City Council - Regular Meeting

good afternoon let's call door to the special council meeting closed session of july 28th 2026 at 4 31 p.m the city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings this council meeting is considered a limited public forum which means the council can regulate the time place and manner of speech speaker comments must be limited the agenda item being considered by council uh If the 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 on Zoom. to use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Following the closed session, the study session on artificial turf policy study update will begin at 5 p.m. and the regular council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. City Clerk, may we please have roll call?

Mayor Kline. Present. Vice Mayor Mellinger. Councilmember Cisneros.

Present.

Councilmember Cerny-Vasen.

Present.

Councilmember Sell.

Present.

Councilmember Cheng.

Present.

Councilmember Ley.

Present.

Six present with Vice Mayor Mellinger absent.

Thank you. And Vice Mayor Mellinger's absence is an excused absence. Members of public will now have an opportunity to address council on the closed session item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, are there any remote speakers wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I will go ahead and close public comment. Council will now adjourn to closed session. See you back here at 5 p.m. for the study session on artificial turf policy and our main meeting beginning at 7 p.m. Thank you.

everybody.

Good afternoon. Let's call toward the special council meeting study session, July 28, 2026, at 5 PM. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by 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. Scan the on-screen QR code to 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. Following the study session, the regular council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. City Clerk, may we please have roll call?

Mayor Klein.

Present.

Vice Mayor Mellinger. Councilmember Cisneros.

Present.

Councilmember Cerny-Vazen.

Present.

Councilmember Sell.

Present.

Councilmember Chang. Sorry, Councilmember Chang.

Present.

Councilmember Ley.

Present.

Six present with the Vice Mayor absent.

Thank you. And Vice Mayor Mellinger's absence is an excused absence. Moving on to our study session item, item 26-0264, Artificial Turf Policy Study Update. Is there a staff report?

Yes, there is, Mayor. Good evening. I'm Ramana Chedakotla. I'm the Environmental Services Director. We have Madeline Kerr, who's our Environmental Programs Manager from ESD, who will be our making the presentation, but I also want to acknowledge that this is a project that we worked, environmental services work very closely with Public Works and also library and recreation services. We have a couple of consultants who helped us prepare the draft report, Kimberly Horn and CHA. We have staff from all these departments available today to answer questions as we move along. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Madeleine.

Okay, good evening, Council. We're here tonight to talk about our artificial turf policy study update. Our agenda for tonight's pretty straightforward. We're going to walk through the project overview and timeline, talk about the community engagement results, present our research findings, and then walk through the reports recommendations, staff recommendations and the discussion for tonight. So the project, this came out of the study issue process, which we now refer to as Council Priority Projects. It was ESD 24-01 and is now SU-2. It was funded in fiscal year 25-26, so we kicked this off in October of 2025. As Romana said, this was led by the Environmental Services Department, so we really brought the Um, environmental and sustainability ability lens to this study issue topic. Um, but we were supported heavily by public works LRS and CDD. And so our staff's recommendations in the end here really reflect the goals and services that are provided by each of these departments and how they interact with, um, playing surfaces and private property in Sunnyville. The Sustainability Commission proposed a study issue in response to a community concern that was raised over the environmental and health impacts, potential impacts of artificial turf. It went through the study issue process and was ranked with a comparative scope of work that outlined a comparative analysis between artificial turf and natural grass. and included a cost analysis and the end goal of this study is really to provide recommendations for potential regulations around artificial turf use on both public and private property. After it was ranked, council did ask for an amendment to the scope to include an analysis of current operations and of maintenance and operations for athletic fields and recommendations for optimal maintenance practices. So I wanted to take a moment to clarify what we could and could not accomplish given the scope, funding, and timeline for this study. So we completed the comparative analysis using existing research that was available and included scientific peer reviewed papers case studies and information from the industry. We did not do comparisons of specific types of natural grass artificial turf or really get into really specifics of mitigation measures and things that you would do on a project by project basis that are going to vary a lot at that level, so this scope is really focused on the planning and policy level. We completed the analysis of our, there was an assessment done of our field conditions, current maintenance practices and some recommendations for improvements to those. And we collected community input, so we did a lot of community engagement to kick off the study issue and then have collected community engagement here at the tail end of this as well. So what was not scoped in this study was any sampling or testing of surfaces, a full analysis of recreational playing time demands and availability, or any modeling or quantification of environmental and health impacts of surface types. There's been a lot of discussion on this topic already with the community and that discussion focuses largely on artificial turf fields within the public park space and whether or not they should be used. So we wanted to talk and just provide some context for Sunnyvale Public Parks. They serve a multiple variety of purposes and recreational opportunities is just one of those. And within recreational opportunities, we do have sports leagues renting out fields. So there's 52 rentable fields within Sunnyvale's parks and school sites. All of these are maintained by our park staff, and parks take the approach of maintaining these spaces as open spaces, again, suited for this large variety of needs. So currently, our sports fields aren't being maintained any differently than other open space natural grass areas. When discussing sports use of the fields, hours of play is an important data point to consider. And there's a lot of variance in how these numbers are shared and represented. So we wanted to walk through this chart with you all to talk through how these numbers are calculated or where they're coming from. So for the industry recommendations, This is what most conventionally managed natural grass fields industry experts recommend play time per year. So 600 to 800 hours of play per year on natural grass fields. This allows for the fields to recover and grow back in between use. For artificial turf, you can get well over 1,000 hours of play on a field per year. It doesn't experience the same wear and tear as natural grass. For potential availability, this is something that we calculate and looking at our fields and how much availability, we can provide for reservations. So this really doesn't look at things like field growth and rest periods and things like that it's more just like what what how much how often can we offer these fields. We have reservations data for Sunnyville's fields and looking at that data from 2023 to 2025, there is an average actual hours of play calculated for natural grass versus artificial turf. For natural grass, we're looking at about 570 and artificial turf anywhere from 800 to 850. Then when you look at the actual hours of play range per field, there's quite a lot of variation. So I wanted to highlight this since the average versus the actual can be quite different. So some of our fields are experiencing over a thousand hours of play for natural grass fields. And others are experiencing as low as 23 hours. And so some of the factors that might contribute to that are things like the park's location or field's location, the size of the field, and the type of sports that can be played on that field. And so all these kind of contribute to the demand of that field. The larger fields that can accommodate multiple different types of sports, especially like a full adult league soccer game, are the ones that are experiencing a lot more hours. So two important notes here is one is that this is data available to us through what's tracked from reservations. So there's a lot of play and use of these parks happening outside of what we're seeing through reservations data. The other thing is that some of Sunnyville's grass fields are experiencing more hours of play than what's recommended by industry. And so that's something to just take into account as we talk through recommendations about maintenance and improvements. All right. So for community engagement, we kicked off this study by engaging with our community since this was a topic that was already something that was, we had a lot of engagement from the community on already. So we first held a focus group where we reached out to a lot of community groups who had been um sharing uh thoughts and opinions and and priorities for this topic with us and so this was an invite only focus group with representatives of both sports and environmental community groups we had a pretty even split between those two groups we heard from sports groups that playing time and field quality were the most important factors and in their experience artificial turf was usually able to provide the the most or solve for those issues We heard from the environmentally focused community groups that impacts on human and environmental health are too great a cost and then so warrant not installing artificial turfs in order to avoid those impacts. There's also a group of community members that support the idea that organically managed fields can actually, they focus on soil health and can actually provide more playing time than what we're currently getting out of natural grass fields. Community input was also collected through an online survey, farmers market tabling, and a community-wide in-person workshop. For the in-person workshop, as attendees arrived, they were assigned to a table, and each table corresponded to one of these topics where they were able to discuss with the table mates and the facilitator kind of the pros and cons or priorities for them for these topics as they relate to the study. At the end of an allotted period of time, they got to rotate, and so everyone was able to sit at each table and discuss each of these factors. For a full review of what was shared and what was recorded during this workshop, you can see that in Appendix C. Everything's divvied up kind of in pros and cons per surface type and per topic. highlights here really what we saw as some of the most common things that were brought up during the workshop so for playing time prioritizing sunnyville residents maximizing the use of our natural grass either for general use in open space or for sports groups for the environmental factors there's concerns for both natural grass and artificial turf and a general concern over loss of ecosystem biodiversity For health factors, we saw more concerns for artificial turf than natural grass, and those were related to chemical heat and bacteria exposure related with that surface type. For maintenance, we heard more concerns regarding natural grasses. There's a lot more maintenance involved with that, and that was really around field quality and playability. Our online survey was available through OpenGov City Hall platform. And I want to emphasize that this was not a statistically significant survey. It was just another means for us to collect community input for those who couldn't attend meetings in person or provide input in other ways. The survey platform uses things like IP addresses and cookies to kind of track if you've submitted a response before. So it really discourages people submitting multiple responses to the same survey. Out of the 850 responses, we had about 300 registered responses and 550 unregistered. An unregistered response is submitted anonymously. However, like I said, they're not able to submit multiple times. What we've shared here on this slide is just an overview of some of the key or critical points that were collected through the survey. And again, the full results can be seen in Appendix D of our report. One of the first questions that we asked were where people fell on a sliding scale of very concerned to not concerned regarding environmental impacts of artificial turf and natural grass and health impacts of artificial turf and natural grass. You can see that 60% of the respondents indicated that they are very or moderately concerned with environmental and health impacts of artificial turf. We did have 26% indicate that they were not concerned. For natural grass, it was a lot lower on the concern scale, so only 29% indicated very or moderately concerned on environmental impacts, and it was even fewer for health. Another question we asked was to gauge where people fell on the range of wanting artificial turf restricted or not restricted. And so you can see that the results for that were pretty split between artificial turf being allowed, restricted, or only allowed for specific use cases. We developed the survey in a way that we could look at how people identified or responded to a certain question and then look at how they responded to other questions. So be able to slice it via demographics data in some cases. So for people who indicated they lived in Sunnyvale, we can see how they responded to the question around turf restriction. And it wasn't that different from the overall. For users of Sunnyvale public fields, we asked in what way they use those fields, whether as a sports league, for general recreational purposes, or for both. And so you can see anyone who was involved in a sports league or used the fields for both use cases, the results showed a higher percentage of people thought that artificial turf should generally be allowed. There's more results and different ways to look at this. And again, you can find a lot of that in Appendix D. But I wanted to jump into a couple questions we asked regarding private property. So for respondents who indicated that they did not have artificial turf on their property, we asked what their reason for not installing it was. Environmental and health concerns were, again, some of the top-rated reasons. Appearance was another or just never having even considered installing it was again up there. But for respondents who don't have control over their landscaping, haven't done any landscaping projects, rent apartments, whatever it might be, those fell within the NA and other categories you see here. We had 112 responses indicate that they do have artificial turf on their property. The majority of those people would not replace it and believe that the city should generally allow artificial turf as a policy. We did have 18% indicate that they would replace it if they could. And so in those cases, they learned after the fact that they didn't like it, it didn't work out the way it was, or they learned about some of the impacts that it has and weren't aware of that at the time of installation. Overall, we saw reduced water use and lower maintenance as the top reasons for people installing it on their property. Oh, and I realized I did not have that slide up for that piece there. So here's the information I was just going over. All right, so jumping into our research findings. The two tables at the top of this slide indicate the environmental impacts of artificial turf and natural grass. And what I really want to highlight here is that the scientific research is really substantial and that these impacts occur and there are some effort to quantify them. So we've got a lot more support indicating that these things are happening. We know we'd get plastic pollution and microplastic pollution from artificial turf, chemical leaching. It's got a high carbon footprint from production and disposal, and it retains heat and contributes to urban heat island effect. We have, from natural grass, we've got high water usage, the potential for high chemical use, and a high carbon footprint from the operations. Where the research starts to get a little fuzzy is actually correlating those environmental impacts to human health impacts so. For any instance of plastic pollution, we could be getting from artificial turf we don't understand how that actually impacts human health and to what extent that might how artificial turf contributes to that factor. um so that's one aspect to consider when talking about human and health impacts the other is that we looked at one study that compared one field of natural grass to one field of artificial turf and calculated the ghg impacts at the field versus field level natural grass comes in as the lower ghg overall calculation versus artificial turf. However, hours of use is something that is used to calculate. So instead of a GHG impact per square foot, for example, it could be a GHG impact per hour of use. When you look at hours of use, artificial turf ends up being lower on a GHG impact because of the significant amount, significantly more hours of use it can provide. So that when we were looking at the study's results, we found that at about 800 hours of use for natural grass and 1,600 hours of artificial turf is where the GHG impacts kind of looked the most equal and was the break-even point. So we wanted to put together this chart and kind of walk through this again with the lens of more of how we use these fields, surface types in Sunnyvale. So in Sunnyvale, the way that we currently manage our natural grass fields, we do see a high water usage. And this can be a problem for the city in years where we have drought. We've seen, if we think back about 10 years ago, we were in pretty significant drought. So that can be a hard one to mitigate, a hard impact to mitigate. Chemical exposure and leaking happen on both surface types. It's from the materials that artificial turf is made of. And then for natural grass, it's what we apply to the surface. Artificial turf definitely contributes to increased heat and microplastic pollution. And then both surface types contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. More from the production and disposal of artificial turf versus the operations of natural grass, operations and maintenance of natural grass. For end of life and disposal, artificial turf cannot fully be recycled, and so this is a pretty significant footprint for it. There are new technologies and techniques being created every year to help increase recyclability, but because it's plastic and it's a multimedia surface, it can be really hard to separate them to get the components down to recyclable form. There's very few facilities in the United States that do this, so those are also hard to get to. And where it's happening, it's not happening at a full artificial turf field being converted into 100% new artificial turf fields. Usually some sort of downcycling is occurring. But they are repurposed in a lot of cases as well. So, for example, I know that we've heard of uses in batting cages and things like that. For personal health and injury, both surfaces pose the potential for injury. We did not find in the research that there was any conclusive evidence one way or the other. And a lot of those studies are done for professionally maintained fields and professional sports. So it's just a really different use case. And so both have the potential for that impact. So as we went through this, we were really looking at how we currently maintain and manage these surface types. I wanted to note that there's also mitigation measures for a lot of these. So for example, you could go to an organically managed field for natural grass and remove some of the chemical exposure that's occurring by applying chemicals to the surface. There are some PFAS certifications you can get for artificial turf fields to ensure that the manufacturer is not maybe using it at the time of manufacture. For increased heat, you can provide shade. There's some cooling techniques. There are basin and drainage capture devices to help filter out microplastics that might be coming off of the field. from the artificial turf. So there are a number of different mitigation factors for each of these. But all of these are going to come at a cost. So what we're looking at when we talk about the cost comparison table on this next slide is really how we're conventionally maintaining them right now. So without these mitigation factors. I think with that, yeah, we'll go into the cost comparisons. So this cost analysis is done for a standard field comparison, again, with conventional management techniques and no mitigation measures. Comparing field to field, looking at a total 20-year cost, including installation, refurbishments, operations, et cetera, what you can see here, over time, natural grass fields are less expensive by about $55,000 annually. When you take into account hours of play, these numbers change. The calculation for hours used here are based on industry standards for these surface types and not Sunnyvale specific hours. There's been a lot of questions about how these numbers are calculated and if you use different math to get to an hours of use for natural grass, how does that change the results? So for example, instead of using the 554 number reduced from rain and you use just the 640, you'd get about $201 versus the 292 that we've got on this table. And again, 94 for artificial turf. Say you went up all the way to 1,000 hours of use for natural grass, you're going to come out with $129 versus the 94. So I wanted to clarify that, you know, this is just one example of how this can be calculated. Again, coming to a specific project where you're looking at how that field would be developed, that these costs are going to look a lot different specific to that project. And we would do a cost analysis at that point in time. The second point is that this is only one piece of criteria that went into this report and into our recommendations. And so it is... I'm not something that the details don't need to get. We don't need to get hung up on the details of how this is necessarily calculated. I guess that's what I'm getting at. All right. So jumping into our recommendations. First off, I wanted to discuss the maintenance recommendations for improving field quality. So after the field assessments were completed and our consultant reviewed everything with our parks team, we are making the recommendation that irrigation is probably the number one problem that we need to solve for. So a lot of our irrigation systems at parks are just old and at the end of their useful life. And right now those are all set to be replaced at the time that that park is renovated. But that could be problematic right now for maintaining grass fields to the quality that some community members might want to see. Their consultant also recommended that we could increase the staff time that we're allocating to work on irrigation and maintain efficiency and efficacy of that system. The other approach that we could do is adjust our mowing techniques. So instead of approaching our parks as all open space, really focusing on the fields themselves as a more, providing a little bit more focused maintenance. to those specific areas. So that would mean increased and more frequent mowing, mowing to a lower height, using separate equipment to prevent a lot of weeds coming in from the outside area and things like that. So with these considerations in mind, our consultants are recommending that an additional eight parks workers would be needed to implement both the increased mowing and increased attention to the irrigation. And that looks like an approximate $1.2 million a year add to our budget. We'd also need to purchase additional mowing equipment to implement this updated or optimized maintenance strategy. So the report includes 10 recommendations and a decision tree. I just wanted to walk through kind of the highlights of those 10 recommendations here, and then we'll kind of walk through the decision tree next. So first and foremost, the report is recommending that we prioritize and conserve natural grass. Based on what we found in the environmental impacts as well as where our community concerns and priorities lie, this is a really good step forward. However, we did not feel that we should minimize or completely exclude artificial turf from possibilities with parks renovations because of the gap in what we're seeing with playable hours. So if the demand is there for the community and we're able to mitigate some of the impacts, then that should remain something that we're able to consider in future parks. So basically what we're recommending is considering artificial turf only when high use fields are determined necessary and a lifecycle analysis should be conducted before any artificial turf decision is made. The report also recommends adaptive reuse or repurposing of existing facilities such as like, for example, a top of a parking structure. That way we're not replacing natural grass space with artificial turf. When artificial turf is used, implement best management practices to mitigate environmental impacts and health concerns, and that should be based on the best available technology data and research at the time. for the private property recommendations. We currently don't have any way, there's no landscaping permit required for single family homes, and there's no current regulations for larger developments regarding artificial turf. However, there are some regarding water conservation, drought tolerant species and things like that. So there's, because of these, what we need to look into for what it would take to implement either a private property specific for single family versus for larger development that's really being left up to council to kind of give direction and what way that should look, which way that should go. So moving on, I wanna just walk through this decision tree. So the idea is that this decision tree would be used anytime a park's coming up for renovation and where it's been identified that there's really high use and artificial turf might be something we wanna consider. So the first question is around the use. Is this used for high intensity activities? Is it year round use? Is there a multiple sports being played on the field? And if so, if not, then improve and retain natural grass. But if so, the next question that this tree is asking us to consider is can natural grass meet the current and future demand? So this is where we could really look at is there a different type of species of grass that could do that? Is there a new drainage design or subsurface that we would want to invest in? Is there some way that we could make a natural grass field here that would be able to meet the demands that we're looking for? With the consideration that, you know, you want to be able to do so with available maintenance resources as well. So looking forward to what it would take to maintain that. And if yes, again, stick with the natural grass. If not, then that's where we consider the environmental impacts and look for ways to mitigate those. If we cannot mitigate those, then again, you're sticking with natural grass. If you can, then we're discussing health and safety standards. If we can meet those, then the next question is whether artificial turf can be installed without adversely affecting existing park operations. And so this really gets at what is this park used for? How would installing artificial turf change how the park's used? And is that going to be a significant change past what we want this park to be? At the end here, if the answer to that last question is no, so it is install natural grass and then consider adaptive reuse because at this point we've identified that artificial turf might be a need that we have. Maybe we need to, we have more playing hours than we can meet with natural grass going through this. And so adaptive reuse is one way for us to look at alternative spaces to meet that need. So based on our report, the community input and operational considerations, these are the recommendations that staff have, which is to accept this report on artificial turf policy, to provide guidance to staff to operationalize the decision tree to be used during the renovation process, If artificial turf is needed, require mitigation measures to minimize environmental pollution and health impacts with the note that that will likely result in increased cost to the project. We do recommend implementing an organic field management pilot. So we looked at organic field management throughout the course of this study and while we weren't able Verify data via scientific articles or speaking with organizations that have done this to really understand what the full maximum capacity of hours of play could be for this. We really think it's something worth looking into to pilot and understand better for how this could work for Sunnyvale and what the potential costs and improvements could be. Another recommendation is to consider a proposal for improved maintenance methods at Lakewood Park. So we have a new park coming online and as part of that staff were looking into providing higher maintenance services to that park already. And so when that proposal comes forward to council, that would be something to consider. Approving as it could help support our understanding again of cost and time needed to improve maintenance and then what that kind of maintenance, improved maintenance looks like on the ground. How does that improve playability, field quality, hours of play, any of those data points? And the final staff recommendation is that further study is required to identify the parameters and goals of a private property regulation. So as I said, there's a lot of complexities with the private property regulation. We have not seen a lot of other examples of that. And so enforcement of that would need to be discussed at length. And I think understanding how that fits into departmental work plans would be another consideration. So with that, that concludes my report. And these are the discussion points that we have included for for Council. So we're really looking on for feedback from Council on overall our report and the recommendations we're making general guidance on operationalizing that decision tree. where we're landing with our decision of a private property standard or regulation, and then feedback on implementing both the organic field management pilot and increased maintenance program at Lakewood Park. And we'll be ready for questions.

