you you you you Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Or good evening, I should say. We're getting ready to go to the office. We're going to be going to the office. We're going to be going to the office. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Or good evening, I should say. We're getting ready to get started with today's council meeting. Today is May 20th. The time is 6.33. At this time, I would like our city clerk, James, to go ahead and do the roll call for the council members that are present. Mayor Barragan. Here. Vice Mayor Dynan. Here. Council Member Brico. Yep. Council Member Lincoln. Here. And Council Member Romero. Present. You have a quorum Mayor. Thank you. Before we proceed I would like to ask you ask you James you James, if you can please reminder online public of the instructions for translation services. Yes. 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 you preferred language. There will be interpreters available during this meeting. Si osa le gustaría escuchar esta junta en español, por favor use el modo de interpretación localizada de abajo de su pantalla, presionando al ícono del globito y escogiendo español como su lenguaje preferido habrá interpreters disponibles. Thank you. Thank you James. So I'm moving. Oh. Thank you James. We're moving on to the approval of the agenda for today. I would like to actually move an item item 17.1 for after the reconvening of the EPA SD. So I don't know if I could please have a motion to second that. I'll second. Okay. Where are we moving it to? After the EPA SD board meeting is over. and we're reconvening the after item 15. Yes, after item 15. So all in favor. Oh, I didn't catch the so was a motion by me. Okay, and then seconded by thank you. Yes. So all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, thank Aye. Okay, so we're going to move on to the approval of the consent calendar. I'm at this time. I don't know if anyone would like to pull a few items. If not, I, do you want to pull them or do I? Yeah, I'd like to pull item 3.2 Jewish Heritage Month's Proclamation. I'd also like to pull 3.7, which is the Proclamation for Alfredo Bryant. I believe do we have a motion to second that? I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar minus 3.2 and 3.7. I'll second. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to read our proclamation for the Citibis Palazzo. This is in recognition of the celebration of the Jewish American Heritage Month for the month of May, whereas Jewish Americans have an important part of the American history and have greatly contributed in all areas of American life and culture since our earliest days and whereas generations of Jewish immigrants have arrived in the United States, fleeing persecution, seeking opportunity and their resilience and determination they built vibrant communities and enriched the American social fabric while advocating for civil rights, social justice and democracy for all and whereas Jewish Americans were instrumental in historical movement such as the labor movement, the civil rights movement and the for all. And whereas Jewish Americans were instrumental in historical movements, such as the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the women's suffrage with leaders like Rabbi Abraham, Joshua, I, his smell, I hope I'm seeing it correct. Part of me if I didn't. Marching alongside with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others contributing to the fight for equality. And whereas Jewish Americans have contributed to face anti-semitism, including a dramatic 344% increase in anti-semitistic incidents over the past five years are ranging from harassment to vandalism and violence according to organizations that are careful to distinguish anti-semitism from legitimate criticism of Israelite government policies. And whereas the city of East Polo also recognizes the importance for outstanding and solidarity with the Jewish American community to condemn anti-semitism in all forms of hate, ensure inclusive representation in civic life, and provide mutual respect and understanding. And whereas we celebrate the rich and diverse heritage of Jewish-American community, including those who live, work, and contribute to the life of East Palo Alto and recognize the importance and preserving and sharing their stories as part of their collective history. And whereas on April 20, 2006, the federal government proclaimed May as Jewish American Heritage Month to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of all Jewish Americans to the United States. Now and therefore be it resolved that the City Council of East Polo Alto, State of California here recognizes, hereby recognizes May 20, 25, as Jewish American History Month in the City of East Polo Alto and encourages all residents to learn about and celebrate the diverse contributions of Jewish Americans, confront anti-Semitism and all its forms and promote education that deepens understanding of Jewish American history and culture. Thank you so very much for all that you have contributed to our community and I think that's what makes in my personal humble opinion, I think that's what makes this country, still great that we have a fabric of different kinds of communities that contribute and make it a better place. So thank you so much for being here. And I'm not particularly sure if I hand this over to our assistant city manager, or if there's a particular leader, I should be presenting this proclamation to. Did anyone want to make a comment on this before? Yes. Before I go ahead and hand it over. Thank you. Good now. All right. Thank you so much for this proclamation, Mayor Bergman and the entire City Council. I'm very thankful and excited to be here today because this means a great deal to me. I come here wearing a few different hats. I'm here as a proud homeowner and resident of East Palo Alto for over five years. I'm here as a Jewish woman. I'm here as a Jewish scientist. I'm here as a new American citizen who voted for the very first time a few months ago right outside here. And in fact the very first person I messaged when I got my citizenship was Mark, letting him know he has one more vote now. But the most important hat I wear is that of a mother to a Jewish child, my son, no one with the head in the book. Boaz Alexander is six years old. The fact that the city that we live in has chosen to acknowledge Jewish American heritage man and thus show support for its Jewish residents makes me just a little bit less afraid for him. Boaz is named after my great grandfather. There's a go. And here today in the US, I had to make a choice. And that choice is to not wear the large star of David necklace when I'm in public with my son for for his safety. And that choice, choice says a lot. But so does your choice here today to stand with us. Jewish American heritage is rich, diverse, and like any good Jewish family, it's loud and full of opinions. As a scientist and specifically a microbiologist, I have to give an example of the example of Dr. Jonas Salk, who gave the world a podium vaccine, and then refused to patent it. And of course, the obvious example is Albert Einstein, who wasn't a biologist, but will make an exception for him. For example, one of his amazing discoveries was the fact that gravity can bend light, which is amazing. We can also reflect on other Jewish Americans, the people who gave us Hollywood, stand-up comedy, invented Google, Facebook, if I'm pointing it the right direction. Represent 35% of America's science Nobel Prize laureates and played a huge role in the fight for civil rights in America. And that's what this heritage represents. Resilience, values, history, humor, and pursuit of justice. And for my son, Boaz, it's also about pride, pride in who he is, where he comes from, and now where he is. So that's why this moment matters to me. And thank you all for helping to make our city, East Palala Alto, a place where he and all of us can feel like we truly belong. Thank you. At this moment, I would like to invite any other member from the community that would like to say something that might have a comment or if not we'll move on to our council members. Yes, you know, I want to say that I moved here about 46 years ago and I think East Palo Alto is a community that has always embraced diversity where one where another, a lot of different communities have ended up here in EPA. With also, I think, a long history of those communities having to struggle for social justice. Let's just say that in the context of the American experience. And so, yeah, I think it's only fitting that we have so many, only so many months, but this month it's also Asian American. but Jewish community and so congratulations and you know people have already made contributions but I'm sure that will continue and I do want to just say when I was mayor I was the one who brought this to the council because that was a missing piece and And I'm sure we probably have a few other missing pieces. But I think that's who we are, sort of a tapestry of all these different communities coming together. So, and thank you for being here to receive it. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any public comments? James, that you see? No? Seeing none at this time here. Okay. So at this moment, we would go ahead and we'd like to present this proclamation. I'm not sure if I'm not. Would you like to go up and take a yes? Thank you. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. and that's your time time. There you are. One, two, three At this moment, I hope that, um, Io Bryant, are you here? Present. Perfect. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to, I'm going to go ahead and read the proclamation. Honoring Mr. Alfredo Bryant for his enduring legacy of faith, family, and enterprise. So whereas Alfredo Bryant was a longtime resident of these pollalts, he raised a family and lived out a deep commitment to faith, service, and community advancement. were asked together with his family, his wife, Mrs. Bryant. They launched lots of... and were asked together with his family, his wife, Mrs. Bryant, they launched La Té, a groundbreaking drive-through cafe shop that became one of the first local businesses to receive national recognition through a digital village. Sorry, I forgot my glasses. And I'm sorry by the Lincoln administration of its innovation and impact on East Poulalto's visibility and growth. And whereas they work, they're work built upon the legacy of East Poulalto's pre-incorporation entrepreneurship, those who let the foundation for self-directed progress, community ownership and generational empowerment. And whereas Alfredo Bryant's role in civic life extended far beyond presence, he was a contributor, a builder, a man whose actions reflected his values, engaging in city events, supporting political efforts, and investing in the city's future through consistent leadership and faith-driven service. And whereas he will be remembered not only for what he built, but for who he was. He steadily laughter his integrity and the quiet strength of a solid man who could be counted on by his family, neighbors and city alike. Now therefore be it resolved that the City of East Palo Alto does hereby honor and recognize a Frey-Thom-Briant for his, I believe, daughters come forth and receive this and I don't know if they would like to say something before they receive it. Okay, sure. Can you hear me now? Okay, so hello everybody. My name is Rashida Bryant. I am a lifelong resident of East Palo Alto born and raised and I'm really proud to be here today and for my father to be recognized for his commitment and service to the community through entrepreneurship leadership and his dedication to the betterment of East Palo Alto. So I won't be too long with it up here but just once again thank you so much for this proclamation and for recognizing my dad Alfredo Bryant for his service to the community. Thank you. Thank you so much for oh I'm sorry I'm losing my voice I'm losing everything today okay thank you so much for being here I don't know if his other daughter would like to come up or you're fine. Yes, I have my sister, Juan Nier here with me. And she is also someone who is really, really involved in the community, a program director at, what's it called? Hope Horizon, hope Horizon. So she works with the youth. And so still like a pillar here in East Palo Alto. Well thank you so much for continuing the legacy that your father started here in our city. I'm sure he's super proud and wherever he is. He's sending you lots of love and we're really happy that you're here today to receive the proclamation. At this moment I would like to turn it over to the council members us, but keep things going. So. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do. I'm going to do. I'm going to do. I'm going to do. I'm going to do. Those who have come before us, but keep things going. So both of you and others in the family. Yeah, I would say, keep it up. You know, I mean, I've seen you, you know, got a school and everything and you're definitely a reflection of him. So keep it up. Thank you. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for your father's contributions. Thank you so much. So at this time we're going to present you with a proclamation. We're going to get a picture. you you So at this moment we're going to move on to public comments. James, have you received any comments? Slips. Yes. I received two, one from Marjorie Ruiz, Idaugle, followed by Gail Dixon. Out of mayor, council members, city manager and city staff, good evening. My name is Marjorie Ruiz Ilegal. Thank you for this opportunity to introduce myself to you. I am your PG&E local government affairs representative for the 21 jurisdictions on the peninsula. That means that I am your day-to-day single point of contact. This includes department heads and senior staff. I started in late April, and I am still learning my job. But my commitment to you is that I am always available and will do my utmost to help you serve your constituents and my former hometown of East Palo Alto. Essentially, if you have any questions about anything PG&E, please contact me, you each have my business cards now, and I will find the answers for you. I do wanna give you a bit of context. I am part of a whole PG&E team based out of the San Carlos Service Center. So this includes gas and electric, electric crews, emergency response, service planning, vegetation management, and everyone responsible for the customer experience. You already have my business cards. I will be reaching out to you individually. I'd love to schedule a coffee, hear your comments, questions, comments, concerns. I will talk to you about anything related to PG&E or in general. I'll be reaching out individually to see what your availability are and again thank you for this opportunity to just introduce myself to you. I'm really happy to be back here tonight and I will, I'm sure I'll be seeing everyone here soon. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, Gal Dixon. I have two things. I feel like I'm the official complainer of East Palo Alto. Two decades ago, the business people were told that they would have a place to have an office. The only thing that they come close to is Renaissance, and that's so far. And I remember what about a month ago, you guys said that you were going to give us a thousand square feet, not give us, but to everybody. But the business people, 247 businesses were displaced and that's wrong. There are three buildings over at the four seasons plaza that needs to be filled. And I like to act you present. Maybe you could subsidize the rent over there. So, some of those office people, those businesses can come back over there in that area. The other thing is I love the way that you're fixing up the streets. Corner of University in Woodland is atrocious, this terrible. It took me 20 minutes to get from Woodland up to the top of the ramp there and something should be done. They did the streets real nice. Couldn't get out of my driveway for a while but they didn't put back the don't block driveway. And the traffic from Palo Alto with all their Teslas are coming off there and the traffic is just backed up terribly and the pedestrians, somebody's gonna get hurt. I think I mentioned it the last time, one of my neighbors, he got hit. He broke his arm and his leg right there at the corner. And something should be done better in that location. But I'm serious about the subsidizing the rent. For season, I'll be returning, because I got three empty buildings and you guys should be charging a vacancy tax. Thank you. Thank you. And those are last public comment. Okay. Thank you. At this moment we're going to go ahead and move on to our special presentations, which is one shoreline presentation. Okay. Good evening. Good to be back here. I spent a lot of time in this room, but it's been a while, so it's good to be back. My name is Len Maderman. I run the San Mateo County flood and sea level rise resiliency district. We're also known as one shoreline for obvious reasons that our name is so long that I'll go go through all of that. And you can advance the slide, James. Okay, so a little bit of background on one shoreline for those of you who in the public or on council, who have not been exposed to it, is there had been a flood control district that was established in 1959 in San Mateo County to address flooding concerns in in 2020 when we were created. It covered about 10% of San Mateo County, including part of East Palo Alto, but not all of East Palo Alto and 90% of the county wasn't covered by the services of the flood control district. You can advance the slide. There were a lot of studies done on the vulnerability of San Mateo County area in comparison to other Bay Area counties and comparison to other parts of the state. studies done by accounting and by the different state agencies, Stanford Berkeley researchers, other agencies. And they came up with the conclusion that we are similarly vulnerable to most climate impacts and uniquely vulnerable to the issue associated with sea level rise. So the jurisdictions, this all 20 cities in the county plus the county realized that they couldn't solve this alone on their own for their jurisdiction. And so they asked the state to create a special district dedicated to this James. So it's not just previous studies. This is a headline from San Francisco Chronicle last month about the vulnerability in Redwood City and the mid-Pedenzola to flooding. It's also adjacent to an article about the LA fires and also a discussion about wildfire concerns in the Bay Area and of course in LA, James. So what are, we were established by state law. It was signed by the governor in 2019. We opened our doors January 2020. And we deal with all the water-related impacts of climate change throughout the county. James, we think of ourselves as being thinking in a holistic way about the threats, the objectives, and just thinking about kind of on a county-wide basis, so it's geographically diverse. Also, we think about climate as being not just environmental issue or water issue, but also issues associated with housing or transportation or utilities or any of the things that make our communities work that are affected by climate change. And I'll talk about that later. Go ahead, James. So we have four priorities. You could just advance the slide. We'll put them all up. Basically, addressing long-term concerns. Our agency was founded with the thought that we needed to do large resilience projects and that's true. We also encountered early on in 2021 and 2022 and 2023 major atmospheric rivers that affected all of us throughout the state and definitely in San Mateo County and so so we had to also add that to our portfolio. And we saw a lot of land use decisions being made on approvals of projects that weren't thinking about future conditions. And so that became an additional emphasis of our work. And then finally, we don't have perpetual funding for one shoreline. All the cities contributed three years of funding initially in 2021, 2021, 2022. The county matched that. We've been able to extend that three years of funding to nine years through 2028. But we recently, the county again, put up a similar amount of money and we approached the cities to do the same to buy us time as we think about our county light approach to perpetual funding James. Yep, you can keep going. Okay, East Palo Alto is no stranger to the impacts of atmospheric rivers. Here's two pictures on the left associated with major storms. The top one is from the storm of 1998, which created the San Francisco Creek Joint Powers Authority, which didn't create it, but it motivated it to work with the neighbors. The one below that is from the storm in 2012 when I ran the JPA. There was substantial amount of flooding. This is a picture on Woodland Avenue near University Avenue. Also, it's no stranger to the impacts of higher tides. You see pictures here at the PG&E substation near Cooley Landing. And also, these are houses also along the Bay during a King Tide. James, and then finally a confluence of both. These two pictures are from San Francisco Creek, but during stormy times, but also affected by high tides. The one on the left is at West Bay Shore Road, and the one on the right is before the project was built between the Bay and Highway 101. And you see on the right side of that picture at the very bottom on the right, a house and the relative height of the house to the old levy system before the levy's were raised and the creek was wide. And James? OK, so the current vulnerability in East Palo Alto, this is a map that shows in blue green, the FEMA floodplain, current FEMA floodplain, in yellow, the sea level rise, vulnerability area and in orange, the area associated with groundwater rise. And this is from what we have, what we call a map of future conditions, which is on our website. It's countywide. And what you can tell from this, which is characteristic of most cities along the Bay, is that the influence of the sea level rise extends well beyond the FEMA floodplain and the influence of groundwater rise extends further still. And that has implications for how and where we build, especially underground utilities and parking lots and mechanical equipment, etc. James. There is an organization called First Street, which is a national organization that looks at vulnerability and the economic issues associated with vulnerability. These are two snapshots from East Pellowalto those vulnerabilities associated with flooding. And so each dot on this represents a property. And this is looking ahead at vulnerability in the future. The one in blue is for flooding and the one in purple is related to air quality. There's also maps related to heat as you can tell and fire. Just wanted to show this, the issue of air quality, as you know, is a very significant one here and actually throughout the peninsula, especially going forward. James. So this is an image, the one on the right of this slide, that I show to indicate how we're all in this together. You think about the major infrastructure and utilities that we all have to rely on for our communities and for our homes to function. And that includes drinking water, sewer treatment systems, certainly transportation and utilities. And this shows the location of those major transmission infrastructure. That's all along San Francisco Bay for this side of the county on the Pacific. Actually, it's a similar story where the major infrastructure is along the ocean. And so to this is how this is the image that I used to talk with folks that may see themselves as removed from the shoreline or the issues associated with the shoreline and what I like to say is if you drink water or Flush a toilet or turn on lights or natural gas or or drive on 101 or El Camino or Highway 1 then this issue affects you Certainly it's it's and the and the portable water piece indicated on the bottom right is where the Hatchechi system enters the San Francisco Peninsula which is just north of East Palo Alto between Dunburton Bridge and the city of East Palo Alto. Okay I'm not going to go through all of these things but this is a snapshot of various or resiliency projects that are going on. The one, I guess, that I'll highlight is the one at the very bottom. Well, the safer Bay Project is written in blue on the bottom of the screen, and that is a project that should be well-known to you, I believe it is. It's a project that we began at the San Francisco Creté JPA back in 2012 when we applied for money, really at the urging of East Palo Alto and that project has grown and it's a project that also includes Menlo Park and one shorelines role in that we've been in support of the project but also we will tie into the end of the project at Marsh Road. The other thing I want to show is that image at the bottom associated with Bayfront Canal under construction. That was our first construction project at one shoreline. It was a project that had been in planning that for about 11 years. We inherited it in 2020. Small project, about $10 million construction across the border between Menlapark and Redwood City. And that made it complicated to implement. And for us, it was a proof of concept of multi-jurisdictional work. And we built it and completed the construction in 2022. And it basically takes water away, flood water away from five mobile home parks and sends it into the US Fish and Wildlife Service Ponds, providing environmental benefit there. James? Actually, go back one, James. The word R-SAP at the top right, it stands for Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan. And what that is, it's a requirement, a state requirement of communities that touch the San Francisco Bay or Pacific Ocean. And the requirement was a result of Senate Bill 272. And I'll talk that in a couple minutes but I just wanted to clear up what RSAAP is. And the RSAAP you see on the pink line or kind of dark, you know, dark pink line, it covers Belmont's and Carlos Redwood City Menlo Park in East Palo Alto and then at the very top it covers Brisbane and I and I'll talk about that in a second. James? Okay, another high priority for us is land use planning, as I mentioned before, in zoning, and looking at our public infrastructure and making sure it's resilient to future conditions. James, so I mentioned in the beginning that there were a lot of projects that came to our attention early on that were concerning and here's pictures of three of them. The one on the right shows a new development. It was completed in 2024 in the town I live in, which is St. Carlos. And this new development is right next to the creek adjacent or across from a pump station. And this is during a sunny day during a high tide. And as you can tell, this is kind of a disaster waiting to happen if there had been a big storm. The water would have poured into the underground parking garage and the first floor of this building. So that's a kind of thing that we're trying to avoid in the future is that we can think about these things today. So we developed and adopted landing policy guidance, James, you want to add that? And this came out, we adopted it formally in the summer of 2023. And it includes text for general plans, specific plans, and zoning ordinances. And as I understand it, the