it's also to um important to keep in mind that that's not the only set of housing programs that we have. So, we we we certainly have our inclusionary requirements. Um, we're supporting the development of 100% affordable sites and we have a number in the pipeline and interest expressed in in sites. Um, and then in addition to that, we require

when business constructs and they're creating space for more employees that they pay a housing mitigation fee, which is how we help supplement the affordable housing. So, to your earlier point, Council Member Sell, um, where can they move, right? So you have to we have not enough housing for everybody which is why some of them are on the street. There's other reasons why others are on the street but that's that's the whole point is this is kind of a little focus tonight on the homeless population. Once they're not homeless they need some other options.

Okay. Um I think that's all my question. Oh, and this is long-term, but the provider that we pick, it would be great if they had a track record of another tiny home place that they're able to um have the resources, the counselors, and all those in place to move people, have a higher success rate of moving people to permanent housing. Thank you for your efforts.

Thank you, council member. Um, I have several questions. First, thanks for answering uh my many Monday morning questions. Um, several council members talked about timeline. You have three very distinct items here. Is there a priority from a staff standpoint on how they're implemented and or or because you only have limited time between now and September? Assuming that the council takes staff recommendation,

I think um they're going to work in parallel to some extent. Um the uh permitted parking is um really a solution to try to address an acute problem that we're having. The um interim shelter option is going to take a little bit longer, but um we're planning to bring back feasible feasibility, you know, work by September and hopefully give council a more concrete update. Um there was a line on one of the slides that we didn't catch on the recommended slide, but we'll also be bringing back at that point what we might have to defer in order to to move this all to the top of the list. So haven't had a chance to really talk with uh all the departments that will be involved in all of these projects, but we'll bring a full picture back to council as soon as we possibly can.

Okay. And and definitely how that plays into the budget and everything else becomes a a bigger question. Um, since you tal Well, let's talking about budget. Um, you you talked about towing and towing costs. I'm assuming that this year's budget has continued increase in towing for RVs as was put into last year's budget. I'd have to take that as a follow-up. I don't recall what that line item is. Okay. We'll be talking about it next month anyway. So, just putting that out there.

What I when I what I was talking about specifically was for the RV buyback program and um what we would apply for as part of the incampment resolution funding that we would include towing fees um as part of the um the funding application and the program.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I was a little surprised about the no safe parking and the recommendation for tiny homes. Um, when a few years ago we were kind of in the opposite direction and pushing council was pushing staff to say look at some interim solution and that was basically said no. you seem to be pre presupposing tiny homes as opposed to stackable solutions or it's it's interim housing tiny home seems to be have at least from what I've read and what I've seen in visits has a has a defined design is staff already narrowing in that or or are we just putting the bigger picture of interim housing because you you talked about a number of units is that number of units It's based upon this is how many tiny homes we could put on that site. If you bid did two levels or three levels of interim housing, small homes, it's a much different vision.

Take it.

Um good evening, mayor and council members. Connie Versales, deputy city manager. Um when we looked at the tiny home uh project, when home key through the state was um funding was available through the program, we did look at the specific site. So, um, this is part of the reason of from staff's recommendation putting this to the top of the list because we did do some preliminary work and council may recall that we presented this item at the strategic session where we uh were talking to an operator at the time and a potential private funer um where we did do uh some preliminary site layout that gave us a rough idea of what we could do um with tiny homes that were multi-level. Um, so this was easy for us to revisit that opportunity and knowing that there may be an opportunity for additional uh funding through the state to do a a different program. Um, you know, it seems like all the pieces are coming together. So, um, this information is based on some previous work that we've that we've done and this is why we're also thinking we could move quickly on coming back with some concrete recommendations to council.

Okay. Thank you. And especially as you're looking at, you know, I still question the the viability of funding, you know, because there are so many different agencies or jurisdictions that are fighting for that funding right now. Um I'd be interested to see that and conceivably what partners we have when we when it comes back to us um conceivably in September. Um you talked about permit program, a permit program for RVs, but there wasn't a lot of detail. So, I understand you're you're coming back to that. That being said, you talked about streets. Are you talking about basically a permit for every residential property that has an RV that wants to park in front of their home and then a designated permit streets where the RVs on it need permits or they're permitted to park there? There's a big difference between the two of those.

Yeah. This wouldn't this wouldn't regulate regular residential parking of oversized vehicles. The the um recent ordinance changes will cover that. Um this is more of a permitted parking where people can park RVs on designated streets for longer periods of time. Um with and my question again is with a permit or or just park on a permitted street. Slightly different. That's that's to be determined. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And and I'll and I'll raise again

how we know what RVs parked in residential neighborhoods are allowed to be there and understand that our ordinance change kind of changed that to some degree, but it's a week or we it's more than a week to deal with any RV in a community. Um, as we're looking at what our permit solution is, I will say this, we need to keep the bigger picture that other cities have already been doing of RV RVs and residential neighborhoods as part of that. If we make a designated area, we also need to clear residential residents who want to park RVs near their home and people will continue to complain. And and so it's it's trying to close that loop of complaints because if you're having the random RV park in the community, you're going to have complaints from res from residents. A permit program gets rid of some of those problems. And so as this is coming forward, permitted streets are part of it, but it's the bigger picture that that you need to also it's it's a two-part solution. Um, and I'll leave it at that. Um, car safe parking at faith-based sites, you've you've done outreach. Your response said that that some of them were concerned about the insurance. You know, first I I want I would love when this comes back. I know that that we still have the money for the grant program for safe parking conceivably only for cars at some of the faith faith um agencies, but if insurance is the problem and then you need to come back to council for how that should change because you know from a grant standpoint be because we're we're kicking this off and I don't know what other cities have done but that was and we have no idea right now what the cost of that

insurance is on a per site basis or we do I'm talking to the county uh but I was not able to get a number tonight then I don't want to misquote anything okay I can follow up

so I would appreciate you know and and it's not for this item that's separate it's a it's a separate program that we've already enabled but it is very tied in that that you know there were agencies that were looking for it until we started the grant program and set up the rules for what say parking exa means and it's one thing to set it up it's a whole other thing to run it long term and if it's all insurance helping defer that insurance to me create safe car parking in some portions of our city I think has value but I'll leave it at that I'll stop my questions and go to Vice Mayor Melinger thank you very much Mr. Mayor, I'm just going to ask for a very brief recess before we commence public comment.

Okay, that was all council questions. So, let's go ahead and take a five minute recess and come back at 9:10 and we'll go to the public. Thank you. Questions.

Let's go ahead and reconvene. I will open 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 the public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. Um my first speaker card is Agnes B followed by Chuck F. As you know, Liverable Sunnyville sent a letter to council questioning staff's rationale for rejecting the safe parking sites noted in their council report. Did staff look at Moffett Park as a possible temporary site? It is baffling to me that our neighboring cities and their staff have found spaces to support safe parking, but Sunnyville cannot. Staff's report points to an existing program in the housing element with an objective to quote support the establishment of a safe RV parking program and identify at least one potential site. The time frame to complete this objective was to commence study in 2023 and implement by 2025. Anyone reading this objective would believe Sunnyville was going to implement a program to assist individuals living in their RV or passenger vehicle. We are four months into 2026 only to be told that staff has determined that a safe parking program is not viable nor would it be effective in Sunnyville. simply declaring the program unworkable after setting the expectation that it would be delivered and after multiple requests from council to develop a safe parking program raises serious concerns about follow through and accountability. Council regularly emphasizes the

importance of results and accountability from partner agencies as demonstrated when the county presented at the April 14th council meeting. Public trust depends on that oversight. I urge you to ensure the commitment to explore safe parking results in meaningful action. Thank you.

Thank you. Um next up is Chuck Followed by Steve S. Good evening. Uh people living in their vehicles are the largest segment of the unhoused population in Sunnyville. Yet, reading the staff report, the city's approach seems less like a search for solutions than a search for excuses to say no. The city only found one site suitable for RV parking, almost three acres um on Fair Oaks Way, but they only found a way to fit 15 RVs on that site. For reference, in my neighborhood, it fits 19 single family homes on that same amount of space. San Jose fits 44 RVs in that amount of space. And the report even on that same site found a way to fit 40 tiny homes plus all the services for them including services for licensed medical professionals. But we can only fit 15 RVs there. The site also excluded small sites less than one and a half acres for RVs. Yet neighboring cities like Mountain View and PaloAlto implement safe parking on half an acre. It comes up with other excuses for sites. Um underneath Matilda, site 10 was ruled out because of access restrictions from the west side. Why not simply reconfigure it so that access is from the east side on Angel Avenue do a curb cut there so you can get in that way? The old SCES site is ruled out because it's being used for something else. Why not investigate how you use relocating all of those uses? You need parking there, move the parking somewhere else. If you need the office space, maybe the city has to lease office space or warehouse space so that that site can be freed up for safe parking. For every site, the goal of the report seems to find a way to exclude them rather than find a way to mitigate the challenges. Please stop looking for reasons to say no. Our unhoused neighbors don't need a perfect acre and a half solution. They need a safe place to park tonight. Direct staff to return with a plan that makes these difficult

sites work. And a quick comment on the uh RV buyback. I believe Berkeley's uh program only four out of the almost 30 or over 30 participants entered permanent housing. Yeah, we can't do safe parking because only 30% enter safe housing. Doesn't make sense.

Thank you. Uh, next up is Steve S, followed by Mike S. So, I think this direction from staff is going the right direction. um having a a a publicrun RV park on our streets without collecting a fee isn't really in our budget to do that. So, um I also agree with staff's analysis that the safe parking arrangements are not getting the outcomes we want. Um I have toured Evelyn Avenue, safe parking. I see Elwell Court in Palo Alto. I see Mountain View almost every week, Independence Avenue behind Costco, all the people there. Uh I'd say about half of those trailers and half of those vehicles. Um they're using them for free RV parks. They're traveling here. They're awful good condition. There are those that are in bad condition. Those are the ones you need to address. But you don't need to make a place for people to just freeload. Um we also need to look at the budget constraints. When somebody talks about a grant and a budget and things, there are a lot of needs in our city and to just throw out $1 million here, $500,000 there. Well, we need a teen center. Golfland may close and the teens won't have a place to go for video games and and uh congre congregate a little bit. We're having an 8 to 10 years for some sidewalk and street things having uh uh mosquitoes breeding in the standing water in our streets. Our street trees are behind all of those need um funding also. So, I think this this permit thing and finding proper streets to do that on, as long as it

means parking on a designated street by permit, then it's fine, which mayor Klein asked about, not just allowed to be there. Um, so I think the the direction we've got here and come back with September some more specifics I think is a good plan to move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Mike S. followed by Jim D.

Good evening. Mike Cerrone speaking on my own behalf. Uh there are, as you've heard, there are hundreds of homeless people living and sometimes dying on Sunnyale streets. 75% of them are living in vehicles and this is nothing new. Liverable Sunnyvil came before the city council years ago talking about safe parking and pointing to programs in neighboring cities. It is amazing that Sunnyville concludes that a safe parking program is not feasible when neighboring cities have been operating safe parking sites for years. The costs range from 15,000 to 36,000 per space per year. Uh, Certino and Fremont programs use a rotating faith-based model, rotating among churches, although not for RVs. Saratoga has a similar church sponsored program that does include RVs. Santa Barbara, one of the oldest safe parking programs in the country, has a distributed program with a few vehicles each at multiple church sites. So, a huge uh site may be better, more efficient, but it's not required. Um, offering churches an ongoing income per hosted vehicle instead of a one-time grant might encourage participation and asking the churches what they would like to see also might be worthwhile. Uh, the same thing with commercial sites. There are many buildings that are empty with huge lots. Uh, and of course if you ask ask them, well, do you want say parking here? They'd say no. But you you would have to give them something some some sort of uh income. Tiny homes are a great idea, but it will take years to get funded and built. It has taken many years to get to this point where we conclude that we can't move ahead with uh safe parking. Um if there's no money for safe parking, uh how will the tiny homes be funded? Uh

regardless of the outcome of this meeting, our homeless residents are not going away. Thank you. Uh Jim D, followed by Eileen L.

Mayor, council members, thank you very much for this opportunity to address you in this very serious situation. For years and decades, the city of Sunnyale has been known as a leader, as an innovator, and all of that seems to have gone behind us. Now, we're now the following a agency that's dismissing a lot of the uh the work that's been done by cities that are smaller uh than us and with less population and less money and less finances. For instance, the city of PaloAlto not only has safe parking, but they have thousand uh hundreds of tiny homes. Mountain View, a city right next door to us, has multiple safe parking areas and also tiny homes. Now you ask questions about you Mr. Miller should ask questions about, you know, uh, how do you do this or, you know, what what can be done? All of those questions are answered. Those two other cities right next door to us have answered every one of those things, including what it costs, how fast it can be done, and and what the operational issues are. Now, the other thing the city of Sunnyale never did was we didn't take this issue seriously until just recently. For two years, we had two motel on Wedell that were up for sale. All we had to do was use eminent domain, take those properties over and convert them into residential areas that we could have housed a lot of h unhoused people, more than the five that we currently do. Now, the other thing is that tiny homes uh are built in Mountain View and Palo Alto by private organizations in conjunction with the city. The other thing that we've missed out on is the $500 million that the county had for uh measure A. And I suggest that we start working with the county of Santa Clara again to revitalize that or start our own uh

bonding program so that we can address some of these very serious problems. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, next up is Eileen L, followed by Batman.

I'm going to be followed by Batman. That's really exciting. My name is Eileen Lei, Sunnyville, uh, District 6. Speaking on my own behalf, the homelessness crisis in Sunnyville is a disaster. It is a man-made disaster. It's been, it's been, it is the product of numerous poor choices over the past decades. It is not this current council's fault. Is not this current staff's fault. I think that in looking at the council questions, the overwhelming consensus among my colleagues was why not both? Why not something sooner? One to two years is an eternity. It is a lifetime to people living on the streets, to people who have to live in their cars every night. And in the absence of safe parking, people are resorting to unsafe parking. That is not acceptable. We need to be better about finding solutions for our unhoused neighbors, for finding solutions for families, for people who are living in the streets, for people who are sleeping in their cars every night. If we cannot do that, then this will continue. I have a question from uh from one of my residents and it says um when does FEMA bring in un bring in trailers for disasters? This is a disaster. This is something that we need to be taking care of now today. We need to look into solutions not just for RVs but for the people living in vehicles. The RV buyback program doesn't resolve that. Also, I also want to point out um and this came up in council questions, but again I want to reiterate that the site near 237 really needs to have sound mitigation. You are right next to the freeway. There are trees currently there and I would be curious if staff has a proposal for whether or not those trees would be kept. But even with those trees there, there is a lot of noise pollution and if we are moving people into that location, we need to be aware of that. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And my last speaker is Batman.

Good evening. Uh I wasn't planning on speaking on this item but given the work I do I felt compelled to. Um I think the discussion we're having is very much about what are our options right and like the previous speaker mentioned um it seems that there's some hesitancy to try um safe parking and I've done work with unhoused and homeless communities all all over the place um all over California and in uh Rochester, New work and safe parking is consistently one of the options that I've seen that has been the most helpful for people specifically living in vehicles which I believe a previous speaker said was the majority like 75% of the people living outside right now they're living in vehicles. Um, offering a place for people to put their vehicle means that they don't have to worry about it getting towed when they're going to work, when, you know, they're doing all these other things. I think that in the absence of interim housing, right, we need to have an option that's ready to go immediately so that you can start to build up that trust. You can start to build up that relationship with people who might be hesitant to um to go a different way to abandon their vehicles or something like that if that's necessary for um any of the other options that they might be presented with. And I think not going with uh safe parking and not trying to explore that would be a mistake. Um genuinely safe parking has been one of the options that I've seen consistently work the best for people living in vehicles and I would obviously I don't live here. I don't fully understand your guys' situation here, but I would highly highly

recommend you look into it a little bit further. Thank you. Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. Um, one moment. Uh, city clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item? Yes, mayor. First up, we have Angela, followed by showing you. Angela, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council.

Good evening. I'm Angela Rous speaking on my own behalf. Almost a decade ago, I asked a group of priests in the Sunnyvale area how they slept the past night. At the time, I was one of the leaders of a faith-based group in Sunnyvale working to raise awareness that there was poverty in Sunnyvale. I want to highlight some things I'm noticing. Several months ago, council directed Mid Peninsula to reduce their original proposal of housing approximately 315 residents to just 262 residents, a net loss of 53 residents. This is a place people could move from interim housing. Council directed staff to find safe park in 2024 and here we are in April 2026. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. Not doing safe park will not get RVs or people sleeping in their cars off the street. It will continue the problem that affects the entire city. Yes, it's a hard problem and we need lots of options. But delay seems to be a theme. Tiny houses or interim housing has a timeline of two to four years to be completed. 1240 uh 1240 Fair Oaks Way seems to jog my memory of a cold weather shelter option around the time before the Hamlin Court was proposed. I'm hoping I'm wrong because that was a suboptimal site. It was then and it is now. I won't ask you how you slept last night, though I want to. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have showing you followed by Trent B. Showing you, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council.

Hi, thank you. My name is Drew Seagler. I'm with Showing Up for Racial Justice Santa Clara County. Um I have lived experience living in a car um and being homeless and um I you know safe parking is really probably your best bet and to see that the city staff is is poo pooing it is really uh disappointing. Um, I I want to say, you know, I live in San Jose and I I think you can look at our city and there's a lot that you can learn of what not to do. Uh, you know, don't criminalize homelessness. Uh, don't create a whole new uh team of cops to go around towing people and like, you know, you know, there's there's a lot of things that you can not do that that would be helpful. But um the one thing that San Jose has gotten right is its is its uh safe parking sites. Um it gives as as Batman said earlier, you know, it gives people stability. It gives people uh you know, a lot of these people that have their mobile homes, they're, you know, they're working, you know, they're they're they're and they're they're they're actually using fewer services than everybody else because, you know, they're doing their own cooking, they're doing all, you know, they're like they're living in quarters. It's just mobile. Um, and when, you know, when they go to work and, you know, it gets towed, you know, that sets them back, you know, $2,000. And so having a place where they can say like, "Hey, I could put this RV here and then I can go do my work, my job, and then come back." You know, that's that's a sense of stability that these people just lack right now. Um, and one last thing with with the tiny homes, like tiny homes only work if you have permanent affordable housing and

permanent supportive housing to move into. So unless you have that, don't go with the tiny homes. Thank you.

Next, we have Trent B, followed by Marie B. Trent, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council. Good evening, council and uh special guest Batman. Uh I am Trent from Cineville. I have uh two points. One, the underpass under Matilda is always empty. There's a literal parking structure next to Cal Train. Um so I feel like you should be able to ask some official like, "Hey, this space is clearly underutilized and redundant given the newer parking structures within our city. If somebody is taking the train where they can't carry their car to a destination, the person can probably walk a block or two from the downtown parking structures to the train. So, we should be prioritizing human beings rather than literal empty parking spaces where RVs can park. Also, uh for part two, where I'll ignore that the construction staging triangle doesn't seem very dignified to live at for the noise and stuff. Um the civic center having a disadvantage of limited staff parking issues, indicates that a major part of your strategy needs to be improving public transport, biking, and walk uh walking infrastructure. If people use less parking spaces for city trips, you have more land to utilize for proper interm housing, RV/car parking. That can only happen if you ensure cars are not the default mode mode of transportation people expect to use to get there. And again, the Matilda underpass is always empty. We could make more parking lots empty like that if we put more focus on people rather than cars. Please make a big part of your strategy funding the non-car modes of movement within Sunnyale. um especially city hall and the library so homeless uh RV and car folk can have a dignified space to live in our community. Uh thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next we have Marie B followed by Sharon S. Marie you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council.