Thank you very much. Are there questions from council? First up is Councilmember Lay. And just to give counsel a heads up, we'll probably do about six minutes apiece and then conceivably come back before we go to the public. Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you for your work in this to staff and to our consultants and also to the members of the public who participated in all of the community outreach. We have a community that's very passionate about this and in both directions, people who are passionate for artificial turf and people who are passionate about natural grass turf and I thank both communities for their feedback. I have a quick question, actually, pretty quick question. Slide eight, which I believe is the hours of play on fields. I'm curious about the distribution. So we have the average and then we have the actual, and that was really surprising to me that the actual could have such a spread. Is there a strong, I want to say bifurcation there? Are there like a couple of parks that are extremely high usage or is it like, is it, Is the distribution like this or is it broader?

I'm going to actually rely on our recreational staff to come up and answer that question so that they can speak a lot more accurately to that.

Thank you.

My name is Veronica Torres. I'm the recreation service manager. I used to oversee all the field reservations from 2018 to 2025. So I have a little bit of historical knowledge of the field distribution and allocation. So you're asking, like, what are the popular fields or parks that are reserved or the groups? What exactly?

So I'm asking if there, when you look at a distribution of the, sorry, I'm trying to translate from math to English. When you look at the distribution, are there two distinct buckets? Like is there one group that's not used for very many hours at all and then one bucket of parts that is? Or is it like more spiky than that?

So you definitely have your spikes. So we have a joint usage with Sunnyvale School District and we cannot... reserve the fields till 5 pm at the sunnyvale schools that we oversee in the park maintain so yeah there's shorter time periods on that but the other fields that are city parks they can start early as four during the weekdays which they do and go blighted fields go till 10 pm and then the non-lighted fields usually go to about seven or eight fair oaks is by far the most popular park that's been reserved consistently since it's been open. And again, on the weekends, it's consistent. 8 a.m., we start reservations on Saturdays and Sundays. Typically, the grass fields go until like 5, 6, or 7 p.m. But again, at Fair Oaks, they can go all the way to 8 to 10 p.m. So that is your highly used and high demand park.

Okay. And then it sounds like from what you were saying that some of the other ones include the schools. Correct. What are the other ones that see high usage?

At the schools or the non-schools?

So if you would just.

So like for Sunnyvale Middle, that's one of our high use fields. We have soccer groups and little leagues that utilize, and our youth softball leagues that utilize those fields. Cupertino Middle School is another one that's high use as well. Cherry Chase is another one that's very popular, high usage as well.

And you're not, when you calculate that, that's the, when you calculate use, that's calculated by the numbers of play that are reserved.

Yeah. It's by reservation hours per group or per, per resident.

It makes sense to me that probably the schools during their own hours are using that.

Exactly. Yeah. We can't rent. We don't allow, they don't want the public out there for the safety of the students and the staff. So yeah, that's why we can't, at least at the Sunnyvale school districts, the Cupertino ones, usually we get on the fields between four and 5 PM.

Interesting.

okay thank you you're welcome I will probably have more questions later but that's it thank you thank you council member uh next up is council member Srinivasan thank you a question for you and then you mentioned yeah you mentioned but in the meantime um uh on slide um 2015, what is chemical exposure of natural grass? Is that because of the pesticide?

Correct. Pesticide or fertilizer.

So we talked about the, you explained about the hours of reservations in various parks. Fair Oaks Park is highly utilized. And then is that because of the lighting or is that correlated to, I don't know whether, let's say we replaced artificial turf with natural grass, but we had lighting. Would the usage be similar?

Possibly. So Fair Oaks is lined for three regulation soccer fields. So it's highly popular in our community. It's also lined for youth and adult cricket and baseball and softball. So we have some overlapping fields. I believe it's the consistency in the line fields. And we have very specific goals that are allowed on Fair Oaks Park. So I believe that's due to the popularity. And yes, because it is lighted and it's open till 10.

okay and then on slide uh 16 and the cost comparison uh slide no the cost comparison yeah that one it says natural grass field is two hours per day That seems to be very low. I understand about the school fees, but then regular, let's say Ortega or some other natural grass, why is it just two hours? Is that people don't want to reserve, but they just want to walk in or something like that?

Well, I know that Ortega, Rainier Park, What else is out there? De Anza, Hollenbeck, they usually start around 4 or 5. And the schools, and they usually go to about 7, 7.30, 8 o'clock at night, right? It's daylight, so it's whatever they have. So it's probably a culmination of all the cross, because some schools, some people won't use some schools, just maybe the location or the size of the field, it doesn't meet their needs. So if that's zero and now the one's four, the average is going to be two. So that could be some of the why it's a two-hour minimum or average. so sorry we have almost three times artificial turf field usage six hours per day is i'm trying to understand why is that because the lights lights is huge right yeah the lights is huge um fair oaks we will go back to back to back on reservations so you could have youth groups out there and then hopefully we could accommodate some adult groups and they will go all the way till 10 p.m monday through friday

so in that case is it fair to say it's not a apple to apple comparison but it's for example if there is a natural turf with lighting with artificial turf with lighting, that's the comparison we should be looking at, right?

True, but we do have some parks now that have lights that don't go all the way to 10 PM. It's specifically Fair Oaks where you'll see the ongoing consistency with reservations till 10 PM. Because we have Cupertino has a lighted field, Ortega has a lighted field, Well, Lakewood, but it's under construction right now. So we do have other fields, but they generally don't go till 10 p.m. Usually they'll go to 8 or 9.

And just to clarify, Council Member Srinivasan, the cost comparison table, the hours of use there are not Sunnyvale specific hours of use. That's industry recommended recommendations. So this is like an example of what hours of use could be. Oh, okay. So those numbers aren't specifically from Sunnyvale.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's what I was wondering whether... It's artificially inflated number because of lighting and other conditions rather than the actual playing surface.

I also want to clarify that's not the case. That may play a factor, but the grass is not really available for use. Natural grass basically needs time to rest. You cannot use it during when it rains and quality deteriorates the more you use. So based on an industry wide kind of actual studies these hours are reflective of typical usage for natural grass fields versus artificial fields lighting may have some impact but that's not the the overriding criteria okay yeah i remember last time they said three months uh resting period of seeding and can you bring up that slide again uh the average maintenance cost per year uh

it is, it say, I am looking at the artificial turf field column. It says average maintenance cost per year over 20 years is $30,330, whereas two lines above, it says $30,770. I don't want to nitpick on $30, $40, $300, but that might be a discrepancy there. I think my time is up. Okay, thank you. See?

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, staff, for the presentation. All the community members who have provided their input through the process. And I just want to first say, like, starting in 2025 and now we're just one year later, I'm pretty happy with the speed that things are going. It seems like we're... Really making progress on the efficiency and we're seeing more issues that the Community cares about come for discussion much quicker, which I think is super helpful and especially these situations. yeah I just to give a little feedback on the presentation, it just seemed like the literature review and a lot of like these numbers, as you said, like not to get too caught up in the calculations of generalizations when I feel like. the root of what we're getting to is in the public outreach and the community sentiment in order to apply any of that information to Sunnyvale specifically. That's where I see they both work together to become useful in my analysis. So I wanted to say the decision tree idea is really good. I just do have a couple of questions about that. If we were to operationalize the decision tree, would the installation of an artificial turf field still come before council or that then be a staff level decision?

Oh, that definitely would be something that would be discussed in front of the council, because this would be a project by project approach. So when a park would come for renovation, we are basically recommending that we would use this flow chart to go through the decision making process for what we would do for that park at that specific period of time. For example, the next one would be Ortega, which would be 2032. At that point, a lot of things would have changed, possibly. There may be new technologies. There may be better ways of maintaining our grass fields that we've learned through a pilot. So all those things would factor in to basically making the decision. And then also what that park specifically would be used for would be taken into consideration.

Absolutely. Understanding any decision we make could potentially potentially or likely change the use. And so taking that into consideration as well though, but that involves that whole process of bringing that before. And this just helps inform your alternatives and helps come up with a way to talk about your recommendation. Okay. That's really helpful. Let's see. Okay. And then I just wanted to give feedback on the private property or development guidelines, I have a question. Would it be more efficient for staff to study something like that if council were to have an appetite for it alongside the current studying we're doing on this issue, or would it make more sense to hold that off until the end, just on a staff level, like your capacity in studying this? Is it significantly different?

I think that really is going to depend on community development's capacity. So that would be something we would need a lot of their staff time for. And I know, yeah, that would just be a conversation with them and really up to them.

Okay. That's helpful to consider because that is a piece of it. Whenever I look at a big scoping change like that, it looks like now we'd be pulling in another department to have that then be a big piece of that conversation as well. So it's a significant change in scope.

Yes, it would be something that CDD would lead. And, you know, we've talked to them and it would be something they would have to incorporate into their work plan with everything else that they're doing. And it would not be a small scope. So that's why we basically punted that to the next, you know.

Great. Okay. That's very helpful. I think that's all I have for right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Sal.

Hi. Thank you for the report. It's a lot of work and thought went into it, so thank you. So I was wondering, when you look at a natural grass park dedication fund, investments in improved drainage, could that be paid by the park dedication fund?

Yes.

And then how about renewable energy powered mowers. Like I guess there might be solar powered mowers and those kind of things.

That would be operations.

Okay, so not part dedication. Okay, and then currently in the master plan, there are some parks that are penciled in as consideration for artificial turf, and that's when the decision tree would be used, but some other parks, there was never a conversation of artificial turf. So would the decision tree be used for those, or would you go by the master plan?

We are recommending that you would use the decision tree for all park improvement projects.

Okay. And what is the reason for that when previously we had like a master plan and what would be, what is the reason for deviating from that?

So that's the outcome of the study. Okay. So based on the recommendations and based on the analysis and the research we've done, We think obviously we want to give preference to natural grass, but we want to keep the option of artificial turf open, but make that decision on a case by case basis. So this would give us the best flexibility in choosing in making the decision.

Okay. So when one of the questions I asked was that we're going to do a pilot and you know, we're investing probably in organic methods for that pilot. And then so if along the way we also invested in more artificial turf, then that kind of would, you know, are investment organic. Anyway, the answer to my question that Stout gave me was that the next few parks aren't going to be artificial turf. And the next one that might be artificial turf is like in 2030. It's not going to be for Sarah Park and it's not going to be for another park, but it's going to be for Ortega Park. So But if we approve the flow chart, then the artificial turf might be considered for every park instead of what the answer was. No, the answer was it won't be considered until Ortega Park. So what are your thoughts on that? There was an answer there. said it wouldn't be until Ortega Park, but the answer you just provided was that every park would be considered potentially the decision tree and the outcome could be artificial turf for every park.

I would actually word it differently. The flowchart actually prefers natural grass as the default choice. So we would basically consider natural grass for every park. Uh, if for some reason that doesn't work, then we would basically also look at artificial turf for the two parks that, uh, we are basically taking, um, steps to do design, um, and, uh, planning, which is Sarah. And I think, um, I remember, uh, was it San Antonio? Yeah. For those two parks, we are not considering artificial turf. We are only going with the natural grass option. Okay.

And then implementing the flow chart, you would come to the same answer because those fields would not be considered high-use athletic fields.

Yes.

That there's no other options for.

And if I can jump in, Councilmember, I think also those two parks are already underway. They're already in process. They're already scoped. So we're not going to, we've already awarded design or about to award design contracts. So we're not going to shift gears right now on either of those parks in any case because we said until we completed this study we would do zero artificial turf anywhere. So that's also why those parks are not included because they're already in process and we weren't going to ever consider artificial turf for them until the study was done.

And so the first opportunity to use this would be in 2032. That's the next time that the park's coming up for renovation in which we would even be able to use this.

How am I doing on time, my six minutes? Another minute, okay. So I think add to the decision tree might be considerations like a change in the use of the field in terms of once you do artificial turf, you can't have dogs on it, you can't have food on it. Those kind of things should be considered. And you would need to sanitize it periodically because they the waste on it doesn't decompose it needs to be sanitized and that would need to use like not recycled water you know potable water and then other things that might need to be on it is that on the decision tree for choosing artificial turf is that as we're going to have more hotter days, so there would be more intention and ways to cool it, such as irrigation to cool the artificial turf. So those items need to in some way be added in some way to the flow chart. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you very much.

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

Thank you for the presentation and the report. Could you talk to me a little bit more about the organic field management pilot and what would be involved in that?

Sure. So an organically managed field focuses a lot more on soil health. So instead of applying any pesticides or herbicides to the field, there would be manual weeding, soil health analysis, maybe more frequent like aeration, mowing, just and more involved labor. But the idea is, is that over time, the soil health builds up and the grass becomes more resilient. And I think that's where we're really looking to understand what that looks like in terms of how labor costs might come down over time. So there were a few case studies that showed that initial upfront costs might be higher, and then long term maintenance costs are lower. And that's the data that we couldn't get verified and wouldn't want to see art for ourselves.

Thank you. And I think in the responses to the commissioner questions, I think it was mentioned Washington Park might be the best location because of the irrigation systems. I also noticed that it is the highest gallons per acre for pesticide use park. So how would that interact with kind of both studies or pilots happening?

um I think staff are considering coupling those two studies because they would they would make sense to be coupled together um and I can look to parks in case they have anything else to add to that but that's they would they could be coupled and that's part of the what we'll evaluate as we scope out those projects thank you for Fair Oaks Park right now you know if there's replacement portions that have for for the turf that has to be replaced right now how are we managing the disposal of those pieces I don't think I have an answer to that. How are we managing this disposal of pieces of Fair Oaks Park anytime it's refurbished? Is that your question?

Yeah, there's certain parts that need to be replaced. There were pictures where the person mentions that there were parts of it that were fixed or places that were was replaced.

At this point, we don't really have a great way of recycling artificial turf. Usually all this gets to the smart station, and we've talked to our smart station operator, and there is no easy way to recycle a good system in California right now to recycle artificial turf. It just ends up in the landfill.

Okay. Thank you. I think those are all my questions for now.

Thank you. I have several questions. First up. So I was hoping to see from a study standpoint, I understand we're talking about hours of play, but it really a lot of this comes down to how often the fields are closed. And, you know, from from the let's say the natural grass parks, maybe it's in there, but I did not see like the number of days that a park is closed because, or a field is closed because the grass is in unusable space, is in an unusable state. And this is what we always hear in the wintertime, that the fields have been closed too long from, and talking to the AYSO parents, it's like, it's closed for four days or something of that nature after a heavy rain until it dries out. Or even the baseball, some of the little league groups were having issues on opening day. Do we have that data? Are we keeping that data? I was hoping to see that as part of this study because ours is not really apples to apples as we saw that there's a wide variance on a per park basis.

