you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I'm sorry. Okay. started time is 6.35. James, will you please help us with roll call? Thank you. Mayor Baraghan. Here. Vice Mayor Dynan. Here. Council member Lincoln. Here. And Council member Abrika will be absent today. And Council member Romero. maybe absent, but may also be late. So if he does join, we will need to read some descriptions in order for him to participate remotely, but you do have a courant. Okay, thank you, James. With that, James, can you please provide us instructions for the translation of the services for tonight? Thank you. Absolutely. So if you would like to listen to the Spanish portions of this meeting, usually at around public comment, please use the interpretation feature located at the bottom of your screen by clicking on the globe icon and selecting English as your preferred language. language. se le gustaría escuchar esta junta en español. Por favor, use el modo de interpretación localizado abajo de su pantalla, presionando al ícono del globito y seleccionando español como se le engüajo preferido. Habrá interpreters disponible para esta junta. Thank you, gracias. Thank you, James, with that we're moving on to item three, which you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank We would also like to pull items 3.9 and 3.10. Okay. Okay. Council member Dynand, do you have any items you'd like to pull from the consent calendar? I do not. Okay. So I don't know if we have someone to provide a motion. Is it a motion for that? Or we just go ahead and pull those consent out of items. If you'd like mayor, you could pass them or make a motion and approve it to adopt the rest of the consent calendar. Okay, then I'll make that motion to to pull those three consent items, 3.2, 3.9 and 3.10. I don't know if anybody would like to second that motion. Sorry, the motion. I think the motion was to approve the consent calendar, right? Yes. Oh. And then the... Let's pull those. Okay. Yes, other than those items, the... Okay, yes. Sorry. Thank you. No problem. So my worries. I'll second school, so my... Don't worry. I'll second that. Okay, thank you. So with that, I guess we're going to go ahead and start. You have to go down. Do we have to go down that? Yes. Okay. So all in favor? Or do we have to do roll call for this? I know you can do. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Also all in favor, please say aye. Okay, so then we're going to go ahead and start off with item 3.2, annual housing element and general plan, annual progress reports. Councilmember Lincoln? So when I was reviewing this, I noticed that on page 22, there's a section called Imped impediments to housing production. And then it goes on to lists multiple things that have impeded housing. They say the sanitary district was impeding housing. You know, there's water supply challenges that were allegedly resolved But it doesn't talk about the challenges On why we haven't had You know housing built Any's pulse or as much housing or not meeting we're kind of behind on our housing production And And I think really that has to do with the, basically how our policies have been set up and how, and the policy that I guess our council has given our city staff has basically ensured that almost no housing gets built unless it's a falls under affordable housing. So we've built housing, you know, we've expanded light tree. We've got more affordable units over there. We have the Calibri comments and we've been just, a majority of the focus of the housing that we've built has fallen to only affordable, very low, extremely low and low income housing. But in terms of market rate or even moderate housing, are moderate income levels, housing for people with moderate income levels. It's almost impossible to get something built because a lot of our policy has made things infeasible. And there's also the market conditions as well. So the suggestion, and I'll know if any other council members want to discuss this, but But my suggestion is that, you know, we need to revise this report, especially when it comes to impediments. And there's some things that, you know, you really need to be reflected in the report that I feel that are concerns, you know, specifically looking at how we need to make these policies more attractive for investment. So we need to really adjust and look at a lot of the policies that we've put in place over the last five years and see how the results have had the result. I mean, we've seen the results from the previous policies that we've had. And we just aren't meeting our goals or our targets. So I think we need to recalibrate and adjust and look at, you know, how other cities have been successful at building housing in the Bay Area and making sure that our policies keep us competitive for investment. know. So, you know, I, you know, we, uh, I want to make sure that this report, um, addresses a few key points, including, you know, the financial and regulatory burdens imposed by our inclusionary housing ordinance, particularly looking at the high and loofies, um, and rigid affordability requirements, which made a tour housing development. I would also like this report to reflect the impact of infrastructure constraints, including unresolved water and sewer capacity issues, which continue to create significant barriers despite the EPA SD's transition. So just the fact that the EPA SD became a subsidiary of the city doesn't resolve any of the issues. And that's what this report is trying to say. So I think that regardless of whoever governs EPA SD, those issues still remain. And also the permitting and approval process, including delays, like those experienced in theswood Business District, who should have taken four years and over a million dollars to get approved. I mean, it was only rushed through in the latter, prior to me being sworn into the council, and also the Euclid Improvements Project. That project started in 2019, and here we are in 2025, and we're still waiting for that project to at least get kicked off. Meanwhile, a lot of tenants are relocated, turnover may be voluntarily. And I honestly, I wanna make sure that we're not displacing residents, you know, so that that is still important, but you know, I think we need to move things forward. So as long as the report reflects, you know, the regulatory and financial burdens in place by the I. The inclusionary housing ordinance, the impact of all of our infrastructure constraints, and the permitting and approval process, all needs, those are all issues that have impeded housing. the impact of all of our infrastructure constraints and the permitting and improving, uh, uh, approval process all needs, those are all issues that have impeded housing and East Palo Alto and I want the report to reflect that. Um, and so, um, in addition, so specifically under the, uh, inclusionary housing ordinance, you know, addressing things like the fees, the mandatory 20% inclusion, inclusionary housing requirement, see how that, that needs to be addressed. The affordability levels, I believe our rental units require 5% extreme low, 10% very low, and 5% low requirements and these strict tiers make it financially difficult, especially in the absence of substantial public subsidies. The approval requirements and bureaucracy complexity, you know, we, this, the, so yeah. So yeah, those are all the things I think this report should reflect and I've already kind of provided my feedback. And there's things like long-term affordability restrictions, limited developer incentives, addition to the infrastructure challenges I've already mentioned, permitting delays, permitting and development delays, those are impedements to housing that's not reflected in this report. And so given these we need to as a city consider making additional policy changes for in terms of our housing, you know, streamlining the approval process, adjusting our fees, reassessing our 20% inclusionary housing requirement, increasing flexibility in terms of our affordability tiers and expanding infrastructure investments. The support I don't think it also includes how we also, in these parts of this, in general, very limited land for new development, and there's also historical environmental justice concerns, such as in the RBD that require remediation. So all the toxic waste that was left in the RBD, that stuff all needs to be addressed. So with that, I'd say that this report needs to be revised and to include those facts about the impedeness to housing. And if they're revised, I'll be willing to support approving this. Okay, thank you, Mr. Lincoln. Councilmember Dynand. Yeah, I was going to pull this item, but then I thought it's such a huge topic and there's so much to say. I 100% agree with what Webster said. And, you know, let's talk about inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning is basically making the people paying market rate, housing, you know, say, let's say, of 100 units, you have, with our inclusionary zoning, you or 25%, you have the 75% subsidizing the 20 or 25% that not only makes it the market rate housing more expensive, but it ends up with a whole lot of housing not being built. So even in a best case scenario, you have, 400 units and there's, you know, 80 units that are subsidized housing. What those numbers don't tell you are the thousands of units that are not built because they're economically infeasible. And I do think we need to look at our IZ requirements and revise them or eliminate them entirely. When you are looking at what other cities do, it's nothing like East Palo Alto. You know, for instance, Redwood City has a 15%. IZ requirement and they, I believe, had a moderate income requirement for the 15%. So even if you're renting out those units, it's not at a substantial loss to the developer. The other thing is we have to recognize that we're no longer in a free money environment. There is high interest rates, the cost of money has increased the cost of development. Things that made sense, or you could see of a 2018 or no longer true today. I would encourage our planning staff to come up with a plan around IZ requirements. This was something that I had focused on to actually address the issues because we want units to be built. What I was going door to door as all the other candidates have, it was very common to see homes that were rented out to four people. They were four professionals who due to the lack of market rate housing had rented out a single-family home and had taken up the you know a house that might have used to be mom dead and a few kids or mom and mom and a couple kids whatever You know we need to build a lot more housing. We're at what really caught my eye and it was referenced in a letter from Sandhill that I saw today, but we're at two years into the cycle and we have 7.6, we've met 7.6% of our housing requirements under under Rina. And that's not fast enough. That's, I mean, things have changed, but we need to have a different strategy. We can't expect different results with the same strategy. And again, I 100% agree with what Webster said. We need to look at everything, permit streamlining, expediting things like I was for the Euclid process, the applied for a demolition permit. In November, it has not been issued yet. If you want to build new housing, you have to demolish the old housing that's there. It's also a health and safety issue. I don't know why that hasn't happened. It seems like if we want to build new housing, you go to put one foot in front of the other. And we're not asking for favors. We're just asking for things to happen in a timely fashion if we want to build new housing. The other thing not really related to what Webster said is, I had asked about this report and was going to have hopefully it end up conversation with staff before that, and unfortunately that didn't happen. But related to our parking issue that's later today, I had asked how many permitted 80s have been built in East Palo Alto in the last few years. The total is seventy two so since twenty eighteen there was zero twenty nineteen eight twenty twenty eleven twenty twenty one thirty twenty twenty two twenty three uh... so that doesn't necessarily include anything in twenty twenty three twenty twenty four so we're probably looking at around um you know, 180 use, right? I'm all for it, but we can't be putting houses, 80 use and people's backyards and then saying, yeah, you have an unlimited right to parking. You can have as many people, you know, living on a property as possible. So I think permit parking ties in with us. I don't think we can build more housing. And he's also without addressing the parking issue. And I just, I did wanna bring that up. But thank you, Webster, for your comments. I agree with them. And, you know, I don't have a problem because I understand this is probably a procedural issue with the state to submit a report to the state. It's not for our own. Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor Dyn so just to and Councilmember Lincoln, I know you understand this a well, but I'll just reiterate it for the public These annual progress reports are documents that were required to submit to the state looking back on you know for the past year what progress the city has made to accomplish its general plan objectives as well as its housing element, which is a portion of the general plan objective. So it's really summarizing what has happened as opposed to forward facing. A lot of your desired modifications, Councilmember Wink, linking about modifying the impediments. I hear you, but I'd also take caution with telling HCD that city policies are impediments to developing housing when HCD discussed on a very long process. They didn't approve our housing element until last May. Cities policies. And it's fine if the council believes that our policies need to be updated and if that's the council's desire as we should do that. However, I'm not sure that our housing element APR is the best process to do that in. My recommendation to change policy would be that this body, whether it be through the priority setting processes saying that we need to look at our inclusionary housing ordinances or some other process just bringing those items forward thinking while this document, these annual progress reports are more looking in a rearview mirror, what's happened the last year. Yeah, I mean, this is also do April 1st. So this is kind of like turning in tax documents, right? I mean, you have to do it. It's not. It's not going to change anything. So I encourage us to actually pass this tonight. But to your point, I want to, I'm doing a workshop on affordable housing. I'm not going to mention any names, but we're talking about East Powell. So they're like, yeah, you guys have a terrible record at housing. You know, you've built a lot of low income housing, but you're not building moderate and market rate housing and you really flip you should do. And he said, yeah, we were talking about going after you, but we figured it would be more effective to go after Woodside and, and, uh, Atherton and Memel Park and you know other communities instead of East Palo Alto. But, Big No, you know, Big No mistake about it. We have a terrible record on housing. And it's not, you know, housing is more than the subsidized affordable housing. It's, you know, people on East Palo Alto, the median income is 103,000. Our poverty rate is 9.3%. It's below the national average. We need housing for repulging jobs and we need housing for people who are, you know, in the, we're in the most opportunity rich part of the world. And, you know, whether, if we don't build housing, people are, you know, working at Google, Meta, Stanford, they're just going to take over the existing housing and that's what's going on right now. And it's how we distribute housing in the United States for market rate housing and every single family home is market rate. So if we don't want to see people displaced and the evidence is behind this, you know, you build more apartments than our market rate apartments. The only thing about it is I was talking, you know, today with our police chief and just getting a tour of our beautiful facilities and seeing the, and you know, 965 weeks is coming online. I think that's over 350 units, 365 units, something like that. But you know, 132. 132? Not like tree, sorry, 965 weeks. 132. That's it, 132, four stories. So you know, they're not paying any taxes. And that's fine, I support that. You know, it's subsidized housing. But if we're going to provide services and be able to afford things like police services and I would be surprised if this building like any large housing complex didn't need police services. It's going to be draining resources on the community and not paying taxes for it. Right. I mean, by law, affordable housing does not pay property taxes correct. And was accurate? Yes, accurate. And just want to clarify, it's 136 new units, not 132. I'm not talking about electricity, talking 965. 965 weeks, co-leabry commons will be 136 new. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, so we have to have a strategy that, you know, it's an AND strategy. It's not like affordable housing or market rate housing. It has to be everything. And so, but, you know, to Webster's point, I don't know if we can fix this in a report to the state right now. I, my motion would be we advance this and we, we make it a priority to get policies in place to enable us to build a lot more housing. Well, I don think I want to consider is that we should, is it possible for us to make a recommendation or, or make a motion that we approve this item with amendments to the impediments, recognizing that specifically inclusionary house, some of our, well, some of our housing policies need to be recalibrated. And then recognizing that, you know, infrastructure challenges have also beaten pediments as well as, well, this, those, those two points. So to your first question, this, this item is not a rubber stamp item. You have the prerogative to, you know, and accepting it, you can make modifications. Um, but I know that our housing manager is raising her in to talk and I think she'd like to respond. So if the mayor would I was just going to say that we do have comment. Ms. Grace. Sorry, it was gotten Camacho our housing manager. Yes, thank you so much. City Council for your comments tonight. Camacho has an economic development manager. So the report that is before you, the staff report is just the summary of what we will be submitting to HCD. And the tables that are attached is actually what the spreadsheet that we submit to the housing community development department at the state level. So as you can see in Table D of the SPARTS meet, that table provides an overview of all the housing policies and programs that the city committed to in our housing element process that each city will be monitoring for compliance. And in our housing element process, we did undergo the analysis of governmental constraints, a lot of which Councilmember Lincoln mentioned. And thank you for raising those again. Those were parts of the conversations that we had with HPD in the process for getting our certification. And in our policies and programs, you'll see that there's particular goals that we set to counter or take away those impediments. So to answer your question, changing the language and the staff report won't make a difference to what is submitted to HPD, where there could be a judgment are in our action plan, the description of what we did in 2VD. So if there's particular policies and programs that you're noting on there where you believe that we need more detail. We can go ahead and provide that update to HCD. But as Vice Mayor Zainan mentioned, this is a report that is submitted to tell HCD that we're complying with our goals. So anything that draws attention to the city, it can, you know, backfire a little. But again, we're trying to meet the goals by the deadlines that we set. Hopefully that helped provide a little bit more context on this process. Thank you, Ms. Cunning. I think we also have Ms. Grace that has her hand up. I don't know if she'd like to. She may be. Yeah, if you'd like to open public comment for this. Oh, I have to open the public comment. Oh, yeah. I thought she was part of her. So we'll go ahead then and do the public comment. I don't see any hands raised. Oh, miss Grace. Yeah, great. Hello, thank you very much, City Council and also for the comments from Karen Kamako. I certainly wouldn't want to put anything in the documents which makes them cause hiccups. But if we are talking about what are barriers to producing housing in East Palo Alto, we should never forget that we need to get a safer bay project done and the FEMA map updated because we can't put new housing at ground level in the gardens, area, the part of it that's in the flood, until that happens. And that seems not to be mentioned very often as an impediment, but I'd like it to be top of mind. It isn't just expensive for people to have to put flood insurance on their properties and a risk, but it also prevents people being able to build under FEMA rules. So thank you very much. So thank you Ms. Grace. I don't know if we have any other public comments cards coming in. I don't see any for now via Zoom. There are no more on Zoom however. I believe the city clerk is getting. Yeah, I think he's getting some cards right now Are these Mr. Colin is are these related to this topic? There is one from Gil Wilkerson one speaker slip. As Wilkerson. I'll walk us in on there. Good evening. It is I. Um, I love you're talking and I feel like we're in better hands and I'm glad that Mark you agreed. You're doing it back and forth and I concur. If I was sitting up there with you, I would be agreeing with you. Don't hesitate to correct what has been taking like I think you mentioned four or five years when it shouldn't take that long to get something pushed through. I don't I think we have like 96 projects in the pipe and I am getting kind of tired of people saying that people are holding things up. We should be further than we are now. 1983, we were incorporated 2.5 square miles. We should be much further along than we are now. And I appreciate you taking the concern and looking at it with not with emotions, but I'd like you to care about something. And I hope you keep going on that same track. Another thing I would like to bring up, and I think I made the city attorney aware and I don't know if I talked to Melvin but I was on the public works commission and I was told I couldn't be on there and be on the advisory committee and I like for somebody to point that out. somebody to point that out. I did ask for the ordinance of that state that you cannot be on. And the sanitary district is separate. You got it on your website and it's separate from the city and I want you to look into that. Because I can do I can whistle and tie my shoes also. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Wilkerson. Thank you and sorry there's one more speaker from Mario Pulido. Okay, sure. the the I think that the first time I'm happy, because they have spoken, is not true that in and the people are going to replace it. I watched history and when the Spanish arrived here, There were many African-American people. And they were... But they arrived in the Spanish, there were very few African-Americans, and the two were poor, and the Spanish replaced the African-American, but it's not because was a money or nothing. It's just that time when they were not here, they were already here. I was in the bar with the account that people are replacing. If there are people who are going to be in need, but most of them, who I this, nothing. So, nobody in this, nothing. When many people went through the crime, So, it is false that people are replacing another person with false false. falso que la gente está reemplazando otra gente es un falso. Ya se me ha acabado el tiempo. Bueno, gracias. Yo los felicito. Creo que se he espaldo ante el buen tiempo de venir lo mejor. Gracias. is Palo Teotempo, the Vanilla, mejor. Thank you. Thank you, and those are last speaker. Okay, thank you. So with that, I'm gonna look too. Are you? Can I just make a suggestion, man? Sure. Yeah. So what I heard was that some of the concerns that were raised by Councilmember Dynand staff made a bunch of How much related to that? I think one thing that I just want to underscore is that the APR report related to the housing element Is something that has already been stated that something we communicate to HCD About our progress towards our goals the housing element was adopted and approved Adopted by the council and approved by HCD, and it includes not only discussion of governmental constraints and other types of impediments, but also strategies or a plan to address that. But we also have something that is separate that this might be more appropriate for, which is the affordable housing strategy that we have. So one potential motion that you could do is approve the APR, both of them for, you know, as they're written, but then direction given to staff, consistent with comments by Councilmember Lincoln, that would go towards coming back to find out ways to change the affordable housing strategy to meet those concerns. Because I take it that the most important thing is making sure that we actually have implementation steps that actually meet those impediments as opposed to writing something to the state to the same effect. And so if that is something that Councilmember Lincoln would be happy with, that's perhaps a motion we could do. Hey, thank you. How do you feel about that, Mr. Lincoln? I agree. I'm just like, you know, I think the state should obviously be aware of certain practices that are preventing housing. So I just personally, I think we should be truthful, you know, and regards to the progress that we have made and why we haven't built our, we aren't on track to meet our goals, but I'm willing to move forward with Mr. John Lee's suggestion. Yeah, I agree with that. I'd say, you know, as a city, I'd like to see it as easy to build market rate housing as it is to build affordable housing. And that's absolutely not the case. There are lots of impediments to market rate housing and we're not gonna solve our housing shortage by not building housing. It's just gonna make it worse. So with that, I move that we adopt the resolution with the suggestions of Webster Lincoln. Okay. I second. Any is that appropriate? What Mr. Dynan just said the I'm not sure that's that staff capture you you mentioned the changes that make the approve the APR as written with the recommendations by council member Lincoln that he suggested. I don't know if you'd like to. Yeah. And in the APR council member Lincoln, you I understood your comments to be in reference to the text of the staff report, not the actual attachments, the tables that are included. actual what we submit those tables. So is that and do you have modifications to those tables? No, I do not have notifications of those table tables. Okay. So I believe, I think the motion was to adopt the resolution providing staff but then also providing staff with direction on our to Consider this as a part of our affordable housing strategy. That's correct. Yes, okay So I would like to make that motion. Okay. He'll second so all in favor. Please say aye. Okay. Thank you very much. So we're moving on to item 3.9, the city manager employment agreement. I believe Mr. Dynan was the one that pulled that. There was a staff. Oh, the staff. Sorry. Sorry. And that was 3.92.10. Correct. 3.9 and then 3.10. Okay. Oh, is it 3.9 and 310? Yeah, 3.9 and 3.10. Okay. So I don't know who would like to speak to that. I can take this item of leaving members of the council. So before the council approves these items, I'd like to make a brown act statement concerning the following consent counter items. 3.9 is to authorize amendments to the employment of agreement city manager gain and the council's support for the council. So before the council approves these items, I'd like to make a brown act statement concerning the following consent counter items. 3.9 is to authorize amendments to the employment of agreement city manager gains as follows, extending the agreements term until January 30th, 2029, and increasing total annual salary to $317,312. $17,312. There's also a modification to the resolution on this item where the third whereas statement should refer to the person as the city manager and not the city attorney. So that was a slight modification there. And then the second item, item 3.10, to authorize amendments to the employment agreement of the city attorney, John Lay, as follows. Extending the agreements term until January 9, 2029, increasing total annual salary to $300,000 in $30, offering of fringe benefit, mirroring a provision in the city manager's contract and other amendments as noted in the staff report and agreement. And so these amendments were made to bring these positions in line with other peers and to reflect the addition of new duties and responsibilities. And those were the two items I would wanted to call attention to. So we can approve them separately. So I don't know if there's a motion for 3.9. I'll make a motion to approve 3.9 as discussed by our by James column. Okay. I'll second and everyone in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. And then I'll make a motion to approve item 3.10 as described by James Collin. I second it. Everyone in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you very much. Do any public comment for this or no? Okay. So we're moving along then to item 4, which is closed session we have none today. Item number 5, public comment at this time. I don't know if we have any public comment from. We do have one. Okay. From Miss Fernandez. Hello. Good evening, everyone. My name is Teresa Fernandez and I'm here to let you know that the Rotary Club is having a youth speech contest this Friday, 21st at 5 o'clock in this room. Well, yes, that room. So I invited this invitation for everybody to come. It's very important that we support our students and be here to see who wins. Okay, well, that's all. Thank you. And have a good evening. Thank you, Ms. Hernandez. So I don't know, do you have any more comment slips coming in? Mr. Collin? None for public comment. Did you want to speak on public comment? Okay. Okay. We do have a one public over the comment. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Can you say your name? Two Pofi now at 1643 Tulane Avenue. As you guys know, heard about what was going on. Lady in the neighborhood. There was, you know you know some criminals running around with the gun at our neighbor and there was last Friday it's founded outside at the premises here to requesting you see if it's possible to have more because before they used to have the police come around, then they put in two hours. After the black matters, we don't have that security coming around and now the violence that coming back to our neighborhood, people just walking around with the kinds and you know the police know so what was going on it's it's getting worse and we're here to request more security uh knows to be around the protectors we have crickets running around and we cannot we don't have no ways to So our family, because there's people just walking around without you. Like last yesterday, I walked up, I went for a walk. There was a lady coming out with a dog to walk along and she ran over to our house. There was somebody who was behind her, right? Over here at the university, so I to have my husband and my daughter-in-law to walk her back to her house. So I'm here to request for support, see if we can have more of the cops. At least two hours, whatever, convenient for them to know to patrol over Thank you. Thank you for your comments for your request Do we have any more comments? Those are last speaker. Okay So then I guess we're gonna move on to item six which is informational reports Do we have to prove the agenda or do we? I don't believe we actually had a motion on that. Correct. Nice meeting. So I don't know if you would like to approve, make approval of the agenda as is, or if you'd like to make any modifications to it or changes. I make a motion that we move item 16.1 to the front of the meeting, given that's widespread community interest in this and rather get it done sooner. Okay. Do we have someone that would like to second that motion other than myself? I'll second the motion. Okay then all in favor please say I. I. I. I. So then I guess we'll leave item six point one for later and right now we'll move item 16.1 for later and right now we'll move item 16.1 which is the public hearings of the residential parking permit program ordinance and this is just the first reading. I don't know if we're going to have a special presentation for that and if we are who would that be James. We'll be receiving a presentation from Miss Michelle Hunt and the tools are. Thank you. Good evening members of the council. I was with tools are a Miss here, engineer with the city. We have Michelle Hunt here with Hexagon who will be presenting information on the residential permit parking program and It tonight is the for would be the first reading of the ordinance. So with that Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, council members, Mayor and community members. My name is Michelle Hunt. I'm an vice president at Hexgown Transportation Consultants. I don't see what slide you're on. So I'm ready to go into the agenda slide. So tonight I plan to briefly review some basic information about the residential parking permit program for the benefit of anyone who is new to this topic. Then I'm going to go over some background information of the work done on this topic to date. We'll then cover a few follow-up topics that were raised the last time this item was discussed in November and then I'll outline the next steps to move this item forward and then be available to answer questions. Next slide. So the residential parking permit program is intended to regulate and manage residential on-street parking. So the program may be implemented in any residential neighborhood where on street parking is at least 75% occupied during the peak periods There's several reasons why this program is being considered first to control Overflow parking by non-residents from adjacent uses So this could be office workers who choose to park in a neighborhood street or residents of a neighboring jurisdiction who park an East Pellowell to do to parking restrictions in their own city. Second, the permit parking program would equitably allocate on-street parking spaces among neighborhood residents. This is especially important in neighborhoods where on street parking is scarce. We've heard many comments from residents who report that a neighbor regularly parks four or five or even more vehicles in the street leaving no parking for themselves or their guests if they arrive home late. The program is broadly focused on addressing a range of adverse effects to health safety, welfare, and serving the general interest of the public. Next slide. If adopted, the RPP ordinance would create a mechanism and a process for interested neighborhoods or the city council to pursue implementation of a permit parking restrictions. The ordinance being considered tonight would not impose permit parking restrictions itself in any location, as that would require a separate second action by the council following the adoption of this ordinance. Next slide. So I'd like to just walk through the process to create an RPP area. As I mentioned, the ordinance itself would not impose any permit parking restrictions that would be required a separate action to create an RPP area. There's two pathways that this can occur by. First is through initiation by the neighborhood. And second is being initiated by the city council. So if it's initiated by the neighborhood, a resident would come to the city and complete an application. Then the resident would coordinate with the public work structure to determine the scope of the RPP area, the days, times, hours, and geographic area that may be appropriate. All this would be subject to change depending upon information that's obtained later on in the process. Then the resident would be charged with taking a petition around and collecting signatures from other residents within their neighborhood, where the permit parking program is proposed. The petition would require signatures representing at least 67% of the residences on each block within that area to move forward in the process. The other route is the initiation can occur from the city council. So council could decide to initiate consideration of an RPP area. again, then the city staff public work structure would be charged with determined the city's state consideration of an RPP area. Again, the city staff public work structure would be charged with determining the scope of the RPP area. There would be no signature collection required if it's initiated by council. Next, the next step is optional, but there could be a neighborhood meeting held to provide an additional means to explain the process and what the permit parking program would implement. The petitioner could seek out letters of endorsement from any neighborhood organizations or other entities in support of the program. then staff would be charged with collecting parking data to confirm the actual usage of parking on the within the RPP area that's being proposed. And as I mentioned, it would require a 75% occupancy. If that occupancy threshold is not met, then the request would be denied and the process would end. So if the 75% threshold is met, then staff would considering the data involved, finalize and make any adjustments that may be necessary to the RPP area, for example, adding or enlarging or reducing the size of the proposed RPP area or adjusting the hours, time limits or restrictions within the RPP area, and come up with a draft RPP resolution for consideration. Then, staff would survey the residents within that neighborhood to determine the level of support. So this is an extra step beyond even if there was a petition where it was signed by 67%. Because the parameters of the resolution might differ from the initial petition, this is to verify the level of support by the residents. So the recommended threshold is 67% support, although council could adopt the RPP resolution with just a simple majority of 50% plus one support from all the surveys return. After the staff completes the survey, then the issue would go before the public works and transportation commission. They could recommend approval, deny or modifications. And then it would go to city council where they could adopt, modify or reject the proposal. If approved, staff would send notices to residents and erect signs. A similar process would be applicable to either in large and existing RPP area, if one has been created previously, or to dissolve in RPP parking program if it's no longer desirable. Next slide. So let's review some of the most important RPP policies. First, permits do not guarantee or reserve a parking space. Instead they act as a hunting license. In fact the number permits granted within any particular neighborhood might exceed the number of on-street parking spaces within the RPP area. Second per the proposed program guidelines permits will only be issued. Oh. Sorry, I'm speaking too fast for the translator. So according to the guidelines permits would only be issued to pass in your vehicles. Commercial trucks, boats, RVs, taxis and limousines would not be eligible for a residential parking permit. Residential parking permits must be renewed annually. The maximum number of residential parking permits per residence would be set forth in the neighborhood specific resolution and that would depend upon the number of on-street parking spaces within that neighborhood compared to the number of residences. But in any case, a resident would not be able to receive more than one permit per vehicle. In addition, private service personnel such as a nanny babysitter, caregiver, other household employee could be issued an annual resident parking permit if they routinely in the performance of their business provide a service at that address within an RPP area during the permit restricted hours. They any permits issued to service personnel would count towards the maximum number of resident parking permits. Each residence could obtain up to 20 single day guest permits per year. Permits are not valid for use at parking meters, any off-street parking lots or parking garages. And vehicles with permits are still subject to all the other parking restrictions, such as loading zones, red curb zones, fire lanes, accessible parking spaces, and other city ordinances, such as those requiring a car to be moved every 72 hours, those all still apply. Some vehicles would be exempted from permit parking restrictions. Exemptions include government utility, emergency vehicle vehicles with disabled placards or a plate in a designated disabled parking space. And commercial vehicles while they're actively providing a service if they're parked legally. Time restrictions when the permit parking would be in effect would be created based on the characteristics of the individual neighborhood where the program is implemented. There are several options and the initial petition includes options to have the restriction in effect over the nighttime hours from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., seven days a week, or just during business hours. So if this is a neighborhood that's affected because it's close to an office or a retail establishment, they could choose to have permit parking restrictions and affect during business hours. So 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday requiring a permit to park more than three hours or all day restriction seven days a week or to have the permit parking required only late at night. So for example midnight to 5am seven days a week. Next slide. So I want to just quickly review some of the background and the work done on this topic to date. We've been talking about permits parking for a number of years. The issue was first studied in 2020 as part of the mobility study. The study investigated parking additions and selected East Pellow Alto neighborhoods including the Gardens neighborhood. Neighborhood meetings were held to discuss potential RPP program in the Gardens neighborhood, but it received a mixed response. The Mobility Study Report recommended adopting an RPP ordinance to allow designation of the RPP areas, but no action was taken at that time. The residential permit parking program was also discussed as several public works and transportation commission meetings. Next slide. The item was first brought before the City Council last June. We received input from residents and council members at that meeting and council requested additional information on several items. Next slide. We came back before the council last November and received additional feedback on a draft ordinance and key decision points. There are several key topics of discussion that I'm going to speak to. The first being the petition signature threshold, staff recommended aligning the thresholds at 67% for both the application and approval and City Council agreed with this recommendation. I have other slides to address each of the other topics so we can move to the next slide. So the city explored the was interested in exploring the possibility of partnering with private property owners to lease off-street parking for residents use at night with a permit. In 2019, this idea was explored as part of the mobility study and city staff reached out to several organizations including the Boys and Girls Clubs and several local churches. We also last fall in response to the council's comments at the November meeting. We hexagon contacted the Ravenswood 101 shopping center to pursue a public private parking agreement. However, in each case, the property owners declined to allow overnight parking by residents due to concerns about liability and security issues. Next slide. There have been questions by council members and residents about how the RPP program would affect commercial vehicles. The ordinance, the draft ordinance states that commercial vehicles actively providing services or making a pickup or delivery would be exempt from the RPP parking restrictions if parked illegally. So that means that if you have a plumber come to fix the toilet at your house while you're working at your house, you don't need to worry, he doesn't need to have a permit. For the more, the program guidelines state that commercial trucks boat, boat trailers, RVs, trailers, and other work type commercial vehicles, including taxis and limousines are not eligible for parking permits. I'd like to point out though that the city code, this is section 10.04.080, already states that commercial vehicles are prohibited from parking on residential streets for more than one hour, except when an actual use for the transaction of any lawful business. So this already, existing code already limits parking of commercial vehicles in residential areas. So depending upon Council's intent, Council could consider taking separate action to revise this existing code to more precisely define commercial vehicles. The RPP guidelines could then refer to this definition to allow certain dual purpose vehicles that might be used for both commercial and personal use, such as a minivan that might be used by a cleaning service or a pickup that's used for landscape work. Those vehicles might be allowed to obtain a resident parking permit if the vehicle is registered to a resident who resides within the RPP zone, although oversized vehicles would still be excluded. But that is up to council's discretion. That is not part of the current draft ordinance. Secondly, the city does have recently enacted an oversized vehicle parking ordinance that prohibits oversized vehicles and trailers from parking on any public street between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m. So that also affects many commercial vehicles and the ability to park overnight. Next slide. The city staff solicited input on the RPP ordinance from residents using a variety of methods, including a citywide mailer in both English and Spanish that was sent to all East Palo Alto residents. Inclusion in the city's newsletter, a project webpage, and social media posts. Last November, the council suggested additional outreach methods, including physical surveys. So staff made physical copies of the outreach survey available at City Hall and at 1960 Tate Street offices. Additionally, the online survey was extended beyond the November council meeting to allow additional time for residents to participate. Next slide. So since the resident survey data was last presented to the council last November, we received 66 additional responses for total of 198 responses to the online survey. The neighborhoods with the most responses were the Palo Alto Park University Village and the week's neighborhood. Next slide. So looking at the city as a whole, a council council council council council council council council council council council neighborhoods that were not in favor of the RPP program by the majority of their residents. But I would want to point out that the university square neighborhood had only 10 responses, so this is based on a small number, a small sample size. slide. Enforcement has been an important topic that we keep hearing over and over again. And City Council echoed concerns raised by the public regarding the enforcement of abandoned vehicles and improper parking and requested the development of an enforcement plan for existing issues and the new program. So city staff is currently investigating measures to increase parking enforcement. These may include adding additional city personnel allowing CSOs, which are community service officers to conduct overnight enforcement and or contracting out enforcement to a private party. A new day lighting law went into effect at the beginning of the year. This new law makes it illegal to park a vehicle within 20 feet of a crosswalk, whether it's marked or unmarked, or within 15 feet of a crosswalk with a curb extension or bulb out. This applies only on the approach side of the road leading to the crosswalk. You can still park a vehicle on the far side of a crosswalk. Daylighting improves safety for everyone by increasing visibility at crosswalks. Removing vehicles from these areas helps drivers spot pedestrian sooner, reducing the chance of accidents. The city will be facing an implementation and enforcement of this new law starting with intersections along the city's high injury network segments. And we'll be making changes to the curb pavement markings and signage. Next slide. So what is next? So tonight we are here for the first reading, introducing the RPP ordinance. The second reading and adoption of the RPP ordinance could then occur in May. And then if adopted staff would follow up with a fee study to investigate the cost of the program implementation looking at the cost of permit, the permit parking platform determining appropriate permit fees and weighing different options for enforcement. And if directed staff could collect parking data in additional neighborhoods and bring that back to council at a study session to inform any potential council action to create an RPP area. Next slide. So at this point I'm happy to answer any questions you may have for me and I know the tool may also be able to help answer questions. Thank you so much for the presentation. At this moment I don't know if anyone on council has any questions, comments or concerns? I'll do later but should we have public comment? Okay so we can go ahead and do public comment at this time and then we'll come back to the council for any comments or questions There's that's okay Do we have any card speakers and if we do how many so that we can allot the correct amount of time? There are currently only four speaker slips for tonight. Okay, in person and online. Do we have any online? Non-online. Okay, then we'll go ahead and start with the public comments of the people who present here. Thank you. First speaker, Christopher Cow, followed by Jack Peter Men and Gil Wilkerson. Good evening, mayor of ice mayor, council members and city staff. My name is Chris cow and I am in support of a residential parking permit program. I wanted to provide some a little bit more context based on when this had come to the public works and Transportation Commission, which I'm on in the previous two years and also wanted to advocate for two potential modifications. So firstly, this first came to the Public Works and Transportation Commission in December, 2023. Our commission at the time unanimously strongly supported this residential parking permit program To main ask that had come out at the time which are not reflected in this ordinance one was consideration to To proactively Specify certain zones as opposed to requiring the 67% of votes. The majority of commissioners at the time strongly supported that. And the second thing, I'll get to in a sec. I had recently gone through the process to request speed hump proposal using the city's guidelines in which I had to get 67% of votes on my street. I did successfully get that and by the way they also all wanted to see a residential parking permit program. But for the speed hump thing it took me 10 hours of time across four weeks just to get 67% of votes on a on a block on pogas with 15 addresses. And for something like this, if residents wanted it on a block, they would need probably at least 50 to 100 addresses since it includes all the houses that aren't just along the street, which I think would take potentially 20, 30 hours. And I think would be very difficult for residents to do. So that concludes my comments that I think it would be great to have certain areas be proactively set as zones. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, Jack Bitterman, followed by Gil Wilkerson and Ronald Angsi. Good evening. My name is Jack Bitterman. This is my second appearance at the City Council meeting on this subject. Every day the street sweepers are working. They must dodge hundreds of illegally parked vehicles. Enforcement has been very poor. I see several illegally parked vehicles every day. Again, enforcement has been very poor. Current enforcement has been hamstrung by having only four parked time head counts, each limited to seven hours, which is nowhere near enough needed. Please provide sufficient resources to get parking in East Palo Alto under control. California A before 13 was enacted two years ago. Not just recently, two years ago, to give people time to educate the public. So far none has been done in East Palo Alto as far as I'm concerned. I see no visible improvement in East Palo Alto. On the EPA website, public safety is listed third. I please make public safety your first priority. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, Keel Wilkerson, Dixon, followed by Ronald Angsee, and Cheryl Arnold. Hello. I know a few of you know, especially Mark, when we're on the public works, I'm against the permit. I know something has to be done, but I like to see something where you don't have to. How is it going to be monitored? Police, short of police. I heard that they were giving tickets out because of the state law in one area. That's a good thing. But I'm not in favor of the permits because there's so many. When you have a criminal and charge are doing involved in people, they will find a way to get around and make the permit program just thank you. They'll probably, I took note of the 20 single days. How many houses are in that, that, that, that little area of the garden, 20, 20 times that. You're going to have people who are going to be buying the permits and then charging other people. It's going to be like the music industry where they, you people buy tickets and then they jack them up. They might buy them for $100 next thing. You know they're $5,000. That's my worry about it. And I brought up the idea about talking to the private owners like Regansard 101. She said that they declined. They have no room to decline. We're 2.5 square miles. Four seasons, Amazon, Regansard 101. There was a fourth one. We're 2.5 square miles. That's where the over parking should be made and had. They should be enticed to want to have people park there. I mean, security, the city can make sure this security. Right now, they have vagrants hanging around there. The place is nasty. They got gum trash and everything. I mean, there's a lot of ways to persuade the four seasons. I was on the screen. Thank you, Ms. Bookerson to do it. Now I wish they, rats at the deep hole. Sorry, you, I mean, you're two minutes from up. Okay. I know. Thank you. Well, she says some about oversized vehicle. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Gail. Thank you. Next speaker. Okay, I know. Thank you. Well, she says something about oversized vehicle. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Gail. Thank you. Next speaker, Ronald. Angseh, followed by pick you and your baby up on the intersection because there's too many cars parkedac. I have video footage on my cameras of a fire truck emergency backing all the way up because they couldn't make a proper uterine, which was the whole point of cul-de-sacs. I have written evidence that when my wife gave birth to her to our kid last year, we had an induction because I was afraid that every friggin day, there's double and triple parking that if she had to give birth, we could not exit the cul-de-sac, so we had to do an induction. I have video and paper evidence of all this. It's insane. We used to live in Queens, New York, where parking permits are like a normal thing because of New York's population. No one cares. It works very well. I understand, even though most of this is happening from cars, not any small also, they're happening in other cities that are just dumping off their trash in our neighborhood, that there are legitimate families that need that parking space. But that's indicative of a larger problem for affordable apartment housing and proper parking complexes. We need to solve that problem properly rather than turning each single family household into a makeshift condominium complex or in my area in Pogas Garden. We all know there's someone in our codeodasak who has like a car repair shop business and they illegally have like eight to 15 cars on any given weekend. You know it and a lot of us know on the street who that person is and it is being abused and I can't have my daughter living in a world like that where he could potentially harm her. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, Cheryl Arnold, followed by court skinner and Mario Polito. Hello. Is this on? Yeah. Okay. I made a little bit of notes. My name's Cheryl Arnold. I live in University Village. I own a single family house there. I fundamentally agree with this program. However, having listened to a few of the facts, the permits do not guarantee a spot. That seems like a pretty substantial gap to a success with this program. But here, I wanna adjust my main concern, my personal main concern, which is my safety, due to overcrowding of vehicles and large commercial trucks on my street. I have to see through vehicles in order to exit my driveway, and I have been narrowly missed by vehicles coming down my my straight more times than I can count. I'm not sure that this program will address my safety issue but I'm all for doing something. So whether that's enforcing codes that are already in existence or creating new, please just take some action. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, court scanner, followed by Mario Polito and Isabel Lopez. You smell? Where we've come a long way on this, and we've been doing it for a long time. I remember early on the guy that said, what do you mean? If I buy one of these parking spaces, I can't park in front of my own house. If somebody gets there first, you can't buy public property for your own. Nobody else gets to use it. But that seems to be something that's difficult for people to understand. I think the other issue that needs to be addressed, I'm not sure we've covered it here, but it's the cost of enforcement. Now we've got enough people in code enforcement, parking enforcement, and whatever to actually make sure that we can make this work. And I'm hoping that comes up, you know, there's a budget and we've got the money to cover it. I think that's really important. Meanwhile, I agree with everybody else. There's too many cars that are parked on the streets at least but also just just too many I Did talk to one of my neighbors who said He didn't want to pay even he can usually find a place in front of his house So he was happy with the way things are now and even want to have to pay in order to keep parking in front of his house So there's's going to be people that come up with with reasons that it's it's not going to work. But we have to try. We have to get it set up. We have to figure out what goes right and what goes wrong. And we can't we can't not do this. We have to do this. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, Mario Pulido, followed by Isabel Lopez, Ismail, and Dixie Lee. What's your name? I think I know that it's only a function of this problem. I think that's the situation in the dragway and you have to ask permission because they move. This problem has created the past, the leaders. And for the top, what needs is to apply the deal. So, apricula lei. So I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I Dixie Lee on zoom. Hello, thank you. Hello, thank you, city council for taking action on the parking problem in East Palo Alto. I am in favor of moving forward with a parking permit program. One thing I've noticed in my neighborhood is that we have people who use their driveways for storage or for used and for old and unusable cars. So there, I think we need to incentivize them to use their driveways for parking. Some concerns I have about the permit program the way it's written is the fact that community members will need to spend time as Chris Kal, potentially 10, 20, 30 hours talking to people on their blocks to get it approved. And if it doesn't get approved in some blocks and it does in others, that could leave us with a situation where there's uneven enforcement making the problem worse since some streets while other streets are better. And I just think this would be a big mess. So if we could just have city council designate zones ahead of time, I think that would be a much more efficient solution with a much higher chance of success. And I do We also agree that we will need more enforcement once this program goes into effect. And I think it's a good investment to hire some more community service officers to help enforce the parking program. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker,ixie Lee. Hello. Can you hear me? Okay. Dixie Lee, Spectre Shultz. I am in favor of some form of permit parking. I think it needs to be citywide, not directed to specific areas or communities and approved. I think that's going to be a huge mess where you're just going to have people taking their cars or vehicles to another place that didn't approve it. And I don't think that's going to work. I think it has to be a citywide agreement and ordinance. I would propose that it either be one free permit or two and depending on what you do, then a staggered, I know it's supposed to be staggered, but a staggered next one that would be somehow nominal fee and then from there bump it up quite a bit. The big problem is people that have just numerous cars, cars that are not functioning and I know this that are not using their driveways and even when they have open driveways. And this is a huge problem. If you have one permit free, you should have a parking space, at least one, if not two, on a driveway. That means that by the third one or fourth, you are paying. And at that point, you should. I mean, even if it's a group of people living in a house, then they share the cost somehow to be able to do this. I also think code enforcement is a huge issue and continues to be. I was able, along with other people, other neighbors, to get a stop sign at Oaks and Pogas, even with doing that. I still find with the trucks and the cars parked right on Poulgas at the end and Oaks and Oak's corner the same thing. I have difficulty crossing the street from let's say Oaks are Oak's corner to Poulgas simply because I have to be very careful. Oh, sorry Oh, sorry. Okay. Thank you. And that was our last speaker. Thank you. I don't know if at this moment the council members that are present would like to make any comments, ask questions or concerns, thank you. Well, you know, we didn't get our parking situation didn't get this way overnight. It's been a long time. We have done very little to address it and I think that has been intentional. But I'm, you know, obviously trying to improve the quality of life for all of our residents. You know, I do definitely have some suggestions on how we could potentially improve this ordinance. And, but in terms of comments, I think it was raised during the presentation that we do not have a Good definition of commercial vehicles in our ordinance. Is that an issue? Well the ordinance the way it's written references the city's existing Munich code which we have I mean we have a section related to that restricts commercial vehicle parking. And we didn't add any definition in this ordinance because we have an existing one and it may create some conflicting sections in our community code. But yeah, we defer to the existing commercial vehicle restrictions. Okay. Because I would say maybe we should align it with the California vehicle code. I think it's a section 260, which defines commercial vehicles. As vehicles who are that are registered as commercial. I think I mean, John correct me from wrong, but because it's not defined in heart ordinance. It falls back on the textbook definition of a commercial vehicle. Yeah, that's correct. So it when an ordinance or even just any law really, um, doesn't define a term. It takes on what's called its ordinary meaning, which is its definition in the dictionary. Um, and that definition is going to be any vehicle used for commerce. Yeah. Okay. What is the best. Okay. Well, I do have some suggestions on how I think we could improve, I guess, this ordinance. I would say that we should remove the provision for free permits and charge reasonable fees for all permits. And by reasonable, I think it should, the fees should be able the cover, the expenses of enforcing and implementing this ordinance. And along with fees are typically charged, you know, for parking permits. By comparing those other cities, you know, in the Bay Area, California, but reasonable means that we're not overcharging our residents, but they're reasonable. When you think about fees, you know, if you go to San Francisco, just for one day, you know, you're gonna be paying about $25, just a park for one day, you know. And if we're talking about having the ability to park for entire year and to charge some fee, that means that we'll be able to provide enforcement and not have a program that just becomes costly and this has no funding mechanism. Second, I think that we should prohibit issuing permits to vehicles with delinquent parking citations or expired registrations. I don't think that's mentioned in the ordinance. I think this ordinance should explicitly state that commercial vehicles, not just in the guidelines, that commercial vehicles are these boats and oversage vehicles are ineligible for permits. So I think that needs to be put in the ordinance, not just in the guidelines. I think we should establish, in addition to the proof of eligibility, which includes drivers licenses and vehicle registrations, I think we should also factor in having the insurance too for those vehicles. So not only having driver's licenses and the registration within the RPP are our residential parking permit zone, but also the insurance needs to be registered at that same address. And in terms of the petition eligibility is kind of vague. It just says, Residence, Honor, Renter, or Occupient. You know, if you get a 12 year old design, you know, as an Occupient, they're not even old enough to drive. Can they designate who, or can they petition to have RPPs on established in their area? If I may, in the ordinance, we specifically say adult. So when we define a resident, it says adult occupant owner. That was just an example. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, so those are the some of this key suggestions that I would make to, um, make this a, just to improve the permit program. Um, but nevertheless, I think that, um, that process is not, we don't know that is that that, so can you make this, maybe it's not clear, but what defines a residence is that the parcel, is it like an ADU, is it the home, or the, what? It would be housing unit, so 80 use are considered a separate housing unit. So if it's a property with a home, a single family home and a 80 you, it has a separate address then that would be a separate housing unit. Okay, so anybody within that housing unit could submit a petition or sign a petition to have a RPP or a regional parking permit zone designated. Is that how the ordinance is written? Yes, but any adult resident within that unit. Yes. And the residence is defined in the ordinance and the draft ordinance. As Marvin said, it includes apartments, accessory dwelling units, junior accessory dwelling units on those townhomes. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, it's unclear how we could verify and that process would be challenging to verify who's actually an occupant or residence owner. I mean, you can figure out who's the residence owner or in order to, I basically verify who's submitting these positions. It requires a lot of work. You'd say, okay, if you're an owner, okay, you have the deed or whatever to the house. How is that being verified? I can check the county records. Your rents are, oh, we need a lease agreement. But someone who's an occupant, you know, there's this, it's just, creates challenges to verify who's actually submitting these petitions. So I think that we would need a better language. I personally believe that it should be aligned with registered voters and homeowners. Because certain zones have renters, and we know how many, I mean, we know how many voters are within certain, uncertain streets, you know, in certain zones or areas, whatever once, if someone wants to establish a zone in our P.P. area in their neighborhood, we know how many voters are there. So we know the denominator. We can verify that. That's a record that we can, someone if someone's validating these petitions, they can easily go pull the voter file or the county record and or should God, who's the home the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the file or the county record and or should God who's the homeowner or who's the renter to determine who's submitting these petitions. So I would just say we should modify the language of San Francisco residents owner renter or occupant to change that to registered voter or homeowner. And I believe that we should only require one signature per homeowner, per parcel, because it just makes it easier for verification purposes. And we don't get into them. It makes it easier on staff who are trying to verify these things because we have a voter file. We also have the county records in terms of the parcels. So I think that maybe we should just change it to that. I understand we want to be inclusive, you know, and everything, but I think that it's just, create, makes it more challenging when it comes to collecting petitions and stuff like that. Otherwise, I mean, we could also distract this entirely, you know, from the ordinance, but I'm willing to listen to whatever, my other council members have to say about this. So that addresses the revised petition language. In terms of the, I think it's section 10.070, on the issuance of permits. I think that the language should be, and when it comes to, when it says applications for a parking permit must include the following documentation, I think we should make sure that includes that all these documents show an address within the permit area. So that should be amended. So when it says a current DMV driver's license for each resident or a private service personnel requesting a permit, it needs to show an address within the parking permit area. Because that language isn't included in the ordinance. Same good thing goes for current DMV registration for each vehicle. And these are show and address within the permit area. And I'm also suggesting that we add to that current vehicle insurance policy with an address in that permit area. And so those are the only suggestions that I would make and I'll see what my other council members think about that. And so those are the only suggestions that I would make. And I'll see what my other council members think about that. And yeah, I think that all permits. Should require payment of a fee established by city council resolution. That should be added in. Into that. Section 10.40.070. And I believe so essentially what I think that is there's a section that says the council made by resolution establish and I would add different fees for initial and additional permits so we can establish fees for an initial permit or additional permits, you know, through by resolution. So that's only those suggestions that I think I would make, changing the petition to say that registered voters or homeowners may request, the formation of our PPP area, and then making sure it requires one signature, per homeowner, per assessor, parts of numbers, you don't need multiple signatures. And yeah, just the amendments to say that all the required documentation need to show an address within the permit parking area and then also the fees, the will establish a fee. So all fees are all permits, shall require payment of a fee as established by a city council resolution. I think that language should be in there. And yeah, I think that's mostly it. In terms of also we could add a potentially add a new section what you guys have to say. That explicitly prohibits commercial or delinquent that's explicitly prohibits issuing permits to vehicles with delinquent parking citations, expired registration, registered as commercial RVs, trailers, boats and oversized vehicles. So that's already just making it explicit. Yeah, those are my suggestions. Okay, thank you, Council Member Lincoln. Council Member Diane. Thank you for the presentation. This is something that's why I got elected. People all talked about parking and when they were given choice of nine candidates, they voted for me, they voted for Webster. It's an incredibly important issue for the city. I highly unscientific but over 500 people participated in this. I did did a simple question. Is it easy to find parking, street parking in your neighborhood, and 80% of 500 people said, no, it's not easy? That's a pretty large sample size. Now, how we're going to solve this problem is a huge debate. I'd encourage us to take the Kiss method, which is keep it simple staff. And I think the whole signature thing is absurd. It's what I said when I was chair of