Good evening mayor and city council and staff. Marie Bernard from Sunnyvale Community Services. I'm speaking tonight to speak first of all about the fact that I know that things are very very hard and we're making tough choices. But I do have to tell you that things are going to get harder for our lowincome people and we can expect that more people are going to be at risk of homelessness in a matter of weeks and months as medical, food stamps and other programs are cut and people are disenrolled in these critical programs amongst other things. So, we're bearing down to uh look at what we can do to prevent homelessness with people already housed. We're very proud and very glad that we are partnering with the city on the TBR, the tenantbased rental assistance program, but it's only one of the levers that we have. I do remember that in 2016 we opened Onazuka Crossings, which was at the site of the old armory where people used to go when they were unhoused um singles for a single night and they would line up to get a bed that night. and that site got transformed. We also had two or three years of struggle to find a site for the homeless shelter that the county was going to be running. And it got very ugly at one point, but then we found a site in an industrial area of Sunnyvale where that count that uh shelter has been for many years. It was a huge innovation and we actually partnered with some of the developers to have an interim site before that one went up. I really beg the council and the city to think about even if it's a temporary site that we do something to help people who are in their RVs because if they're not going to but to um be given the option of affordable housing which we don't have in our city then having them be safe for a year for 2 months whatever it might be in their RV is better than having them not safe and having them on

the streets. So, I do think that we have to do an end as opposed to an or and consider a a solution that might not uh be the uh the path into long to long-term housing for people, but we that housing. Next, we have Sharon S. followed by Peggy S. Sharon, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council. Sharon, you you should see a popup asking for you to unmute yourself.

Thank you. Sunnyale has excuses. Surrounding cities have results. We need to look at what surrounding cities are doing because, as I said, they have results. where the city of Sunnyvale we continually we're it's a merrygoround. We're continuing to have the same issues day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and nothing is getting resolved. We need the safe parking and I it's frustrating to no end in my view that the city is not working hard enough at solving this problem. Again, Sunnyale has excuses and surrounding cities have results. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Peggy S. Peggy, you've been unmuted and have two minutes to address council. Hi there. Uh this is Peggy Shan Brewster, a resident of North Sunnyville. Um calling on my own behalf here. Um I want to uh echo what I've been hearing with all the comments um which have been all in the same tenor. Um, I'm usually commenting about um like to compliment Sunnyville for innovation and resourcefulness. Um, but this time I'm asking us to meet the urgency of the moment and to support our unhoused residents. And I do see that um we could be more creative, resourceful, and um innovative in how to support our most needy residents. And we do see cities around us um Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose that have had done safe parking successfully. And um we can do that too. We are Sunnyville. We can do that. Um so I just urge you to meet this uh this is a moral imperative. It's not just like the urgency of moment but it is people's livelihoods and um you know city c city's uh worth or success could be measured by how well we support our most vulnerable population and right now we are not doing very well by our most vulnerable populations and um let's do better. Thank you very much.

Thank you mayor. That was the final remote speaker on this agenda item. Okay. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for questions or motion. Uh, Vice Mayor Melinger,

thank you very much. I have questions about a specific site. Then I have some general comments and I'd like to get some input from my colleagues before we consider a motion. Um, I want to talk about site 10, which is the Matilda, the area under the Matilda overpass in my district. Uh, this is just north of fire station one. It is a fairly large parking lot. the table uh in the uh document says it's 68 or 69 acres um south of fire station one, excuse me. Um is north of the track south of fire station 1. Um my understanding is there are some pretty serious legal incumbrances on that site. Uh staff, could you for provide uh council and the public an explanation of what those incumbrances are? briefly.

I'm happy to help with that. Uh, council member or vice mayor. Um, the access to the site for parking, um, which is available for parking for Calr patrons, um, the access comes from the property further to the west of that. So, you have to come off of California Avenue through the private property to access that parking. um the um the agreements with that um property owner are very specific to the access easement is only for the purposes of accessing that parking. So that that that's a legal agreement that exists. Um

real quick, but we do own that parking lot. It is city owned. We don't own the access. It is part of the right of way for Matilda Avenue and the city controls that right of way. Okay. I mean there are some other pieces of of rightway where I would tell you we can't use that for um for this purpose. So we other little pieces of right of way we couldn't but this this is a little bit of an exception because of how the uh uh road comes over the railroad track at that point and creates that space underneath the roadway.

Okay. Um so I just because you gave me the microphone. Um one of the speakers suggested that perhaps access because of that encumbrance maybe access could come from the east which is a single family neighborhood that recently added um uh permanent parking um because they did have an an excess of people parking on their street um which was um difficult for them. So that that was one of the more recent um permit parking neighborhoods that was created.

Okay. Thank you. Um, so I'm going to say I recognize that there would be serious issues with using that site for safe parking. There would need to be negotiations, my understanding, uh, regarding the easement and, uh, with PG&E on utility access. That said, I do believe that this site could be very valuable for tiny homes, especially if one of the rules on those tiny homes is you don't get to have a car there. um because then access is on foot via the public right of way on Angel or via the public right ofway on the CAL train. Um now I am also going to say that this is uh to borrow a line from my dear friend Tara Martin Millius a way that we could perhaps feed two birds with one seed. This area is one of the frankly sketchiest places in town and one of the places you least want to be after dark. And we are talking about as part of the Calrain access improvements um improving the accessibility, putting walkways there, trying to make it uh a better pathway to access Calra. And the the fear I have on that and which was discussed in that meeting is who's going to want to walk there at night if there are tiny homes there. That site is no longer for nothing. There are people there. It is no longer a creepy liinal space. It's a neighborhood, a small one, but you can have on-site security. So, I recognize that this is not a thing that we could move forward with in the immediate future given the legal encumbrances, but I would strongly suggest that staff begin discussions with those stakeholders on what we might be able to use that site for because the member of the public who spoke and said that it is empty all the time is correct. I virtually never see any cars parked there and have not since the pandemic. So, I wanted to put that out there. I recognize that I am maybe sticking my neck out and putting my neck on the line by suggesting this, but I

think that that site is worth looking at for future tiny homes. Um, and Mr. Mayor, would you put me on a fivem minute timer? Thank you. I wish I had done that a few minutes ago. Well, go ahead. Should have, would have. Go ahead. Okay. Um uh to the members of the public who spoke tonight, I want to say that I share your frustrations and I am going to break a rule that I don't think I've ever broken and that is I'm going to publicly criticize staff. I'm sorry, but I must on this. Are are we going to get to questions and emotion? This would be This is normally be a motion.

This is I'm seeking input on a motion because I'm not ready with a motion yet. We prioritized safe parking as part of our housing element in 2023. We repprioritized it as part of an item in 2024 over a year and a half ago. This council has been consistent in saying neighboring cities have safe parking. We should be examining this and looking at this seriously and it is an important tool and no it is not the beall and endall. And yes, I can agree that the tiny homes may have better results, but safe parking is something we could get set up soon as opposed to tiny homes, which would be another two to four years down the line. Um, you know, we heard from a resident who said that Sunnyale has excuses and surrounding cities have results that hurt to hear, but I think we should all sit with how painful that is. We've been talking about this for years and we have failed to deliver. And I'm personally very frustrated by that. And beyond that, I have no faith that if we say, "Okay, let's do tiny homes tonight." That we will not be back here in two to four years with another explanation as to why it can't work. I don't have faith that if we prioritize that solution that it will actually be implemented and delivered. So, I am going to say, you know, I I'm amendable to the idea of putting tiny homes at the Fair Oaks location. I I think that that could make sense, and I can understand how trying to Tetris RVs on a weirdly shaped lot like that could be difficult, but we should not be giving up on safe parking. It is a serious the vehicle parking, living in vehicles, it is a serious serious problem in our community. And I I cannot accept that there is nowhere in this city that can support a safe parking program. I think that we should look at, you know, trying to rent one of

the disused office buildings in Moffett Park. Those buildings have massive parking lots. Um, I I think that any motion that I'd be willing to vote on tonight needs to give direction to staff to no, we need to continue looking at safe parking and come back with some viable options for us. Um, I am reminded from a line of a line from Chesterton who is one of my favorite authors and with peace to the religious content. Um, the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. And I cannot be help but be reminded of that quote as part of this discussion. So, I'm not sure what a correct motion is yet and I want to hear my colleagues input, but I'm I'm not thrilled with what's in front of us tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Cisneros.

Yes. Thank you. Um, and thank you to members of the public who came out and gave um really valuable feedback. um much I I have questions now based off of it and we heard from a wide variety of people but I want to first call back to the very opening the very first thing that I asked staff and my questions was I'm going to do it exactly because I have it written down. It was, you know, this is high cost, low impact dot dot dot for now. And like, is this something you're going to continue to look at? And staff said emphatically, yes. Does not work for these sites for that purpose that you asked us to come back for in a way that would be the best use of that highest and best use of money. That that was what I understood. Is that that is still correct?

That is correct. Okay, great. And I noticed that we have uh Would you like to introduce yourself? A new staff member here.

Hello. Is that working? Hi, I'm Jocelyn Vidales. I'm the unhoused specialist for the city of Sunnybell. I started um November of 2025. Um and I come from the county of San Monteo. I was a program planner for the healthcare for the homeless and farmworker health program there for a couple years. Um, so thank you for the opportunity to set up here and speak with you all and thank you for coming to work for Sunnyvale. Uh, it's you you have a really great resume and we have a lot of work

that needs to be done. We're very grateful for you. Um, I'm grateful for the rest of staff for bringing you on and for expanding the program. So, this is all to just say cuz I want to I I've the anxiety is very real and the frustration is real that um the city has historically um not been treated this matter with the urgency that is necessary in order to call yourself a well functioning city. But what I see is a group of people who are trying very hard to turn that around all the time. So, I do have questions. Um, cuz I can feel the the mayor uh thinking that at me. Um, and so when we talk about not having resources for this, not having funding for this, but we do have funding potent, you know, for tiny homes. Let's pull apart. What does that mean? Like, how does that work? For whatever reason, a number of years ago, especially during COVID times, um there was funding from the county, uh there was also state funding, uh that was able to be used directly for safe parking. I think during COVID times, safe parking was a really good strategy because people needed to stay apart and it was pretty much the only known strategy to start addressing vehicular homelessness, which was increasing. And so during that time and when you see uh a lot of the the Mountain View programs, the PaloAlto, early Palo Alto program, San Jose, um they were all doing it with that funding and during that time and that wasn't a time where Sunnyville was ready. Um there there wasn't a homeless services manager or staff who had the knowledge or capacity to be able to to bring a safe parking program up. And so it wasn't until um the city council um approved that position and somebody was able to myself was able to come on and start doing the work and and really

looking at whether safe parking would be viable. And the first part of that was creating an ordinance. Safe parking wasn't allowed until that ordinance was created. And so that was a heavy lift and that was the first thing that needed to be done. And then I I and now a team really looked at it even more closely over the past year, year and a half and cross-dep departmentally to understand like truly what did we have out there and was it viable and and again funding rose to the top. There isn't funding now. There isn't county funding and there isn't state funding that can be applied to safe parking. So while we can consider safe parking and and look at sites as you're suggesting um we do need to consider uh that the city would need to be funding the safe parking site whereas interum housing again because of those outcomes and these different um funding sources that we've identified u that we will have something that we can at least um partially pay for capital and operating funding

in in other cities that currently have save one, they got an earlier start. We we got we got there kind of late like we did. Did they fund that themselves typically just from the city or did they rely on that? Do they rely on that funding in order to have it? Yeah, for there each they each have all of these sites have unique funding mechanisms. So some of them used home key, some of them used uh home key city funding and county funding. So um each of them has again their own unique um funding uh mechanisms but it sounds like typically combination of out you need the outside funding is my point like you need the outside funding in order to make this work and that's how they make it work.

Exact. Exactly. The county is paying for a number of these um sites for the ongoing operating costs. Okay. And in turn, they're also using coordinated entry, meaning that um they have to allow who gets placed there, which is for instance why Sunnyville residents can go to the Mountain View site for safe parking.

Yeah. So it and I, you know, Marie Bernard, one of the commenters mentioned it's going to get a lot tighter for people like next week, tomorrow, in two months. And so this has never been more urgent and it it's continuing. Yeah. That's really driving it home. And when we're thinking about these solutions, it's not an either or. It's a yes and all the spaghetti against every single wall. Like whatever we have available to us, we need to do it like right now. Um, and so with that, I I am comfortable with that. And I I'm also comfortable with Well, let me ask. So when you looked at all of these sites, just to clarify, were you considering it for the tiny home option and the safe parking option or just for the safe parking option for some? Like how did how did that pan out with that? Have you done the full analysis or would it be worth it to go back and do that analysis with a different lens to say actually like how far can we stretch to get maybe some tiny homes here or you know in a reasonable period of time?

Um I I can answer that question. Um, essentially we looked at the sites for safe parking and we identified that two were viable because the others had other uses on them and um they were leased for example or um maybe there was a parking lot but it was needed for whatever the use was uh current use of the building. Um so the original focus was on the safe parking. Um but because of the of the of the challenges and the you know just kind of what the various options were um staff found that this could be a lot more impactful in a positive way um for the unhoused community to to to go the tiny homes route or or some some sort of interim housing. Um I and I also because I have the microphone I wanted just to caution the council. It's it's really easy to compare ourselves to other cities, but our situations are very different from each other. Um, Mountain View's homeless population is almost entirely in vehicles. Um, and their numbers are considerably higher than us, even though their their base population is quite a bit lower than ours. So, it it it's it's tempting to say, I want what they have. Um, but maybe we've done a good job over the years of preventing homelessness. I'm not saying we have done a better job than them, but for some reason we don't have quite the same high numbers of homeless. So that's we kind of use all those factors to help guide the recommendations that that we give you. Of course, we never want to disappoint the council. We want to make sure you have lots of options. Um and that's why we're here this evening.

Absolutely. And lots of different kinds of solutions um that'll fit. So, I'm not I'm not sure, but it sounds like perhaps some of these sites could potentially be suitable for interimm housing, tiny homes, if not safe parking. And even if that's not something we have funding to expand and do a huge tiny home per program, I would be very interested to know where those are, those potential identifier sites. Like for example, like when are leases up for these sites, right? But what I'm hearing from you is I no, when it comes up, we'll bring it back, right? So if at least in two years, we'll hear about it when it's when it's reopened

for safe parking specifically. Yes. And will this So and this will stay on the work plan. So this will be part of an ongoing annual decision I would imag or not decision I'm so sorry discussion where we can get updates from staff on that on a regular basis. Oh I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? Oh yes. So um this will remain on the work plan. So, as far as these sites becoming available, new opportunities for sites becoming available, we'll have that opportunity annually built in to have that discussion, get a check-in, how are things going with state parking sites, interim housing opportunities, etc. that as we identify them. I haven't decided whether it'll remain on the work plan yet. We'll bring that back.

Okay, sounds good. That that's another conversation, another can of worms, another Brown Act thing. Um, and besides that, I think that's all I've got. I'll leave some space for other people. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Uh, Council Member Chang,

you mentioned the coordinated entry Mountain View site. Did staff uh reach out to the county or see if we could expand or fund some of that Mountain View site to have more of Sunnyville residents going there? So, Mountain View has two sites that currently go through coordinated entry specifically that that are larger. The Evelyn site and then also Shoreline Lot B. The Evelyn site is closing in August so that affordable housing can be developed. And so, uh in order to recapture those spots, they are expanding Shoreline Lot B. Uh it'll be a no net loss um of the site um expansion. Um but that is uh so that they could accommodate that again and so so we have had discussions uh with the city of Mountain View. Um but they are are working closely with the county on on that change right there.

It looks like last month they they added 47 additional oversized vehicle spots. So I'm wondering in those discussions were there any discussions for Sunny Belt? So So just to be clear, they're closing the Evelyn site. So it's a no net loss. So they're not adding they're not adding slots per se. They're just it's a no net loss because they're closing an entire site. So they're they're not generating any new spots. They're just bringing the spots from Evelyn as it closes over to Shoreline Lot B once it closes. So we're not expanding.

Okay. Not expanding the the number of spots, but the physical location of the Shoreline B, the physical occupancy of the lot is expanding. the lot at shoreline is significant um and so they have the room to expand that and close the Evelyn site and move those spots to uh to the shoreline site. I'd encourage council to go ahead to Mountain View's website and look up their staff report and uh read that to get up to speed on what Mountain View is doing. We're we're not really positioned to to speak to Mountain View's programs or strategy.

Yes. But my question was if staff has engaged on that potential partnership of expand having some of more of Sunnyville RV potentially there having Sunnyville RVs go to Shoreline. Yes. No. And I don't think Mountain View would be particularly receptive to that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Uh, next up is council member Cell.

Okay. Um, so for safe parking on streets, how long do you think that would uh take to get that up and running? So that would mean people could park on certain streets and they'd be permitted so they wouldn't fear about being towed. They'd get workaround, they get wraparound services, counseling and is that they get counseling maybe or you know we we hope might meet with them and our other nonprofit about giving them counseling in terms of transitioning to housing or um some support even though they weren't in a safe parking lot. They were in a street, but the street we might be able to help service them. Is that what the street parking say parking me? Like street like part of this um part of what was offered in this solution was um RV parking on designated city streets. What services might come with that for an RV parked on a designated streets? Would there be any services that come with that to help them move towards permanent housing or interim housing or

Yes, as I had mentioned previously in my report um that we hope we could utilize existing uh resources that we have such as our street outreach contract with we hope um to direct them to have that be some of their service area and the city manager we're working with him and um we expect that we can get that program up and running in less than a year.

Okay. And then if we had like a parking lot and we did the same thing, how long would that take to get that up and running for RV? Would that be like two years or one year? Currently, you don't have a parking lot. But let's say you did have a parking lot. Would that be a year, two years, or which one is faster? The street parking for RV or a parking lot? Is it more? the street the street parking would be faster because there's no expectation of of services of um uh sanitation services on site. Um you could have dignity on wheels um visit the location when it's on the street um to provide some benefit to to those residents um because there are a number of them together um it would facilitate the outreach efforts of our street outreach team. Um, and it would really depend on the site in terms of whether or not um we would have to bring in uh portable toilets or if we could install um uh you know water water-based toilets on on the site. So, it would it you'd have to know what the site capabilities are.

Okay. Yeah. Sorry. There's not there's never like a clean answer because it always depends on the site.

Okay. So, we aren't saying absolutely no to safe parking. We are um in this um proposed uh motion alternative one. It does say um parking on streets, RV parking on streets. And then we do have a program in which if we find a church that would want to have um one to less than 10 um RVs that uh they could apply for the grant which is $100,000. Currently the grant only pays for um capital expenses but not ongoing expenses and I guess your input from the churches is there were hurdles in terms of who's going to pay for the insurance which is a ongoing thing. So, I was just wondering if um if we could explore in a modified motion of this to talk to the churches to see if some ongoing funding would allow them to take some maybe, you know, some RVs or some cars. Would that be acceptable in this motion or it's not acceptable because it's not on the um agenda?

I think it's acceptable. I mean, it it is about the agenda item is about RV parking and safe parking. So, I think that's okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt, but um as you said earlier, you all you needed to do was I thought talk to the churches and come back to council if there was an issue. wouldn't you know to is it is it insurance because this is you didn't know the answer and more specifically we have we currently have a safe parking capital grants program that it's a pilot program um that we were approved to run it's open right now um and that if we um council could direct us to um convert um or allow operating costs as well as capital costs for that grant program

have to be at each item yes you could direct us to bring that back

thank Um, and then I I don't want the council to think that if insurance were covered, then several faith-based um uh organizations would be um eager to establish a program. At the forum that I was at last week, there was a pastor from one of the churches said that it was the one of the hardest sales he ever had to to do was convince even a small vehicle small number of vehicles on the site. So people have different um reasons for being concerned and so so one is is finance obviously but the other is um you know we all have our personal reasons. Yeah, I just wanted um so does it have to be part of the motion or do you ask if you could explore I know it's like the churches most stuff have to agree to it and there might be more

I think council member I think it does need to be a motion to come back to direct them to come back so that it does need to be a separate motion you can be part of this motion from

part of this okay yes okay so I would be open to that and um I would also I the site that um Vice Mayor Mullinger talked about in terms of the underpass um that I that seems like a wonderful site to explore. So um I think those are my two things that we are not saying no to safe parking even in this motion. We're uh looking at it for streets and we're looking at it for churches and may trying to be more flexible with the churches, other nonprofits. Um I think that's all I have to say. Okay. Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Shinas.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll uh so one of the things I caught on and then I commented was there is no single solution and then uh that's what I wanted to uh explain here that is we should be looking at cars and are we separately because they are two different things and then just to say that we will explore in mousousing I totally get that that is the success rate is very high but today P about 75% or whatever the number of our residents are living in their vehicles cars and RVs so I would be flexible to uh look at cars and RVs separately so that cars can be accommodated lot more cars can be accommodated in whatever the space and then I would also be looking at different side different support levels for example The uh dollar figure you have you have given to operate a RV the safe parking site includes case management and all those things. But as we heard from public there are some people who need to have a safe uh place for parking their vehicle when they go to work so that they are not towed away. So those kinds of they may not need case management and so there is a wide variety of spectrum looking at that might be very interesting and then uh I also agree with vice mayor site 10 uh tiny homes might be tiny homes without cars or uh because it's close to uh uh Cal Train and then downtown right it might be ideal for using public transportation there and then you also

mentioned that you are looking at uh safe parking 24 hours but I would recommend looking at uh parking overnight or something like that just to see that there might be some uh sites which might be aminable. So what I am saying is look at different kinds of options which we might be surprised that 10 cars here 20 RV is there and then by the time we look at we might be able to accommodate lot more of those things. I also want to I I am not convinced that uh I have done lot of research on this county uh supporting Sunnyale is very very limited coordinated entry system. I have talked to lot of organization they have we have very very little uh uh uh success with that including the the voucher programs. Case in point, IRA D hall 45 units, we have zero who lived and worked in Sunnyville, right? So, so I think what we need to look at is different options and then maybe this site might accommodate 10 cars there uh from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. or something like that. So, that is one option and then as I mentioned look at different portfolios. Okay. Thank you. and then I would like that to be part of the motion if possible. But yeah, so okay, thank you. Thank you, council member. Um, several questions. So, one of the things and I'll I'll second what the vice mayor said. You know, I I like site 10. I like Fair Oaks Way um for potential and I'll call it interim housing.