I think we'll ask our parks team to come up to answer that question.

uh good evening mayor uh jim stark deputy director of public works um i don't track that data i don't know if it was tracked as part of the study if you looked at field closure due to weather it happens it's real you know unfortunately it seemed to rain right before opening day of little league every year but i don't have the specific numbers and i'm hesitant to shoot from the hip yeah okay and it would have been so just as we're going forward and i don't know where the study ends

and how it ends today and how it continues. But tracking that data I think is critical because this is one of the key things of, you know, supposedly the values of artificial turf. And we can talk about lights and we can talk about a lot of other things, but that is often, you know, and it goes to drainage and everything else also. And I appreciate the speed that this came back to us, but there are, to me, there are, you know, that's one of the things I would have liked to seen. And then the use at home. So we kind of talk about, you know, we did polling for residents who currently have artificial turf. Is there any discussion on park strips? So, you know, officially that's city land maintained by residents. And it's one thing for a resident to utilize artificial turf on their front yard or backyard. for whatever reason, whether or not it's too much shade, too hard to deal with and all that. Does staff have recommendations on that usage and kind of recommendations on, you know, after we've gone through this process, what we should or should not be prescribing from an ordinance standpoint?

um i don't think that we have a specific recommendation i think i saw trudy ryan online and i'll look to see if she has anything from community development perspective um hi thank you madeline trudy ryan community development director um mayor and council uh we don't have anything in our in our um community or the zoning standards that address uh landscaping in the park strip um You sometimes need an encroachment permit. There are things you're not supposed to do. That really comes under the, I'm not trying to kick the can, but that's really more of what Public Works would want to do for that. But as you indicated, it is the adjacent property owner that typically maintains that area.

Okay.

And so go into the zoning code. That wouldn't be the appropriate location for it. If the council wanted to do that, it's a similar type of study. I think it could probably be wrapped in if you wanted to look at private property, but it really is kind of a separate requirement. And we just need to know what the concerns might be from a public works perspective.

Okay. And talked about the study so so there's a recommendation to kind of change like what we're doing for lakewood and or you know it's conceivably how that's operated i know we we did a lot of direction from a council standpoint to improve the quality of that field looking at drainage looking at you know irrigation and everything else um what would be the cost on top of that to go more organic than it already is. And you talk about staff, the eight staff that you're kind of talking about here in general is that if every field went organic in the longterm or, you know, and as we add parks and we added, you know, park staff this year, because we've added parks over the last few years, what, you know, what specifically, you know, what would be the incremental change to do this pilot?

I think Jim is working on a cost estimate. He's preparing an economic plan. It's not done yet, but it is going to be something that we would probably bring as a project in next year's projects budget for consideration for the council.

then i just want to clarify there's there's two different things that you're kind of talking about so there's improved maintenance and then there's organic management and those can be two different things you can improve maintenance still using conventional synthetic applications of pesticides and herbicides and things like that but just invest more staff time and resources into maintaining it and so that's kind of what we're looking at i think with the lakewood proposal versus maybe at the washington park it's just the organic so you can kind of compare and contrast between those two um that with organic you would automatically need to also increase your maintenance because you no longer are relying on the synthetic pesticides and herbicides to remove weeds and do things like that. So there would be increased labor associated with it.

I appreciate that. Okay. Thank you. Next up is Council Member Sell. Additional questions from Council? Any other questions before we go to the vote? OK.

Seeing none.

OK. Seeing none, let's go back to where I was supposed to be. I'll go ahead and open the public open up the public comment on the specific item please submit a speaker card to the city clerk raise your additional hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that she was to speak i will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants speakers will have two minutes to speak um And I'll be reading off two names. First person, please come to the lectern. Next person, be please waiting in the wings. First up is Daryl J followed by Robert P, Robert B, sorry.

Yeah, thank you. All right. Thank you, counsel. And thank you for the presentation. I think I'll jump straight into the field at Fair Oaks Park. So you'll notice that the field at Fair Oaks Park has a fence that surrounds the artificial turf. And there's a set of rules that's listed on the fence indicating what activities are permitted on the park and what's not. Well, primarily what's not. So here's a partial list of some of the things that are prohibited on artificial turf. Like food and beverages aren't allowed. Volleyball nets would be precluded because they use stakes to go into the ground. Tents would be precluded because they use stakes to go into the ground. Walking a dog across the park would also be precluded. So I think this study, it would be helpful in the study to highlight what are the limitations of artificial turf that we see. So it's more transparent as to how this would affect users of the park. Something else that can happen with artificial turf is due to the fragility of the turf to certain uses, a barrier may need to be constructed to isolate the turf from users who would wander under the field and violate the usage limits of the turf so you know in feral fair oaks park they have a fence in other parks it may be something different but these barriers create a sense of like they a park would lose its sense of openness when you put barriers to access to the field so i think in conclusion just um We need to do a good job in the future of accounting for current usages of the park. A lot of those usages fall outside the reservation system. And I think it's well understood in parks and rec that it's hard to assess spontaneous usages outside the reservation system. But I would encourage everyone to really take a good look at that because many of those usages are not compatible with artificial turf. Thank you.

Next is Robert B. followed by Barucho M. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Robert Bileci. I'm with Tenkata Grass. We're the largest turf manufacturer both globally and nationally. First off, thank you for the study and I just want to say we agree with you. We want to keep kids playing. We want to keep kids safe, and we also understand the environmental impact that comes along and concerns with it that come along with turf. We understand the issues surrounding field demands, and more often than not, it's the poorest kids impacted when access is limited. When people hear the word synthetic turf, many think of products that were installed decades ago, and the reality is that today's technology has changed dramatically. This is why at Tenkata we developed Pivot Performance Turf. The innovation behind Pivot pretty much checks every box from environmental concerns, safety, maintenance, and durability. On the environmental side, we've been manufacturing Pivot PFAS-free since 2023. So there's no black chrome rubber, actually no performance infill at all in our turf, which also prevents the fibers from creating that friction that causes microplastics. um our turf is recyclable at the end of its life we actually operate a recycling facility in louisiana on the safety side we have heat mitigation through pivot cool which is used in our pivot system 100 level playing surfaces which makes it safer and it was developed to play as close to natural grass as possible on the maintenance side it's virtually maintenance free no constant field grooming or replenishment and it comes with a 12-year warranty, which I believe is the only in the industry, which is 50% longer lifespan than the industry standard. I know I'm running out of time. I just want to say that there are some fields here in the area in Palo Alto and San Jose already if you'd like to check them out, and we'd love to be involved in the process as you guys move forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Heruko M., followed by Kitlyn S.,

Hi. Yeah, my name is Haruko Matsuda and I volunteer an inordinate amount of time for the local soccer club here. So I generally support the staff recommendation for a blended case by case approach. in determining the synthetic turf usage. And hopefully kind of leaned more towards the synthetic turf because we just don't have enough fields to play year-round in the city. And one of the staff showed that the Fair Oaks Park is the most popular park because you can play year-round. in a good condition. And I do want to thank your predecessors at the City Council in deciding and actually installing synthetic turf at Fair Oaks Park. 50% or more of our high school players are financial aid players who actually live very close to the facility, the Fair Oaks Park. And they are able to engage in meaningful activity within walking distance or a quick bike rides away. And that's been a life changing resource to them. So please, whatever decision you guys make, do not take that away from them. And if anything, provide more opportunities for them to play year round and engage in meaningful activities. So thank you.

Thank you. Kitlyn S. followed by Mary B. Hi.

My name is Kitlyn Seto. I work with Sunnyvale Alliance Soccer Club in operations. I'm the operations manager there. I do a lot of the field scheduling of games. As we're just limited in the number of fields we can play our games at, some of our games have to be at high quality fields, which is limited to Fair Oaks parks, basically. And we have, you know, since we were limited on the fields here, we've actually in the past year had to look at private rentals to sustain the, playing quality field quality for our players to be competitive against the local, the surrounding community that could cost us up to, you know, approximately $300 an hour to rent a private high school fields. That's quite a burden on our nonprofit program, which as Rico mentioned supports a high level, a large number of financial, low-income families, and it's a huge burden to ask the city to ask for us to have to pay those prices to field the games for these players to play at. And it's a good program that keeps our kids engaged in supervised activities that they benefit for life from.

um and i think that's all i'm gonna say thank you thank you um mary b followed by tiffany c

Good evening. City parks are not sports complexes. The community wants the space to be available for multiple purposes. We do not want restrictive fencing or limited use. And the community will continue to fight for natural grass in our parks. Community parks are well used and the fields will never meet the ideal levels that some teams are requesting. I suggest that the city improve management of the park fields to include some of the techniques that have been proposed. The city should also develop a dedicated sports complex. This area should include space for soccer and cricket and should be natural grass. Perhaps look at a golf course or Baylands Park. A dedicated area would minimize overuse by the general community and relieve the residents from having to fight off artificial turf as each park is updated. New natural grass sports fields should use best practices, take advantage of offers to help install these fields, rotate use, and ask the users of these fields to help pay for maintenance to meet their requirements. I encourage the city to ban artificial turf. Existing natural grass fields should be managed organically, and new natural grass fields should be opened up. Thank you.

Thank you. Tiffany C followed by Carrie L.

Hi, thank you for the report and thank you for your time. So I was an AYSO coach and mom. And as you know, AYSO, every child plays, so we encourage to have as many fields as available for all our games. Well, I understand the limitation on the grass fields and I've heard the preference for turf field. I actually have been out on the field when the players are playing and I can tell you on a turf field on a sunny afternoon is unbelievably hot. At least for the parents and for the coaching staff we have, we're under tents, right? But for the players, I can only feel how hot it is and how much difficulty it is for them. So I encourage based on the report I've heard today is to improve the maintenance of the fields so that we could have more grass field outside of the fall and spring when a white SO is in session. The other piece I want to bring up, having said that, is actually on the cost comparison. So I heard some of the questions being asked by the city council members. The similar questions I have, if you can go back to that slide, where it's the comparison between grass and turf.

From a cost standpoint?

From a cost standpoint. So I actually would like the city to look at it from a total cost of ownership. Because if you look at the cost comparison, I'm not gonna go into details because, details, I mean, I can, I have trouble trying to calculate the numbers to get what I see in the slide. But the first one I wanna highlight is that, It has the cost for a construction cost given that most of our fields are already grass that shouldn't be a factor in the cost comparison. On the artificial side, based on what I've heard from various public members is your total cost will have to factor in lights because you need lights to have those extended hours to play until 10 p.m. as well as you will need fence. So I would encourage the city to account for all that in the cost comparison. Thank you. Carrie L followed by Andrea W. Can you put that slide back up?

Thanks. Okay. Hi. I take some issues with the study issues. There's some numerous unsubstantiated and biased claims, and I have some examples right here. On this report, for example, a well-managed field built with modern resilient grass and efficient drainage could reduce the full refurbishment cycle down to one to two times in a 20-year cycle, not the five times that's listed on this report with that cost over half a million dollars. Susan Nemitzki, On page 8 of the actual report itself, there's some confusion. It equates microplastic with PFAS. These are two completely separate issues. The public survey on pages 36, 46, and 52 is quite biased. Asking whether, quote, artificial turf should generally be restricted is a leading question. If natural grass is not considered, then a fair survey would ask if we should reject artificial turf altogether. just take a you know with a decision tree if that is the case i support the pilot study if it's installed over several high use fields for apples to apples comparisons bayland park would be an ideal place offering ample space while promoting equal access for all residents we must ban artificial turf from our parks if we want year-round safer and healthier place to play thank you

Thank you. Andrea W, followed by Susan H.

first and foremost staff has recommended that city council accept the study issue i am strongly opposed to this the study issue did not provide enough information on the environmental hazards of artificial turf as compared to natural grass that we believe can do very well if maintained organically without chemical pesticides and fertilizers it did not fully take into account all the microplastics that are shed from it and end up in our waterways aquatic animals and our bodies It did not accurately compare usage for natural grass fields using more drought tolerant grass and regenerative maintenance practices. The comparison was only based upon this field Sunnyvale currently have, which we all know are old and never meant to handle heavy use sports teams. We also know that the irrigation systems are old and in need of repair or total replacement. The cost comparison of artificial turf versus natural grass was based on too short a time frame as it did not take into account multiple artificial turf replacements that would be needed if one looked out 20 or 30 years and not just 10 to 12 years. Lastly, recycling of artificial Lastly, recycling of acres of worn out fields is still something that has not been proven to actually be happening at scale. Do we believe the hype like we do for all plastic that's supposedly getting recycled? We know this is not happening and is causing a terrible plastic pollution problem for all of us. The pilot of natural grass fields is something that should include multiple locations, not just one, and for a more accurate analysis and comparison. I urge Sunnyvale to hire an outside consultant or contractor who has demonstrated experience successfully managing natural grass athletic fields using organic land care practices. i also recommend a moratorium for residential and commercial artificial turf installations until the city comes up with some sort of process that includes a permit with a fee not only for the installation for the disposal of that artificial turf into our landfill and an educational portion on all the harms of artificial turf and the valley water rebate program thank you susan h followed by courtney j

Good evening. It's nice to be here again. My name is Susan Hinton. I'm the conservation chair for the Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club. I first came before this council in 2023. It's 2026. In 2023, we were talking about Lakewood. If Lakewood Park had been redone today, we would already know the answer. for how an efficient grass field would work in comparison. Sadly, Lakewood Park is still in the state that it was in in 2023. Among other things to note, schools use their fields during the day. So it's not exactly true that school fields are not used during the day. Unfortunately, we probably aren't. able to get a hold of those hours, but it's worth keeping in mind that there is more usage of all the school fields than has been accounted for here. Also, I remember looking at rain and when grass fields were closed in thinking, this is California. Sometimes it rains heavily and undoubtedly fields need to be closed. I've even seen middle school children and elementary school children led away from Fair Oaks Field when there was heavy rain. However, most of the time, as we know, rain is very light. There really is no reason to close a grass field when there's only fractions of an inch over an entire day. There's so much more I could say, but real quickly, pivot is not what you think it is. It's hotter and more dense, and it sheds quite a bit. I do invite you to go over to John Mee's field and walk around the edges and see how much it sheds. Thank you.

Thank you. Oh, there's one moment. Can you come back for just a second? Oh, hi.

Thank you, Council Member Lay. Hi, thank you for your comment. I didn't hear what you said. You invited us to walk around. Okay, I'm sorry.

One of the local fields, it is Tenkade Pivot. It's called John Mise, M-I-S-E. Maybe it's Mise. I'm sorry. I don't know the correct pronunciation for that. It's across from Middy, Archbishop Middy, off of Lawrence Expressway.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Courtney J followed by. Harris Harris are curious. Oh, Marius.

My name is Courtney Jameson. I'm speaking on behalf tonight as a Sunneville resident, resident of Lakewood, as a local user of the parks, as an unpaid advocate who has been here, let's see what else, as a former AYSO soccer coach, a former parent or parent of a former AYSO United soccer player, and for the first time as a current parent of a Sunneville-owned soccer player. the artificial turf is not great. I would like you to see it. And I love the idea of the organic land care pilot. But I actually don't want to talk about that now. I'm going to direct your attention to page 57, PDF page 57 of the full report, which is question 16 of the survey. What zip code do you own property in? I'm going to assume it's a proxy for where do you live, which wasn't actually asked in one, but they're not something. Zip code 94089, where I live, of the respondents, 4.4% of them were from there. 6.3% were from 94085, which is a zip code where Ferox is in. 15%, roughly, from 94086. And 59% from 94087. i don't think it's typical of the responses of city surveys i didn't have time to look it's not representative population the population breakdown doesn't match that but our survey is missing input from people in the community where oaks artificial turf already is and where artificial turf at lakewood was proposed I have struggled with room to figure out the right adjective for how to describe this, and I don't have a good one yet. But I think if we move forward, it's really important that we approach housing input from all of our communities and where we go from there. And so I just look at the survey and I look at all the voices that are missing and what would they say if they had commented and if they were able to be included. Thank you.

Thank you. Marius R followed by Zach Kay.

Good afternoon. I'm Marius. I'm the executive director for Sunnyvale Alliance. I looked at the report and I can also say it's a few errors there. They're talking about the field conditions, the ones who have been and talking about the fields, grass fields looks terrible in March, but they are probably getting better during the season. It's actually opposite. March is the best condition on the grass fields who've been observed because they have been laying dormant, rested, because they have been closed for three months. So that's the best time to look at the field. So they have got this a little bit wrong, but that's just a side comment. At the same time, we, as a soccer club, we would love grass fields. We had the facility before where we could rotate grass and play on grass. Every soccer player prefer playing on grass, but a good grass field, not the grass field who is, let's say now we are playing on Columbia grass fields at the school. And I have to say they are unplayable, but we still do it. It's like a farm field and a farmer wouldn't be proud of it. When we are investing in fields, If you buy a turf field, it's a higher cost, as you see, but then it's basically no maintenance in the artificial turf. The maintenance for a grass field is a lot to keep it. I have been part of building 10 artificial turf fields, similar grass fields. Grass fields have been great, but you need to mow them twice a week. You need to water them daily, and you need to pesticides all these things on it to keep them nice. So think about that. Thank you.

Thank you. Zach K. Followed by, I guess, Mark Riddell.

Say you have a field of living vegetation in an urban environment, an athletic field for instance. You replace the vegetated ground with asphalt. You could do some sports on asphalt. Okay, maybe you can't slide tackle in soccer or play tackle football. Instead of asphalt, maybe a firmer version of the recycled rubber you use in your playground equipment. That reduces limitations. What is the reaction to seeing a once living field blanketed in asphalt or rubber? Now let us take the next similar step and consider plastic grass. A little less visceral reaction to paving everything? What if it was pigmented car grease brown instead of green? It is the same material. Why is it so important that it is pigmented green? Does the manufacturer not want the general public to notice something taking place apart from the playing characteristics? Plastic grass has a heat problem. If the manufacturer went with Clorox bottle white, it would be partially addressed. But again, plastic grass is always pigmented green. Let us go with real green living grass and keep the plastic for diapers and garbage bags.

Thank you. Margaret L followed by Bruce P. Hi, I'm Margaret Lawson.

There's certain things that are invented once in a while or discovered or put together. And in my view, plastic grass is one of those things. I don't know why it was ever invented in the first place. But anyhow, it's got pollution. It chemically leaches, it's got a high carbon footprint, it retains heat, and it pollutes. If I had a kid who wanted to play on plastic grass, I wouldn't let them. I think that one of the things, we talk a lot about rain. I have a rain gauge. I'm kind of on whether or not I have a barometer, I have a wind velocity meter, and I have a rain gauge. And we're supposed to have 13 inches of rain a year in Sunnyvale. In the last couple of years, we've gotten about five inches, if we're lucky, five to six inches. So I think this issue about rain and fields being closed and all that other stuff is... kind of not exactly accurate. The other thing is, I know a lot of you watch soccer during the World Cup, and one of the things you see soccer players doing is sliding on the grass. You can't do that on artificial turf. Now, mind you, they water the grass before the game and in the in the break, the halftime break. So that allows the players to slide. They'll slide ten feet. And so I think that some of this issue about Fields being closed is kind of an artificial comment, an artificial, anyway, it's artificial just like the grass. I strongly oppose any artificial grass.