the Public Works Commission. We're making this too complicated. It's never going to work. This is a bad idea. I said it at the Public Works Commission. We, you know, we already have huge issues with people getting speed humps installed with 67% of the vote. And it's a convoluted process. It takes a lot of time. I don't see this effective. Staff needs to show leadership on this or sorry, city council needs to show leadership on this and say we're tackling this and it's not coming, you know, if you have a problem with it, it's coming from your city council, not from your neighbors because that is not going to work. You know, we need a fair and equitable way to distribute parking. We have lots of people who don't live in East Palo Alto who are storing their vehicles here. And this is something that every our permit parking should solve for. We also can't do this without a vigorous code enforcement element. And that could make it worse before it gets better. We have people parking six cars on their front yard. And that is terrible for the neighborhood. It looks horrible. People don't like it. They don't want it. As was mentioned, we have people running car out of repair businesses. And they're out of their home. I'm not sure if that's a code enforcement issue. Parliament parking would surely solve for this. At Echo, Parliament should only be issued to vehicles register in these poll also. And I think registration is good enough, but if you're gonna park your car on the street, you should be registered. I do think all Parliament should have some fee, and it can be fair and equitable, but it shouldn't be free We need to cover the cost of this program. I'd say that any excess funds that are collected from the RPP should be reinvested in the same neighborhood with street improvements beautification and you know other benefits, you know your paying for A permit, but you're also seeing your sidewalks get fixed and the roads get fixed and it's not just a money grab by the city. But again, today we're not determining what the fees are. We're just moving this thing forward. But I would like to make a motion to strike the whole signature aspect from it because I think it's a bad idea. It's unworkable and it's going to create a tremendous amount of work for both residents and staff. And I'll make a motion to that effect at some point. I don't know of any city that would actually address parking seriously where, you know, it's every other street has permit parking. It just doesn't seem workable to me. And I've talked to the chief about it. This is not enforceable. It's going to be, you know, for the... So, yeah, we wouldn't have individual permit parking areas. It would be that small because as you said, it would just cause somebody to go to their next street. So you would have to consider a natural boundary that would not cause a spillover effect. So yeah, I mean, frankly, you know, one of the things I think we should divide the city into zones like every other permanent parking program that I've seen in other cities. You should be living in that zone to park in that zone. There should be where I live on runny meet. We don't have an issue with parking. There's no need to have a permanent parking program on my street. I think there should be an automatic mechanism that if you know we hit that 75% threshold in my neighborhood that it automatically becomes a parking zone because we've you know we have an issue with parking in that neighborhood I think there's some neighborhoods that probably don't meet that threshold. There's some that are already far beyond like you know the west side and the gardens You know, this is the first reading. We don't have any real specific details but I encourage staff to develop a workable solution. I don't see the signature and multiple people have made comments about that. It's not workable. I mean you know it's going to be a tremendous amount of bureaucracy for something that you know if you want permit parking it should from city council. We should keep it very simple. It should be divided into zones. And, you know, to Webster Lincoln's point, I agree, you know, there should be a fee associated with it. And any fees or fines associated with the parking program should be reinvested into that, that neighborhood, that's best practice, not on shoot, you know the high cost of free parking. It's people generally don't want to pay for parking. I mean, who would want to pay for parking in front of the roadhouse? I get that. But we have an out of control situation. It's not working. It's terrible for families. We have some people who, you know, talking to my friend of a rato, he's like, yeah, he's got a rental property and he's pal, also. And he said, one of his renters has 10 cars. Another car on deaf knee court, which I believe one of the speakers lives on, guy moved in, I know this because I'm over there all the time. And yeah, Ronald is right that parking there is terrible. It's not safe. We have all sorts of issues with emergency vehicle. So I mean, I think at the end of the day, the idea that we can just sell people, you can live in East Palo Alto, you can have unlimited storage of cars on your street for free. We've run out of gas, like it doesn't work anymore. It's not, you know, we can't keep doing this. The other thing is we've had a lot of ADU's built Something like 78 through 2022, right? We want more housing We can't tell everybody. Yeah, you can have an unlimited number of cars if you move into East Palo Alto One of the things I'd like to say is that I don't think there should be an unlimited number of permits given out I think per zone it should be like looking the gardens for instance instance. There's let's say 2000 parking spots. We're going to give out 1800 you know or 75% because we all want there to be some vacancy so if people come in and come out there's a place to park. I think that's an important aspect of it. You know we don't want to oversell the permits and then just have the same problems but just with everybody registering. We have to limit the number of cars here and we have to give people one of the speakers, Isabel mentioned people having not using their driveways, right? There has to be a motivation for people to clear out their driveways of broken and unused vehicles, boats and everything. And I don't know if that's a code enforcement issue. I suspect it is, but if somebody's paying $150 for a permit, maybe that'll give them some incentive to clean out their driveway and park there. I think one of the things that's complicated in these policies that nobody uses their garage for parking a car, which is logical. Maybe some people do, but I'd say like at least 95% of us, including me, I use my garage for something else. But especially in the simple home neighborhood, you have like space for four or five cars to park in the driveway. What we're seeing is that some houses for one reason or another have, you know, legitimate reason. They have more cars. And we need to address that. And just, you know, there has to be incentive to use public transportation. public transportation, there has to be incentive to use e-bikes and incentive to get rid of broken down vehicles and not everybody's going to like it. I mean, it's going to be a setting limits on people's ability just to have cars. And I know people won't like that. Some people won't like it. But I think at the end of the day, when this is fully implemented, it's going to be kind of like congestion pricing in New York City, which was tremendously unpopular before they implemented it. And now people are like, wow, why didn't we do this 15 years ago? And I think at the end of the day of the vision for this is that anybody who lives in East Palatown has a car can easily find street parking. And that they're going to, you know, it's gonna be regulated and it's not gonna be a free for all, but there'll be, you know, ability to find parking. The following is I think we have to be very specific about when the enforcement would happen. I strongly, and I said this at the Public Works Commission a couple of years ago now, that enforcement should be like between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. or something like that. We're talking about the problem in East Palo Alto is not from business parking, at least not yet. It's from residential parking. I think midnight's a little bit early because people, if you have friends over, you don't want to have them get ticketed at midnight, but I think one AM would be a reasonable time to say that you got to get going. I do think that this is a big challenge for the city, And I think we have leaders, I'm council, who are ready to meet that challenge. And, you know, for me personally, it's kind of funny. I think I had the first meeting on parking in 2017. I hosted one of the YMCA, actually met court skinner and Borlaus Verges there for the very first time. And we had a, in 2017, we had like 50 people. A minor factual correction. the mobility study was issued in 2020, but there were meetings in 2018, 2019, 2017. So this has been an ongoing issue. Council has not taken action on it, and I'm excited that we are able to take action on this right now. But I do want to see a permit process that is rational, that has ability to be successful, the the enforcement mechanism, which is probably gonna be a third party, is simple. And it's not one of these things where people have to go gather signatures. I mean, that's, to me, that's, that's putting the work on the community when we should be showing leadership from council on that. But I'll leave it at that. I'm sure that Mayor Baragon has other comments on this. Thank you so I just wanted to say thank you for the report for keep coming to us. I did want to say a lot but I'm going to try to keep it short because we have a long agenda tonight. I do agree with the fact that I I don't think it's a good idea to go ahead and have our constituents collect signatures. I think that if we're gonna implement something, it should be citywide. Another thing is that I think it should be simple and straightforward, so folks don't have a hard time doing that, making it more complicated. And also I just wanna remind folks that this would just be, we're taking, trying to find the right word choice here. We would just go ahead and implement this, hopefully with the revised version of the parking permit, with the recommendations, I think that we've suggested tonight. But if for some reason it's not working, we could always come back and just try to see what we need to improve, what we need to take away. Because I think that in order for us to have a good, for us to be good leaders, and for also to have our constituents participate, it's a dialogue that we have to continue to have. And we want to continue to hear from you, your voices, what's working, what's not working. But I do feel that we do need to have some kind of control, because here I am thinking,, oh my goodness, what's going to happen if we have a natural disaster and we can't evacuate. How are we going to handle that? And sometimes we forget that. Recently we've been having a lot of earthquakes, right? And so if we were to evacuate, how are we going to evacuate, especially our vulnerable residents? And so I do feel that we do need to have some handle into this matter and so you know just keep it simple straightforward not to complicate it don't require the signatures citywide implementation and then we can always come back and see if we need to change it tweak it and maybe have like a sunset date where we can come back and reevaluate how's it going? Maybe it's not going well. I also do like the fact that if we could also try to continue the conversations for those folks where it's super saturated and maybe the parking permits won't necessarily suffice but if we have those like the Boys and Girls Club parking lot available, that we can work something out. And have that also as an alternate option. And I see it as well as perhaps generating a few jobs here and there within the city of having somebody, you know, look over the cars, have some kind of security. Those are my personal thoughts and take on this. Yes. Yeah, I'd also like to add that as long as you mentioned that there was people not interested in this. As long as parking is, you know, free, there will never be demand for paid parking lots and people are going to do what they're going to do. One of the one in, I think this is kind of in parallel, but it's not part of the RPP. We need to have solutions for commercial parking. There's people with commercial vehicles, they're running businesses in East Palo Alto. There is a lot of parking space in EPA and some of that is in the Ravenswood business district. But if you have a construction vehicle, and I saw a dump truck parked on somebody's front lawn, something you would see in a mining operation or heavy construction, there needs to be a solution for that. And one of the things we made we could look at for these acres of unused and probably not developed, when that's not going to be developed is look at temporary use permit for commercial parking. And there's any number of spots in the Ravenswood business district that would meet the need of. But we need to have a solution. I don't want to demonize business owners. I'm one of myself. And if you have you have equipment that you're parking on the street right now, I understand why they're're doing it but there needs to be a solution not just the city chastising people and saying you don't do this and I think most business owners would readily agree to pay a reasonable fee for secured parking where they don't have to worry about their trucks getting broken into whether it's a gardener construction worker or any plumber whatever and this stuff happens but again. But again, there's not going to be a demand for that kind of service as long as we're saying, you can park as many of your cars on our streets as you want. So, but that's not really directly related to the RPP. It's more direction to staff that, we need to be creative about how we're addressing this. And this is a real issue and hopefully we can come out with a solution that if it doesn't, even if it doesn't make everybody happy, everyone agrees that while parking is so much better in East Palo Alto and we've removed all the businesses from Palo Alto that are parking here or the businesses from San Carlos who, you know, from Stockton who are storing their vehicles on our street So I'll leave it at that. I think but I would like to make a motion to remove the signature portion From the RPP and strike it completely. Can I address that? Yeah, I just want to point out I think It's clear that many of the council members to are interested in taking action on behalf of their residents to initiate the process, whether it's citywide or specific neighborhoods. But the ordinance is intended to be more general to allow for that. So because the signature process is still in there, doesn't mean that you can't take the actions that you're desiring to take. But it allows the residents, the freedom if down the line when there's a different council and may not be taking action. There may be other items that are more grabbing the council's attention that residents would have a process that wouldn't rely on council's action. So if you think that 67% would be, you know, too onerous you could consider. But I would suggest that you keep it just as an alternate path that would be accessible to residents. Well, I think we heard that needed to, and I think it was unanimous that they would like to have that removed. Correct me from wrong anyone that's present. It's your prerogative if you want to remove it. I think what Ms. Hunt was saying was that there are two pathways right now. So it's your prerogative, isn't it? Okay. Right. So with that, I don't know if we would like to make the amend to that. You know, I mean, I guess, you know, I don't see this as ever being practical or ever, you know, I want people wasting their time on this because I've seen what happens with the speed humps and people get signatures and nothing happens. And basically it happens when council or staff takes the initiative. And I just don't believe at all. signatures and nothing happens. And basically it happens when council or staff takes the initiative. And I just don't believe at all that gathering signatures is going to work. I don't mind leaving it in there. I mean, we can leave it in there and advance it. But what I would say is that for this to work effectively, we're going to have to divide the city into zones. We're going to have to have zone A, B, C, D, E, F, how many of us are going to have to come from council. And it shouldn't be incumbent upon the residents of East Palo Alto to do this. And again, I would disagree slightly with Webster Lincoln. I don't think the immigration status is at all relevant of whether somebody wants permit parking or not. But I see that it's incredibly messy and incredibly like hard to determine. I mean, you know, how are you gonna, how are you gonna, you get a signature from, you know, one person, how are you gonna verify it? How is it gonna be, it just seems like a very messy process. I don't mind leaving it like a clarification. I'd never said anything about immigration status. The homeowner or voter. Yeah, homeowner's voters. Sure. But when it comes to immigration status, we have immigrants who love it. We have immigrants who are homeowners. So I'm just trying to make it more easier if we do consider this process. And we can verify whether 67% of the petition submitted meet the threshold, meet that 67% threshold. Sure. Okay, I'm going to have to call it. We're going to have to move on because our agenda's pretty tight tonight. So I don't know if we were going to have to go ahead and make a recommendation and I'm looking to our city attorney how we can do that. Sure. We can do so you have actually two options. Some of the edits and I'm assuming that Council Member Lincoln's edits or edits that are also desired by Mayor Vice Mayor. But one thing I am concerned about is making sure that the ordinance language actually reflects the desired recommended edits of this body. And so, you know, my recommendation generally, if you have this many edits to kind of come back, but if you want to proceed with the edits, it probably best practice to kind of go over what those are and just confirm them for you. If that's what you want to do. I think that would be good. So I can take a crack at it. Sure. Okay. So this is what I heard. Okay. So this is essentially council member Lincoln's edits plus the desire from both mayor and vice mayor to strike the work. The pathway that allows for residents to gather signatures and it would only be kind of council directed. But here are Lincoln's edits as I have them. First, to have a good definition of the commercial vehicles, perhaps use the California Vehicle Code section 260, which by the way, I believe it states that commercial vehicle is defined as transporting a person's for higher or transferring primarily for property. It wouldn't include van pools for example, but that definition I just want to note would probably include ride sharing because it is transferring people for you know for for. But I think that because that definition of commercial vehicle is actually included as an exception, it would only be allowed if it's there for the duration that's allowed under the municode, which is only an hour. So I just want to point that out. You also stated that you wanted to explicitly state that oversized vehicles are not eligible for a permit. You must factor in insurance, which I read to understand to mean that it's not in order to get a permit, you have to have insurance that actually matches up with the address at the resident residents that's getting the permit. You talked about petition eligibility. You wanted it to state that it was an adult resident or renter. You mentioned that the documentation required should be aligned with registered voters or registered homeowner. In other words, you have to be on the deed. You mentioned in 1040-07-0 under issuance documentation should include all documents with the same address within the RPP area. That also includes current DMV record to show an address within the RPP area. You mentioned that the current vehicle policy, okay, I think I stated that already all permits should be required to pay a fee. There should be explicit language to state that the fee will be adopted by resolution, which I believe there is already. And let's see here, I believe Vice Mayor and Mayor both agreed that the signature requirements should be removed. And also there was support for a parking fee established by resolution. But those are the edits that I heard. Are there any other ones that I may have missed? Yeah. One point I said is we should have a street parking metric, which will automatically implement permanent parking in a zone of a certain threshold. This past, such as 75%, that was suggested by the parking reform network. So you don't, you know, let's say we don't have, you know, permit parking in theville initially, but then suddenly parking gets bad. It would automatically kick in if we do a study and at 75% like, you know, the metric. And then there wouldn't need to be some sort of mechanism to monitor the parking then at, you know, yes. Yeah. And then the other point, which is a primary thing of, you know, primary parking, is that any excess funds collected from the RPP will be reinvested in street improvements, beautification and other benefits in that zone. So that if, for instance, the gardens is generating an extra, you know, $10,000 a year, it's reinvested in the gardens for the part. That's one of the other principles of SHOOP and parking reform. Right. And that is not something that I added right now because I believe I also heard that the fee is something that would come back later. And so that's something that's certainly established in the future. That's a principle, though. It's not setting a fee. is just saying that if there's excess funds, it would be reinvested. And I believe that's something we can put in the resolution. Sorry. something. Sure. We're certainly establishing that. That's a principle though. It's not setting a fee. It's just saying that if there's excess funds, it would be reinvested. And I believe that's something we can put in the resolution. So. Any more comments? But we're just trying to move this on to the next step. But I do think taking the signatures out upon reflection. I think that's a good idea. Well, let's keep this as simple as possible. Yes. And I want keep this meeting going to. Just one clarification on the signature portion because the way that our ordinance is written is there's two kind of check and points if it's initiated by the public. So getting the petitions and then there's also a check and point where the city would survey residents in that area to see if they're in favor. So let's say it's we remove that first first petition portion. I mean it's City Council initiated. There's still that step of we would the city would take a survey to see if 67% are in favor and then there's the 50 plus one. It comes as the authority to approve with the 50 plus one. So there's two sections in our ordinance that reference reaching out to to the public and seeing if they're in favor. So do you also recommend removing that as well? Yes. Okay. No, I'm just trying to keep it simple. Um, you know, so I had already kind of made some suggestions, but I agree. I think we should strike 10.40.040A, the initiation by neighborhood petition. I agree with the other council members. And also in section 10.40.070, to make sure that all those documentation show addresses within the permit area. And then when it says, remove the language where it says, unless otherwise prescribed by resolution, establishing the residential parking permit area, each residents within an RPP area may receive upon application one parking permit at no cost to the applicant, subject to the conditions established by the director to affect the purposes of this chapter that whole sentence those two sentences should be striked and disreplaced with all permits show require payment of a fee as established by city council resolution. And then there's also towards the end of that where it says the City Council may by resolution, it should say establish different fees for initial and additional permits. Other than that, that's the only, just to be