I'm please deuse the tiny home concept because that to me presupposes the whole issue. Um, one of the questions that I asked in Monday morning questions was was conceivably using a site as uh safe parking until the time of which we are able to build. And I echo the frustrations of the public and my council members saying and for me who's been here the longest. We've talked about in the past we were told that that you know interim housing wasn't viable and now safe and we gave direction for safe parking. Now, safe parking isn't viable. If we put safe parking on on an interim site on on ultimately an interim site, much like Mountain View is now doing with the old VTA site that they're waiting that they they had say parking and now they're building permanent affordable housing. Um, is that viable until we're ready until we're ready to build? and and staff is saying it's 2 to 5 years before we actually get everything our ducks in a row. Um is safe parking bio if we find a parking site, an interim parking or interim housing site, could staff utilize that as safe parking. I

think again it depends on the site and the infrastructure that it has. I I just want to ground everyone too and in and that safe parking was built on people experiencing homelessness and the point is to get them out of their vehicles and into housing because living in your vehicle is not safe and it's not healthy. And so having case management services is what makes it safe parking. And so we would need to build the safe parking into the budget. So, we would we would certainly need to come back into that because we would want to have that case management. Again, having people just parking um but not receiving services or or getting anywhere further um is is not the essence of of safe parking. It would just be parking in a parking lot. Um so, if if we want to have the core of what is safe parking, then we would need to build that into the budget. And so, the city would have to to consider how we would pay for that in an ongoing way until the interim housing was built. So, um it's not a no.

Okay. Yeah. And then as far as sites are concerned, um you looked at city sites and you kind of put a general call out. Did we actually approach you know sites in Moffett Park to to look to rent um as potential safe parking sites much like Mountain View is doing in Shoreline and partnering with VTA to rent their sites. Um we didn't target Moffett Park per se. Um but we did reach out to a number of major land owners um many of whom own land in Moffett Park to ask if they had a site that we could use for safe parking. Okay.

Yeah. Um okay. So just as feedback to the vice mayor, you know, I think um and all the ultimately this is prioritization and I that'll be the interesting thing as the as the city manager said of what comes back to us in September. But um I'm not willing to give up on safe parking. I think, you know, ultimately looking at these sites um as potential safe parking and then interim um is is viable and whether or not whether that fits in the budget, I don't know. But but you know, conceivably we set up safe parking within a year uh or year and a half, two years worse. But we're not going to have interim housing in my opinion for much longer than that. And so whatever site staff could work on, you know, would to me is viable. Looking at um what the what the issues are in our grant program and bringing back um you know ultimately car parking. So, so, so at a later date coming back to council with with potential um car parking solutions at faith-based institution and whatever grant program changes need to be done, I think is important. Um, but other than that, you know, for me, the permitting is the quick thing. And as I said previously, expanding that definition on our on residential permitting as well as as permitted areas and what that means. Um the buyback program I think only has limited appeal. You know, looking looking at the Berkeley study, I don't think the I don't think everything is finalized as far as that's concerned. So, I do think, you know, there's still questions about the viability of that program, but I'm hoping that the the towing budget is

there for, you know, to to try to understanding that we're looking at potential buyback, but um it's the viability of these these programs overall. Um and let's see and and and for me and it's like it's to me it's from a prioritization standpoint permitting we can you know it's what can we do the fastest permit program conceivably safe parking locations um the buyback program I think only has a certain amount of value from from our standpoint and then interim housing conceivably if we have a partner that's ready to really move this along Fantastic. But I want to see that and I and I'm hoping to see motion from that standpoint. So I hope that's good enough direction to for for for the vice mayor. Yes. Thank you. Um next up is Council Member Cisneros. And hopefully this will be short. Um you've already went 10 minutes post.

Oh no, I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you. And I'm going to uh Good news. Um, it was I I assumed you were gonna call me after the vice mayor. So, Okay. Okay. Vice Mayor, I'm going to try this.

I'm going to begin by saying I am extremely open to friendly amendments, and I'm probably going to need some, Mr. Mayor, because I'm not sure I captured everything. I move alternative two which is um no oh I move alternative three which is going to be alternative one with modifications. So direct staff to develop an interim housing site on city-owned land. The Fair Oaks site. Um an RV buyback program. We can discuss striking that if you want to. uh and a permitted RV parking program on designated city streets with the following additions. One, redouble outreach to churches with the goal of removing obstacles to them establishing safe parking programs. Two, begin discussions with stakeholders at site 10 about possible use of site 10 for interim housing andor safe parking. Um, three, examine the ability to of examine providing safe parking like services in the RV parking district. I'm going to call it a district, street, whatever. Um, and for to specifically examine car parking solutions since it is easier to support these than RVs. I'm going to stop there and say that if anyone else wants to get something in, I'm going to I'm very eager to take friendly amendments.

Thank you, Council Member Cisneros. Second. Thank you to your motion.

This is the literal problem from hell. I am not trying to be dramatic here. This is when I when I look at the misery on our streets, it is like looking into a a print out of an addition of Dante or something. It is hellish what we see on our streets. We have residents in this city living in the most dire poverty in miserable conditions and no level of government has done enough to address that crisis including this one. This motion is not going to solve the problem. I hope that it makes a I hope that it begins to make a dent in it though. Um, and I'm going to stop talking there because it is already late and as I said, I suspect that there are friendly amendments coming from my colleagues. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, Council Member Cisneros.

Yes. I have but one additional comment to say about this besides vote yes. Um is that when we're doing anything to address homelessness, which should be all the spaghetti against all the walls, is that you need to have a lot of goals exist all at the same time and all of them are worthy and important and you must but all must be considered. Um things like rehousing, getting getting someone from their current situation into housing is a goal. So is preserving life and keeping people from literally dying. Uh providing dignity and access to the very most basic resources that every human being should have access to. Access to stability to those who are who are trying to keep their lives from slipping further backwards but are right on the edge. and so many more. And and I just want to say that um when we're having these discussions and I heard tonight is is a lot of these goals showed up and they're all heard and and I really hope we all share them and you can start sharing that and show that with a yes vote. So thank you.

Thank you council member Shinasan. I will be supporting this motion. But uh on the you also included removing barriers which I really like that phrase and then uh should we expand on the barriers uh some of the things we included cars only separating cars and RVs but number of hours of operations and then sites without uh uh uh outreach or anything like that just for parking safe parking uh all those things and then uh CDD mentioned about uh dignity on wheels. Should it be part of the motion or uh is that a direction uh staff needs?

Staff is very clear on what you're thinking. Very good. Thank you. Then I will be supporting this motion as it said. Thanks. Thank you, council member. Uh, Council Member Chang, I would just uh propose striking the RV buyback portion. I I would rather staff focus on interim or emergency housing. Colleagues, can I ask for a straw poll on whether to strike the RV buyback portion and whether you're supportive of that?

You support need to be clear. you support are do you want to get rid of the RV buyback portion? If you want to do a show of hands on that real quick. One, two, three. I have a question for staff, but go ahead. Will that uh free up your time to pursue other things? Right. Or money, time, resour. I'll say it again. We're going to come back with a prioritization that will tell you what will have to be set aside to prioritize these efforts. Okay, fantastic. Then I am fine with the motion as is.

Are you withdrawing the friendly amendment through the mayor? Uh yes, council member Chang. Yes. Okay. I yield. Council member Chang. I'm good. Okay. Uh, Council Member Cell. Um, I just wanted to say I think um between the mayor and Council Member Melinger and all my other colleagues, I think this is a motion that's encapsulated like all that we've heard in the audience and um staff and our colleagues. So, thank you for putting it all into a great motion. Thank you, council member. Uh, Council, Vice Mayor Malager,

two quick things. Yes. Um, first, does staff need explicit direction in this motion to be looking at doing car parking or RV parking on the interim housing sites until interim housing can be developed? Staff is clear that we can explore both of those things. Great. The second thing, and I will just point this out, is that there is a very large parking lot right back there that is really not used very often after midnight. And maybe we should be looking at overnight parking in that parking lot. And with that, I don't believe I've got any other comments.

Okay. And and I'll wrap this up quickly hopefully. Um, so thank you for Thank you, Vice Mayor, for for leading this charge. Um, you know, definitely the community is frustrated, you know, and and council's frustrated to a certain degree. I, you know, I'm glad we're at this point. Um, I was hoping that we would have found a a safe parking site when this finally came back to us. Um, we have potential sites. So, thank you for staff for looking at interim and and my biggest frustration is there were conceivable partners years ago and we we missed out to a certain degree. That being said, we are where we are. Um, I want to say thank you. We should also be thank you thanking SCS for keeping helping keep more um more residents in their homes. You know, the TBR program that we help fund and they help fund through county and other programs. Other funding makes a big difference. Um we have ex we have been we have heard from residents we have you know expanded services um you know dignity on wheels and other operations and outreach that what that wasn't done previously. So so you know the council has moved the needle somewhat but there's always more need in our community and what you're seeing here tonight is trying to move faster and trying to find more solutions. And I understand this burdens staff, but it's important from a community standpoint to see what we can do. Um, and I'm hoping that that all the comments from from council here um are taken in consideration um as we're moving forward. Um, with that, city clerk, and I strongly support this motion. With that, city clerk, uh, please conduct the vote.

Okay, the motion carries 6 with council member Leia recused. Thank you. Um, with that we will take a 10-minut break. Sorry, actually we'll do an 8 minute break and come back at 11:15.

Let's go ahead and reconvene and move to our last item, item 26-0113. Discussion and possible action regarding the data retention policies, uses, and agreement with block group for stationary automated license plate readers. Is there a staff report?

Yes, there is. Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is Dan Pistor and I have the honor of serving as a chief of the Sunnyville of the Department of Public Safety. Joining me tonight, our chief information officer, Kathleen Budet Foster, Captain Yan Lee, who serves as our flock systems administrator, Deputy Chief Ava Fenucci, who leads our special operations bureau. I want to take a moment to thank all of the city staff who contributed to this presentation. The following presentation is a result of a combined effort of various city departments including ITD, city communications, the city attorney's office, and of course public safety. This presentation reflects extensive research and I truly appreciate the hard work that staff uh put into it and the attention to detail that went along with it. I also want to take a moment and thank council for providing public safety with this opportunity to openly discuss our fixed automated license plate reader technology and the flock system. Transparency and public trust are core values of public safety and I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to share with you and our community how we use this technology to enhance public safety while safeguarding privacy rights. We'll get started. Tonight we're going to discuss several things. We're going to discuss the ALPR technology overview, how Sunnyville uses the system, privacy protections and oversight, uh IT department system review, program results, state and uh state laws and policy context, and then we're going to have plenty of time for question and discussion. I wanted to give council a quick overview of what we're talking about when it comes to ALPR technology. Fixed automated license plate readers are cameras that capture images of vehicles traveling on public roadways for use in

criminal investigations. So what is being recorded? The license plates be being recorded, the date and time, the location, vehicle image, basic characteristics like color, make, model, and body type. And we use this information u to identify vehicles associated with criminal investigations, locate stolen vehicles, assist with criminal investigations, proactive policing and locating missing persons. I also want to really cover what the system does not do and this is an important slide. The Sunnybo system does not collect personal identifying information. The system does not use facial recognition technology. The system does not monitor or track people. It does not enforce traffic violations. It does not collect driver or occupant information. And it does not provide DMV vehicle registration information. And most importantly, it cannot be used for civil immigration enforcement. The FIC we have 20 fixed license plate readers in our city. They're located along major roadways. They're not located in residential neighborhoods and they're fixed in place and not mobile. These cameras capture vehicle information as the vehicles pass in front of them. So, how are we using this technology? Uh, AL ALPR supports investigations at DPS by identifying vehicles associated with reported crimes, preventing uh, criminal activity, confirming investigation timelines, narrowing a pool possible suspects, locating stolen vehicles. U, we locate vehicles linked to potential witnesses and also missing persons. ALPR is used as an investigative tool to supplement traditional police

work. And I really want to highlight that it is a tool that supplements what we already do, but it involves an officer. So to help illustrate this, I'm going to give council a quick overview of a typical use of the ALPR system that our officers are using every single day. Um what will typically happen is an officer receives a report of a crime. A vehicle description might be uh provided or a partial description or a partial license plate. A location time frame may be identified. We authorized and trained officers log into the system. We search um using that specific criteria and but most importantly the search requires investigative um justification. The system spits out results which match the vehicle location, date, time and importantly staff has to verify what's coming out of the system. So the important piece of it is that human interaction is still there. The officer is still involved in the system. We compare the results and it helps confirm timelines and generate investigative leads. This is what an officer would typically see out of an AOPR hit. You would get a a a zoomed in focused license plate. It would be on the officer to verify that the license plate showing on the screen is is um matching the data that's coming out. And you would also see a vehicle. And as you can see here, you cannot see the driver occupants. It's just a general description. And you would also receive uh date and time and location information where that vehicle was seen. And here's page two. And you can see in here that it provides a little more data like it's a sedan, it's a Toyota, a little more detail. There's several layers of protection

that goes into our system. When we receive a an APR alert that notifies DPS of let's say a stolen vehicle or a felony crime, officers cross-check and verify APR alerts with DMV records, stolen vehicle databases through the California law enforcement telecommunication system or KLET. And this is the system that governs most of our secure law enforcement data. Plex is the database is a gold standard of IT security and officers are trained every two years and credential and must have credentials to access any of the systems uh governed by KLET and KLET operates on a need to know and right to know basis. So we can't just go in there and search for the fun of searching. We need to have a reason and it needs to be documented and logged. It provides a check and balance on this on the flock system and human validation is the key component. We're not just relying on the system to to um take enforcement action. We've had some pretty impressive results with ALPR since it went uh live in October of 2024. Um we've had over 20,000 alerts. So those alerts included stolen vehicles, stolen vehicle plates, vehicles linked to major felony crimes that have occurred in the city and we've located missing persons with it. It's contributed to 81 leads and 61 arrests. Um and that number is constantly climbing. Um crimes investigated included robbery, homicide, stolen vehicle cases, and organized retail theft. Um, I highlighted three specific cases that I thought would uh caught my attention and I thought would be of interest to the community and council to show the power of this system. Um, the ALPR data helped our investigators solve a particularly gruesome homicide that occurred on the

north side of our city. Um, it identified and confirmed the suspect vehicle. It established a timeline for vehicle movement. It connected locations to the suspect and confirmed information from other sources. It was used and was played a critical role in the murder of Kimberly Chinos Flores, who was a 24-year-old Mountain View resident and a mother of a 5-year-old son. And I would say that after having extensive briefings with my investigations unit, if we didn't have this system, I would be worried about where that case is now. now, but instead we made an arrest within two months, which is incredible, and our investigators did an outstanding job in that case. Um, another example is an Indian jury robbery store series. These occurred between May of 2025 and August of 2025. Sunnyville experienced eight violent takeover style robberies targeting Indian jewelry stores in Sunnyville. And we may have reme remembered these in the press. It was pretty well covered. Stolen vehicles were used in that time. We interrupted two of those b uh robberies and the way we did it is flock provided an alert of n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n nous stolen vehicles entering the city of Sunnyville. Our patrol developed a response plan which they had trained on when we were experiencing these robbery series and arrived at the jury store on El Camino as several of these stolen vehicles pulled into the parking lot. So they were expecting to pull into a parking lot that was empty and to pray upon our jewelry store owners. In in fact what they found was officers waiting for them. That prevented the robbery. So it prevented those people from being injured. Um obviously the sto the property would never got stolen and we made five arrests off of that incident. The flock system provided an early early

warning in that case combined with our proactive patrol response prevented those people from becoming victims. And finally, my last example that I'll give you tonight is on March 6 in 2020 2026 around midnight, public safety received a flocked alert of a vehicle that had been driven by an elderly female who was reported missing out of Sonteo County Sheriff's Office. She was last seen around 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Uh just after midnight, Flock located the vehicle in our city which was being driven by her. and I'm happy to report that she was returned home to her family unharmed and we were able to locate her because of the information we received off of Flop. We have several privacy safeguards um that are built into our system and was built into our system from inception in October of 2024. Those safeguards include a 30-day retention before automatic deletion occurs. Access restricted only to authorized personnel that I covered earlier. Investigative justification is required for all searches and is logged. Detailed system audit logs are now kept and data sharing is limited to approved law enforcement requests following a command level review. So what that means is when a jurisdiction asks to go into our data, we um have an attestation form that they have to sign. That jurisdiction has to agree to follow all state laws. They have to agree that the information is not going to be used for civil immigration enforcement. They sign that form and then we allow them access to our data. That comes to me and comes to Captain Lee. So it's at the command level that we authorize that Sunnyville ALPR program upholds the California values act and the Sunnyville statement on values and public service.

So we have additional data controls um ALPR data access requirements. So individual user loon credentials are required. Case number or investigative just justification is required. So you can't just log into the system and poke around. You have to have a reason. Activity logging and auditing. And then for the data sharing, it's limited to approved law enforcement agencies only. Requires a documented request that I just covered and my approval and must comply with state law. Now, when this um when Flock um gained um prominence in the news, I was proactive in our efforts at Sunnyville to ensure that we were doing everything by the book. And I asked the chief information officer, Kathleen, here to examine um how Sunnyville is using the program and to verify that we were doing everything possible to safeguard privacy rights. and I'll turn over the microphone to um Kathleen.

