City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Let's call to order the special council meeting closed session of 05/05/2026 at 05:01PM. First, councilmember Lei, do you have a statement that you'd like to make?

Yes, mayor. Thank you. I am participating remotely in tonight's council meeting under just cause provisions of the Ralph m Brown Act included in the California government code section five four nine five three dot eight dot three c one. There are no individuals 18 years or older present in the room at my remote location.

Thank you. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means that council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to agenda item being considered by council. 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. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Follow the following the closed session, the regular council meeting will begin at 7PM. City clerk, may we please have roll call?

Mayor Klein?

Present.

Vice mayor Mellinger? Councilmember Cisneros? Council member Srinivasan?

Present.

Council member Selle?

Present.

Council member Chang?

Present.

Council member Lei?

Present.

Five present with council member Lei participating via teleconference.

Thank you. And council member Mellinger and council member Cisneros sorry. Vice mayor Mellinger and council member Cisneros' absence are excused. Members of public will now have an opportunity to address council on the closed session items. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants because we'll have two minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, are there any remote participants wishing to speak on the side?

No, mayor.

I will close public comment, and council will now adjourn to closed session. See everyone back here at 7PM. Thank you. Good evening. Let's call to order the council meeting of 05/05/2025 at 07:02PM.

The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to agenda item being considered by counsel for consent calendar and public hearing items.

Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within counsel's authority, generally referred to as within counsel'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 be 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 to the time period set for that specific item, and time limits will be strictly enforced. Guidelines are posted on the city website and on the council meeting agenda. First, please join me in a salute to the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with

liberty and justice for all. City clerk, may we please have roll call? Mayor Klein? Present.

Vice mayor Mellinger, council member Cisneros, council member Srinivasan?

Present.

Council member Selle?

Present.

Council member Chang?

Present.

Council member Lei? Four present with vice mayor Mellinger, council member Cisneros, and council member Lei absent.

Thank you. And all three of those absences are excused absences. Next, we have our closed session report. The city council met in closed session, held pursuant to California government code section fifty four thousand nine fifty seven point six, Conference with Labor Negotiations Agency Designated Representative Heather Ruiz, Director of Human Resources, employee organization, Sunnyvale Employees Association, SEA, IFPTE, Local twenty one, and SEIU, nothing to report. And the city also met in closed session held pursuant paragraph one of subdivision d of California government code section five four nine five six dot nine, conference with the legal counsel, existing litigation, name of case c Overrah, and company versus city of Sunnyvale, Santa Clara County, Superior Court case number two five c v 462318, initiation of cross complaint.

Direction was given to file a cross complaint. Next up, we have two special orders of the day. Let me come up to the lectern. Evening. Tonight, before we have a special presentation in honor of small business week.

Small Business Week was started by the Small Business Administration to continue to promote small businesses all over the country. This week also allows us to recognize small businesses in our community that are making a difference. Joining us tonight is Sam Rafi, co owner and operator operations manager at S and S Tires. This family owned business was started by Mike Rafi and has been serving the Sunnyvale community and keeping our autos, including the mayor's auto automobile, on the road since 1996. We congratulate them as they celebrate their thirtieth year this summer.

Mike, Sam's father, worked at worked for Goodyear as the district manager and oversaw over 20 different stores. And when Goodyear decided to close the shop at 597 South South McMurphy Avenue, Mike ended up purchasing that site. He renamed the shop S and S Tires, named after both of his sons with s's in their names, and the family focuses on providing the best service to its customers for by getting the job done right and to help customers get back on the road. Sam, come on forward if you'd like to say a few words. Interpreter here.

Thank you. Yeah.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Sam Racy. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. Wanna first and foremost thank miss mister Mayor Klein over here and also members of the city board and council members. It's a great honor and privilege to be here tonight to receive this award and your acknowledgment tonight.

We're a small family owned business, as you mentioned, started in 1996 by my father, Mike Racy. And it's been an honor and a pleasure conducting our business here in this beautiful city of Sunnyvale. It's not many cities or places you can go to conduct your business where it gives you such a small tight knit community vibe, and I think that's very, very special about the city of Sunnyvale. We've been here for a long time now celebrating our thirtieth anniversary this year, and we've been very fortunate to watch all the growth and development here in this beautiful city. We strive ourselves on being a family business, treating our customers as family, and doing great quality work and letting that speak for itself.

We're very proud to service the cars and needs of the local neighborhood and families, police officers, firefighters, and even members that work here in city hall. It's been an honor. It's been a privilege, and we're so fortunate to conduct our business in such a beautiful city, and we hope to continue to do that for years to come. Thank you so much for this acknowledgment, and I greatly appreciate it.

I'd like you. I'll pass this to you. Yeah. Thank so much. Stay here for just a second so I wrap up. Yeah. The city of Sunnyvale extends our appreciation to all our family owner family owned businesses that ultimately continue to support our community. Small businesses make up 90% of our business community, with over 6,000 small businesses in Sunnyvale to choose from. We encourage everyone to visit our local establishments, spend your money, which is locally, which is best for the city. The next time you go shopping or or need services for your vehicle, remember to shop local and support businesses serving Sunnyvale.

On behalf of the city council, it is my pleasure to declare the week this week, May 3 through 05/09/2026, as small business week in Sunnyvale. Thank you very much, and and thank you, S and S. Appreciate you. Thank you, Frank. Uh-huh.

Yeah. We got the photo. Bye. Thank you. Our second recognition tonight is on our three three weeks dedicated to our fantastic civil servants.

Public service recognition week, Public Works Week, and Municipal Clerks Week, all that are happening in May. In honor of Public Service Recognition Week, which this year is May 3 through May 9, we have some special dedicated public servants joining us tonight. First is Sheridan Smith, employment and training supervisor of NovoWorks. Please stand up, and we'll go through all of you. Next up is Jenny Shane, administrative services manager, finance department.

Jenny. Matt Hazel, housing programs analyst, community development department. Thanks, Pat. Paul Ramsell, public works construction inspector, department of public works. Our city clerk, David Carnahan and deputy city clerk, Daniel Byers, from the office of the city manager Hejing Sim, adult literacy program coordinator, library and recreational services Tracy Gott, Recreation Services Manager, Library and Recreational Services.

And if any other city employees are present and would like to stand, I would appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you all for your work. Please give them a round of applause. Working behind the scenes in federal, state, local, and tribal governments, public servants represent what's make what makes our country remarkable through their dedication to our everyday lives, their spirit of ingenuity, and their commitment to getting the job done, often under, you know, very challenging circumstances.

Here in Sunnyvale, we have 946 regular employees and three ninety seven casual city employees. These employees support a total of 11 departments providing the city with services such as public safety, transportation engineering, parks maintenance, building and planning, waste management, waste water treatment, recreation, and arts programs, workforce development, just to name a few. They also provide administrative, financial, legal, instructive support directly to the departments. Further, some of these services are maintained twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, so that our residents are safe and supported at all times in what they're doing. I would like to invite Heather Ruiz, our director of human resources hiding behind me, sorry, to say a few words.

Thank you, mister mayor, council members, and members of the public. It's a privilege to be here to recognize Public Service Employee Week and honor the people who keep our city running, often behind the scenes, but always at the heart of everything we do. Public service isn't just a profession. It's a commitment. Every day, our employees show up representing the city's core values of integrity, leadership, and respect with a genuine desire to serve our community, Whether they're maintaining our infrastructure, ensuring public safety, supporting residents in times of need, or delivering critical administrative services, their work makes a meaningful difference in the lives of others.

This week's an opportunity to pause and recognize the contributions of all city employees. At the city of Sunnyvale, we strive to be an employer of choice by fostering a workplace where our employees feel valued, respected, and empowered to do their best work. So on behalf of the human resources department, I want to extend our sincere appreciation to every city employee. The city doesn't produce a product, we provide service, and we couldn't do that without all of the public service employees working hard every day to ensure delivering the best service to our community. So thank you.

Thank you. Just stay here, I'll pass all these to you. We further acknowledge two additional special recognitions in May. Municipal Clerks Week, also May, and Public Works Week, May. These weeks recognize the unique contributions that these offices offer from the clerks who staff our public meetings and maintain our public records among among the many tasks that they perform, including helping making sure that this meeting runs as smooth as possible, to the public works staff who, ultimately, those crews who build our roads, maintain public services, and so much more around the city.

The city appreciates all the work that they do on a day to day basis, making our city just a wonderful city for everyone to live in. On behalf of the city council, I hereby proclaim the week of May 2026 as public service recognition week and municipal clerk's week, and the week of May 17 through the twenty third twenty twenty six as public works week. I commend and thank all of our city staff for their wonderful work and their continual contributions to make our city a vibrant and thriving one. Thank you very much, and congratulations. Please give them all a round of applause.

Next up is oral communications. This is now the public's opportunity to address counsel on topics not listed on tonight's agenda. This section is limited to fifteen minutes and may be extended or continued after the general business section of the meeting.

Second.

At the general sick sick after the general business section of the meeting, individuals may only speak once during oral communications. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within council's authority, which is generally referred to as council subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are not are outside of council subject matter jurisdiction, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. This allows counsel to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers.

A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk or raise your digital hand now or dial 9 on your telephone indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. Before I get to the public, council member Sel has several announcements.

The city of Sunnyvale's environmental services department is excited to introduce a new community initiative to help the local waterways clean and streets flood free. The City Sunnyvale adopt a storm drain program. The city's storm drain system plays a critical role in managing runoff from streets and neighborhoods. Unlike wastewater, storm water in Sunnyvale 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 clean and clear, participants can make a direct impact on the community by preventing flooding and protecting local creeks in the Bay. Residents aged 18 and older are invited to participate by committing one year of stewardship for a local storm drain. As part of the program, participants will have an opportunity to name their adopted drain and will be provided access to the city supplied tools and safety equipment, including a litter tool, rake, dustpan, bucket, gloves and safety vest. Residents interested in participating are encouraged to visit sunnyvelle.ca.gov and search adopt a drain adopt a storm drain to learn more and sign up. City clerk, please play the video.

Hi. I'm Sunnyvale mayor Larry Klein, and I'm thrilled to announce Sunnyvale's brand new adopt a storm brain program. This allows residents like you to adopt a storm drain and keep it clear of debris. This helps prevent street flooding and helps keep pollutants from getting into the San Francisco Bay. Did you know that Sunnyvale has separate sewer and storm water systems?

The sewer system goes to these water pollution control plant where it is cleaned, and then it's used as recycled water or it flows into the bay. But the storm system is a completely different set of pipes. Anything that flows into the storm drain goes straight to the bay, completely unfiltered and untreated. The city has an incredible team keeping our storm drains clean. They respond to calls for street flooding and clean out our drains to help keep us safe.

You can help our hardworking crew by adopting a storm drain near you. City will even provide supplies to help you clean up trash and debris near that drain. I'm going to be the very first storm drain adopter in Sunnyvale. I'm going to name this storm drain Sunny, and I pledge to keep it clean and clear of debris all year round, especially during the rainy season. Thank you for wanting to keep our city and our environment a little bit more clean. Go visit sunnyvale.ca.gov to learn more about the adopt a storm lane program and learn how to keep our city a little more beautiful.

And our next announcement, the city launched a community equity assessment to learn about the residents experience with the city programs and services. Your feedback will help improve access, remove barriers and create welcoming services for everyone. Share your experience and feedback at one of our upcoming forums. Light refreshments will be provided. Childcare is available for potty trained children ages older than four years old.

Advanced registration is required for childcare. The forum dates are Tuesday, May 12 from 06:30 to eight p. M. At Columbia Neighborhood Center, Morse Conference Room Wednesday, May 20, from 06:30 to eight p. M.

At Sunnyvale City Hall, Bay Conference Room Saturday, June 6 from 02:30 to four p. M. At Sunnyvale Library Program Room open to all residents, language interpretation is available upon request. Notify us forty eight hours in advance of the meeting by calling (408) 730-7950 for more information to register for childcare. Visit cenyvel.ca.gov and search community equity contact (408) 473-7950.

And our next announcement, interested in upgrading your home or car? Cruise on by the Electrify Your Life Fair on Saturday, May 9 from 11AM to 3PM at the community center. At the fair, you will test drive electric vehicles and e bikes, speak with experts about electric appliances, discover available rebates and incentives and enter to win a portable induction cooktop. Following your test drive or walk through of the electric vacation booths, complete the post event survey and receive a food voucher for the on-site complimentary food truck. To register for the test drive and learn more about the event, visit events calendar at sunnyvale.ca.gov.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next up, I'll be reading off names for those in the room. First up is Angie H, followed by Russ M.

One second. The council members, thank you for having me here tonight. I am Angie Hinson, and I'm here to ask you to reconsider the proposal of option one to fence off a large portion of our Las Palmas Park for a sports complex. Right now, that space is something rare and valuable. It belongs to everyone.

On any given day, you will see softball players, cricket matches, pick up softball games, volleyball nets, families picnicking, kids running freely, and neighbors walking their dogs. It's flexible, shared space, and inclusive by design. No one needs permission, a reservation, or a fee to belong there. Fencing it off changes that completely. A fence doesn't just mark space, it sends a message.

It turns a public comments into a controlled area, limiting who can enter, when they can enter, and how they can use it. What we gain in structure, we lose in accessibility, spontaneity, and community connection. Open space is not empty space. It's active, diverse, and constantly adapting to the needs of the people who use it. Once it's gone, we don't get it back.

This isn't about being against organized sports. Sports are important, but they shouldn't come at the cost of eliminating one of the few places where everyone, regardless of age, income, or affiliation, can use the space freely. Please protect this piece of paradise. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Russ M, followed by Emmanuel F.