Ravenswood Pacific Plan has utilized the elements of this, which would be great because we think that this is super important. It's focused on private development. James, you want to know something? Yeah, so here's the example of some text that is in the plan. And what this can result in, if it's in a zoning ordinance, is, you want to advance the slide slide? Is, this is a text from a development agreement in the city of Berlin game, which compels the developer to build a climate resilience infrastructure on their site as part of their development. And it also requires them to provide an easement to the city and or one shoreline to build that up. Should that be needed in the future to adapt to higher levels of water. And so this is kind of the gold standard, let's say, of the result of all of this work is when we know that we can't pay for all of this as public agencies on our own. And we know that there's a lot of private sector development that benefit from resilience, planning and infrastructure. And so this is a way to bring the private sector into it and something that we've worked really hard on. James. We're now turning our attention to public infrastructure. We have public infrastructure guidance. That's under development. We're focused first on stormwater systems and roads and wastewater systems and water recycling systems. And in 2026, we plan to come out with the public document and adopt it early 2026 and then turn our attention to utilities and parks and marinas. Right now these types of infrastructure are not designed, they're designed looking the rearview mirror like what a historic 10-year storm is rather than what a future 50-year event is for example on stormwater systems and so we need to be when we design new projects in this kind of infrastructure thinking ahead, not behind because obviously the conditions are changing rapidly. James. So back to the RSAAP, there was Senate Bill 272 that was passed in late 2023 and then James, you can advance the slide. and BCDC came out with its guidance associated with that Senate bill and it requires jurisdictions to come up with regional shoreline adaptation plans. And by doing so in a certified plan, it puts them farther up the queue for state funding for these projects. James, so we just got a notification that we're to be awarded a grant to do the City of Brisbane's RSAW and work with San Francisco onto the North because that's the border between our counties. And it's important that we think about what San Francisco is doing on the shoreline as we think about Brisbane. And then also work with South San Francisco and Caltrans because in Brisbane Caltrans Highway 101 is most of the shoreline up there that you would see driving from say San Francisco to to here. And we're putting together a proposal for East Palo Alto along with Mennell Park and Redwood City and Belmont and St. Carlos and and that would be something that we would submit. We're going to be sending we've been working on the draft application. We're going to be sending that to the city staff in about a week or actually less. For them to review, we're planning on submitting the application at the end of June. If we were awarded that, then we would start around the end of the year on this planning exercise. And it go hand in hand with the safer project. And it would be something that the city council would need to adopt. We anticipate in about two years timeline, maybe a little bit less. And so it's just something to be aware of. It's an important planning exercise. That's a state requirement. There's an incentive in terms of funding and the benefit of doing it this way rather than just as a city of East Palo Alto is that we can then integrate it with with your neighbors. James. Okay, onto storms. One of our priorities is alerting people to and reducing the impacts of storms. We'll talk about all these pictures and stars, but these are different activities around the county. The picture with the at taken in the evening of the debris being removed from the creek, maybe I'll just highlight that one. We had a, we've hired contractors to go in and do work in creeks between atmospheric rivers. This picture is from January of 2023, and it relates to a permit application that we're submitting for countywide for Creek debris removal in flood prone areas. James, we have an early warning system of 32 gauges around the county, and that provides early warning to most of the cities in San Mateo County. In the case of East Palo Alto, it's integrated with the early warning system associated with San Francisco Crique that the JPA has been involved with for a long time. I'm happy to talk about that. James, you want to advance it? This is another image. This is from Belmont Creek, which divides St. Carlos and Belmont, and this is work being done between storms, again, similar situation I described earlier, and we're getting a permit for five years to do this kind of work. James. Okay, finally on funding. So again, we've received funding from the cities before. And we've stretched that to towards the end of the decade. We've also been able to bring in additional funding beyond that money and beyond the property tax revenue from these historic flood zones, the 10% of the county I mentioned, about $30 million in project- work. And we have this request that this is an image of the letter that went to Melvin Gaines. We have a request into all 20 cities and the county is already committed and several of the cities have as well. And James, you can advance the slide. This just has some text about what I just said. And next slide, and I think that's it. So I guess in summary, I would say, there are really four ways that we work with East Palo Alto. One is on the land use planning and guidance for flooding, for groundwater rise, for sea level rise, and drought, so that private development and public infrastructures designed and then built in a way that is conscious of future conditions. Another is this regional shoreline adaptation plan to be compliant with state guidelines and an alignment with the neighbors. And the other one is the Safer Bay Project, our tie-in on the north side of Safer Bay. And the fourth one is accelerating work on San Francisco Crito Creek upstream. I haven't really dived into that because I know the JPA, the San Francescito Creek JPA probably keeps the council aware of these things but I'm happy to talk about it. We are a member agency of the JPA just like the city of East Palo Alto and in fact our representative is on board, and that's Lisa Gosei through her seat now on the county board of supervisors. She serves on one shoreline. And through that, she serves on the JPA. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. James, do we have any public comment at this time? At this time, Mayor. Okay. Council members, go ahead. I'm glad to see you again. Under quite different circumstances when we first met. I guess you could just talk a little bit about the success. I go for walking every day and I know you were on the Reach One project. I go walking pretty much every day on that and so I appreciate it, especially when we've had a lot of rain. For homeowners in East Palo Alto, we have flood insurance and it's a requirement. Can you talk a little bit about what the impact of one, the Reach One has had on flood insurance rates and then also what the impact if we were able to successfully build a levy what uh... a female certified levy i believe is the correct word um... what that would be on the east call to uh... flood insurance rates yeah so my understanding and it's somewhat anecdotal is that uh... flood insurance rates are lower than they had been for the area in the gardens neighborhood. I don't know how far that extended, but that's my understanding after the project was built. Now there could be another reason for that or it could be a combination of reasons. FEMA also is slowly as they do, instituting a new flood insurance program they call it 2 2.0 I think or something like that. And so I think that might have had a benefactor in this, but I think it's fair to say that the project did reduce rates. Now, it wouldn't eliminate the need for flood insurance because as you identified, until you do the work along the shoreline, people are still in the FEMA flood zone and that was shown on the slide, in one of the slides that I showed. And we knew all along that that would not eliminate the floodplain for those homes at this point. So after the idea is after that work on the coastal levee is done, then people will be out of the FEMA flood zone and then they would no longer have the requirement for flood insurance. So this could conceivably save every homeowner like a thousand bucks if you're paying that for whatever you're paying for flood insurance, it could just go away more. Yeah, I think the average is actually higher than a thousand bucks and increasing, but yes, that's the idea. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a huge impact. I mean, I just wanted to raise that because I mean, I think that's a huge impact. I mean, I just wanted to raise that because I mean, for a lot of people in East Palo Alto, they may not, if you have a mortgage, you have flood insurance. And that's a very like, why should we be supporting this? Well, that's just one very solid reason if you're a homeowner. There's all sorts of other reasons as well. I don't see us becoming like Venice, you know, having Gandolas and maybe, you know, singing, but we look forward to seeing this build. I mean, I believe, yeah, I can almost certainly say, I'd live adjacent to the bay. And so this will be allowed in noisy production when it happens, but we're looking forward to it. And having both getting better bike lanes and better pedestrian bike, but also just having the knowledge that as we do this, it's going to happen. So we'll save us, hopefully, from flooding at some point. It's a lot of money. I think the stretch from Margaret Bruce that's a million, like 250 million, from Dunbarton to friendship bridge, or maybe it would would go to friendship. Yeah, so I mean, it's a lot of money and we're not gonna pay for ourselves and The federal government at some point would have to step up I would think and definitely stay California But anyway, thank you for your presentation. Yeah, yeah, good to see you. Thank you Thank you. Do we have any more questions at this time? Mr. Maddenman, you're asking for, you're coming to the council. I don't know if we've approved this, but you're kind of a council for requesting the same amount of funding, which is $55,000 is that right for our city? It's 40,000. 40,000 over three years or 40,000 a year for three years. Yeah, I'm asking 20, 25, 20, 26, is that right? Yes. 40,000 over three years or 40,000 a year, four, three years. Yeah, I'm missing 2025, 2026, is that right? Yes, next fixed where and we have budgeted it and the proposed budget, which you all have began reviewing. Could you, so you explained the regional shoreline adaptation plan and what its purpose is you also mentioned. I think it was five cities. That's right. So how would our safer Bay plan then integrate where we were one of the cities dimension, but how would our safer Bay plan integrate into that? I mean, I think every city probably has or most of the cities probably have something that they're beginning to work on. Right. Right. That's true. And so how it would integrate, well, the regional short-line adaptation plan process is new. Right. It was just, the guidelines were just adopted by BCDC less than six months ago. Well, right around six months ago, it's really December. And so, I think we and BCDC are trying to figure out exactly what this looks like. There are certain elements in the guidelines that we know already of how we follow it, how it works to have a regional sholine adaptation plan that's multi-jurisdictional, that's new to them, how, to do, how one that does that in the midst of a project, capital project that's much farther along than the planning process that's new to them. So I would say that the fact that the safer B project is moving forward helps us quite a bit with the technical studies piece. There's already been a lot of technical studies done for the SAFER-B project, and that feeds into the regional shoreline adaptation plan, the RSAF process. But there are also elements associated with land use and associated with utilities and associated with things that say for Bay isn't really focused on like groundwater that will be need to be studied as well. And doing that in a broader context with state funding, I think is much preferred to doing it locally only, you know, for obvious reasons. So I would say that we don't know yet exactly how the R-SAP will, let's say, fit hand in hand with safer Bay, but the fact that safer Bay has been going on now for a long time and has a lot of information at hand will certainly make the RSA more efficient. So are these guidelines that are mandated to be followed, are there guidelines that the local cities would incorporate into their respect? So the term guideline, it's a BCDC document that was approved by the commission back in December 5th, I think it was. And basically what BCDC is saying is, if you want us to approve your regional shoreline adaptation plan, then you have to follow these requirements. I think... for elaborating the plan and incorporating those into the plan. That's right. So the plan and and incorporating those into the plan. That's right. So the plan has to have certain elements that are described in these guidelines. That that BCDC adopted. And for me, the main really the two main reasons are you want to make sure you're aligned with your neighbors. Now safer Composers a lot of that but not all of it as I just said but also It's clear from BCDC and from state funders like the Ocean Protection Council is a major funder of this kind of work. But basically it's in the Senate bill that says projects within cities that have approved RSA plans will be considered preferential for state funding and so and and they give you a long time to do these our SAP plans My belief is we should get going on the sooner rather than later because the climate bond just passed and the states trying to figure out how to spend those climate bond dollars by the time we finish the RSAB or anybody finishes in RSAB it's going to be a couple of years from now. We would I'd rather have proposals going in for funding and that could be the safer project or it could be something else. I'd rather have proposals going in for funding three years into the climate bond than ten years into the climate bond because I have a fear that by years nine and ten of climate bond, we may not see a lot of money available. And so I'm trying to get as many scum into county cities to get going on an RSAAP, and that's why we're doing these proposals. And who would fund the RSAAP, the individual cities, you're applying to the city? Yeah, I mean, we just got word of a grant from Ocean Protection Council for Brisbane. And our application that's going in in early July that I mentioned, that would go also to the OPC. And we've met with them about this RSAF, this idea of not just about Brisbane, but also about the five cities here. And we would ask that they fund the entirety of the RSAP exercise. I think the only commitment coming out of East Palo Alto to participate would be staff time. It would not be a financial commitment. And do you have an approximation of what is the cost of elaborating the RSAP? The cost to do the five city RSA? Yeah. My, it's between one and a half million and two million dollars. I'll just say the grant that we're getting for Jisper's main is $750,000. Now I think there's an efficiency in this situation for two reasons. One is economy of scale with working with five cities. You don't just take one city times five but also the fact that the safer bay project has a lot of information and Redwood City is embarking on a levy project. They have an RFP out to hire a consultant team to start design for Redwood shores which is a pretty lengthy link the bit of shoreline as well like the Safer project. So essentially if you count both of those as providing a lot of technical information, in these five cities, all you'll really have is that between San Carlos Airport and Marsh Road that you'd have to, that would be undiscussed, let's say, by other projects. Yeah. you elaborate a little on the permit to clear debris from the creeks? That's a permit. That's not funding to do the work. It's just you're getting the permit from all of the regulatory agencies, is that correct? Yes, but I'll tell you the permit is more expensive than the work. And we have like absolute evidence of that based on the, we've done the work and we're getting the permit. And because the work that we did previously was actually more expensive than it otherwise would be because it was done between atmospheric rivers and we were paying a premium for a contractor to go out there. This was in January of 2023 when we were all getting drenched by storm after storm. So we did the work and I can tell you that work is cheaper than getting the permit. The permit in and of itself is about a $200,000 process. And it's not just one permit as you identify just now. It's regional water quality control board. It's the core of engineers, consultation with fish and wildlife, state fish and wildlife, and who am I forgetting? Anyway, one of their agencies. And so there are five year permits. There are two do work in creek channels. All the other counties in the Bay Area have it. We didn't. San Mateo County had gotten a permit, but it was only for San Mateo County road roads. And it wasn't for other areas that affect cities, let's say. It was only an unincorporated area, so we're focused in this first round of permitting on four channels, San Bruno Creek, Belmont Creek, Cordillaris Creek, and Atherton Channel. All four of them flooded substantially in the last couple of years. All four of them have major debris issues, and all four of them, those issues are associated with either El Camino Real Highway 101 or Haven Avenue, which also is a Caltrans asset along with 101 and El Camino. So in my mind, it's not coincidence that a lot of the flooding in our creeks are associated with roadways, number one, and number two, those roadways in these cases are caltrans assets. So the consequence of that is we've been working a lot with caltrans so that they clean under the roadway and we clean adjacent to the roadways. And that's our approach to this five-year permit. And so- It's a five-year county-wide permit. Well, it's a five year countywide permit just on the creeks we've identified. Oh, just on those four creeks. So we would do another round to expand that and we've already talked to the regulatory agencies about that, but we're It's it's it's very challenging to get these permits even just removed a brief It's very challenging because they're riparian corridors, so So so the SFJJPA could get a permit on its own. Is that correct? That's right. And there's quite a bit of discussion about highway 101. And so maybe that's exactly what you're asking about is highway 101 because there has been the JPA and Keltrans have been talking about that for quite some time. And of course, that's the county line. And so there's also been conversation well, should decide deal with it or Santa Clara Valley water or well, whatever. I probably should defer to the JPA because I haven't been in those discussions myself directly. But I have talked to Margaret and Tess about like what's the plan with 101? As you know, there's a lot of sedimentman accumulation that, you know, from those Searsville talks that we've had, that we had what was 12 years ago, I think. I think that was, we were that special. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's been a long time. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. I don't know if we have one more because we do have a lot of an agenda. I understand, but I do have. I do have some questions and comments. Yeah, thank I do have. I do have some questions and comments. Yeah, thank you very much for the report. And, you know, this has a long history, but I'm just going to keep it short. So in the interest of time. So, you know, the areas you identify, I think that are relevant to East Palo Alto, probably to other cities too, with the regional plan, the land use in terms of us, I think, being updating our policies so that any private development understands what that we're working together on. It can be only the government, but any development has to carry some responsibility. And so then, so under safer bay and the upstream, because you mentioned upstream. Yeah, I think under safer bay, I'm glad to really see all the progress that has been made, you know, how long has the one shoreline, it hasn't been that long that the one shoreline was set up, right? 2020. Five years. So I mean five years and now you're feeling like there's enough money to function through to 2028 to keep working on this. And so, you know, I a compliment, land because you've been at it for a long time as director of the JPA. And I do recall the year 2010 or 12 when at the time, customer Romero and I represent a DPA, and we were very focused on, we could be flooded by the by the tight title flooding, which has now had become safer Bay, right? The ocean, the sea. And you know, we really had to present a lot of arguments with our colleagues on the JPA who at the time felt that really the, the major responsibility was really just the creek, the so-called fluvial flooding. I definitely appreciate you as the director having been supportive in your own way, because I mean, potentially you could have been fired as the major of the JPA said, no, that's not our business, why are you in support of this? But you pointed out that there were some ways in which we could at least initiate. And so, you know, I want to give credit to East Palo Alto and Mental Park because we are the ones who kicked it off. And now it's grown so much. And I hope that the work with the private sector continues with Facebook and PG&E because they are key also for funding purposes. But I'm really glad to hear all the work that's been done to, you know, with different grants to do planning to interact with the different cities come together and integrate things. So that's really good to hear. I'll just say one thing on the upstream because that's another case of you know they need to do public and private. So as we all know well the upstream is by between middle field no El Camino. Yeah El Camino and the in the mountain and a lot of that land is owned by Stanford and I'm'm hoping a lot of these days Stanford just out of the goodness and ethical responsibility would just come right out and say you can work, we want to work with you to work on the upstream and basically avoid a lot of potential flooding. They may still, well I think they'll come around, but right now, I do want to just report from the JPA that starting this month, there will be the first report on the alternatives, the concept for alternatives for reach two, but included in reach two is for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget for the budget Alto, on the reach too. But like I said, I think the upstream issues will come up. And then also there will be around the presentations at each member agency. And I think so that's gonna go through probably August, September. So I think, you know, at this point, Mark and I represent the city. And so I think we'll be able to stay on top of it. But there will be those presentations, even more expanded in a way. So I think that'll be a good opportunity to catch up on different issues and even bring up the interlocking work with the one shoreline. But anyway, you know, and yes, Lisa will share is now representing one shoreline. And yes, Lisa, Bill Shea is now representing one shoreline, so you know, we're lucky to have in a way her understanding obviously from our perspective. And of course, at some point the issue of financing is going to have to be dealt more vigorously. But I think things seem to be moving and hopefully the federal government won't get so radical to eliminate support for local projects. I hope it doesn't happen, but either way we have to keep going. So yeah, so that was just a few comments under. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. either way we have to keep going. So yeah, so that was just a few comments and that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Landfair presentation. All right, thanks a lot. Let's see. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to adjourn the city council meeting and we're moving on to the East Pawl Alps O'Century District Board meeting. Good evening. It is 7.39 PM and we are starting the East Palato Sanitary District Board meeting. Do we need to have a roll call on this one? Okay, so I would like to have a motion to approve the East Pal to Senator District Board meeting agenda. I'd like to make a motion to for the East Pal to Board meeting agenda. Can I give a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. I, demotion passes. Moving on, we have item 10.0 approval of the East Pell Autocenatory District Board meeting consent calendar. This includes the cash disbursement report for March 2025 and the recommendation is accept the cash disbursement report required pursuant to California Health and Safety Code Section 6794. Can I get a motion to approve the EPA Sanitary District Board meeting consent calendar? I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar. second. All in favor? I. I believe he's well to sanitary board meeting public comment James is there any public comment? Yes there's one from apologies for public comment for Gil Dixon. Okay. Good evening Chief Complaintment and session here. As you know I'm on the I'm an alternate professional I'm gonna get me a crown. I like to say that when I do my job I take it seriously. There's no not dot in the eyes, not crossing the teeth. I triple check things. I was talk that by my supervisor at the Postal Service. He was an Air Force pilot. And I take pride in doing a job the right way. I like to say that I know that advisory commission is new, but not to the point where people can't show up. And this has happened on other committees and commissions. And I know you know, and there's a lot of problems that I had when I was on the rent board. People not being professional. And then they turn and reflect it on you. You require them to do a job, and I know it's just getting started, and we need information against to trouble over. But just getting a meeting together has been a headache, and I can just see problems down the road. And I guess what I'm saying is it's time for East Pawl Autos to stop having Crook's cronies, clikks and clowns when you put things together. You got to figure out a better way of doing it. I mean, opening up my email. Oh, we're not going to meet. Oh, yes, we're going to meet. Oh, I got to go to a barbed missful. Oh, I got to go to a Debbie Tontball. Oh, my husband's birthday. You know, could I kind of crap? I'm here all the time. I came on my birthday. Didn't know, sweat off my nose, I mean. But I want you to look into that and look at it seriously. If you want East Pole better, get better people. Okay, moving on to item 14, East Poleos sanitary district board reports. Are there any board reports from any of the members? None. None seen with move on to item 15. This meeting is adjourned at 7.44pm. We'll go back to reconvene the City Council regular meeting. Okay, thank you. So we're reconvene the regular use politics to the council meeting. And per our earlier motion that we did earlier at the beginning of the meeting, we're moving on to item 17.1, which is the commission appointments. At this time I believe we're going to proceed with the interview of the applicants. Yes, Mayor. Before we begin, I would like to make a brief announcement. There was a mishap with some of the applications. We do them through SurveyMonkey and when we sent out emails to inform people that tonight's applications would be heard, two of the applications, the emails were parted into the incorrect spot and so they did not receive the notification. Now one of or two of the members are in convents. And so we have tried to notify them that the meeting is, that the interviews would be held today, but it may be a little last minute. And so I just wanted to make that announcement just in case we are doing for the planning commission. There are two regular seats and one alternate seat. And so I'll give them some time to try to make it tonight, but just I just wanted to make that announcement. Okay, so are you proposing that we go ahead and start with the rents and the station appointment of those? Oh, just a procedural thing because could you just review what is open for each of the commissions before just how many seats or which seats are open? So for the planning commission, they're. Yeah, if you just tell us for all of them, just. Yes. So for the planning commission, they're two regular full term seats open. And then there's one alternate seat seat and then for the rent stabilization board there are there's one alternate and one regular see open. Are we also doing the senior advisory committee tonight apologies no that's for that's next. Okay, thanks. Okay. Thanks a lot. This is the, I've met Madam Mayor. I'm sorry. For the next one. Thank you, sir. No, that's for that's next. Okay. Next one. This I'm sorry. Correct. Sorry, senior, we won't be doing tonight. Yeah, it's just planning and rent rent stabilization. So, Madam Mayor, I might suggest that perhaps this item should be postponed if indeed it was an error on our end in terms of notifying folks. I think it would be fair to give everybody the same opportunity to be present. And if there are a couple of three people, it may not have been notified and had submitted it might make sense. And, you know, for fairness sake, to postpone this until all are notified uniformly and have the opportunity to be here either remotely or in person. Thank you for your suggestion. I just wanted to know James. So everyone that applied for the rent civilization are those folks here? Are they present? I'm not sure. I think I see at least one here. But if you want the chinner, so to please make it there are two individuals who applied who we failed to notify of tonight's meeting for the planning commission and they happen to be two incumbents for the rinse stabilization board we did notify everybody correct James so if there aren't people who applied for the Rents Stabilization Board, it's not because we didn't notify them. So I wanted to know we can proceed then. If we do have those folks out of respect to those for the Rents Stabilization are present. And then we can probably go ahead and I do apologize for those who are here for the planning commission. We can go ahead and reschedule that and just go ahead and move on with the rent simulation. If you're applying for the rent stabilization board, can you please raise your hand? Two. Okay, thank you. So yes, I think you made him here. Okay. We'll go ahead then and go forth with the rents demonstration. Yes. And deep as apologies for those of you that carved out time to be here present. I hope that in the future we have this more under control. So thank you for coming. Thank you so first applicant Vanessa Smith. Good evening Council members. Just for the record I didn't receive a notification to come but I'm here. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that for the last few days. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that for the last few days. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that for the last few days. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that for the last few days. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that for staff to improve how information is communicated to both tenants and property owners, making it a more accessible, transparent, and easy to understand. I also remain a strong advocate for language access so that all tenants, regardless of their language background, can fully participate in our meetings and understand their rights and responsibilities. In this role, I look forward to continuing to work with my fellow board members and staff to strengthen the processes and elevate the voices of tenants and ensure our cities, policies reflect the needs and realities of the communities we serve. Thank you. Thank you, Vanessa. At this time, I don't know if we have any council members that have questions. I I don't know other than I know I've spoken to you about the rent board before and you've shared your your thoughts about it and and You know ways of improving it. So I certainly appreciated And the interplay I've had with you personally about your engagement on the rent board and how it's been going. So thank you for your service. Yeah, I did have one quick. One question is, you know, the way we structure the thing and the structure of the city right now has sort of how, which I is good housing overall and one section of that is the rent board which covers only certain number units and then there's the other issues and topics that come up but how do you see that I think it seems to be going okay, but what would you do to make sure that there's good communication and housing issues and also kind of sorting things out because some people may show up at the rent board for housing issues that really the board has no authority or vice versa people don't know and they yeah any thoughts on that just how that can be improved or continue to improve? I think the biggest takeaway from communication between like tenants' property owners is working with staff. I think having a clear process on what the rent board has authority overseas, not authority, but overseas. I think just creating documents and being more, I think, in community and that is really dependent on our outreach committee. So I think working closer with staff and I've spoken to staff about how we can streamline these communications, how we can be more effective in what we put out to tenant and to property owners so that they do know exactly what the full breath of the rent board is. Thank you Ms. Onesa. Okay, moving on to our next candidate. Thank you next candidate, Devon Taylor. Good evening. It's Devon actually. No worries. It's kept will be throws everyone. I actually submitted for both the planning and not only as a professional who has spent years navigating the complexities of public service and policy, but also as a professional who has spent years navigating the complexities of public service and policy. both. So again, good evening. My name is Devon Taylor. I'm truly honored to be here tonight. This moment is deeply personal for me not only as a professional who has spent years navigating the complexities of public service and policy, but also as a father, a coach, and community member who cares deeply about the future of East Palo Alto. Over the past decade, I've built a career in public administration and labor relations and community engagement serving cities, nonprofits and institutions, design, inclusive policies, manage budgets, strengthen compliance and improve programs. I've worked on equity centered strategies that put people at the heart of decision making. But what grounds me most is my day to day life in the community. I'm a proud father of a 13 year old. I coach his basketball team, support his model you, and all of the wonderful possibilities that come with raising children. I believe in mentoring the next generation. So I currently serve on the Board of Directors for an outdoor camp that connects youth of color to nature and leadership development, and I also served on the Board as a Board Director at a high school working to expand college and career pathways. These experiences have shown me how much potential exists in our communities and how critical it is to create a city that allows families to thrive here for generations when we prioritize inclusion and accessibility. I'm applying to both of these because I believe deeply that planning and housing decisions shape the soul of a city. Whether it's how we zone new developments or how we protect renters from displacement, every decision we make shifts the board's sustainable, equitable, and healthy growth. That means prioritizing the voices of long-time residents, investing in affordable housing, and designing inclusive processes that make people feel seen and heard and not left behind by change. As a planning commissioner, well, I'll skip that for now. But on the rent stabilization board, I'd bring my background and labor and policy to ensure fair protections for tenants balance relationships with property owners and better education about rights and responsibilities, expanding accessibility through language, through means of engaging with the board, and ensuring that there are open lines of communication. East Palo Alto is rich with culture resilience and talent. I believe that a strong city listens to its people when we center the experiences of those most impacted we get better outcomes for everyone. I would be honored to serve in this capacity and to contribute my experience, my heart and my full energy to the continued success of our city. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. I don't know if we have any questions at this moment for Mr. Taylor? Yeah, same question, you know, on the structure of the city, sort of, housing area that the rent board has to fit within the rent. Submissation law and then they're sold all the other housing, you know, topics and concerns and how to navigate that or keep improving the functioning of both areas. Any thoughts on that? You know, I think there are generally a lot of gaps in the understanding of how government may work in like the roles and responsibilities of different commissions, different departments and divisions and where that, you know, kind of where the responsibility lies. Generally what I found, I'm on the West Side when I've seen a lot of different developments, there's rarely any communication that goes, I mean, the communication comes in in mailers. But I think what ultimately ends up being the information gap is the access to the meetings when they're being housed. I think knowing that the cost of living is so high in knowing that many folks have to work multiple jobs is generally just hard to spend time and process that information, whether you receive it or not, or then actually have the ability to show up because I'm leaving my second job or my kids have something to do. And then if we're thinking about our elders, we can talk about the advent of technology and how that's increased accessibility. But for many of our elders, they also need support in accessing that zoom and getting support and logging on. And so they're creates a disconnect and how the community can engage. And so you generally end up getting kind of the same folks and the same kind of connections. And so I think really just to kind of piggyback off of our experience member of the board, it is engaging with staff to understand where in the workflow those gaps are. But then also reaching out within the areas where we reside in the community, why aren't you receiving that, why aren't you showing up and trying to get an understanding on that? At least in my conversations with some of my immediate neighbors in the area that's generally the feedback that I've gotten is either I don't have time or I just don't know how to truly engage. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Do you have any more questions from the council? No? Yes. Yeah. So the position, so we are talking about the rents cabalization board. That position, that position on occasion will require you to sit in a quasi-judicial manner. That is to say you'd be adjudicating potentially cases that would come before you, which requires some skill and I'm trying to find out if you've had any opportunities. In the past to do so again is quasi-judicial in our city attorney will be there as well as the attorneys potentially, the hearing examiners. So you're not on your own, but have you had any experience at all in that? Yes, sir, extensively. I've worked in HR. Yeah, could you explain? Yeah, so I work in HR, employing labor relations, and so generally we will have hearings around a particular disciplinary issue that may involve union representation. I've worked in union environments as well. And determinations have to be made. Notifications have to be sent out. And we have to abide by either a CBA, union policy, and labor law. And so the position itself or the rent stabilization board is in charge of overseeing the implementation application of the ordinance. You have some flexibility to look at guidelines and change those. But for the most part, it is a codified ordinance that you are supposed to follow. So is that something that you're comfortable with? Again, it's understanding the ordinance and understanding how it's being applied and working with staff over seeing that. So yeah, I just want to point that out and also have you had a chance to the reviewer or look at the ordinance at this point? Yes, I have a chance to review it. That's definitely in my wheelhouse. I also consulted for state government and so administering public programs and ensuring that folks are in alignment, whether that's on the vendor side or the client side has also been routine, I guess, in another way putting it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Thank you. So I had a question, James. Is Ms. Portia Fort here tonight? I'm not. I don't believe so. Okay, because I feel that we have run into the situation in the past where we have had, you know, the majority show up and we either have one or two or three people that don't show up. And I don't know, I think that I would like to see if it's possible to amend that so we can stop that from reoccurring. And I feel it's a disrespect for those that actually made it. Whether they got the notice or not, the majority of them are here, are present. So I don't know. City Attorney, there's a way that we can amend that tonight perhaps because I feel like it has happened in the past when we've been trying to assign commissioners. So for the apologies, for the planning commission, in the past we have notified everyone and so if they don't show up, then that's kind of on them. And so I think that it's fair in that case. But for this case, not everyone was notified specifically for the planning commission. And there were some reasons behind it. But the fact of the matter is that some of the members got notified and some of them didn't. So I'm not sure if- So I don't know how would we proceed then because we have three ballots or three needs on the ballot. Through the chair, I believe that the city clerk reached out to the rent stabilization that the person who was in here did receive a notice of tonight's meeting from the city clerk. If that is the case, I would recommend that you move forward with making appointments to the rent stabilization board. I'd also recommend that you interview the people for the planning commission and make your ultimate decision at a future date after we let everyone know to come. But potentially the people who are here today would not have to be re-interviewed. Okay, and can we please be more adamant in terms of contacting everyone before the meeting that would save us a lot of time? Thank you. Thank you. Just a procedure, I think by now the ballot we got is for the full seat. Correct. And we're to get one for the alternate, right? Correct. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the clarification. So we'll go ahead and take care of this. And then to honor everybody's time. For those of you that showed up, we'll just go ahead and proceed with the interviewing. And then for the recommendation, we will later notify who got the seats for the other commission. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and start with our voting at the time. Yes, for the regular seat, correct. you So I'll be reading out the votes. Council member Brica voted for Vanessa Smith. Council member Lincoln voted for Devon Taylor. Vice Mayor Dynand voted for Davont Taylor. Mayor Baragon voted for Vanessa Smith and Council Member Romero voted for Vanessa Smith. So with that, Vanessa Smith does receive the full seat for regular seat for the rent stabilization board. Madam Mayor, can I just suggest that by accoladeation, we appoint Devon to the alternative seat. Yes, that's fine. So, you know, my question is more for the applicant because he did state that he applied for the planning commission and the rent board. So we don't want to force him into something that, obviously, you know, I'm just racing that is true. There's a question, right? But. Thank you for reminding us. Yes. Mr. Taylor, would you like to be the alternator? Would you like to have the opportunity to also interview for the other committee for the planning commission? So what I believe, what I believe we can do is that we can see who gets elected for the regular seats for the planning commission. And then if he does not get selected, then he can be elected for the alternate seat. Or do you mean if he gets elected, he'll vacate. Through the chair, I would recommend that you all make an appointment now and we've done this before. And it's a little tedious. However, if Mr. Taylor decides to remain in a candidacy for the planning commission and you select him, he could then resign from this alternate position. So then we'll do that. Okay thank you. So I guess we'll just go ahead and move on to. I make a motion that we I think bring in a motion that make a motion that we appoint Mr. Devon Taylor to the alternate seat on the rents compensation board. Also good. All in favor please say aye. Hi. Hi. Yes. All right. So with that we're going to move on to the alternate seat on the rents compensation board. I'll second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Yes. Aye. So with that, we're going to move on to the interviewing of the folks that are present for the Planning Commission. So James, can you please let us know who's the first one? Yes. So first applicant, Christopher Cowell. Go ahead, Mr. Cowell. Okay, good evening Council members. My name is Chris Cal. And I'm here because I care deeply about East Paltice Future. Thank you for waiting us. This is just for notes. Thank you. Okay. I think we're ready now. Thank you. Okay. Good evening, Councilmembers. My name is Chris Cal. And I'm here because I cared deeply about East Pulse this feature. And I've already been working to shape it. For the past three years, I've served on the Public Works and Transportation Commission, which I now chair. I helped organize working groups that tackled infrastructure funding, ADA walkability and pedestrian safety, and I helped on two successful safe routes to school programs, pilots, installing temporary traffic circles at Pogas and Fordham to improve safety in your schools. Through that work I came to realize that the decisions made by the planning commission about where and how we grow are the most lasting. And that's why I've been actively involved in the Ravenswood specific plan update since the beginning. I proactively share transportation data with the city's consultants like Sam Transit's plan for bus rapid transit and the new EPX rel to make sure the plan reflects both current and future transit options. I believe our next phase of growth must serve today's residents and future generations. Many of my peers in my generation want to say an EPA, but they're being priced out or are leaving because there aren't enough housing options or destinations here. I want to see Ravenswood and an East Palo Alto that offers walkable mixed-use development and is also rooted in East Palo Alto values. I also understand the risks of displacement. That's why I believe we need to build more housing, especially near transit, to relieve pressures on existing neighborhoods where multiple families often crowd into one home. More homes means we can improve quality of life and preserve affordability. I bring planning literacy, data-driven thinking, and a track record of collaborative community first action. I'm ready to bring that same energy to the planning commission to help make EPA more livable, equitable, and resilient city. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any questions from the council? question on on There's like a short term planning issues, I would say, that the planning commission deals with and then there's got a long term, you know, which Could be five years, ten years, next generation. Any thoughts on how you would approach the short term planning needs in the long term? That is a great question, Councillor Marriko. I think for a long term, I think the first step is I've been reading a lot of the documents and studies as they've come out, not just to Ravens with business district from the city perspective, but also I plan to read that one shoreline one that was talked about or some of the more regional things. I've attended a number of the SFCGPA meetings just to get some more context. So I think that's probably the first step and I've always made an effort to try and share that out to the community as well. I fly drones. I used to share a lot of videos, show people where the lever is. So that's the long term. For short term, such as the EDU topic that I see is coming on the agenda today, I think that communication is very important. I've noticed from talking to a number of residents in East Palatol, oftentimes they may not be aware of what the departments are. Had a conversation today with a resident who was asked to build a sidewalk, and they were just asking me these. I come, you know, as engineering within public works or building and I felt like those sharing the information could help them to then find the right people to get things done. Hi, Chris, thanks for coming. Thanks for applying. You're on the Public Works Commission. I believe you're the chair of Public Works and Transportation Commission. Yes. What makes a successful commission? And what approach have you taken as chair of it to lead it and to make this commission successful? Yeah. So vice-merde Dynan, I think. So I've been chair for less than a year of the Public Works and Transportation Commission. We had a lot of new members join, just from your term and other terms having come up. And one of the things that I had made a strong emphasis to was I had worked with staff to create our onboarding document because I was not onboarded when I had joined. So we had one commissioner here, for example, and she can attest to that. I made sure to attend both of the onboarding meetings and one of the points I emphasized was I expect the commissioners to read the documents because that has always been the case and commissioners have recognized that meetings been like, yeah, Chair Cal said to read the documents. Because that has always been the case. And commissioners have recognized that meetings. And they're like, yeah, Cher-Cal said to read the documents. I read it. And I think it's made our meetings a lot more efficient. A lot of our meetings before you used to drag on to your three hours. And because people are prepared, and I've encouraged people to ask staff questions beforehand, if they don't have to be asking a public meeting, be asking a public meeting like technical details. I think it's helped save everyone a lot of time. Thank you. Do we have any more questions? Yeah, I have some questions. I think you're definitely an asset on the public works and transportation commission. And so it's a little bit different being on the planning commission. So I think what do you, where do your interests lie, like in terms of like, are you more interested in public works or more into the long term kind of planning? You know, personally. Yeah, I think right now I'm really interested in,'m very interested in the shaping the longer term vision of the city kind of like what counts I remember brief convention earlier about the short term and long term. I think if I'm able to do a lot of short term fixes on the public works commission advocating for extra mile of bike lanes to temper traffic circles things like that. But a lot of the things I care a lot about, like, you know, where are people going to live in the future? Will I be able to walk to to some grocery store or something nearby? I felt like I couldn't necessarily have as much of an impact on that on the Public Works and Transportation Commission, especially being more on the advisory role to Public Works. I felt one step more removed from shaping that. So I'm very excited about being able to kind of take the learnings I've had and apply it to these bigger projects that really shaped the future of our city. Thank you, Mr. Cal. Do you have any more questions? If not, we're going to... these bigger projects that really shaped the future of our city. Thank you, Mr. Co. Do you have any more questions? And if not, we're going to move on to our next candidate. It's next candidate, Tonga Victoria. We'll see you here. She's not present. Elena Savva. Hello. Good evening. My name is Elena Savva. My family live here about seven years and I'm trying to be active community member and I hope I can do something for City. I have my degree in architecture from Russia and I was involved in architectural design projects like city design, parts of city or infrastructure design in Western Europe and Asia. Now I work with residential projects in the Palo Alto and different cities. and I hope I see problems inside from inside and I also how a different city solves some problems and I hope I can help community and I hope my education and experience will be useful for CT. It's what I want to tell you. Thank you, Ms. Elena. Do we have any questions from the council at this moment? You know, the same question I asked. Just some of your thoughts or your approach to, as a planning commissioner, looking at the short term planning needs of the city and the longer term challenges for Yes, for short goals, I think it's existing regulations and City has in general regulation for like a parking or how many parking places you need provide for your property for different bedrooms or something it's like this one and I saw how different city solve this problem because the the standard of regulation has the regulation has different sizes. And I think it's much problem is parking, it's existing regulation, it's existing development regulation. I hope to help with this one. And for long term, it's of course, it's a city zoning, and I think it's infrastructure, and it's like a street design or like this. Thank you. Thank you. If you could thank you for applying Elena. Could you expand a little bit on projects that you've worked on? You said both internationally and you'd like, what kind of projects that you've worked on as an architect and both here and in and in a brown. Yes I have a couple example of if you examples if you like you can see this it's I work with residential areas with industrial areas with new new city we designed new cities and new parts of CT and sub-urban areas and a lot of you can see of my projects and I sometimes I'm an adaptation of project from different CITS to local regulations, like big projects and building projects. It's what work I have. I do. Thank you. Is me. Do you have a copy for each of us to look at your project? Did you bring a copy for each of us? Oh, pictures. If you want. Would anyone be interested in looking at the pictures? No. Okay, yes. Okay. I guess we'll just with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Can we have the next candidate please come up? Thank you. I just had a quick question. How do you feel or what are your thoughts about displacement related to development in which problem I know. I read a lot of this, this class, and it's a huge problem. Problem I know I read a lot of this was displacement is a huge problem and I think it's allowed to need more affordable houses and need more development with multifamily buildings with special programs because I understand a huge problem about displacement. I have just one question. I mentioned knowing like your connection to the community. I believe you mentioned that you're from Russia, but you've, you've lived here for some time. What do you think are the desires of the community and comes to development? Yes, I work in this plot. I make a dental design like Home Aditions, like a a facility structure additions. Now I work with small projects and I work with people and I know what they need. Sometimes they need more bedroom for children, more addition for something and I work with regulations a lot of time and I see problems. I see problems because people can't develop property because we have really strong regulations and sometimes it's It's great, sometimes it's too much for this city. And I think it's great, sometimes it's too much for this city and I think it's needed to be. Thank you. Thank you. And I work with a lot of people and I work with building and planning department a lot of times. Sometimes I have maybe nine projects in a while, then I did nine projects with permit. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next candidate please. Next candidate, Elena Cogan. Hello, my name is Elena Cogan. I was one of those people who applied, but did not get an invitation, but Elena Salva was kind of not to bring me the invitation here. So I'm here. Thank you so much for considering my candidacy. As you know, from my previous statements, my family and I lived here in East Palo Alto for 25 years, since August 2000. My grandparents, my parents, my mother and father, my aunt and uncle, and me and my brother. We all live in East Palo Alto. and they were not planning on moving, so I'm here for the duration of my life's foreseeable future. So I'm very much invested into the betterment of the city of East Palo Alto. I think I'll be a great candidate for this position, also because I spent 25 years in biotech sales. So the sales background, I think it comes in handy as far as interpersonal communication and most importantly negotiations and fundraising. As far as my vision for the city of East Palo Alto and what's most important. I think that the priority for the city should be public spaces, public transportation, and workability and accessibility. The more usable, beautiful, clean public spaces there are in the city, the more attractive it is. But within that, the foremost priority, as I see it, is spaces for kids. Kids are a future, it sounds tried, but there's nothing more truthful than that. Kids have once in a lifetime genius would develop their interpersonal skills in their athletic skills. It's under children after, you know, their adults, they're already formed, right? I'm an athlete, I spent a lifetime of sports and I know how important it is to start early, especially let's face it with the obesity epidemic that our kids have in the United States for various reasons. So this is where kids can run, play football, ball, basketball, volleyball, tennis. All kinds of athletic things to me is the absolute utmost priority for the city of East Palo Alto and for really any city and any town in the United States. Accessibility, public transportation, 15-minute cities, that goes to fighting disembowishment, that is a scourge of the Bay Area in general and East Palo Alto in particular. And that is also extremely important. Sorry. Thank you. I don't know if we have any. Yeah. Thank you. And you made some strong statement. So reacting to that. Yeah. Good. No. Thank you for your presentation. I mean, I don't know if you can hear me or. It's it's our system our system is not not you. Okay. Yeah. No, but so the same way is you know, if you're you're approached or your thoughts and how to about the short term planning needs and the longer. I don't know that short term planning should lay the way for long term planning. If there are some short term planning decisions being made that make it impossible in the future to create all of these things that I was talking about, such as great public spaces, accessibility, accessibility to transportation, multi-unit housing, then they probably should be reconsidered, right? But I'm also a strong believer in regulations. So I think enforcement of existing regulations, such as parking and zoning and such. I'm a strong believer in that that should be a short term priority and always a priority. Thank you. Next speaker, Devon Taylor, but not sure would you like to interview again? Hello again. I'm going to go ahead and the hello all heard from me on the rent stabilization board. You know, as. I'll just leave this for me. The important thing around the planning commissioner, you know, especially hearing from you, councilmember. Avrica around. Short and long term vision. It's I think it's just being thoughtful. In city, it's, I think it's just being thoughtful in city planning and including the most folks as a part of the conversation. Your short term goals should align with the long term planning. So for example, we want to build more developments. I know on my side they're building high rise apartments right so ensuring that infrastructure is ready as best we can ahead of those developments or by the time that we're moving residents in. Or if we're building more dense multi housing that we're doing it in a way that's thoughtful and around dense transit areas we should have more open green spaces we shouldn't didn't have to go to Minnell Park to be able to access the gym freely or to find more parks than are available here for East Palo Alto kids. There can be more partnerships I think in that way, especially when we're thinking about planning across cities and how they actually kind of run aground with any, again, highway infrastructure, infrastructure planning that goes with the county. And I mean, ultimately, it's about taking care of the residents that we have now, ensuring that they aren't displaced, ensuring that they can age with dignity where they are, but ensuring that we have a thoughtful plan for growth for their next generations to be able to stay here as well and grow. And that we're also an attractive spot for new investment and new people to come and move and be able to take advantage of the richness that's here. But we also have climate concerns. We also have identity concerns, housing, the cost of housing that's also pressing folks out. And being sure that when we're working with developers that there are community benefits that go along with that, that we're hiring locally, that we're ensuring that local businesses have a place to set up shop. And so really trying to leverage those partnerships to get the most for the benefits of the city, because in those developments they're getting the most out of us in our dollars as well. And so ensuring that we are, as we're introducing new development opportunities that were being thoughtful in how we reach into those communities, setting up resident advisory groups, for example, to bring people in and say these are the plans, what do you think about these areas? Or this plan or this project, I'm gonna sound like a tree hugger here for a second, if that's not a bad term, But there was a beautiful tree down on the complex that they're taking out for new development And I you know for me I think as a part of this It's also ensuring that we're consistent in our environment environment environmental studies on Ensuring that we're maintaining as much green or we're also including it on the back end so that folks have a spot Have a space that they can feel welcome and warm if they are living in a multi-family unit And they don't have a front yard or a backyard that they do have a community space within that community that they can access Within their residents, but then also having those again, like I said those additional green spaces and addition so So all of those things happen in concert right increasing walkability establishing infrastructure so that you can bring more folks in but also working strategically with the partners to ensure that you're hiring locally so that folks are making affordable wages to be able to stay here. There's housing available for them to afford to stay here and you're prioritizing the people here, while also encouraging other people to come here and experience the benefits of the city. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Any questions? Well, for me, you kind of touched on it, but maybe elaborate a little more on the balance or the tension between short-term, planning needs and then the longer term, you know. Certainly. If I want to build a 200 unit high rise in the city, I want to make sure that the infrastructure is available to support the new families that are going to be in there. I know for example one of the things that comes up regularly at council meetings are regulations are parking. When you cannot afford to live in the home that you have and you need to live collectively. It's a chicken or the egg. If housing costs were lower, perhaps more parking would be open because more folks would not have to be in one spot. So thinking thoughtfully about, all right, if we want to put up this 200 high rise and we know that there's already traffic on university and It's bad How much more congestion is that going to cause? so understanding the Difficult position that the commission and the council is is in generally and trying to assess and respond to the needs of the community and having and in responding to mitigating congestion or supporting more affordable housing with development. That has to, I think some of that can be supported just by having more of those community conversations and thinking through what is the impact going to be in that area. And sometimes we're not always going to get the right answer on what that is. But I think that mayors between short term and long term is sometimes that-term is actually more of a medium term and taking more time for that thoughtful development than trying to get the most now. And as someone who has worked in state government with vendors, a lot of them love to put pressure on public entities as though there are no other options available to them. To take a deal that perhaps we can take more time and think more thoughtfully on. And a lot of it is because our hearts are in the right place and we want to do the best for our community. But in our haste, we are incidentally exclusionary for folks, because we don't take that additional time to bring them in because they miss their shot to show up this time and have the conversation. Even though we know it's at six o'clock and a lot of folks are just getting off work and they're probably stuck in traffic, even though we know that they may have other kids, that they need to attend to other events, right? And how can we partner with schools to get a lot of that information out? How can we partner with churches and faith institutions? And so I think it's just about being more creative about our opportunities to interface and engage with folks and how they can, I still don't think in all of this technology nothing beats word of mouth and a lot of the reasons I think as we've heard here, folks end up here because of their neighbor telling them something and how often are we leaning into them to spread that word and make sure that people are coming out and engaging. And so short term and long term goals means that we have to include as many folks across the H spectrum. More folks who are younger than me and older than me and ensuring that you know they have a seat at the table. You know I know my 13 year old is spunky and has a lot of thoughts too but just ensuring that we're staying together and in community and those conversations around what the what are the goals and then what are the impacts on the pathways that we're taking they've reached them. Thank you. Do you have any more questions? If not we're moving on to our next candidate. Thank you, Mr Taylor. Thank you. Thank you. Next candidate, Marty,, Mr. Taylor. Thank you. Thank you. Next candidate, Maria Rocha. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, it's Dean Poured. I feel very honored listening to all the candidates that are applying. It would be a great honor to be able to serve with any of them which bring, they all bring amazing skills. Pardon me, I was already ready to go. It's moved Okay. So I want to serve on the planning commission board because East Pellalt is not just where I am from. It's where my heart is. I was raised here and educated here and I'm raising my own family here and I've seen our city change over decades and I want to help guide that change with intention, care, and community at the center. We are at a pivotal moment with transformative projects like Golibe Rikamans, the 851 Weeks Street Senior Housing and the Light Tree apartment expansion and the Emerson Collective Waterfront Plan. These projects show promise, but they must be planted not just for the next years, but for the next 50 years. That means designing for affordability that lasts, environmental resiliency, climate adaptation and public health, so that the families who live here today can still be here tomorrow. At Stanford, I support infrastructure projects and oversee safety and sustainability for over 300 buildings. And I've written over 100 policies and training documents. And I hold an OSHA and FEMA certifications. I understand that it's what it takes to plan responsibly, balancing compliance, innovation, and community needs. With an MBA in healthcare management, I bring a public health lens to planning, understanding how land to use affects everything from air quality to senior care. I also serve on boards that focus on education and cultural preservation and I've always centered equity and inclusion in my leadership. Planning is not just about zoning and density, it's about designing a livable inclusive city that works not just for today but for generations to come. I'm ready to bring my experience, my values, and deep community ties to help these ballaltrow thrive long into the future. To answer Mr. Abrika's short term planning needs and how I would address them within the next one to five years to respond to immediate priorities and key strategies include addressing urgent housing and infrastructure needs and prioritizing projects that are already in the pipeline, like the Calibri comments and the Light Trip apartments, ensuring that they continue to move forward efficiently, engage community members early and often, as some of my other colleagues have already mentioned, especially those most impacted by current development, and ensuring compliance with current codes and safety standards, including integrating emergency preparedness and natural warning systems. When the gentleman was speaking about the waterfront, I pay $2,800 for my flood insurance. So if we are able to continue to support that program to move along, $2,800 goes a long way. I have a daughter in college, I have one that's about to go to college. So being part of this committee would be something that would very much interest me in order to help our residents. Looking into our long-term planning vision, planning and looking what does their 10 or 50 years look ahead, land use and housing affordability that continues to ensure families that can stay and grow and ease pelolto across generations, climate resiliency, planning for sea level rises, sustainable transportation and green infrastructure, and of course health equity ensuring neighborhood support while being with clean air access to fresh food, walkable streets and quality health care. How do I align as someone with real-time project experience at Stanford? I've worked with both short-term goals, compliance, access and safety and long-term strategies. With the OSHA and my FEMA training, it prepares me to address both immediate risk and build resilience. I think that I'm going to stop there and allow to see if you have any questions for me. Sorry, I always get nervous. It's okay. Do we have any questions? Any further questions from the council at this moment? Well, I think you're address mind so. I was paying attention. Do we have any other questions from the council? You said you've been involved in Stanford's massive building expansions. What are some of the challenges that you've seen from a planning perspective with Stanford? Working as you've brought a bunch of new buildings. I believe like dormitories and business school and things like that online. My knees just mostly in the residential area and it's the access control compartment of it. So I do work a lot with the project management office and the other sustainability team and the health team seem to make sure that we're meeting with the compliances for the university that the university has. A lot of what I work on is like, like I mentioned, the security component of it, like we're moving towards not having keys so we're like keyless access. So that's my main forte in that area. So you're doing like when school starts and school stops, it's like deactivating a bunch of keys in a few weeks when Stanford's done and then also when kids come in or I should say students come in. That's one component. And then being part of the committee that works on what type of infrastructure are we building and with the buildings that we're renovating. So what access control systems are we going to implement for that? Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know if we have any more questions at this time. If not, thank you. Thank you for your participation. We're moving on to our next candidate. Let's candid Andre Guzman. Andre Guzman. I'm out here. Next candidate Elizabeth Poulido. Hello, good evening everybody. Thank you so much. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very proud to be here. and well-being of our community. I bring a Promatic Solutions-oriented approach to decision-making and prioritizing efficiency, economic stability, and long-term planning. I've served and been involved in many local organization in Palo Alto, from Wani's Palo Alto, from Nostragasa, projects, and projects we hope, and also with my local church. I'm currently the vice president of Precious Hearts, which is a nonprofit who helps vulnerable children and families, which we help in equip and empower for them for a better future. And one of my current big projects is there is completing an office that we're building in Kenya. That's going to house about 100 orphans in Kenya, Africa. With my background in business administration's nonprofit leadership and management, I have the expertise to navigate challenges and implement practical solutions that benefit both the residents and local businesses. Transparency and accountability and strategic planning are essential to shaping a thriving sustainable future for our city. My goal is to support thoughtful development that enhances public spaces, ensures responsible infrastructure expansion, and preserves the character and structure of our community. I believe in fostering a well-structured forward-thinking approach to growth that strengthens our local economy, support businesses, and enhances the daily lives of our law abiding residents of East Palo Alto. I look forward to serving and contributing to the city's growth, ensuring a thriving future for generations to come through responsible planning and strategic development. And then just to answer Carlos' question, short. I'm actually moving. Oh, sorry, Ruben. It's okay. I apologize for that. For short term, I would focus on zoning and land use, traffic, and safety enhancements, the verification of the parks, the overcrowding of the parking, also for bicycling pedestrian safety. For long term, it would be for the infrastructure expansion, also economic development and supporting with local businesses and also investment more rows and open spaces for the community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bolido. Do we have any further questions from the council at this moment? So I think a lot of people are focused on housing. I think you mentioned economic development. And in terms of economic development, what do you see in terms of our planning and how we can improve the economics of our community? Well first, supporting the local businesses. So making sure that our local residents are able to afford where to live. I would think it's important to finish whatever projects are in hand and also educate everybody. How is it possible to buy their home? I think that's something is so important. I think everybody should be able to do that, so we can focus on that and then also expanding single-family homes that will be great for our commuter expansion for the family unit. So I did have a... Yeah, you partly answered my question in terms of topics, but I'm also interested in what your approach is. You know, how do you see that as a planning commissioner that addresses specific issues, but really more your approach? How do you approach that? Well, first is communication with the community. It's about listening, about sitting down, not just the businesses, but I would think families, businesses, leadership, churches. I think it's important for us to understand where everybody's coming from and then come to an agreement. What is the best for the community as a whole? If it's expansion to helping people buy a home, if it's for someone wants to start a business, then we can start developing for the local residents instead of first reaching out outside. I would say focus first here and then see the needs and then see what the zone regulations currently have and go from there. But communication I think is very important in understanding what is the best for the family and for everyone that wants to come here and stay here as well? Thank you. I don't know if we have any further questions If not at this moment, thank you Miss Bolido for coming. Thank you so much. We're gonna hear our next candidate next candidate, uh, Gildixin Me again Okay, you guys know me okayail Dixon, okay? That's where I started off in my business. Dixon Enterprises, Coliseum Realty, okay? Now, I feel like at this point, after almost a century of learning, I spent over $100,000 in my education. Anything I'm interested in, I go and I look into it. I think I've mentioned to you all and I always end up an alternate but it's okay because it leaves me open to do other things. I've never been to Russia but I've sold to Russians. sold a whole tale, Oakland, California, uh, off a Heggenberger, $25 million. I sold houses behind Home Depot. KB signature. I think I had to tell the council, um, about a sign that was there. A man got a ticket. Well, we're going to find out who put that sign there. I do. I knew the developers did it. What I'm trying to say is I've been here, you know, 1955, I mean, has seen up, is a lot to up and down and up and down. And I still don't know where this murder capital come from. I think it was a stereotype that they just wanted to put on a minority community. Because I used to sit there on the corner where Amazon is, of Capitol and Donahoe. I used to call a police. Because I had prostitution going down one side, heroin on that other side, the restaurant given out green cards on the other side. And I'm saying that all to say is that I'm invested in this community. I know what it is. I mean, you don't have to put lipstick on it to dress it up for me. I know. I've dealt with developers. I've been in board rooms, even though I look a little scruffy now. I'm older. I've sold real estate all over the state of California, into Nevada. I don't like bragging. My mother always said bragging about yourself. You know, it's a sin. But I mean, if I knew it was show and tell, I would have brought a lot of papers so you could see. Exactly what I know, how I know it, and who I've dealt with. And I'm seeing you getting this all for free, okay? I have a degree, he says I'm going right now back for my masters and I'm going to real estate a bachelor's science degree with the emphasis on real estate. I have that degree, bachelor's is down. And I've owned some restaurants. if you ask me a question about East Palato, I can tell you. I can tell you what to do. I think I've come to you many times and say you need to hire a urban designer. You need a proto type out in the middle there so people can see what direction the city is going into. And I think the first time I came to the city council meeting and I said, well where's the plan? Where's the general plan? Nobody could tell me. And it's over there, it's over there. I found it in the computer and I read it and it says you're supposed to update it every year. Oh no, we're not going to do that. We work too hard. Okay, that's to you. But to be a meaningful city and to do things the right way, I do things the right way. I think it through. So I don't have to, what is your grandmothers? I know everybody's your grandmothers said, a stitch in time saves nine. I don't try to make mistakes. I do try it do it the right way the first time. And it did it dismayes me when I I get frustrated. I've been on the committees and commissions and okay, I might rub a couple people wrong way because I'm not following their behinds down that rabbit hole. I have clients who are in foreclosure right now and I took them to Dwayne Bay, found out they had been there like two, three years before and then they get a hole to somebody else and I write it up. This is what you have to do to help. Start in sharp as focused and if you can wind up or um, you guys do to me. No, I'm making folks round up for four minutes and discriminate it against. I did tell you I have a bachelor's science degree in peer-reliant studies, right? All right. I fill off that stage. You haven't got it fixed yet. So we give you five around five five minutes. So okay. But I'm saying as I'm overqualified, I'm giving