Thank you, Chief. Good evening, council. Kathleen Bet Foster, chief information officer for the city and IT director, uh the the reason why it jumped in very quickly is not only because the chief and I have a very strong partnership, but this is about community trust, this is about keeping data safe, and this is about protecting our community. And there's nothing more important. The IT department takes data security very seriously and therefore we dropped everything to make sure that we could immediately get involved and work with public safety and work with Flock to determine and look at what was going on. So we received access to the system. We went into all of the areas and I want to go through what we actually the audit included. Not only did it include the system itself, we actually talked to Flock on several occasions to find out more about their architecture, the design, the security structure, their operations, and how their staff are involved and what their staff are able to do and look at all of their processes as well, not just the system itself. as well as looking at public safety's protocols and data sharing practices to make sure that their guidelines and what they do internally within the department was up to what we would expect as it relates to code and sharing. So we were able to confirm that the system absolutely has been configured properly. We were able to look at the data sharing settings and to look at what was being shared and how as well as to review all of the user permissions that were going on and the access logs as well. and we were confirming the fact that there when we looked and we still keep looking there has not been federal agencies that have access to our data. There are three different types of logs that we look at with in flock. There's what they call the network log and that is looking at auditing the cameras themselves, the infrastructure that's on there, whatever activity is going on with the actual

camera and the network itself. Those logs look at what's being searched, the reason why it's being searched, and it has all of the details as to who and what agencies are searching. Also, the organizational logs that gets into the individual look. So who specifically what data users what login are going in and out who's accessing what data when what downloads if any are happening what data sharing is occurring and all of the information that goes along from a users's activity level whether it's Flock or ourselves we have access to see that the event logs also provide us the ability to see anything that's going on as it relates to the system any configuration changes any documentation changes anything that goes on as it relates to modified roles or security. We see those as well. All of those logs are kept per in perpetuity. They are never erased. They are not a part of any retention. We're able to go back as far as we can and they will be continued to be kept, never to be given away. So, I wanted to make sure that you understood that. As part of the DPS policy review, we also looked at the evidence data and how the evidence is tracked and and just as chief mentioned, they're very good about making sure every agency that's requested data from us has that authorization, goes through the proper approval channels and is approved by public safety staff appropriately. So, in our findings, we did feel that the system is configured the way it's supposed to be. We looked at the fact that it was not sharing any data with the federal agencies. We were not sharing any of the data with any sharing partners that they did not already receive written authorization or documentation about the user roles and permissions were properly configured as per our agreement. Our access controls were all in place. The searches were properly being logged. All of the data we could see what was going in and out, who's been looking at things, why they've looked at things. Yan was a big

user of that we could see as it relates to his role. Um but more importantly is there were no generic accounts, no random admin account, no generic accounts that didn't have a person attached to them. So the information was from our point looking at the system doing exactly as it's supposed to was agreed upon. But let's get into the real thing that everybody's concerned about data retention and security. There is a 30-day retention policy and it this data goes up into the cloud. it is automatically deleted after that 30 days. Unless there is some sort of criminal evidence hold that's put onto that data, it is going to be deleted after the 30-day period. And that happens automatically. We don't have to manually go in. It is something that occurs. The other part of this is that any logs or exports or things that we see, it's flagged in the system. And again, that data doesn't go anywhere and we can tell who's using the data and for what reason. And we saw no foul play as it relates to any sharing of data or any logging of the information. Everything looked right. The evidence preservation was correct. All the documentation showed that everything was correct. DPS is strictly following all policies and protocols. In addition to that, we went ahead and looked at the cameras themselves. The cameras on the poles have the data encrypted while they're storing all that information. While it goes out to the cloud, the data is encrypted in transit. So there isn't the ability for a hacker to just go in and randomly grab data. Um we made sure and looked through how the architecture is. The data is fully secure and up to NIST protocol standards which is the higher standards for security as it relates to IT data and sharing. So the data is encrypted. It does not contain any personal data. We did have the ability to confirm that and make sure as you saw in the examples that chief showed the data is only make, model, vehicle and license plate information. No human, no

person, no activity about an individual, only vehicles. We also reviewed the logs to make sure they were intact so that we double checked they are not being erased. They are still staying intact. So when you look at the data settings themselves, uh the national lookup that became a hot topic item for a lot of other agencies was never in effect for us, not even during our pilot. We had piloted a few of these cameras. It was not turned on for the pilot. It did not get turned on when we went live. The state lookup was turned on. However, with all of the activity and interest and excitement, that was turned off in January. We no longer have automatic state lookup as well as it relates to other federal and state agencies having access to the data. Yes, those that were granted access by public safety through the process and protocols that were put in place by the policies for the department. Yes, there are 27 agencies that have data sharing agreements signed and approved and they have access to the information. I do want to call out the fact that we continue and will continue to audit the system and ensure that our community's data is locked as much as it can be, that we're keeping people safe, that we're making sure that it isn't being shared otherwise. Now, there has been also good news. Flock is also responding to California and the needs of our local cities as well as counties. As of March 2nd of this year, so just little little more than a month ago, they have actually changed their implementation and put in guard rails for California implementations of Flock. And these include the safeguards are California agencies cannot accept or initiate sharing data out of state or with federal agencies. Federal agencies cannot discover or broadly request data sharing in California. Federal agencies are not part of statewide or national lookup networks. Immigration related and reproductive care related searches are automatically blocked in California and

are available nationwide by administrator activation only. Every search requires entry of a standardizedbased neighbors offense type to ensure auditability and accountability. Cities and counties retain 100% control of our LPR data and determine who and how we share it. And any change to sharing settings is permanently logged. In addition to that, Sunnyale took an extra step. We added multifactor authentication so that anyone accessing the system now has the ability to for us to be ensured that there is another layer of security that someone can't be an impostor to get into our system. So multiffactor has been turned on as of very recent few weeks here. So we did go ahead and look at all the settings and from what we can see the audit showed that everything that we have been wanting the system to do in the sense of providing those additional securities and safeguards are in place and the data isn't shared inappropriately. There was one case of federal sharing data and I will let Chief go into more detail on that.

Thank you very much for your help. LMA Linda Healthc Care System Veteran Affairs Police Department is a veterans affair agency based in Loman Linda, California accessed our system in May of 2025. It involved uh two searches. One search was a hit-and-run investigation and another was an attempt to locate a suicidal veteran. The search was both searches were compliant with state law. The search was conducted through a statewide lookup function which provided a a large net. The search function l was limited to license plate information only and no national sharing occurred. The California laws governing ALPR system is SP34 and it requires written ALPR usage policies which we have documented data sharing procedures which we have audit requirements which we have limits on what uh who can access the ALPR data which we have. So we are in full compliance with this law. I just want to touch on what's going on regionally with the ALPR programs under review. Cities across California have taken different approaches to fix ALPR programs. In recent months, some have reviewed the policies and procedures related to privacy and data sharing. Some have strengthened oversight policies. Many have continued to use existing or additional safeguards. Some have cancelled or temporarily paused their programs and others have reinstated ALPR after updating security their own internal security pro protocols. So options before council staff recommendation is that we maintain the city's current fixed AOPR system with stronger oversight measures to include

include an annual audit conducted by public safety and ITD. provide the city council with an uh annual audit report of the ALPR system to continue to monitor state legislation and re evaluate the program and vendor options prior to the contract expiration in 2027. And in closing, I hope we have provided the council with significant information regarding the use of our flock system to reassure you and the community that we fully understand the importance of protecting privacy rights while allowing our staff to effectively utilize this valuable technology. The Department of Public Safety will always operate in a manner that is consistent with the values and expectations set forth by this city council. As chief of public safety, I believe it is my fundamental mission to ensure the city of Sunnyville is a safe place for everyone in our community to live, work, and play. With 29 years of experience in law enforcement, I can say with confidence that the Flock system is one of the most valuable and effective technologies I have encountered in my career. I have no doubt that this technology is playing a meaningful role in helping our communities stay safe, solve crimes that might otherwise go cold. With that said, I also recognize there are legitimate privacy concerns that must be carefully considered. I believe the plan we have presented tonight, which includes transparent auditing both internally and from ITD, combined with annual reporting of our findings to the city council, provides the appropriate balance between protecting privacy rights and ensuring this technology is used responsibly to enhance public safety and address crime in our community. I believe staff recommendation number

one before you tonight will place Sunnyville in a leadership position within our region when it comes to oversight of this technology. To my knowledge, no other jurisdiction has implemented this level of civilian oversight and transparency. And I believe the city manager would like to make a few comments.

I would. Thank you, Chief. Um, I want to start by grounding us in what matters to me the most, which is to keep our community safe and to maintain our community's trust. Um, that's our mission. Our mission is we build community trust by delivering exceptional services. These are the principles that guide our use of ALPR technology. And what the chief is proposing and staff is proposing um gives us a clear framework to protect privacy while keeping strong public safety benefits. Uh Chief Ptor shares shared some uh of of our successes. But I wanted to personalize this a little bit. Um, when I started as interim city manager, my first weekend I was enjoying a celebratory Nepalese New Year festival at Balance Park on a Saturday afternoon and I got a call from Chief Fono at the time who told me that a violent takeover robbery had just occurred at Nitton Jewelers on El Camino. It was what would later become a string of robberies throughout the city that terrified our community. The following day, council member Shinivasan and I visited Nitton Jewelers and the owner showed us the security video of the robbery. Approximately 15, a gang of 15 people forced their way through the security measures at the store, held the owner at gunpoint, and smashed up the entire store while a terrified customer cowered in the corner. I can't even imagine how that particular victim still that's still got to affect them day in and day out. Our ALPR system combined with the good work of our public safety officers helped put those crimes to an end in Sunnyville. And just to underscore, we have public safety officers. That is different. We

don't have police officers. We don't have firefighters. We have public safety officers. That is unique in this area. What does that mean? Our public safety officers are highly trained in law enforcement, highly trained in firefighting and our EMTs. For example, at a recent large apartment fire we had, the first responder was a public safety officer who was assigned to patrol. and they started the, you know, responding to the emergency while the fire response was on its way. I underscore that because the the department's mission is to save lives and protect property, but they're also guided by values of excellence, integrity, professionalism, accountability, and community engagement. I'll close by saying if any agency can use ALPRs responsibly and in line with our community's values, it's Sunnyville. And uh with that, thank you for the opportunity to comment and we're available to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, director. Thank you, city manager. Uh we're going to do something a little bit different tonight. Uh council will not be asking questions first. We will end up going to the public. So, thank you for everyone who stayed for this specific item. Um, I will go ahead and open the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star9 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 one minute to speak. Uh for those remote speakers, please raise your virtual hand. Now you will have until the end of the first person speaking uh to raise your virtual hand and we will not take additional people at that point. We have quite a few people in the room and a good number of people online um understanding that that it is late at night but uh ultimately we will try to get we will get through everyone uh that's here. Um, with that I will be na reading off two names as I've said previously. First person come to the lectern. The next person hopefully be waiting in the wings so that we can transition as quickly as possible. Um, and as a reminder this is a safe space. Um, no clapping, no booing. You know this everyone should be free to give their opinion to lectern uh, whoever they are. So first up is Russ M. followed by Eric K.

Okay. So, good evening, mayor and council. My name is Russ Melton. I serve as CEO of the Sunnyvil Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'll mention that I served on Sunnyvale City Council from 2017 to 2025. On behalf of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce, we're here tonight to advocate for Alternative One. Uh, my board of directors at the Chamber of Commerce supports ALPR as a vital public safety and crime fighting tool, provided it is governed by robust policies that protect the public interest and data privacy and data security. Um, I'll note the great cases that the chief noted. Elderly woman, disoriented and found solving the murder of Camry, right? Great achievement. But from the Chamber of uh commerce's perspective, uh putting an end to the violent takeover robberies of jewelry stores in Sunnyvale through the use of this technology um I think is what it's all about. Please support alternative one. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh next is Eric K followed by Andrew C.

Yeah, long time res. So, I'm also rising to speak in favor of alternative one. Um, I'm a strong believer in civil rights and civil liberties. Um, but it's also important to remember that um, criminals and violent crime or property crime violates people's civil rights and civil liberties, too. Um, when Kimberly uh, Chernos Flores was murdered, she lost all of her civil rights. Um, and the ALPRs have proven themselves in the city of Sunnyale to be a useful tool in preventing crimes and in uh finding out those who are responsible for committing crimes. You know, those jewelry store robberies, they aren't just a property crime, they're dangerous. Uh, one of those uh takeovers took place right next door to the Taekwondo Academy where my two young children take lessons, right? and the criminals use guns and um you know cars to bash into uh the windows. So anyway, I support um um alternative one. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh next is Andrew G followed by Hamza sorry Hamza W or Hamza M. Sorry.

Good evening council. I come before you to add some more detail that I feel like was left out of the staff report. I started looking into these devices after hearing a sort of steady drum beat of people being falsely arrested after misidentification from camera surveillance, usually from flock ALPR devices or other flock devices. What I have found is rather troubling. Basically, the D8, the Department of Homeland Security has found has rated a significant number of software vulnerabilities with the flock camera ecosystem that they have rated as critical or severe to our national security. This is almost 60 different individual vulnerabilities that you can go purchase scripts off the dark web and we go down to Matilda and El Camino and I could compromise all of your cameras with just a laptop. And from that one laptop, you can then compromise or from that one camera, you can compromise the whole network. But this really shouldn't be that surprising when you're follow if you follow along with flock safety. The Dublin had their things misidentified and or configured and you could grab their camera images off of Google search.

Thank you. Uh Hamza M followed by Dave B.

Uh good evening everyone. My name is Hamza. Um um I'm here to oppose the flock based AOPR system uh because of their current track record. I want to preface that I'm not against AOPRs. I'm just against the flock solution and this is basically echoing what the previous person mentioned because I come from a enterprise security and machine learning background and um the national vulnerability database has listed multiple flock flock related CVEes and many of these unfortunately can't just be addressed with configurations. Um I support the third option which is we look at alternatives and more importantly we rely on security audits with uh releasing those audits so that others can verify that such as the greater security um security researcher domain. Um that way we can ensure that whatever solution we have is uh able to withstand uh scrutiny to penetration testing. And this is very critical because uh California law requires that we maintain a reasonable security measure and the vulnerabilities that they have currently exposed are not meeting those requirements.

Thank you. Thank you. Um Dave B followed by Maria H.

Hi council. Uh Dave B. I am a longtime Sunnyville resident. I've spent 20 years in tech, specifically in cyber security. And I'm going to echo exactly what HS said. The problem isn't the controls that we can put on Flock. It's that Flock's not a trustworthy company. They're not running their business well. They're not adhering to the right sorts of steps that they need to take to make sure that their product is secure and able to be secured in a reasonable fashion. Um it's something that really really comes through when you start looking at it and it's really concerning. Um there's also the fact that when they were pushed on this, one of the choices they made was to say, well, we're going to bring in an independent auditor and that auditor was run by somebody on the board of Flock. So there's some real problems in that company and we really need to look at other oper other options and in the meantime, we need to stop that. We need to just put a put a table on it right for right now and just step back and reassess. Thanks.

Thank you, Maria H. followed by Tara M.

Thank you, members of the city council and Mayor Klein. Thanks to public safety who does such a great job protecting our city. I really appreciate all the information you've provided to us. Um, unfortunately, I don't share the conclusions that there are sufficient safeguards against intrusions to our privacy with this system. And so, I'm asking the council to cancel the contract with Flock, turn off ALPR cameras, and cover or remove them so they can't be reactivated remotely. Flock safety, as this last speaker talks about, has a very bad record of using deceptive and intrusive practices to create a nationwide mass surveillance network that frankly is not consistent with living in a free democratic society. I don't want to live in that kind of constantly surveiled state. And while I really appreciate that we all want to feel safe, part of feeling safe is feeling free and not feeling that we're being surveiled at all times and that that data can be exposed. It can certainly be hacked. How many data breach settlements have each of us been part of in the past year? So, I'm asking the council to take into cons consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Tara M, followed by Jake G.

Thank you, council. Um, Tara Martin Miller speaking as uh an individual person here. Um, my whole concern around this is safety and it seems to me that we can't expect any privacy from readers uh from from any kind of readers and we had readers for a long time. So, I'm not really that concerned about having something read uh license plate, but um keeping keeping the data safe and keeping it out of un identified and unidentifiable hands. That's where it that's where I I would worry about it. And I would say that trust is the whole issue. I trust what you do. I trust what our DPS does. So, I'm happy with it and recommend going forward.

Thank you, Jake G. followed by Margaret L.

Hi, my name is Jake Greenberg. Uh, I'm just going to kind of echo a lot of the points that have already been brought up, which is that without open-source security audits, there's really no way to prove or uh have confidence that what Flock Safety says their system does is actually what occurs. And so, uh, if what that you say in the slides is true and you're, you know, deleting the data after 30 days and you have all of these security guarantees, that would be great. But I think that we are not, at least from most of the public, confident that these things that they say are happening are actually happening. And as far as I'm aware, there's no way to really enforce that they are enacting the policies that they say they are. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, next up is Margaret L. followed by Steve S. It's too late. Anyway, I'm Margaret Lawson. I support keeping the AL ALPR devices. I trust the Sunnyville City Council. Sorry. I trust the Sunnyville Public Safety Department to protect the residents, which is its primary purpose. If the ALPR cameras will help them catch the bad guys and keep us safe, I think they should be continued.

Thank you, Steve S. followed by Brian J. I think what our uh public safety has presented gives me confidence that they looked at things. I spent a lot of my career chip design, network communications, sniffing data as it went down the wire. Um, and there is a way to to verify that you've got encrypted data going there. I can show from a personal standpoint or knowledge a personal standpoint how the flock systems are very important. In August 2023, one of my friends was shot in the leg during a uh attempted catalytic converter theft. His son, who's a scout I worked with and a scout troop, was shot at. Okay. A short while later, well, and they were near Highway 85. If a flock had been there, you might have seen them running away. A short while later, friends over in San Miguel had a car that was tried to steal the house across the street from them and multiple shots were fired. They had easy access to Launch Expressway 101 and 237. So, those two incidences tell me that it's valuable having this and I trust that

you've done a good audit. Thank you. Thank you, Brian J. followed by Austin M.

Good evening. My name is Brian Jones. Um, I want to thank the chief and the CIO for um some really solid work that they've done on putting good policies in place. Uh, the difficulty is that even the most excellent policy cannot control a national database in the hands of a private for-profit company. In fact, section 5.3 of the current Sunnyvil contract grants Flock the right to, and I'll quote, access, use, preserve, and or disclose the footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, andor third parties. If Flock has reasonably goodfaith belief that such access is reasonably necessary, this completely undermines any possible city policy. Our hard work to make this system safe is meaningless. This is not a theoretical problem. In fact, Mountain View and Los Altos also had excellent policies that were violated by Flock. Once the data leaves the city, we have no control over it. DHS policy requires that ICE access be scrubbed from database logs. In this day and age, that's unsafe for all of us. The only possible consequence of the violation is the cancellation of the subs of the subscription. Thank you.

Thank you, Austin M. Followed by Ashley O.

I'm here to urge the city of Sunnyville to reconsider its relationship with flock safety. No amount of safeguards can make the camera safe as countless negative news stories reveal that laws, policies, and professional norms have thus far proven ineffective at protecting us from harms. Every city thinks it's the exception, but Flock's negligence is the rule. No amount of anecdotes can convince me that AI mass violence is a reasonable solution to any perceived surge in crime. Public safety is affordable housing, food security, clean environment, access to good education, and economic opportunity and a government you could trust. That's where the city's priorities should be. For these reasons and more, I'm calling upon Sunnyville to cancel the contract and remove the cameras. Thank you. Thank you. Ashley O followed by Bob S.

Hi everyone. We've met before. My name is Ashley Ortiz. I'm an organizer with Sunnyville Tesla Takedown. Um I am also a born resident in Sunnyville. I was born in the same hospital in Okconor was with my son. I'm raising my family here and I'm very proud to raise my family here unlike Ice Austin Wyatt who was an Idaho resident and he says he would never raise his family here. And as a police officer who has taken my tax dollars, that's wild. So I am here to ask that you cancel your um cancel the current flock system and the contract with it. So um I'm here to because people are advocating for more surveillance. If the people advocating for more surveillance do not believe in this community, why should their vision define our future? Keeping the current flux system even with added audits and reporting does not solve a core issue. They don't even have two-factor authentic authentication until recently. Something I've had on Facebook for years now. None of these guard rails even matter because it's been proven that ICE and DHS have been given the ability to access all logs of flock and other cameras without leaving a note in the audit log or any other trace.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh Bob S followed by Marco M.

Thank you. Um, Flock has claimed that no unau unauthorized users, including Flock Safety employees, have access to the footage. Okay, then why did Flock's VP of business development, Bob Carter, watched the live feed of a young girls gymnastics class in Dunwy, Georgia? Randy Gluck, another Flock exec also watched the girls gymnastics class on three separate occasions on three separate days. In total, Flock execs, police officers, and people that can't be traced back to either, watched live cameras of the pool, the Fit Line studio, and daycare areas. The only reason we know this is through public records requests. Flock has not been forthcoming about how these cameras were accessed and why. Nor have they conducted an investigation into how this was even possible given their security claims, nor how widespread that problem is. You need to immediately terminate the contract with Flock and physically remove the cameras. Do not replace with a different surveillance vendor. It's simply not necessary. The Sunnyville PD said themselves, "It's not required. It's supplemental." They've been perfectly capable of solving crimes without it for the last 76 years. Thank you.

Thank you. Marco M followed by Een S.