Good evening, mayor and council. Russ Melton, CEO of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce. And while the city clerk is bringing up high foils, let me start off by thanking and congratulating city council on a great vote on your agenda item fourteen days ago regarding ALPRs. The chamber appreciates council's vision and leadership in crafting a solution to support public safety and crime fighting along with strong policy controls. Of course, the chamber supported alternative one, and my board of directors appreciates your vote fourteen days ago at 02:30 in the morning.

Next up, another area where the chamber and city hall agree is with the area of workforce development. And I'm proud to report that yesterday, we held our workshop with our friends at Meta called AI for small business. I just wanted to mention that. And, of course, our signature event on June is the art and wine festival just right around the corner. The event is completely reimagined this year.

It's going to run on Washington from Sunnyvale Avenue to Matilda, on McKinley from Sunnyvale to TAFE, and will be connected on Murphy from Washington to McKinley. Like I said, the event is completely reimagined with over 200 high quality art vendors, great food, live music, and, of course, a real variety of beer and wine. I'll just mention that the Chamber of Commerce cannot put on the art and wine festival without our amazing volunteers. We've had an incredible number of sign ups, which I really appreciate. We need just a couple of more, especially on Sunday, June 7.

Please find your way to sunnyvaleartandwine.com. There you can find your way to the volunteer tab and sign yourself up for a shift that works for you. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Next is Emmanuel g or f. Sorry. No. It's fine.

It's okay. My penmanship is not the best, but that took years of practice. I think there's my no. I'll wait till my presentation's up. There it is.

So good evening, city council. My name is Emmanuel Guerrero representing the movement to keep Las Palmas Park green and serene. First of all, thank you, mayor Klein and councilwoman self for attending our rally the the past weekend. However, serious questions remain regarding how the city intends to safeguard the voices of Sunnyvale residents. Mr.

Geary of the Parks and Recreation Commission also leads the Northern California Cricket Association. In 2024 and 2025, his organization publicly urged nonresidents to influence our local surveys. Furthermore, the athletic needs assessment report confirmed that individuals from outside the county participated and that the surveys were easily manipulated. These results are misrepresentation of our community's will. Outside organizations who seek to capitalize on our parks will eventually move on, but the residents who live by and love Las Palmas Park will be forced to live with the legacy of these lights and a fence for decades.

So how can the city proceed with a project built on such a compromised foundation? This is really small print. I apologize. But I'm gonna read you an excerpt from one of the posts by the Northern California Cricket Association on Facebook. This is from November 2025, and it says, cities only invest in new cricket facilities when they see strong visible demand, and the easiest, most effective way to show that demand is by completing city surveys. You don't need to be a resident to participate. Complete the surveys. Share them. Encourage your family and friends. Every response counts.

At the bottom is the option that the members are urged to vote for. It actually has option c, and it even has a link to our city survey. This is only one of multiple posts urging members throughout Northern California to vote on Sunnyvale resident surveys. So in closing, you know, please tell us, who does the city represent? I love pickleball. I have family in The Philippines who love pickleball, and I'm not gonna call them or email them to vote on our surveys here in Sunnyvale. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Actually, go ahead, mister Kirby.

Thank you, Mary. I just wanted to comment that there is a new FAQ on the Las Palmas renovation project site that talks about what the status is of the project and what the next, steps are. I encourage anybody who's interested in this, effort to improve and, improve this park. To subscribe to that project site, you can just go to the city's website and search Las Palmas renovation, and, you should be able to find, the site and subscribe. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you. Next up is Gerald Jay followed by Paula Jay. We have slide sheets with one slide. Oh, one slide? Uh-oh. Or is that the last? That was the last one. Okay. Okay.

Alright. Thank you. Hello. I'm Darryl Jim Gochin, a resident of Sunnyvale. I'd like to address the council on the surveys associated with the Las Palmas Park renovation.

As you can see, many in the community want to see the field at Las Palmas Park remain open with no perimeter fencing and no stadium lighting. Let's always keep in mind that past surveys showed Las Palmas' open field ranked as the number one appreciated feature of the park. A separate athletic needs assessment has been performed showing Las Palmas as one of the possible places for the expansion of cricket. One concern, however, is this assessment did not account for the displacement of current park users due to the large size of the cricket field. So I think we can we can improve such an assessment by by looking at the existing users of the field.

And subsequent surveys performed have had external biases. During the survey process, parks and rec survey surveyed sporting leagues outside of Sunnyvale and outside of Santa Clara County. And as Manny mentioned prior, the Northern California Cricket Association encouraged participation amongst its 7,000 plus followers on Facebook and numerous teams throughout Northern California, encouraging all members can participate. And in another post to the same audience, family and friends were encouraged to participate. Of course, it would be good to include cricket in the park renovation, but it seems high perimeter fencing is required due to safety concerns, and such fencing would take away from the open ambiance and architecture of the park that everyone loves.

So going forward, let's ensure our surveys assess the wishes of the community of Sunnyvale, add yes, no questions to the survey to separately assess feedback on features of the park that could be detrimental, such as high perimeter have been seen, And limits surveys to the residents or or the community of Sunnyvale who should be the ones making the choices between, say, fitness equipment or a children's water play area. Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Paula Jay. It's my last speaker there in the room.

Okay. Good evening, mayor Klein and council members. Thank you for having me. My name is Paula Jimbo, and I'm a longtime resident of Sunnyvale. I'm fortunate enough to enjoy Las Palmas almost every day and I'm here tonight because I care deeply about its future.

I read the recent status update on the Las Palmas renovation and FAQ And I do have some input to the upcoming survey and process. First, as others have mentioned, regarding the voting community, I believe that this should be limited to Sunnyvale residents and not just open to anyone to vote. Second, if the city's goal is to maximize the usage of Las Palmas Park, the process needs to include not just data from field reservation systems, but also data on the number of people who actually use the field today for spontaneous play and other usages. Our community has actually been to Las Palmas, our team has been to Las Palmas multiple times to document park usage and the number of people on the field. We would like to share that information and have it factored into the process since the Las Palmas assessment report does not fully comprehend sports and current usages in Las Palmas.

The survey should also clarify the definition of multi use. For example, if a cricket match is being played because of the size of the cricket pitch and the proposed fencing, there is very little room for other sports or activities to occur at the same time in the large space. To get the most comprehensive community input, the survey should allow for greater flexibility to pick individual features and to allow for additional feedback and comment. Finally, the voting methodology and results should be transparent. Today, the park is a vibrant flexible space.

It's well utilized exactly because it is open and accessible. We hope that it will continue to be a park that is enjoyed by all. Thank you for your time and for listening to the Sunnyvale community. Thank

you. That was my last speaker card in the room. City clerk, do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak under oral communications?

Yes, mayor. First up is Valerie. Valerie, you've been unmuted, and you have three minutes to address the city council.

Hello. My name is Valerie Linford. And I I thought the Palm Las Palmas story was pretty touching. But is it okay? I I just I think that that people should like, sorry. I think that the agenda item I wanna talk about is the eviction where instead of, like

Thank you. We'll we'll be getting to that later this evening.

Oh, I'm sorry.

No problem.

Sorry.

That's fine. Thank you.

Mayor, there are no additional speakers wishing to speak under oral communications.

Okay. I'll go ahead and close oral communications. I will move on to our consent calendar. I'll open up public comment on the consent calendar items. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial 9 on the telephone indicating that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I don't have any speaker cards on consent. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on consent?

Yes, mayor. We have one, an individual, Austin AJ. I'm gonna briefly briefly unmute you so you can identify which item you wanna speak to. Afsaneh, can you let us know which consent calendar items you would like to speak to?

One d.

One d as In dog? Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. Were there any other speakers?

No, mayor. That was the only speaker. Okay.

I will go ahead and close public comment and bring it back to council for a motion. Councilmember Srinivasan.

I move. Mhmm. Consent calendar one a, one B, one C, one E.

Thank you. Councilmember South. Second. Thank you. City clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

Sorry. Give me one moment to update your voting system. K. Council members, please vote. The motion for consent calendar items one a through one c and one e carries four zero with vice mayor Mellinger and council member Cisneros and Lay absent.

Thank you. Now let's go ahead and take item one d. Item one d is approved, to item 26 dash zero four four five, approve a $34,000,000 increase to construction contingency with a contract with Walsh Construction, the Sunnyvale Clean Water Program secondary treatment, and thickening the watering project. Are there any questions from council? Don't see any.

So let me go ahead and open up public comment on this item. Please submit speaker cards to city clerk. Use the raise hand feature now, or dial 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, mayor. First up is Afsaneh Jay. Afsaneh, you've been unmuted, and you have three minutes to address the city council.

Mayor, council, city manager, and the city attorney, I appreciate you allowing me to speak on this issue. The citizens of Sunnyvale are asked to pay 38 and a half million dollars extra on this phase of the project due to delay in the project sequencing. In 2013, the city awarded the contract to the design engineer. And by 02/2021, the design was completed. The city has hired a design firm, a construction company, a construction management company, and a program management company in addition to the all of the engineers that work for public works that work on this project.

During this eight years, nobody thought of coordinating for with with PG and E for the the new servers. Of course, I know the design was not completed and the load was not obviously known, but the coordination could have started and they could have had an idea as how long it will take to install the new service. The project was delayed due to installation of the new service. And then there is another issue. There was a building, maintenance building that contains a lot of hazardous material that was not identified during the design phase.

So these two issues together caused a delay in the project development and implementation. As a result, we paid 38 and a half million dollars for that delay. All engineers know that power supply is a major issue that needs to be dealt with, but nobody in this project took the time to pay attention to that fact. And as a result, we are paying high dollars for that. I appreciate if there would be a higher level of requirement for implementation of these contracts and responsiveness of the contractors and the city staff.

I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for this agenda item.

Okay. I'll go ahead and close public hearing and bring it back to council for a motion. Council member Srinivasan.

I move item one d. Staff recommendation.

Staff recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Chang.

I actually had a question. I was wondering if Sorry about that. Yeah. No worries. If staff could speak to the changes that have been implemented since this occurred.

Thank you, council member. I'm Ramana Chinekhotla. I'm the interim public works director for the city. Some of the lessons learned that we have implemented since these delays, One of the big changes we've made in terms of our contractor selection, we've made sure that we are prequalifying some of our skill trades, especially the electrical controls, HVAC, mechanical. These contractors, we are prequalifying and we've done we've applied this lesson in our future projects.

For example, the ones with Walsh construction that's currently in place. We are using that that strategy, and that's really helped us. We're also given the number of different firms that are actually involved in the construction and in the design, we have a partnership that we basically are engaged in that the team and various levels of the teams meet every week so that we can basically identify issues on the ground very quickly and ensure that those are resolved quickly and keep the projects on schedule and within cost. So that's something that we've implemented already, and it's it's really bearing fruit.

Thank you. And on major construction projects, have we now buffered in this time that we have to work with PG and E?

We have, and we are beginning that process much earlier during the process during the project phase. And we're also ensuring that we have enough time frame enough time by the time the contractor comes in and works on it, that all the PG and E and all the other, including permitting, all those things are in place.

Thank you.

Thank you. Is there a second to the council member Sallo?

I just had a question.

Go right ahead.

Do you confer does the city of Sunnyvale confer with other agencies that do similar type of work and to get input and feedback on projects similar to this.

Absolutely. We do do that all the time.

Yeah. That's great. So I'd like to second.

Thank you. Any other comment from council? I will just I'll be in favor of this motion. I understand it's important to talk about, you know, good fiscal responsibility. You know, I think the one of the big things here is PG and E, and and I say almost without a doubt, no matter how early you ask, sometimes they don't come through when we need them to.

And and I think our relationship with PG and E has been improved in the last few years. But definitely getting their focus is one of the things that that caused a lot of issues with this project. So understand residents' concerns, but trying to now catch up and and, you know, making sure that we are meeting the requirements to keep this project on schedule. So with that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote for item one d?

The motion doesn't quite carry yet. I'm looking for one more vote. Your council members can you vote again? We didn't register one of the votes.

We vote again.

The motion carries. There we go. Motion carries four zero with vice mayor Mellinger and council members Cisneros and Lay absent.

Okay. Thank you very much. Let's go ahead and move to our general business. And because we only have four council members here tonight, I wanted to kind of change the order of our items and take item 26Dash0502First. Item 26 dash zero five zero two proposed project, adopt an urgency interim ordinance pursuant to government code section six five eight five eight, adopting a temporary moratorium on establishment establishment of operation of smoke shops as defined and included in the ordinance to regulate the sale and distribution of nitrous oxide within the city of Sunnyvale.

Is there a staff report or at least a comment from the city attorney?

Yes. We're asking that this item be continued because we don't have enough council members here for six votes.

Thank you. And that requirement, just as a so if there's any questions to the city attorney, I'd appreciate it. That requirement is because it's an urgency ordinance.

Correct? Because well, one of the ordinances is an urgency more zoning moratorium, and under the government code, it requires four fifths of the entire legislative body, which for seven members is six votes. There's also the nitrous oxide ordinance that doesn't require a supermajority, but just for efficiency, I would request that both of those be continued to the next meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from counsel? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk, raise your additional hand now, or dial 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item? No, mayor. I will close the public hearing and ask for a motion or question from my colleagues. Councilmember Srinivasan.

I move to continue agenda item number six to a date certain of 05/19/2026.

Thank you. Council member Sall? Second. Thank you. City clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion to continue item six twenty six zero five zero two to 05/19/2026 carries four zero with vice mayor Mellinger and council members Cisneros and Lay absent.