you all the benefit of my education for free. If you don't like it, do what you do all the time. I mean, you got a lot of, Christopher, he's the best. I mean, he's the stuff our emails with information for the plan of the public works of commission. He is true, he's not fake, he's for real. He looks into things, I like him. And I hope he likes me. But anyway, we have history here, a lot more than the others, but I know real estate upside down, sideways, I know the zoning and I know the regulations, unlike some of the candidates that are running for city council didn't even know that they had a church in the middle of the RBD district. Either a lion or their blind, but I know he's followed out to them. That's all I have to say. And I'm for real. Well, this is the shit me up again. Bye. Thank you, Ms. Wilkerson. I'll ask my question just any, your thoughts on, you know, I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. I know your name. what will work and real estate they teach you about how harmonious a community has to be. In a new community they say you don't know which way it's going to go. Is it going to turn out to be a good community or a bad community. And you have to situate it right. That's why you need an urban designer. Sure term, it's easy to do. I have it all written out somewhere right here. I just happen to have my master organizational plan for my business. You have to have it harmonious. And getting grants, you guys are a city. You can get money. You should have money coming out of your ears. Don't you see Donald Trump trying to use the United States of America to increase his bottom line? You could be doing the same thing. You could do it. Short term, however you want, Reverend Baines, he's going gonna put homeless things over there. It's a lot you can do. You just have to have a plan and think it through. Now I know Mark, I mean, how you sit nicely. Some people don't like rich people coming into places but we need that. Espa Lotto had a middle class for decades. They went to work, came back home, my name, and business. But what did we get stuck with? Murder capital of the nation. The short term is easy to do. All you have to do is find the homes and put them in here. And then just Samaritan does that they'll put people in a house and Then say your time is up and You get a job we give you this resources and What is it? What's the saying you give a man a fish? But if you give them a fishing pole teacher not, they'll live forever. That's what you have to do. That's short term, and then the middle, I mean, it's different levels. It depends on the situation. You have to, it varies. Did I answer your question? Because I can add more. You okay? I have one question. What is that? What are your thoughts on building skyscrapers in East Palo Alto? Oh God. See now you want to give me a trouble because there's a lot of people who want to stay country. We have 2.5 square miles. We don't have two miles. Who in here believes we have 2.5 square miles in East Palo Alto? No, we don't. The sky's the limit. And I have to tell somebody that on the planning commission. I don't know if he's still on there. But no, you can't do that. East Palo Alto owns the sky. Now, over on the west side, to tell you the truth, I want them to knock that whole thing down. The buildings are old, dilapidated. My cramers, he's tired of fixing it up. He wants to do something else. And then build something where people can stay. You have retail at the body. She did that over by Home Depot too. I tried to tell PDL, whatever it was that. Retail and then housing on top. The reason why you have it that way, because the people on top can feed the retail at the bottom. And you learn that in real estate. So high rises, I heard one guy, no, he was on Facebook. He said, I don't wanna tell my grandchildren, I can see four seasons from, and he lives way out there on Illinois. And you know, that's the way people are. Some people don't like high-rise. I do. I like it. And as a thing in real estate, you have to have it harmoniously. You can't have little kids with a bunch of old people. seniors, you know, they go crazy. It doesn't work. In the real estate industry, more houses are worn down than torn down. You know what that means? You'd ever know what you're going to get. You might have some people coming in there who has one standard, and do you have people who have another standard? It has to be harmonious. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Jackson. Our number who's always here. Yeah, but we never just a meeting. Thank you for what about you, Mark? What you want to talk about pinhouses? I would love to talk about penthouses with you, Gail, but we have a lot on our agenda, and thank you for all your thoughts. I agree with you on skyscrapers. OK, 20 stories. 30. How to, Mr. Romero? OK. Thank you for your enthusiasm, Ms. Dickerson. And actually, she really doesn't miss a meeting. It's noticeable when she's not here. So thank you for participating. With that, Mr. Collin, I think we're going to wrap up this part of our agenda item and we're going to move on to item 16.1. Just apologies for the interruption. Just want to make a brief announcement that I will be notifying everyone here when we will be making the decision. Some of you did not give me your emails. So please maybe please give me a send me an email at city clerk at cdvp8.org with your name and what position you applied for. I would appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So with that, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna move on to our item 16.1, which is appeal hearing for 1174 Laurel Avenue and I believe that's going to be mischievous presenting. Thank you. Once again, thank you to all that showed up and presented for the commission. So we appreciate it. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Council. Testing. Does that work? Okay. Good. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Amy Chan. I'm going to go to the next slide. Testing. Does that work? Okay. Good. Good evening. Marin City Council. My name is Amy Chen. I'm the director of community and economic development. I'm joined here today by Donald Sout, our interim chief building official. I'll be passing him the mic to do a majority of the presentation. And then also we had our outside councilor Lance Bayer. He wasn't able to make it tonight. So we have Michelle Mangarro sitting in for our staff to support on our outside council. So with that, I'll pass it to Donald. Thank you, Amy. Testing, testing. Okay. Good evening Mayor and City Council. My name is Donald Zowl. I'm the interim building official for the building division. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. Through the chair. Apologies Donald because of this hearing I want Mayor bar going to hear everything so let's give her a second to come back. you you I'm going to start with the next one. I'm going to start with the next one. I'm going to start with the next one. I'm going to start with the next one. I'm going to start with the next one. I'm going to start with the next one. I. My name is Donald Zowl. I'm the interim building official of the building division. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. I'd like to provide a little background of the project and why we're here today. This is a project related to 1124 Laurel Avenue. It's a conversion of a 400 square feet garage to an accessory dwelling unit. This permit was approved in January 2024. The project plans called for the removal of the roof, but not but keeping the walls and the foundation. The plans call for reinforcement of the walls and the foundation. On October 1, 2024, an inspection was scheduled, which revealed that the entire structure was removed, including a foundation. This exceeds the approved scope of work and is in violation of East Palo Alto Municipal Code as well as the building code. I've included a picture of the garage and where it was located. We are here today because of an appeal of a decision I made regarding the terms existing versus new. When a building is removed in its entirety, including the foundation, the word existing is no longer applicable. The approved plans for which the permit was issued called for the conversion of an existing building to an accessory dwelling unit. This does not include the demolition of the structure. East Palo Alto, Minnesota, Code Chapter 15, Adopted California Building Standards Code, which requires construction to follow approved permits. The unauthorized demolition violates this requirement. 100% of the building was demolished and removed. The demolition of the structure and the foundation has eliminated the existing structure. This requires new approval. Determine existing does not apply to new construction. Here is a table shown the difference between new construction and ADU conversions. This is not an all-inclusive list. This is not an all-inclusive list between what is required of new buildings versus existing. This is more specific to this project. As you can see on the left, we have flood proofing requirements, cow green requirement, that also includes reach code standards, photo-phototic and energy storage system requirement fire sprinkler systems, as well as city impact fees. These are all the things that our division, other divisions would have to look at to value whenever there's a new building versus existing. When the buildings completely removed, most of the boxes on the left for new construction would apply. So staff here is recommending to city council to deny the appeal due to unauthorized demolition and code violations. Require a new permit for the ADU. And also to apply the fees that's already spent for this building permit, be credited to the next permit. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Do you have any questions at the stand from the council? Um, so it's my understanding that when you're demolishing a structure, does that require demolition permit to? If it's a large permit, yes. If it's not, normally we would roll it all into one permit. In this case, this approved plan did not call for demolition of the structure, eight called for, remove of the roof and the concrete slab. The walls and the foundation were to remain. No question. Okay, roughly speaking, how much would the new construction cost versus rebuilding the old construction under old standards? Well, so on the building division side, so one of the things that we try not to do, but we do take into account is cost of construction. When it deals with building codes, we normally should not be including it as as part of a decision of whether something is life say the important or not. In this case, we did request that the appellant take a look at what the cost of doing concrete slab or raise floor, what the cost difference would have been for them. You could put answer the what are the fees associated difference, different the different fees. So impact fees is one thing that gets evaluated. Impact fees for this project is pretty much not applicable because it's only scored 400 square feet. Anything over 750 square feet, I believe, would have to have impact fees. So those get accounted for anything over 500 square feet would have to pay school fees when it comes to additional square footage. Permit fee wise, a remodel takes significantly less inspections than a brand new construction. So there would be a delta in increased cost for new construction, probably 50 percent. I'd say I don't have it at the top of them. So what would be the number for that? I would be guessing be probably between, say, $3,000 to $5,000 difference in terms of building permit fee. Okay, and is there an inclusionary housing fee as well for this ADU? No, on ADUs, and specifically if this was just a garage conversion as followed by the plans, there would not have been any inclusionary requirement because it was not adding any net new units. So, but if it is under the considered new construction, is there an inclusionary housing fee on this as well? No, there's also not any inclusionary requirement because ADUs are exempt from inclusionary. Interesting. I heard something different from on a different case, but thank you. Thank you. The chair I had, and I know that we're going to hear from the appellant, but in your opinion, if you could elaborate a little more on your decision to basically recommend that the appeal be denied. And what are some of the standards that are being used to support your decision? Just briefly, I know that there'll probably be more discussion, but yeah, if you can address that. Okay, so as interim building official, building official in general, our jobs are to render interpretation of the building code and to enforce them and establish policies for them. So I've included a slide with the code sections right here right here. So that's the first one. This is establishing what what our intents are. The next one is definitions of the words addition, alteration, existing building, existing structure, and repair. So these are words, these are definitions that we apply to projects. And in this case none of those definitions apply when you have a a complete removal of a building, including a foundation. So we are here today because of a difference between how I, the building official, interprets the code, and what the appellant is requesting that we call the complete removal of the building and is a existing building, which I don't have the mechanism to define based on the code sections right here. And also, we have the municipal code with floodplain definitions for structural, I think the definition is substantial construction. And that has to deal with 50% of the structures of value. So the municipal code under chapter 15.04 and 0.015.8 for floodplain defines that. And if I were to say this building, that's completely removed, is it an existing building? Now what? And if I were to say this building, that's completely removed, is it an existing building, now would violate the municipal code as well. I've also included a section of the California existing building code that also talks about the same similar requirement. So then we would be violating a building code in terms of the 50% rule that's established. Again, our map is simple. I hope that answers your question. So some of these codes are state codes too. So the city of East Palo Alto adopted the state codes, which is the California building standards code, there were no modifications to these standards. We do. We are applying the most current codes. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any further questions? Yes, I may have misunderstood you, but did you say that the scope of the original work included the removal of the existing foundation? I assume it was a slam on grade. Is that the right answer? So this is a existing garage and the scope of work was to convert the 400 square feet to into an ADU. The roof was proposed to be removed, so there's a new roof trust system. But the walls were to be reinforced with new studs, 12 inch on center, and then the foundation, the structural engineer plan called for reinforcement of the footing, the slab were removed. So, it is essentially an unreinforced slab on grade originally. Is that correct? I don't know. I don't know. So, because what you're telling me is that the engineer has said he wanted the perimeter walls reinforced, or I don't know if it's reinforced or removed. Actually, I think I saw the plans. I think you're doing an underpinning. Underpinning, yes, correct. But the... And then you said, though, that you're calling for the plans called for the removal of the interior slab and a replacement of a concrete slab in its place. Yep. That's what was proposed with the slab. So the engineer specified the underpinning of the existing, I assume, unreinforced slab. I mean, maybe it was slightly thickened. But the engineer said, we want the slab removed, right? And we want a new foundation put under it. Because essentially, that's almost what you're doing, right? Through the underpinning. And you're also taking out the interior concrete, which I just finished. Sorry. Had that been approved? Had the plans originally been submitted, saying, we're just wiping out the foundation, right? And whatever, we'll put the garage up on stilts, whatever, probably wouldn't make sense, but anyway, you put the garage up, you redo your foundation, then you set it back down. That would have been permissible, correct? Yes. Okay, no further questions, thanks. So interested in the ongoing intent behind demolishing the structure because once you what is the difference between doing a garage conversion versus a new construction is all kinds of rules and regulations yet to follow because we'd be living a flood plain and elevation and all of the kinds of stuff that requires more time, probably more expenses. I'm interested in the intent behind going not following or submitting a permit for a new construction versus a conversion. What's the difference between the time and the cost and regulations and is that I'm trying to understand the intent? Yeah, so we can try to address that. I think just as a point of clarification, and we jumped right into this item, and sorry Mayor, we wanted to wait for you to be able to listen to the whole public hearing. We did outline in the staff report the order of the presentations. Council member Lincoln, your question might be better answered by the appellants. Mayer, if we may, transition to the appellants presentation. remember Lincoln if question is not answered, we can bring that back as people have some rebuttal time as well. Madam, I have one final question to the building official. So no walls remain in the new structure that were there previously correct all walls were moved. 100% of the building is gone at this state. There's no construction at this point. Once also we did inspection in October 2024 and we discovered the work exceeded the scope of work. So no work has proceeded. Right, but all of if I'm looking at your presentation, scope of permit and approved plans, three existing stereotypes to remain and be reinforced. Those are gone. Those are all gone. Thank you. Yes, we can have the appellant. Please come up. Members of the East Palo Alto City Council. My name is Derek O'Yang and I am a researcher at Stanford. A nonprofit consultant for the city, and in the case of this appeal, the project representative for Achille Agrawal, who is the owner of 1174 Laurel Avenue. I first I'll provide what I believe to be important context for this case. Second, I'll detail the substantive arguments of our appeal. This case follows a long legacy of ADU streamlining efforts in EPA. Council members of Drika and Romero will have the seniority to directly recall the second unit task force, which presented policy recommendations to the council in 2019. I co-authored their final report and presented it to the council. Since then, I have continued to participate in the city's technical working group, which is convened monthly to the present day. I've also supported planning and housing staff in an SB2 funded project to identify ways to streamline the review and approval of ADUs. I provide this historical context in part to underscore the extent to which I've supported the city in furthering its own ADU goals going on seven years now. I also believe this case directly relates to our conclusions from that SB2 funded city project Namely that the primary barriers to streamlined ADU development have moved downstream from the planning department to the building department and other infrastructural authorities. I now turn to the substance of the case. You have a copy of the drawings approved January 2024. The city permitted the following scope of work, take the existing 20 by 20 detached garage in the backyard, demolish everything but three walls and the footings beneath them, build a new floor and roof, add a kitchen and bathroom inside, and finally replace the fourth wall where the garage door used to be. Again, this permit was fully approved and met all the city's planning and building review requirements for retrofitting existing construction, including passing that 50% substantial improvement value test. Shortly after we completed the approved demolition of those pieces that were allowed to be removed, we identified a serious structural defect under the three walls we had intended to keep as is. This is getting to your question, Council Member Lincoln. We immediately sought the recommendation of our licensed structural engineer who recommended a complete demolition and rebuild. Notably this would require no new structural details on the plans since we could use a detail that was already approved in the plans for the fourth wall. Now, I take responsibility for the decision onsite to deviate from the plans and immediately take down the walls given my own utmost focus safety, and my expectation that within a matter of days, we would be replacing those walls exactly as they had previously existed as illustrated and approved in the permit drawings. I also understand why the inspector flagged this as an unauthorized deviation from the plans, stopped our work, and asked us to resolve the issue with the interim chief building official. To be clear, this is not the subject of the appeal. Since one way or another, we expect to come back into permit compliance. The actual disagreement in the case is in what we believe the permit resolution to be. Our position, which is exactly what we are appealing to the council to affirm, is that we should only be required to add a simple annotation to our drawings, showing that the three walls originally meant to be left as is, are instead to be structurally replaced to the exact same size and shape. Granted approval by CitySnap, we would then simply continue with the project as drawn in these plans with absolutely no material difference in the final ADU. The interim CBO disagrees and considers the removal of those three walls to have triggered a complete reclassification of the project as new construction, which means that the original design itself would have to be modified to address various requirements that don't apply to existing retrofits but do apply to new buildings, which the CBO had just shown on a slide. His position requires a more fundamental reworking of our drawings, a resubmission, and a more thorough re-review by City staff. These steps would also involve more soft and hard costs, which are likely to be cost prohibitive since we are already working at the limit of the owner's budget. In short, we are appealing to allow three walls to be replaced with three walls of the exact same dimensions without changing anything else about the project. However, city staff write that this appeal will quote, compromise the city's ability to enforce building codes, set a dangerous precedent, undermine the integrity of the permitting process, and endanger public safety. I would like to address each of these claims in turn. First, they claim the appeal will quote, compromise the city's ability to enforce building codes. It's not clear at all what enforcement abilities are being compromised when the inspector would be able to verify that we constructed the three replaced walls per detail the city had already approved in their plan review. Their emphatic wording of this concern would suggest that they see the enforcement of procedural issues, like whether removing three walls triggers a technical reclassification of the project as their central enforcement duty. But if so, they are forgetting the obviously more important enforcement responsibility, which is ensuring the actual habitability of the completed building itself, which of course, in no way has been compromised here. Perhaps staff are claiming that our actions have compromised their ability to follow the letter of the law. But I have repeatedly pointed out statutes in California existing building code that allow for exactly the discretion we're asking them to exercise under the letter of the law. Section 104.10 states, quote, wherever there are practical difficulties involved in carrying out the provisions of this code, the code official shall have the authority to grant modifications for individual cases, provided that the modification is in compliance with the intent and purpose of this code, and such modification doesn't lessen health safety or structural requirements. Of course, in our case, we are actually on the side of promoting health and safety through a structural repair. And speaking of quote repair, the term is defined as the CBO noted in the slide as, quote, defined as the CBO noted in the slide as, quote, the reconstruction, replacement, or renewal of any part of an existing building for the purpose of its maintenance or to correct damage. End quote. In other words, an existing building can have any parts replaced and the building code still considers it an existing building otherwise the sentence couldn't possibly exist in the existing building code. The correspondence record will show that when provided these statutes, City staff refused to acknowledge that they exist or applied to them, despite otherwise claiming a commitment to the unquestionable authority of building code. Second, City staff claimed the appeal will quote, set a dangerous precedent, specifically quote, allowing applicants to obtain conversion permits with fewer requirements, demolish structures, and appeal to bypass stricter standards for new construction." The implication is that applicants like us may be intentionally gaming the system so that we don't have to abide by costly requirements like a raised foundation. But I'll remind the council that the issue of replacing or not replacing three walls does not in any way change the fact that at the end of this process We will have built a 400 square foot ADU that looks exactly like what the city approved Where is the loophole being exploited here? We are not secretly planning to build a mick mansion because obviously as soon as the project begins to look like a mick mansion Instead of the approved ADU the city would have every right to stop us. Third, the city staff claimed the appeal will undermine the integrity of the permitting process. From my experience, the greatest threat to integrity is a slow and frustrating permitting process. I am currently assisting the city with its required state reporting of about 40 ADUs that were entitled, issued permits or finaled in the calendar year 2024. The average time from application to issued permit was 345 days. The average time of construction itself was 605 days. Our project, of course, is currently in the construction phase and has been delayed seven months so far, due to this appeal. There is also, of course, an even graver risk to integrity, and that's a process that is so slow and frustrating and costly that property owners simply resort to unpermitted construction. In my day job at Stanford, I recently co-authored peer-reviewed research that estimated a 75% unpermitted construction rate in our neighbor San Jose. We should be reforming the process in a way that builds the trust of property owners so that they are willing to build above board. Experiences like ours shared neighbor to neighbor certainly don't help. Fourth and last, city staff claim the appeal will quote danger in danger public safety. Perhaps city staff is raising the concern that this project will not have a raised floor and thereby will endanger public safety from a flood risk perspective. I remind the council that the project was already approved without a raised floor and that's because retrofits of underutilized buildings are an explicit benefit to the city such that conversion projects are intentionally granted. Wait, wait, wait, this is not a retrofit. It no longer is a retrofit. Sure. Such that conversion projects are intentionally granted leniency on some non-essential building requirements. So either city staff are suggesting that they do not believe any conversion projects deserve that leniency, which might I add is granted by the very state building code they claim to unhearingly uphold, or they simply don't believe that certain conversions are deserving of it, like ours, and the dangerous ones our project will apparently inspire. But as we previously established, there's no way for a conversion to look and sound like a conversion in the permit approval process, then secretly and nefariously turn out to have been a fake conversion. If what you start with is a 400 square foot garage conversion, a garage, and what you end with is a 400 square foot ADU, I believe that's a conversion, and the means of getting there shouldn't change that. I would like to conclude with some final remarks. The last few years of state and local legislation have incrementally removed the discretion of planning departments to stop or delay this type of desirable project. So let's simply hold building departments to the same standard. EPA could be a statewide leader in the council's understanding of this problem and its common sense direction of staff to focus on the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. And I am confident that city staff want it too and are simply looking for the council's permission. On October 30th in an in-person meeting, I asked the interim CBO whose individual decision is the fundamental subject of this appeal, whether he would comply with an upheld appeal by the council. He said that his responsibility is ultimately to serve this council, and so he would be happy to allow us to proceed with our desired approach if the council provides him with that direction. This of course is the final crux of our case, which is that there is in fact nothing about state law that supersedes the power of local city councils on this topic. And that city staff has always had the discretion to accept our appeal at any time. They just wanted to be the council's responsibility not theirs. I hope the council will respond accordingly. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any comments or questions at this moment? Yeah, I think you, Derek. What is the additional cost for if you were to go through this and you have one budget for rebuild and you have another, but you know, what would be the increased cost to making it a new build with all the new flood requirements, also the solar panels, etc. So we barely made this project work under the current owner's budget of roughly $150,000 and by my estimates and in early discussions with the structural engineer, this would be at least a 10% increase in the cost, which would exceed what we've been shooting for. I'll also clarify that in order to even get a clear estimate, we would have to bring the structural engineer back on retainer, which is to start to build in some of those soft costs that we are trying to avoid in the first place. So roughly $15,000, $20,000 more? I would say that at a minimum. minimum. Yeah, so you guys demolished the whole building because of wall damage. Correct. And the foundation? Yeah, there are cracks under the foundation that weren't clearly visible until we had started to do all the other kind of cleanup and demolition of the other parts of the project. Okay, so when you discovered that, why did you not contact the city? It was a matter of about a 24-hour decision. So the first contact I made was through the structural engineer, because I saw that as immediate life safety question. By the way, as soon as you've removed the roof and the floor, the slab to a project like this, you've removed the structural diaphragm. So those are three walls that are currently unstable on-site. And from my personal experience of being on-sites, I felt like the most important thing was just to ascertain is this an issue we need to deal with at a serious level right now of just removing the structure. Now, I take full responsibility that that was something I could have stopped and called and had that process with the city to figure out what was going on. I was worried that in that time the elements themselves would have just fallen over. So I made the choice which I would be happy to then consider in this process as something that is a deviation from the approved plans. We have some resolution, and then we're back in compliance. To me, that's not the issue in this appeal, but I hope that explains my desire at that moment that I feel like in hindsight was a kind of quick decision, but a decision I would still not fundamentally change my mind too much about. OK, so what outcome are you hoping to obtain from the sale? So typically in a revision, you add pink clouds, and you might even see some on the drawing, which is when you made revisions throughout the process. To me, this is one pink cloud. You just draw a pink cloud around the three walls and say, now these walls originally were approved to stay as is. We're just simply going to repair them because they were structurally defective. Nothing else about the project, we would ask, has to change, and we would be seeking approval for that, which would just allow us to continue the project as is. I think the hold up here, of course, which I also totally grant is that it's hard to think about it from that perspective and then flip around and think about it as an empty site right now. And I think this exact fundamental perception difference is what we're getting stuck on. And I think this is fundamentally what, why I think this has come to the council, to really think through the underlying implications of those two world views and how that relates to the broader question of why ADU development, ADU permitting this whole process can feel so frustrating for folks and to really fundamental decide is this more a letter of the law issue or is this more a spirit of the law issue? Okay, so This is a new construction though. At this point. So I would strongly interpret in my opinion that the kind of situation we should have. I mean, where do you draw the line? Yeah, totally agree. So I don't think any line should be drawn in this case. I think this is an existing construction project because if you zoom out far enough, this is an existing 400-square-foot impact, which was a garage, and we are changing that use into a habitable space. And what we're arguing about is just the means to that end. But if you just stare at the start and end of that process, that doesn't change, right? Whether whatever we're talking about, the start and the end would be the same. I think when we switch over to there was nothing in the backyard and we're going to add a new building or we're going to go fundamentally from a 400 square foot courage to something drastically larger, then I would totally concede we're talking about new construction. The point is that this project is none of those situations. The actual strange threshold that city staff is trying to argue here is that there was some difference between what they had approved, which was leaving three walls intact. And we flipped some magic switch and are now in a completely different situation. So that's somewhere between zero walls and three walls. But if we really interrogate that further, putting a threshold there makes no sense. Because where is the threshold? What if it were two walls? What if it were one wall? What if it were half a wall? What if it were one stud? I think the implication of what the city is asking you to uphold is a kind of world philosophy in which one, two by four would have been fine. And then you knock that down, and suddenly it's a new construction. And that's a kind of magical thinking that I think is reminding maybe some of you of the Greek shippathesia thought experiment where the ship gets replaced piece by piece and you ask whether it's an old ship or a new ship. I think is reminding maybe some of you of like the Greek shipathesia's thought experiment where the ship gets replaced piece by piece and you ask whether it's an old ship or a new ship. I think you avoid those types of fundamental paradoxes if you just recognize that there's a difference. This is not an ontological discussion which is what you're getting into here. I big the differ. Where would you suggest that threshold is then? Well, I would suggest that actually city building codes and be more restrictive than state building codes. We have the right to do that. Absolutely. So, essentially, it's what we're doing here, right? So we don't have to apply the exact state code. We're saying as does Palo Alto, as does if you, you know, done any work in most of the other neighboring cities that are much wealthier than we are. You leave a wall or two if you want the building, right, to be considered an existing construction. It's there. Once you remove those walls and you will see entire lots, right, with one standing wall, right? Yes, very straight up. And you'll see people actually doing subterranean work around that one standing wall, okay. For foundations, what have you? Okay. So, I mean, that's, it's clearly permissible what staff is proposing to do. And I don't wanna think about the monetary piece because to me, that should not enter into this discussion. It simply is a normative issue. If you follow the rule or not, what is the rule? Let's apply the rule and let's see then if indeed your client or this this project falls outside of the rule. The fact and. Yeah, the fact that there is nothing there now. I understand the segment scraped as we say. That's correct, okay. To me indicates that what will be put in its place, granted it'll be 400 square feet, it'll essentially be just like you proposed with the exception, actually I guess it'll be just like opposed, it'll be a slab on grade that's all connected. Exactly, right. You're not going to be doing any painting of the interior slab to the underpin slab, it's all one thing. But the removal of those three walls, I think makes this then the new construction by definition. Let's not go into the ontological discussion of, you know, the, you know, let's, let's, let's not get into that issue. I think that what is there proves visually and empirically that it is new construction. And I'll say that I am not a you or your client of gaming the system, however, I do see that if this decision were to, if we were to agree that no, it is existing construction, we could indeed find places where someone decides to build a home, right? On an existing footprint, in a floodplain, right, let's say it's a thousand square foot home. They want to redo it. And skirt the issue related to the floodplain piece, which can be expensive. I have to admit, you know, I'm not thinking about money in your case, because to me that is not germane to this discussion. This example if we were to approve it, or this appeal if we were to say deny it. Could to me lead to that occurring in the future? Tell me why not, but I think that's a legitimate concern. Okay. So I did bring this up specifically as one of the rebuttals of the claims, because city staff was very clear about that in the report. And my main rebuttal was that because you would, in that situation, approve the project, then you could decide and you have the decision from city staff's perspective of whether you would grant that project that leniency. Aren't we doing that right now? Yes. So this project was granted that kind of leniency. So we would have to do this on a case-by-case basis, that? project is already already a case-by-case basis when it comes to building review. Well, but you were precisely arguing that if we want to streamline this process, you apply the rules on the books, you move forward, no changing them on you, whatever. Why would I want, on a case-by-case basis, to determine whether or not the flood control piece applies if you demo the building, if you demo the building, you demo the building, you get applies. Sorry, to clarify, we are talking about a hypothetical future project in which a client is proposing a conversion of a project in which they would leave some amount, maybe just one wall of the project up, and then they would build something else that would not be subject to new building constructions like raise floors. So my point is simply that the building department will be able to decide on the merits of that end state condition on whether that had violated any kind of public safety concern, and they would be judging that like they judge any kind of conversion project, and they would rubber stamp that kind of project. And then now we're just asking a separate question of whether during that process they might have actually ended up demolishing the elements that they said they were going to keep in place and that's the subject of this appeal of course but the end state is still what city staff had a chance to review to whatever degree they wanted to and approved to whatever degree they wanted to so there's no precedent that I think applies here because I think we're imagining that there's a detour of the project to something that the city did not expect. But I'm simply reminding everybody here that city staff would have approved in the hypothetical case the end state, which was a project that did not have a raised floor. So I think it's just a misunderstanding of the kind of imagined risk there of a kind of like runaway system, but I'm simply reminding that I'm not changing the fact that that project went through approval, and everyone saw clearly was in the plans, and what the end state was. We're all agreeing on what the end state should be here. We're just disagreeing about a slight deviation in the means that that end. And that, to me, is the streamlining question because to create issues and that is to create issues that are unnecessary as it pertains to the end goal of the project. Hopefully that clarifies things a bit. Okay, thank you. Wait, so wait a second here. So the safety question is one that you essentially set aside, said there really is no safety issue on the contrary. Having these walls that are pinned up, you know, just loosely hanging there would be a greater safety issue. But the reason, and you know, your client actually might want to elevate it to 18 inches, I think it's 18 inches, is that what plain is? Yeah, 18 inches. Is because we know that flighting is going to have, it's happening that we're having climate change, that they're gonna be potentially these 500 year storms occurring maybe once every 100 years. We don't know, maybe once every 60 years. So the health and safety piece is yes. If you're doing a project and you have that opportunity, increase the 18 inches, you should do it because it's a safety issue. In this case, right, he has the opportunity to do it because we have completely scraped the site, right? We have an underpinned. So So I think it is an issue, it is an issue now of health and safety, because it can be done, because now the underpinned piece is no longer there. You could probably do an underpinned 18 inch slab wall. I mean, to be interesting how they would engineer that, but okay, I mean, but now that there's nothing there, right? It is indeed that health and safety piece. I'm sorry, I'm looking at that. That health and safety piece now is very legitimate. Yeah, right. Now, response to this. I know we're trying to move forward on time. Yes, we do need to move along. Well, I think we have a public comment. I don't have to understand your reasoning. I know that we're going gonna have a chance for staff to do a rebuttal, but so as I understand, you're rationale, the end result is what, so whether it was done as a conversion or new construction permitted, but you do have to go through permits. Yes. But if we're focusing on the end result, theoretically, someone could get neither permit, neither conversion, neither new construction, and just create a beautiful building that complies with the best standards in the world. And I seem to infer from your reasoning that that would be okay because the end product is really the same. So all the other stuff doesn't really matter or it matters to some degree. But like the, the end justifies the means. Whether you do it legally, illegally, however you do it. Magic, well hold on a second. So that's what I get from that. But my question to use this, so the day comes when you realize that, and you acknowledge, and that's good, you made a hasty decision. And so you were applying your interpretation of the codes and the states and the history you were applying your interpretation. Was there a reason why you did not want to hear the interpretation of the staff before you demolished everything? Because in this case, it sounds like, okay, there might be different interpretations. I, you know, I'm not a building person, I'm not, but I do read the materials. I try to understand what the codes are, what the procedures, what the process in order to have some order in this area in particular. And so, you know, was there any reason why you did not immediately let the staff know and try to hear their interpretation and maybe come to something. Obviously you didn't do that. So why didn't you do that? And then now it's coming up to us and probably eating up a lot of, maybe a necessary time, but that's part of our job. And so I'm just saying in your rationale for at that moment, having chosen not to consult with a city who ultimately does have the authority and the responsibility to grant permits or not, and to apply them according to the codes and the law. May I respond? Sure. May I respond to Council Member Romero? So I'll respond to three points. The call is original point and then the two you made, Council Member Bica. So I want to grant Council Member Romero that I think this is the right way to be thinking about this. It's whether you might just think entirely, prospectively as a council and say whatever happened is a matter of whether you can intervene at the situation to create a more safe environment. And I think that I would have to be honest to say that is entirely within the council's purview to decide to actually just separate from the facts of the case since we have the opportunity to apply new construction here. Let's go ahead and that. But that would be different, I think, than the broader policy question. I have tried to present the policy case for why there's a significant inconsistency in how current regulations are being doled out, because this project already was a project that was approved as a conversion and was provided that leniency. And so I think it would be inconsistent to say that there's an allowance of that kind of situation for conversion projects in general, which is just true right now as practice Nis Palo Alto, and that we would apply any stricter standard to this case. To me that would be an inconsistency between two otherwise equivalent kinds of situations. If you're truly thinking about it from a flood risk perspective, to just say that one more time. Right now, conversion projects are already granted leniency from flood requirements. And so if that is the paramount concern of the council, then instead of thinking about this as a single case, you should really understand this to be a questioning of that entire system in which conversion projects writ large are allowed to not abide by certain new construction requirements. I think the intention of that policy is because you want to encourage such conversions to happen. So it's kind of what do you want to focus on from a council's perspective here? quick question and death. So what is the standard that we are using? To say that this is Because apparently they pass the 50% Just asked what are the standard that what is the standard that we're using to say this is new construction? What is the standard we're using today? Yeah, right. Can we object to at least say in our code? It says, exam one in three walls, boom or whatever. So, so if you may share the 50% for alterations, part of the existing building code is actually better and we can go next one. I have an answer for this as well from my experience. Yeah, this one. So I put it up on the screen. It talks about the any repair, alteration, addition, or improvement of a building or structure, the cost of which equals or exceeds 50% of the market value of the structure. Now, there's a lot of room for interpretation, but none of this work that's being done when there's no building, you can't call it repair, alteration, addition, or improvement to run this calculation of 50 percent when there's no building. It's pretty clear on my side. side is zero times any or number is zero So I mean, okay, so so a little premise I I'm here to try and help move these projects and and and most cities have a 50% rule Menel Park has a 75% rule to establish new construction I've chosen to help as much as we can on these structures. I'm on board in reducing as much as we can, but there are rules that I just can't let go because those are rules established by AACity Council and the state. And so if there's opportunity to change that, more than welcome to talk about it, but not with this project where there's no room for interpretation. Thank you, as Chair of the meeting, I would like to ask also a question. My question is, how do you, it seems very open-ended as the way that, from what I understand, I'm not a building person, but it's usually pretty open and as to how you interpret, I guess, the law, right? So is there any specific training, calibration, some kind of rubric or some sort of guide that can help determine, you know, how you interpret the law? So this is why you have building officials cities established and and and they they each city has a building official at the point. And also the state has regulations requiring the the building officials to be certified because of the years of experience required and also yet you have to have certification. You pass a quite a few tests. Is this done on a regular basis? Do you have to you know update your skills? I am fresh up on your I don't know the new. Do you go I'm assuming you have to go through some kind of training as well. I have a lot of CEUs. I have to maintain on my end. Okay. Good. I just wanted to kind of get a glimpse of that to like the rest of the public. Also, you know, we're no experts in this area, but we also know kind of what's going inside the builder officials like mine and like what their background, you know, in terms of making these decisions kind of look like how they base them on. Thank you. Hey, Bargain. kind of look like how they base them on. Thank you. Maybe, Argana, I still had two responses. Council Member Bricka, your first question was whether we are implying that we are okay with unpermitted construction in this case. If it's the end state, that's exactly the same. I think that was your question, right? Yes, I guess. So, yeah. I know so enough. Okay. I never intended to create that sense. To me, the comparison is that the end states between our situation and what the city wants are both verifiably the same end state. The key is that this entire process remains completely transparent to inspection and building review. So I'm only distinguishing between the project that would have to go through a more convoluted reclassification and permit review versus the one that would let us continue as is with this kind of like minor revision. But in both cases, my strong argument is that I've not prevented in any way the inspectors and the building review to see the stages they would see in the inspection process. In my mind, and this gets to the second point, we were within days of an inspection in which they could have seen those three walls back up and verified that they were to code. Yeah, but my second question was not that. My question to you was when you made the decision, why not stop? You were applying your interpretation, basically saying, well, I can get rid of this, replace them, get rid of everything, and the end result is going to be the same. My question was, why did you not Check with the city building to hear their interpretation of what you were planning to do. Yeah, well, why did you not? It seems like there was time to do it. There was, you know, why not? You were, what I give from that is that you were 100% sure of your interpretation regardless of the citizen interpretation. Why would you not consult with them to at least hear, like, okay, listen to me. I mean, I convinced you my interpretation is Maybe you you might have been able to convince them I don't know or they might have been able to convince you Why why did you not do that? I? Think simply put my worldview and this has been one of streamlined the process so to me the cost was time So, that again, the cost was simply the time uncertainty around how long that conversation would have been agreement on what that path was. Okay, so well, I guess I'm just going to say what I would have done. Even if I'm full of myself, like all of us are, I know I'm correct, I know 100%. But in this case, I'm dealing with an authority that also has rules, regulations. So my instinct would have been to call them and say, look, what's going on? This is what I intend to do. I think I'm correct. Do you agree with me? And if they said no, then it like, well, can we talk about it more? I just feel like I wouldn't go so far as to assume 100% if I'm dealing with an authority. And I'm requesting something from that authority. So I had to consult, go by the rules, even if there's a different, I just didn't understand that part. And so I understand, you know, if that's your worldview, then okay. Yeah. And to be clear, this world view is one in which we are talking about housing regulations. And we are in a larger regional conversation around and constantly changing what those regulations are. So this is one very specific case with walls. But I'm and this is Anderson with my larger. The question seems to me was, do I get rid of these walls or not? That was a question, not the regional policies is really to me is that simple? Yeah. So mayor, if we may, we have next up actually the staff rebuttal. And then the pellet will actually come back up again for a final rebuttal. So if the council does have any questions that arise from that for the pellet, please keep those in mind. So I'll pass it back to our interim chief billing official. I wanted to talk about rules and regulations. So there are processes in our inspection and plan review protocols that are there in place to have some orderly function of the building division and how construction occurs. You have to get permits for certain things. You have to submit plans for certain things. You get them approved. You start construction. You don't cover up until you have inspections. Each part of the way has a reason behind it, which is to make sure that the consumers, the people who occupy these