Hello mayor, uh fellow council members and DPS chief. Um thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight as a resident of the fabulous city since 2013. I would like to express my support for maintaining the use of automatic license plate readers. uh understanding the recent news and motivation to limit its use, I still believe it helps in all our public safety to okay address community threats and garner responsive uh interactions. I think the technology benefits community in locating individuals as we've mentioned be previously and triggered silver alerts and exclude Amber alerts. Uh we use technologies today, doorbell cameras, security cameras around our home and in our home and dash cameras, ALR or PR just provides a faster actionable data point for the DPS. As our city and community continues to grow, it is my opinion that safety services will only become further strained. Uh we live in an amazing city and I'm hoping that we do not hamstring our dedicated officers in their ability to maintain our safety and use current safety technologies. Thank you.

Thank you. Een S followed by Tomac J.

Hi, my name is Essen Salter and I'm a Sunnyville resident and this is my story. When I was in college and when the internet was young, my ex partner became my stalker. Having a stalker changes your attitude and behavior and life choices when it comes to privacy. Onethird of women in the US have been stalked. Flock is a stalker's dream tool, easily creating a dossier on your movements and predictions of where you will be with a simple search. Nationally, Flock has already been misused by law enforcement officers to stalk domestic partners and other in others in multiple states. Flock can easily be hacked and Flock login can be purchased for as little as $100 on the dark web. Under the Fourth Amendment, we are guaranteed a reasonable expectation of privacy. What is unreasonable is that our city would use dangerous service-like flock rife with misuse and easily hackable. It undermines our rights, privacy rights, and allows tracking and potential stalking of our residents. Protect yourselves, your daughters, your sisters, your girlfriends, your wives, your mothers. Remove flock cameras and cancel the flock contract. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh Tom J followed by Melissa D.

Hello, my name is Tommy Ashenowski and I'm a Sanville resident. I grew up in Poland. Poland was a surveillance state within the Eastern block country. In Poland, people dreamed of living in the United States where everyone had free freedom and wasn't surveiled. Uh, I'm speaking up because I'm seeing how Flock is building a surveillance state that the Soviets could only have dreamed of. In addition, Flock is violating the fourth amendment of the US Constitution uh, regarding the reasonable expectation of privacy and also violating California SB34 law. Best intent of our public safety and IT uh to keep their access to flock secure cannot prevent illegal sharing of Sanville data due to inherent security clause in the flock equipment and the contractual ownership of all the data and um I ask that city council removes flock cameras and council's contract with flock because flock's violation of lock cannot be excused with its benefits. Thank you. Thank you.

Uh Melissa D followed by Habiba.

My name is Melissa Denwy. I want to speak directly to the staff report. It admits in its own contract analysis that the current agreement has no prohibition on using this data for immigration enforcement and no prohibition on surveilling people exercising their first amendment rights. Staff says trust us to renegotiate. But Flock's own 10% of crimesolved statistic was produced by Flock employees. The researcher whose name was on that study later said he would have done things much differently. That's not science. That's a sales pitch. You can't fix a surveillance corporation with better contract language. The cameras need to come out. Privacy is safety. remove flock cameras immediately and cancel the flock safety contract to protect our community's right to privacy. Thank you.

Thank you, Habiba. Followed by Hadon.

Mayor and council members. My name is Habiba and I'm here on behalf of CARE, the Council on American Islamic Relations. We're the nation's largest American Muslim civil rights organization. I'm here to urge you to end Sunnyville's use of automated license plate readers. These systems create a form of mass surveillance that makes our communities feel less safe, not more. They disproportionately impact immigrants, black and brown residents, religious minorities, and people exercising their First Amendment rights. There is real risk of these systems contributing and misuse, data sharing, and targeting of vulnerable communities. People need to know that when they drive to a legal clinic, when they attend a know your rights workshop, or when they meet with an attorney that they are not placing themselves under the risk of surveillance or worse, being kidnapped and murdered by ICE. Public safety should not come at the expense of civil rights. Care joins the ACLU of Santa Clara County and others in urging you to terminate this contract with flock and protect Sunnyville City residents.

Thank you, Hadon. Followed by Bruce H. Don Hi D an Bruce H followed by Margaret O. There we go. Hello, my name is Bruce Hana and I support cancelling the Flock contract. Flock is one player in a broader set of corporations that provide surveillance technology at scale. As such, we should expect them to expand their surveillance capabilities and they have in 2024 they purchased a drone company. So they will now be able to aggregate all the surveillance data from their license plate cameras with data that they get from their drones. It's also inevitable they will move into facial recognition and in fact in October they tried to partner with Amazon Ring which does do facial recognition. The direction we are headed, as others have mentioned, is for a small number of corporations to control a nationwide surveillance infrastructure that allows merging with purchasing decisions. So people will they will know people on the other side of the camera will know what you drive, where you buy, who you're spending time with, and thousands of other details about your private life. I don't want to live in that kind of society. So I urge this council to intervene with this cancer. Take all necessary steps to terminate the agreement with Flock. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Margaret O followed by Lyanna.

Margaret Kuzumi, Sunnyville resident. Flock is an untrustworthy company with a surveillance network that is insecure and easily abused. Bolts magazine reported last month that after the city of Verona, Wisconsin ended its Flock contract, Flock refused to take down its cameras. For three months, Flock rebuffed repeated requests by the city to take the cameras down. Instead, they sent a sales team to try to sell the city another contract. Only after Verona Mayor Luke Diaz had the city tie black garbage bags over the cameras did Flock agree to take the cameras down. Um, the fact that they didn't take the cameras down shows that we are the product. Dia said they were never really selling to us in the first place. What they were doing is selling to a much bigger um much bigger agencies the ability to spy on a ton of people. and I really resent that our city um it's not a company that can be trusted and our city should cancel his contract.

Thank you. Uh Lyanna followed by KBT.

Thank you, council. I am also asking that you remove the flat cameras immediately. Across the country, there have already been many instances of abuse and misuse of data, including breaches of trust from law enforcement itself. In Milwaukee last month, an officer was charged with attempted misconduct in public office when he used flock cameras to track a romantic partner 179 times over a two-month period. This past j past January in Manasha, Wisconsin, an officer was terminated after it was discovered that a single user was responsible for 25% of the department's flock usage. One license plate was searched for over 395 times. In Kansas last fall, a police chief resigned after it was determined that he had used the flock system to track his ex-girlfriend and her current partner. Another police chief resigned in Georgia last year when he was charged with using flock cameras to stalk and intimidate citizens. While these are documented cases, there are undoubtedly others that have not been discovered. Indeed, many of these victims only learned of these abuses after searching on their own using sites such as have I been flocked.com as opposed to internal police audits. Get the cameras out now.

ABT followed by Renee R.

All right. So, the argument about smart devices, you can opt into those. You can buy them. You can consent. Yes or no. Okay. I can't consent to flock. Okay. I can't drive anywhere without them being tracking where I'm going. and they can wax coet all they want and lie all they want about how they're never going to use it against us. We're getting there, okay? In the next five years, if we don't stop this and protect our citizens from this invasion of our privacy, it's going to get there. They're starting to pro do all this stuff to make video be available, okay? They're going to start having 15-second video clips, okay, with audio potentially. How is that not going to get used against us? Black is not trustworthy. They have creepy people on their staff watching people and I'm able to turn off location on my phone in my car. I can't do it to flock. But you know what? You know what I can flock? Protect our privacy and our rights.

Thank you Renee R. Followed by Ali D.

Hi, my name is Renee and I'm advocating for cancelling the flock contract. I'm a resident of Los Altos but a frequent visitor to Sunnyville for shopping and dining. Flock is a company has already been proven trustworthy in what they say versus what they do when they shared the data of millions of California residents with out ofstate agencies including ICE despite saying that they do not do that. including in Los Altos where we found external access in our network audit while Flock insisted that wasn't true which is like saying credit checks that show up in your credit reports didn't really check your credit which doesn't make sense at all. In Los Altos we believe we have strong flock policies in place to deter this from happening as I've seen you do as well and yet flock whether intentionally or mistakenly violated those policies in California state law. I do not want residents in any city to become targets due to dissent with the government or due to pursuing health care choices that are not allowed or any other reason. Cancel flock.

Uh Ali D followed by Jose T.

Good morning everyone. Uh, so I'm a business owner in the city of Sunnyville for over 20 years and um been a victim multiple times with several breakins um in our mailbox and just the business overall like probably tens of thousands uh was taken. I'm definitely um supporting flocks uh just because I bu I feel like the officers are here to support us. So, we need to give them the the tools to actually fight the crime. And you know, I think there's a bit of education. I do agree there's concern in this room and you know there's definitely going to be some strong rules oversight in the the flock system and maybe give the the publics a little bit more cushioning that hey it's here to fight crimes you know if you don't have flocks you invite people that come into a nice area like Sunnyville because in their town they don't have anything else so they come in break into the businesses and such as residents and you guys here to protect us and we definitely want to support you.

Thank you. Thank you. Uh Jose T followed by Ariel.

Good evening. Uh my name is Jose. I'm a longtime Sunville resident and the current HOA president of my community. I want to be honest. I didn't come into this issue automatically supporting flock cameras. When I first heard about them and what happened in other cities, I was actually upset. I took time to do my own research, dig into the concerns, and really understand what was going on. What I found was a lot of misinformation. Once I looked into Sunnyville's actual policies and how our Department of Public Safety uses this technology, I saw the difference. We're not those other cities. We have strict safeguards, no sharing with federal, out of state agencies, limited data retention, and full accountability. This technology isn't about watching people. It's about identifying vehicles tied to crimes, and giving officers the tools they need to do their job effectively, especially in a time when resources are stretched thin. And just as important, it deters crime. Criminals do not want to operate where they know they can't be identified. As an HOA president, I hear from directly from residents. I see fear when crime goes up, but I also see relief when something is actually working. Flock is working. I strongly urge you to continue supporting this program. It's not just about technology. It's about keeping our communities safe. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ariel. Followed by Leia G.

Okay. So, just because something decreases crime or or helps solve crime doesn't necessarily make it a good policy. um you know if you put a camera in everybody's house yeah you might solve more crime but I don't think you know people are willing to sacrifice their personal privacy that much um and that's an extreme example obviously but when you think about it to get the level of data that the flock cameras are getting on people's movements previously you would have had to have a police officer basically tailing your car um and cars are very easily you know tracked to their owners right it's not like oh we're just tracking the car yeah most people only own one are. So my point is we shouldn't be normalizing this. Even if you guys are using it as ethically as possible, it doesn't mean everywhere is and it doesn't mean Flock isn't lying to you as they have clearly lied to many other cities. Um they you know they break their own promises quite frequently and they are not trustable and I just think that you know this type of mass AI surveillance is more indicative of like an authoritarian government than a free democracy. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh Leia G followed by Devin K.

Hi council and mayor. Um my name is Leia Gropo and I am a longtime resident of Sunil 34 years. I grew up here and I came back to raise my family. I have a deep love for Sunnyvil. Um so I think with this with all things um that are very important to us, it's a very gray matter. I definitely understand finding and fighting crime, saving people, gunpoint. I want to keep Sunny Doll safe. But with that, I also think it's very important to look at Faulk as a company. Um, and it has such an awful track record. Um, and I think that that is something that is really hard to discredit. I was reading the council's um, report and I answered the questions uh, 3.20 response. And I also really want to encourage you if you don't cancel Flock to really do more frequent audits. Personally, I love every three months. Thanks. Bye. Thank you, Devin K, followed by Dominic B.

Good evening. My name is Devin Klein. I'm president of the Sunnyville Public Safety Officers Association. The PSOA strongly supports the city manager's recommendation to maintain our current AOPL ALPR system and increase transparency and accountability. ALOPR technology is making a difference in Sunnyville. It's helping us solve crimes, locate missing people, and protect the community. Those are facts. I recognize that a segment of the community wants to shut down our camera system. They tell tales of major data breaches and list all the things that could go wrong during just the right conditions. But let's be clear, those are not positions taken based on data. Those are not facts. Instead, if you look at crime data in our city covering the last 10 years, you'd see that now is not the time to shut down a crime fighting tool that is getting results. From 2015 to 2024, violent crime increased by 133%. Motor vehicle theft is up 45%. Firearm related crimes are up 64%. Those are not just a bunch of statistics. Those are real people in our community experiencing real harm. Real people are physically injured, suffering emotional trauma, and struggling to go back to a normal daily life at work, home, or school.

Thank you. Uh Dominic B followed by Steve G. Good morning. Dominic Patanti, public safety officer and executive board member of the PSOA. Since the crime surge Devin just talked about, our detectives are handling an additional 700 cases per year. A DPS uh property crimes detective right now currently has 70 or more cases on their desk. This is happening at the time when we face a more sophisticated professional criminal who's leveraging tech I'm sorry leveraging technology to stay ahead of us. Activating our ALPR system has been a key factor to improving our ability to fight the rising crime. AR ALPR cameras act as digital witnesses. They help us identify suspects, find missing people, and solve cases. What once took a days or weeks now takes minutes. The cameras are a strategic and meaningful response to our city's rise in crime. If the system were to shut down, we have no doubt we'd have more victims and fewer arrests. Our officers value this tool. We're committed to using it responsibly and within the established safeguards. For us, it's not a nice to have tool. It's a must-h have job tool to do our jobs effectively. We respectfully urge you to follow staff recommendations and keep ALPR. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve G. Followed by Andrew H.

Good evening. My name is uh Steve Gorsy. I'm a lieutenant with Sunny Bell Department of Public Safety. Uh 23 years of experience. I'm here tonight on behalf of Sunnyville Public Safety Association. In December 2025 in District 1, Council Member Linda Cell's District, an employee at Zenado on South Mary was robbed at gunpoint as he as he arrived to work. Evidence at the scene was minimal and a sub vehicle description was the only thing we had. Using the Flock camera system, our detectives were able to identify that vehicle, which led to the identification of the suspect. Working with partner agencies, we determined he was responsible for multiple robberies across Santa Clara County. He was ultimately located and arrested, preventing further violent crimes. This case shows how critical this technology is in turning limited information into real results and keeping our community safe. I respectfully urge you to follow staff recommendations and keep the ALPR system in place. Thank you.

Thank you, Anderson H. followed by Anthony S.

Good evening. My name is Andrew Herbert. I'm an officer with the Sunnyale Department of Public Safety. I have over 17 years of experience and I'm here tonight as a member of the Sunnyale Public Safety Officers Association. I want to touch on a case that was mentioned earlier where that occurred in District 2, March 2026. An elderly female was reported by her family in San Monteo County as missing at risk due to dementia and other medical problems. The me missing person was suspected to be driving a vehicle which indicated that they could be a danger to others and would likely become easily lost. This necessitated an urgent need to quickly locate them. The vehicle was entered into flock and when it crossed into Sunnyvale at El Camino Rial and Bernardo, officers were immediately notified, immediately responded, located the vehicle and were able to safely remove the missing person from the roadway, return her to her family. Um, I respectfully urge you to follow the staff recommendations and keep ALPR in place. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, Anthony S, followed by Eugene R. Good evening. My name is Anthony Salt. I'm an officer with the Sunnyville Department of Public Safety. Been an officer there for over 23 years now. And I would like to speak to you on behalf of the Sunnyville Public Safety Officer Association. I want to talk to you about an event that occurred in District 3. In January 2026, officers were investigating a sexual assault that occurred in Sunnyville. It was determined that the suspect sexually assaulted a 9-year-old girl with special needs. The victim was being babysat by a suspect's girlfriend. Us utilizing flock, officers were able to determine what the suspect vehicle looked like as well as its likely path of travel. This led to the identification of the suspect vehicle and suspect. The information enabled officers to locate and arrest the suspect the next day. Because of flock, officers were able to safely apprehend the suspect without incident and in a timely manner. I respectfully urge you to follow staff recommendation and keep the ALPR system in place. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Eugene R, followed by Todd F.

Good morning. My name is Eugene. I'm a robbery homicide detective for Sunnyville DPS and I'm here on behalf of the Sunnyville PSOA. I was going to share um some stories about the robberies and homicide, but our chief and the city manager touched on those. So, I'll uh skip on to some other topics I'd like to discuss. I would like to point out that these cases are happening in almost all of if not all of the council members districts. Um, we are still continuing to see a rise in organized robbery crews across the Bay Area. Uh, as recently as last Saturday, there was a violent robbery that occurred in Sacramento. We are also hearing directly from small business owners. Many are increasingly concerned about the safety and some are even considering closing or leaving if conditions worsen. I'd also like to point out that prior to our flock systems being in place, uh, we had a stolen vehicle with a child inside. Um after an exhaustive hours long search um officers did locate and safely um collect the child. Um but without I believe that with the flock cameras we would have been able to uh get that child sooner and possibly prevent something like that happening in the future. Thank you.

Thank you Todd Followed by Daniel M.

Good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of council. Uh my name is Todd Faky. I'm a resident here in Sunnyale and I'm also an officer with the Sunnyvil Department of Public Safety with 23 years of experience. I speak to you tonight as a member of the Sunnyale Public Safety Officers Association. I'd like to share a critical case where officers were able to utilize the Flock camera system to locate and apprehend dangerous and violent suspects. Uh Vice Mayor Melinger, this event occurred in your district, District 5. Uh, in February 26, DPS received a report of a shooting at the residence in Stewart Drive. It's ultimately determined two victims had been shot. One witness was able to photograph the suspect vehicle with the license plate visible. Officers entered the vehicle into Flock and it was located by Morgan Hill PD later that same day. Uh, Morgan Hill PD was able to apprehend both subjects in the vehicle and ultimately led to the identity and arrest of related subjects. It was determined through interviews that the subjects in the identified vehicle were on their way to Southern California following the shooting. It's unlikely suspects would have been identified without the timely use of flock network.

Thank you. Uh Daniel M, followed by Scott I.

Hi, my name is Dan Moody. Uh I'm an officer with the Sunnyville Department of Public Safety and I've been working for the city for a little less than a year now. I'm here to speak uh as a member of the Sunnyville Public Safety Officers Association. Uh Council Member Relay, I'd like to point your attention to an event that happened in your district, District 6. In July of 2025, officers responded to a Google campus on Humble Court for a subject who was violently assaulting employees. The subject went to multiple Google businesses attacking employees without provocation and threatened to shoot and stab people. Google security was able to provide officers with the suspect's license plate utilizing Flock. officers were able to coordinate with Sanonteo CHP and Daily City PD to locate the violent subject subject. They pursued him through several counties and were eventually able to apprehend the suspect uh with the help of Flock. If Flock wasn't used, he most likely would have been able to continue on that spree. And I've only worked for this city for less than a year, but I've seen the results of this system. I've seen cars get retrieved. I've seen domestic violence people get arrested and victims be saved from this technology. Thank you.

Thank you, Scott. I followed by Naru K.

Good evening. I'm Scott Issacs. Uh I'm a lieutenant with Sunnyville Public Safety. I've been with the department for 19 years. I'm here uh in my capacity as the vice president of the PSOA. Uh over the last few weeks, we've heard a lot of whatif scenarios regarding uh flock and ALPR systems in general. Uh what ifing can be an interesting exercise, but let's look at some of the whatifs. If our ALPR system is shut down, what if an Amber Alert is issued for a kidnapped child? The FBI tells us that the first 3 hours are the most critical window to find that child before the outcome turns fatal. What if that suspect's car was driven right through Sunnyville past our cameras, but we couldn't see it because they were decommissioned? That's a what if our officers in this and this community never want to face? What if Sunnyville resident John Doe has his car stolen? It's used in a crime and abandoned in an area covered by two of our cameras that have since gone dark. Because we can't locate the vehicle, he spends the next month trapped in an economic catch22. Missing shifts, losing money, and struggling to keep his job. For a low-income driver in our city, that's not a far-fetched what if. It's a realistic threat against their economic stability.

Thank you. Um, Naru K followed by Pinder S.

Hello, my name is Nu Khalia and I just wanted to point out some uh things with Flock. Yes, we do support um ALR uh sorry ALPR um some things um with my background I have over five plus years in um risk management including uh cyber security everything is at risk even with or without multifactor authenticator um once you leave your home there's Ring cameras everywhere um utilizing this tool to help help police officers and law enforcement um to protect and serve our city where we live, where our children are outside playing is very important. This is a tool that we need. Um we're not asking for any um we're not asking for special treatment. We're just asking for basic security.

Thank you. Uh, Polinder S followed by Batman.