Thank you. Bruce P followed by Manny D.

Good evening. My name is Bruce Payton. I currently serve on the County Sustainability Commission, but I'm speaking today on my own behalf. I also should say that I have a PhD in environmental studies, but that doesn't make me an expert on artificial turf. But it does mean that I'm capable of reading the reports and reaching independent conclusions. I think if you looked at table one of the comparison of health and environmental effects, it would make you wonder when artificial turf would be a superior alternative. So the argument primarily is cost effectiveness and hours of play. That brings us to the question of why 2,000 hours? I'd like to see greater definition of why that choice. I understand that that's an industry recommendation standard use, but is that a realistic number to use? Because the cost comparison varies directly as a result of that. I also want to point out just one of the many challenges. The report says it should be noted that despite the growth and increased demand for recycled materials from artificial turf, complete recycling has not been achieved under current conditions. So I went to the Tenkati website and says we're actively exploring opportunities to participate in a closed loop system where recycled plastics are integrated into our own turf manufacturing process. To put that statement in perspective, I would say I'm actively pursuing opportunities to be taller, better looking and thinner. But it's hard to conclude that I'm likely to succeed at that. So I think we need to be skeptical about the industry claims and ask for hard data. Thank you.

Thank you. And my last speaker card in the room is Manny D.

Good evening, Mayor, honorable council members, Manny Diaz. I'm a consultant for Tecate Grass. I want to, first of all, thank staff for including our industry in the focus group discussion to share the information. I think it was very important to have the latest information on what the turf industry is doing. We also sent you a letter. A lot of improvements have occurred in the last few years. The industry is very different from what it was five, ten years ago. So we believe that there is product out there now that PFAS free. We have a couple of bars is called Pivot. There's no more infill in it, which caused the heat factor without the infill. It lowers the heat by 30 to 50 degrees. It is recyclable. I know people are skeptical about that. I understand that. And we also think that obviously the costs over the life of the field is much lower, ongoing costs. So we think it's a win-win for the community. And so we want to thank you for your thoughtful approach to this study. Thank you very much.

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

Yes, Mayor. First up is Beyond Pesticides, followed by Stephen M., the individual joining as Beyond Pesticides. I understand you have a presentation. I'll put that up and then let me know when you'd like me to advance to the second slide.

Okay, thank you. Sorry, I forgot. My name is Rika Gopinath. This is my work Zoom. First of all, thank you to the city council and mayor and staff for the hard work on this issue, especially to the council for investing $150, $1,000 in this study issue. We were searching, we hoped, for best practices, not just an operationalized decision tree. So let me start with my time with just two points. First of all, we would ask that you do not accept The report without corrections, both in the math and the definitions that I'll get to in a moment, as well as corrections in the cost and playable hours. Most importantly, please do not accept an operationalized decision tree. Sadly, it assumes the truth of what it wants. It assumes that the best practices for natural grass is what is being currently done. conventional thinking and chemical management. Here's the critical correction. Throughout the report, Beyond Pesticides shared information with a sub-consultant who, to his credit, had never heard of organically managed land care, organic land care, or organically managed natural grass fields. That is the definition that should be in there. Organic turf management is what I heard described earlier by staff that said, You have to use high use of pesticides and fertilizers. If you take those away, labor increases. What we heard last week is that There is high use of pesticides and chemicals, and yet the conditions are not optimal. We would argue that soon as you stop that and use the labor towards actual soil biology, soil amendments, and you need a qualified consultant to do the pilot project. The second slide is just about the pilot project, and we would please ask that before you decide on sites, you find outside expertise that can bring you best practices that are happening in the real world, including in our program at University of Iowa with the division one grass soccer field. Thanks.

Thank you.

Next up is Steven M followed by Christina P. Steven, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the city council.

Hello, good evening council. Thank you for your attention tonight. So I have a lot of experience being around artificial turf because I was a track and cross country dad at Fremont High School so I spent about four years around the Fremont High School track and I'm a four-time winner of the watermelon run, which is a fantastic event. In fact, my daughter and I I think we're four-time winners together One, being around artificial turf, it's absolutely horrendous. I felt health effects myself. In fact, I got exercise-induced asthma by the byproducts of the gases coming off the field. I've been spending a lot of time at Fremont High School standing on the fields, and I tell you, it's absolutely horrendous. But besides that, let's look at the key issue here is the tension between are parks, which are for local usage and the demand for sports access. There's a lot of Sports clubs that want to have more fields and I understand that. That shouldn't come at the expense of our local parts. There needs to be some type of study issue to provide more access to sports fields. Um, and then they can do what they want if they want artificial turf on sports fields, you know, so be it. But I would recommend that the city look. At a study issue to. provide more sports fields. And in fact, my proposal is to look at your golf courses. Your golf courses are heavily underutilized. They use a lot of water for very few participants. You have two public sports fields, golf courses, sorry, that would be perfect targets for more sports fields. So instead of targeting local parks, please target your golf. Your golf is due for a master plan. I'd say get rid of golf and produce sports fields. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up is Christina P followed by Bailing S. Christina, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay, cool. I don't see a timer. Yeah, my name is Christina Pistone. I'm speaking on my own behalf tonight. I just wanted to make sure that we keep in mind that this report is highly focused on the sports usages rather than any of the other usages. And I understand why that is. The data are what they are. But if any artificial turf was going to be installed, a more detailed analysis would need to be done to consider all of the other usages of natural grass. which would not be possible if you switch it to a plastic sports field. I know it's challenging to quantify the value of the proverbial touching of grass, but those are some things that we could lose if we make decisions only considering what the reserved playing hours are. The flowchart, I think, is generally a useful idea, and I appreciate how most of the decisions do end with natural grass unless very specific conditions are made. I worry that a lot is still left up to interpretation. For example, if you looked at the Sustainability Commission meetings and the Parks and Rec Commission meetings, they had completely different takeaways from that flow chart. Specifically, if you have a different definition of what high usage means, then you're like, boom, we don't need to make any of the other considerations. We don't need to consider whether or not it's recyclable or not. I know it was discussed a little bit. I'm not sure that the confounding factors of lights and the fact that there's only so many hours after school, I'm not sure that that's actually insignificant. And the unlighted fields go until 7 p.m. Lighted grass fields go until 9 p.m. Fair Oaks goes until 10 p.m. That seems like a two-hour differential versus a one-hour differential. And most importantly, there's no way around the fact that these fields cannot be recycled. They will not be recycled. They're gonna be shedding throughout their lifetimes. It is a line item in the budget to replace infill periodically. conservation of mass where is that going if it's not shedding with the wind or going home on kids clothes or going home with the water rain and i wouldn't necessarily trust things of people who are say us trying to sell a product and finally i support the idea of a natural grass pilot product i think we can do better and let's give it a chance to prove it thanks thank you next up is mailing s followed by barbara

Mayling you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the City Council, please let me know when you'd like me to advance to your next slide. Mayling you appear unmuted but we're not able to hear you. Okay, Mei-Ling, we have one more speaker, if you wouldn't mind dropping off. Oh, there we go. We can hear you now, yes.

Okay, thank you. My name is Mei-Ling Stephan. On the left-hand side, on the environmental impacts of artificial turf, besides plastic pollution, please don't forget to smell the plastic. Chemical leaching continues in landfills. High carbon footprint from production and disposal ignores the limited lifetime of landfills around us. The heat and hot surfaces. Kids are more sensitive to heat than adults because they cannot regulate their body temperature as well. There's a large body of literature on that. On the right hand side, the environmental impacts of natural grass. It simply states the status quo. It doesn't consider using new technologies like soil moisture sensing to minimize water usage or the use of recycled water. And high chemical usage eliminate weed killers, can we mow down weeds and goats prefer weeds to grass. And electric battery riding mowers can be used. The safety for kids should not be left to the judgment of event organizers. Please advance the slide. Next slide, please. Yes. Many wells in California are contaminated by PFAS. Governor Newsom rejected a bill to ban PFAS in fake lawns, though he signed one to allow cities to ban them. Even so-called PFAS free turf can be found to contain PFAS. It costs a lot to remove artificial turf to restore fields to grass. So please no artificial turf in Sunnyvale parks. Then staff need not spend time on decision trees. Residents need not protest. Council's time need not be taken up by residents protests. Thank you.

Next up is Barbara. Barbara, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council. Barbara, you should see a pop-up on your screen asking you to unmute. Barbara, let me try one more time. You've been unmuted. You should see a pop-up asking you to unmute. Unfortunately, the last speaker were unable to get them to activate their microphone to provide their public comment. and there are no additional remote speakers for this agenda item.

Okay, thank you. I'll go ahead and close public comment and bring it back to council for final input. And David, can you pull up the last slide again? And first up is Council Member Lay.

Thank you so much. Thank you to the members of the public who came out tonight for your comments. We appreciate your time and your engagement with the community. I have a question or I have a preference regarding Mei-Ling Stephan's comment, one of our last public commenters. One of the things she raised was the possibility of fuel closures in anticipation of hot weather. One of the things that concerns me as a parent, as someone who generally lives in this area, as a person who lives generally is climate change and the potential impacts of climate change not just towards less rain but more heat in researching this topic i found that locally fremont union high school district has a has a temperature at which they close fields and i re i also realized that our new public works director from redmond washington his city has a similar policy in redmond fields are closed above 100 100 degrees fahrenheit for safety And at FUHSD, it follows a guideline of wet bulb globe temperature of 86.2 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. I would like to see the city pursue that. These are guidelines at FUHSD that are clearly for high school aged kids. But right now it seems that we leave this to the discretion of the sports leagues. This isn't necessarily a one size fits all, but I think that should also be a factor in how our fields are used. Also, I would like to say that I am interested in seeing the split maintenance for the fields and how that's going to happen and how we will define high intensity. It seems like some of this is assumed, like we already talked about how the next time this will come up will be Ortega, which seems to indicate that we already know that Ortega is high use, which makes sense to me given, you know, um, anecdotal evidence, but I would like to see a more structured way to define this as, as we go into the flow chart, as we look at the flow chart and see, um, to see what is high, uh, high intensity and what isn't. Um, I'm also curious about the timeline for the, uh, organic pilot for what are we looking at there? Is it going to be done over the course of a few years?

Yes, it would be something that we would bring back as a project for consideration for the council at the next project's budget cycle. And if the council approves it, it would probably take a three to four year time for the whole pilot to play out.

Okay, sorry, let me say that again. So it's going to come back at our next project workshop. And then if we approve it, the pilot will be, I'm assuming put out to, to bid, and then that will take a number of months, and then it will start. So this is 2026. It'll take that might not even be done by the time we're taking this up.

So Ortega is actually scheduled to begin in 2032 33.

For the fiscal year?

Fiscal year, 2032-2033 fiscal year.

So is that when Ortega will be starting to be scoped?

Yes, that's when we will actually start work, begin work on the project.

Okay. And then for the pilot, what are we looking at for the pilot? What are the considerations for the field that's going to be studied there?

Well, the first basic criteria is that it needs to have good irrigation.

Good what?

Good irrigation.

Irrigation.

So that's why we chose Washington, because it has very good irrigation. And Madeline, you can kind of correct me, but the scope essentially includes organic field management techniques. So that would essentially, or is it, am I saying it right?

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, so it would basically include also improved maintenance practices. The idea is that you improve the maintenance of the grass fields, and then you also get away from using any synthetic fertilizers. But it takes time for the grass to change and the soil to change. um so that it basically becomes resilient and you don't have to use pesticides anymore so that whole process are actually fertilizers anymore synthetic fertilizers anymore so that whole process takes about three to four years for the you know for uh the pilot to conclude and for us to actually see what the differences are so that's that's how long it will take and that's the scope

Thank you. And then for the parks team, what is the current status quo of Washington Park as it's used for recreation reserved hours currently?

I think we could take that as a follow up. I believe Washington is one of the heavier reserve parks as a community park. I also know it gets quite a bit of drop in play.

Okay, thank you. And I want to also, I want to say that we as a council are aware, we have heard this in many of the public comments, that there are other recreational uses for grass fields. I go to the park a lot. I think my kids are at the park now. None of that is logged in these studies. I'm not a recreational soccer player, neither are any of my sons. the parks are for everyone. I just want to get that out there that I hear you when you say that. That's the extent of my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you, Mayor. I had a couple of questions for, there were three comments from public I wanted a clarification on. One is grass field closing is that closed because of rain or is it for seeding while he's coming up i have another thing survey another public mentioned about the skewed survey problem that is some portions of the city are not participating can we ensure that everybody is aware and can participate or if it is not already done okay

Okay, I'll go first. So for the community survey, we conducted outreach. We reached out to all of the sports organizations. We did outreach via social media, all of our news outlets. I mean, we conducted outreach to the best that we know how from our team's perspective and from all the communication channels that the city has. It was a heavily advertised opportunity to comment on the survey. And so, I mean... how who heard of it and how they commented and how that correlates to the zip codes was just, you know, a byproduct of who our message was reaching.

yeah thank you thank you for that i'm not criticizing staff and then i'm trying to understand the why the results are skewed across the city i totally understand why it could be but any effort to reach out to all the parts of the city is appreciated i'm not i don't have any particular suggestion so

Yeah, so Jim Stark, Deputy Director of Public Works. Back to the field closure question. So in natural grass, the bulk of the time the fields are closed are during the winter months, right? December, January, and February. Not only us, pretty much every park system in this part of Northern California. The reason is that grass is not actively growing. When you put a lot of demand on a sports field, you need the grass to be able to recover, right? And you can picture this probably at your own house. During the wintertime, our cool season grasses aren't actively growing. So when the kids are out there in their cleats or adults are out in their cleats, they're tearing the grass up. In the wintertime, the grass isn't growing, so it doesn't recover. You don't get regenerative growth. In the spring and fall, with our cool season grasses, that's when you get that regenerative growth so it can recover quickly and be ready for play tomorrow. One of my biggest fears when Lakewood is open is a natural grass field is that a group comes from maybe out the side of the city during a winter month when it's not open and they play a Saturday long adult soccer game on that. It will destroy the field because when you think about when we do and here's the other part with the water. So, right, you have grass. It's not actively growing. It's not dormant, but more or less dormant. You have a bunch of play on it. Well, when you think about a soccer cleat, it pretty much looks like a soil compaction tool that you use during construction, right? Have you ever seen a sheep's foot compactor? That's basically what a soccer cleat is. So when the grass isn't actively growing, then we get rain on top of it. The cleats tear up the field and it doesn't have it's not growing to recover. So that muddy torn up field, if it happens in mid-December, it's going to stay like that in December, January and February until the cool season grasses kick into gear, which is typically in March.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then one last question before my comment. Can you bring up the slide? So being The way I look at this, there are three scales. One is organic turf, that is pesticide free, natural turf and artificial turf. That's the gradation in my view. And then, We heard about BN pesticide public comment, and then I also read in the report, which was very scant about other technologies or other methodologies. I'm assuming that staff will follow other, when we say organic field management pilot, which we approved last week, they are looking at other organic methodology. Is that correct?

Sorry, I didn't get the question.

So beyond pesticide, that company itself is the organic field management concept, right?

They're a consultant who basically have given us some information about organic field management. We have looked at that information. I think the report mentions that, and I think Madeline can correct me, but we could not validate some of those aspects. But that's one of the reasons why we are recommending a pilot, because we can actually do that in-house. I mean, do that in the city, not in-house, but we would get a consultant to help us. But we would do that here to understand how it actually works. And if it's effective.

That's my understanding reading the report. Thanks for clarifying. So regarding my feedback on this, I will be very quick here. Overall report, kind of like the report, but at the same time, I would like to see more of organic field management because that's the future. That keeps our city healthy. So I don't want to totally reject the report at this stage because it's a case by case and then we can decide when we want. But looks like it's already leaning towards natural turf. But I think based on the feedback I heard or the comments I heard, it will lead to organic field management once the steady pilot, depending on the results of the pilot. So regarding the decision tree, I think it's a fluid one. It also depends on the organic field management and other studies. So straight off the bat, I don't think this decision tree will have a lifespan of 20 years or 50 years, it will be a very, very short lifespan. So I am not going to discuss that. And then I think Lakewood Park would be a wonderful place or a laboratory for us to study how and then improve our own know-how how to maintain a natural grass. So those are my comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Council Member Tso.

Thank you. And when we're looking at natural grass, I'd like us to look at drainage, because if we improve the drainage, we can improve the time of use. I like what Council Member Lay said about closing the fields at 100 degrees C or some standard thing that the high schools use. And I would like us to do the pilot and for the pilot to look for a management, organic turf management, that is for athletic fields. And I would like to have the sports leagues be one of the stakeholders involved in the outreach for the pilot. to understand their needs because they're high users. I also liked one of the commenters that mentioned that maybe it would be good to have an area where we have a lot of fields and the main thing of the purpose of them is to be sports. That's a good idea to look into that. Our parks, as was mentioned by one of the commenters, they're used by a lot of things and artificial turf does not allow for many of those uses. So the community is giving up many things by changing over to artificial turf. So I think some of those things that were mentioned there should be in a flow chart that these are all the things you're giving up. not being with dogs, not being with people. It was that whole list. Yeah, I really I like what you said about, you know, maybe artificial turf with a place where it could be like, you know, a garage that could be dual use or a parking lot that could be artificial turf. In that case, you're not getting rid of natural living grass and that's expansion area for artificial turf. And I like how this study is going towards exploring and being open to organic methods. So I like that. Thank you. And I believe I answered all the questions. terms of private property i was thinking like um do the carrot thing where you would um maybe have a campaign and show the public that you can have um natural native plants and those kind of things and be drought tolerant and so be more of that instead of banning it but be educating i think that's all i have thank you council member council member cisneros

Yes, thank you. Thank you to the members of the public for that, for your input. It was varied and a lot of interesting points were made. Definitely got me thinking. I agree the definitions are really critical as part of this decision tree so that we're all operating from a base of shared understanding for like first and foremost. So if we were to implement a decision tree, it's really critical to get in there and have that be something that's easily accessible when the decision tree is listed on the website or as part of any resources, first and foremost. And then on the decision tree as well, as it was mentioned a few times, already capturing use outside of play hours. I 100% understand. I think whatever the commenters said, the data are what they are. Like you had literature and you found it and this is what it is and this is how usage is measured in a lot of cases. And so we needed to go ahead and figure out a way to generalize that to our city. But when having the decision tree, I wanted to ask you, at what point in the decision tree do we quantify for an individual park the usage that is not late time hours? This is volleyball, this is sports, some kid toddling around on it, this is a Girl Scout troop meeting there, all of those varied things that we talk about. I see a couple of points where it could be, but could you tell me where you would be defining those?