more specific on what I'm saying. I've said and also think that we, I'm not sure if we want to add this, but it's in the guidelines, but I think that we should explicitly state that no residential parking permits will be issued to vehicles with delinquent parking citations, vehicles with expired registration, vehicles registered as commercial vehicles, recreational vehicles, boats, trailers, or oversized vehicles. And I think that's mostly it. That's the only suggestions that I had. So Okay. So at this moment, can we go ahead and make a motion to make those amendments mentioned? I'll make a motion that we move forward with the RPP plan with the amendments that have been mentioned. Okay. Anybody wanting to second that? I second it. All in favor of the. I. I. I. Okay. Thank you very much. Congratulations, guys. Okay, so we're moving on to item 6.1, which is the informational reports. Thank you for sticking around. Those of you that still have a presentation to make, and this is the automated license plate reader implementation updates. I believe that's done by our police. Can we hear the library first? Oh, sure. I'm not sure if you guys missed that one. Okay sorry Chief. Hello, okay, there we go. All right. Well, good evening, everyone. Good evening, Mayor Baraghan. Good evening, Mayor Barragan, City Council members, City staff. We got some library staff in the room and hello to everyone from the public listening this evening and tuning in online. My name is Kelly Reineker. I'm the Interom Library Manager here at East Palo Alto. And for those of you who may not know, I started my career as a librarian here back in 2015. Very happy to be back and thank you for giving us some time to present this evening. I know I have 10 minutes so we're going to be moving quickly. And I'm just seeing my Teo County libraries is very proud to offer services that ignite growth and strengthen our community. And there we go. First established as a county library back in 1912 and about 25 years ago we were established our library joint powers authority, also known as the JPA. And our service area covers 351 square miles. We are made up of 11 member cities and the unincorporated areas of the county. And we have 13 library locations and also provide services beyond our library walls through our book mobile and through the library outreach. So our communities comprise a rich diversity of individuals and our services and collections in Bracent support them. We have talented staff and wonderful volunteers who create a welcoming atmosphere that inspires our communities and includes all. Our programs and collections are very highly used. And I want to share some statistics with you from this past fiscal year. We circulated over 2.4 million items with a slight increase of 4% from the previous fiscal year. Our library visitors were also up by 16% for 1.7 million library visits. visits. And we had over 10,300 events, and that's a 36% increase from the previous fiscal year. Our website is also very well visited. That's where you'll find our library catalog, and we had a 51% increase this year. And also our Wi-Fi sessions were up by 14%. Laptops and hotspots that we check out are very heavily used and well appreciated by the community. We saw an increase of 40% of the circulation of those items. And at the local level, Eastpellal to a library had about 70,000 library visitors last year and we circulated 44,000 items. Oh, thank you James, we're keeping up. We also saw about 15,000 digital downloads this past fiscal year. Many of you are aware we closed temporarily last year. We're located on the second floor in a very, very small space. So our program attendance did crease somewhat last year. We had about 3,000 attendees. but we did, however, reach over 4,000 folks through our community outreach, participating in community events, and visiting schools, preschools. So now, like to highlight some of the accomplishments of our library system, we do believe that libraries uplift communities, but also that our communities uplift libraries. So I'd like to take you through a few accomplishments. And this past year we began a robust process to update our strategic plan. We held interviews and surveyed thousands of community members and stakeholders. We sent our staff to schools, laundromats, grocery stores, trying to reach folks who maybe we haven't talked to in a while, and use these insights to develop our strategic plan, which has now been released. We will be receiving a printed copy of that, along with the annual report. And this plan will guide us for the next five years in meeting community needs and refining our services and setting and issues goals for the future. And I'm very proud to announce we had a 98% favorability rating as well as a result of those surveys. And here I'd like to introduce you to our updated mission. We strengthen our community by creating an inclusive sense of place and environment for learning. Our vision is to ignite growth through transformative experiences. And this plan again will carry us through the next five years. Some of our programming highlights, we are increasing our efforts to engage seniors in 55 plus audiences. We offer tech classes, wellness-centered programs, just some examples here in East Palo Alto, are to our very popular Tai Chi class and different music and art programs. And we really want to be a space for folks to connect socially and combat loneliness in the lives of not just seniors, but everyone. Speaking of our English language programs, we support learners in improving their English. We have conversation clubs, dedicated classes, book clubs. We have currently a citizen test prep class that's been very popular. We're hosting Know Your Rights workshops and really doing a lot to support language learners and we're very grateful for our volunteers who drive these programs. And if you happen to know anyone who would be interested in volunteering, we're always looking for folks to help support our learners here in these follow-all. So feel free to contact me if you have some ideas about that. Also, in the last fiscal year we opened our first library outpost about the Pacific Asancha's library. It's sort of like a library vending machine, if you will. It has a curated collection. It's available 24-7. You can go up, pick out a book. You can also pick up items that you may have requested. And we are working on plans to expand those to other locations in our service area. And if you've been to these pallops of library, you know it is a bustling environment. We offer lots of creative and fun programs. We like for folks to learn, experiment and play. We've done different tech workshops around learning how to use Adobe products, Photoshop and just all kinds of things. And we also have some interesting items for checkouts, as karaoke machines, we have board games, and more recently we have blood pressure cuffs, as well as Nintendo Switch and video games for checkout. And of course books. As well, you know, our spaces are super important, you know, in times of unexpected weather, like those are storms, our extreme heat, our libraries, our destinations for supports. We provide a place to recharge, provide access to the internet and reach for folks to access resources during those times. And we've worked with our partners in the cities that we serve as well as the county Department of Emergency Services. We worked with the Red Cross and PG and E, the help folks in difficult times. Our library champions, those are our staff, are very dedicated and are always looking for opportunities to better our community libraries and provide exceptional customer service. We're very proud that 32% of our staff speak another language. We've got Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Hindi, Tongan. I believe we have some folks who speak Russian. Lots of languages represented. And even more proud that Eastpull also library our staff over 90% of our bilingual. And would like to thank our volunteers and friends of the library groups as well as the foundation who really give us critical support throughout the year. We had over 500 volunteers contribute over 25,000 hours to our success. And of course, a lot of exciting developments happening locally here in East Palo Alto. I'd say for us the past fiscal year reopening our space down here was a huge highlight. We're very happy with the new space and public as well as really enjoying the updated space. That was done as part of the county's renovation project. So we reopened in February of 2024 and we have updated furniture, carpet shelving as well as a reimagined layout, which is really working very well. A lot more spaces for folks to study and for kids to get cozy in our children's area. So if you haven't been yet, do check us out. And I just want to thank you once again for giving me the chance to share about this exciting past fiscal year. And for trying to figure out this microphone. We do appreciate the strong support of our city, city council as well as the city staff. And really thank you for helping us continue to have a successful year. And do you want to thank our JPA member Mark Dynan as well as city manager Melvin Gaines for their work on the JBA governing board and operations committee. And of course thank you to the East Fellow to library staff for their dedication and passionate work. So thank you for allowing me to speak tonight and again looking forward to working with you all in the future. Thank you for that presentation. I don't know if we have any comments or questions from the council. I just want wanna say thank you. I think one of the prime goals, at least that I have being on council is really wanna move forward and fund a new library and get it built and move forward as quickly as possible with it. I mean, you guys do amazing work in the space that is here, but I think once we have a new library, it's going to be transformational for the community. And libraries are something that benefits everybody. It's not just, I just went to the library today and I ordered a book. I read Doon. I wanted to read the second book Doon Messiah after seeing the movies. And ordered it just picked it up right before, meaning conveniently across the hall. But I think as a priority for our council, I think there's broad agreement that we need new library. We need to put our money where our mouth is and actually get it built and get it done. We're working on that. I mean, there's going to be a lot of details in the next month. I hope that should excite people. I'll leave it to that, but thank you for coming by. Yes, thank you. I don't know if Council Member Lincoln has something to say. Thank you. Yes, I just want to say thank you for the report of all the things that you offer to our community. I occasionally step in and take my little one. I think it was there last week. I used to do that a lot more with my oldest one. I'm trying to do that again with my youngest. But I know that the libraries are very important part of our community. So thank you for all the services for your dedication for those of you that have been here for years. That maybe we might have probably crossed our paths, maybe in high school, middle school. I don't know. or maybe had siblings that were going to the same school. So thank you so much again for your dedication. And I think that I believe are we just accepting the report at this time? Correct. Okay. I don't know if we have any comments from the public at this time. There are none. Okay. Well, thank so much. Thank you everyone and I hope to continue seeing you all again. And also visit anyone by sign up. Thank you. So we're gonna go ahead now and we're going to move on to item 6.1 which is the informational report on the Automated License Plate Reader Implementation Update. Thank you. Good evening, Councilmembers. Jeff Lucci, for please. I can't see the slide anymore. They move the monitors on me. I'm waiting for my PowerPoint, so just bear with me one second. Yeah. I like the proved. to increase our effectiveness and to increase public safety. During that meeting when the trial period was approved, Council directed staff to come back quarterly, on a quarterly basis and report out on flock activity and asked that the, this be designated in our policy and our department policy. And that's policy is section 4 428.4 And as you can see from the slide on the right hand side the bottom line that section was added as council director slide, please All right, so in December 2024 and where you'll see there is a picture of part of our monthly audit report. You can find the full audit report on our website in the AOPR section. Each month, December, January and February are all on there for your reading pleasure. We went live December 10th, 2024 with 23 of our 25 cameras. Our auditor found that all searches were done within policy and I wanted to highlight one notable event which took place on December 27th, about 9.13 AM, officers responded to the report of gunfire in the 600 block of Bell Street. When they arrived on scene, they found two subjects at fired multiple gunshots at each other and one from a moving vehicle. A private security camera, the picture in the photo on the left, gave us a video of the Suspeg Vehicle, but no license plate. Next photo please James. So, and actually next two photos. Through the use of the FLOG cameras, we were able to capture the Sus capture the suspect vehicle while it left East Palo Alto and record the license plate number given us a suspect vehicle and we using the flock cameras we followed the vehicle All the way to a Modesto where ultimately Parked in a private driveway and got covered up immediately But it's through the use of the flock cameras that we were able to identify the suspect and get that person in custody and locate the suspect vehicle. So flock wasted no time paying dividends. Slide, James. All right, in January 2025, 23 of 25 cameras still. All searches were conducted within policy and we had 18 notable incidents. And I want to highlight a notable event that took place on January 21st. On that date about 9.54 a.m. officers respond to a report of a hidden run on the 600 block of Donneau Street. Officers arrived on scene to discover the vehicle collided with a building, Jones Mortuary, and struck the electrical box, causing the building's wall to cave in. And then the driver left his front bumper behind as well. Driver took off in the vehicle, left the area, but it was described to us as a blue outy. Searched the flock cameras, helped identify the suspect vehicle, and a short while later, we found the suspect vehicle at Home Depot Park in Lott with no front bumper. The driver is arrested and he admitted to the hit and run. That was held accountable. Next slide please. No, we're off every. Keep going through. Yeah, that's the blue out in there. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, but go to the next slide please James. On the left side you'll see a snapshot of our department website for license plate readers and it has a link to our transparency portal, which you click that link, it'll take you to the picture on the right where it has a lot of detailed information about our use of the flock cameras. And on the left picture you'll see each month's audit report on the bottom. It's available to look at anytime anybody wants to. But everything I gave you guys tonight, except for the photos is on our department website and available to anybody at anytime. That's all I got. Thank you, Chief. I don't know if anybody on council has any comments, questions at this moment? Concerns? Where we go to public comment or should we do public comment? Do we have any James? I don't see none. I don't know if you have any cards there. I've seen that. Oh, sorry. We did receive one. Well, maybe there is one. Chris Cowell. OK. And Miss Wilkerson. Good evening again, council. I'll keep this one shorter. In general, I've been really happy with seeing the transparency reports and audit reports on the city police department website. I've been digging through the data and I was really impressed that seven stolen vehicles were discovered in February 2025 alone. I mean, if you extract this out 12 months, probably 84 in a year, assume $10,000 per vehicle, that's almost $1,000,000 with the vehicles that are recovered for a system that's about one tenth of the cost. I see the ROI just from that alone. My main topic is about private locations, actually, such as the Ravenswood 101 Home Depot, number of HOAs. It came to my attention that there are two Fox safety cameras at Home Depot, but there are six or seven entrances into the Ravenswood 101 shopping center. I know the city doesn't own the shopping center, but the city does have one vote on its board. And I would like to really see the city advocate for more Fox safety cameras at every entrance in the Ravenswood 101 shopping center. The data that backs us up is I've attended some of the beat meetings that the officer lamb has held. Did you know that around 50% of all crime in B3 is occurs in the Ravenswood 101 shopping center and that more than a quarter of crime in the city happens in B3 is occurs in the Ravens with 101 shopping center. And that more than a quarter of crime in the city happens in B3. So at least probably a quarter to a third of crime is just in that shopping center alone. I like how the Fox safety camera can share information with the police department if they want to. And at least from the data data it seems like there have been a few crimes that have been found that ended in the shopping center which I have to think is because of those private cameras. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Next speaker, Gail Wilkerson Dixon. It's I. I wasn't aware that the they had gotten the cameras up already. Boy, that's fantastic. They need more. And one of the cows said that we should have them going into the, you guys keep giving off these vives. You have to act people. Um, that guy in the White House, he, he drives the V. King and stuff like that. But you guys have the rule of ordinance is everything. You can make this city safe and tell those people who own that property. They won't even turn my calls. They think they stuff them. But that's their attitude. And people will carry on being that block sedatal. If you let them, you say this is for the benefit of the city or else. They don't, we're 2.5 square miles. How many acres is over there, Reemanswood, 101, and for the safety, and make them clean it up as nasty, gum and paper and trash all over the place, and they have homeless people of mine, Marie McKenzie tried to clean that up. But you keep asking, no, you don't actually have a city and you have to demand stuff for the safety. You don't have to say that because they own it. You can, I mentioned this before, they own the property but you can tell them what to do with that property. You can re-zone, you can put ordinances in and that great big old center over there empty nasty you can make them do things and in a legal way their laws on the book but the license plate reader my son was murdered in June of last year, an organ, not at least East Palo Alto, and they caught the guy by the license plate reading. Everybody had a camera, even a church, and they had the guy on camera, but the police said they didn't want to go in there and say they could say it anybody. So what they did was scour with the license plate and they found his car. Please wrap up your last comment. I got two more at words and they caught the guy. So put more license plate and specially around Ravenswood 101 and four seasons probably got them all here too. Thank you. Those are our last speaker for this item. Thank you so much. Council members, any questions, comments, please? Sure, I mean, I just make a comment that I think technology is our friend, security cameras are everywhere. And especially in the city that has limited resources like East Palata, we should be embracing cameras. That other cities have is they have a center with cameras like in the parks and in dumping areas and areas with known issues in the past. And they can have somebody monitor the live video feeds without it being a sworn officer and just making the force more effective and no I think we should embrace solutions like that and we obviously need to be concerned about civil liberties and be aware that there's sensitivity there but But at the same time, you know, if we have live feed of cameras going into the police department, or sorry, live feed from the parks, you know, going into the police departments, I don't have any problem with that. I think it's going to make our parks safer, our public spaces safer. We're going to make people feel more comfortable out and about in the public area and we're all on camera anyway. So that's just my general. make people feel more comfortable out and about in the public area and we're all on camera anyway So that's just my general thought. I'd love to hear more suggestions of things like the flock camera They can make policing more effective in East Pellalto well at the same time Being aware that there are civil rights issues that we absolutely have to you know protect civil rights and not be intrusive But I'll you know walk that line. Thank you. So I think it's good to have, especially when we have unresolved like murders, it would definitely be helpful to identify the potential suspects who are in the air, especially if they were in a vehicle. And so I think that it's a good program. I've seen it personally. I went on a tour with one of our CSOs and I got a firsthand demo of how it works. It creates kind of a network. I know we've been able to identify a lot of stolen vehicles that way. So I think it's good to have. And yeah, thank you for implementing this program. So I just want to say thank you once more for your service or your dedication. Please also extend my gratitude to your team. And with that, I believe we're going to accept your report and your recommendation, which is to receive the report of the License Plate Reader. And hopefully, you know, we'll have you back, maybe asking for more cameras. Thank you. Do we need to have a motion to second the note because we're just accepting the report. Okay. Thank you. So with that we're moving on to item 8 which is the adjournment of the city regular meeting, the city council regular meeting and we're moving into the East Policy Sanitary District Board meeting. It will be let by President Diamond. Page eight, section 11. Oh, that's just, he's talking about. and 367 or is it 10 point? Oh, 363. 