All right, guys. Hold on. My throat hurts a little bit, but I am a jewelry store owner in Sunnyville. So, they attempted to rob me July 18th. It didn't work. 5 days later, they were on the way back to try again. I already know it wasn't going to work, but Sunnyville PD called me and let me know six cars are on the way to you. Get prepared. I got off the phone. I walked to the front window. They're there. Who else is there? Sunnyville PD. I agree with everybody. I don't trust cameras. I get the whole conspiracy situation, but we live in Sunnyville. The moment you leave your house, you're on a damn camera. Your iPhone is your camera. Your watch is your camera. Everything where we live is a camera. As soon as I make enough money, I'm gonna move to Arkansas. So, y'all are welcome to go with me. But right now, everybody is on the camera, so don't worry about it. This is just another part of it. I know they're coming.

Thank you. Um, Batman followed by Carrie L.

Oh, my dog Batman coming. What's so good? So the crux of the issue here is we want to solve crime, right? Nobody wants crime in our cities, right? But at the same time, there is a cost to using certain technologies such as Flock. Flock we know is not a reputable company. I know that we've been discussing whatifs, but a lot of people have presented what's going on right now. Officers in other parts of the country have misused this software. And genuinely, I really really hope that Sinville PD doesn't have that problem. But also the contract that you guys signed leaves a lot of possibilities open for, you know, federal agents taking advantage of it. The city could do everything right, every single thing right, but we know that federal agents have a backdoor access to this. We cannot allow this to continue. Please end the contract.

Thank you. Carrie L, followed by Alex D. Hi, good morning. Um, I'm longtime Sunnyville resident. I urge the city to immediately shut down all flock cameras and council of a contract with the company. Flock safety is fundamentally untrustworthy. They have bypassed state law SB54 protection, sharing sensor data with ICE and CBP without authorization. Their patents allow widespread use and for tracking individuals by gender and even race. This is mass surveillance, not a simple crime fighting tool. Furthermore, Flock has utilized overseas gig workers in the Philippine to access and tag our sensored data for AI training, creating an unacceptable unacceptable security risk. Trust is broken. Neighbors like Mountain View, Coutino, Campbell, Saratoga have already turned off their cameras and are cancelled contracts due to these concerns. By continuing, Sunvil enables a system that track those that are undocumented, seeking abortion, gender affirming care. So basically, our resident telling you not feel safe. Do not prioritize algorithm over constituents privacy. Turn off cameras and cancel the contract. Thanks.

Next up is Alex D. That is my last speaker card in the room. Yeah. So, I know some people here have claimed that there are that they that and that the fog company and the flock cameras have some level of uh guard rails. But it's important to understand that none of these guardrails even matter because it's been proven before that people have been able including ICE and the DHS have been able to access all of the logs and all the footage of Flock and other ALPRs without even leaving a note in the audit audit log or any other trace. While it's great that our city examined logs and settings, you are presuming that the vendor is providing the customer with the same level of visibility that the vendor has, which never will be true. Please cancel the flaw contract.

Thank you. That was my last speaker card in the room. We'll move to remote speakers. Remote speakers are warned to limit their comments to the agenda item being considered. Speakers who are ruled out of order will 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, we have Tim M, followed by Trent B. Tim, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council.

Hi, thank you. My name is Tim McKenzie. I'm with the Silicon Valley Democratic Socialist of America. I urge you to cancel the flock contract and get rid of ALPRs. According to the report we just heard, the internal audit shared that the statewide lookup tool was turned on until January of this year, meaning the vast majority of the time that Sunnyvale has been having a flock contract. There has been sharing with other agencies in the state that did not go through a sign off from the command structure, did not go through the written uh rules that we just heard. We cannot trust Flock. We cannot trust ALPRs. I believe it was the city manager said if anyone can use this tool responsibly at Sunnyvil. Well, unfortunately, no one can use it responsibly. It is just not safe. And it's also ineffective. Uh criminals are swapping license plates causing innocent people to be turn pulled over just like what happened a month ago in Oakland. Cancel the contract. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Trent B followed by Victor S. Trent, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council.

Hi Trent again. It's clear that the ALP PR system is a band-aid which obiscates underlying social ills. The main one for our city being a lack of self-perpetuating community connections and humanentric city design. Sunnyale is clearly a great city working towards a path to improve and solve such issues. But lacking safe places for houseless folk to stay and untrustworthy systems like flock are strike reminders of what it means when we accept convenient narratives and tools rather than building healthy and robust solutions. Given the current federal administration, some nasty corporate strategies, and the false flag hallucinations automated systems can produce, upholding the right to privacy is fundamental to our constitutional freedoms and American dream. News about ALPR systems have shown bad actors or even simple options like the left on uh option for state lookup can easily erode um our capacity to have those rights. Uh we should not be content with enabling a dystopic surveillance state because it was harder or more costly to fix the underlying problems of of our society. We should just be bold enough to wrangle the root problems so that every citizen, immigrant, non-resident and tourist has a fantastic life in Sunavail. Um please revoke the flock system uh contract. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Victor S. followed by Richard L. Victor, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address council.

Evening mayor and council members. I'm Victor Sin, chair of the Santa Clara County chapter of the ACLU of Northern California. Automated license please read is a surveillance technology that makes it less safe for us particularly immigrants, black and brown people, religious minorities, people seeking reproductive health care or gender affirming care and protesters exercising their first amendments rights. Flock's transparency portal on Sunnyfield's data shows that about 0.4% of the data are related to hot list. The vast majority of the data is gathered on law-abiding people going about their everyday business. The current federal administration is looking for ways to exploit local surveillance systems in order to target immigrants and activists. The only type of secure data is no data. In other words, do not gather the data to begin with. We urge you to terminate the flock contracts and end the use of ALPR. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Richard L followed by Brandon K. Richard, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council.

Good evening. My name is Richard Leer. I am a resident of Sunnyvil and the current serving chairperson of the Sunnyvil Personnel Board. This technology is currently in ethical and professional use by the city and is an instrumental tool to the Department of Public Safety's ability to safely service our city. Voting against continued use of this tool will only result in less safety and limit DPS's ability to effectively counter crime. Crime is not going to go down in the absence of flock. The world evolves. We are more technologically dependent upon data management. And if our law enforcement practices do not follow, our public safety will suffer. Potential smash and grab jewelry robbers can use cell phones to coordinate multiple stolen cars targeting Sunnyvale. And continued use of flock would alert DPS the moment they exit the freeway onto Sunnyvale. Flock technology and ICE enforcement in Sunnyvale are not correlated with each other. There will be a

Next we have Brandon K followed by Jacob Y. Brandon, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council.

I urge the city of Sunnyville to cancel their contract with flock and seize pursuance of any ALPR technology. ALPRs have systemic flaws from technical mishaps that have resulted in guns out traffic stops for misidentified persons, spying on peaceful protesters, stalking exes, and illegally sharing data with federal officers, and countless other issues. ALPRs conduct mass warrantless draget surveillance on all persons in a community regardless of their criminality. The California Consumer Privacy Act considers license plate numbers as personal information, and people drive cars. So, by extension, these systems track people. Independent studies show flot cameras ineffective at actually preventing crime. The amount of crimes resolved by use of this technology is disproportionately low relative to the innocent citizens surveiled. We cannot sacrifice our right to privacy for the dangerous illusion of security. Don't buy into the false idea that this data can be protected. The only way this data can be safe is for it to not exist. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Jacob Y followed by Kimberly W. Jacob, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council.

Hello. I'm here to urge you to cancel the contract of the flock master rail with cameras in our community. In multiple neighboring cities, including Los Altos, Mountain View, and Santa Clara, the nationwide search setting has been turned on and used for immigration enforcement without the knowledge or consent of the cities themselves. This isn't just a technical flaw. It's an intentional business practice and a fundamental failure by Flock. to protect the privacy and safety of residents. If these systems can be accessed so easily and frequently, they put everyone at risk. And it was also mentioned earlier that flocks supposedly disabled the ability for California police agencies to share data out of state. Well, I just looked at the portal for Elcun in Southern California, and as of today, they still have many, many outofstate police departments uh listed as having access. It's clear that Block still willingly allows and encourages illegal data sharing. Cancel the contract. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Kimberly W, followed by Stuart.

Kimberly, you've been unmuted and have one minute for city council. Hi, I'm Kimberly Woo and I'm from Services immigrant rights and education network also known as Siren which serves our immigrant communities around the Bay Area including Sunnyvil. We strongly urge you to cancel flock and AOPRs due to the massive constitutional privacy violations. Real people are being harmed by these AOPRs that weaponize our personal data against every driver on our roads without a warrant. ICE and CBP have weaponized AOPs to hunt and deport our immigrant loved ones. And state laws prohibit data sharing with external agencies, but data sharing with unauthorized agencies or outside agencies only make a loophole in California sanctuary laws increase anxiety when leaving our homes out of fear of being tracked. While there's side door access in which local PDs have searched our data on behalf of federal agencies, it can also happen through fusion centers in which law enforcement have coined fusion centers as the wild west because any federal, state, and local officer can search our AOPR data without any regulation and these cap cameras capture way more than just license plates. We ultimately cannot trust Flock, the vendor. Next we have Stuart followed by Jay. Stuart, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council.

Hi, I'm Stuart Norton, longtime Sunnyail resident. I'm really upset that Sunnyville has been using the vulner vulnerable flock cloud systems for 247 monitoring of the public. These systems have already been misused many times, as has been publicly reported and referred to here many times. Please end our contracts for mass surveillance as soon as possible. There are of course posit positive uses of this technology and maybe that was an important factor a couple years ago when this program started. But it should now be clear to all of us that mass surveillance is a danger to the public. Flock expands the ability of bad actors like the federal officers that we've watched publicly commit murder in Minnesota to harm our community. These people are breaking the law, and nice improvements like audit logs and an access approval process just don't address the fundamental problem with lawless federal and private actors and a vulnerable cloud data system. Please protect our safety by protecting our privacy. Shut down the Fox systems immediately. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Jay, followed by showing you. Jay, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address city council. Thank you and good morning. Uh my family's in public safety and was on the fire department for many years. So I spent a lot of time uh with and around police departments. Uh that being said, uh please remove the flock cameras immediately. Join Mountain View, Los Altos, and Santa Cruz as well as many other uh jurisdictions around the country. Auditing can only see what happened and Flock as many others have shared has lots of vulnerabilities and back doors. Uh Victor from the ACLU also said that the only secure data is no data and the federal policies change at the whim of the government. Um any money that goes to flock supports their policies and sharing even if it is not enabled here in Sunnyvale or in California. That protection does not follow me when I go other places and sophisticated actors will always know how to get around this uh supposed u protection that flock provides. Send a message that this company does not deserve the support of their community any or or anywhere in the world. Please cancel the contract. Thank you. Thank you.

Next we have showing you followed by Peggy S. Showing you've been unmuted and have one minute to address council.

Hi, thank you. This is Andrew Seagler with Showing Up for Racial Justice Santa Clara County. Um, cancel the contract. Ditch ALPRs entirely. You know, I like to hear the uh public safety officers say it. They've never solved a crime before without flock. And I just find that really hard to believe. Um, you know, it's uh you look at the uh their their transparency page on on flock safety. I'm looking for the city of Sunnyvil right now and there were 873,000 vehicles detected in the last 30 days on Sunnyville's cameras. Now, let's say a thousand let's say there were a thousand bad guys. That still means that there were 872,000 people who had their vi who had their rights violated. You guys took an oath when you when you you took an oath when you got onto the deis to say that you would protect the constitution and the constit and the people under the constitution. So you got to protect that 872,000 people that got tracked.

Thank you. Next we have Peggy S. followed by Manny. Peggy, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address council.

Hello, this is Peggy Shamster. Um, again talking on my own behalf. Um, thank you to staff for your presentation and thoughtful safeguards and policies. I deeply appreciate our Department of Public Safety and um, wholeheartedly believe in your ability to keep us safe. Um, even with strong policies and safeguards, let's remember that bad actors don't care about what's legal. While the use of ALPRs have had benefits in Sunnyvale, I have grave concerns about flock specifically. They have an insidious business model that has already developed a nationwide surveillance state. I respectfully urge you to stop use of the flock system while we look at our the abuses and our vulnerabilities. Uh let's also keep in mind the very tenuous state of our democracy that coupled with a nationwide mass surveillance state with an administration that seeks to punish opposition is a genuine public safety concern. Uh we have an opportunity to keep Sunnyville residents safer by ending the use of flock security. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Manny. Manny, you've been unmuted and have one minute to address council.

All right, I want to be quick. So, my name is Manny. I'm an undocumented organizer. So, first off, I want to say Flux patent clearly states that their AI neural networks are capable of categorizing people based on their height and weight, their race and gender, clothes and accessories worn, bicycles, and even animals. Secondly, in the contract language, there is a worldwide rights clause. The reason why Flock includes this worldwide rights clause is because of the fact that it sends data overseas to Filipino gig workers so that they can help train the AI models. Thirdly, there is a something you guys are ignoring which is the 2021 DHS policy which governs ALPRs and it requires that all ALPR vendors, not just Flock, not leave any trail of ICE in any audit logs except in audit logs made available only to ICE. So, you will not find ICE in your audits. And if you want a personal story, a a Chicago teacher named Marimar Martinez was talking.

Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker on this agenda item. Thank you. And with that, I will close the public hearing and we'll take a five minute recess and come back at 12:56 a.m. Okay. Brother.

Let's go ahead and reconvene and we'll bring it to council for questions. First up is Council Member Lei.

Thanks so much. Um I want to thank staff for their hard work in preparing this uh council questions. We sent you a lot and I'm going to lob a couple more at you. Um, I realize that this is a lot of questions and I really want to express my appreciation that we're able to do this in public to assuage some of the fears um of the public if we can and if not maybe clear up clear up some um misconceptions and inconsistencies. I have a question about our contract with flock in the I think 3.37 I asked about the encryption key and I apologize to that. I think I somewhat misunderstood the industry standard. I thought that we would hold the encryption key, but it seems like we don't. And so my concern is that if within the contract language it says that flock is able to share data given I believe the wording is reasonable reason to believe uh reasonable a reasonable reason in cases where there is I want to dig in on that and talk about what reasonable means. I would like to see our contract strengthened to be specifically a subpoena or a warrant. There was a case involving the murder in district 6 where I served an arrest warrant. I want to know if Flock would be able to gather data for an arrest warrant rather in the absence of a subpoena uh sorry an arrest request in the absence of an actual subpoena or a warrant. I think this might be a question for the city attorney. So, I I think the thing to um really look at in the contract um there's several different provisions that people have looked at, but in 11.1 it says that Flock has to comply with

all laws and and that includes local, state, um and national laws and policies. So, so they are required to comply with the city's ALPR policy. Um, so there is that wording in um, and I'm is I can't remember the section number right off the top of my head right now, but that talks about good faith belief. Um, however, that has to be understood in connection with 11.1, which says they have to comply with the ALPR policy. Um, so it's it's misleadingly when you read it, it's it seems very broad, but then if you read it in connection with the rest of the contract in context, it's it's not as broad as um as it seems by itself.

Thank you. I also have a question. Um I think my next question was about in the absence in I was assuming the presence that we would have ownership of the encryption key. It seems that we don't and it seems like the process if Flock were to be served with a warrant would be that federal agents or someone else would serve the agent would serve the warrant to Flock. They would hand over the data and then they would be legally obligated or not depending on the case to tell us about it. Is that true?

I can take that. We we actually did verify that information as part of the audit and asked the question directly as to what would happen if a warrant or a federal agents or if current administration that we're all concerned about re recently asked for information or data that they should not necessarily have access to. And the process because of the 10th amendment that we have at the city and any city has we will receive notification from flock if they are served or if they're actually received by a judge an actual warrant. So, they do have to get a judge to be able to be convinced to do this. And then once they do have the warrant, then they could go ahead and bring the warrant. We then have seven days after they notify us to go ahead and say, "We do not want to have our data shared and to go ahead and proceed through legal terms and action." So, they can't just hand it over. We do get notified and we do get seven days to respond, to pause that, and then it goes through a big legal proceeding.

Thank you. I appreciate that because as uh the members of the public raised um I don't necessarily trust Flock but I have high confidence in our staff. Um speaking of which I believe that many of the members of the public were referring to side door access where um in other jurisdictions DPS equivalent officers, police officers were able to look things up for their friends and it looks like within our system you're required to have a case number. Could someone please speak more about that? Yeah, I could speak to that. So, in any data system, we are required to take a two-year test and training on our CLT system. But in any law enforcement sensitive data, there is u conceivable bad apples, right, in in a department. But we have a very robust accountability system. We would know that you would have to have a legal reason to be conducting that search. So, if you are breaking the law, then we will hold you accountable and up to termination, right? Um so um we would know about that through our audit logs. We would see that activity. Um but is it conceivable that an an officer could be acting in bad faith? Yes. But I am very confident that we have very robust accountability systems built into everything we do in public safety um to ensure that we hold on to the high level of public trust that we currently um work under. And just to add to that, we do get re alerts on odd data retrieval. So for instance, there was the example provided by the public as it relates to several hundred of of requests of a p personal license plate that would absolutely get flagged. And because the way that public safety doesn't have all of the officers authorized to use the system, I have a lot more high confidence in our public safety department's way of administering this application. it is not available for throughout the entire department. There's only certain administrators that can go ahead and receive this

information. So, I have high confidence in that. And then now we have the backup on it looking over as well at the same time.

Thank you. And I just want to take a moment as well to thank our um DPS officers for the work that they do. Um all of the crimes that have been solved and were cited by um by the public commenters as well as the chief. All these crimes have faces and names attached. They have histories. they have they have trauma attached to these crimes. Um, and I especially wanted to thank the public commenters who aren't here anymore, the um, jewelry store owners, and to acknowledge that these have been an important safety public safety tool in reducing the incident of of these that have been terrorizing our South Asian community. South Asians in this city have been the victims of these smash and grab robberies. They have been the victims of Bengal snatching frequently um not just on the south side of town but also on in my district near the Hindu temple. My my neighbor was hospitalized for a number of days following one of these. It is difficult to quantify the level of hurt that families go through when they are victims of these crimes. And I want to thank public safety for handling these and for speaking about these. It's a difficult job. It is a difficult job. You guys see so many bad things all the time and thank you so much for all that you do. Um, I have a follow-up question about I think well not so much a follow-up question but an observation which is that based on the council questions. It feels like the broad buckets that we're relying on are not just vendor promises and the current software settings but our own our own policies and statewide and state laws and those are in compliance currently. I think there is broad suspicion of flock and of the federal government and I feel like both things both of those are fair. I hope this attorney will take a moment to address the concerns about the fourth amendment.

So, so first I do want to acknowledge the concerns about privacy that a number of community members have raised and and I I think the fourth amendment is extremely important and um I would you know if if I had a concern that there were that the use of flock was a fourth amendment violation then you know my advice would be not to use the system But based on the current state of the law, which is a a fairly wellestablished long line of cases from California, the Ninth Circuit, other circuits, and the US Supreme Court, the Fourth Amendment does not uh prevent police officers from photographing people in public places where there's no expectation of privacy. Now, I know there's there's legal debate now about the the expectation of privacy and how, you know, some of the some of these cases, many of these cases were decided when um you know, maybe we maybe police had video cameras and before that they just had still cameras um or cameras mounted on poles and things of that nature. So we do live in a different world now technologically and so there may be the the law may evolve but currently um I in my opinion it's not a fourth amendment violation to use ALPR technology in this way.

Thank you. Um, more questions. I'm sorry. One question for um, Kathleen. The 30-day retention about the deletion there. Are we as uh, through your IT review, are you confident that the data there is fully unreoverable after the 30-day deletion and what assurances do we have about that? So, we were able to actually track the data and see when the servers actually go through their retention cycle. And we were able to confirm and visibly see that at the 30-day mark that data goes away. This is not just on a regular cloud environment. I do also want to remind everyone that the flock system is using the Amazon web government cloud or what they call their gov cloud that is under higher scrutiny as it relates to data access, data storage, data retention, data retrieval as well as the way that data is even put into those servers and taken out. So, GovCloud has higher regulations than what we would do in regular cloud-based services and by that we are able to track a lot of it. Now, I know that someone had made a mention of the public about, oh, we don't know if they've stored another version of it or if it went through. I I I can't speak to things I can't track, but we can see our data going into our tenant. That is another thing that we did look at as it relates to our audit is to make sure that the part of the storage, the tenant of our gov cloud is Sunnyville specific. We did look to make sure that we can't share data across other tenants. it doesn't accidentally get put into some other jurisdiction or vice versa. So, it is locked as it relates to that. But I cannot speak to the conspiracy theory or the idea that okay, the data is being placed someplace else or another copy exists. I I can't track that.