Thank you very much. Let's move on to our next item, item 26 dash zero two six six. Public hearing to adopt a resolution confirming the annual report to levy and collect an annual assessment for the Downtown Sunnyvale Business Improvement District for fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven. Is there a staff report?

Yes. There is. Good evening, mayor, council members, and members of the public. I'm Christine Velasquez, the economic development manager. Tonight's public hearing is for council to take action to renew the Downtown Sunnyvale Business Improvement District or bid for fiscal year twenty twenty six twenty seven.

On 03/10/2026, council approved the BID annual report and adopted a resolution of intention that specified 05/05/2026 as a date to hold the public hearing. As required by state law, the resolution was mailed to the businesses within the bid by staff. It was also emailed to the bid businesses by the Sunnyvale Downtown Association. Businesses have had the time to support or oppose this action since the approval by council on March 10. Per state law, a public hearing is held to give businesses a final opportunity to support or oppose any planned activities on this action.

City Council cannot add or deduct any planned activities in the annual report. City Council also cannot propose any changes to the bid structure or operations. The process for the public hearing is as followed. The mayor will ask Molly McClendon of the Sunnyvale Downtown Association to provide an overview of bid activities. The mayor will then open the public hearing to allow opposition or support, which I will keep track of.

Depending how many protests there are, I may need some time to tally this in which council may wanna take a short recess. I'm pleased to share that there are no protests received up to this point. If at the end of the public hearing, the protests do not exceed 50% or more of the total assessment, staff recommends that council moves forward with renewing the Downtown Sunnyvale bid for next fiscal year.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Next, let me call up Molly McClendon, treasurer of the Sunnyvale Downtown Association. Hello, Molly. Hello. Is there a business improvement district report?

Yes. There is. Thank you, mayor, council members, and Christine. My name is Molly McClendon. I'm the treasurer for the Downtown Sunnyvale Association board of directors. I'm excited to share a few highlights from our upcoming calendar. We'll kick things off with our premier some summer tradition, the summer music series beginning July 8. These eight events will run every Wednesday through August from 06:30 to 9PM on Murphy Avenue. We'll feature a diverse lineup of live bands, refreshments, and meaningful opportunities for the community to connect. We hope to see all of you there as we welcome both long term patrons and new faces to our downtown events.

Following the summer series, we'll host the annual Halloween pet parade in October. We're especially energized as this marks the second year the downtown association has organized this event. We are committed to making it making it even more impactful than the last. Finally, we will close out the year and ignite the spirit of Sunnyvale with our annual tree lighting festival in December at Redwood Square Park. In closing, we are incredibly appreciative of the continued support and partnerships from our local businesses, sponsors, and the city as we work together to create the exceptional year for the heart of Sunnyvale.

Thank you very much. Does council have any questions of either the bid process or the annual report? I see none. Okay. So let me go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial 9 in your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, mayor.

Okay. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Economic development manager, you might wanna come forward just to summarize, again, how many protests we the city has received?

To this point, we have not received any protests. Okay. Thank you very much.

So with that, council, is there a motion? Councilmember Srinivasan.

I move I move staff recommendation. Alternative one, adopt a resolution to confirm the annual report and lay by and collect the annual assessment for the downtown Sunnyvale business improvement district for fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven.

Thank you. And before I ask for a second, are you the two hands up for questions? Okay. Councilmember Chang. Second. Thank you. To your motion.

Yeah. It is an important part of Sunnyvale that represents downtown and downtown businesses. I was a council liaison two years back. I see personally the economic activity. Our downtown is in the other neighboring cities with all the activities and then the residential apartments and office spaces which have come up. And then Sunnyvale Downtown Association, where this is an important component. So please vote yes.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Chang.

K. I appreciate the work that you do to keep the downtown vibrant and the changes that have been implemented this year.

Thank you. Councilmember South.

Last year in 2025, I was the council liaison to the Downtown Association. And I just was so impressed with the caliber of the board members who joined together to jointly work on resolving issues, making contact to the city on important issues, and planning these wonderful events that encourage people to come to downtown and partake in many of the businesses and activities in the downtown. So I just wanted to thank the downtown association board, the staff who works very closely with the downtown association to resolve the issues and just a wonderful contribution to our city that the downtown association and the members who contribute to the bid and the sponsors to the programs and the city of Sunnyvale does to cohost events. So thank you very much for the very wonderful work. And as was said before, our downtown is the envy of the region.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member, and I'll just pile on. So I'm I hope to support this motion. Definitely, you know, it's good to see well, for one thing, no protests, but the the foresight twenty years ago of creating the Business Improvement District and to help revitalize and and bring people to our downtown. As councilmember Sall just said, it is the envy of many cities around us, and that vibrancy is partially because of of this Business Improvement District. So so thank you for for the hard work of the downtown association. Thank you to our economic development manager on on her hard work and, you know, happy to see that this is going forward yet again this year. Thank you. And with that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote? The

motion carries four zero with vice mayor Mellinger and council members Cisneros and Lay absent.

Thank you. Our next item is item 26 dash zero four eight five. Introduce an ordinance amending chapter 19 dot 71 of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code relating to the residential tenant pro protections program. Is there a staff report? Take your time. No rush.

Yes. There is. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Ryan Dyson, housing specialist. And with me tonight, I have Samantha Luke, our housing specialist, and Amanda Stoltz, our housing officer.

Tonight, we'll be discussing potential updates to the city's tenant protections program specifically related to relocation assistance for no fault, just cause evictions under chapter 19.71 of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code. To start off, I'll give some background to tenant protections and developments at the state level, beginning with AB fourteen eighty two, which is California's Tenant Protection Act of 2019. This set of statewide tenant protections framework and most relevant for the city established a one month relocation assistance for no fault, just cause evictions. Shortly thereafter, in April 2023, as part of the city's 2020 housing strategy, the city adopted its tenant protections program, which built off of a b fourteen eighty two. Most notably, it included a right to lease as well as increasing relocation assistance from one month rent to two months rent for no fault, just cause evictions.

This is intended to assist with relocation expenses, including moving expenses, first month rent, security deposit, and application fees. At this council hearing in 2023, council also directed staff to study increasing increasing relocation assistance to three months, providing further protections for vulnerable and elderly populations, including lower income households and households with children, and starting just cause eviction protections on the first day of a lease. In February 2025, staff returned back to council with the increased three month relocation assistance for no fault, just cause evictions, which was approved by council. The council also noted the low community input on the item and directed staff to return with amended ordinance. So tonight, we're back with the to introduce the ordinance, along with the results of our expanded outreach and analysis.

And I'll note that staff inadvertently left out the further protections for vulnerable and elderly populations and day one eviction protections from this particular ordinance and from our outreach. But we picked it back up, and we'll be asking for direction on both of those items as part of alternative three tonight to continue to study those items in more detail. A quick summary of no fault, just

cause

evictions. These are evictions that are not the fault of the tenant but are still legal causes to evict. And examples of these are demolition or substantial remodel of a unit or that an owner or family member intends to occupy a unit. No fault, just cause evictions are as opposed to at fault evictions, which are cases where there's a lease violation or a nonpayment of rent and the tenant is at fault for the eviction. There are some exemptions to the relocation assistance requirement for for no fault just cause evictions.

These exemptions include single family owner occupied residences where they're renting a room, single family home that is not, owned by a real estate trust or LLC, duplexes where the owner occupies one of the units, and that includes ADUs where the owner would be occupying the primary residence, and deed restricted affordable housing. So in response to council direction, staff completed a more recent robust round of outreach. Here, we sent out mailers to 2,700 landlords and property managers registered in the city's business department and sent a survey along with those mailers. We received 212 responses to that survey. Last time, we received 14 responses, so we've we've really substantially increased our responses this time.

And a tenant survey was also advertised through social media, farmers markets, the housing division's website, and city newsletters. All in all, 278 responses to the general tenant survey were received. Last time, we received 24 responses. So, again, very robust promotion this time, and we received a lot of feedback as a result of that. And so we'll share with you tonight some of those reserve the survey results for both the landlord and tenant surveys.

The both surveys are essentially mirror images of one another. We ask very similar questions, and we'll we'll talk about the one of the questions being what impacts on landlords would be for increased relocation assistance from two months to three months rent. Many landlords cited an unfair, undue burden, and economic hardship, that would result from that, with over half saying that they would consider raising their rents and also potentially restricting flexibility for an owner to move into a unit. On the tenant side, we asked that same question. How would increasing the no fault just cause relocation assistance from two months to three months of rent impact you.

Here, over half of tenants said that it would help prevent unjust evictions, make it easier to find comparable housing, and also increase housing security. Some tenants also noted that they were concerned that landlords may raise rents as a result of the increase too. We also wanted to have an understanding of how many tenants and landlords have been involved in no fault, just cause evictions, just broadly. And here we're seeing that 8% of tenants and 11% of landlords have reported experiencing a no fault just cause eviction. So this shows that no fault just cause evictions are a fairly specific occurrence and fairly infrequent.

And then finally, we wanted to gauge familiarity with the city's tenant protections program. So we asked whether landlords and tenants were familiar with the city's tenant protections program. And here, just under half of landlords were familiar with the program, but only 15 per 15% of tenants were familiar with, the city's program. So it's clear that additional outreach is needed to inform the public, both landlord and tenant, about the city's requirements. So regardless of what direction the city takes tonight with regard to the proposed updates, staff will expand outreach in 2026, and that will include informational mailers to landlords and property managers, in person events, expanded resources on the city's housing web page, and social media campaigns.

And then finally, as part of our research, we looked at neighboring jurisdictions requirements related to tenant protections. Here, Sunnyvale is is somewhere in the middle. We looked at relocation assistance amounts in surrounding jurisdictions. The jurisdictions of Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose have all adopted three month relocation assistance or more. Some have a fixed amount.

Others indicate a monthly rent amount in the case of Mountain View. And Cupertino is considering a requirement for expiring affordable housing units, But then jurisdictions like Santa Clara, Milpitas, and Campbell have not adopted additional tenant protections beyond AB fourteen eighty two. So in the other categories here, looking at additional assistance for special circumstance households. These would be lower income households, households with children, or elderly households. You can see a similar pattern where Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose all have increased assistance for those vulnerable populations, whereas Cupertino is considering, and other jurisdictions do not have any additional protections in place.

And then we also looked at minimum occupancy requirements for tenant protections to get an idea of how common day one protections are. Again, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose all have, additional requirements there, where their tenant protections would begin, before the twelve month, date of a lease, whereas Cupertino and Santa Clara and other jurisdictions do not have additional protections. So this leads us to our recommendation tonight with which we base on outreach outreach and research. We find that no fault just cause evictions are infrequent but have a significant impact for tenants and landlords. For landlords, these impacts are financial and operational to their business if they're undergoing a substantial renovation typically or moving into a unit.

For tenants, these are more personal impacts that cause housing instability, which can greatly impact their personal and professional lives and potentially lead to homelessness. And this is at no fault of the tenant. The cost of relocation for a tenant could easily exceed three months of rent, when you include first month's rent, security deposit, application fees, moving expenses, sometimes, additional storage is needed. And so we wanna balance these interests of both the tenant and the landlord, protecting the tenant but still make a feasible ordinance. And we can see that Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose have all managed this, and the city can as well.

And this aligns with previous direction from council. So tonight, we recommend alternative one to introduce the ordinance for three months relocation assistance for no fault, just cause evictions, and also alternative three to direct staff to con to continue to study additional tenant protections, including day one protections, additional protections for vulnerable populations, and using fair market rent as a benchmark for relocation assistance amount. This item was taken to Planning Commission and Housing and Human Services Commission in April. Planning Commission split their vote for each alternative. They voted to deny alternative one, although three were in favor of alternative one.

Two opposed, one abstained, one was absent, but that was not enough to pass the motion. And then planning commission also voted to approve alternative three. Housing and human services voted to approve alternatives two and three. And as part of alternative two, they directed staff to consider exemptions for properties with fewer than seven units and directed staff to define what a seven unit ownership exemption would look like. And, yes, this this concludes staff's presentation.

I'll be around for questions. And we also have Asenya Mesias from Project Sentinel available remotely for any questions regarding mediation about relocation assistance. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there questions from council?

First up, sorry,

is councilmember Sall.

I was wondering if, if landlords and, tenants, are there means for them to avoid the eviction such as if we put this into place, but the landlord and the tenant agree to move the tenant to another place in the complex, or if the, landlord gives notice to the tenant, in advance in the required date, that they're not renewing the, the lease. Like, it's a one year lease, and they're supposed to give, like, about sixty day of notice, and the landlord does give that sixty day of notice, then do these protections, kick into place or not?

So for in the case of of noticing, I think it may be helpful to note that tenant protections kick in after a tenant has remained in a unit for twelve months. So at that point in time, the no fault just cause eviction relocation assistance would actually be would actually kick in at that point in time. If a landlord does not renew a lease within the first twelve months and issues a notice to the tenant that there is that the lease is not being renewed, then no relocation assistance would be required in that circumstance. In terms of allowing a tenant to move into another unit, this could be a special exception, but it's not something that's contemplated in a b fourteen eighty two. So it would be outside of of a b fourteen eighty two and the tenant protections.

Okay. And then my last question is the currents of this eviction no fault, just caused eviction is it doesn't happen very often. And are there reasons why it doesn't happen very often? Both the tenants and the landlord report it doesn't happen very often.