Yeah, the last question is, can artificial turf be installed without adversely affecting existing park operations? And so that's really where we would look at how the park's currently used. And so as part of the park renovation process, there's a lot of community engagement and input involved with what people want that park to look like, how they currently use it. So I think that's the point where those factors would come into play.

And that makes sense. But is that something that also staff would go and survey, say, show up on some weekends, various weekdays during the year or leading up to that study in order to capture that? Because as much as we get robust public participation, other points were made. You know, it's really difficult to survey the entire community the way that we would like to.

Yeah, that's an excellent question. I think we would definitely make every attempt to quantify all kinds of use, not just reserved play. Reserved play is just something that the data we have right now, which we used, but we fully recognize that most of our parks have a lot of unreserved use and play. So we would try to quantify that and capture that for a specific park improvement project before we go through the decision tree.

Excellent. I think it would be really helpful in the decision tree to highlight unreserved use as something that you're quantifying in there because I think that's a piece that is really important to call out to the community that this is something that is part of the original decision-making process and is an intentional part of the study process. I think that just helps us all level set a bit. about how many parks will go through this process between now and the end of the pilot?

I would say none.

I'll say none. Okay. So essentially we'll, so what I'm thinking is then we're making, we're having this decision tree, which is pretty open-ended, and then we'll pilot that after we already have that data to incorporate into the study. So we wouldn't be using this decision tree without having already collected data on organic maintenance?

Yes.

Okay, that's helpful. And I agree, closing fields at a certain temperature and looking at the schools to that just for safety purposes, that'll help. And then we'll also be able to incorporate those play hours. How many of these days do we have in the city? How much time is sacrificed because of heat will be important. And then I remember us talking about a pipeline project looking into having cricket at Baylands Park. Am I remembering that correctly? Right. And would that be cricket only or would it also include use for other sports?

We're always going to try to define design fields for multi-use. We don't have any totally exclusive use.

There's no reason to make it exclusive use?

No, but at Baylands, there's space, we believe. We're going to bring a project in on the capital cycle, so we'll have to confirm that, but we think there's probably enough space to do a regulation size. That's really the attraction of Baylands. That was in process before any of this started. It was a separate study issue as well.

Very timely that it's coming back now. That's very exciting. I look forward to seeing that. And it is on one whole side of the city, so I want to see how that helps create more usage. And then as far as private property regulation goes, I think this is a substantially different enough issue to this study to warrant. You know, if Council were to put up a study issue when that comes up so that we can scope it properly and understand what it is we're trying to do before we take some really impacted city departments and just kind of like have them run it at issue. Things should be targeted. This is. takes into account a lot of things that what we've studied so far really can't relate to. And that's what's driving my thinking around there right now. I want to do that right and make sure that we are considering the right issues. So I think that's all I've got right now. So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Chang.

Yes, thank you to the members of the public that spoke today and the many comments and emails that we were sent in advance as well. I wanted to agree with the sentiments about the drainage improvement at the parks, the organic field management pilot. I also wanted to see if we could set higher standards for existing artificial turf, for example, at Fair Oaks Park, if we're replacing segments of it or if we're looking at doing an overhaul of it, if we can have higher standards of I don't know if we can call it fully PFAS-free, but if a company considers that they're PFAS-free or some level of higher standard going into the future, because it's not great that it just ends up in our landfills at this moment.

Is that a question?

It's mostly just comment.

Okay. I'll summarize just a little bit. So thank you for the presentation. Thank you for all the residents who have emailed and met with me and been here tonight. So just kind of going through the options. So definitely I'm happy to see this report is here. I wish there was more data. I'll second what Council Member Lay talked about as far as having practices about when we close fields because of heat. Going forward, we need to keep track of when we're closing fields because of rain and, let's say, broken artificial turf that's been destroyed. This is something, you know, and because usage is not, you know, apples to apples and And I understand that, you know, depending on which parks have lights, which fields have lights, how long those lights are on. It is important to say on this day, this field had zero usage because we had to close it down. And that to me is part of this data that we really need to collect. You know, I'm happy with the report and kind of the decision tree in general, you know, it basically goes to, you know, natural grass in some ways. I want to see, you know, the organic field management pilot. I think that has a lot of value. You know, we gave a lot of input when we were designing Lakewood Park and trying to get, you know, ultimately best practices in a designed field there. That was one of the things that, you know, all of our turf fields that we have right now are to a certain degree organically created of not a lot of design put into them as far as leveling and looking at ongoing irrigation and drainage and everything else. So I think it's important to look at what we can do with Lakewood. And I think also the organic field management pilot is important. I am disappointed that this study did not cover anything really regarding private property because i know there are there's lots of artificial turf in park strips and it's one thing to to let's say push residents on yes you you know as much as we want them to go to natural uh plants in all in in their front yard, in their backyard, wherever possible. From a usability standpoint, certain residents have pushed back and I've had lots of discussions on this is, you know, for this location, this is the only way that my grandchildren can use this because we tried to have grass and it just wasn't viable. It was too shady, it was too whatever. But at least from a park strip standpoint, this is kind of our city property. managed by residents. I would like to see something from this coming back as far as that's concerned. So property standards regulations for artificial turf I do think is important and just implementing the increased maintenance of Lakewood Park that is recommended. So all these staff recommendations I'm happy to see. I would like to see more, but but I'm happy that at least when we started this study, we've actually moved it forward quickly and this has come in front of council in a reasonable amount of time. So thank you, thank you to staff, thanks to everyone. um with that this i would all and also just a final final request city manager and everyone else uh please give a summary to council of kind of the general direction since this is not a motion so it's a little bit different from that standpoint and and we're one council member short that okay city manager

Yeah, we can come back with an info-only report to council to summarize sort of the changes. And we will connect with Council Member Mellinger to speak to him also.

Thank you very much. With that, we will adjourn the special meeting at 7.10 p.m. We'll take a 10-minute recess and come back at 7.20. Thank you. Good evening. Let's call the door to the council meeting of July 28, 2026 at 721 PM. This 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 the agenda item being considered by council for public hearing items. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within counsel's authority, generally referred to as 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 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 or 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's website and on the council meeting agenda. First, please stand if you're able and 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.

Present.

Council Member Cerny-Vasen.

Present.

Council Member Sell.

Present.

Council Member Chang.

Present.

Council Member Lay.

Present.

Six present with the Vice Mayor absent.

Thank you. And Council Member, our Vice Mayor Mellinger's absence is an excused absence. Next up is our closed session report. The City Council met in closed session earlier this evening, held pursuant to California government code section 54956.9, Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, paragraph one of subdivision D of section 54956.9, name of case, Escuela, Anthony versus City of Sunnyvale Workers' Compensation Appeal Board case number ADJ 13603849 and ADJ 17614359. Nothing to report. Next, we have a special order of the day. So let me come up to the lectern and also Council Member Cisneros. Good evening. Before we begin tonight's meeting, we have a special guest present in honor of Silicon Valley Pride. Joining us tonight is Jamie Cabrera, the Chief Growth Officer for Silicon Valley Pride. Come on forward, Jamie. This year marks the 57th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, in Greenwich Village, the LGBTQ plus community came together to take a stand against public harassment and discrimination, ultimately spurring the LGBTQ plus rights movement Locally, Silicon Valley Pride has a long and rich history in the Bay Area, having been founded as a gay rights rally in 1975 in San Jose, before ultimately evolving throughout the years to become an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming celebration of the South Bay community known as Silicon Valley Pride. Silicon Valley Pride embraces and recognizes the unity of our area and works to inspire the community to come together. Their mission is to create safer spaces and advocate for the LGBTQ plus community to thrive through organizing and sponsoring year round events and programming. This includes, of course, the annual Silicon Valley Pride Parade in August this year on Sunday, August 30th. Jamie, would you like to say a few words? Yes, definitely.

Hello, everyone. Thank you guys for inviting us here today. I wanted to share some events that we have upcoming. So in August is when we run our Pride Month. August 29th and 30th is our Pride Festival and Parade.

Just want to make sure you guys put to hear me.

Oh, God, I got it. Other than that, we have a volunteer meeting this Friday at the bill of different center. That's at the Alameda in San Jose. And that's a good chance for us to get the volunteers together to let them know what they'll be doing during the pride set up. volunteers get a free admission they get provided lunch so if you have anybody that you would know of please send them over to sbpride.com and it'll be me who will be answering back so you can let them know Jamie you'll go ahead and contact them back in addition to that I just wanted to share thank you guys for having us here today it's a strong feeling when your community is behind you and I speak for the community when I say I appreciate you all today

Thank you, Jamie. And Councilmember Cisneros, would you like to say a few words?

I sure would. And I want to thank you, Jamie, very much for coming and representing and all of the very hard work that goes into organizing that event and to look to grow. I think that that's really key when we consider what we're celebrating here today is the growth of inclusivity, the growth of visible love and community. And when I was elected, I was the first openly LGBTQ member to join the city council in 2020. And I say openly because we have no way of knowing if one of the other dedicated servants on that wall did not feel safe enough to be themselves in public life. But because of work done in Silicon Valley pride, those barriers are being taken down because it's not just about the event itself. It's about those who are not ready to be themselves in their community, be out in certain situations to see that there is community and there is belonging. for them there and to really normalize people being themselves in a very fundamental way. And that is a Sunnyvale value, that is a Californian value, and that is an American value. And I'm really proud to be part of a city that is so respectful and recognizes the long history of struggle, but also the current moments of celebration and just real delight of being part of the community and also having, you know, for many who have loved ones, uh who are there and it's a good way to show our support so i want to thank uh you very much because again those events are such hard work uh truly for everyone and i know you have a great team and i look forward to seeing everyone there it'll be a really fun time

Thank you, Council Member. So thank you, Jamie, and to you and all the volunteers that basically make Silicon Valley Pride so successful. You know, the support, how you support, you uplift, and of course, advocate for and celebrate our South Bay LGBTQ plus community. To affirm Sunnyvale's statement of values, The City of Sunnyvale is committed to respecting, valuing, and affirming all members of our community, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Today and every day, we celebrate our LGBTQ plus community, which includes many Sunnyvale residents, business owners, students, employees, and much more. It is my great pleasure to proclaim August 2026 as Silicon Valley Pride Month in the City of Sunnyvale.

thank you for all that you're doing thank you so much congratulations thank you

And next up is oral communications. This is now the public's opportunity to address council on topics not listed on tonight's agenda. This section is limited to 15 minutes and may be extended or continued after the general business section of our meeting. Individuals may speak only once during oral communications. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, and council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within council's authority generally referred to as council subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are outside of council subject matter jurisdiction, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. This allows council to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now. or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have, let me see how many are here, three minutes to speak. Before I get to the public, Council Member Lay has several announcements.

Thank you so much, Mayor. I have three announcements. First, Lakewood Park playground ribbon cutting. The wait is over and the brand new space-themed Lakewood Park playground is ready for launch. Join us for a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the completion of the stellar all-inclusive playground. Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 29th at 10 a.m. at Lakewood Park on 834 Lake Chime Drive. The playground is located in the southeast corner of the park. Also ready for enjoyment are the new tot lot and new exercise equipment. While the playground is officially open, please stick to the open areas as the rest of the park continues to get its makeover. The John W. Christian Greenbelt pathway and the basketball, tennis, and handball courts will remain open for public use. We hope to see you there. Second, National Night Out. National Night Out is a fun, free event held every year on the first Tuesday in August. It brings neighbors and public safety officers. Should we get the next slide? Thank you. It brings neighbors and public safety officers together to build stronger, safer communities. People celebrate in many ways. Block parties, pizza nights, barbecues, potlucks, ice cream socials, live music, and more. This year, National Night Out is next Tuesday, August 4th from 5 to 8 p.m. Check with your neighborhood group to see what's happening near you. We hope to see you out and about. Lastly, Sunnyvale goes back to school. After their summer break run, Sunnyvale students are heading back to school. In the upcoming weeks, students all over the city and South Bay will be walking and biking to school. Some students are driving to school for the first time this year. To ensure a safe return and commute for everyone, here are a few pointers. Obey the 15 mile per hour speed limits around schools. Our public safety officers will be out as a reminder. Drive carefully and observe all traffic laws. Be on alert for pedestrians, bicyclists, and student drivers. Please obey all crosswalk guards. Do not use disabled parking stalls as a drop off. Be patient while driving, especially in school zones. We wish everyone a safe and happy return to the school year. All done?

Thank you. I'll now be reading off speaker cards for people in the room. I'll be listing off two names. The first name, please come to the lectern. The next person be waiting nearby. First up is Russ M followed by Peggy Q.

all right good evening mayor and council russ melton ceo of the sunnyvale chamber of commerce thank you for the opportunity to speak and while the city clerk is bringing up my foils i just wanted to say we have a new intern starting with the chamber of commerce today it's stephanie and stephanie comes to us from sunnyvale nova works and i don't know if marlena sessions is watching right now but it's a real pleasure working with the team and nova works has just done a fantastic job great collaboration between the chamber and the city and i wanted to talk about some upcoming events that we have at the chamber of commerce speaking of great collaborations our inaugural golf tournament is coming up at sunken gardens on september 17th don't worry if you're not a golfer that's okay because after the golf tournament in the afternoon at old greenwood barbecue is the banquet portion of the event so golfing is at 3 30 The banquet is at 530. You can register for both or just the banquet if you're not a golfer. And I invite everybody who's watching to sign up for that event at svcoc.org. Another event that we have coming up. is our breakfast with congressman rokhana that's in eight days on august 5th at the hilton garden inn we still have some tickets available that's in the morning again you can register at svcoc.org and mayor klein i need to have my intern stephanie change that foil there because you've stepped in to introduce rokhana vice mayor mellinger had to bow out so thank you mayor for um jumping in to take care of that with your busy schedule um next up we have a ribbon cutting the chamber of commerce loves ribbon cuttings here in sunnyvale this is a thriving city with many new businesses this is safe haven sunnyvale residential care facility for the elderly that'll be on the afternoon of august 12th to learn more details about that please visit svcoc.org mayor klein i think we'll see you there council member sell this is in district one i think we'll see you there as well and i'd love to see all the council members if your schedules permit to join us for the ribbon cutting ceremony and take a tour of the new facility and then the final one that i have to mention we've just added this to the calendar i'm super proud to announce that we're going to have another breakfast event this one with california state treasurer Fiona Ma, this is on October 14th at eight o'clock in the morning. The treasurer is a constitutional officer of the state of California, and we really appreciate that she's given us a little bit of her time for a breakfast with event and hear her thoughts and ask some questions about what's going on in the state of California. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Next is Peggy Q followed by Richard P.

Good evening. I'm Peggy Quillinan. Our city appears to have made a strong commitment to providing a formal cricket facility in Sunnyvale, one surrounded by tall netting and field lights. Neighbors and regular users of Las Palmas Park were shocked to learn of this on March 19th at the final meeting of the park renovation process. We had not heard of an interest in more cricket facilities in town, in particular at Las Palmas as reflected on option one on March 19th. It was a mystery to neighbors where this push originated when no one in the three public input sessions mentioned tall netting field lights or cricket pitch. Since then, you have received a multitude of texts and emails from residents expressing a desire to keep the Las Palmas field open to all. You have witnessed hundreds of residents gathering at the park to express the same priority. You may have seen some of the almost 400 yard signs that residents have paid for and posted in their yards in support of no tall fences or field lights at Las Palmas. You have received a petition signed by over 1,000 residents advocating to keep the park open to all. Lastly, you have witnessed countless constituents regularly attending city council meetings for almost five months now, all in support of keeping the park field open and accessible to all. Where are the cricket advocates? Who are the cricket advocates? We have not seen them in attendance at city meetings, nor have they spoken out publicly in support of cricket. I still wonder where the hundreds of votes in support of a cricket pitch in Las Palmas Park came from on March 19th. Are these people residents of Sunnyvale? It seems this invisible cricket community holds great influence here at City Hall. my question to each of you is how can we the families the residents and homeowners the taxpayers the voters of sunnyvale get all of you to value our needs and desires for our community in a way this other unseen group has done so successfully thank you thank you richard p followed by aj

Hello, Mayor Klein and Sunnyvale City Council members. I am Richard Peranto, a 35-year Sunnyvale resident, here today in my personal capacity. I'm here regarding the air pollution and harmful health impact caused by exhaust from diesel or natural gas electric power generation for AI data centers. You may soon be asked to approve projects for Sunnyvale that include or use this type of electric power. I'm asking you to direct the planning commission to reject these projects. I'm asking you the Sunnyvale City Council to enact city ordinances and laws that explicitly prohibit within the city limits of Sunnyvale these AI data center projects that are powered by natural gas or diesel generators running mostly full time on site or another local site. This recommended prohibition would also include prohibiting temporary use of full time carbon fuel based power generation while waiting in queue for local power service to be provided. The Planning Commission staff reported yesterday, July 27th meeting, that they have received an AI data center project for review. Please pass these new ordinances or laws to require data centers to use only green, non-polluting electric power transmitted directly from the source or that's available from the local power service provider. Reasonable non-polluting approaches exist via very efficient high voltage DC power lines to bring green renewable power from other locations, like the Central Valley, where large generating capacity already exists or is currently being installed. Use of high voltage DC power lines and their DC interfaces prevent compatibility problems from synchronization or other issues with the existing AC power grid. further dc power lines and interfaces are inherently dc interface compatible with large fire safe lithium iron phosphate dc battery power storage systems i hope you will take urgent action to agendize and implement these new city ordinance and laws thank you for your time thank you aj followed by mike c

Honorable Mayor Klein, City Council, City Manager, the City Attorney, thank you so much for allowing me to speak on this issue. The RRM Design Group contract was awarded for Las Palmas Park renovation and enhancement project. Public description identifies Las Palmas Park as a longstanding Polynesian-themed community park and explains that the renovation is intended to update the facility for a long-term sustainability purpose. The contract is not a tool for rewriting the park's legal purpose. Sunnyvale Municipal Code Chapter 18-10 uses park dedication and in lieu fee to provide park and neighborhood recreational facility that serves the affected subdivision or the planning area. The chapter is grounded in public interest, convenience, health, welfare, and safety. This supports the argument that the park resources must remain tied to the community recreational needs rather than being redirected toward a high impact facility that serves a specialized or regional users. When a municipality purchases land for the purpose of public use under declaration of public interest, welfare, convenience, and necessity, it does not hold that land as a private landlord. It holds the parcel as a public trustee. In addition, the conditions accepted by the city in the original purchase deed creates binding restrictive covenants. The foundational deed mandates the parcel remain as a public park and open park. The proposal that changes the park open municipal character or covenant into a regional sport venue conflicts with that purpose. The 1961 and 1965 general obligation bonds were not blank checks. They were public promises made to voters for municipal park and recreational purposes. In plain terms, the voter founded the municipal park, not a regional sport complex. Upgrading infrastructure to host centralized sport tournament would transform the property from neighborhood serving municipal park into a regional facility. That shift is inconsistent with the park intended to serve the local residents area. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Mike C followed by Paula J.

okay that should work uh so my name is mike cascani i'm a resident of sunnyvale for 45 years and i want to bring up the topic of a potential conflict of interest of an individual on the parks and rec commission with respect to las palmas and cricket i'm not going to name the person we all know who it is on the street people talk about oh that's covered by the brown act Well, I looked up the Brown Act on AI and said, no, that's not true. It's about open meetings. But it did tell me there's two other laws, the Political Reform Act, the PRA, and the Government Code 1090, which have to do with financial conflicts of interest. And that's the letter of the law. The intent of the regulations is what I question. I don't think a person, even if they don't have a financial interest, should be weighing in. And I think that we need to have a higher standard higher standard for for what we allow so my request is can sunnyvale attorney research and give an official position on the recusal of this individual that can be shared with the public is that possible sorry this is only for comments okay so how do i get a response so you can email the city manager and

and the city attorney and ask for a response.