Um I think and I think in your council question answers you um addressed the uh metadata and how that is also wiped. I'm curious about what industry standards are for this if there are generally third party party auditors or code review um as part of this process to ensure this. So we we did go ahead and look at whether the standards across how the data is stored and right now the industry standard for these types of ALPR systems is a 30-day uh in addition to that we are going to be looking at not just it doing an audit but I'm very excited to say or preview the fact that we are about to enter a contract to have a a chief virtual chief information security officer that would be by a third party. They will also be helping us audit systems that are criminal justice and other major systems related. So we will actually have even more help very soon here to ensure that our data is being secured and properly stored.

Thank you. And then to the question of the audit which I believe is kept indefinitely after the 30 days. Does that mean that the license plates that were looked up are kept indefinitely or just the people who are looking at them? No, the this the logs of the data is kept indefinitely. And so we can see, for instance, if uh Yan Lelay here goes ahead, Captain Lee goes ahead and checks for something, I can check that and I will be able to track that forever that he looked up these license plates or it's not even the license plate data. We can just look up the fact that he looked up these records and get information. The data itself is actually gone unless again there was a crime or there's some sort of open case that would require us to keep that data for longer.

Thank you. That's the extent of my questions. Thank you, council member. Uh, next up is council member Chang.

Thank you. I was wondering if you could explain a little bit more about the relationship DPS has with private entities that have lock cameras like Lowe's and Home Depot. Um, are you a do you access them? Can flock access them? If we turn them off within the city, would the city would it be a citywide turnoff? So, we're able to access them if they allow us to be a sharing partner, right? So, if if the city chose to discontinue Flock, um that's a private entity. They're operating their own system, their own cameras. It would be up to them. We just wouldn't have any access to it.

And then, so if if we decided not to continue with Flock, then it would just be the cityowned cameras. Yes. So, what we're talking about tonight is the 20 cameras that are operated and owned by the city. Okay. Thank you. And then my follow-up question, so the contract is currently through July 2027, or is there a specific time and date?

I can get you the exact date, but it goes till 2027, and I believe it's July. I don't right now. The date slips my mind in my papers here, but I can get back to you. Okay. Thank you. That's all my questions for now. Thank you, council member. Next up is Vice Mayor Melinger. I'm sorry. Oh, one second. Go ahead. Uh July 19th, 2027. Sorry for the interruption.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, uh Miss Boute Foster G, Chief Ptor for a very thorough presentation. I appreciate all of the hard work that you have done on this. Uh I co-authored the colleagues memo with council member Lei, council member Shiny Vasan and gave you 60 days and I am very impressed with the work that you have done in that time. Um I am going to ask a couple of questions. Um, the first and most important question to my mind is, are there any alternative ALPR vendors with comparable abilities on the market right now?

The short answer, Vice Mayor, is no. There uh the power of the flock system is that 14 other agencies within our county are using them. And as we know, um, criminals come into our city driving a vehicle and they leave our city driving a vehicle and they don't respect boundaries. They go throughout jurisdictions. And that is the true power of the flock system is it allows us to um connect and allows us to communicate and it allows us to reduce our response window. And I think an example that we had today was the jewelry store robberies, right? I mean, we were able to be waiting for them. um when they arrived and the only reason we we were able to do that is because we had a heads up. So I know this is a little winded to your um question but no there is currently not that I am aware of anybody that in this space that is at the level of Flock right now.

Okay. Thank you. Um why wasn't multifactor authentication on to begin with? So unfortunately, Flock actually didn't have multifactor included in their product line until recently. So that was a complaint that many of their clientele had provided. However, having said all of that, multiffactor is extremely important when you're dealing with public-based systems, when you have folks that are going in because they're easily hackable. When you're talking about criminal justice systems that are going through sieges requirements, going through govclouds that are specific with all of their security functions, multiffactor isn't as critical because the population who were actually accessing the system was pretty much public safety. In fact, it didn't have a login until this all came to light. So, do I trust the three people in public safety that had access? I do actually. So, did I need to have multifactor for those three to make sure they were doing the right thing? Wasn't going to push it. Now, the product ended up bringing it to our light anyway, which is why we turned it on. Therefore, there's more protections as it is. But,

thank you. I I'm I'm sorry. I am actually going to start cutting off responses given the late hour. Sure. Um Okay. Um

I do have concerns about sections 4.3 and 5.3 of the flock contract. 4.3 talks about anonymized data. It says repeatedly in the contract, Flock does not own and shall not sell anonymized data. It says repeatedly in the contract that the city of Sunnyvil owns the data. However, it also says that it can use that anonymized data to use and perform services including the training of machine learning algorithms. And then 5.3 is I believe what council member Lei was speaking of um that they have to disclose data if legally required to do so. I think that's been asked and answered. So can you talk a little bit about 4.3? So that's the uh anonymized data. Yes.

So the way I read that and and the technical side of it I would rely on the IT director maybe to give more insight on that. that the way I read it is that anonymized data is data that cannot be identified as being connected to any individual person um and that they can use it for various purposes um such as training um machine learning which I believe is is essentially AI um and I don't like the technical part of that I I couldn't speak to um but my understanding is that is anonymized data and also they can't sell the data so they could use it internally Um, but they could not go out and sell it um to make money off of our data.

Okay. Um, I'm going to lay out a couple things that I consider to be sort of core truths and facts about this and then I'm going to turn off my microphone and let my colleagues continue. Um, first of all, I'm going to say that I am satisfied by staff's report on the internal controls and processes in place around flock. I do not have concerns based on what I've heard tonight of internal abuse of the flock system within the city of Sunnyale or by city of Sunnyville employees and I commend staff on a very thorough audit and a very thorough set of safeguards. I believe these ALPRs are useful. I think that the evidence that they have stopped crimes and solved crimes, serious violent crimes that have caused serious harm to our community, I believe that evidence is incontrovertible. I do not trust Flock as a vendor. I'm going to just straight up say that I do not trust them. There has been enough. Their public posture has been inappropriate. They have been late on responding to security concerns. They are have been late on maintaining their own trust. I am a software engineer by trade. You all know this. Uh Kathleen has been the victim of many of my tirades on usability over the years. Uh, I spent five years working at Dropbox. The number one company value at Dropbox, which was drilled into us repeatedly, was worthy of trust. And I'm not saying this to glaze Dropbox because it is a private company. I no longer work there. I'm not getting any benefit from saying this, but that was drilled into us repeatedly. And the reason for it was selfish. That company understood that keep people keep their entire lives in their product. and if they lost their users trust they would be dead. Flock has not shown that commitment in its public and private actions. I have very serious concerns and while I appreciate the depth of the audit that

you have performed and the safeguards put in place in the AWS GovCloud, I am not satisfied that there are no possible federal backd doors. I am not satisfied that it is impossible for flock internal actors to access this data. So, what I'm saying is I actually agree with most of the public comment that we've heard tonight on both sides of this issue, which puts us as a council in a very difficult place where we have some essentially conflicting truths that we're going to have to deal with. So, I wanted to lay that out. I'm going to turn off my microphone now, let all my colleagues speak, and hopefully we can come to some kind of motion soon.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is Council Member Sherbasan. Thank you, mayor. Um, as uh most of you know, I am a cyber security technologist and uh I have a AWS certification. Um, I trust first of all, thanks a lot for all the work you do and then uh IT department and then especially DPS. I was I visited all the Indian jewelry stores within the day of the robbery. It's so traumatic. One of the jewelry shop the owner was uh injured so severely there was blood everywhere. That's not the city we need to be living in. And then if and then we have also evidence to prove that uh ALPR and flock I'm combining both the things but two are different one is a technology the other one is a company uh as help DPS and then we heard repeatedly how it is solving uh the help uh our DPS Indian community is a targeted minority community When people talked about uh minority, this is a community uh minority community and then the jeweler businesses were robbed, house are vandalized, temple are desecrated and then robbed and then the seniors are the chain snatching all those things are happening. They came here to just visit their parents and then the safety of our uh our residents is the number one priority of the city. I there is no compromise. We cannot be

living in a unsafe city at all. So I also know that uh IT director said all the logs network log aggre uh organization log event log and all those things which I am extremely familiar with. So I think we have enough control and then the way I look at this is any system can be hacked. We know that for a fact. We get so many uh mail uh saying that your credit card is compromised and then here is the new way to get the thing reserved. We trust Google, Facebook, uh Meta, Apple with our data, right? I know some a public rightfully commented those are all opt-in data but then very very few people opt out. We still use our cell phone right with location services as we speak. Somebody knows that this is the location I am in. So uh and then there are multiple ways a system can be broken and then there four main ways are flock themsel could be uh hacked. DPS could be customer error or somebody a rogue officer or hackers in general. Hackers any system can be hacked. Uh I I jokingly say any software system is a hackable system. So that's the thing we work we are in. And then at a large company I was in charge of data security. The way we did that was how much risk can we take for what is the risk benefit ratio that's how we measured can we live

with this because we cannot protect all the data at all and then similarly yeah we don't trust flock but unfortunately that's the only company available right now unless we de we can develop our software but then that can be a hack too so there is no way of doing that and then I trust DPS. I I as chief pointed out the the the chances of some rogue officer in Sunnyale is so remote. Uh with all these things I am uh yeah I I don't trust flock but at the same time we don't have any alternative at this stage. We cannot be uh living in a society where uh all these crimes are happening and then the tool is tool for DPS is not we're not adequately giving them the tool. One of the emails from PSOA chief said that there is enough data in San Diego if what 30 officers do with the ALPR they need 111 officers which is four times or three and a half times which we don't have budget in Sunnyville we cannot have three and a half times more DPS officers so system plus I totally agree with our uh uh public comments on the privacy privacy issue, backdoor issue, all these things. I was in charge of the 15th most visited website in the world. We were hacked. GE I was in charge of uh digital strategy entire GE website. I we were hacked. That's the thing we are in. But having said that we need to adequately protect and then encryption is one way.

Uh you also mentioned that it's a local store encryption, transit encryption and remote storage encryption. So the chances of some hacker hacking into the data is very little provided we have the right encryption key. Whether flock can sell the data uh it could but uh I don't know what are the other ways we can we uh any other company including our own software uh it will be hacked and then uh so we need to take that kind of risk knowingly we that's a risky situation we need to protect ourselves with appropriate clauses and legal contracts and uh some other mechanisms where we can be we can uh protect the privacy of our uh our citizens. One important last thing uh uh our camera to surf square foot ratio is the lowest in the neighboring cities. Right? That's an important factor. That's a with the limited resources of ALPR cameras, we are able to solve these crimes. So that's what I would like our residents to uh know about and then we are not here for surveillance or anything like that. So those are my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh next up is Council Member Cisneros.

Yes. Um, thank you very much for your careful and proactive consideration. And it's very clear to me where the values of staff lie and of the city lie. Um, and when you did this work, I I could feel that like this these are all things that trouble you too and that we are all in line with that and have ultimately the same goals um tonight. But there are many things. So, fortunately, many of my questions have already been asked and well answered. I do have a couple more. Um, the there were concerns brought up about the vulnerabilities within the cameras themselves. How have we um know issues like penetration testing and potentially doing open source? How have we addressed um those concerns internally?

Yeah. So what we learned is that if if you want to try to compromise the camera, the best way to do that is to climb the pole, get the camera down because it's going to take time. Like I said, the in data that is on the camera is encrypted and that is something you have to locally be able to work through that you can actually the one thing that we did find is if you want to use as a Wi-Fi hotspot and you know how to hack in and use it as a Wi-Fi hotspot, have fun. Um, but as it relates to getting to the data and being able to get to pertinent data, the camera only stores only the amount of information that it has if it did not have the ability to reach the network in the cloud. So, it will keep seven days if there's no power, no network. Otherwise, it's going to as soon as it can reach the cloud, it's going to send that information up. It's not locally storing data onto the camera unless it absolutely has to. So, the idea that we're going to hack cameras and be able to go in, I I would love to see someone do it. I actually almost authorized my staff to go ahead and tamper with the cameras and realized that's a breach of contract and probably wouldn't have any support at that point. So, we backed away. But the the reality is we have yet to hear of an actual legitimate breach of the camera and the data that way. And I would love to see someone show me and how to do that because we have not seen it. and the reports that we've seen are are actually not fully accurate when we try to re recreate those steps. So, I I have not I don't I can't speak to it.

Okay. Thank you very much. That was very helpful. Um could you explain why staff went with recommending an annual audit? Uh things are moving really fast in all of this space and we want to be able to have the most upto-ate most thorough up-to-date information. I'd love to understand that recommendation, the justification behind that particular time frame a little bit more and how often would be feasible. So, we went with annual audit because when we're talk when when all of this flock conversation started, I proactively reached out to Kathleen and asked for her help and basically opened up our books and said, "Whatever you need, we're going to cooperate with. Please poke around our closet, make sure we're doing things right." Um, so that takes a lot of work and a lot of staff time on it. Um, what we do internally, what Captain Lee does is he periodically, and I'm talking uh monthly, is doing our own internal DPS audits. But what we wanted to do was really invite a third party into our house and really kind of verify that we were doing everything correctly. And that takes a lot of work on it's part. So, we didn't want to overt tax um Kathleen's staff when we are internally doing our own audits. And then I'll let you speak more if you want.

Sure. And the idea is that again the logs are there, the alerts are there in those patterns of behavior and things can be tracked and DPS is tracking that and looking at it and they're very closely looking at not just on a monthly basis, but when those alerts pop up, they're being very proactive about that as well. And so we didn't feel the need to hover over them uh very often. But certainly if we were to increase the frequency of us participating or even like I said our our third party working with us to do a more formal audit, it would just mean staff time and resource time to be able to do that.

Okay, that that really that really helps. Um, and as been it's been mentioned, one of the greatest strengths of Flock for us is the connectivity between cities and being able drive in, drive out. The cities that connect to Sunnyvale that want that people would be driving in or out of, a lot of them are turning these cameras off. So when the cities around us are turning them off, does that reduce how much does that reduce the usefulness of us having hours on?

So there's 14 um jurisdictions within our county that still have them on. So that's a significant amount of law enforcement coverage in in our in our county. There are some um smaller jurisdictions. Mountain View obviously is the one we all think of that does have them turned off and obviously we're not going to have the data that comes out of there. But maybe Palto and into Sonteo County, you know, we're able to look at that data. There's 400 agencies in the state of California that are currently using Flock and we only operate within the state of California. So, um although we Flock did lose some of these smaller jurisdictions, by far it's still a useful tool. the vast majority of our area is being covered and we're still getting a lot of useful data out of it and we're seeing a lot of results.

Where do you think the tipping point would be? I can't say a specific number. I'd have to watch the data and keep track of it. I mean, if multiple jurisdictions conceivably started removing flock from their inventory, then we would have to see how our results were affected by that. Um, I can say that I sit uh on a county chief's association and I meet monthly with various other chiefs and at this point I don't hear a lot of talk about flock being um removed from these jurisdictions. Could happen. Nobody reports to me out of these jurisdictions, but um I'm not hearing a lot of discussion about it.

Okay. Thank you. Um like I said, these this is all moving very fast. So I'm thinking ahead like if that usefulness declines like you know the utility is important if that's really the big justification right now to have them. Um what would be the protocol if uh we did detect unauthorized access? So, if we did detect unauthorized access, of course, Captain Lee would bring that to me and we I would immediately call Kathleen and we would work on how deep that unauthorized access went, what happened, what was lost. We could um shut down sharing abilities to a jurisdiction that maybe um is having issues. and we could do that immediately, but that would be brought up to us right away and we would take steps to understand how bad that breach was and then how to stop it.

And if it was something internal, we could immediately address. Yes. Internal it would be easier. But if there were to be like let's say an unauthorized access by the federal government, we don't know how they got in. like we can, you know, cut the access, but then we don't know how they wouldn't get back in at that point. Would the option then be to pull the system?

I think that would be a hypothetical that we would have to examine and think about. I've I've never seen that happen. I've never heard of that happening um with my law enforcement colleagues. It's never happened in Sunnyville, I'll tell you that. Um I've never heard of that being an issue at all. Um, conceivably if that were a scenario, you know, I think that would be something I would immediately bring to the city manager. We would look and Kathleen and we would see how we could protect our data.

I think it's really important to think about these things ahead of time. So, if something like that were to happen, it would be a deeply disturbing situation and something that the community is very concerned about. I'm concerned about. So, I just want to make sure that we h like, you know, if we keep the c if we keep these cameras, hopefully that would never happen, but we have a lot of plans for things that have never happened before and hope never happened, right? Um, let's see here. Who has the ability to modify or delete logs? The actual logs themselves, they're not to be deleted. They're permanently kept.

They're Oh, okay. So, uh, because you mentioned I thought I heard like, oh, we choose to comp. very late. Um that it was some kind of choice, but they could be modified or deleted by anyone at any time at least. Correct. They're they're kept indefinitely. Yeah. And that that's locally stored.

Well, no, it's still stored in the cloud. So, that's all still stored in the same spot in the .gov cloud. However, those logs aren't part of the 30-day retention policy. They're kept indefinitely. And so, we would have access to that. Now, there if a user, let's say, um we we wanted to I think there was an example of we want to take down a camera. It is true that a officer or even IT, we don't have the ability to actually take a camera off a pole and do that. That is flock that would own that piece of it. But the data itself we have access. Now another question on the camera. So let's say it was disconnected from the network. How long could it how much storage does it have? Only seven days.

Only seven days. Correct. Okay. Um okay. Well those are my question. I'll just say very quickly um just to echo some of the comments. I do not trust Flock as a company, but I very much have a lot of faith in the city and the sincerity and the the work and the capabilities to um if it is possible to do this safely, the city could do it. But I want to do if it is possible to do it safely. That is not a determination I've made. And I to give a little context, when I got my master's degree in public policy, I did my thesis on data privacy and sharing in public schools um in partnership with the ACLU of Northern California. Granted, that was um over a decade ago now. So technology is different, data is different. That whole world I no longer current on in that capacity. But um yeah, I would have had a lot more different different paper. But uh yeah, it's coming from that place and holding these concerns all at the same time like my colleague said, I just wanted to echo that real quick. But thank you for your work and thank you members of the community for being here. So I it's really amazing. Thanks.

Thank you, council member. Next up is council member cell. Um so I wanted to thank the public for being here. Um thank my colleagues for bringing this to the dis and uh for public safety and it to be taking this so seriously and in all my three years of being here I've never seen so many sworn officers um make comment. So this is something as the public safety chief said it's uh the technology the tools that this provides to public safety it um is tremendous or else we wouldn't be here you wouldn't have done so a thorough analysis we wouldn't have the public safety officers you know here all testifying um and talking about the violent crimes and the violent criminals that have been put into jail so they no longer can harm people on the street, for elderly people to be returned to their loved ones, for kids to be safe. Um, so this is serious. I understand the public also thinks this is serious. Um, so um, one thing is the location of these cameras. What what guides our public safety to put them where they are?

Do does it relate to some values that we have or you know you just

certainly I mean we when it when you're specifically asking about our values we're concerned about sensitive areas and locations that you know houses of worship come to mind things like that. Um, but what what we did is we did an analysis on the main arteries of entry and exit into the city. And that's really the most impactful places to put these cameras because that's where you're going to catch the most amount of cars um entering and leaving the city, right? I mean, if if you're going to leave Sunnyville, you got to get on the freeway. You're going to there's only a few ways to get there. Um, so that is how the analysis was done. Currently, our cameras are on all arterial streets. they are not in residential neighborhoods and I think that's an important distinction.

Okay. And um as it was said there's a table and it shows that ratio like how many we have compared to other communities and it's very low and even with that low ratio we have like all these crimes that have been solved. you know, these criminals that have a stolen caravan of criminals, armed criminals coming to our jewelry stores um and putting people at gunpoint. Uh that has stopped. So, um I just uh I am not a person and public safety is not a person is not an entity that part of your job is to question. part of your job is to investigate and that's why you got it involved. That's why it is looking over your shoulder. Um that's why you do these monthly audits like you could be doing a lot. What is involved? My last question. What is involved in that monthly audit?