Yes. I think it's just a fairly uncommon occurrence. We we cited some examples of of no fault, just cause evictions being the owner's intent to occupy a unit or having a family member occupy a unit, a substantial rehabilitation, which would be a significant remodel of a unit. These are all fairly rare in the case of tenants and landlords, and they just don't occur that commonly. So for those reasons, we don't see most tenants and most landlords having experienced one of these particular evictions.

Okay. My last question is the MTC TOC has policy standards that encourage cities to have this three month no fault, just cause eviction protection program. Why do they do that?

Yes. So MTC has created their transit oriented communities policy, and they've created several different buckets of policy. One of those is protection, I believe, is how they frame it. They have a number of different policies that jurisdictions can meet to to be more in compliance with MTC's TOC policies. One of those is establishing three months of relocation assistance.

The idea here is that across the Bay Area, which is what MTC is looking at, most renters are are going to be a lower income. So the additional tenant protections or the additional relocation assistance is intended to help them with relocation costs, understanding that they are are more likely to be lower income as as a renter and needing that additional assistance for the first month's rent, for security deposit, for other expenses related to moving, storage, all those things.

Let me just also add that that is one of a number of different policies that the city could could adopt to to be eligible for the the the funding, the TOC funding. So it's not a requirement that everybody adopt that policy.

Okay. Thank you very much.

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

Thank you, mayor. Thanks, staff, for the presentation. In the survey, both the landlords and then tenants said that they might there might be an increase in rent. Have we observed that in other cities? Any data on that?

It's it's very difficult to get data that could be attributed to an increase in relocation assistance alone. There are so many other factors that may affect an increase in rent just in terms of inflation, the availability of rental units on the market. You could have a new rental complex open up that is that has higher or more luxurious units that charge higher rents. All of these things could factor into why a jurisdiction's rent would increase. I think broadly speaking, we see, you know, in San Jose, their rents may be below what Sunnyvale's are on average, whereas in Mountain View, they may be slightly above what Sunnyvale's are.

So it's difficult to make any solid conclusions from those.

Yeah. The reason why I'm asking is though the number of evictions are less than, whatever, 10% or something like that. But both of them, almost 50% of them, both landlords and tenants said that there might be an increase. So for a 10% eviction, if they factor in that, and then if there is no data, there is no data attributable to this. So that's what I wanted to understand.

But I I totally get what you are saying. There are various parameters, and then it's very difficult to isolate the rent increase attributable to this. And then the other question I have is so if the in a normal eviction, the landlord gives some notice. Right? So what we are saying is, let's say, if this resolution is if this is passed, it's three months notice, or how does that work?

In in most cases, if a tenant has resided in a unit for twelve months, then sixty days notice is standard. There's some special circumstances for affordable housing developments, but the sixty day notice is required for tenants that have been in their unit for more than twelve months.

So within so let's say they live twelve months and then the car the lease is renewed, and then the landlord gives within the lease period sixty days. Is that the way it works?

Sixty days notice. Yes.

Okay. And then but what if this resolution is adopted, it will be ninety days?

There wouldn't be any change to the the noticing requirements. It would remain at at sixty days, which is the state law.

Okay. And then the slide neighboring neighboring jurisdictions program. I don't see the slide number. As additional yeah. That's like additional assistance. Who pays for this? This is the landlord who pays for that?

Yes. This the the landlord would be responsible for the additional assistance. Okay.

And then slide number eight, that is awareness of tenant protection program. What concerns me is not on the tenant side because tenants I was a tenant, and then I didn't know about this. But even on the landlord side, let's say we adapt a resolution, and then if it is not they are not aware of this, then it becomes a problem. Right? They're passing a resolution and our our didn't answer.

Yeah. Well, yes. And and that's why regardless of whatever direction is taken tonight, we we want to expand outreach in terms of notifying tenants and landlords about our tenant protections because landlords need to be aware of of this as a requirement. The if a property is exempt, they need to notice provide notice to their tenants, and they need to provide notice to their tenants if in the case of a no fault just cause eviction too. So this is an important ordinance, and and we do need to get the word out. So we'll be expanding outreach this year.

Okay. And then I want to expand on what housing and human services commission said about number of units seven or below? I think in the council question, there was I'm trying to see that. Approximately, only 10% of the units are seven or below. Is that correct number? Or

Yes. Based on what we can see both in our our GIS data, looking at buildings and and units throughout the city, and then looking at the city's business registry, we can see that 10% of units would be in 1010% of rental units specifically would be in units or or buildings with fewer than six units or fewer than seven units. Seven units. Yeah. This is because largely these are smaller properties. Most renters are going to reside in in larger multifamily developments.

Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you.

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

Thank you for the presentation. For project Sentinel, do we have a number for how many cases they mediate annually for Sunnyvale residents?

Specifically related to, relocation assistance?

Relocation assistance or in general?

For relocation assistance, they have had in fiscal year twenty four, twenty five, there were 16 calls about relocation assistance related to no fault, just cause evictions. And this could be tenants or landlords calling about the requirements. It's not necessarily that a termination or eviction was going to take place, but sometimes landlords and tenants just want to know if it applies to their particular property. But there were 16 calls over that year. Going into this year, I think the numbers were similar, but the fiscal year isn't yet complete.

They received about 90 calls total on evictions and terminations in general. So this represents about 18% of those total calls about evictions.

And do we have a sense it might be hard to tell, but if if I mean, people might not know about the mediation process, and it looks like from the survey, 85% of tenants didn't know about the protections. And there's a large group of tenants kind of falling through that aren't able to take it to small claims court and just don't know about the program. So what happens to them?

So this is where, our work with Project Sentinel is very important. If, if a termination is occurring, if there's a notice of, of termination, and the tenant involves or the landlord involves project sentinel in the process, they can determine if the notice is valid and contains the right information related to relocation assistance. If it doesn't, then a new notice would need to be issued with those terms in it. So in that way, if it's caught before the eviction takes place, we can ensure that the right amount of relocation assistance is paid to the tenant. If this is something that comes up after an eviction has taken place, then it would need to go through small claims court small claims court.

K. Thank you. I think that's all my questions for now, but I just did wanna say thank you for the increase in outreach for the survey responses.

Thank you, councilmember. Yes. I'll start there. Thank you for getting a much better turnout from a survey standpoint for both landlords and tenants. I have multiple questions.

So first, you talked about seven units and less are 10% of the units in approximately 10% of the units available in the city. That being said, it's twice as many sites. So so you you said 750 registered businesses are 10% and less, and 400 approximately 400 have more than eight eight or more units. So so even though the vast majority are greater, you're talking about if you talk about specific properties, you have a vast as many approximately units or landlord owners ultimately have seven or less units. Correct?

Seven approximately. Yeah. So for the most part, 90% of units are in buildings that are or properties that have seven or more units. 10% of units are in buildings or properties with six or fewer units. But we see a lot more ownership of those units or a lot more different entities owning those smaller buildings and properties just because they are are smaller. So so that's where that disparity comes in.

Okay. Thank you. So I just wanna talk about just cause and kind of going through this. There's a hypothetical that I didn't think of asking Monday or conceivably earlier. We had the we had the Twin Creeks apartment fire several years ago. And so the majority of that u of that building was condemned until it was renovated for smoke damage and all that. Would that have been a just cause eviction for the landlord to pay for renovations?

There are different laws related to evictions that are related to a a government order. I believe that's an exemption to no fault, just cause eviction. It would be its own separate thing, and I don't think that relocation assistance would be involved in that case, but we can check into that too.

Okay. And maybe the city attorney can look at that while we're while we're here. Let me go a little bit to and so from the survey results, you said that, you know, a lot of residents and landlords didn't know about a b or 1482 and project Sentinel. That being said, we're putting requirements I'm talking about changing this ordinance as far as requirements of posting, requirements of addendum to the lease. If they're if they're not posting at that location, what what follow-up does city staff have to at least and understanding that people often don't read their lease all the way through.

And that is that for both 1482 and project Sentinel for both of those things as far as part of the lease and posting?

So the the lease the inclusion of an addendum with the relocation requirements and and our other tenant protections programs in there is required to be included in the lease. That is both a state and city tenant protections program requirements. The city also has the additional requirement to post in a in an area, a conspicuous area on the property of the tenant protections program. So those are both requirements. And like I said earlier, there's a requirement to notify a tenant if the property is exempt from AB fourteen eighty two or relocation assistance.

Otherwise, the property would would not be exempt. So if a property owner fails to indicate that they are exempt from the ordinance, then it would apply to them. Okay.

And so the Housing Human Services Commission wanted to exempt below seven units. What would be if council if it was council's decision to exempt below seven units from three months and understanding that two months is already existing for for under seven as well as as eight and above units from an ordinance change, what would be the process to to do that from what we're talking about tonight?

The process in terms of an ordinance change or the process in terms of

So so if if council decided to do that tonight, that we didn't want to go with you know, move so, basically, the the summary is as, you know, as opposed to the ordinance as it sits in front of us now, move to three months for eight units and above is what the quick the quick summary from that standpoint.

I may ask for some help from the city attorney.

I was gonna say the city attorney can help us, but, essentially, you would have to continue the item to a date where you would have a new draft ordinance to introduce. And, Rebecca, if you

could So so you wouldn't have to continue it, but you would have to reintroduce it before the another. So there would be three hearings instead of two. We would have a reintroduction and then a second reading.

And a second reading, which is normally under consent. Okay.

So the reintroduction would be to on a date certain.

So they would direct staff to come back with you would direct staff to come back with an amended ordinance that would be reintroduced at a subsequent hearing. And then there would be a third hearing after that for it would be, at that point, the third reading. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yes. That makes sense. So, basically, it would it would be just directing staff tonight, and then conceivably, we have a second we we ultimately have a a second meeting sometime in the future with the with the new draft ordinance. Read read it, and then it'd be a a later consent.

Okay.

Thank you. And then you answered the project Sentinel question. Thank you, council member Chang. Okay. That was all of my questions. Council member Selle.

If we did do the exemption of related to seven units or small smaller from the three month, would Sunnyvale still be able to apply for the for the grants, for the transit oriented communities, NPC grants? Because those grants seem like you it mainly targets areas that are the transit oriented corridors to be the three months. So since the it's only 10% that are, you know, less than seven units, would the grant still apply? Could we still maybe apply for the grant?

Yes. In short, the the grants are the MTC's OBAG transportation grants. They are still available to jurisdictions that are not within full what MTC considers compliance with the TOC policies. So the city would still be able to apply for those grants and that funding. There it looks like from what we know right now of MTC's funding process with these new TOC policies in place, there will be set aside funds for jurisdictions that are more in compliance with those TOC policies, but the OBAG funding will still be available to jurisdictions that, are not in what MTC considers to be full compliance.

If you think of it as a menu of options of of policies to have, you need a certain number of points to be eligible. So that's just one of that menu of options that a city could choose to include. We we have enough other that we believe that we would still be strong for for for the grants.

Yep.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And a follow-up to one of my previous questions. We talked a little bit about the ordinance requiring the the contract amendment as well as kind of posting for for Project Sentinel. What is the if if a if a landlord is not posting Project Sentinel and what it is, what is the process? Well, it makes it difficult to check. But if we found a way to check or found out that it isn't being posted from residents or whatever, what is our follow-up from a city standpoint?

So the landlords are required to post the city's tenant protections program, and and it does include contact information for Project Sentinel, but they may adapt another posting. The city just offers one that includes project sentinel information. In terms of Compliance. Compliance with that, I I think that the easiest thing for staff to do would be to work with the landlord to make sure that they have the posting posted and in an area that that is considered conspicuous enough for the tenants to know it's there. I think that would be staff's recommended way of of handling that

situation. Okay. And and, thankfully, we at least seem to have better communication with the landlords than we had last cycle. So so I'm appreciating that. Next up is council member Chang.

Thank you. I wanted to follow-up on that because I just pulled up my lease from 2025, and there is no addendum for any of that information. So they are a corporate landlord that they own 90 something units. In this case, if they're not in compliance, you're saying that I, as a resident, I should tell Sunnyvale staff, or what happens now?

Yes. I think that we should know about it to inform the landlord and and let them know about our resources. We do have a a sample posting that they can include in their lease as an addendum and post to meet those requirements.

But there's no kind of

No compliance penalty?

Yeah. No compliance penalty.

I think we need the help

of the city attorney to answer that question of whether if if a landlord is not providing the proper notice to the tenant and tenants, if it's determined that they haven't done that, if if there's any kind of enforcement mechanism, what what that would be.

Can I check that?

Penalty or I don't know what the right terminology would be.

I'd have to check the ordinance for what the penalties are.

Okay. Thank you. That was the last of council questions. Let me go ahead go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial 9 on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I will read off one name and then the the following person so they can come to the lectern and be waiting nearby. First up is Janet m followed by Marie b.

I have thirty years of experience as a renter in the Bay Area. During those thirty years, I scrimped and saved. I put those savings into the purchase of a fourplex in Sunnyvale. I'm now the mom of a mom and pop who live in one unit and rent out three units. The three apartments are a side hustle. I continued working my day job and thankfully made it to retirement age. Our rental plan was to be gentle with rent increases to avoid turnover. Turnover is difficult when you got a full time job. At the time, we figured we could raise rents as expenses arose or at the time we sold our building. But in 2020, we got caught by law changes, including rent control.

In spite of that, we chose not to raise rents at all through the pandemic. Because of that generosity, our rents are 25 to 30% below fair market now. We may have a problem selling the building because of low rent tenants. We can't predict when we will sell. It will depend on our health. I'm in my late sixties and pop is in his seventies. And

my

building is old, fifty seven years. It's vulnerable to structural decay, which isn't visible until it's too late, like cancer. Finding it early means a 10 or $20,000 construction job. Delaying turns it into a $100,000. At least every ten years, I need to go over every inch of my apartments to look for small hints of decay.

