I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm just going to go down. It's got some debris. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. the town council meeting of April 8th, 2025 to order. Julie, will you take roll? On some of... Boom. Let's call the town council meeting of April 8th, 2025 to order. Julie, will you take roll? I'll just remember Abarish. She said here, but I don't think his microphone's on. Council member, Fran. Here. Thank you. Council member Gold. Here. Council member Wall. Here. Mayor, Mayor Dong Kowski. And we'll start with Council member wall, but I know you're on the road. So we're the record. No one in the room over the age 18 and just a reminder to keep the camera on. Can you. Yeah, and I'd like to let everybody know that I am participating remotely this evening, exercising a just cause exception under the Brown Act because I have a child care need, which requires me to participate remotely. Okay, thank you. Thanks for participating Council member Abriish. I am, thank you. I am also participating remotely this evening, exercising a just cause exception under the Brown Act as well, because I also have a child care need which requires me to attend remotely. Thank you very much for being here. Yeah, ask a question. Can you turn me? Absolutely. If Brian and I were off site, could we count that as a just cause for child care for each other? Okay. I'll just I won't weigh in on that. Okay, well, thank you. With that, actually mayor Prattem Gold, we lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Okay. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Communication. So this is public comment. Versus wishing to address the council. And any not on the agenda are invited to do so. Please note however that the council is not able to undertake extended discussions or act on non agendas items such items can be referred to staff for appropriate action, which may include placement on a further future agenda. This period is limited to five persons three minutes each. Anyone else can be heard at the end of the session? Is there anyone here that would like to make public comment on an item not on the agenda tonight? Anyone in the zoom? Okay. Well then, this we were going to close public comment. And we will move on to the town manager report Kevin. Yes thank you Mr. Mayor. Just a couple things I wanted to report on and in no particular order. We are coming on to a period where we'll have to renew our sheriff's contract. The way that they have done this in recent years is they're seeking to get, and this makes sense as a government agency to gain cost of service for their contract. In other words, we're paying for the services that they will be providing to us. They're interested in having us sign a longer term contract that indicates that we would be the police services advisors. I'm working with council member Abish and the mayor on providing them kind of where we'd like to be and we'll be engaged in that process for the public if that resolved. So that's something that's not on the new time manager's plate. Second thing I want to mention, this is in the category of some of our technology improvements, make of this, which we will, but we are something that we have not done before, starting in 2025, and maybe even a little before that, we have, I think, mostly 2025, but we are now accepting credit card payments for a number of transactions, and we have seen the update on that, on that probably not surprising as we've seen it increase from January to March just to give you a sense in January less than 10% of our receipts came via credit card this last month the closing March we were at 30%. So I think people are taking advantage of this we are are aiming to, there are a number of permits, another project that you can pay for, you can use credit cards to pay for, we are looking to continue to add to those over time with the second phase of the rule at the bar. This all relates to our conversion to the E-tracket, cloud-based permit and, traffic, permanent tracking software. So that's, for me, that's kind of a big deal. And I think it's just kind of anecdotally feel like there's less traffic coming in to do some of those between payments, which is good news for everybody involved. Last thing I wanted to mention, those of you in the room who have noticed a lot of caution tape around the building, you may or may not have looked up on this roof, on an independence hall, the beginning, I'll call it the framing of the solar panels, but that is the work that is now undergoing. We are expecting that, I think optimistically, you're expecting it to be complete this week, but I think realistically expecting a couple of weeks. And I believe that once they're up and on, they go online and we should start generating, or paying for and using power from from our own buildings. So that's all I have for this evening. Thank you. Many questions for Kevin. Yeah, I have a question, Kevin. Can you give me a status report when we're going to start seeing some movement on the town center plan? Yeah, we are currently in the process working with the consultants to, they're gathering a lot of data information. So they're in that initial project phase where they're getting a download kind of from staff and that's getting all organized with their consultants. So that's where we stand. I should more be able to provide you a little more in a couple of weeks. Okay. I just like to see a little bit of timeline of what they expect to happen. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Any public comment on the town manager's report? All right. Yes. Seeing none, we will close and move on to appointments. We have a recommendation from our appointments committee on a new member for the emergency preparedness committee. Again, do you have anything in front of you on this? Yeah, no, really great. We have an application from Catherine Gregory, who is interested in being on the Emergency Preparedness Committee. She is a physician and cites her ability to work hard and also being particularly good in emergency situations. So I think Paul and I didn't have an opportunity, at least I don't recall it's having an opportunity to talk beforehand, but I think I'm supportive. I called you wanna indicate your support. Paul, are you supportive? I didn't get anything on this particular appointment. Great. Sorry. So the appointments committee is in support of this applicant. Yes. I have no contrary evidence to present tonight. So I will go along with. I'll submit the. Any questions on this appointment? Or comments in the public? All right, Julie. We will take a vote. We need a motion in a second. Oh, yes. Yeah. Okay. I'll make a motion that we point, make this appointment to the emergency preparedness committee. Can it? Yep. Council member obwary. Yes. Council member brand. Yes. Council member gold. Yes. Council member wall. Yes. Mar Delm Kowski. Yes thank you. Okay. Welcome aboard. On to the consent calendar all items in the consent are considered routine and will be approved with one roll call motion unless a request is made at the beginning of the meeting to pull any item. Is there any request by any council member to pull an item? I'd like to pull seven please. Seven? Six. Six. And I'll pull four. And let's, so why don't we approve, can we get a motion to approve one, two, three, and five? I'll make the motion. Second that. Feelinging. Council member Obrich. He said yes. Council member Brown. Yes. Council member Gold. Yes. Council member Wall. Yes. Mayor Dom Kowski. Yes. Why don't we go in reverse order tonight. Number seven. Council member Wall. Yeah. So seven is a resolution approving plans and specifications for the road rehabilitation project. And I was hopeful, it might be a little surprise that Hillside Drive wasn't included in the list for this year. So then Kevin and I had a little exchange, but for the benefit of any residents that might be online or anybody that might want to look back at the meeting minutes, Kevin, can you just kind of summarize what's going on with Hellside Drive? Because there's been for the benefit of the council. There's been a fair amount of resident concern raised about the condition of that road. And during the last storm, there was a slide that has been not fixed, but I think remediated sufficiently until more repairs can be made. So Kevin, just with that context, can you update everyone on me on when Hillside Drive will be repaired? Sure, and I'll ask Yazda chime in as well, but basically hillside drive is, we didn't include it on the road rehab project because we're treating this as a separate, this is probably it will be a substantiated project that I anticipate the costs will be similar to what the entire road rehab project for the streets that are here will entail. What council member Wall is referring to that this winter we were notified a notice that there was some cracking in the road up near 231 hillside which is near the top after one of the first bend as you come down the hill next to a fire hydrant which certainly caught caught our attention. And we went out, we had engineers go out and do a, both a quick look as well as got them under contract to do some subsurface analysis of that area. There was a storm that occurred in February where some of the pavement cracked and we lost some of that pavement. We had the crew go out and did some immediate sort sort of immediate, coming off of the area and did some, what the, we did. It took some action to kind of preserve the pavement that was in place. And then I want to say the following week, we had a Farrellon go out and do a pavement repair for that stretch of road, which has held up in for their meaning of the year. We also have a geotech engineering firm working on a couple of different areas close by on the hillside. One is at 231, where they're taking the information that they got from their subsurface, and will be providing us. They're working on a design or some design concepts based on their studies, but they will bring forward to staff to analyze that. That will be a distinct, we anticipate that will be a distinct project. What that fix ultimately needs to be or what our options are for that fix, have not yet been determined, but that is in the works. We