buildings, aren't a safe condition. Right. So I want to lay out there are protocols that are to be followed. Okay? And I want to state, you know, the scope of work for this project and it's clearly laid out on the cover sheet that says this is a conversion of 400 square feet of a garage to a house or 280 use, excuse me. Throughout the plan, it talks about that. Simply redlining it, redlining a couple structural elements. It doesn't serve it justice. Now, on the screen here is a list of items that need to be looked at. Okay, so what I've learned over the years being part of community economic development here is building departments do not operate by themselves. Fire department, public works, planning, sanitary sewer, these are our part of the city system to make a building successful. Without sewer, right, You don't have proper disposal of waste. Without public works, our streets aren't going to be looked at, right? Fire, fire is the one that's going to come rescue these people in case of an emergency. So these people will also review these buildings to make sure it complies with their standards. I've listed it here, these items are a few items. Okay, but there's more involved that isn't in my realm of expertise. And this is where the protocols come into play. When there's a difference in how a project comes in and how it's being built, it requires a revision that needs to go back. And if it has impact on the other divisions, they have to look at it too. I have no idea what planning requires for this, for this ADU that's now a new building. It's not that simple as taking a red pen to a, to a, to a structural drawing. There's more involved. So I just want to highlight that piece. It's not that simple. There are rules and regulations there. Now, about the opportunities, that's the main thing I wanted to point out about the procedures used to make sure we have that. And if we don't, if we don't follow those rules and regulations, that's established in the Muni code or the state code, that's going to create a precedence that may have problems that we're not aware of. What's that? This one's okay. So that's a question. So in a new construction, you're also required, or wouldn't this project would they be required? It feels a new construction to have like fire sprinklers and stuff like that. Yes and no. So on this page here, there's fire sprinklers has a depends. So the residential code has provisions about when sprinklers are required for ADUs. This one doesn't fall into it because a house does not require sprinklers. Or the main house, when the main house does not require a sprinkler, and this building would not require it. So I've left a few things here, why we're focusing on flood proofing was, we've worked with the appellant on all these items and where they need to comply is flood proofing. Every other one of these has an exception that we've worked with them to say it's not required. And I, if I could just add to that, um, rebuttal and clarification. So in the conversations that we've had with the pellant, and again, this was after the entire structure had been demolished, after they had time to call their structural and engineer first and not call the city. And so it was only after our building inspector went out, was called out for an inspection, and there was no structure there anymore. So just want to make that 100% clear, there was no effort on their pellets part to then contact the city as the second call and have us rush out within the 24 hours that he was claiming that those walls were going to go back up anyways. I think if those walls had gone back up anyways, we would have noticed they were different walls. And again, that is something that we're really concerned about because that circumventing the rules that we have in place, the difference between existing building and new construction. And what Donald had pointed out again is that we can't just assume for other departments and other entities and agencies. There is a need to go back and have that conversation. When we had the follow-up conversation prior to the punt filing the peel, we tried to talk through it with them and we wanted to understand, again, why they didn't call us. I asked the question, what would you normally do in a compromised situation like this? And the appellant did clarify, we would have reinforced the walls and we would have picked up the phone and called you. So it was clear a mistake was made on the appellant side. The other thing that we asked out of that meeting was to go back and do some of that homework. So even though cost is not a part of this conversation, we did give that opportunity and ask, well, what would the new construction project look like? Because we wanted, again, to keep up that streamlining, we want 80 use in our community, we want garage conversions to be done correctly with permits. And so we do applaud the appellant and the applicant, the homeowner, for bringing this item back and keeping this as his project. So, you know, we understand that there are projects out there that don't follow the rules. And that is actually, you know, our last concern about precedent and if I could share that. Because some of the council members had kind of alluded to that is that we have a case here and how does that set precedent for all future projects. So we're not accusing the pellent of using this process to circumvent the new construction laws. But we have concerned that it will put the city at risk for all of that in the future. And so we have to uphold the building code. That is the highest law, if you will. And so to the earlier point that the appellant made about how Donald can bring this back to the council and the council can always make that case-by-case decision, we agree with one of the council members' comments that that would just slow the process down even further. So if the appllant had picked up the phone and we had that discussion back in October, even after they had demolished the building, I think we would have been much further along in coming to agreement to get their projects underway as new construction. Can we, I think we need to wrap this up. We do have other matters on our agenda tonight and if we could could just, I see our final word from the appellate, then I'm sure council members would like to have final thoughts on this. I know I do. And I just want to clarify in the order of the staff report, there is a public hearing necessary. So we will need to hear from public comment. And then the public. Yes, because we've been patiently waiting for someone. If we could go ahead and wait, can I ask what, what was the permit or what was the inspection that was called for after complete demolition? Well, either. I believe it was under floor plumbing. Yeah. Floor plumbing. So that would have been the first inspection no matter what. Well, yeah, but you had already formed out the footing. Is that correct? No. Yeah. So there were forms there already. Okay. Yep. I thank you. OK. So I guess at this point we're going to public comments. Thank you. First speaker, Mariana Sumina, followed by Gildixson and Ilyana Nicholas on Zoom. And the meeting counselors and stuff. I will not steal a lot of your time. I was actually about to leave, then I started to hearing the appeal. I generally admire the idea with a straight face, far-go-ing, that demolishing and retrofitting are the same. But my big thank you for all of you to actually consider and discuss it for an about an hour. Because I mean, it's very late. And probably everyone is tired. So my only one command about that is as a resident. And I'm actually doing remodeling right now. You're probably seeing many times in a state street. I'm going to be very concerned to live in a city. Then I can demolish anything and then rebuild it, claiming this is the same structure. And no one building, planning, consulates have anything to do with it. It's like really pretty scary. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, Gail Dixon, followed by Eliana Nicholas on Zoom. Gail Dixon, Rillow State expert here, and I've seen a lot of construction. And I'm glad you guys are coming out the wow, wow, west. Let me tell you, I tried to find permits. They only have them up to so much date in East Palo Alto. You have to go to San Martell County. And when you get there, you better take some kind of their present fields because it scares the hell out of you. There's two homes that I mean, they, a lot of people did it, but built stuff and then later on when it was sold, it would be grandfathered in. Was it over on Illinois and then on the Kavanaugh? People died. People doing electrical work, house catch on fire in the middle of the night. Children die. And I'm glad to see you guys are holding their hand to the fire. You can't come to East Tololato Alto and just jerk us around like we're made up from the jungle and there's a reason like he said to save people lives. How you long tear down a house and then not expect where to be a new construction? There's nothing there. Oh you're to think twice when you come back to East Palo Alto now. In Millow Park, they would have made you put it back, charge you a great big old fee, and you probably lose the house and a whole bunch of crazy stuff. So you're lucky. You guys are going to let him pay the fee. And, oh, you're lucky. And think I think i think it's on criminal right that's that could be some kind of criminal uh... at that that you did don't come back to his palo also with that kind of attitude thank you next speaker alena sava followed by alien and nickel is Zoom. Hello again. I have some concern about this case. I hear everything, but in this case we have revisions. And if you have some issues during construction, you need to submit just revision to building, because people can make decisions, constructure decision, engineering decision in just how they want. It's just a case, but I wanted to tell about our building department and planning department. I have a lot of projects in this plaza and I have everything. I have good advises. I have a good time lining and never delayed and I have five ADU projects approved by planning and building and everything always great. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, Iliana Nicholas on Zoom. Good evening, Council. My name is Iliana Nicholas. I am an ADU program manager with EPA Candue. I'm here tonight offering public comment on the critical roles of ADUs and the challenges inherent in their development. Our work in the community consistently reveals that ADU projects, especially those. Sorry, involving existing structures like garage conversions can face hurdles during the permitting process and often demand tough in field judgment calls during construction. The pervasive issue of deferred maintenance within our aging housing stock is very real. When homeowners embark on these projects, on foresee structural issues frequently come up, this transforms what could be seen as a straightforward conversion into complex costly endeavors that can originally clash with with initial permitting process. I'm sorry I'm getting over a cold. The appeal concerning 1174 Laurel provides a powerful learning moment as it illustrates how current processes can indirectly create bottlenecks for homeowners striving to improve their properties and add much needed housing. I would like the council to consider the spittle, the spirit sorry of AB 2533, a 2025 bill that streamed mind ADU legalization of existing structures prioritizing health and safety through clear pre-respections standards while While 1174 law is in the legalization project, it highlights these defaults need to refine its internal processes for handling unexpected discoveries in projects evolving existing structures. This can help prevent similar frustrating and costly delays for other residents. I believe that this project can also help provide insights of challenges like this as we look forward into developing a home repair program. And lastly, we believe that empowering city staff to exercise their professional discretion and latitude when navigating. So we want to empower city staff to exercise to a discretion when navigating real complex city strategy of our housing goals. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Those are our last speaker for this item. Okay. I think this is almost the final part of this. I'll just note that it seems like a crux of the decision to make is whether this case will set any kind of dangerous precedent. And I'll just simply remind the council that this deals with just a process question and not with the kind of end state housing we want to see on sites like this. And so a decision by the council, I strongly believe, will in no way affect the ability of city staff to continue to guide and control and facilitate what we want to see in terms of housing. This is just about literally whether a replacement of structural elements in a conversion could ever reclassify this as new construction and become a fundamental reason to reclassify that process. I think that's the focus here, and it's a procedural thing, which I think is actually far from also a lot of what the public was rightfully concerned about in terms of potential risks. And I just want to strongly convey my belief that this case does not have to do with those types of concerns. And to be led to believe that would be to misinterpret this case. I'll do it there. Thank you. Excuse me. I have a concern here. So if you had a similar client with a similar project in which you discovered the same issue, you would not inform our staff and you would move forward if you did today. Is that correct? No. No. Because I've learned from this process, what the strong belief is. At that time, I did not think this would happen. I did not believe there would be this kind of disagreement. Because it seemed like a pretty common sense that you would. So what you're asking, though, is an exemption to this project on a one-time basis because you know that the rules are, Now what the rules are in EPA, that's what you're asking. I'm asking for the Council to provide. On a one time basis because you know that the rules are now what the rules are in EPA. That's what you're asking. I'm asking for the council to provide direction to staff to think about the overt discretion they're applying right now to bottleneck projects. For reasons that don't fundamentally affect the end goal we all want. So this is just one example of that. So this is process as president though, right? This, this process that you're talking about What's it? It's basically sets the precedent for right then expect not I am not specifically appealing for the ability of future me or future other cases to From code. That's not of course not. But that's not what precedent is about. President is looking at a previous case and saying, if it applied to him or your client, it should apply to me because the material conditions are the same. And that's the precedent. That's what I'm talking about in terms of the press. This appeal is not about that deviation. It's about what the resolution of this is. So I think that is a precedent that I strongly agree with. In future situations, a removal of three walls like this should not constant to a reclassification of a case. But as we imagine that future situation, it's not the upstream step because I thought we were clear here that that's not the subject of the appeal, whether I had the right ultimately to have violated the permit. Let me understand what you just said. This is really important. Yeah. You're saying that a decision on this decision to deny would set up then the president for you to say removing all walls does not create a new construction requirement. Is that correct? Is that what you're saying? I believe that is a way the council can weigh on this issue. I think you can also decide exactly where you want to draw the line there. You can for example draw that on only garage conversion projects to garage conversions to ADUs as an explicit city goal. And in those cases, a structural removal of elements, as long as the future ADU is still within the 400 square foot print, I think that's a pretty common sense. And I think that is a way the city council can weigh on this. But you can stop there. And I would be totally within the options of the council on what kind of precedent this can apply to in the future. Okay, thank you. We really do need to move along. I have to actually leave at 10 30 today. I just want to point out to the mayor. This is a full hearing. I understand the evidence is important. Right. The appellant as well as the city. Should be putting into the record. They're their issues and concerns. So I do not in any way want this to seem as if we are curtailing or stopping evidence and questions that should get put in the record. Right. I mean, this, this is an evidentiary hearing that we are sitting in and we need to make sure that all the information that both appellant as well as the city want to get out, gets out. I'm sorry you may be late, but these are issues I think of legal import. I understand and you guys can carry on without me. I also have other obligations I need to attend to. So if we can please move on, that would be great. Yeah, I mean, I'm ready to vote on this. And I would say that, you know, it's a question, are we pro housing? Do we have discretion to okay housing? Did this change in any material way change the outcome? Are we focusing on process over results? And when I look at this, I'm like, yeah, have discretion, that's okay, the ADU, we need more housing and use Paul to the the end result is no different. Getting up, hung up on process issues and encouraging a process that's going to be longer, slower and less, you know, performance, you know, less production of ADU. So I, I think this is a unique situation, but as the speaker from EPA can do mentioned, this is going to be very common and as people do conversion to where to see things like this. I would like to see the city have discretion to say yes and to work with ADU construction to make this happen. I don't have any concerns about life safety because the end building was going to be the same under, you know, the rebuild as it was if there was no difference from what was OK in the playing department. under, you know, rebuild as it was if there was no difference from what was okay in the planning department so I support this appeal and I want to see more housing built in East Palo too. Okay so with that I'm sorry if if I may we're since we're summarizing positions so there is an health and safety issue now that there is no building there that is to say your building could be much safer in a flood. If it were to occur because it would be 18 inches higher. I will probably vote no on this, however, I'm going to ask legal if this were to be approved or denied, I should say. My concern would be that we do nothing and don't put a literal black line, whatever, line in the sand saying, no Mr. Oyang, you do this again. And the rules are clear You will have to you will have to consider this new construction. So I just want to make sure that if we do approve this We can make it a non-presidential issue because I think it was a mistake, Mr. Ouyang. But I think I see where votes are going, but I want to make sure that this doesn't occur again and that there is a clear black line that would be, that we would be able to point to and say, no, you cannot use this as a precedent. So I won't reiterate that the the scope of this proceeding is really just to decide on this particular appeal. Questions about precedent and whatnot. Those are entirely separate. The representative for the applicant mistated what the council can and cannot do. This is not a policy discussion. Those are entirely different questions. Whether you set a policy or not, that's something that is a combination of what the council decides when we're doing local amendments or when we're approving the California building code, and that is distinct from deciding how this issue plays out. Now the building official does have the ability as he's already noted to make interpretations. He, I don't know that he's formalized this interpretation. He has, as is particular case, but that's something that he can certainly exercise. The question about the policy, what the council wants to do in terms of aduse and streamlining or what have you, that's something that the council can consider on a separate track, entirely separate from this. So this proceeding is really just for this particular appeal. It doesn't and shouldn't have any presidential value. This is something that could be reflected in the building officials' formal interpretation. In Alameda, for example, we had a book of them. The building official would issue one. I don't know that the building official has done one here. He's done one ad hoc, but they're entirely separate issues. What was the purpose of having the book? There would be formal interpretations pursuant to the code that was actually highlighted in the earlier slide that the building official has the authority to make interpretation. So would this become a well, no, we're not this decision, but the building official could establish his own interpretation, formalizing and because that's what the building after this hearing you're saying it, but separate and apart from what we're doing here. It's separate and apart from the. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I think we're gonna go ahead and... Are we stating our... Yes, well... Are we gonna go ahead and just vote at this point? There hasn't been a motion yet. Okay, so I would like to see if anybody would like to make that motion. I do apologize. I have other obligations and deadlines I have to meet. This has been a very long discussion. I know the importance of it, but I also have other important issues I need to attend to. Okay, so this is going to be like 30 seconds. Nevertheless, when like, you know, when you're going into construction projects, you know, you never know what can happen, you know, especially when you're trying to remodel or even are built to say to you or whatnot or conversion. And you might encounter issues like what you guys account for the foundations bad, the walls are bad, but nevertheless you still have to work with the city. You can't unilaterally decide to demolish property, you know. So I think the biggest issue you mentioned was time and that obviously construction you need to have some sort of contingency in terms of the time and the cost. So I think the city we could work on improving the process when we're dealing with these issues because a lot of people wanna convert things, we could improve the process but I'm just not in favor of making an exemption for this particular project. And so I'm not in support of the appeal. And I think staff, we should assist them in getting a new permit. And we can credit any sort of unused fees towards the new permit. I'm basically at the same places Councilmember Lincoln. I think that having taken unit lateral decision is not good precedent or no precedent. I don't think that's a good message to send to the community and we've heard from some people who are themselves doing something and they make sure they check with the city. And I think that is, at this point to me, that is really the message. It's a little unfortunate the way it happened, but I don't think it's good to act that way. And I think giving credit to the fees and starting the, yeah. So I'm also not in support of the appeal at this point. And I don't think the staff is trying to do any nefarious action. They're just bringing it to our attention. How would happen and staff. So thank you. Okay. So I don't know if we have a motion at this time? Just a question to staff. So if this gets approved, if this gets approved, or I should say if we deny the item, will you require the applicant to then go forward with a new set of documents, including the 18 inch, it's basically it's basically it's a stem wall foundation. So it's not a simple red line the structural plans and call it a day There's, like I said, there's a lot of information throughout the architectural plan, electrical plan that shows it's existing. So even if it's say we approve it, as is with some red lines, it's not the right direction instructions in the field to work with, because everything says existing. That's sorry, you didn't answer my question, whether... Well, we would have to go through and review it. I think it would be our utmost goal to streamline it as quickly as possible, but we do wanna make sure that we treat it as a new construction project. And to the note that it is a part of staff for recommendation and council member Lincoln reminded us of it that we would try to credit the appellant as much as possible from the current permit to the new construction permit. And that is not something that we needed to do. We could have taken their full fee and then charged the manoeuvre. And so we are trying to work with the appellant if they are cooperative. I did want to just make a comment before the mayor leaves because this is important to close up this public hearing item, whatever the motion and the votes end up being, that there will be an outpass it to Michelle to make the statement, but there would be a follow-up and close-up item of this as well. Thank you, Gneven. I just wanted to say that the action being requested from councils to direct staff to prepare findings consistent with the evidence and to prepare a resolution consistent with those findings. Thank you. So depending on the vote staff would come back with a resolution stating the conclusion of this public hearing. Okay, thank you. Are you ready to make a motion then make a motion to vote? Sorry making a motion to either approve or deny the appeal. And then to the following like the recommendation on the fees. Is that the motion? We would prepare a staff resolution and bring it back at the next regularly scheduled council meeting, which the earliest would be June 3rd. And then we could adopt that on the consent calendar, just to solidify and codify the outcome of today's hearing. And so it could include also staff's recommendation, but reiterated that fees that were not used up in the first permit could be credited towards the new construction permit. Okay, well I'll make a motion that we follow staff's direction, deny the appeal, and credit the fees towards a new permit. Seconded motion. Okay. Well, okay. Are we going to roll call? Okay. Mayor Baraghan. Hi. Vice Mayor Dynan. No. Council Member Brieka. Yes. Council Member Lincoln. Yes. And Council member Romero. Yes. Motion carries. Okay. Thanks everybody. Mayor Baragon needs to get going. We're going to move on to item 16.2 status of the city's vacancies recruitment and retention efforts pursuant to assembly bill 2561. See manager, do we have a presenter on this item? Yes, we do our human resources manager on a Torres Mojagon is joining online via Zoom right now. Good evening, Ella. Good evening. Can everyone hear me? Yes. Perfect. Let me share my screen. Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Anna Maria Torres-Mondrago, and I am your Human Resources Manager and have been with the agent in the position for approximately two years now. I am grateful to be here today to present to you the status of the city out a little... Mickey, monkey. Maybe try switching your microphone because it's not... um, we can't hear you properly. No, or maybe I'm lugging and plug it in. Yeah. Hello. Oh, that's perfect. There we go. Okay. Apologies. No worries. Thank you. Would you like me to start over or I don't know if anyone heard the beginning part? Yes, please. There you go. Good evening. I don't know if the mayor is still there in honorable council members. My name is Anna Torres Mondragón and I am your human resources manager and have been in the position for approximately two years now. I am here today to present the status on cities vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts, which is the law that was recently passed and was effective January 2025 of this year, which mandates local governments to present annually to hold a public hearing to allow recognized employee organizations to make a presentation. And if an agency meets a 20% threshold within any bargaining unit, the agency must present additional information. I am happy to share that we are not within the 20% threshold, and our actual vacancy rate for POA is currently 12.12% for MEA, it is 15% and for SEIU, it is 12.97%. Here is a quick snapshot of the city's efforts for the recruitment and retention program. In the past two years, we have implemented an extensive target in marketing strategy. We hired additional recruiting support. In addition to that we also advertised on paid and free professional and industrial specific job boards. We also advertised on virtual platforms such as LinkedIn. On March 4th City Council approved a recruitment and retention sign-on bonus for our hard-to-fill positions. We also review job classifications and organizational needs as positions become vacant. We also offer an enhanced new higher orientation program, which we've implemented on a quarterly basis, which is the thorough department overview to provide new hires and introduction to the executive team, but then also that share our, oh, I apologize, I lost my place. What they do and we are how we are all interconnected. Our team not only shares or organizational values and emphasizes our critical mission to serve, but they show our new staff members of what it is to be a true East Palo Alto staff member. We put our heart and pride in all of the work that we do and we are very proud to be here. We've also initiated employee appreciation events such as the... Let's talk about gratitude. We also have pumpkin carving contests. And we tried our best efforts to celebrate as much as we can our birthday celebrations. We've also invested in our city's team, which we've recently attended a Women's Leadership Summit, which was approximately 12 employees worth of attendance of Vicar City staff, and it was very helpful and very informational educational. We've also invested in our employees growth and development through coaching and mentoring and additional programs as well. City Council invested in our HR support specifically in our recruitment and retention program and approved a $320,000 agreement September 2023. And this is well before the law actually came into effect. These agreements set the city up for success in maintaining a low vacancy threshold. Assembly Bill 2561 states that organized employees, employer organizations, for bargaining units, shall be entitled to make presentations at this hearing. Tonight, we have M.A. President Kevin Lewis in person and S.I.U. President Janet Nunez on Zoom. I would like to make a statement. P.O.A. was also invited, but they did not wish to make a statement at Teddy's hearing. if you'd like to step to the dius. Good evening. City council members. Forgive me for my attire. I'm totally out of character when speaking to such staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Kevin Loes, Public Works supervisor and city inspector. And at times, field engineer. I just want to take a few moments to speak about the importance that affects all of us who care about the future of these Palo Alto. How we continue to support our city, her city workforce, amid of growing demands. First, I want to acknowledge the progress that has been made particularly around reducing vacancies rates across departments that is no, and that is no small accomplishment. That's a big feat and I really, really appreciate it. Super, super appreciated. And I know it reflects focus efforts of human resource department heads and this council. It's a step in the right direction and we are super grateful. At the same time, the nature, the nature and scale of the work and East Palo Alto continues to evolve. As our city grows, so do our needs, and our community more housing, infrastructure projects, more public engagement, more services to manage and new policies to implement. Even with improved staff levels, our teams are still navigating high workloads, tight timelines, and increasing complexity within our work that we perform. In addition, in filling positions, it's still about sustaining the workforce that we can you know, keep pace with community. We're serving and to do so with the care quality and innovation of our residents that they so deserve. With that in mind I kindly ask the Council to consider the following. Explore ways to support staff capacity as projects continue to grow whether through added positions positions, cross department collaboration, or process improvements. Continue investing in retention to ensure that we are just not just feeling seats, but keeping the talented experience professionals who know the city and care deeply about its future. Third, recognize a sustain of high work loads, even in well-stab department and explore ways to balance efficiency with well-being. East Palo Alto is a very vibrant, dynamic city with such potential. Let's make sure that the that behind the scenes, our city staff have the resources, support and tools they need to help that potential flourish. Thank you again for your leadership. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to the people who live and work in this community. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. I believe Janet may be joining us virtually. Yes. Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council Members. My name is Janet and I am the chair for the East Palo Alto chapter of SCIU. I want to thank Giana for the presentation tonight. I also want to thank City Council for taking steps to approve staff retention. Historically, it has been difficult to keep staff with our jurisdiction. As soon as the staff member was fully trained, another city would pick them up and the cycle of posting hiring and training started once more. The community was displeased with the constant changes in staff, but now with the changes implemented, the adjustments have minimized. We support the current recruitment of retention efforts and seek city council to build upon them and continue to be proactive on this matter. This might be in the form of updating classification and salary studies for the staff in preparation for contract negotiations. Overall, we are grateful for the collaborative and supportive relationship with the HR division. When it comes to recruitment for the positions under our unit, we have consistency and feel valued with the current practices. Let's keep working together to fill the remaining positions. Thank you Thank you Janet Yes, thank you, Anna. Are there any comments on this item from folks? Anyone? I have comments. But OK, I'll go. Anna, nice to see you again. I appreciate the hard work. I'm a recruiter. And East Paluto is a difficult place to recruit for, but it's super important if we wanted to deliver the services and to our residents that we hire good people and that they don't just stay here for a minute, they stay here for years and can grow and we keep turnover to a minimum. So appreciate all your efforts. And are there any public comments on this, James? Yes, we did receive one speaker slip from Gail Dixon. Wonderful. So with that, we'll open it up to public comment and Gail Dixon. Two minutes, Gail. The right of books. I write, I have three books I believe in. OK, I've been wanting to address this for a long time. I'm glad this came up. You have problems. You have always had problems keeping people. And you got to say why? You don't keep repeating the same thing that you did before. You got to do something different. Did I tell you I was my last job at the Postal Service? I was in HR? Well, now you know, okay. And it was very diverse. Every ethnic group across the board, federal government, they didn't discriminate. That's why, I, I why I, I, a lot of people said that's why Donald Trump got it was trying to get rid of them because 16% of the, the federal workers were minorities. I found, and I have heard this, and I've never brought this to the council's attention before. There are qualified people who come to the city to get a job. They're not hired. And you know why? Because it was restrictive. You know what that restriction was? You have to speak Spanish. That's wrong. The president just made English the official language. I don't agree with that. But if you're looking for good people, don't turn them away because they can't speak Spanish. Give them some Spanish courses, you know, pay for it. That might solve it, but I know a husband and wife that told me this, overly qualified, they were turned away. And then not the only ones, there are several people that says, I don't speak Spanish, I couldn't get a job in East Palo Alto, the city that I grew up in. So maybe that's why you have problems. Thank you, Gail. Okay, can we get a motion to accept the report? Mayor, Mayor Vice-Mayer, may I just chime in once again? Sure. You know, Ms. Torres Mendegones, she's very humble and she's not going to say this herself, but as she mentioned, she's been in this position for two years and I will tell you, sorry, if there's a lot of feedback, I will tell you she has really made really critical strides in this organization, both in recruitment and retention. She has a very small but very mighty staff and the four of them have made very very critical progress. And these numbers that she pointed to were not the numbers a few years ago. She has filled a lot of seats and kept a lot of employees in those seats. and made a lot of progress in a lot of HR-related programs. So I just want to let you all know it is very, very impressive and it's a lot of our employees are still here because of that team. Thank you. As a recruiter I see recruitment as a foundational part of the success of any organization. You can't build a good team if you're not hiring the right people. But with that said, can we? I'll pull the dots and the resolution in the back. I'm sorry. Yeah, I do want to just agree with the comments just made. I think a lot of really good progress have been made the last few years. And I know our current HR director has said a lot to do with it, but top management. And I think the council's direction has been followed. And now that there is this new state law, which I think is good to hear the reports. And I appreciated the comments made by the union leaders. And in particular, I like this one that I think it's, as a council member, I need to keep that in mind too, that there is a balance between demanding efficiency and the well-being of people and be very mindful of the loads that are carried, the resources and what is being asked to do because I know for a fact that is Palo Alto, other cities probably too, but we are kind of known or even self-reflection that we the employees work from their heart a lot and that is great. But the heart is also very vulnerable and we cannot just keep demanding and demanding and demanding. But I do appreciate it. I appreciate the combination of people's dedication, their skills, their willingness to learn and continue. So I, yeah, definitely these are good news. I did have one little question though, and talking about recruitment. I know it's been very difficult to find a part-time driver, apparently, right? Is that the case? It's been very hard to find a part-time shuttle driver. And I'm sure you're trying everything. But I know I'm not a recruiter. But I know that recruiter sometimes do like targeted. I don't know. You've been hiring somebody to go find someone somewhere. There's got to be somebody. And so whatever you need to do to do that, I think that's the, it's a small thing relatively speaking, but anyway, so I hope that that one comes through soon, sooner rather than later, but I know people are trying. So thank you. May I address that comment regarding the van der Waer? Of course. So since the recent adoption of the earlier approval for the sign on retention bonus, the Van driver was one of the classifications I was part of that program. And we are currently working really closely with the manager to post that recruitment shortly. So we're hoping that we'll actually have someone in that position very soon. Excellent. Thank you. With that, I think we'll move to the resolution. Can we get a second to councilmember Romero's adopt a resolution motion? Second. All in favor? Aye. Yes. Alrighty, forward, item 17.2, 2025, transient occupancy tax grant recommendations. The recommendation is to authorize the city manager to award 12 grants to the following organizations for acceptance into the 2025 TOT grants program. Councilor, sorry, city manager, gains is there someone presenting on this item? Yes, community service, says manager Maurice Baker is joining via Zoom right now. Good evening, members of councilor. Can you all hear me? Yes. Thank you. I am going to share my screen real quick. Thank you all for staying with me at this late hour. As our city manager said, my name is Maurice Baker. I'm a community services manager and I will be presenting recommendations for the 2025 TOT grant. I just wanna start out by just laying the stage. Let me see here. By providing the recommendation, the recommendation says that we are authorized and that council would authorize a city manager to award 12 grants to the following organizations for acceptance into the 2025 TOT transit occupancy tax grant for $30,000 each and for a not for a program amount not to exceed 360,000 and then you would follow the sequel requirement that this project does not constitute or that this proposed action does not constitute a project. Okay, for tonight, I'm going to talk about the background and process of TOT. I'm going to provide updates to the program. I'm going to talk to about the summary of the proposal, or provide the summary of the proposals. And then finally, the recommendation with next steps in council direction. I do, before I get into the background in process, I do want to thank our Assistant City Manager, Sherry Klemma for participating in the whole process of the TOT and really providing thought-provoking questions that actually led to the recommendation by the Community Grants Review Panel. I know that there's a lot on everyone's plate, so her taking the time to do that was very helpful and it's going to help push us forward. All right, so in 2002, V initiated the current form of the occupancy tax, 10% affordable housing, 10% children in youth. We followed this same process and the grant was released March 24th, 2025. We hosted two mandatory sessions with over 50 participants and April 25th, we received 25 applications from that potential 50 organizations attending the information session. And then lastly, the applications were reviewed and ranked by the Community Grants Review Panel. And that is what we're presenting to you tonight. The Community Grants Review Panel puts in significant hours, put in significant hours on this, reviewing the application so that council doesn't have to do that. Then providing their rankings and they do this all voluntary, so I want to give a shout out to them. It was their desire to try to fund as many organizations as possible. But as we are getting into here, updates to the program, we provided a rubric this year. However, after some discussion, the grants review panel asked to revise the rubric so that we were giving more weight to the majority of program being serving East Palo Alto residents. So we wanted more East Palo Alto residents served than outside organizations. And you can see the other criteria that we utilized here. On 318, we brought an item to you all regarding the preparation for this TOT grant. And we asked that you only accept the allowed 10 to 12 organizations per funding round. Just so because the administratively we were trying to make steps to improve with the execution of the contracts, confirming insurance, POs, paying the organizations, making sure they're properly invoicing us so that all details and audit trails are covered in the city is protected. And then we really, it's really only myself, however I have support of, you know, my recreation coordinator, Vincent Emilio, so I want to thank him as well. Along with the other responsibilities that community services and has. We really wanted to work this, how this year be better, so that we could establish the paperwork submission requirements, and then oversee the organizations that are doing the work, that is set start July 1st. So time was of the essence, and I would love to give more time to this in the future, and we will. And staff wants to really evaluate the TOT program overall to make recommendations for programming changes in the fall that we would like to come back to you with. Okay, so here's a summary. I'm not gonna read through just going to slowly, you know, list their names out here. Two of the proposed 12 organizations to receive funding. This is actually their first time receiving funding. And they are Boys and Girls Club and fit to the core. Followed by Paxton Academy, Living Piece, Mid Peninsula Athletic Association, Fresh Approach, East Palo Alto Greyhounds, Hope Horizon, Formerly Bashe or Christian Ministries, and Youth Community Service in Partnership with Repact. center, the East Palo Alto Community Media Center, so mid-pin media, and then also East Palo Alto, the East Palo Alto Tennyson Tutoring. Manicain Dance in Theater also applied as well as the Lewis and Joan Platt East Palo Family YMCA, New Estrucasa, live music fostering community, the foundation for a college education, and the Bay Area Urban Eagles, along with the East Pawelts or Razor Hawks, and beyond Barriers Athletic Foundation. So those 20 organizations, here are the Community Grants Review Panel and Staff's recommendation. And we are proposing that they each receive $30,000 each application, due to the fact they wanted to be equitable in serving the larger institutions as well as those that are a little more strapped for resources. The next steps would be to onboard the next approved organizations. So we would have a host an orientation session for that. And then provide those added administrative pieces and auditing for successful candidates throughout the summer. We want to return to council in around November, or or October November to provide you all with an update on how things are going and also ask you for your feedback on how you would change the process for next year or for 2026. And then our hope is to know our plan is to launch the next round of 2026 funding in early 2026, so around January. What that being said, again, the recommendation is for you to award those 12 grants in the amount of $30,000 each for a total program not to exceed $360,000, as well as follow the Sequa Act. For that this project does not cost or that this proposed action does not constitute a project. Thank you for your time. And with that, I am going to open the floor for questions and comments. Thank you. Are there any questions from City Council or? Yeah, I have a comment. So I think the list is good, but if I had a recommendation, I mean, you know, we're funding. The Boys and Girls Club, but we're not funding the YMCA that. I'm kind of like, you know, that's the only thing I kind of noticed that was kind of, it didn't make sense to me. But nevertheless, I support most of these. One thing I would recommend is that we consider funding the rugby club because they serve both women and men or girls and boys and teens. And it's also, you know, it's our, a lot of our people in our Polynesian community, they play rugby. My sister, she plays rugby. She's on the USA, or she was on the USA Women's National team and played in the rugby World Cup. So that's something out hoping that we can support. And I also think we should add something in this a little bit more technical. I'll just give some sort of STEM exposure. I know hope her eyes and their part of behind. They're behind, you know, our churroods. But I think we should also include some, another technical kind of organization. So I also support the urban Eagles. And I also had a question about fresh approach and how that applies because it seems like it's a farmer's market. But if I were to change two of them, sort of adding additional ones, it would be basically maybe supporting the rugby club and the urban Eagles and probably swapping that for a fresh approach in the Boys and Girls Club. Because I know Councilmember Don and wants to support the YMCA and there'll be future opportunities for that. So I'm just thinking that maybe these dollars would matter more to a lot of the smaller organizations that could use them and that serve different purposes, maybe even outside of sports. So that's just the only common kind of recommendation I would have. Thank you, Councilman Lincoln. That is noted and as you more pointed out, there will possibly be future opportunities through your priorities to support organizations like the YMCA, so that is where we are targeting. And to your other points, I'm happy to hear here's Council's support of that. Council member, now? Yeah, with all due respect to the council member, I do not want to devolve into a situation where we're moving around and trying to second guess the scores. If in the future we don't like the way things have been scored, we can certainly help fashion the rubric that gets used, the scoring criteria, but I think at this point, I'm just ready to approve the recommendation of the committee that has labored collectively probably over 120 hours to get to these numbers. There are groups, actually I would like to fund the rugby club, but I don't think it makes sense for us to go ahead and remove or put new groups in. At this point, I think we should proceed with the recommendations and move forward. That would be my sense of moving forward. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would agree with Council Member Romero. I think there's a lot of room to adjust the process. And I've had extensive conversations with staff about this. In particular, I noticed that there's, you know, they're all good groups, right? There's no, from my perspective, they're all doing amazing work and we should support them as we can. But one thing I noticed is that it's very much slanted to Councilmember Lincoln's, the one group that came in, the ballet company Uninvante, is very much focused at young women and girls. And I see groups here that are focused, the impact in sports academy is, I think, a boys basketball team, mid-pennantula, athletic association, I believe, is Men's Football. I mean, maybe there's women's football. And then I believe the Greyhounds does both women and men. But I would echo Council Member Lincoln's concern is, if we're going to be doing things for boys, we should also have some programs for girls. And I saw the ballet company on there. The other thing I would add is that I'll have a lot to say I hope about the process moving forward, but I think having a 20-minute interview with every applicant is a very good process and I would hope we would encourage that in the future. One thing talking to some of the applicants, they've never talked to anybody on staff or deciding committee. And so I think that one way we can make this process better is to have short interviews. I know one of them who had received a grant from, I believe it was Silicon Valley Foundation, so that he was really surprised that there was no interview process with East Palo Alto. I mean, it's $30,000. I think it's a significant amount of money. We can definitely make sure that everybody gets exposure and also make sure that people make in this election know who they're voting for and who they're not voting for because it's a real tendency to just vote for the people you know if you're familiar with them. I would thank you for the hard work. It's a lot going through all this. And again, these are all great groups in particular boys and girls club live in peace You know gray hounds mid they're all good groups and so I you know I'm excited to see hope horizons and tropa's good funded YCS doing emergency preparedness. That's great epicenter You know, it's all it's all good. So thank you for your hard work and my comments there. Yeah, I'd like to also thank the staff and the committee and all the applicants. I definitely agree. You know, all the groups really are worthy of the work that they're doing. I do feel like over the years, the process has become more thorough, I think, more consistent. And I think the proposal from the staff also is that, in the fall, there could be some discussion about changing the process in any way that that might be better. But at this point, I think it is, to me, it's a good process. And the results are there. And I think it just, there was a point in time when I think, you know, it would spend hours and hours and hours of the city council because it was kind of almost like negotiating groups. And I think ultimately we decided that was not really a good process. But I think developing this, the way that is being done so far has been good. and then we'll see what else we learned that could improve the process in the fall. And then the other thing I'll say is that it is a responsible of each council member to check for any potential conflicts of interest. So I did check with a city attorney and I think at different times people have done that. If there happens to be any connection to any group. So I do serve on the board of the Boys and Girls Club. But both of the FPPC and the city attorney's opinions is. You know, there is no conflict. So I will be voting on that too. And but anyway, I thank you everybody for all your work. And it's I understand it. I think the staff, one reason why they were limiting it to 12 is really in order to have the capacity to really get to know the programs more, to visit to to, you know, maybe solicit their input in terms of the whole process. And in order to do that, I will require more time and resources. So I think that was good. I think that was a good decision. And anyway, that's the dots from my comments. Thank you. Okay. Can can we are there any public comments on this? James? There are no public comments so can I'll make a motion that we approve the recommendations in the packet. Second, all in favor? Yes. We'd like to do a roll call about. Yes. Vice Mayor Dynand. Yes. Council member Abrica. Yes. Council member Lincoln. Yes. And council member Rermato. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you all. Excellent. And we'll move on to item number 18, are there any council reports? Seeing none, I will adjourn the meeting at 11, 14 PM. Thank you everybody. you