Old laws prevent me from inspecting an occupied units. It's considered harassment of tenants. State law SB five sixty seven enacted in 2024 made it much more difficult to do a no fault eviction for the purposes of construction or remodel. It the unit has to be unsafe for thirty consecutive days. An eviction, attorney verified that for me.

So if my tenant if my tenants, who have all been there longer than ten years, choose to stay, I can't address structural decay until I've got a $100,000 problem. SB five sixty seven was enacted in 2024, but it didn't stop there. That year, the state enacted 64 new laws directed at rental properties. A bunch more in 2025, I stopped counting. Those laws don't recognize nice guy landlords.

They cost me and pop more and hit us harder because we were nice guys. Sunnyvale and the state continue piling on laws, costs, and risks. I've got thirty years of saving in my building, and I'm being forced to choose, either collect rents and take giant risk with those thirty years of savings or remove the tenants and taking this off the market. I have good tenants. As nauseating as it is, the choice is obvious. Remove the tenants. I've already written the first check, $5,000 to the eviction attorney.

Thank you. Next up is Marie b followed by Anil b.

Good evening, mayor Klein, city council, and city staff. My name is Marie Bernard from Sunnyvale Community Services. When a family loses their housing, even when it's through no fault eviction, it's devastating to them financially. Based on our agencies, decades of experience providing direct support for recently unhoused residents, it typically takes sixty to eighty days or longer according to our records for households to identify and secure a new unit even with financial assistance, even with dedicated housing search support from our staff. These timelines reflect real conditions in Sunnyvale, and I also wanna make a point that when families need to change housing, they pay more rent because they're going to a new place.

So rents rise regardless of whether or not it's a no fault eviction reason that they're being evicted or because they are moving to another household. These times with lines really reflect the real conditions in Sunnyvale. We have limited housing, and we have high rent levels, as you all know. Without sufficient time and resources, many households will not be able to transition into stable housing without a lot of help. And if they leave their housing before they have secured a new unit, which could take months, they will need temporary accommodations.

They will need a storage unit. They may live in their car. They may miss work because they're running around trying to find affordable housing, and the spiral of homelessness homelessness can quickly happen to them through no fault of their own. No fault evictions are relatively small. They are about 10% less than our relocation costs or or cases, but this small number still, equals dozens of families, and they will face the same barriers in our city as other renters looking for affordable housing.

All the families that SES serves through housing, assistance are housing burdened. Technically, means they are spending more than 30% of their household income. But what we see in the budgets of our clients, they're spending 80% of their income. They're working two to three jobs. They're wondering whether or not they can feed their families, which is why we'll have 1,300 families coming tomorrow, Wednesday.

These are families repeating their need to come every week for for food assistance because rents are so high in our wonderful city. I do wanna also say that, mayor Klein, you mentioned the, the, fire that happened in Twin Pines Manor with in twenty in twenty sixteen. We were right there on the front lines with the city of Sunnyvale staff. We worked very closely with our city staff to negotiate fair ways for those landlords to compensate the tenants and to make sure that they were housed. A 169 people were housed within six months.

It took gargantuan amount of money to be raised, our city's cooperation, but also a number of help as well as well. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next up is Anil b followed by Emily Barr.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. My name is Anil Babar with the California Apartment Association. We represent the operators and managers and owners of rental property in the state of California. I wanna start by saying the increasing the relocation payments of three months of rent is an example of an unaffordable housing policy, one that will ultimately make housing less affordable in Sunnyvale. This proposal is problematic in several ways.

First, while it's designed to serve a relatively small number of households facing a no fault eviction, it will post costs across the rental market. These costs are absorbs absorbed into the city as higher rents affecting all renters in Sunnyvale. Second, there's no clear justification for why this increase is necessary. The city hasn't presented any data demonstrating the current relocation assistance isn't sufficient. There is a significant this is a significant policy change without a clear evidence based rationale.

Third, your own advisory bodies raise concerns. Both the planning commission and the housing commission question the potential impact on housing costs. Survey conducted by staff echoed those same concerns. Taken together, the lack of data, the concerns from your commissions, and the broad market impacts carry real risk. Housing policy should be grounded in evidence and focus on expanding affordability, not negatively impacting them.

When you increase the cost of providing housing, the cost of housing itself goes up. So for these reasons, I urge you to reject this proposal and focus on education of existing protections, and CA would be happy to help with that process. And we're also happy to help in educate our owners about any addendum that the city, requires the owners to attach the lease. Lastly, I wanna just touch upon a couple things that I heard during the presentation. One, the inclusion of both Mountain View and Sunny and San Jose suggesting that their relocations are at three months.

Those were all enacted before 1482 was passed, the relocation requirement was mandated. And aside from those two cities and Palo Alto, every other city in the county has kept it at one month because in Sunnyvale, as I as I mentioned, is at two months, and I wanna see we would like to see evidence that that isn't sufficient. To date, we haven't seen that. Lastly, regarding the TOC, as council member Sall reckon suggested, that is a very complicated, process. So I would highly recommend against making any decisions today until you understand the full breadth of how those points are calculated, to get those grants.

And furthermore, the grant amounts have been significantly reduced. So understanding both the process and what the ultimate amount would be before considering relocation as part of your, that proposal. Thank you.

Thank you. And my last speaker card in the room is Emily r.

Hi, mister mayor and council members. I'm Emily Ann Ramos. I am with SB at Home and the tenant protection and empowerment associate there. We sent a letter in yesterday, but I wanted to highlight some of our the big highlights of it. So we support staff's recommendation of increasing the relocation assistance for no fault evictions from, from two months to three months and exploring additional tenant protections, including the day when just cause and enhanced protections for vulnerable populations, and use of fair market rent and as a standard for relocation assistance.

Something to highlight, increasing relocation assistance to three months better reflects the actual cost of securing a new unit, including first month's rent, security deposits, moving expenses, and the time needed to locate a comparable housing in the in such a constrained market that we all feel in this Bay Area. It is notable that there are throughout this region and the state, there are many cities that have tenant relocation assistance that are even stronger than what you are adopt are looking at adopting today, and they still have a functioning rental market. So now that I have the nice little highlights of that, some things to note. Palo Alto did adopt a Trejo back in 2017. It was in response to a mass eviction event.

And you don't want to face that when you're like, oh, no. We we we need to address something like right now. It's best to have some kind of safety net before that happens. However, Palo Alto did adopt make it made it they made it stronger more recently because they added it into their housing element. Several other cities are looking at a tenant relocation assistance ordinance, making it stronger.

They have committed to that in their housing elements such as Cupertino, Mont Morgan Hill, and Santa Clara. Santa Clara seems really excited about it. I just took their affordable housing proclamation right before this, and their staff seems excited about building on that. Some things to think about is in another jurisdiction that had Trejo before AB fourteen eighty two is one of your lovely neighbors, which is my favorite city. But they also made their Trejo stronger after 1482, so it's not completely out of line.

Some things to also think about is as you explore other protections and and focusing on more vulnerable populations is that a lot of these things are an and situation, not an or. There's not gonna be one single tenant protection or one single housing policy that's gonna solve us from this housing crisis. You kinda need all of them to build together to really help your most vulnerable populations and your residents. So I ask you to push as far as you can because we all need that help.

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

Yes, mayor. First up is Valerie followed by Katia w. Valerie, you've been unmuted, and you have three minutes to address the city council.

Hi. My name is Valerie, and I would like you guys to vote for articles, whatever, supplements three in one to basically help, people get more eviction protection and tenant protections so that they actually have a social safety net, and they're not left out left out on the streets. So thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Katya w. Katya, you've been unmuted, and you have three minutes to address the city council.

My name is Katya Weiss. I'm a tenant here tonight to speak in favor of increasing the relocation assistance required during no fault evictions and to

Sorry, Katya. We lost the ability to hear you for a moment. Would you be able to restart your statement? You appear to be unmuted, but we're not able to hear you.

Hi. Can you hear me now? Hi. My name I I'm unmuted. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Sorry. Hi. My name is Katya Weiss. I'm a tenant here tonight to speak in favor of increase seeing the relocation assistance required during properties with fewer than seven units in this ordinance. I think the argument for increasing relocation assistance is fairly obvious.

We're all aware of how expensive it is to be a and sunny let alone how expensive it is to look for new housing in the city. Instead, I will be focusing on why we should not exempt smaller landlords. Something we need to keep in mind when it comes to this topic is that this relocation assistance is only being given in situations where landlords are choosing to pull their properties from the market. The tenants in these cases have done nothing wrong and now need to scramble to find new housing in an increasingly expensive of If landlords with fewer than 70, they should consider not evicting their tenants and keeping their properties from falling into disrepair. This is a decision that majorly impacts tenants' lives, it's only fair that landlords should need to consider it very carefully.

And let us be honest here. Owning a property that you rent out in addition to your own horrible amount of wealth. These people are not struggling for money, least of all when compared with the tenants who subsidize their lifestyles. Additionally, the idea that rents need to increase because of additional support to those impacted by just cost evictions, something that impacts only 10% of tenants is ridiculous. Rent increases don't happen in a vacations on the rental market. This is why you've probably noticed they trot out the rents will increase argument in response to any regulations. Thank you for taking the time to hear me tonight. I hope the council will take my comment into into consideration.

Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for this agenda item.

Thank you, city clerk. Let's go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for questions or emotion. I have questions, but I'll see if anyone else has questions. Any questions? First, city attorney. Do you have any feedback on compliance with either not not an appropriate posting or or addendum to a contract?

So the the ordinance is not enforced directly by the city. It provides a private right of action to tenants to bring an action against the landlord, or they can use violations of the ordinance as a defense and a wrongful detainer action. Essentially, what that means is that if they refused to vacate if they had improper notice and they refused to vacate, they could not be evicted, or they could raise that as a defense. But the city itself doesn't have a process for imposing penalties or or enforcing the ordinance directly. We do provide education to members of the public.

I know that from time to time, we have people who contact the city attorney's office about tenant landlord tenant issues. We have a list of resources for them. Think people also sometimes contact the housing division. And we tried to provide education and legal referrals to like pro bono or the County Bar Association referral service.

Okay. Thank you. And question for staff. So I know that one of the residents or one of the members of the public spoke about, you know, three months versus two months versus one month. The does so we we focused on other cities with three months. Do you have a general breakdown from a county standpoint of two months versus one month?

Yes. We're the only city with two months relocation assistance. And then as we noted, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose have three months or greater. Palo Alto is equal something greater than three months, but it's just those cities with three months. The other cities in the county just have the current state law, which requires one month of relocation assistance. Although there are other there are other jurisdictions that are considering ordinances.

Okay.

Thank you. Bring it back to counsel. That was all my questions. Does counsel have any questions or a motion?

I have an answer to the the question about destruction, total destruction of an apartment building, for example, by fire. So so legally, if if a lease dwelling is completely destroyed, the lease automatically terminates. So the tenant no longer owes rent even if, you know, they had a lease that, you know, was for longer than that period, and the landlord no longer has an obligation to provide a dwelling. So so the legal argument there would be there is no relocation that's due because the lease is terminated automatically. However, if the fire was the result of poor maintenance of the building or something of that nature, I could see that there may be damages owed to the tenants for that.

And just as a quest so just as a follow-up as far as that's concerned, that's if the unit burns down. If it's just smoke damage and this is the perfect example. It's like, I think one of the units with one or two of the units was directly affected by the fire in the Twin Pines apartment fire. But the but a whole wing or more was affected by smoke damage. So I don't know. What where does that stand if you under if you in the in the research that you did in between.

So right. Well, a landlord has a duty to provide a habitable dwelling, and that includes a duty to make repairs in a reasonable amount of time. So if there was smoke damage, they would need to repair that and get the tenant back into the unit in a reasonable time, or they could be liable for breaching, you know, their lease with the tenant. However, if the entire building is burned down, there there is no repair that's available. There are I have read there are some some jurisdictions, not in Sunnyvale that, for example, if that happens they will require that tenants be offered former tenants be offered a unit in the rebuilt structure.

But there you know, that's as a practical matter, if the building's gone, it can't be repaired. Right? Okay. There's nothing left to repair.

Absolutely. No. That makes sense. Thank you. That was all my questions. Is there a motion? Council member Srinivasan.

Move staff recommendation alternatives one and three.

Is there Mhmm. Is there a second? Seeing none, is there an alternate motion? Councilmember Chang.

I move alternative three to direct staff to study additional tenant protections for day one just cause evictions, further protections for vulnerable populations and fair market rent location assistance.

And as far as items one or two? So their staff staff recommendation is one and three? Oh, just alternative three. You're just moving alternative three. Okay. Is there a second for that? Council member Sowell.

I second that. To your motion.

I understand the value of moving to from two months to three months, but I have a lot of concerns about compliance right now and and how much knowledge there is as as I just looked at my lease and that wasn't included. And I think right now, I really want staff to be able to focus on getting the current protections information out to tenants and landlords and focusing on that outreach and then looking at further protections later on.

Thank you. Councilmember Sell?

So I am sympathetic to the tenants that no cause for the for the position they're in. They didn't do anything wrong, but then their place is being remodeled or for some reason, and they're being evicted. But Sunnyvale has two months, which is more than a large percentage of the whole all the other cities. There's only three other cities that have three months. So I guess I agree with council member Chang that if we could advertise, and I think the California Association Apartment Association said they would help us advertise among the tenants and among the renters so that we would advertise that we do have the two months protection.

And I think this protection so I like that we have two months. I like that it's more than most of the county, the cities in the county tab. And I like that what council member Chang said, focused on getting that information out to people. And

that's what I'm thinking.