333. All right. Good evening everyone welcome to the East Pal Alto Sanitary District Board of Directors, our Center District Board meeting. The time is 909 pm and the first time on the agenda is the approval of the EPSD board meeting agenda. Can we get somebody to make a motion to approve the agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda for the eSports center's district. We have a second. I'll second it. All in favor. Aye. Aye. All right. Moving on, item number 10, approval of the East Pell to Senator District Board Meeting Consent Calendar. The item 10.1 recommendation except the cash disbursement report required pursuant to California Health and Safety Code section 6794. This is a consent calendar item so you all can either pull it or pass the consent calendar. Approving, right? Just approve the consent calendar. We'll move to approve the agenda. We need to approve the agenda. We're in a motion that we approve the consent calendar. Second. All in favor. I. I. Moving on do we have any EPSD board meeting closed session items? We do not. Moving on to item number 12. East Pawl, the Sanitary District Board meeting, public comments. Are there any speakers? Go Wilkerson. I think I mentioned this before. You guys going to have to make it clear you are put hats on your head, you know, take the city council out putting on sent here. So people know the difference. But I know this has, I don't know if this has come to your attention, but you're separate. This is what it was sold to the public for. You're separate. But it doesn't look that way. And I was told that I could not be on the public works and the sanitary. And I was wondering why? Because you're separate. And it's turned out totally different than what it was sold to the citizens. The way it was. We're separate. You're city council. And then you sit there. And then you turn into magic. Cool. I guess. So. It's confusing. I had to sit down and think about it. Just think about what people who are not involved are thinking. And you're going to get sued. I know you are because, I know you don't like that. I love it. Part of my employment. You are representing the city and the sanitary district and you've told the public that you would be separate, but you don't look separate and by what happened to me, the public works and I can't be on the sanitary advisory, that doesn't make sense at all. So I think you guys are dot your eyes and Eisencrawlshire T. Mr. Attorney, city attorney over there, who said I couldn't work for the Ravenswood School District and be on a commission for the city. That does not make sense. I got two degrees. I know better. I know how to read and write. But anyway, That's all I'm like I'll say to you. Thank you. Thank you, and those are early speaker. Thank you, Gail. Moving on to item 13.1, except the annual financial reports for Eastpel to Sanitary District for fiscal year 2023-3 2024 the recommendations adopt a resolution accepting and directing staff to file with the State Controller's office the annual audited financial reports for fiscal year 2023-2024 Um, did I do have some comments on that item? Oh, yeah, staff has a presentation to start. Good evening, Council members. I mean, both members and member of public. My name is Tomo, finance director, district treasurer. This item is to accept annual financial report for the sanitary district for the fiscal year 2023, 2024. And we have the external auditor, present the audit result and then we take question at the end. David. Good evening, members of the Board of Management. So as was said, the fiscal year June 30, 2024 audit was completed. In the first slide, it's a snapshot. So it was an unmodified opinion meeting. It's a clean opinion. In accordance the accounting principles gap. However, there were four audit findings. There were indications of an allegation of fraud. I had no difficulties with management. So, and then there was abuse in the spending of the district, which is part of the audit findings. So we'll look at really high level, what is the audit process, we'll look at the statement in that position, the revenues expenses, some financial metrics, we'll look at the audit findings, recommendations and conclusions. And if any of the board members I'm fine if you have questions while we can interact, you're not the way till the end of this fine. I have a question. Yeah, yes, sir. Key go back to that slide. Okay. So if this is a financial report. Yes, sir. There were indications and allegations of fraud. How does an allegation occur during a financial audit? Oh, I have inquiries and management inquiries of board members inquiries and employees. And then when then there's allegations and I have to say, okay, what? Give me some evidence supporting that. Okay. Um, and abuse of spending. So these are just allegations that you're receiving from former employees, board members, you know, correct. So my question is like how does that relate to someone doing an audit? So with the junks of the auditing standards? Outside of those allegations. Outside of those allegations, don't quite follow. So you're saying how do the allegations of fraud have to do with the audit? So as part of the auditing standards, if there is indication or allegations of fraud, the auditor is supposed to communicate that to the board. Okay. And that's really what it is due to the auditing standards. So, you should technically find all fraud of material amount, which is a larger amount, not necessarily a smaller amount, right? This was very material. Oh, it will get into it in the presentation. Okay, that was a smart question for now. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my apologies. Next line. After the table of contents. So a very high level process of an actual financial audit is there there's a planning process where you have to understand the procedures and policies and assess the risk, then what you do is you create a program, you test, and you make sure what is in the financial reports is actually an accurate statement in accordance with the counting standards. And then based upon those results, then there's an unmodified opinion or qualified depending on the situation. So if we go to the next slide. Statement of net position. So I'll just highlight some of the larger balances for cash. This is unrestricted cash was about 23.356 million. an increase of about 9, almost a million from the previous year. There is just the board knows restricted cash that is restricted for the CalPERS. Another highlight is the deferred outflows that is due to pensions and other post employment benefits. Next slide. The liabilities accounts payable was around 800,000. The net pension liability just so the board knows that is an estimate that's calculated by CalPERS was just about 800,000. That's going to fluctuate. And then another large amount was the deferred inflows related to pensions in OPEB, which was about 1.3 million. Next slide. So the next slide is the net position. So this is literally just assets minus liabilities. We break it out into the three parts. Then investment in capital assets restricted, which is technically the restricted cash, and then everything else is unrestricted. Next slide. So operating revenues was $5 million. Non-operating revenues, which is property taxes and investment earnings was $1 million and then capital contributions was $2.2 million. Total revenues was about $10 million total if you include the capital contributions. Next slide. Then the special item, this is the last due to fraud. So there was, you know, the, the fraud. There was, and then there was a reimbursement. So the net amount was 360. Revenue's minus expenses was 6.1 million. Oh yes sir. So you said the fraud what is the fraud? It was how much can I speak about this? There was 519 $10,000 fraudulent check cashed. That's the fraud. This happened before the city took over correct. Correct. Yes, this was in March of 2020. 2024. The city took over October 1st. Okay. That was my question as well. Was this fraud? I've heard things, you know, and I think it's still being investigated. But I just didn't know what was the fraud if there's like, it has been a conclusion to that investigation. So if I can jump in here. So I think the term fraud here is a term used because we don't fully know what happened. What we do know is that a payment was made to someone that wasn't an authorized vendor, which leads to the conclusion that there's possible fraud. We don't have necessarily any, we're not prepared to make that sort of a conclusion at this point. But I think it's a way to kind of convey what I just stated, which was the payment was not made to a vendor, even though something was issued for that vendor. But right now it's an open investigation and we want to be very careful about what we disclose. We want to be hyper vigilant of protecting the integrity of the investigation, which is why nothing has been revealed at this point. But we at the same time convey the results of this audit report in a way that can be sort of understood to the best in the best way that we possibly can. Okay, I just wanted to be careful when it comes to reports when you say that there's fraud, as there have been a't like, I just wanna be careful. I understand you do have to kind of report, but I don't wanna put, when you're putting allegations out, I don't want to be taken the wrong way. So that's why I was asking if there was been a conclusion. I think what we can say is there's not a conclusion at this point as to those. So I think maybe we could use different words like maybe it's unaccounted for or some but like I think like charge and potential frauds like I'm not ready to. I'm not ready to. So what you're asking is to reclassify that special item in the report. Is that what you're asking for? Yeah, so we have a conclusion to the investigation. So these are management's financial things. I'm okay with changing it actually, because as long as it's recorded as a special item, which is in accordance with GAP, I'm okay with. Well, we can do, we can go back if that's, it's management's financial statements, ultimately. Well, we can, so, yeah, I think it sounds like you can make the change so long as it's, you know, consistent. We don't want you to do something that doesn't follow God, for sure. It's the, it's where it is in the financial statement, so it's special item. Right. So it's not detailed enough to say like how to classify it. We just need to have it under special items. Right, and so just what I'm hearing from Councilman Rulinkin is that I don't think he's saying that it needs to be categories outside of the special items. But I think what he's trying to make a point about and he's putting it on the record which he already has is that the presentation does state fraud even though we don't know who's currently responsible. And I think that's probably sufficient. I don't know that there are any, there's any language that's similar to the word fraud in the actual report. And if so, I think he's perhaps instructing that it doesn't have to change where it is. In other words, it's still can be a special item. But, you know, removing concludes our language that we don't know the answer to would be helpful if that's something you can do. I'd also just like to clarify that the term fraud when I'm to short sometimes, but the fraud was that a $519,000 check was fraudulently cashed, meaning that. The district didn't intend for that check to be cashed by whoever cashed it. I wasn't suggesting that the district committed fraud. I'm thinking trying to say that fraud occurred. A check was fraudulently cashed and the many went missing. Okay. Yeah. So I think that we seem to be careful. you know, when we're making allegations and putting fraud and not defining what, you know, it's all I'm trying to say. That's really, I'm not saying that there is an allegation. But when it's like, you, I don't want it to be conclusion, like, you know, the draw conclusion, like we've fully investigated, we found it, someone's been charged, you know, but yeah, that's all I have to say. Understood. If you want, we can talk afterwards. But these are management's finance statements, I'm just providing an opinion. So it's really how they want to classify it really. Should I? Yes. So initially it was categorized as misappropriation of assets. Maybe that might sound easier to the redo of financial statement than calling it a fraud. So if you don't mind, then we can change it to that misappropriation of us. I think that's a little bit a little better but it's still kind of you know but it's okay. Oh should I proceed? Okay all right. So with the special item that's where we were there changes in net position with 6.13 million. If you go to the next slide, this is the financial metrics systems, just so, because I know everyone here is new to the board. So this is the cash position from 2020, which was about 21.3 million, and total and it increased about 25 and a half million in 2024. Just remember this is June 30, 2024. And in the current year, the way that the cash is broken out is by operating, cashless from operating, activities that was negative 64,000 non-capital financing activities, those of your property taxes 1.5 million and then capital related financing activities was negative 1.6 million and then investing was 1.1 million. So that's how you break out. There's total increase but check you break it out into four pieces. Current liabilities next line. So you could see that the current liabilities has decreased over the last few years. It increased this year mainly due to accounts payable. So accounts payable is just what the district owed to vendors. So that's really good to fluctuate from year to year. Next slide. Long-term liability. So the district did pay off its long-term debt and the other post-employment benefits was actually reported as an asset, meaning that by the actuaries and so pretty much the only long-term debt was the compensated absences and the net pension liability. Next line. So total revenues, it does include the capital contributions, but you could see that the revenues have increased steadily since 2020. Next line. So total expenses in 2020 was about four and a half million, went down a little under four million to four and a half, then went went up to 7.5, and then this year there was a pension credit, so CalPERS reported a pension credit, so that lowered it to 3.5 million without that it would have been closer to around 6. Next slide, we're going to get into the audit findings. So as a result of audit procedures, we discovered that asset liabilities revenues expenses material to the finance statements were misstated. So after the closing process, you know, the finance teams will do their year and close. So after that, we found multiple misstayments toward it wouldn't have been able to provide a clean opinion without that and it was a lot more than than previous years. So we recommend, disrecomplement internal controls. Does that have your management? It does? Okay, awesome. So management responded to all these. Everyone knows that the district pretty much, you know, the board of directors changed from September 30, October 1. So obviously the internal controls changed from the district to the city, whatever the city procedures are. So those internal constraints pretty much everything was implemented as of October 1st, what I'm trying to say. Material weakness number two, sorry, my apologies. During the fiscal year ended June 30 district management discovered that a disbursement check was manipulated and dispersed to a vendor not affiliated with the district. The district management failed to communicate the misappropriation of assets until three months after the misappropriation of assets occurred. So we recommend implementing internal controls policies to prevent misappropriation of assets and that management communicates sensitive information to the board of directors in a timely basis. Number three. So as a result of the auto procedures we discovered the district failed to follow the procurement policy. So we recommend the Board of Directors implement board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors We discovered a board member use funds of the district to travel and attend a conference is outside the scope of the district activities. We recommend the district to travel and attend a conference is outside the scope of the district activities. We recommend the district implement internal controls, insert travel and training relate to the district's activities. I have a question about this one. Yes sir. It kind of falls under the same lines. How are you to, I mean, obviously there's allegations and about previous board members about your travel funds and this and that. How, I mean, is this based upon an allegation? No, this is actually I was able to find documentation. Yeah. And so what I did with this one was okay, there's it's a sewer district. So if somebody would go to a conference that had nothing to do with sewer, had nothing to do with government finance or being a better board member, that is outside the scope or outside the activities. One of them was a podcast conference. Really has nothing to do with being a board member. Okay, so did you review the travel policy for EPSD? Yes. They allow, I forget if it's like three, four, they do allow going to conferences, but within the travel policy it states that it has to do with the activities of the district. So it wasn't so much of the conference, it was the type of conference, that makes sense. Okay. Excuse me. This thing is I kind of have issues with, you know, coming to these conclusions, hope that this is just an audit, And if someone makes an allegation, oh, they went to this conference, that conference and this conference. And oh, this is fraud and that's, you know, misuse of funds and this and that. Usually there's processes that people go through to investigate these things. And you can report them to the appropriate authorities, the district attorney or whatever, if someone's misappropriating funds. But to draw that conclusion in an audit, like a financial audit, like is that within the scope of what you have? Yeah, because the audit standard state that you're supposed to understand the internal controls. But when you identify a breakdown in the internal controls that could lead to a financial statement or breaks the policy you're supposed to communicate it to the board. That makes sense. So that's the reason. You can't find these because it's a gas audit, like a Jen accepted auditing center on it, it's in a separate letter. It's not part of the audited financial statements. If this was a yellow book, then it would actually be part of the financial audited financial statements. Because it's a hired tiered. It's just how the yellow book standards are. So if there's any allegations or indications of fraud, I actually have to by the standards communicate that. Okay. Or I'm not a body by the standard. Okay. It's that simple with the reclassification. That's fine. Councilmember or Carlos Romero has joined us online and has his hand up. Okay. I just want to finish my comments. Oh, yes, sir. So I can understand why someone would want to go to a podcast and conference because say you want to engage with the community. You want to learn how to communicate. You know, so my question is how do you determine what conference is outside of the scope of the district? I mean, you could stretch it, you know, and say a lot of conferences aren't within the scope. It's like a subjective. It's objective. It is, honestly, I'll just be totally transparent. It is subjective. So, and I already communicated that to the management. And so they were aware. So they disagreed with me. They could have rebuttled. That makes sense. All right. Yeah. So thank you thank you. You're very welcome. Carlos. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Yes. OK. Yeah. So I want to state very clearly, these are serious audit findings. I don't know whether the last speaker understands that in any audit, if we were to see these findings of the cities, believe me, both the city manager as well as our finance director would be in deep trouble. I am not going to be an apologist for the East Powell of the sanitary district. I I think we need to keep, I don't, I'm not in favor of trying to change any of these findings. These are the findings that an independent auditor came up with who is qualified to determine these weaknesses and these findings. Again, I state for the record that these are serious findings and I think are indicative of many of the issues that the East Pello Alto sanitary district had with managing the district. So I am glad that they are reported. I am glad that they are pointed out. And again, I think if Tomo or if our city manager were to be in an audit of our city funds or this agency in the future and we get these findings, they'd be very, very serious and we indeed would be talking to those representatives of the city as to what went wrong. So again, let's not be apologists for these poll-out to sanitary districts. Let's recognize that these are problems and significant material problems that need to be addressed. And I'm sure will be addressed. Maybe we can ask Tomo how we should address these, but will be addressed going into the future. I mean, God forbid that we had to go back, you know, four, five, six, seven years and look at all of the other issues that might turn up from the, from the accounting management functions of the previous managers of the district. So I'm not in favor of changing any of these. And you know, I'm glad we called them out. And again, I, you know, on a state for the record, these are very serious findings. I'd like to respond to that. I'm not being an apologist, but I just wanna be careful and what the information we're putting out in the public. I know there's been a lot of history in terms of the sanitary district and I don't think anybody really in this room has been involved in the sanitary district at all prior to the city assuming. You know control over the district. But with that being said, you know, when you're putting out findings and allegations and stuff, I just think that we should be careful about that. Most definitely. It does like if we reached out to the previous director, have you interviewed or spoken with them? That seems like it's yes. Okay. It's part of the auto process. Okay. Yes sir. So you received a response from the director. Okay. It's part of the audit. I'm supposed to interview or question management employees and the board. Okay. But nevertheless, I'm not stating that I'm being an apologist. I'm just trying to be careful on what we're putting out into the community. Understood. As an understanding that I do not want to be an apologist. And I'm also, and I want to put into the record that it is generally not appropriate to try to second guess as I'll use the term either uninformed or unqualified, kind of financial analysis from, from a board member or a city council member, to question an independent auditor's findings to potentially try to get them changed. But I don't know for what reason. When we have hired a competent independent auditor, this isn't about competence or independence, let me finish that clear. Let me finish. Whose audit findings have been discussed with staff have been and were put in this document, you know, assuming gap principles and and normal principles of accounting. And so we should respect those findings and use them to improve the overall management of the East Palo Alto Sanitary District. Let's continue. Thank you, Carlos. Let's get this report read. Okay. So we were actually, I believe at the last slide, correct. So following slide is the conclusion slide if I'm not mistaken. So this presentation is an overview. Is that the last? Yep. Yep. So this presentation was an overview of the financial highlights of the district. If you'd like to review further, please see the audited financial statements. Was a pleasure working with Tobo and Morrison team. I think then for providing me all the information, couldn't really do the audit without receiving the information. Then always feel free to contact me with any questions. Does anybody else have any questions? I think so. How long have you been auditing the EPA Senate? This will be the fifth year. This year, okay. So there's no need to do like a forensic audit presuming that we trust that you've been looking at the books for the last few years. No, forensic audit is different. It is different. So forensic audit is specifically for to look for fraud, right? Financial audit is to make sure that the financial reports are in accordance with the Genics of the Accounting Standards. uh... and i believe it's already under The financial audit is to make sure that the financial reports are in accordance with the genics of the accounting standards. And I believe it's already under there's an investigation, isn't there? Yeah, send your investigation. Yeah, I mean, what am I concerned with the EPA sanitary district is transparency and the issues you've raised. whatever you call it, it would be good to know. I mean, obviously we're looking forward to get the Sanitary District on the right track as far as proper financial procedures moving forward. But given that we're talking about serious allegations of fraud over half a million dollars disappearing I'm really curious what it looks like going back if you you'll peel back the layers of the other yeah That's that's management decision. Okay. Yeah, cuz as a non-added route to be independent So I cannot have any management responsibilities and that is a responsibility of management Okay, to say you know we need to go back you're basically the sanitary district is giving you files, you're reviewing them. They've selected which files to give you. No, no, I select the files. Yeah, no, no, no. So yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. I have it up for their questions. Any comments staff. Yeah, so thank you for your presentation. I think we should accept your recommendations. I think that we aim to provide our community with good services, including improving the sewer and the structure. We have a lot of development. We want to move forward. So we have to address all that. And so yeah, nevertheless, I accept your recommendations. Oh, thank you. Yep. We do have a comment online from Grace Poppel, member of the East Pal to Senator District Advisory Commission. Is there any public comment on here, James? Yes, from Grace Popple and Ms. Gail Dixon-Lokerson. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. So my name is Grace Popple. I'm speaking here as an individual. And I want to thank you for presenting data, which is very useful to understand what's happened. And thank you very much for conducting the audit and for sharing the results here. I do hope that there will be an opportunity for the East Palo Alto Sanitary District Advisory Committee to be able to ask questions about the content in the documents at a future meeting of that committee so that there's an opportunity to go into more depth and maybe a little earlier time of the evening and spend a little more time on it. But thank you very much for the opportunity to see the data. Okay, welcome. Thank you. Next speaker, go. time on it. But thank you very much for the opportunity to see the data. Okay, welcome. Thank you. Next speaker, Gail Wilkerson, Dixon, followed by Henrietta Burrows. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Interesting. Interesting. But I like to reiterate what Mr Lincoln said. You got to be careful. I've been in this city for since 1955 and I've seen it high, low, and everything. It embarrassed the hill out of me when Patty Hearst got kidnapped and they bought cheese and bread here at right here at University in Verode. I didn't eat all that stuff. But you got to be careful and right now I'm smart. I have been stomping out the fires about East Palo Alto being the murder capital world world and they're blaming it on African Americans. And everybody knows that the sanitary district I'm speaking as a citizen to was majority my minorities and bad news spread faster to good news. And I still hear how terrible the sanitary district was. It wasn't everybody. It was a few bad apples and they're gone. And it was all in the news and everything. So you got to be careful about using the word fraud and making other allegations. Because me, I'm speaking for my segment of the African Americans, we're insulted and we're tired of it, especially me. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't steal anything. I hate a thief, and I'll help you catch him. But you got to be careful when you use words that you should set a ledge. That's what they use in a legal community. A ledge fraud or a ledge. You have to say that. You see that on TV all the time when they said it was a legit like that. But you got to be careful and people are so quick to paint the black people in East Palo Alto. Abreca said you got to get somebody to speak for you and I said I could speak for myself. The murder capital in a world nation or whatever was blamed on the African Americans that were in East Palo Alto and that's what I see that was done to the East Palo Alto Center. Low hanging fruit. Black people are always low hanging fruit. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, Henrietta Burrows. Thank you. I have several questions, and I'm wondering if I'm allowed to ask them of the auditor. For example, did the travel expenses have anything to do with the misappropriated check? And when was the check written? Who signed it? And to whom was it written? Is it possible to have those questions answered? Ms. Burrows, I was waiting for the President to make this comment, but this is an ongoing investigation, so we won't comment on it publicly. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Those are last. Oh, sorry. One more speaker Ms. Donna Rutherford. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good evening Mayor Council my worst city staff. I just wanted to weigh in on the audit. The audit is something that's it's a normal thing that happens in organizations and. You know, it's important that when you're spending public funds that there's accountability there. And if the auditor found that there was some fraudulent spending, then it is a serious case. there and if the auditor found that there was some fraudulent spending then it is a serious case and it doesn't matter. Well it does matter how it happened and so that's why an investigation has to be done. You have to find the culprit who did this. I'm on a board and the same thing happened several years ago where it ended up $450,000 was stolen from the district funds and it was serious. And we actually, like Dr. Derser said, this was a forensic audit. So once everything was resolved, and the person that did this was put in jail, put in prison for several years, we did have to make the changes internal, the internal controls. controls, we had to put policy in place, we had to tighten up everything. And our reputation was in question, why did that happen? And the money was hidden so well that even when it was being questioned of the financial director, she had good answers to the questions, but the district manager should have been on top of this situation and never what happened. Well I won't say never because it happens all the time, but you just have to do some, have the audit done and they find what they find and you have to respond to that. So it's not an indictment. As I see it is just something has to be done and I appreciate the fact that David did the. He did the audit very well and it was very, very simple. We explained as far as I'm concerned because I've been through a lot of auditors and some are very complicated but I appreciate this and you want to start fresh because this is a new area that you've taken on. Thank you miss with the free. That was our last speaker. Okay. The recommendation is we adopt a resolution accepting and directing staff to file with the state controllers. Office for the annual audited financial reports for fiscal year 2023 and 2024. Can we get a motion to do so? I'm low motion. I'll second We have to do a roll call though So that's great Learning mayor Barragan. Yes. Uh, Vice mayor Dynan. Yes. Council member Lincoln. Yes. And council member Romero. Yes. Motion carries. Excellent. Thank you for your time. And, um, the item moving on item 13.2, except the notice of completion and carries. Excellent. Thank you for your time. And the item moving on, item 13.2, except the notice of completion and authorize the release of retention payment to Ranger Pipelines for the Sanitary Sewer Replacement Project at Beach Street, Clark Avenue and Green Street. The recommendation is that we adopt a resolution accepting the notice of completion to Ranger Pipelines for the Sanitary Sew replacement project at Beach Street Clark Avenue and Green Street authorizing the release of the retention balance and the amount of $238,000, $16.90. Authorized reading the recordation of the notice of completion with the county of San Mateo and finding that the proposed action does not constitute a project with the with the meaning of the California Environmental Quality Act sequel, pursuant to sequel guidelines 15378 B4 and five and that is not a governmental fiscal organizational or administrative activity that will not result in direct or indirect changes to the environment. Is there staff activity with this? Yes, the staff report will be presented by Humza Javit District Engineer. Thank you, Mr. Guinin, members of the board. My name is Humza Javit, and I'm the District Engineer with EPSD. And we have this item tonight. It is for the final retention release of this capital project that was done by the sanitary district. This project was completed last year. And essentially when city staff did take ownership of the project, it was complete. And we've been working towards wrapping up the paperwork and the administration of the project, which also means of final payments to the contractor, retention release, making sure all the improvements were done for the project specifications. So the project has officially been completed and this is more of a procedural item in front of the board tonight to make sure that they are able to release the retention and we can close out the project. So if there's any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. There are no questions or are there any public comments on this item? Okay. Okay. Grace, um, in the audience has our hand raised so public comment. Yes. It's uh, Grace. Popple. Thank you very much. Um, uh, I noticed that it said that the budget for the work was 5.04 million, but the spend was 4.76 and the difference was driven by scope changes, not necessarily an unused contingency in the contract. I am intrigued by what changed in the scope and is there some work that didn't get done that could have been in the scope and that might still need to be done. Yeah, that's a good question. Absolutely. So there was a portion of pipeline along Beach Street that was not constructed due to a PG&E gas main conflict. So that process will take at least a year in order to make sure that the pipeline alignment is coordinated with the sewer alignment. So PG&E would need to go in and relocate their line before the segment on Beech Street, the sewer segment is constructed. so that was one portion of the project that was eliminated. And staff has been working with PG&E to get an application going to relocate their gas main. So yes, to answer your question, there was a scope change that processes underway and it will be at least a year or more before this last piece of segment is constructed. Thank you very much. Thank you, Grace. Excellent question. Can we get a motion if there's all the public comment is done? Council member Romero has his hand wrist. Yeah, so there are no mechanics leans that have been filed against this project. That correct? Yes. All right. I wanted to make sure we check just because I'm not always certain that the sanitary district was other paying on time or paying all the bills. So, OK, thank you. Just wanted to make sure. Yeah. and just to follow up on that, yeah, there were there were some payments, you know, that's that's been sort of our job over the last six months is to work with the contractor to make sure that all the payments were finalized and they were correctly paid out. So we've been working with the contractor in that very closely. Okay, thank you. Unless are there any more comments from council members? Can we get a motion to adopt the resolution? I'd like to make a motion to adopt the resolution second Can we get a roll call vote please? Me here. I'm sorry president Dynan.. Vice President Baragon. Yes. Board member Lincoln. Yes. And board member Romero. Yes. Motion carries. OK, thank you. Thank you, Hamza. Moving on to item 13.3, signature authority. The recommendation is that we adopt a resolution, rescinding district board resolution number 419, authorizing the district's pleasure of East Powell to Sanitary District, the city finance director, to sign checks and warrants in the name of the district, authorizing the general manager of EPA SD, the city manager to sign all contracts, releases receipts, and similar documents in the name of the district, consistent with applicable local law, including the East Powell Alton Municipal Code, including without limitation. Section 2-59.1 formalities approval of Chapter 2 administration, and chapters 2.84 purchasing as amended from time to time, of the East Powell Alton Municipal Code, in the name of the district is authorized by the California Health and Safety Code 6487 and finding that the proposed action does not constitute a project with meaning of the California Environmental Act, CEQA, pursuant to CEQA guidelines in section 15378B4 and five and that is not governmental fiscal, organizational or administrative activity that will not result in direct or indirect changes in the environment. Thank you, Board President Dynan. I don't have much in the way of a report. I simply, the changes that we're proposing to make here are to ensure that the accounting functions of the district treasure continue in a manner that is how we've been doing things. And so previously, there are two changes here. One, you might remember the Sanitary District Code already allowed the district treasure, this authority, but we really wanted to formalize it because the way we did it last time was by definition. The second and more significant one is really authorizing the general manager to sign contracts releases and receipt and similar documents because state law allows that to happen so long as there's a delegation, previously required board members sign off on each of these things, which we don't believe is the most efficient way to do it. And so we're asking for this authority to make those two changes. And one thing I do want to note is there is a reference to section two dash five nine point one. Not sure how that got on there, but that should be, that should be stricken from that. We do want to make sure that whatever authorization the general manager has is consistent with the newly adopted two point chapter two point eight four. And with that, I'm hoping we'd get a motion. Okay, we get a motion to adopt the resolution. Yes, I'd like to make the motion to adopt the resolution as written through the chair. I think you do have a member of the public wants to make a comment. Ah, public comment on this one from Grace. Hello again, just before you vote on this, I noticed on page 419 under environmental it says the proposed action involves procurement of design services for tenant improvements in an existing commercial space. If you vote on it and that isn't actually true, will it be okay? Does that need to be checked, changed in some way? Thank you for that. Ms. Pappall, the motion would include that change as well so that it's consistent with the staff's recommendation and the staff report. Okay. Thank you. So just just to clarify the the mayor or in this case, the vice president's resolution includes the suggested change you mentioned earlier correct. John and the correction to the resolution as brought up by the previous speaker. That's correct. That's correct. Okay. So if that's if that's the resolution I'll second it. We get a roll call. Can we get a roll call vote please? Board President Dynand? Yes. Vice President Barbaragan? Yes. Board Member Lincoln? Yes. And board member Romero? Yes. Motion carries. Okay, moving on to another exciting 13.4 purchasing ordinance policies and procedures for East Palo Alto sanitary district. The recommendations we adopt in ordinance amending the sanitary district code to require purchases of service equipment and supplies for the East Pell Alto sanitary district to comply with chapter 2.84 of the East Pell Alto municipal code as amended from time to time in any policies and procedures as amended from time to time adopted to implement the same. Thank you, Board President Dynan. This change is just simply to carry forward an ordinance change that the council has already adopted and purchased the same to ensure that the district also follows the same policy. You heard the district auditor just make a recommendation that that be followed and that's what we're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions on this item from council members? Are there any questions from the public on this item. Seeing none. Maurice Baker's hand is up. But Maurice just wants to be promoted. He's taking the next item. Okay. So can we get a motion on this item? I'll make a motion. I'll second. Can we get a roll call vote, please? Board Presidentynan yes. President Baragon. Board Member Lincoln. Yes. And Board Member Romero. Yes. Motion carries. Item number 14 East Pell Autocenatory District Board Report. I have one report. I do as one. Okay. Um so, uh, one of the former East Pawel also Santer districts recently passed away this month. Um Mr. Allen McIntyre senior. Um and I just wanted to put that into the record. He's a former East Pawel also San Terry district director. He'll be having funeral services Monday, March 31, 2025 at 11 a.m. at Victory and Praise at 2029 East Harding Way and Stockton, California. Thank you, Webster. I guess my board report is that I've heard from several members of the Sanitary Board Commission or the Advisory Commission that they would like to be more involved and have received these sorts of items at a commission level before going to council. And I would actually concur with their assessment. It would be nice to have our commissions be able to analyze this and give us their insights before they come, before things like this come before council. So that is my report. I said I would put in a word for that. We have excellent people on the Sanitary District Advisory Commission and we should utilize their skills and abilities as much as we can. So thank you. And with that, if there's no more comments from board members, we will adjourn the Eastpaw Health and Sanitary District Board meeting and reconvene City Council regular meeting with Mayor Martha Berriganth. Sorry, could I just just a, under your last thought. So I just want to make sure that I understand what you're saying. You're saying that all matters related to the sanitary district that we are hearing should come to, should be discussed and come to the advisory committees that we're suggesting. That's not exactly what I'm saying. What I am saying is that matters like this in financial statements and such, you know, in the same way that public works go before the public work commission. It would be useful to involve them in some way. I know they had a skip meeting this month and there was some thought from commission members that, you know, why are we not meeting, especially at this early stage in the process. I'm not saying everything has to come before. You know, the advisory commission, but we should be engaging them. And right now, I don't feel like we are. OK, I just, I'm not necessarily opposed to that. though when it comes to audits, financial reports, we are the fiduciary of this entity, and I just wanna maybe we can circle back with our city attorney, as well as our CFO about the appropriateness of having the audit of financial statements go to them before they come to us. So I just made, maybe we can just research that. Yeah, your point is, Jacob. I just have something to say. I don't think they meet that often. Maybe once at five monthly, right? Yeah, so just clarification. We set their regular meeting schedule to be by monthly, but in their inaugural midi meeting, I explain to the committee that working with the chair and a vice chair, we could schedule special meetings. We didn't want to have a series of regular meetings that we wouldn't have discussion items for, but we have the ability to meet potentially monthly if they schedule those special meetings. I still need to meet with the chair, uh, Reverend Lewis Verges, but we will be setting some more. The goal was to identify exactly what they'd like to discuss. This financial report that went before the board prior, because of when it was completed, wasn't on schedule, what their meetings and we didn't want a schedule schedule special meeting last week to be able to bring it today but They have the ability to schedule additional special meetings if necessary They let some of my point, you know, they don't meet often enough and we would have to change that their meeting cadence To accommodate that So that would be something that would have to be factored in. Yes, and as we are, the city is working on the EPA SD or I guess staff is working on the EPA SD budget, similar to the city budget. And kind of their charter is to look at fees and charges. So having a good awareness about the budgets is a necessary input for them to be able to do their job effectively. And we want to take the proposed budget items to that board. But we're going to likely have to schedule some special meetings in order to stay on schedule. Okay, yeah. Essentially they're just advising us and providing recommendations. They're not voting on anything. So, you know, they're really just an advisory body at the end of the day. Yeah. Okay. But I don't have really anything else. I appreciate the insight that Grace and Debora bring two issues and the other members of course including everyone's favorite alternate Gail. So thank you. I mean, that was, you know, gentle advice. But let's move back to the, can we adjourn the East Palo Alto Sanitario District and move back to the regular East Palo Alto City Council meeting? Okay. Great. I think this is our last item, one of our last items in the agenda. So we're moving on to item 17 policy action, 17.1, 2025 taught grant program, notice of funding availability release. And I believe that we're gonna have a presentation by Mr. Baker. Is that correct? So I think we're finally ready for you, Mr. Baker. Thank you so much Madam Mayor. Good evening. Thank you for taking on on these topics. I don't plan on taking up a lot of your time this evening. I just want to talk to you all through the process of our TOT grant, release for funding availability. So let me know if you can't see my screen. You can see it. Thank you. Right. So I'm going to, like I said, I'm going to go through about six lives with you all, and then I'm going to ask you five questions and get your feedback on that. So just so you all are aware that TOT, the transit occupancy tax was a, was a voter initiative that was amended in 2022. So that 10% would go to children, youth and family services, including seniors. And that another 10% would go to affordable housing and the remaining amount 80% would go to the general fund. So grants were to be awarded to local organizations. And I should say nonprofits in that on that state local organizations. Or those who are serving the majority of East Palo Alto residents. In the past, TOT was formerly on a summer grant cycle so that it could impact activities. Taking place in June and August. However, our recent increases to the fund balance since 2019 have allowed City Council to offer more support year round. So you all made that decision. Just last year, Council sought to release more funds to the community by inviting more organizations to apply who met the criteria. And that grant amount was increased from what used to be a maximum of $16,000, up to $40,000 that were pending some criteria that organizations had to meet. 19 organizations were recommended to receive a grant. And we were able to close out a majority of those. At the time of funding, there was a balance just in the Children, Youth and Family Services that sat under $1.4 million. So the total grant funding amount that was given out was you know almost was $734,000. The process, the way we go about it. So last year, we issued a request for applications, RFA in February. And then we have an established community grants review panel, but you can see here, the community grants review panel was established in around 2014 and it was meant to elicit community input and feedback on how these grants were distributed to the community. So we had to have the request, the request was to have a four seasons representative, was to have someone with grants making expertise and then a resident, most to have someone that owned a small business or representative of and be a resident, and then most to have someone who represented a large business or was the owner, and then also last but not least, most importantly was just a community resident, resident in general. So in March last year, then we established that, we brought that review panel back with 22 applications and then they recommended 13, the Grash Review Panel recommended 13 organizations to be moved forward to Council for approval or consideration. Council approved those, but then they also asked staff to fund additional organizations that, you know, we could also impact during that fiscal year. So staff came back with an expedited funding round and we're able to add an additional request that council consider an additional six organizations, all which were approved, which brought that number to 19. All right, so the things we learned this past year is that administratively, there could have been more support given to a smaller group of applicants, 19 organizations, while they were all great and had amazing proposals and applications and programming to work with, we could have focused a little bit more and honed in a little bit more on a smaller group of applicants. And then releasing two rounds of funding slightly delayed the process of the grantees receiving their contracts, you know led to other delays with insurance and things of that nature. And then lastly the grantees could have benefited from a more robust orientation process following the grant