Okay. And I'll copy you, Larry. Thank you.

Thank you. My last speaker card is Paula Jay.

Thank you.

All right.

Good evening Council Members. My name is Paula Ginbo and tonight I have the pleasure of introducing the newest member of the Sunnyvale Neighborhood Association, the 29th neighborhood association in Sunnyvale, the Las Palmas Park Neighborhood Association. Our story starts with a park. When our community came together, passionate and vocal, in response to the Las Palmas Park renovation, we realized something important was missing. A neighborhood association to represent our voices. So a few months ago, a small group of neighbors decided to change that. today our association represents roughly let's see there you go roughly 550 homes in north sunnyvale spanning las palmas park and cherrywood cherry orchard neighborhoods in district one bounded by hollenbeck avenue to the west west remington drive to the south and stretching from south matilda avenue and sunnyville to sunnyville saratoga We're guided by four goals and principles. First, to strengthen community connections through events like block parties. Second, maintain transparent communication through newsletters and social media. Third, to encourage participation in activities that benefit our neighborhood, like dumpster days and emergency preparedness events. And fourth, to inform and represent our community's interests and concerns in local government decisions. Membership is free and open to every resident within the boundaries with no obligations. And we hope that many of our neighbors will join us in the Neighborhood Association. We have a website up and you can learn more. and sign up at www.LasPalmasParkNA.org. Stay tuned for upcoming events. This is just the beginning. We're excited to bring our community together to help neighbors meet neighbors, to give voice to the issues that matter most to our residents, and to work hand in hand with the city to make our corner of Sunnyvale an even better place to call home. Thank you.

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

Yes, Mayor. First is Amy E., followed by Mei Ling S. Amy, you've been unmuted, and you have three minutes to address the City Council.

Hello? Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

okay hello members of the board my name is amy it's a nickname i'm a court documented survivor of child trafficking me and my family were residents of sunnyvale california for 20 years two of my family just died 30 days apart a few months ago my sisters i'm here to speak on the i'm here to speak for the large community of survivors of child and human trafficking in santa clara county I have to make you aware of a problem within your law enforcement proper protocol for child and human trafficking listed online for residents of California. I mean, Santa Clara County to see are not being followed at the local police departments. Verified victims are being disrespected by police who are unprofessionally calling the RP mentally ill. Verified victims are being forced to flee to other jurisdictions in order to receive help escaping their abusers who are organized criminals. Residents of this city and other cities are asking, why? Why can't we be protected by our local police departments? what do we pay taxes for if the criminal justice system is being set up to protect the criminals? Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Mei-Ling S followed by Steven M. Mei-Ling, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the city council. Please let me know when you'd like me to your next slide.

Yes, thank you. My name is Mei-Ling Stephan. This is about CalWater's new well project at 800 Carlisle Way. The application was approved on July 21st. There are significant but unavoidable impacts to neighbors to the south because the well is located close to the south property line. On July 21, I tried to comment that the new well, as represented by the blue circles there, can be moved up north to be further away from the neighbors to the south. The magenta line represents the boundary of permissible well location for a minimum of 50 feet setback from the sewer and from the old well. So even keeping 50 feet setback from the park boundary, the new well can be moved upward north by at least 30 feet. Next slide, please. Now, today, I'm going to show another map. This doesn't involve moving the new well, but it involves rotating the drill rig, say, for instance, by 90 degrees. Because by looking at the noise report, it is seen that the dominant source of vibration and noise is at one end of the drill rig. So by rotating the drill rig towards the park, then the source of noise can be further away from neighbors but i also realize that the eir does not seem to include the ground vibration from the drilling process of breaking up rocks next please next slide please so i would like to make the following request and um i shall put it in writing um to the city manager I would like to request new noise and vibration analysis with the noisy end of drilling rig oriented away from neighbors and, of course, find mitigation for the noise. This should include the effects of pile driving to install sound barriers. The effect of pile driving to install sound barriers was omitted in the EIR. Cal Water should provide information on wells drilled in the last decade to see if there was any comparable experience with our situation. Here I wrote 16 wells because they claim 16 wells were drilled in the last decade, but perhaps three most relevant ones can be included. I would like to request a meeting between staff and residents.

Thank you. Do you have a question?

Yes, I have a constant question for city manager. I know last council meeting we approved with we gave conditional approval approval to tell waters. With the. Stringent condition about sound and vibration mitigation, but. How this slide shows that the the rig orientation and then moving the well uh uh slightly not is that I I know I specifically asked about uh moving the well not uh is after the conditional approval what are the recourses what can we ask Cal waters for can we ask for rig orientation to reduce the noise level and also the

a new layout for wells good evening council member uh sandy lee from the city attorney's office at this point the council has made its decision on that project it was properly agendized for the last council meeting and so the final action has already been taken and there's no further action available for the city council okay okay thank you

next up is stephen m stephen you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the city council

Hello, good evening, City Council, Mayor. Hope you're having a good night. I had a great day today. I was kayaking out at El Viso, and there were the Sea Scouts out there. If you remember, the Ski Scouts leader was recognized by the county last year for his great program of getting kids out onto the bay where we have beautiful nature. I saw Forester's Terns and Harbor Seals, which brings me to my concern about nature. which has me talking tonight regarding your fecal indicator bacteria monitoring and source identification program dated fiscal year 2024 to 2025. This monitoring report I got through public records access report because you're not sharing it with the general public. Thank God for the PRA system. It needs to be untouched because this is the way we find things that you guys are hiding. And with respect to your memo, on March 2026, you have several misrepresentations. First, regarding bacteria sources, you say they run off from yards and parking lots. where we'll what we really know is that this bacteria is coming out of broken sewer pipes and bad connections and potentially unhoused individuals although i don't think it's the problem of unhoused individuals i think you have a massive problem with your sewer infrastructure that you're hiding from the general public you say that this is not caused by human bacteria but your own measurements are doing a genetic marker hf183 and in some measurements it recorded 17 million gc's per 100 milliliters as compared to the standard is 525. folks who do math that's like three orders of magnitude so you have massive fecal bacteria in the cretes uh you claim that there's no evidence of harm i think we've seen a lot of harm with uh human parasites in the last few weeks regarding lettuce. So to say there's no harm with human feces being in the creeks, I think the news reports should characterize you wrong. Yeah, the judge himself said that your systems are ineffective and not even close. And you have this no swimmers defense. Well, you know who swims in the bay? I saw a harbor seal today. I think he's swimming in the bay. I saw pelicans. I saw all this beautiful wildlife. You don't have a carte blanche to lie and misrepresent what's going on with your fecal bacteria. And I ask you to direct the city manager to retract his memo of March 2026 and publish the facts. And by God, please read this report. If you don't have the report, ask the city manager for the report. It's disgusting.

Thank you. Mayor, that was the final remote speaker for oral communications.

Okay, I'll go ahead and close oral communications. We'll move on to our consent calendar. I will open public comment on our consent calendar items. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards for oral consent calendar items. City clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on consent?

Yes, Mayor, we have one individual. Let me unmute them and find out which item they want to discuss. Henry S., can you let us know which consent calendar item you're interested in discussing?

Good evening city clerk, can you pull up item one a and refer the bottom of page 43 and top of page for.

Council first needs to pull the item and then they'll make a motion for the rest of the consent calendar then they'll come back to item one a so just always want to find out which item it was at the moment, and we will give you an opportunity to speak Council will hear you shortly understood, thank you.

that was the only item uh yes sorry mayor that was the only remote speaker indicating a desire to speak on a consent counter item thank you i'll close public comment and bring it back to council for a motion council member sreeni boston move to approve 1b to 1.5 thank you uh council member lay second thank you city clerk can you please conduct the vote

The motion for consent calendar items 1B as in Boye through 1F as in Frank carries 6-0 with Vice Mayor Mellinger absent.

Okay let's go ahead and take item 1A. Do we have any comments or questions from Council? No, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your additional hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, are there any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, Mayor. First up is Henry S., Henry, you've been unmuted. And if you can repeat the page number you were looking to see, I can pull that up.

The bottom of page 43 and the top of page 44. And let me know when I can start.

You can start with just giving me a moment to look through the packet and get, so bottom of 43 and top of 44. Okay, there is, sorry, the wrong, there we go. This is the correct information you're looking for. You can go ahead and begin.

Yes, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members. I like to comment on this item, not just because this is another consultant payment. It is one of the few opportunities for the public has to understand where the Las Palmas project actually stands. And in front of you in this document, there are six separate payments of invoices paid out to RRM Design Group for invoices RC24-11 through 24-16, including a revised invoice, RC24-15R, totaling more than 100, just a little bit over $108,000 for the Las Palmas renovation project. Yet the public receives only an invoice number here and a dollar amount in your document's public disclosure. With no description of the work completed no milestones achieve and no indication of where the project stands. Now this is particularly important because Council approved the 1.1 million consulting agreement in 2024 plus contingency for comprehensive scope that included public outreach. Community meetings online surveys conceptual alternatives refinement of those concepts presentation before the park and recreation Commission and city council. Sequel work, construction documents, and construction support. The contract also requires monthly billing tied to work performed and the percentage of completion. So there are some fairly straightforward questions here that are still unresolved. So first, why are there six sequential invoices with the same date process together? Were they delayed or held for review? Or was the previous invoice dash two four or two four dash one five replaced by two four dash one five R? Or is this payment intended to close out a major phase of that the park renovation contract. Second, what has the city actually received for this hundred $8,000 worth of work. What what contract tasks were build what percentage of the overall contract has now been completed and what is the cumulative amount paid to our and since the contract was awarded third and, most importantly. If the city intends to bring in a new facilitator based on previous staff testimony for the Los Palmas Park project because issues surrounding the public engagement process, and this still remains to be true, then the city owes the public an explanation. If RRM is being closed out and being essentially terminated for their services on this park renovation project, And it was intended to conduct a much broader outreach and basically the better of the contract. And now another facilitator is being hired to restart or substantially repeat that work. Are the taxpayers paying twice for the same deliverable? Has the scope been reduced? Is this a contract transition or is the city effectively restarting the process after two years because now the project is now too controversial? And I believe the public deserves some explanation for what these payments stand for and where RRM stands as a contractor going forward on this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for the consent calendar.

Okay, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for any questions or motion. Council Member Srinivasan.

I have a question for city manager. Any response for the comments the public made regarding RRM design group?

I don't have specific details on these invoices. However, this particular agenda item is one that you'll find on almost every council agenda. It is a list of the payments that we've made. All of these payments are backed by detailed invoices. All of the public work projects are managed by a project manager. There are progress payments that are made. The invoices are tied to scope. and verified to be accurate before payment is made. So there are internal controls that we have in place that ensure that we're paying properly. Bringing on a facilitator is supplemental to the scope for RRM. outreach to help with um a very active uh neighborhood group and project that is uh in the public outreach phase so um i don't think we're uh um double paying for the same scope it's a it's more of a an extended scope or an added scope for public outreach

Thank you. The member of the public asked another question. These invoices and details, are they available for public or how do a public know, for example, RC24-11, what does that mean? Sure.

By way of background, there are many, many, many, many documents that the operating staff operates within that are not things that we post to the public. All of our work is available through a Public Records Act request, and any member of the public could request all the invoices for our RM, and we would provide those.

OK. Thank you very much. I am ready for the motion. Approve Concern Calendar 1E.

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

Yeah, to the member of public, as city manager said, these details are available for public review. You can do a public request record, public record request, and then get details. And then as he said, the hiring a new facilitator will not duplicate the work which has been already completed.

Thank you, thank you city clerk, can you please conduct the vote.

The motion for item a one dot a claims and bills carry seven zero with vice mayor mellinger absent.

Thank you just counsel need a recess or we continue. okay okay just checking um okay with that we'll move to our general business um our first item of the evening is item 26-0699 introduction of an ordinance amending section 2.0.4.030 of the Sunnyvale municipal code relating to the city manager claims settlement Authority is there a staff report

Excuse me. There is. Good evening, mayor and council members. Connie Vercelles, assistant city manager. This item is a proposed ordinance that would set the city manager's authority to settle claims at $250,000. But there's a caveat that this would only be in effect if voters approve a related charter amendment in the November ballot. As a reminder, the City Council had formed a Charter Review Committee or Commission to review possible Charter amendments. That Commission recommended amending the City Charter so that Council could set the City Manager's Settlement Authority with an ordinance. council accepted that recommendation and approved placing that related charter amendment on the November ballot last month and also at that council meeting council directed staff to return with the proposed ordinance that's before you tonight right for background right now the city managers has the authority to settle claims up to fifty thousand dollars which this amount has been in place for over decades and anything above that requires city council approval. The proposed ordinance would raise that to $250,000, which would match the current city manager's contract and authority. And again, it would only take effect if the voters pass the related charter amendment. Staff recommends an alternative one, which is to introduce the ordinance and that it would become effective only if voters approve the related charter amendment in November. With that, Senior Assistant City Attorney Melissa Truncay and myself are here and available to answer any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions from Council? Council Member Srinivasan. Thank you.

Thank you. So by introducing the ordinance now, so this will be effective from now to November, or this will be after November? So then why?

It would not be in effect at all. It would only be effective if the voters approve the charter amendment in November. The reason why the ordinance is being proposed now, and I should have clarified that. is that part of the it's in the staff report part of the Charter the recommendation from the Commission was that an ordinance be adopted so that voters also there's transparency to see what the ordinance would look like and what if the how would work and what the impacts of that might be thank you

that was all council questions and i just wanted to comment that this item of course we did not hear this item at our scheduled july 21st 2026 council meeting and that's why it's the first thing on tonight's agenda I see no other questions from council. I will go ahead and open up the public hearing on this specific item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of 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 will close the public hearing. and bring it back to council. Council Member Srinivasan.

I'm ready with the motion. Go right ahead. Oh, okay. I thought there will be a discussion. No questions. Anyway, I move staff recommendation alternative one, introduce an ordinance amending section 2.04030 of Sunnyvale Municipal Code relating to city managers claim settlement authority to become operative. only if the november ballot measure proposing amendments to the charter section 1314 passes thank you is there a second councilmember cell second thank you to your motion i think this will be as assistant city manager said it will make transparency for the public to see the what is the ordinance and then what is the ballot measure they are passing so i urge my colleagues to vote yes thanks

thank you count oh um thank you and i'll be supporting this motion you know ultimately you know this is putting in place something that um at least a threshold that ultimately what when the ballot measure goes to the voters it gives them a little a little bit clearer understanding of what that settlement threshold is for for the city manager and you know ultimately uh the city manager has this this authority um when it's when he's dealing with other contracts and so the concept of adding additional steps for settlement authority and the cost of settlements has gone up dramatically since 1989 when we talked about this last. Ultimately, to me, this makes a lot of sense and so happy to put this ordinance in place so that we can be very clear with our residents. With that, City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

Yes, and first I'll read the ordinance title and ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sunnyvale to amend Section 2.04.030 of Title II, Administration and Personnel of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code relating to City Manager Claims Settlement Authority. Council Members, you may now vote. The motion carries 6-0 with Vice Mayor Mellinger absent.

Okay. Let's move to our next item, item 26-0700, continued from our July 21st, 2026 meeting. The Vice Mayor and I drafted the arguments in support of each of our Charter Amendment ballot measures as Council directed last month. And you see the final results of those arguments as the attachments. ultimately worked with you know vice mayor mellinger on on wordsmithing this back and forth a little bit over the last few weeks and so here you see the final results does council have any comments wordsmithing changes that we would like to look at that you'd like to ask me about or or comment on and we'll have additional chance after public comment councilmember chang

Yes, thank you and Vice Mayor Mellinger for working on this. Are we, or just take them one by one as we do or in a general sense all three?

It's however we can take them as separate motions or for now as far as feedback and questions, let's go through all three together if you want. And then when we get to motions, we can either do three separate motions or basically one motion with the appropriate changes that are requested.

in general i have some proposed edits for all of them just on some of the wording use for the first one for example the city is forced i feel like is too strong of language i would rather use something like required to use um i think there's just some wording that's a little that feels not neutral. I know it's a pro argument, but sometimes it feels a little bit too strongly worded. So there's some words I would remove. Like forced under prioritization.