Good morning, Council Member Captain Lee. So, for the monthly audits, I'm reviewing the uh the all our logs to see any patterns of um misuse. So, I'm looking for multiple plates being um looked at by individual officers or if inputs are not being properly included, such as a case number or a lawful reason for the search. So, I'm looking for anomalies like that. Um, I I want to make sure that all our officers are in compliance with our policy and that the searches conducted by our partners, our law enforcement partners are in compliance as well.

Okay. And um so I I know the value of the system by what was said to hear today. I know the public's concerns and I feel like um public safety and it process and the values that we hold in Sunnyville um has answered my concerns. So I support the system.

Thank you, council member. Um I have several questions. Uh, first I just want to say thank you to the residents, to the business owners, uh, who sent us emails, talked to us, called us. Um, you're, you know, and and as we and thanks for those that stayed or staying to the end. Thanks especially to, you know, the chief, the the staff, uh, DPS staff, the PSO team, the PSOA team that's here. Thanks to the IT director and her staff for bringing in expertise and doing a deep dive because we give you lots of work and all of a sudden you had this extra extra task on your on your plate and continuing that effort going forward I think is important. Um and thanks to our city attorney for staying on top of the legal concerns because that is also an important portion of this. And thanks to my colleagues for asking uh the majority of my questions, especially Council Member Lelay and deep dive on on some of the let's say the nitty-gritty items that that were critical here. Um you know, for for me, uh Chief, I just want to thank you for being proactive, bringing in it. you know, we live in our processes here in our city and having an internal audit now, having a an quote unquote external internal do audit um is really critical and gives me, you know, I trust our our staff. you know, we we do a fantastic job and and look uh and and are actively looking for, you know, problems with the external vendors as well as the the internal, you know, the conceivably if there would be an internal bad actor, we would catch that. And so I appreciate you being proactive as far as as far as that's concerned. Um ALPRs have obviously become an important part of an important tool for policing.

Um, you know, I met with jewelry store owners last year, residents who were saying and you know what happens if I'm in that jewelry store and something happens making the the national news for those smashing grabs had people from all over the country calling residents that you live in Sunnyvil what's happening there why you know what what are they doing and ALPRs have become an active solution. It's not perfect, but you know, hearing from some of the jewelry store owners tonight, it it makes them feel safe. It makes their customers feel safer. Changing the procedures and working with them, all that. But to be, we will never have enough police officers to monitor and catch every stolen vehicle coming into the city. We won't be able to be everywhere. And this is this to me is an important tool. Other jurisdictions have turned off flock. Some are actively looking for replacements like Mountain View. Some have actually turned them on because they've seen crime rates increase. So that that all plays into what we're doing tonight. Um and you know, data management uh is is the important portion of this. So thank you from an IT standpoint of continuing to be vigilant. you know, as residents have said, as my council member said, I don't trust Flock. Um, and as other departments look at, um, other solutions, you know, chief, you're part of the the county chief's organization, um, and staying connected with the other chiefs. if if if that tipping point comes of other solutions that you know that is a decision that that I'm assuming you'll be bringing back to

council at least whether or not it's the yearly audit or other or some other thing. Um I appreciate you know that that's why you're representing us and what makes sense from a county standpoint from a Bay Area standpoint. I did have several questions. Um, one of which is, you know, we do I think now it's a standard for those that still have flock having a 30-day retention. Um, you talked about a criminal evidence hold. So, if and it takes sometimes months to finish this, but but if you track down like an a crime that's happened at a specific time, do you do the that day? Do you do multiple days? Do you do the month as far as kind of putting a hold on that data and off offloading it? And this is kind of a different portion of data retention. It's when it when there's an active crime and you're looking at um looking at that data.

Yeah, it's an important piece that 30 days is an important piece. So, thank you for bringing it up. you know, crime um doesn't always happen like we see on TV where it happens right away and before the first commercial, we've identified who it is and we know the exact time and where it happened. Often times, crime is delayed in reporting. It takes several weeks to get reported. I mean, we think about people that are on vacation and they come home and their house is burglized. Maybe they've been gone on vacation for 2 weeks. Um it takes a long time. So that 30-day window really kind of gives us a a sweet spot. It's the industry standard. If you look around our surrounding jurisdictions, 30 days is kind of what everybody's been using. San Jose just reduced their timeline from one year to down to 30 days because that's what everybody's kind of settled on. And that gives us us and the officers behind me and the detectives behind me some time to make nexuses and develop um um develop leads in in crimes, right? So, you know, property crimes is is a good example that I use all the time because often times there's a delayed response, but it could also be a violent crime, right? If we have a violent crime and we haven't located a critical witness or or we locate a witness a week into an investigation and now all of a sudden our timeline has changed or they have a a vehicle description or something like that, we need to be able to get back into that data and look. But so I think 30 days is a great balancing point where privacy concerns are respected and protected but law enforcement interest in investigation um is still that that goal is still being met. Um so that's why the industry kind of uses 30 days for almost everything.

Yeah. And and I appreciate that. And that's, you know, that's the question as far as if it if you if an investigation goes past that 30 days, do you lock in a day's worth of data that that you're that you that you continue or do you give up on that data completely trying to trying to figure out from a from an investigative standpoint? So are just so I understand Mer. So if if if we identify um a date and time where a crime occurred and how long do we keep that that information? that specific Yeah, that specific a crime occurred at at 2:32 p.m.

We we looked at all the vehicles coming in be after noon from noon to and and exiting until 1000 p.m. Do we save that data in any way or is it is do the officers have 30 days and after that 30 days that's we have 30 days is a hard deletion. So that that data is gone after 30 days. But if we did identify a vehicle in your scenario, then we would save that vehicle hit or that vehicle um image and keep that as evidence. So that would that would follow our evidence retention schedule which is depending on the crime.

Okay. That was my question is is do you do you basically say there's a crime at a specific period of time and like pull out a portion of the data trying to continue the investigation past 30 days. So you have a 30-day timer that starts and you and the officers conceivably are are going through that data trying to find matching vehicle types or partial plates or or whatever the case is to do that investigation. Right.

Okay. Just just checking from an operational standpoint. So only when you've narrowed down the car, then you're doing that for the final ultimately catching that catching that vehicle, catching that owner, and ultimately any final um any final crime uh or any final legal finishing of arrests and everything else. Okay. Um, and then just to clarify one more time, and you you mentioned a little bit about this to uh, council member cell, there are no sensitive data, no sensitive areas that our cameras cover. That's correct. Yes. and and as opposed to five almost 500 in San Jose, the 20 that we have are focused on very

I can't speak to the 500 in San Jose, but I can tell you the 20 that we have now are on main arteries and not pointing at any sensitive location concerns that residents have of they're monitoring health clinics, Planned Parenthood, churches. That's not we're looking at entrances and like the major intersections. That is correct. Okay. Thank you. That is all my questions. Um, next up is Council Member Lei.

Thank you. I have a quick question about notification settings in Mountain View. It was raised that the notifications were toggled without the city's um knowledge. Are we given a notification if settings are toggled? Well, they've actually changed those toggles, but yes, we do get notification, and the toggles that they had automatically put on are no longer automatically put on any installations going forward, as far as we're aware, but we would get a notification if somebody changed the toggle. That's also a part of the logs that never go away as well. And we have that. Again, I I do want to really thank the community. Trust is a big thing, right? And we are absolutely aware that the number one most important thing that we can do both in public safety and it is make sure that we're safe about our data and our population, our community. And that community is the people that live here, the people that work here, the people that visit here. So all of this data of people coming in and out of the city, we take very seriously to make sure that it's safe. And so those toggles, those logs, those actions are absolutely being watched very closely. Thank you. Um, I wanted to say that in response to one of the council questions, I asked if the city was able to shut off the camera without flock without flock on their end and the answer that it was not was disappointing. Um, we have the World Cup coming up and a few weeks ago we discussed the possibility of ICE crackdowns during that time and I was concerned about that. It is disappointing. I'm curious about what would be needed to possibly amend the contract or gain gain control and access to those cameras for shutdown. While we can't actually take down the camera, we can absolutely control the data and the permissions of who has access to that information, but we we wouldn't be able to just automatically take the camera itself off the poll and take it down. But certainly the administrators have the ability to determine what data is going through and what data is visible to whom.

Thank you. And I also want to signal to my colleagues that if a motion were made, I would be interested in adding stronger language to the contract regarding indemnity and damages. Um, I believe that I don't trust Flock, but I do trust them to care about their bottom line. I'm under the impression that as a company, they are on the ropes financially, and we might have them in a position where they might be willing to bargain at our next opportunity. Thank you, uh, Vice Mayor Melinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I am ready with a motion and I am amendable to friendly amendments. Okay. I move alternative one with the following additional provisions. First, no new flock cameras to be installed without separate council discussion. Second, memorialize the annual audit by IT and roll that into the annual military equipment reporting that the Department of Public Safety already does. Third, monthly internal usage audits by the Department of Public Safety. This is not the same as the full technical audit that it ran. This is what Lieutenant Lei, Captain Lei, I apologize, is doing already. Fourth, staff is to return to council immediately as in the next possible meeting if there is suspicion of unauthorized external including federal access. That is to come to us immediately. Uh finally, I am aware that the county is working on their own ALPR initiative. Um that the county motion on this included direction to conveni that to the sheriff's office to convene essentially regional meetings with the chiefs in the county on possibly moving towards their own ALPR initiative. I want us to be working with the county on that. And finally, uh, it to actively monitor for vulnerabilities in the flock system. Um, that is my motion.

Thank you. Uh, council member Cisneros. Yes. Thank you. Um, I have a friendly amendment. Um, should is that a Oh, second. Yes. And friendly amendment. Uh, okay. Great. I'd love to hear the friendly amendment. Thank you. I got that reversed in my head. Um the friendly amendment is if there is unauthorized access by the federal government, we are unable to determine um or unable to ensure that that uh door was closed and you'll have to help me with that language a little bit. Um that the system's pulled immediately and then it comes to us and then we can discuss what to do. I'm going to attempt to rephrase this gently.

Yes. Thank you. What I said was staff is to return to council immediately if there is suspicion of unauthorized external including federal access. I will amend that to say staff is to disable the system and return to council immediately. If there is suspicion of unauthorized external including federal access by disable the system if you have to put a black bag over it do it. Yes. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that rephrasing and that captures the spirit of what I was saying. Thank you. Uh, city manager, do you have a comment?

Uh, yeah. Yes, mayor. Thank you. Instead of uh limiting staff's ability to add cameras, which I think is operational, um, council's control over that is appropriation. Power of the purse. So, I'd suggest a a rephrasing of that. I will accept that. But I would appreciate if that is called out prominently in the up any additions is are called out prominently in the upcoming budget document. Yeah, I would agree. I think we can call out if we're requesting an increase in funding for um for the ALPR system. All right. Thank you. I'm okay with I just accepted a friendly amendment from the whatever.

Okay. I'm not allowed to make that amendment. I I can participate in the deliberations, but I can't vote. Um, right. Should I speak to my motion now? And you're fully seconded. So, yes, go ahead to your motion.

Um, I said before that I believed, you know, a few things. One, that I do trust the procedures that the city has put in place regarding internal access. Two, that Flock has had direct measurable benefits to public safety. And three, that I do not trust Flock as a company. I'm going to state plainly that I think we need to be moving away from Flock as a vendor. I do not think, as I said, I do not trust this company. And frankly, I think that if we're going to be using ALPR technology, I would much prefer to have that technology owned and operated by the city with its data being stored on city-owned servers. um where we do actually have total control over the logging, total control over the system, total audit, we are not yet at the point where we can do that and given the very very real violent harms that these cameras have addressed in our city, harms that are measured in blood spilled, bones broken, children left without parents, I am not willing to take them down yet. Not without a plausible, viable replacement that we can use. I agree with the city attorney's analysis that the use of these cameras does not violate the Fourth Amendment. I do understand the the concerns raised by the public on privacy. This is a a very this is a very difficult item because as I said I believe that most of what we heard from the public on both sides of this issue tonight was largely correct and we here on this day have to balance the competing interests the competing

benefits the competing harms of using or not using this system. I'm not entirely happy with the motion that I have put forward. I don't think there's any motion that would make me entirely happy, but I think that this is the most reasonable compromise based on the information that we have available to us now and I respectfully urge my colleagues I vote. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor, Council Member Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. I won't go on too long. Um the I want to second what my colleague just said and then say that what concerns me most about Flock is the lack of market competition because the rational behavior theories that we can typically rely on to conduct our analysis and predict behav future behavior is absent and whatever is motivating flock is not what is motivating you and me, anyone I heard sp speak in this room, the we are not the same there. And that makes this an unpredictable, quickly moving and life and death situation. And like my colleague said, it's really hard to think of of a motion or of a resolution to this tonight that would make me happy. But this makes me least unhappy because I I do. And you know, I'm a mom. I have kids. And I think about what if one of my kids was kidnapped, right? And what if those cameras weren't there? Like that that's like a real thing that like viscerally gets you. And it's amazing that we have this technology. What an amazing potential public good. Not just potential. It it does serve a public good, a real one. And it could do so much more. And it and it makes me very very angry that we have to sit here and then think, but what if this incredible good thing is used to hurt people? and we have to make that decision. Like that's not fair and it's not fair that any of us need to be here for this. This should be a no-brainer. This is great. This is going to keep my kids safe, your kids safe, everyone safe. But instead, we're making this decision. And I I just want to say that I hope that we have communicated well that as things evolve, if

things go in either direction that we'll make the call and and make a call we don't want but that we're prepared to do it. So, thank you all and vote yes and um vote. Thank you. Mr. Kirby, do you have another comment question? Just checking. Council member Lei.

Thank you. Um, I will be voting in support of this motion. It is a difficult decision to make and I acknowledge that. I want to acknowledge the public's concern about the Fourth Amendment and acknowledge that what is legal is not always what is right. The spirit of the Fourth Amendment is such that we should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I am the mother of Brown sons. My oldest is growing a mustache and getting to the point where he is no longer going to read as cute but potentially dangerous. That is something that is on my mind constantly. It is difficult to sit with this decision and I want to acknowledge that there is always as a local government as a local government entity a balance between safety and privacy. You turn the dial too far one way and you get fascism and a surveillance state. You turn the dial too far the other way and there's lawlessness and jewelry store smash and grabs. I don't want to take this tool away from public safety at this time. It is deeply disappointing that we don't have a more trustworthy vendor for this uh for this tool. I look forward to capitalism doing its job and providing us with one in the future. Um, actually, I think this is a little bit like that scene in The Dark Knight where Batman turns on everyone's cell phones and kind of turns on the mass surveillance and everyone has to sit with themselves after and acknowledge that that was a violation of privacy and a morally compromising decision. I think that's where we are. I don't like it, but I think that's where we are. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next up is council member Shinbasan.

Thank you. Um I'll be brief. I will be supporting this motion. Yeah, I don't uh it's unfortunate that we don't have alternates alternate uh system. Yeah, we can develop our own system but I know as a software engineer it might take lot of time. Yeah. And then to get that network effect uh as chief pointed out could be challenging also. All the cities have to come uh together come up with a spec and design and architect and all those things. So since we don't have any reliable alternative I agree with the privacy concerns. Nobody wants to know uh be tracked. But unfortunately we live in this world to get something. We have to use the tools. Uh as somebody I think one of the public said if you use free product you are the product. So we we have to live with that kind of an environment. But having said that as a city we have choice. uh we could terminate but then that uh clearly results in uh increased crime as uh our PS our officers pointed out chief pointed out I trust our DPS our ITD uh IT department and then city attorney and all the departments uh if I don't trust DPS who will I call on when I have problems 911 one I trust DPS with my life. So uh so I I don't have any problems with DPS or rogue officers or anything like that. I think the checks and balances are very good as I my in my experience I think that's

the right thing to do do a regular audit of the uh logs and other things. Yeah, I I think logs can be modified. I I know that can be done. Uh but at the same time, we don't have any other choice. Uh at this stage, we cannot risk our city being unsafe. So, uh with that, I will be supporting this motion. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next up is council member Chan.

I agree with my colleagues. I don't feel great about this. Um, public safety brought up scenarios that had occurred in in the other districts, but the majority, if not all of the jewelry store robberies happened in district 4. And that weighs heavily on me when I when I balance this issue. And so I hope that by July 19th, 2027, there will be better competitors out there that might um have better track records. I did have one clarifying question about if they're um disabling uh complete disabling over suspicion of um of the friendly amendment. Could you could someone clarify that friendly amendment again for me? If the city manager has reason to suspect that there has been unauthorized external access, including by the federal government, he is to bring he is to disable the cameras however necessary and bring that information to council immediately. I am going to say that I trust the city manager and our professional city staff to not pull that trigger lightly, but also not to wait around on it.

Does that uh Yes. Thank you.

Thank Thank you, council member. Uh next up is council member Cell. Um, so what this has shown me is the values of our public safety. Um, the values that I've seen them display is that they understand that the privacy that is needed for this. And so they chose to only have it seems like the minimum amount of cameras. We have the least amount of camera doors per per square. um uh compared to our neighboring jurisdictions, like we're by far have the least amount of cameras per square mile. And um all the cameras are just pointing at a road. They're not pointing at sensitive areas, no churches, no reproductive uh clinics, no parks or anything like that. So those are also the values of our public safety. The values of our public safety are that when national news started saying suspect things about flock um that our public safety chief turned to our IT and said here's our books here's investigate us you know you know we believe we are doing a good job but please verify that not just trust us verify that so then our it. You could see our IT like manager director. She she was on the point of like having um her staff climb the pole and see if they could like uh decipher the encryption. Um but but uh you can see the magnitude of thoreness, dedication of our staff

and to have monthly audits, yearly audits. Um and I am also not I I believe in not believing I believe in suspicion I and and clearly public safety and it also believe that like you need to verify you cannot trust and that's why we have these audits that's why we don't point the cameras at sensitive areas so I I believe that our public safety our IT our staff believes in that too. And um the counter of taking away these tools from our public safety is that we did have armed mobs going into our jewelry store with people with clients and putting people at gunpoint like somebody could have died. Um, and if we take that tool away, then we open ourselves and our residents up to that violent criminals that could come back and terrorize us. So, I'm not ready for that. I um know that our public safety has shown and our IT and our staff has shown they take this serious. They take privacy serious. They take upholding um the trust of our residents serious. Um most of all they are here to keep us safe and so that we can keep people live in our city and feel uh safe in our city. So um I will be supporting this motion.

Thank you. And I'll be supporting this motion. Thanks to the vice mayor for making the motion. Thanks to the public and staff for uh being a part of this conversation, for putting a lot of hard work into prep for this report. Um and um thanks for staying so early. Um and Wednesday is going to be a long day for for all of us. Um but trust is a big thing and I don't trust Flock, but I do trust our city staff. I trust our officers. I trust our IT staff. Um you are doing the right things. you know, our our public safety officers are keeping our community safe. Um, and you know, from from an operational standpoint, you've you've answered that trust with audits, with changing your procedures, with adding, you know, two factor um authentication. You know, that that is important. You know, public safety is critical and and you know, ALPRs are a tool that is helping keep our community safe. You know, we need to give those officers the tools to do their job. You know, we can never hire enough officers to to do all the things that some of those tools are doing, monitoring um cars, looking for looking for stolen vehicles, looking for, you know, the silver alerts. This is this is important. You know, walking through the jewelry stores and the glass and the blood and seeing the videos and talking to the to the staff. It is scary. And these tools, changing our procedures have made them the the business owners feel safer and the residents feel safer. You know, what are you doing about about the jewelry store thefts? what are we doing on other

things? This is this to me is part of that solution and and so thank you. You know, looking at other solution, looking at other uh vendors at at in the future definitely, you know, that's that's part of it. Um I thank the the vice mayor for putting in um additional um additional checks on on staff's recommendation. I think staff gave good recommendations as far as how we move forward in monitoring the system, but but what we do on this day is is a balance of uh personal privacy versus versus public safety. And and to me, I think um continuing this program, at least for now, is is in the is in the best interest of our community. And um I think that that it's it's an important step. It's an important decision that we're making tonight. With that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion carries 70. Thank you. And with that, we will adjourn the meeting at 2:16 a.m. Thanks to everyone who stayed. Have a good Wednesday.