Thank you, council member. Council member Srinivasan.

Yeah. I will support the motion. In fact, alternative three, we need to get more information on day one just cause eviction. Some of the cities have other cities have more than for day one, we need to look at that more carefully. And then also, we need to have protection for vulnerable population.

That's I would like more research on that. Regarding alternative one, I I I agree with the council member Chang. I'm not a renter, so I haven't seen the my agreement. But what she says makes absolute sense. If we pass an ordinance and then if it nobody knows about it, especially the 85 or 90% of the tenants do not know about it, then passing an ordinance.

First of all, nobody will complain and then then that we need to educate. I think alternative three is very straightforward for me. And then since there is no motion on the other things, I'll just support alternative three. Thank you.

Thank you. And first, a question to the city attorney. Do we need to formally make a motion to not introduce an ordinance from a from a noticing standpoint?

Yes. I think alternative two is do not introduce an ordinance. So

Without. But the second half of that, a moving direction to staff.

You could you could just move to not introduce the ordinance.

Thank you. So as a friendly amendment, can you can can you make can you add that we do not introduce an ordinance to your motion?

Yes. Thank you.

Do you

have a second?

Yes. I agree to the amendment.

As a secondary friendly amendment to what you were asking additional tenant protections, I would like staff to investigate potential enforcement measures for noncompliance of by landlords.

Yes. I accept.

Thank you.

I accept.

Thank you. I'll support this motion. You know, I would have considered especially looking at potentially the the three month increase. Part of part of the thing part of the thing that that allows me to support this is what what council member Sall said and and and what staff said as far as we are not we're above what the state's requirement is. I can conceivably go to to three months for some of the larger units.

But I think the biggest thing, as council member Chang said at the beginning, was trying to get compliance for our existing rules for the two months and, you know, and educating the residents about the use of Project Sentinel. You know, I think it is underused and just having outreach in you know, for almost ten years on council trying to educate residents on that that the availability of Project Sentinel was there. For those that actually knew who the mayor was or the council member for for the city, it was easy conceivably, it was easy for them to tell, you know, tell me about what they're going through and point them in the right direction. We need to make sure that that, you know, the landlords are in compliance. And so thank you for the make for the maker of the motion for accepting that addition, you know, for me and and hopefully the partnership and better communication that we have with with the landlords now helps ensure that going forward, everything is in compliance with what we already have in place.

And so I'm hoping that all this makes a difference within our community. I appreciate the time to get us to this point, but I am happy to support the motion as it currently stands. And with that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion carries four zero with vice mayor Mellinger and council member Cisneros and Lay absent.

Thank you. Those counts yep. That's what I was wondering. Let's go ahead and take a ten minute recess and come back at 09:17. Thank you very much.

Let's let's go ahead and reconvene. Our next item is item 26 dash zero four eight two. Consider approval draft twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven housing and urban development HUD action plan is her staff report.

Good evening. I'm Matt Hazel, housing programs analyst. The item is to consider approval of the draft 02/2627 housing and urban development action plan. Sunnyvale receives two HUD grants each year, CDBG and HOME, which are used to address housing and human service needs of low and moderate income households in the community. Grantees are required to submit an action plan every year that acts as a grant application in a strategic document that lists the funded activities in the annual budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

The city issued two requests for proposals in January, one for CDBG funds and one for home funds. The funding recommendations of the two RFPs were evaluated by the Housing and Human Services Commission on March 25 in item 26 dash zero one four five, and the draft action plan reflects the approved recommendation from that meeting. For proposed CDBG activities, the CDBG activities proposed to be funded in 2026 are shown in table two of the HHSC staff report and table nine of the action plan in attachment two. These activities are eligible for the indicated funding type and amount recommended because they meet one or more priority needs identified in the consolidated plan. The CDBG activities include five main groups of programs.

That's public services, administration, capital projects and economic development programs, the city's internal home improvement program, and the revolving loan fund. For public services, HUD allows up to 15% of grants to be used for public services, which are small grants for services to low income households and funds programs for youth counseling, foster youth support, and food and grocery programs. Fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven is the second year of the two year funding cycle, so agencies that were funded last year will receive their second allocation of funding on 07/01/2026 in the amount of $177,800 Next is the administration planning budget. HUD also limits city admin costs at 20% of the grant amount for CDBG and 10% for home. The planned admin allocation based on HUD regulations is approximately $237,000 for CDBG and $38,000 for home funds.

These funds are used for city staffing to support programs and administer the funds. Also, of the CDBG admin budget, about 26,000 is used to fund a fair housing program. This program would otherwise be a public services program, and the city is maximizing the HUD cap by using admin funds. After CDBG administration and public service programs are fully funded, collectively capped at 35%, remaining available funds are allocated to capital projects. These include economic development, construction rehabilitation projects, and the city's home improvement program.

The city received two applications for capital projects, one from Upwards Care and another from Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley. Upwards applied to continue running their boost program, which is currently in its first year funding that equips low to moderate income child care providers with personalized one on one coaching and digital tools to optimize operations and help create additional jobs, increasing providers' ability to care for more children. The Boost program will serve 60 providers with approximately $552,000 Rebuilding Together applied for their repair and accessibility modification program. This helps preserve the city's existing affordable housing stock, enables residents to safely age in place. Rebuilding Together will host rebuilding days, volunteer home repair events, engaging community members and volunteers, and hands on home repair work.

These events will put together funds for volunteers to repair and rebuild nonprofit facilities and homes to help transform neighborhoods throughout the city of Sunnyvale. Next is the home improvement program and administered by city staff, which provides grants to lower income residents for minor home repairs. The recommended allocation for the city's home improvement grant is $119,000 Lastly is the revolving loan fund, which doesn't use CDBG grant funds, only program income, to staff the mentioned home improvement program and provide loans of larger amounts for major home repairs to low income homeowners. The recommended allocation is $140,000 for program administration and $100,000 for loans. For the proposed home activities, besides 10% of admin costs, the city focuses funds on operating one large activity, the TBRIP program.

This program provides rental subsidy and security deposit assistance as well as supportive services for 40 very low income households who are at risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness. The program will award $1,000,000 per year for two years of home funds for the rental subsidies and additional city funding for the case management administration of the program. The program will continue to be administered by Sunnyvale Community Services, decided through the RFP process, who has been the administrator of the program for the past four years. In conclusion, staff recommends alternative one, adopt the draft 02/2627 housing and urban development action plan as shown in attachment two of the staff report. Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Are there any questions from council? Council member Srinivasan.

Thank you. Thank you for the allocation. I had multiple questions on that. Regarding the first one is capital projects. Rebuilding together, staff recommends 480,000. It scored higher than upwards care. I know both are two different entities, and then they serve their services are different. Why are we recommending though the the boost program requested under 19, we are allocating 552. Why is that discrepancy?

That was

part of the conversation we had with the Housing and Human Services Commission. We ended up with additional available funds, and CDBG requires funds to be expended timely. So because the amount totaled from the applications didn't meet the amount we had available, we we had conversations with both agencies asking if they could increase the scope and impact of their of their programs, and both were able to do that.

Oh, okay. So what you are saying is both these organizations, you went back and then based on the conversation you allocated staff allocated. Okay. Thank you. And then the next is housing rehabilitate habitation program. Why is the administrative cost so high compared to the program cost?

I can take that question. So this is something we also talked about last year. It is a city staff who's running it, but they're also running a number of other city rehabilitation programs with our CDBG funding as well as our PLH funding. And so that is a portion of their salary and benefits costs. But again, they're not just running the loan program, they're running the minor rehabilitation program, the major rehabilitation program, and they're also running the PLHA program as well that assists homeowners with some ADA compliant.

So this is a portion of staff's salary or Correct.

That To run a number of different in house programs. Okay.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, council member. Next is council member Sell.

I was just wondering in looking at the allocation for UpwardsCare. So it says on the chart that the funding amount they requested was 119, and then the staff recommendation is 552. I was just wondering, like, that seems like on the order of, you know, three or four times more than they requested. I was just wondering, staff's recommendation, the basis for that.

That's right. After further communication with the agency upwards, out and after a successful first year of the program where they've met and over met some of the the goals they set, they identified that the need in Sunnyvale does exist. So when the conversation was, could they increase the level of providers from 13 that they applied to to 60, which would be how much they're helping now, they were compelling that they could could meet that goal. So because the funds were available, were excited to do that.

And if I can add to that, it was at commission's direction that we went back out and and asked those agencies. So we had a few $100,000 left over after the initial allocations because we just didn't have a lot of different applicants applying for funding. So commission directed us to go back out and ask Rebuilding Together and upwards if they would be able to increase their level of service. They both agreed that they could, and then they gave us the amounts that they would be comfortable increasing it to, and the amount of people they felt they could serve with those additional amounts.

Okay. And then in the future, so this is for a two year allocation. And say after the two years, there's more in different nonprofits that apply, then do these programs like at words, do they would they expect that's their 550, or would the staff be open to also looking at other nonprofits and other needs? And because I think the county needed to cut a lot of programs. So then there's maybe some services that currently Sunnyvale residents are getting that that's not funded anymore.

But those are new needs, which maybe, like, a few months ago, those nonprofits didn't realize they would be not getting the funding. So

Upwards is actually funded through the request for proposals for capital projects, which is something we do every year. It's only public services in the TBRU program that is on a every two year basis. So we'll open up a new RFP this year for for new applicants, and then something we'll we'll look at every year. Okay. Perfect. They've they've identified that they are are used to fluctuations in funding amounts working with jurisdictions. So depending on how much we have available each year, a new disc we'll have a new discussion.

Okay. And then so that that is allocation is for capital programs, and there just weren't that many capital programs that applied for that.

That's right. We just have the two applicants.

Okay. Well, thank you for your work.

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

Thank you. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about, the TBRA program, just how much of it was expended last this past cycle and how the outreach, occurs.

Yeah. So outreach is done, largely through Sunnyvale Community Services. There's been a program administrator for the last four years. We don't have all of the funding through the current fiscal year that we're in. For 02/2425, I think the programs expended about 710,000 of the of their budget.

Okay. Great. And maybe this question could be for Sunnyvale Community Services later. But, you know, if if there is a higher need that that we're not hearing that we isn't kind of demonstrated in in this report, if that that could be spoken to.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, council member. All of my questions have been answered. Project center. Okay. Yes. All my all my questions have been answered already. Thank you, colleagues. Let's 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 9 in your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. First up is Melanie F, followed by Pilar F.

Good evening, Leanne Klein Council members. I'm Melanie Farr from Upwards. Thank you for your continued support of Sunnyvale's child care providers in the Boost program and for the human services Housing and Human Services Commission's recommendation to expand the program. As Matt explained, Boost helps low to moderate income family child care providers strengthen their businesses through one on one coaching and hands on support covering marketing, enrollment and curriculum. Providers also receive free access to our child care management system, which streamlines day to day operations and elevates the quality of programming that they receive continue to receive free access beyond the program year.

The result provide is that providers grow their revenue, create local teaching assistant jobs, and expand access to affordable high quality care for working families. So thanks to the city's past support, we've already exceeded our goals supporting eight providers and creating four new teaching assistant positions well ahead of schedule. Participants praise the program not only for strengthening their business, but also giving them the tools they need to improve the quality of care. There's still more work to do to answer council member Sal's question. We wanted to be mindful of other applicants or potential applicants, which is why we requested a lower amount.

But the truth is there are over a 150 providers in the city still in need of support. 2025 was the hardest year yet for family child care providers. Locally, earn less than $19 an hour nationally over half struggle to afford food and more than 40% struggle to afford housing. The good news is our team and systems are in place to scale quickly. The jump from 80 to eight to 60 providers may look significant, but we've done it before.

Our San Jose program supported a 131 providers two years in a row. And due to the success of that program, that program is actually expanding to nearly 200 providers next year. I think that as a testament that we can scale up without sacrificing quality. Across more than 30 cities and counties nationwide, including seven here in the Bay Area, we've mentored over 500 providers, created a 180 jobs, and grew provider revenue by an average of 25% and expand childcare slots by over 30% all within the first year. We can hit the ground running on day one and tackle the bulk of Sunnyvale's childcare challenges within twelve months without requiring continued funding at this level.

Sustainability is really central to our model, so we equip providers with the training and tools they need to succeed long term, including again free access to our child care management system beyond that this year. And through Boost, I also wanna note every Sunnyvale family will also have access to a dedicated care specialist to help them find care that suits their unique needs, including extended hours and emergency backup care. So we'll definitely be spreading the word about that as well this year. So with your approval tonight, we'll deliver real impact to help 60 providers, increase revenue, create 20 new teaching assistant jobs, strengthen Sunnyvale's childcare landscape for years to come. Happy small business and public service week.

Thank you so much for your support.

Thank you very much. And just to remind council, if you have any questions of any of the of any of the groups, this is the time to ask. Oh, and on that note Yeah. Council member Srini Bhasan. Thank you for for

reaching end with that, but wanted to shout out the small business.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for what you the services you provide. The question I have is with the increased funding, I I you mentioned that you would support more childcare facility childcare provider. Do we have any metrics on how many more you can support and all those things?

Yes. Thank you for that question. So with this amount of funding that's in the recommended amount of funding, we would support 60 family child care providers in the city, create 20 new teaching assistant jobs, and I would estimate probably over 500 families that we could help find their unique care. As you know, the families are considered indirect beneficiaries of the program because it's a micro enterprise technical assistance program. So to answer your question, sixty sixty family child care providers increase 20 new teaching jobs in one year.