acceptance process and staff will take ownership of that and we look to change that this year and really you know know, dive in before they receive their grant into what our expectations are and with and all the requirements that are going to come up like insurance and like the reporting that is asked. So those are some things we learned from this past year, but one of my very recalls is the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement and we plan to continue that. Looking forward. So we are proposing that Council approve a CAPT notice of funding availability of $350,000 this year that is just our recommendation you are able to set whatever amount you would like. And then with that we would hope that we can focus on with no more than 12 organizations this year versus the 19 from last year, just because administratively it was, it was a little big, it became a little bit cumbersome. Without, of course, if we don't, if we don't receive more capacity and support. Over here, if you see our proposed timeline for doing so, following this meeting, staff would like to post the notice of funding availability by the end of this week to the community. We will utilize a more robust process this year in terms of going out to all of our boards and commissions, putting it in our weekly newsletter, and then also just utilizing our general list that we have email list database. We know that people change, leave organizations or whatnot, but we hope that the list is pretty up to date. And then in April 1st, we wanna host our first mandatory informational session for those who are interested in applying. Then we'll respond to their questions and applications will be due April 22nd. We hope to bring the Community Grants review panel back together on April 24th, 29th, pending Council approval. And then on May 20th, we will bring those recommendations to you all. And then that begins the June process of onboarding. All right, thank you for listening. Quickly items for discussion. Number one is should the city prioritize funding for specific programs in the 2025 cycle. Sorry about that staff. I'm not sure. And then second, does the council agree with the staff's recommendations to issue a notice of funding availability for 350,000. Number three is should the city continue with the current grants community grants review panel members or modify that panel. You already saw those names and then should the grant maximum award be increased from 40,000 to 75,000 or should a different amount be set and then finally should the 2025 TOT grants program limit the awarded number to 12 or should a different number be considered. So with that being said, thank you for listening to my presentation and then I will. Eglier wait your responses to my questions. Thank you, Mr Baker for your presentation. I don't know if we have public comment before we go into the council discussion. Do we have any public comment at this moment? Okay, so I'm opening it up to the council if there's any additional questions or comments before we actually answer these five questions. Yeah, I've been since you're knowing what your recommendations are, Mr. Baker. You know, I'm aligned with whatever you kind of recommend for this grant program. That is the funding availability. Thank you, Councillor Blinken. Thank you, Councillor Lincoln. Do you have any more questions, comments from the other Councillors? Yeah, I do. How much exactly how much money is available? You say $765,000 or was that I did miss here Yeah, it's so since around so around $65,000 So What is the 350,000 relative to you're not you're saying don't spend all of it and just use 350 of that for grant funding. Yes. Okay. What programs did we fund last year and what were the, you know, what were the, you know, did all the programs, for instance, have to be free to people or what kind of programs were funding last year with this grant. For TOT it is not a requirement that the programs be free. However we would prefer that since we are using taxpayer dollars for this but no there was not a requirement that they be free. We had a wide range of programming we worked with the foundation for college Education. We worked with Enemontongue Polynesian Voices. We worked with Living Peace. We worked with Epicenter. Yeah, the range we worked amid Peninsula, Macedon. So it was everything from recreation sports, performing arts, and the senior center as well. Yeah, it was very a very diverse group. Okay, interesting. Should the city continue with the current CGRP members or modify the panel? I'd be in favor of modifying the panel. I think we, you know, having new eyes look at the same issue is important. I don't think we want to get into a friends and family funding issue and certainly folks have had a chance to review the grants and it would be in our interest to have new folks on the panel to look at the grants. Okay. Thank you. So if it's okay, Mr. Baker, do you want me to go ahead and ask the questions or do you want to ask the questions? Mary please go ahead and ask the question. Okay, so number one should the city prioritize funding for specific programs in the 2035 cycle staff I don't know what the council members Response would be I would definitely like to prioritize funding for specific programs. Okay. Council member Lincoln, what are your thoughts? And then council Romero? Sweet part was it funding specific programs? Through the chair, just a clarification. And it's not like for a specific program like Melvin's tiny tuts That's like for a specific programmatic area like youth services or music or something like that. I Think we should be able to provide some input at the council's direction in terms of general programs like if you talk about like youth programs and or senior programs is that what you're thinking? Correct. Yes. Okay. I think we can have some general guidelines. I'm just not like going to get beat too specific at this point. Thank you. How about council member in the middle? What are your thoughts about question number one? I think that staff has done a very good job in owning and refining this process. I would probably shy away from prioritizing funding specific program areas and let the organizations in the city that feel that they could utilize these funds apply and then have the group of five, whether it's that group or different members, but representing the same type of interest. I think it's important to have that diversity of opinion. So I would not have five community members selecting this, right? I think it's important to have expertise. So yeah, I would say let's, let's again, see what the community organizations in the city come up with. And those can be vetted by both our competent staff, Maurice, and your recently hired staff member member and then they go to the scoring committee that also works with you. I think that has worked so far fairly well. Okay, thank you. I think that I agree. I, you know, I think that we should probably look at the type of programs that are being offered. And if we could include some new ones, that maybe perhaps have been really close to getting the funding, let's say that we're runner ups. But, you know, maybe you didn't get the funding, but it was around the same. But that I guess of programs were, was that they were offering to the community the community that would be good just to, you know, have a little bit more diversity. Okay, so question number two, does the council agree with staff's recommendation to issue a notice of funding availability and if N-O-F-A of the $350,000, I guess I, should we do all in favor or any thoughts, questions, comments? I don't have any comments on this, but I'm fine with the recommendation. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is, is there a reason why we're not doing the entire $7? I think the number you said or was that just for, um, keep the money in reserve for some other use or what exactly is the reasoning behind that? Uh, it was just to keep the money in reserve because we have received an increase to the fund balance, um, above our projected numbers. So, but not to the level of we will be able to do continual rounds of $350,000. So if we kept some in reserve, then we'd be able to, you know, kind of bound us that out over the future years. Without. That's a skip back to number question one. Should the city prioritize funding for specific programs in the 2025 staff, so cycle staff. I would like to prioritize arts, music in the parks, you know, dance any program that's going to bring more hearts to use Pell Alto. And, you know, specifically, music in the parks, any dance programs, any art programs as well. But I'll moving back, I'm sorry, I forgot to say that. Thank you. Councilmember Dermittal, any thoughts? I'm the three shit I say that. Thank you. Council member, do you have any thoughts? I've already given you a thoughts about the special program. It's the program area piece. It is significantly lower than last year's amount. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Probably going to come into play for me on question four. Yeah, I'm fine with the 350. I might suggest a slight increase, but maybe that increase happened after we see what proposals come in. So I'm fine with. Okay. Thank you. I'm fine with it as well. Moving on to question number three. Should the city continue with the current CGRP members or modify the panel? Who would like to go first? Councilmember Lincoln. Okay. So the current representatives are in the staff report. Yeah, they're right there. I don't have a problem with modifying them or keeping them. I just don't think that we should say that this is friends and family. I think that's inappropriate. you nevertheless, I'm fine with keeping the current group, but if the other council members wish to modify the panel, I think that's more, I'm just indifferent to this question. Okay, thank you. Yeah, as I said, I think we can bring new lives to this issue. Okay, Mr. Council member, no. Yeah, I don't understand the friends and family kind of went that was maybe not not by Mr. Lincoln, but actually by and was referred to by Mr. Lincoln, Committee was made by the vice mayor. I don't think we've been funding programs, you know, of relatives of folks who are on that or you committee. Again, I think on the grants review committee side, I think it's important to have these categories. And so I'd like to keep the categories. And if staff wanted to come forward with some other suggestions to fill those that would be fine, I think it should be staff's, at staff's discretion. You know, you could come back with a whole new set of folks. But I'm fine with proceeding with that group again. Okay, thank you. Just one quick question, Mr. Baker. The current people that sit in the panel, how long have they been sitting on the panel for? The newest member is Alma Polito. The other members have been on prior to my taking over of the TOT branch process. And just a great point to mention. Thank you, Cindy Manager for that. I made a typo. The name is actually Mrs. Deborah Turner and I'm remiss for not getting that correct. Her and Mr. Turner over at a Bowel Insurance have done great work over the years. Over on New Bridge in the willow. But yes, Deborah Turner. But yes, they all predate me. Okay, I'm fine with the categories as well. I just want to know if there was like a sunset date for the people that just sit on the panel. That was the only, you know, a question I had, but I'm okay. Thank you. So moving on to number four, should the grant maximum award be increased from the 40,000 to the 75,000 or should a different amount be set? Let me talk about that. Anyone? I mean, I'll start with this is a reduced amount. I think if we did $75,000 grants, you know, we'd be, possibly you'll have enough for maybe another four grants, five grants at the $40,000 level. Because this is only $350,000, I would keep it at that $40,000 level in order to try to get you know a larger variety and more applicants coming in. So I think if you said it for $75,000, you would have a lot of groups coming in at that higher number. Probably right. I have more money. I would be fine with that, but 350 is a rather low pot this year. I just need some clarity on this. So just because the maximum is 75,000, that doesn't mean each program would get 75,000. That's just the maximum that someone could potentially get. it. So the simply that you're just changing this the maximum that's just the maximum that someone could potentially get. So, simply that you're just changing just the maximum that's one of these grants could potentially be made to one sort of, I guess, group or program. That's a great question, yes, Councilman Lincoln. So yeah, it does not set the threshold for everyone to be able to access those funds. Last year when Council increased the amount of 40,000, excuse me, they increased it with the criteria that programming had to be longer than three months, three months of programming, which is what the general amount used to be. So it had to be at least four months or longer. With this amount increase, you guys can set whatever criteria you want for that, but again, yes. It's just the maximum. It doesn't mean everyone will be, anyone will be awarded that. Okay, so with the increased amount, there's potentially more flexibility to fund longer programs Correct And some programs might even require that much Yes, okay Well, I'm fine with this you know keeping flexibility I'm but knowing that we can't that there is over an overall cap so That's is. Thank you. Yeah, I think we should have a flexibility to go to a higher level. If you're talking about doing three months of programming, $75,000 is not much for when you start talking about insurance and facility costs and things like, you know, staff especially. I'd also like to reiterate that I don't think, you know, if we are going to be sponsoring, say, summer camps with this kind of programming, that we should make it automatic. It has to be free for all participants. I think having it's entirely appropriate in a community like Eastpalt, so to have some people pay full price and some people be on 100% scholarship. But it's really bad policy if we want to offer great summer camps for instance for kids to say it has to be free because there's a lot of people who can't afford full price and it would end up being a much better camp for kids. If some people are paying full price and the ones that are being subsidized by the city can participate in the camp that has that. So I'd say both, definitely interested in having the option, not necessarily guaranteeing you'd go to $75,000, but having the option to go that high if there's a reason for it. I guess I'm wondering whether $350,000 is kind of a low. If we have a max of 765, I'd be curious what other past years were funded and whether we can meet that funding level, because it would obviously open up more opportunities. And then I would like to also comment on this. I think that maybe I'm leaning towards also the flexibility because when I first saw the 40,000, I'm thinking about the current economy and how everything is so high cost right now. So I think I would also be more inclined to having that flexibility. So thank you. Moving on to number five, should the 2025 TOT grants program limit the awarded number to 12 or should a different number be considered? So I guess it would actually come back to answering question two and four. How much money we actually end up, you know, allotting. If we go with the 350, we increase it or not. So I don't know what the other council members or Mr. Gaines would recommend. Through the chair, I just like to emphasize, on behalf of Mr. Baker, part of his request to keep the limit at 12 was due to how difficult it is at times to kind of get some of the organizations through our contracting requirements. And it takes a lot of work. So kind of 12 is kind of the maximum that he believes he'd be able to kind of shepherd through that process. So it's more of a limit of like what the council be okay with only doing that much and not saying, hey, let's fund more. Okay, yeah. So I guess that would be like the magic number to work with, basically. Yeah, just so you know put, put a 300,000 divided by slow, but potentially if we, if everyone apply for the same amount, it could we could put out just under $30,000 to each organization, but with variation, of course, there's going to be. Yeah, under $30,000 is not much for running a summer program. This is for three, these are programs for like three months, you said, Maurice? No, so programs, it can be longer or longer than that, but generally the programs that would apply for less than, for less than 27,000 would be those that are only three months. But we saw more organizations apply for a year around funding this past year. Okay. Is there any interest among other council members to increase the funding from 350 to say like 450 or just give us a little bit more money to play with? I would say that as we've done in the past, we settle level. We'll see what interest comes in and then you know you come back with your recommendations and say these other groups were not funded. What do you think? Would you like to add a little more to the pot rather than adding chew it right now would be my suggestion. question, but as far as the question goes, you know, now that it sounds like there are three people that want to move the maximum ward up to 75,000, I see no way we're going to fund more than what we want. Probably we want to fund 12 applications. I think if we're going to see probably a number of groups applying for the 75,000 well-over subscribing this amount of money if we go in the 75,000 direction. So, yep, I think your 12-limit is probably too high, but let's dig with that. That's my opinion. You're probably right, Councillor. I think it's just really a factor of the total amount of funding we allocate. The number of grants we issue is really relative not only to the total funds available, but the amount that's being allocated to each program. With that being said, if you want to cap it at 12, I guess we can cap it at 12, but knowing that we probably won't reach that number. So if it makes it better for staff to manage this process. Thank you, Councilman. Okay, thank you. I think, you know, if it's easier to manage, I'm okay with that number as well Do we have any other comments? Okay? So we're going to go ahead and do we have to adopt this recommendation or did he get enough Guidance from answering the questions at this point from the council. We're gonna do public comment minimum We already done it, I don't know if they we can should we go to public comment for the side of the front for 350,000 are we that where we're staying from right now until we come back on May 20. Yeah, that's okay. Okay. Do we have any public comment at this moment? Okay. The report recommendation was to it and there's a draft resolution attached so you can adopt this resolution and it was blank but it's authorizing the city manager to release $835,000 notice of funding availability for the 2025 transient occupancy tax grant program and to allow the community grants review panel to make recommendations on the application pool while increasing the grant maximum award for the 2025 grant program from $40,000 to $75,000. Okay, do we have to do a roll call for this or we just accept? You can roll call for the free price. okay? Can you please do roll call for the item? James but before can we have a motion all make a motion that we accept the resolution All second So roll call please Mayor butter on Yes, vice mayor Dynan yes Can't you remember Lincoln? Yes. And then can't you remember Romero? We're going to bring to us next time. We're moving on to item 18, which are council reports. I don't know if we have any council reports at this time from any council members. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. We're excited and looking forward to what you're going to bring to us next time. We're moving on to item 18, which are council reports. to us next time. We're moving on to item 18, which are Council Reports. I don't know if we have any council reports at this time from any council members? Um, yeah, some reports. Um, so over the weekend, I attended East Palo Alto, Chirobots. They had the Silicon Valley Regional Robotics, first robotics competition. I was able to see their first two matches and they both, they won both of them. So I'm excited that we have robotics, Newspaper Alta. I guess they were started right before the pandemic and then the pandemic hit. And they've been able to, you know, be successful and given that they're not like backed by a high school specifically. They're a collection of students within East Palo Alto. But, you know, I'm just excited to share that they were doing pretty well. And hopefully we can find a way to continue to support them. Thank you. I actually went as well to congratulate them and they were pretty excited. They were actually just really excited that they did very well, so that was nice to see. Anybody else has any council member or council reports? Sure. I also ended up at Woodside High School watching the Turo bots after having visited with them last week and attending one of their final practices. It's an amazing program. It's one that I advocated for previously about getting funding. And what's great about it is the kids are competing at the very highest level against all the regional high schools and they're kicking button-taking names a lot of the times. They were against Woodside, MA. They're more than holding their own. There's still have to wait to see if they're going to the nationals in Houston. But it was just great to see them participating. And really it was one of those things, you know, when I'm talking to my kid about rowing because he's doing crew every day, it's the same thing with the choreobots where it's like winter loose. They're winning. They're learning how to work as a team. They're competing with other kids. They are learning that the value of competition and learning that if they want to win, they have to work hard and study and really get better at it. But they're also giving the confidence that they can hang with anybody in the Bay Area. One of the things that's interesting is over at Bloomhouse, they have a full mock-up of the robotics course, which I had no idea exists. And it's apparently used by 14, you know come over to East Palato to do robotics. And it's a really amazing scene with lots of engineers who work at local tech companies who are coming to East Palato to the mentor kids on robotics. I was talking to a guy from Amazon. He said, this is way more interesting than my day job. Because they get to play with toys and make stuff happen in a very cool environment. If you haven't been over to Blue House to check it out, it's worth doing. The other thing is that I started, I think Carlos will appreciate this. I started a program affordable housing with the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo last week and attended an in-person and the rest is online. but it's an interesting program and looking forward to learning a lot more about the financing of affordable housing and all these other issues. Hey, thank you. Any other council reports? Yeah, one more. I think we received a public comment about this. There's an event celebrating women's history month honoring the life and legacy of June slimming. She was a Palo Alto city manager from 1992 to 2000. And so they're having a panel discussion and a community gathering on March 20th from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at mid-pin media center. That's at 900 Centennial Road, Pellow, also California. And so that was what was shared, and I guess it's sharing with screen right now. So, just about that, we put that in the council reports. Yes, and then I have one last, and then maybe we can call it a night. So the last report I want to bring to everyone's attention as well as at this Friday here in our own city council chambers. We're going to be hosting the speech contest that's done every year by the rotary club. So it's going to be from five to seven thirties of anyone's interested in coming to hear our youth. You're more than welcome to. So I don't know if we have any more council reports, council of momentum. Do you have anything to share out? Or you're good? No, but good to the order all past. Okay, thank you. So then with that, the time is 10.45 and this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.