Sorry, which argument?

The first one under public works contracting.

Okay, thank you.

So the first sentence under current charter constraints, the city is forced, I would change to required.

One second.

okay sorry i'm i'm back i've lost my i lost my um okay so so you are mayor would it be helpful if as council's discussing if we put this on the screen for folks to follow along actually that's probably a good idea um maybe actually let's go ahead and take public comment and then come back to council so that we can if you're if you talk about wordsmithing and then we can make all the appropriate changes thank you city clerk With that, let's go ahead and open up public comment on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial start on any 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 one speaker card, Steve S.

Hello. It's been a long haul to get here, hasn't it been? Let me look at my calendar. We have October 24th, 2024, the applications to the Charter Review Committee. So I turned my application in on that day. We then had interviews later on, and thank you to the council members who were on the council at that time who actually bothered to show up to those interviews. That really makes a big difference. When you show up for the interview and then you're making a choice later, that shows a lot of your integrity. When you aren't there, maybe you're sick or have a problem with your children or something, but still we don't know whether you've observed the the videos or talk to other council members about things, but do thank those ones that were there. Went through all of 2025. Lots of meetings on there. Myself and Zachary Kaufman attended each of those meetings. We also had many public members call in and actually many attended in person on and off. Now we've come to sort of the end game. We have the ballot arguments for and the ballot argument in opposition. And then we will have the rebuttal to the argument for and the rebuttal to the argument in opposition. So we have those dates, August 11 for the arguments and August 18. for the rebuttals. So thank you, Mayor, for you and Councilmember Mellinger working on those things. We have three arguments that you've written, and I'm glad to see that some of your colleagues have looked at them very carefully and looked at the phrasing, the tone, what is disclosed, what is being transparent about. And I look forward to hearing additional comments as you look at these later. I gave one slide to you and there's something very important to look at is that I have a concern for the argument for the council vacancies. I think it's very important that you clearly communicate two things. Sunnyvale general municipal elections occur in November of even numbered years. The second is voter opportunity to vote occurs at the next November of even numbered years. So that even numbered years is very important. Your ballot question does be transparent about that. And I would ask that you take a look at your argument and see how transparent you are being or not being in that respect. So thank you for listening.

Thank you. And next up is Zachary Kay.

I want to apologize for when you received the email I sent. Sorry, the email I sent to council. I sent it at 8.04 a.m. following the calendar day from when I tried to present it. I wasn't trying to be cute. I sent it at 8.04. To my surprise, there was another step, distribution by staff. Staff emailed me notifying me of distribution. That was at 3.40 p.m., so not much time, if any, left for contemplation for argument for document went live. Look, I don't want to tell you what to put in your ballot argument. It needs to be accurate, though. A problem was spotted before I said anything. That is why the word Sunnyvale got inserted into tonight's argument for ballot art version. Now we have, quote, dot, dot, dot, until the next regularly scheduled November Sunnyvale election, dot, dot, dot. A voter reads that and quite possibly digests it as a regularly scheduled November election that occurs in Sunnyvale. The Charter Review Committee and you could have done that. You chose not to. The ballot argument shouldn't indicate otherwise. There is another spot with the same issue. The sentence starts, quote, but the whole electorate at the next November election, dot, dot, dot. Again, you didn't go with the next November election. Again, you didn't go with the next November election. Your opposition might be less had you done that. Please don't achieve votes by misleadingly worded statements. Thank you.

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

No, Mayor.

Okay. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to Council for comments or suggestions. And please define what ballot argument you would like to have the City Clerk bring up, and we will wordsmith in person. Councilmember Sel.

I'm interested in the Council vacancies. So on this one, I believe there's an opportunity for the Council to either decide to appoint or hold an election. And if they appoint, then they wait till the even number year. So I was just wondering, like, Would it be good or not good to say that this is a like I referred back to the Charter Review Commission report and what they say is that this is a hybrid model for filling the vacancy that gives the Council the power to decide whether to make the interim appointment or hold a special election to fill the vacancy. But I'm okay with not including it either if you just want to focus on not having two elections in the same year.

So I think this captures what the ballot description is. And I'll see. I forget. Let me see.

I think we discussed it, that there is a hybrid, there's an opportunity to appoint and then you wait for the next election or to not appoint and if you can't agree on appointing someone then there will be a special election i was just wondering if the fact that it's a hybrid would that make the community aware that the council is in charge of deciding that or is it just confusing so i'm okay if there's no support for it but that was in the charter review the hybrid model for filling vacancies with the charter review commission thought was a plus so i think this captures what the ballot measure is if everyone do any of the other council members have any comments that that you'd like to see here okay okay okay

Councilmember Cisneros? Or Councilmember Chang? Either one. Councilmember Cisneros?

I'll let Councilmember Chang go because she started before we went to public comment.

This is not in relation to Councilmember South's comment.

Okay. So actually, so it looks like there's no additional comments on this, leaving it the same as it currently stands. Do you have a comment? Yeah, I have one more. Council Member Cisneros?

So this is just on the vacancies.

Correct.

Piece, right. Okay. I agree that the language for Sunnyvale there, I would propose that we say can limit what council is able to do, is allowed to do to fill the vacancy and then highlight the flexibility. you know in in keeping with councilmember cell's comment i think that is a strength of what it is that we are able to do what's appropriate at the right time uh and tailor it to the situation and that's where the wordsmithing becomes difficult right so i don't envy i think it's it's very good and what has been done is good but i would advise you know pulling that force language and talk about the limiting factor and how this is going to be how this expands that. So I don't know how to fit that in if somebody wants to help.

Council Member Cheng, do you have any suggestions on this specific one or are you talking about the next one?

Next one.

Council Member Srinivasan. Yeah. Thank you.

uh based on what public said and then i am reading this especially the second paragraph this measure makes a common sense fix a council member appointed to fill the vacancy serves until the next regularly scheduled november sunnyvale election is it worth to add even number years or

So I think that has a value.

As a value, yeah. That's what I also think. That is, it's very, very clear. Because then there is no confusion. It's not odd number, November election year, I think.

OK. And I agree. From a wordsmithing standpoint.

Is that where you would put that?

sorry where would you put even numbered as I placed it somewhere is that where you would put it I think we have I think we have the word so conceivably yeah you could put it as a as a it's getting a long I would I would almost put it after that November Sunnyvale election on every even in even numbered years even number of years yes okay And I think that has value. And I think we're still well within the word count. I think we were 268 or 9.

Totally forgot.

No, it's fine. We're all good for now.

Yeah, that's it.

And it was a lot of fun trying to play with those numbers. Anyway, but we tried to make sure that we had enough headroom for what we're doing tonight. Okay. Okay. Any other wordsmithing suggestions? Do we need to approve this basically tonight?

I have another one.

Okay. Councilmember Tsao. And I know Councilmember Chang has. Go ahead. On this one or a different one?

On this one.

Okay.

So the other thing in the Charter Review report is that it specified that there's a restricted number of appointees allowed. So if there's, I think, more than two appointees already on the council, then it forces there to be a special election. So you can't have, like, four appointees or something like that. Is that important for the voters to know? Because I think it was saying historically maybe this was put into place because there were a lot of appointees. So that shows that there's only... a maximum of two appointees. I believe that there's a maximum of two appointees. And then you need to do a special election for the third. Is that important or not important to anyone?

Well, the question is how much of what's already in the... Oh, is that already in the charter? It's already in the charter. We're not changing any of the vacancy limits that are already there. okay this is this is basically allowing a vacancy to go farther the way it's currently worded conceivably it was causing a prime a a vacancy to be filled with a primary election and this is saying we want the largest voter turnout at the end of the day so that was what this

the the focus of this argument and the focus of the ballot measure was was trying to maximize voter participation as much as possible okay um one last thing so okay when the city council or the city council uh can appoint or hold a special election when the city council fills the vacancy with appointment and everything like that. So where in this whole process do you tell the voters that there is an option for the city council to choose there to be a special election? Is that important or not important?

I don't know if you want it as the main argument or if it comes up from a separate standpoint. You know, it's like it's from the number of vacancies and council can call a special election. It's not necessarily part of our process. You know, it's like we're not forcing, as opposed to the way things were previously, we were forcing council to call a special election. And this is trying to give them the option not.

Not to force to have a primary election.

or a special well it's so so we've made this is this will be the third change to vacancies um over the last few years and it's trying to continue to look at at those hypotheticals of of not having to call a special election okay so i guess i can't see a good place to talk about the flexibility yeah

okay so that's okay thank you thank you council member chang thank you it is on this item on council vacancies my first one is again the force changing potentially changing to require okay so sorry sorry which one um the charter can force sunnyville okay and then This one I am not as tied to, but the line for includes more voters, the one that says council election should be decided when voter turnout is highest. Something more along the lines of it is best practice for council elections to be decided when voter turnout is highest, but I know that's a little.

I see.

Sorry, I just found where I believe you want to put this. Can you restate?

Yes, it's the underlying sentence. Council elections should be decided when voter turnout is highest.

Sorry, what did you want to change it to?

It is best practice for council elections to be decided when voter turnout is highest.

Or it is better if the council election.

No, but it's a best practice. I think that captures from a wordsmith standpoint. best practice for council elections to be decided when voter turnout is highest? Yes. I think that's a clear statement. Everyone agree? Any other comments? We'll kind of keep this open. Council Member Chang?

Not on this one.

Thank you. Council Member Lay?

Hi. I understand i understand your why but for the purpose of this i feel like it is best practice is a little bit corporate for the voter argument unless we it i think to me it raises more questions than not i think the other one was a clear expression of a preference for or value um that council elections should be decided because that's

what's best i don't i prefer it the other way but i'm open to my and we can and we can conceivably do a sprawl a straw poll vote if you want um hang on so so the original and you see in the good thing about thank you city clerk you can see what it was previously council elections should be decided when voter turnout is best or it is best practice for council um elections to be decided when voter turnout is high sorry as highest um I'll just say those that are in favor of making changes and let me read it again and from a tone standpoint um those those that agree the making changes uh please raise your hand Either way. OK, so we'll go ahead and make those changes. And any other changes to any of the ballot measure argument?

Sorry, Council, if you wouldn't mind, could you do that again and raise your hands a little bit higher just because when the operator does a wide shot, it's hard to see.

I think it was Councilmember Chang, Srini Bas, and myself and Councilmember Cisneros.

Thank you. I just want to make sure so for folks following along at home and in the record, we can see who is voting which way.

Please raise your hand again for the change. Thank you. I appreciate that. As opposed to council elections should.

I have a proposal, a wordsmithing proposal. Would you be open to it is healthier for democracy? for council elections to be decided when voter turnout is highest?

It's healthier for democracy.

My only worry about that is when you start, it becomes not prescriptive, but it becomes a little vaulted in from a language standpoint. where I understand best practice is a little business-like. But I think when we start bringing in democracy, and yes, it's trying to get highest voter turnout. And that's trying from a democratic process, trying to get the best engagement from our residents and who they're choosing as their council member. i i think that that's a little and i'll i'll that's only my opinion does anyone have other comments or they do they agree that adding that is not what the ballot measure would what you what you would want it to be councilmember cisneros i believe that it's true i believe that it's

I believe I could quantify that that's objectively true as well. I think that it, I think it would be very fair to say. I think that it would be a fair, I think that it's a strong thing to say and that it's not hedging anything and that there are those who can make arguments that, you know, actually having a vacancy for that long is not good. And so there are arguments to be made there But as I'm looking at it, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a declarative statement that we can stand behind there. I think it's strong. And I would be in favor of putting it in. I think the best practice language works as well, but it changes the... kind of feel of that but then we have to think about what doc this is a support document i think it's appropriate to make a strong statement like that and i don't doubt that an opposition statement wouldn't make a similarly strong claim councilmember cell i guess uh the

it is best practice is just like easy to read and clear, healthier democracy, it starts getting a little more complicated. So I'm fine either way, but right now my preference is best practice.

And I'll agree with that, I think. And there's nothing, I like the concept democracy, but to me it's, I don't know. It's not that it's not best practice, but I think best practice of trying to get voter turnout, when you pull it, for me, democracy seems a little vaulted and higher.

Councilman Srivastava. For me, the word democracy is a good one, but it should have been up on the top rather than at the middle of the thing. But it's a good sentence. And then I think I am fine with it's a, it is best practice for council election because the next sentence, next bullet item I'm looking at, voters still elect every council member and mayor, all those things, it's also in that tone so a healthier democracy could be up on the top uh if we choose to but i am fine with this it's a best practice for now councilmember i'll keep it in mind if we need a rebuttal how about that okay council member cisneros fine

Council member Chang, did you have anything else? No. Okay. Just checking. Are there any other changes? And this is always the fun thing. Sorry, staff about wordsmithing from the dais, but we do have this deadline that, that we have to meet. And just as a question to staff from our last meeting, we not our last meeting but our last meeting where we actually voted on on the ballot measures and giving um myself and the vice mayor the the chance to write this pro argument did we make any i can't remember any decisions on any rebuttals or did we give did we give the you know the mayor and the vice mayor the same ability to write the rebuttal to any

any against arguments and i i'm gonna see if the city clerk has a memory recollection or i can pull up my um my notes yes give me a minute yeah mayor uh council directed the vice mayor and yourself to write the rebuttals um there's a seven day window between when the arguments are published and when the rebuttals are due so it didn't council did not really felt it was feasible to

draft something bring it to council and get it done in that seven day window okay thank you and now and that was you know looking at our at our meeting schedule so so as much as council is reviewing the pro arguments now the rebuttal to any negative arguments would just be done by the the vice mayor myself okay correct okay just just re-clarifying thank you staff I had a question.

I am reading the second bullet again, and then I can include more voters. This is same council. There is the special elections far less, but nowhere else we have mentioned special election here.

True. It was trying.

I know what was the intent.

The intent was basically it's progressively less. Less than that. 50%, 40%, and often 20%, but no numbers.

We're not using special election even now, right? We could if there's too many. But we don't talk about it there.

Yeah, we could remove that if you want.

We should remove that.

Okay, I'm fine with that.

Okay, and then primary election is about 40% 60% like that that's correct number or yes, because that's from the staff report. Okay, got it.

If I remember correctly.

Okay, just confirming that's the edit you're proposing.

That is the edit that's being proposed. I'm fine removing special election comments. And it'll also be something that conceivably goes to rebuttal if there is, but all that.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Democracy, rebuttal, and yes. Any other wordsmithing changes? I see none. Okay. No other comments. Can I have a motion to approve the changed arguments as specified? Council Member Cisneros.

Yes, I move the Change demand or changed arguments as specified, thank you, Council member so.

yeah I thought we did a really good job up here I reread second yeah I second it Okay, thank you.

council members scenarios to your motion.

yes thank you i want to first thank um the mayor and vice and vice mayor for taking the time to write these arguments in favor of the charter amendments distilling a whole lot of information into a very an argument a discussion and as was mentioned by a member of the public it's been a long way to get here so putting it all into one very short, very few word worded document is quite a challenge. And I think you've both done a fantastic job. And I want to thank my colleagues for a lot of thoughtful suggestions around how to communicate that message. I look forward to seeing what comes of any rebuttal, but I'm very confident right now in voting to approve the changes we've made here tonight to clarify our intention. But I'm very confident that when we do reached that point that the mayor and vice mayor will be well equipped to write those rebuttals. And I look forward to communicating this message. Of course, this is just what's gonna appear in the ballots. We're also gonna be having conversations with people talking about this in more detail. So this is one tool in the toolbox to ultimately get this over the line. So I want to thank my colleagues for all the time and work on this. And of course, staff, this has been a massive lift and we're almost there, ready or not. So thank you very much. I hope you vote yes.

Thank you. Council Member Sell.

I just wanted to comment that I think some of the measures speak for themselves and don't require too much explanation. I want to say that the mayor and the vice mayor did a really nice job on all three of the arguments and the fact that we didn't have much input on the first two shows you how like a lot of thought you put into it and we didn't need to do anything. And this vacancy one is the more um one that might need more explanation and i thought um on the dias that it was a good collaboration for the red lines and i read it over and it sounds very good to me so i want to thank the mayor the vice mayor my colleagues um the commission charter review committee and the audience who attended many of those and the staff who who supported all of us through this process. When I talk to people about this, I mentioned that Sunnyvale looks for ways to make things more efficient. And that is also a way of saving money and allowing us to have more resources for our community. So that's great, the Sunnyvale way.

City Clerk, can you please bring up the Settlement Authority one?

Do you have a motion on the floor? Do you want to look at the Settlement Authority one?

I'm about to make a friendly amendment.

Okay.

Sorry. Yes, I know. But now we're to friendly amendments and advocacy. um one thing I forgot so about halfway down there's five X's and with the motion that we made earlier this evening we need to replace that those X's with a friendly amendment to replace those X's with 250. good catch I approve and to the second agree Thank you, thank you, so I just want to get that friendly amendment out of the way, thank you, Council member lay sorry.

I just want to clarify that this motion is for all three or is it just for the first one that we.

They were unless there's a want to split these into motions into separate motions I you would prefer, yes, please okay. um there's a motion and a second on the table i'm trying to remember the best way to uncover this or just vote it down and start again

so my motion i believe was not inclusive of like it was agnostic and like of the ch i just moved to approve the changes i wasn't sure given that's right and i don't advocacy i think we could vote on this and then move on to another one i don't think that there's anything in my motion that would preclude that

may I make a recommendation I mean perhaps the maker and the seconder can withdraw the motion and then we can proceed with individual motions on the three items and I think the first motion was approve the recommended ballot argument for the council vacancies item with the changes identified Um, and the clerks, um, I don't know what the transcript.

So the clerk was it, and I wasn't capturing, was it all three or was, so I, the way I captured the motion is that it was approving the council vacancies argument with the changes that council directed.

Thank you. Okay. So we're doing all three separately. Thank you. Um, okay. So vacancies, any other advocacy on vacancies? City Council Chambers, I think you know what this does is is ultimately for account for for a Council member who was filled was was went through a special election, the fewer the more hypothetical windows that we close the better off, we are from from a Council standpoint, I think the. argument that um vice mayor and i worked on is um thank you with for the wordsmithing but um i think it's it makes the statement fairly well so i'm in support of this motion uh city clerk can you please conduct the vote the motion for the council vacancies argument for the council vacancies ballot measure carries 6-0 with vice mayor mellinger absent thank you council member cisneros Mayor Mrakas, Does a Council member have a motion to.