Okay. But the funding you this is almost three times the more funding than you requested, three and a half times. So if it is 60, what was your estimate?

So, originally, we had estimated to support 13 providers, and that would yield four new teaching assistant jobs. So to go from 13 to 60 providers. Mhmm. Which I know it seems like a big leap, but, really, the original request was just a reflection of what we thought was reasonable given typical years allocation and other applicants. We wanted to be really mindful of, so that's why we made it smaller. It's not a reflection of the actual need that we're seeing in Sunnyvale.

So I am assuming your organization is scalable?

Very scalable. Yes. San Jose is our biggest partner, but like I said, we're scaling up from a 131 providers to 200 providers next year. So I think, you know, given I would also say that the most amount of our Boost partnerships are right here in Santa Clara County. So we've been working in the county for over four years now.

And then these 60 providers will be Sunnyvale?

Sunnyvale, specifically. They run their business out of their home, that's very easy to verify.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you very much. One actually, one more question. Councilmember Selle.

Yeah. I was just wondering as part of your marketing, do you reach out to the local school districts in Sunnyvale? And so what encompasses so you have more funding, and, hopefully, you'll have more that you support. And so what ways of outreach do you intend to do or would you envision?

Thank you for that question. So since the providers are direct beneficiaries, the focus of the out outreach is more geared towards the providers initially. So we've been involved with Build the Future. It was just at an event last Friday. There through that contact, we were also invited to speak to the local SEIU, and that's something we wanna continue to do, not just once, but more often to speak to the local union who represent this the providers and get word out.

And that was actually, I think, before we were even launched in Sunnyvale, but I met providers from Sunnyvale at that event as well. So we'll continue to be involved reach out to First Five, for example, with local organizations that are working directly with the providers. And then separately, you know, a lot of these providers it's kind of counterintuitive because there's a huge capacity gap in Sunnyvale where nearly fifty percent of the kids under the age of six in Sunnyvale don't have access to a licensed care slot yet. And also with the expansion of TK, the day cares need help with enrollment because anyway, the without getting in the weeds, that's something that we really, really help with initially with the boost program is helping those providers fill the empty slots and increase their enrollment, which makes their business more sustainable. So to that end, that's where we have a lot of conversations too by helping families find care that suits their needs, which in turn helps the both the families obviously, but also the businesses be sustainable.

So with that, I would say, for example, the Build the Future event I was at last week was more geared towards employers offering childcare benefits to their employees. So I was having conversations with folks from NASA and Stanford about their employees who may not just be in Mountain View or Palo Alto, you know, but in surrounding areas. And there's only so much their local centers can take on, so that's where we could just help play matchmaker with the families and the providers.

Okay. And then one last thing. Once a childcare provider goes through and gets your assistance and learns the marketing training and has can use your applications. Is it kind of like you can teach someone and then they can be more independent, or do they need to continue to use your services for it to be as beneficial? What are your what are your

Thank you for that question. We abide by the proverb teach a woman to fish. So, definitely, the goal of the program is that it is just twelve months and that we're giving them the marketing resources, the digital platform, which again they retain free access to beyond the program year. All the assets, but most importantly, the one on one mentorship and hands on training. So that they're learning by doing throughout that year so that they continue to be successful regardless of future funding or, you know, the future support from the the boost program.

Of course, they'll always get the the upward support that they need through the platform. So when I brought up San Jose, for example, supporting a 131 providers in the first year and a 131 providers in the second year, that was an entirely new cohort of providers. So they kinda graduate out of the program.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep. My pleasure. Thank you for the questions. Thank you. That was all questions. Thank you. You. Next up is Pilar F followed by Diane E.

Good evening, mayor, city council. My name is Pilar Furlong. I'm the chief community resources officer for Bill Wilson Center. For those of you who may not be familiar with us, we have been in the community providing housing and counseling services to youth and families since 1973. And while we predominantly provide services to youth between the ages of 12 and 24, we also provide counseling and mental health services to families.

The Wilson Center is privileged to be a current recipient of CDBG funds from the city of Sunnyvale, and we're very grateful to be included in the city's action plan. Our program in Sunnyvale provides counseling services for low to extremely low income people of all ages. These are clients that are usually spending their limited incomes on trying to get food or trying to pay rent, not usually counseling. Our program addresses a variety of problems that face individuals such as family conflict, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, stress, just out of control behaviors, or student problems with school. Our counselors really focus on helping people learn and develop the skills and confidence that they need to handle any crisis that they might face.

We look for the positive in each person and we try to build on their strengths and we incorporate a no fail approach because we believe everybody can be successful. I wanted to take a minute and just tell you about a client we served. This was actually a couple years ago. So this gentleman, Michael, I'll call him, from Sunnyvale, when he came to us when he was suffering the loss of a loved one. He was grieving.

He was a father. He had a nine year old son, and he was having a lot of trouble processing his grief in a healthy way. So through participation in one of our grief groups, Michael was working with a therapist who really gave him that compassionate space and the healthy tools for coping. With the new tools he learned, he was able to better deal with his feelings. He was able to connect with his sons so that they could grieve together.

And by the end of the his time with us, he was working on kind of identifying new things in his life that were bringing meaning and really trying to concentrate on some of the positives. I just wanted to thank the city of Sunnyvale for your continued support of Bill Wilson Center through CDBG. We're really looking forward to continuing this partnership in the coming year. So I encourage you to adopt the plan that's before you this evening.

Thank you. One moment. First up is council member Srinivasan.

Thank you. Thank you for the work you do. And then you operate our Sunnyvale Shrinivasan.

We do. We do. Thank you.

The question I have is, how do you work with we also contract WeHope. Mhmm. And then we also have various organizations, Sunnyvale Community Services, Livable Sunnyvale. Sorry. Helping Ads. So do you work with them, or how do how does that work?

So so for Sunnyvale Community Services, we do a lot of cross referrals. If we have folks that we know are from the Sunnyvale area, we might be referring, like, to the to the food pantry or so they get food resources there. Sometimes when Sunnyvale will see a young person who may be homeless or on the street. They can refer them to our youth shelter that we have or to one of our housing programs. So there's a lot of cross referral that goes on there.

With we hope I mean, we see them in so our headquarters is in Santa Clara that we are all we've have spots all over. And we kind of track where they have their, like, their shower service that they do so that we can if we have clients that we know we can refer there. Usually, that's from our drop in center in Downtown San Jose because those are really the homeless youth that we're dealing with. So we work with quite a few service providers, but obviously in Sunnyvale, Sunnyvale Community Services is one of the largest ones that we partner with.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you. And a a follow-up. As far as promoting, so understanding that you have referrals from from certain agencies, how do you promote generally within the city that your services are available?

So for counseling services, which is what this grant funds

And counsel? We work a lot with

the schools and the district because we're really looking at children, and then with that goes to the family. Right? Sometimes it's not just individual counseling, it's family counseling that's needed. So prime the predominant ones are other service providers. We also do resource fairs, but the schools Okay.

Are one

of our largest ones.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up is Deanne e followed by Marie b.

Good evening, mayor, council members, and staff. I'm Deanne Everton, executive director for Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley. Rebuilding Together provides no cost home repairs and safety and accessibility modifications for low income homeowners. Our clients are precariously near the edge of housing instability, unable to afford the costs of needed repairs and or accessibility modifications that threaten their health and the ability to remain in their home. We offer a cost effective solution so that low income residents can remain safely and independently in their homes and in their community.

Our work not only restores healthy living environments and improves the quality of life for each recipient, but our work strengthens neighborhoods, fosters connection, and preserves the cultural and economic diversity of the community, all for a relatively low investment. While Sunnyvale has just recently been added to our service area, we've spent the last thirty five years serving other parts of Santa Clara County. In fact, we've impacted over 6,000 households and invested over $18,000,000 in preserving affordable housing, preventing homelessness, and protecting generational wealth and the diversity of our neighborhoods. Currently, serve about 300 households a year in Santa Clara County, and we do this work with, the help of local licensed and vetted contractors, our in house technicians, as well as our volunteer programs that engage with the community. In fact, just this past week, we, hosted 16 projects throughout Santa Clara County involving, local businesses, corporations, civic groups, and faith communities.

Our clients tend to be longtime residents who've given so much to their community. The majority are at 50% or below of median income for Santa Clara County, with our average family bringing in about 43,000 a year. Seventy five percent are older adults and forty six percent are people with disabilities. Your support of the work of Rebuilding Together directly addresses your annual action plans goal to assist in the preservation of affordable affordable housing for low income and special needs households. Your investment in these CDBG funds helps ensure Sunnyvale residents remain where remain a place where all residents, regardless of income or age, can live safely and with dignity.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Councilmember Srinivasan has a question.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to volunteer for rebuilding together. I was what is called blitzer. I used to go around the client's house to assess Oh, wonderful. Needs. Okay. You mentioned I I when there was also rebuilding Peninsula area, which was the Sunnyvale was under that organization.

That's correct.

But is the other the service area changed or what exactly is? Right?

We we did. We we negotiated with rebuilding together Peninsula, and and it was just determined that we were better suited to serve Sunnyvale. We were getting a lot of the referrals for Sunnyvale, so we we took on that part of the service area.

Okay. And then regarding this grant program repair and accessibility modification, I I totally understand. I was involved in the accessibility modification, the grip bar, and then the staircase, all those things. Of this amount, is this dedicated to Sunnyvale residents, or is it a general pool?

No. It's only Sunnyvale.

Mhmm. Oh, okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. That was all council questions. Thank you. Thank you. And finally, in the room is Marie B.

Good evening again. We are thankful to the city staff for recommending SCS to be awarded the TBRA contract for the next two years. Our two year plan is to serve up to 40 households at any time, reaching a total of at least 50 households over the course of the two years or at least a 100 individuals over two years. This program is all about people becoming self sufficient. We're proud of the graduation rate of our families.

In the past three months alone, we've graduated nine households from the family from the program. We've moved 13 new households into housing since January. So this is a case where churn can be good because they're graduating from the the sustainability that we've given them for up to twenty four months. We now have nine new households going through the approval process. 47% of the children we are currently housing through the TPRA program are children and 9% are seniors.

So we're hitting the population of the most vulnerable here. And about nine out of ten of the formerly unhoused individuals in the program have exited into stable housing, either staying where they're living or moving into even more affordable housing. This is a remarkable success rate because the people who moved into this TBRA program were formerly unhoused or on the brink of eviction. The TBRA referrals, and there was a question before about this, come from our own intake staff. We see hundreds of clients every month.

We screen them for eligibility for this important jewel of a program. And also we work with partners like Helping Hands, the Sunnyvale School Districts, the North County Shelter, and WeHope. This pipeline allows us to continuously serve new households and we also get referrals of course from city staff. This program uses a comprehensive approach which is really unique even amongst TBRA programs in the area. We help the families find housing.

We work closely with hundreds of landlords. We provide mediation and connect them to project Sentinel as needed. We support the moving costs and deposits in furniture and temporary motel stays. And after the move ins, the participants receive rental assistance for up to twenty four months with intensive wraparound case management. And they're connected to all of our safety nets programs, including food, transportation, workshops, and benefits specialists to help them enroll in programs.

We are exist we are using existing housing stock here in Sunnyvale. We're maintaining landlord relationships. I also wanna make sure that you know that the reason why we are doing this has also proven to be a reason, according to the county, our prevention work and also TBRA program, or why our city is underrepresented by the PIT count, the point in time count. We have 4% of the counted population of unhoused in our city, but we are 8% of the population. And they have told us time and time again our prevention and TBRA programs are a reason why it's so low. I like being low in something.

Thank you. We have several questions. First up is councilmember Sella. So

of the people that are unhoused before they enter the TBR program, how do you have quantify? I think you mentioned it, but what's the quantifiable amount? Like, they were unhoused, and then they graduate from your program. How many of them Mhmm. Are housed permanently when they graduate from your program?

In this program particular, it's about nine out of 10, so about ninety percentile. In our prevention work, we have a 98% retention rate. According to the county, we have the highest score of all the homeless prevention services agencies across 19 of them across the county. So we do prevention really well. This is helping people who were unhoused when we started them in the program.

And so it's a tougher road to have nine out of ten of them succeed and remain stably housed is exceptional in this type of work that we're doing. And again it's on a smaller end as well, small number. It's about 40 households. We helped over 500 families with financial assistance, most of it in prevention last year.

Okay. And one last question. Why do you think you are so successful? Because they were unhoused and then now after they graduate from your program, which sometimes do they graduate in less than two, two years?

Yes. And that's a wonderful celebration to have as well. The families graduate sometimes without twenty four months. And in fact, we just had another family that graduated that way as well. It means that they've succeeded.

They've raised their income because we help them connect better employment opportunities to places like NOVA, as well as other resources that will mean that they can succeed in their income as well as in their housing. We also do connect them to permanent supportive housing, which is hard to find, but we know everybody and all the players in the county and in the area. So we're moving them into either more affordable housing or helping them maintain market rate housing here in Silicon Valley. And finally, I will say that I'm pleased that about two thirds of the families we now have enrolled are staying in Sunnyvale, which is hard to do because it has to be affordable. But the other good news is that we are finding that there are more and more landlords who are willing and able to work with us because they see this as a predictable way of them getting their own income and helping a family to succeed.

Okay. And one last thing. What do you think is Sunnyvale Community Service secret for being so successful at TBRA?

Well, think we've added to our success rate and, again, prevention. Because when we move people into housing, we want to prevent them from being unhoused. So we bring all of that to bear. We also have all the local services. We really do wraparound service. We have comprehensive case management, which is not just helping them find housing, but to stay housed. And we bring it all to bear. So we have connections, as you heard, from other agencies. We have dozens of other partner agencies who use our space to offer services. On the sixteenth, we're having our wellness fair again with 35 partner agencies.

So we are a hub here in Northern Northern County, Santa Clara County, to bring all those resources to bear. But we truly believe in comprehensive case management, not just a dip in that pool, but to really wrap around. And we that's where the landlords can really appreciate us because we stand by the the client and we stand with the landlord to help iron out any instances that might be a little bit rocky. We have to convince the landlords that this is a good thing for them to take a risk at someone who probably has an eviction on their note, their their record. And to take a risk for someone that we are believing in, that we're hope helping to bolster up so they can then succeed in within twenty four months or more.

So we're known again, we are the premier homeless prevention services man agency in the county. So we are good in this space of keeping people housed and getting them housed. And it's a unique strength that we bring. We specialize in it for fifty six years and we want to keep doing it. And this TBRA program is a huge, huge factor for a smaller number of our households, but the most in need who have the most promise. Okay.

One last thing. Are all the TPR residents or people Sunnyvale residents?

When they start, yes. They have to technically meet the criteria that the city and HUD have said about using these TBRA programs, the HUD the HUD program. So they have to be associated with Sunnyvale and meet all that criteria.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. And next up is council member Chang.

You. And apologies. I got ahead of myself earlier. My question is about if a a family or participant exits out of the program, do you have a waiting list or or people that are ready?

We do. We we thank you. We do have we actually have, let's see, nine nine households right now going through the approval process. What's exciting about that is we are constantly seeing the funnel. But for even clients before they can enroll, we have to we have to help them go through this process. They have to be eligible. We have to help them figure out where they want to be living, what their their employment situation is. They only officially become part of the program when they are in their housing. They're actually getting that financial assistance. So it could take three to six months of that process to go through the vetting and the eligibility and to help them get ready to go into the housing.

So as I said, we've got nine households already in the funnel and we're constantly getting referrals. We did scale back on the program with the the knowledge and, in fact, the collaboration with the city. About a year ago, we scaled back. We stopped filling the funnel because of the uncertainty with federal funding. And we did that with, unfortunately, you know, with with sad hearts.

But at the same time, we knew that we were gonna be ready to gear up if and when the funding looks certain, and which we're thrilled that it does right now. So we're grateful for that. So please, if you know of people that, please let us know as well. This is a criteria that the individuals have to have a tremendous amount of ambition and ability to, with help, become self sufficient. And we so believe in these clients. It's one that we have to make sure we do a really good match with the landlord and also with their potential. K. Thank you.

Thank you, and and thank you for what the t the TBRA success rate is just amazing. Thank you. Thank you. And my final speaker card is Steve s.

I think it's very wonderful that Citi's considering grant programs to help with organizations like this. I would ask you to balance that against NGOs are coming to organizations like our cities asking for money all the time. And I personally participated in several projects with Christmas in April, which is an earlier name for rebuilding together. I've also participated in many, many projects with a technology company I worked for. And in those cases, we provided quite a bit of resources and in some cases, actual materials, commercial landscaping company my wife worked for.

So you get a lot of the labor and you get a lot of material can be donated. It isn't always that we need to provide near full funding for an NGO. So I think balancing that because we have a lot of needs in the city. So that's something I'd ask you to ask NGOs. What is what else are they tapping out there?

Because there are a lot of companies and I personally participated many of those projects where we provided materials that came out of the company's pocket for material, building material, landscape material, other things, and also labor. Maybe we weren't the skilled labor if you needed a skilled carpenter or something, but we did do smaller type repairs on houses and window replacements. One of the houses was in East Palo Alto, pretty bad condition. So I suggest that that ask you always ask that before you hand out new money. What are they funding from other sources rather than just entertaining all these individual requests that come in. Ask how else they're funding it. Thank you.

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

No, mayor. I'll go

ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for final questions or a motion. Councilmember Zell.

I'd like to make a motion if there are no questions.

Go right ahead.

So I would like to support alternative one, adopt when I read it, the draft twenty twenty six, twenty seven housing and urban development action plan as shown in attachment two to the report.

Thank you. Councilmember Srinivasan. Second. To your motion.

In these times in which there is great need, I am glad that we have a staff that has the ability to apply for these federal programs and to do the research to find worthy candidates to receive this funding. So I just am thankful for this ability to do this in these dire times, and I'm also thank you for the nonprofits here that have been selected to receive this funding. It's very heartwarming, the amount of progress that you're able to achieve in our community for our community members, some of our community members who are in the most need. So thank you to everyone here and all those that support your programs so you can be successful for our community.

Thank you. Any other comments? Councilmember Srinivasan?

Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. I didn't hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. These are worthy programs. And, personally, I know CDBG sorry, the tenant TBRA, and then I was on the board of community services. I volunteered for rebuilding together. I know these definitely help the vulnerable population, seniors, and then low income families.

So this the allocation is really, really very, very good. And then I think staff thanks to staff for working with our community community services organizations to come up with this mix. So I will be supporting this motion. Thank you very much. Thanks for all the service providers. Thank you very much.

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

Yes. Thank you. I'll also be supporting the motion. I also wanted to thank staff for the extensive level of engagement with the stakeholder focus groups and all the other meetings you have with the various organizations to get to this plan.

Thank you, and I'll pile on. You know, thanks to staff as far as putting the report together and and all the work that goes into this and and ultimately the reporting at a federal level, which is critical in order to continue to get this funding. Thanks to all the the providers that are doing the work that we can't do and and, you know, getting additional funding to make these programs better. But but being on the ground from a city standpoint and, you know, I from either health, keeping our seniors in in their homes, ultimately, all the things of of prevention, I think that is that's critical. You know, it's mental wellness.

It's it's all these programs. So I appreciate all the hard work that that you're doing in our communities and making a difference. And, you know, this is this is the fun thing about council is helping to allocate those dollars to programs like this. And, you know, we don't get to do that that often, but it's making, you know, positive a positive difference in our community. So thank you for that. And with that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion carries four zero with vice mayor Melinger absent and council member Cisteros only absent.

Thank you. And we'll move to our last item of the evening, item 26 dash zero four eight one, introduce an ordinance of the city of Sunnyvale amending chapter 19 dot 96 heritage preservation at title 19 zoning of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code temporarily excluding the Murphy Station Heritage Landmark District, heritage resource on the local historic register from applicability of SB 79 provisions and amending the zoning map to add the note indicating this exclusion. Is there a staff report?

Yes. Thank you. There is Trudy Ryan, community development director. And online joining us this evening is Andy Miner, who's returned to us to work casual like, as I say, assistant director of community development. And he assisted in putting this project together for council consideration.

So as you indicated, we're looking at excluding the Murphy Station landmark district from the provisions of s b 79. Just a quick reminder of what s b 79, also called the abundant and affordable homes near transit act, and it was signed into law last year and will become effective on July 1. It applies to properties within a half a mile of Caltrain and VTA light rail stations. We have two Caltrain stations in Sunnyvale and seven VTA light rail stations. And it applies to sites that are currently zoned for residential mixed use or commercial development.

And the term commercial development is defined pretty broadly, so it would include retail as well as office, Probably r and d and even some industrial areas would be considered part of that. It establishes densities, heights, and floor air floor area ratios, setting minimums and minimum maximums. So what I mean by minimum maximums is the city can offer a higher density than that, but we have to offer the density that's in this bill. And it it ranges from eight eighty to a 160 dwelling units per acre. Actually, 200 units per acre if it's immediately adjacent to a Caltrain station.

And that it's a nondiscretionary permit. So it's it's a pretty aggressive program to introduce housing into areas that have transit. This map just kind of briefly show you shows you the green circles, are the half mile radius from the center point of the of the stations. It's a little different than the draft map that's been prepared by MTC, which is a requirement of the bill that the the the regional transportation agency put those maps together. And we, along with all of our colleagues in all the other cities in the Bay Area that have transit stops, will be working with MTC on what they've come up with.

We have some concerns. The there is a provision in the bill that historic districts can be excluded. It's optional. And in order to make it effective, we do have to adopt zoning restriction that that indicates that it SB 79 regulations wouldn't apply. Murphy Station was established as an historic district in Sunnyvale in 1981, and it includes all of the property that face the 100 block of South Murphy Avenue, plus there are adjacent properties along Washington Avenue.

I think it's more than well, it depends on how you count. But, anyway, it it it includes properties that are adjacent on on Washington Avenue. The primary use of those buildings is commercial. There are a couple of residential units in a couple of the sites. And while the sites are small, there is a risk that someone could acquire those properties and tear them down and build this very high density.

It is less than 1% of the half mile area around the Downtown Caltrain Station, and the bill allows this exclusion provided it not exceed 10%. So we're well under that 10%. This map just shows you essentially what the radius, the half mile radius is. And the the red is is basically the the Murphy Station properties that would be included. This map is the a a close-up of the MTC draft map, and you can see that the station is depicted as a number of different points and radius circles, so you have more of an oblong area than a perfect circle.

And that has to do with how MTC was is currently interpreting the regulations on the pedestrian access points. So is it a single point? Is it multiple points? And we'll be working with them on that. That's really not for tonight's discussion.

This map shows you how MTC would would is presenting it, the draft map for Sunnyvale. And you can see the stations also include stations that are in Mountain View. So the the the two and a half circles that are off to the left of the of the map are actually in Mountain View, but their radiuses come into Sunnyvale. After the council considers this this ordinance this evening, staff will continue to evaluate SB 79. There is a potential option of adopting an alternative plan.

Alternative plans do not have to be adopted before the effective date of September excuse me, July 1. However, that's a risk that the city would need to take. It most of the cities that I've talked to have said the same thing. It's an incredible amount of detailed analysis to determine whether it is even feasible to to come up with an alternative plan because these densities are pretty high. One of the things, though, is that there may be some areas that are exempted by the provisions because of the proximity of the of the airfield, Moffett Airfield, And there's a compatible land use plan.

So properties that are within some of those protections, this bill wouldn't apply to. So that reduces the number of units you would have to replace with an alternative plan. So we we are anticipating just doing a little bit of more analysis, and we'll come back and let the council know if it's worthwhile to even consider doing an alternative plan. But there's just endless number of things we could be doing. We also want to take a look at the Moffett Park area, which allows for mixed use.

And as the council has seen with the village centers, we want to do what we can to preserve the opportunities for retail access for the future residents of that neighborhood. There are currently four bills that are pending that would amend some of the provisions in SB 79. One is the mobile home park exemption, and I note that in particular because it affects over 3,000 mobile homes in Sunnyvale. That's a significant part of our affordable naturally occurring, if you will, affordable housing. And the concept for that is that it would be effective before the July 1 deadline.

So it has been introduced as an I don't know the terminology urgency bill, I think. There are also some technical cleanups just in terms of clarifying language, some additional historic property inclusions, and then another one that the capacities can be reduced if the populations of the city are below a 150,000 and we're above a 150,000. So it doesn't apply to us. But I put this here just so you're aware that after this bill went through, there were still a lot of concerns by legislators. And so this is their attempt to try to make some of those corrections.

We took this item to the Planning Commission. They recommended in accordance with the staff recommendation which is to introduce the ordinance to temporarily exclude the Murphy Station Historic District from SB 79. Temporary is there because that's what's written in the SB 79 bill. It can only be until our next housing element is prepared. So we'll have to look at everything again for the next housing element. And that concludes the the the staff presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to council questions. First up is council member Zelle.

So we have the village center, in terms of we were trying to keep it mixed use, but because of the state legislation, it was becoming all housing. So you mentioned that this is temporary so that in our next housing element that we would need to do something to address it. So what would we need to do in the next housing element to protect retail on the downtown since this is only, like, a temporary measure?

Or Well, protecting retail in the downtown, the bill would still apply to the downtown. If we could find some alternative plans that we can adopt, there's the potential that it would satisfy the the spirit of this legislation, and we could reflect that in our housing element. But all of the directions on what we need to do for the next cycle of the housing element is not yet known. So we don't know exactly. Does that mean that this exemption would totally disappear or if there's just some opportunity through our housing element to assure that the protection of the historic district is there as well as protection for commercial areas that are not specifically excluded.

But but as it stands right now, the the bill applies even if it's owned commercial. Someone could come in and put housing there. But if we can adopt an alternative plan such as in Moffett Park or Lawrence Station, maybe there's an opportunity to to to use our local plan rather than the SB 79 provision. So that's what we would wanna take a little closer look at.

Okay. Thank you for your answering my question.

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

Yeah. You mentioned about Moffett Field. I was on and then which restricts the height of the building, which means that density will be automatically reduced, especially near the light rail.

There there are more there more than height is restricted, so the different safety zones also have density, intensity, and land use requirements. So we would want to discuss it with the ALUC staff to make sure that we're capturing all of that correctly.

Yeah. The number of residents at any point of time, all those things

Yes.

Come into picture. And

and the bill automatically excludes those. But what we need to understand is how big of an area and, know, what what is the potential exclusion.

And then that has got more circles and then Right.

Exactly. Yes. Thank you.

So you in slide eight, you mentioned exclusion of areas greater than one mile walking distance. Yes. What does that mean?

So if imagine if you can, Lakewood Village, and if you lived in the very westernmost part of Lakewood Village and you needed to walk to a light rail station, you'd have to come all the way out to Lawrence and then back up to Lawrence to to Tasman and then over to the station. If that's greater than a mile, but it's within the half a mile Okay. Radius Okay. Then those properties can be excluded.

Oh, man.

And so we wanna just capture which properties would be excluded.

Yeah. You want that half a mile or