Mayor Mrakas, Could I suggest that we go back to the settlement authority married had a comment about a change you wanted to make yes.

Mayor Mrakas, So let's so from a word smithing standpoint for that one. Mayor Mrakas, Or the five x's at the bottom, basically, having it match the $250,000 authority that we said previously this evening. City Council Chambers, And so do we have a motion to approve either the settlement authority or. City Council Chambers, The. City Council Chambers, Contracting process. City Council Chambers, The design and build process Council members so.

City Council Chambers, I move that we approve the settlement authority argument with the red lines. City Council Chambers, That the mayor suggested, thank you.

Councilmember Chang.

I have some more proposed edits to the settlement authority.

Okay, so that dies for lack of a second. Okay. Councilmember Chang.

City Council Chambers, I didn't really like the second sentence that starts, of course, not, but that is exactly what sunnyville's existing city charter does it reads to me like the entire city charter is archaic and out of date and not directly reference it's not clear to me exactly where the sentence is headed.

City Council Chambers, So I would be fine if if Council is of a mind to. remove the first paragraph as a whole yeah it was it was a an attempt to thank you city clerk if Council is fine if Council is interested in that word smithing is that what you're looking for Councilman I I debated quite a bit about that paragraph and how either user-friendly it was or or non-officious or non-businesslike, but anyway. Any other changes with this item?

Yes, second paragraph. Your elected city council is forced. Again, I don't like forced. Required.

Yes. Third paragraph. Oh, now second. I was like, I couldn't find it. Okay, third paragraph.

Yes. And then the last sentence of this paragraph, strict absolute accountability. Absolute feels like a very strong word to me.

Accountability.

City Council Chambers, No, thank you city clerk I kept scanning again.

City Council Chambers, yeah my preference is to just strike absolute.

City Council Chambers, Just absolute strict accountability yeah. City Council Chambers, i'm fine with that.

And then I was wondering just a general statement if we wanted to add in some sort of set sentence that the settlement authority would be tied to the existing contract approval authority which city council can amend if necessary.

And you repeat what you said I didn't capture that oh yes.

And that now that we've determined the $250,000 right. If this measure passes that the existing contract approval authority is something that city council can amend. Oh, yes, it's fine that's the first sentence right yeah.

City Council Chambers, So voting yes replaces the outdated outdated $50,000 CAP and empower city council to set. City Council Chambers, Realistic limits by ordinance So what are you sorry, what are you requesting.

City Council Chambers, I think it's just if it's clear that. City Council Chambers, This 250,000 limit can be changed. City Council Chambers, As it's aligned with the contract approval authority.

This is David Kernan, the City Clerk. A note, my understanding of the ordinance Council adopted earlier tonight is it did set the dollar amount to align with the City Manager's current contracting authority, because that was the direction Council received for drafting the ordinance, but it doesn't specifically state that if the contracting authority were to change, that the settlement authority would also change. City Council Chambers, So the numbers do align today, but there isn't anything in the ordinance that says that they're sort of tied together if one changes they both change automatically.

City Council Chambers, So I guess it's a question if we were.

City Council Chambers, directly aligned so so conceivably the. City Council Chambers, Are you saying, for the last sentence this directly lines with the current settlement authority of the city manager is that what you're looking for, or you. yeah i think just that it's not set in stone that if there were an instance where we were to change the contract approval authority that that number would change too no we would have to take the ordinance again and change it yeah but not by charter right right so this directs this so with the last sentence there this directly aligns settlement authority current settlement authority how about that yeah okay thank you okay

so city clerk you got that thank you thank you for being my editor question thank you any other changes no i have council member chang council member srinivasan yeah i'm looking at the word you were elected city council the city council and then the and then the you are elected city council appears twice the city council appears once and then suddenly in the third bullet item focus on priorities so your leaders suddenly the word leaders has come in so maybe we can be consistently saying um i i i am okay with your city council not and everywhere so there are four three instances yes uh right the first one is the second uh paragraph you were elected city council yeah right that's one occurrence and then in the third part in the third paragraph voting yes replaces this rigid the city council is there Right? And then the first bullet item preserves the council, your elected city council. Then if you look at the third bullet item, focus on priorities, clutter, clears the clutter. So your leaders, yeah. Yeah, so your leaders. Right? We can consistently say city council.

I think, but I, so I think part of this was to actually get rid of some of the repetition right right you want some variance from up from a wording standpoint right uh so that's oh I'm uh it's like as opposed to just over over and over again so so when crafting this Richard and I did do a lot of sorry, Vice Mayor Mellinger and I did a lot of, let's say, wordsmithing so that it's not too repetitive. Yeah, we could say city council members every time. And that's why you see a mix of elected and then leader and exactly that, because too much repetition is also your eyes glaze over. So you want a certain amount of variance, but If counsel's will is to make them all the same, I'm fine with that. But there was actual thought of why it's not consistent, just to let you know. Understand, you see four occurrences or five occurrences of slightly the same thing. It's exactly for that reason.

and they all mean the same yeah and I think a standard person would understand but okay if you have specific a specific one that you'd like to remove or whatever I'm happy to uncomfortable with your leaders okay as opposed to other places but I don't have any okay that was but but

Thank you, can you know Council member shooting Boston we did actually go through. Trying to create variability because you don't want to repeat the same words and sentences and as much as you can so.

Okay.

Council member Chang nothing Council member.

Sandy Lee.

That's me, Mr. Mayor. Okay, I just wanted to mention that I think the addition of current in that location is not accurate because at the time that the voter is reading this, that will not be the current settlement authority because it only becomes the settlement authority if this measure passes. um and so perhaps you want to put current where it says existing like city managers current day-to-day purchasing and contract approval limits the current settlement Authority will still be the 50 000. yeah I'm fine with that so go ahead and remove the other current and move it down too

is with the city manager's existing day-to-day purchase i was suggesting that you put current where existing is if you want to use the word current because okay yes and then remove existing thank you thank you for that catch councilman relay

I wanted to say that I did appreciate the variance of the nouns that you chose that it does kind of itch the ear a little bit to have that much repetition. And I think that having your leaders as that last one in all the other cases, it is specifically the city council. But in this last one, it's feasibly the city council as well as other as the executive leadership team and other leaders of the city. So that made sense to me.

Thank you. Any other comments?

Ms. Lee?

Anything else? Lower your hand. Oh, sorry. I got it.

No problem.

I got it. Any other comments from council? Any other wordsmithing for either of these? Well, let's take one at a time. But since we're on the settlement, is there a motion? Council Member Srinivasan?

Move to approve. Uh, the. Settlement argument settlement of authority draft ballot argument.

Thank you. Is there a second? Council member Cisneros second. To your motion.

Good work mayor and vice mayor. Thank you.

And I just want to say thank you to everyone. You know this is this is the fun thing of writing or or not so fun thing about writing arguments is. is trying to get enough variance, trying to get repetition, and trying to make your message as clear as possible. So thank you for your help in wordsmithing. And with that, city clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion for the draft ballot argument for settlement authority for the settlement authority charter amendment passes 6-0 with Vice Mayor Mellinger absent. Thank you.

and lastly public works contracting are there any changes council member chang these are very minor this um city clerk could you bring up the part sorry give me just just one second to bring it up

um yes sorry the software that lets me bring it up just crashed sorry give me another moment okay okay go ahead second sentence the city is forced proposed to change to required And then under prioritizes quality and value, I just proposed to change it to sunny bell would instead of sunny wet sunny bell will finally but that one's really minor. Where's the value. Third bullet. Oh yes okay. So instead of Sunnyvale will it would be or instead of Sunnyvale will finally I would change it to would. yeah.

I can not will finally but just would yeah.

Thank you, Council member any other changes. Any other comments from other Council members. Is there a motion? Council Member Srinivasan?

Motion to approve the draft ballot argument public work contracting.

With the appropriate changes?

With appropriate changes, yes. Thank you.

Council Member Sell? Second. Thank you to your motion.

yeah I like this and then I like the previous one with there was a specific example of fender bender and all those things, but this is also very good well constructed well written, thank you, thank you, Council member cell.

um i like the changes that um council member chang's was consistently suggesting in all of these that was good and um i like the bullet points and so thank you mayor klein and vice mayor um mullinger thank you and i'll support these changes thank you all again and especially council member chang for for um their wordsmithing with that city clerk can you please conduct the vote

The motion for the Public Works Contracting draft ballot argument for the Public Works Contracting Charter Amendment passes 6-0 with the Vice Mayor Mullinger absent.

Thank you. And with that, we will take a six-minute recess and come back at 9-20. Thank you. Let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to our next item, item 26-0150, adopt a resolution to cause charges for nonpayment of delinquent utility charges to be placed on the fiscal year 2026-2027 County of Santa Clara property tax roll. Is there a staff report?

There is a short presentation. Mayor and Council, Matt Paul and City Finance Director. We're looking for your approval to place delinquent utility charges on the property tax roll for collection. The staff report when we first published it had eight properties that were delinquent since that time. We have worked with five of those customers who have paid, so there are just three properties that need to be put on the roll for a total of $753.16. Appreciate your aye votes in allowing us to take these delinquencies and put them on the property tax roll for collection.

Thank you.

Are there any questions from council? And you should have received an email from the city clerk earlier today with the updated attachment of those three addresses. Seeing no questions, I will go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone. Indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, are there any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to council for a motion. Council Member Srinivasan.

Move Staff Recommendation Alternative 1, adapt a resolution to cause charges for nonpayment of delinquent utility charges to be placed on fiscal year 2026-27, County of Santa Clara Property Tax Rule. With the updated... With the updated attachment, yeah.

Thank you. Council Member Cisneros.

Second.

To your motion. please vote yes thank you and thank you um and thanks to city staff for for following up with those others and finally being able to close off um the those getting payments from those that were missing or at least some of those that that um finally listened to city staff when it came to council so happy to support this motion city clerk make sure i get it correctly um please conduct the vote

The motion carries 6-0 with Vice Mayor Mellinger absent.

Thank you. Our next item is item 26-007. Is there a staff report?

Yes, there is. Evening, Mayor, Council Members, Suzanne Park, Chief Building Official, Community Development Department. With me on Zoom, I have panelists Farhan Baramond, Director at TRC Research and Consulting, and Madeline Kerr, Environmental Programs Manager for ESD. I'm presenting an ordinance tonight that is amending ordinance 3248.25. 3248.25 was adopted by the council on October 31st, 2025, and it was filed the next day with the California Energy Commission and the Building Standards Commission. The Building Standards Commission approved the filing on November 14th, but the Energy Commission rejected it because a reference to California Code of Regulations, Title 24, Part 1, Section 10-106B, 2 and 3 was included in a cover letter and not in the ordinance. This ordinance will clarify, will move that reference into the body of the ordinance. And since we had the opportunity, we went through and made some minor updates to the California, the adoption of the California building codes. Amendment one, there are three amendments. Amendment one was the amendment to the California Energy Commission energy code. So what we did was we reorganized the ordinance and placed the the statement into the recitals of the ordinance. Amendment 2 was the minor changes and modifications to Title 16 of the Building and Construction Code. There were minor typographical errors and a text clarification for consistency with the publication of the California Building Code. And Amendment 3, we amended the electric readiness reach codes. We originally inserted a section to close a loophole in the electric readiness program and we have since removed that language because it came to an agreement with the consultant who's represented by Farhad Faramond that the Energy Commission was expected to accept this approval. However, due to AB 130, the California Energy Commission was expected to reject it. So to make sure that both commissions accepted it, we removed that language. We had one minor change to wrap up everything, and it was to revise the second line shown to reference 150.0 instead of W to change it to 150.0V. So the alternative would be introduction, excuse me, introduction, introduce an ordinance amending the findings of Ordinance 3248.25 and other amendments providing minor corrections and the removal of extraneous requirements in addition to the correction to 16.42040, changing the first W to a V. questions.

Thank you. Let me see if there are any questions from council. I see none. Oh, that's a member saying possible.

Yeah. Could you explain what changed in the readiness in the reach code, electrical readiness?

The change, let me look that up. The change was, hold on a second. The change was to provide a prescriptive. So there's two methods of compliance. One is prescriptive where the specifications are outlined for construction. And the other one is prescriptive where you can swap out different aspects of compliance. And so the original, ordinance change did not include the prescriptive. But to close the loophole where some of the designers will say, well, we're following the prescriptive package, so you do not have this ordinance doesn't include that prescriptive package, so therefore we don't need to comply. So we included that prescriptive package, but then the Billing Standards Commission would consider that a major change to the residential modifications that are not allowed by AB 130.

Okay, thank you. Mm-hmm.

thank you i see no other questions from council so i will go ahead and open up the public hearing please submit a speaker card of the city clerk raise your digital hand now or dial star 9 and 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 go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to Council for a motion. Council Member Srinivasan.

move staff recommendation alternative one introduction and introduce an ordinance uh as uh as in attachment one amending the findings of ordinance number 3248-25 and make other amendments providing clarification and minor corrections thank you councilmember cell A second. Yeah, this makes sense.

It's a wrong attachment.

Thank you. One more.

I'm sorry. The council member referred to attachment one because there's a corrected attachment. Isn't that correct?

Yes, so this David corny and the city clerk Council did receive an updated attachment. Earlier today so attachment for which is the revised ordinance was what staff would recommend be introduced tonight.

Yes.

Thank you for noticing that I just read the staff report, thank you, thank you for the memo and thank you, thank you.

So if you can clarify, just as per the memo, it's attachment four now, correct?

Yeah. So the motion is alternative one, introduce ordinance attachment four to the report amending the findings of ordinance number 3248-25 and make other amendments providing clarification and minor corrections. Thank you. thank you and to your motion through the mayor if I if I could just also clarify that that also includes the change of the W to a V thank you that includes in minor correction I am moving yes so yeah thanks uh staff for doing this thanks for the explanation it makes clear thank you very much thank you council member so

I want to thank staff for their thoroughness and enabling us to be compliant with the laws and so that there would be no holdup. So thank you for your great work.

Thank you very much. I'll be supporting this motion. Thank you for your staff and clarifying this and kind of cleaning up with the ever-changing state changes. So with that, City Clerk, Can you read the ordinance and conduct a vote?

An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sunnyvale amending ordinance number 3248-25 to make supplemental findings for the locally adopted energy standards and ordinance number 3248-25 and to amend various sections of Title 16, buildings and construction of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code to make minor corrections and clarifications and to remove certain local amendments to the 2025 California Building Standards Code. And council members, you can now vote. And the motion to introduce the ordinance carries 6-0 with Vice Mayor Mellinger absent.

Thank you. Next up are council member reports on activities from intergovernmental committee assignments. Council Member Srinivasan.

Yeah. Let me pull up in July. I think second week I attended National League of Lead Leadership Summit in Louisville, Kentucky as a part of IT and Communication Committee. We discussed cyber security, ADA requirement, and then we also told the louisville i.t facility and then they host their own servers so we went to their server rooms they are also using or experimenting with some of the ai tools for permitting and also using drone for as a first responder these were really interesting exercises thank you thank you council member council member cell

I also went to special summer NLC meetings and I met with the environmental and energy natural resources group and we were able to it was pretty exciting never been on it but they had us go visit like a botanical garden that was built on a dump it was like beautiful and we saw all these parks there's i think on the order of a hundred park in louisville lots of parks and they have a waterfront park along um their whole waterways that was really interesting um i'm also on the air district for the nine counties and for since 2023 they're implementing some rules for two appliances for the water heaters so that in the future will phase over to non-polluting water heaters and then for the air furnace for the furnaces some non-polluting air furnaces phase over So in July they released a draft, the staff released a draft report for the first phase, which is the water heaters. And so they're taking public comment on that until August 13th. And then in November, the board will decide on those rules. So the goal of those is that fully implemented those rules will save 85 people from early death and annually And save $890 million in health costs savings from people not dying early from people not going to hospital from people not getting sick. So the air district is trying to keep our whole nine counties healthy but doing it in a way that it can easily phase over. So they're trying to put a lot of thought into that.

Thank you. Thank you for those updates. Next up are non-agenda items and comments. This portion is for oral reports and announcements by council members and city manager. First, for purposes of transparency, I would like to disclose that an inadvertent Brown Act violation occurred on June 29th, 2026. This violation occurred when a member of the city staff forwarded an email thread between staff and one council member to the whole council. The subject of the email thread was a request for diagonal parking on Vienna Drive. None of the other council members replied to the email thread and to avoid this from happening in the future, staff received coaching to exercise caution when forwarding email threads from council answer point to make sure that the thread did not include a council member. um so thank you um so um thank you for for the city clerk for giving that information uh to just update residents on I would also just like to thank the city manager and all of staff since we ended our meeting early last week we didn't get a chance to go through this but I just want to thank everyone for a fantastic July 4th event it was uh Add lots of kudos to city staff, uh, and just amazing amazing to hear, you know, from parents that they came ready to pay for, you know, the carnival rides. And it was just the, some of the complaints, the biggest complaints that I heard were, um, it didn't go long enough and it was too family friendly, which is a whole other thing. Um, you know, I think what we did over last year's event of having, um, more. variety of music, you know, as opposed to just a kids stage, having the games and, of course, having the carnival rides really made a memorable 250th anniversary for our nation. So I just want to thank the city manager, thank all of staff for, you know, leading that forward. And, you know, all of the directors who showed up for the day and hopefully had a good time. And I think ultimately, I think it was good for city staff in Sunnyvale to have that event. and then allow our staff to spend the evening with their families. So it was good from that standpoint. Next up, Council Member Lay.

Hi, I would just like to echo the mayor's comments about the July 4 event staff did a fantastic job. I heard specific feedback I want to pass on from a community of parents of disabled children who were very appreciative of the rec staff and the training or the guidance that they received and allowing children with special needs when necessary to be able to bypass the line on the rides. That was appreciated. Thank you.

thank you um city manager do you have any non-agenda items nothing tonight thanks mayor okay with that we will adjourn the meeting at 9 44 p.m thanks to everyone who participated have a good evening