will also be out next week or a week after, this 16th April, right, that date, right? Doing an additional bore in Hillside Drive in the vicinity of 303 Hillside, another area where we've been made aware that there may be issues. So we'll be doing some surface work there as well in form either this project or a separate project. But the plan is to, we would bring back the town staff would bring back plans and bids, plans and specs for a distinct project for hillside drive. And we're aiming for getting that all done and hopefully under construction before the rains occur next fall at that location on hillside. So that's where that, where that's. It's time. Okay. Any follow up, Jen? No, thanks Kevin. That was really helpful. Welcome. And the homeowner has been involved. The believe you told me he's aware that the boringness. Yes, that's correct. Jen, you want to make a a motion on seven? Oh, comment. I'll look at it on number seven. Thank you. And do you want to make a motion? I move to approve consent calendar item number seven. Second that. Council member, I'll. Yes. Council member Brown. Yes. Council member Gold. Yes. Council member wall. Yes. Mayor Gomsky. Yes. Moving on to six. I'll item six is the second reading of the ordinance that we did our last meeting. This is the barn conversions to ADUs. I'm fully supportive, but I just wanted to open it up public comment if there was any or obviously. I did a last meeting. This is the barn conversions to ADUs. I'm fully supportive, but I just wanted to open it up public comment if there was any or obviously from the council members or questions. I'm fine. Okay. Any further questions on the barn AD ordinance? Any thoughts from public? I'll make a motion to approve item six. Second. Council member obrich. Yes. Council member brown. Yes. Council member gold. Council member wall. Yes. Mayor dom kowski. Yes. And then number four is the February Investment Activity Report. And I pulled it just because that was sort of a high water mark in things in the marketplace to become a lot more difficult. And I think as everybody knows, we established a couple of supplemental pension and benefit wordfully owes to help supplement our sort of off balance sheet liabilities. The biggest liability we have of course is our long term pension liabilities here. One thing after the audit committee concluded is a council member GoldenEye talked and I'm speaking independently, but we talked about whether or not we might want to shore that up a little bit. And interestingly, the comment was, well, maybe if there's a big pullback in the market, little did we know what was coming. We are about 85% funded all in right now, but we are still $5 million short of our long-term obligations. And so I just wanted to pull this really to ask if the council would have any appetite in agendizing incremental, the proposal would probably be for about a million dollars to earmark that into these funds, both the pension fund, supplemental and the benefits plan. It would close about 15 to 20% of the gap that we have in this liability item that we don't ever talk about and it's not on people's radars, but it's a really is the biggest long term fear that I have, but I just wanted to see if there'd be any appetite. Because from a timeliness point of view, it's starting to get there's a lot of carnage out there to take advantage of so I just thought I would ask just to see if they're any nod of the head or I think it makes sense but I was also suggest that we we perhaps lay in front of our new time manager a challenge but we need some new revenue sources to help fund this kind of transfer of funding. We could sell gold cards. Okay. Yeah, sorry. I really punish you. I didn't get the shot anyway. Um, yeah, so after the just just a little bit of more color, I'm in complete agreement with the mayor suggestion, but the comment was that we're in relatively good cash shape now, notwithstanding the last week. And we had just finished the audit with Cindy and the members of the audit committee. And the long-term liabilities presented by pension liabilities are what sinks down and cities and states and governments. And I think that while you don't have to be 100% undid, I mean because it does build up over time and people, you know, it's a snapshot in time and we're actually in pretty good shape at 80 some odd percent. I think we're probably more comfortable than most cities or towns or states. But But since we are relatively cash rich at this moment, it was an opportune time to make a supplemental contribution because you never know when that rainy day comes. We want to be able to not take away from existing operational cash needs, current needs, and to have to fund some urgent pension need, which might be five or 10 or fifteen or twenty years down the road. So I think it's an opportunistic thing to do. I think I agree with the mayor suggesting that we should put it on the agenda. There's no rush or urgency but I think that you know to have a full discussion about where we are and maybe explain the pension liability in those percentages which can be a bit of a torture test and sure try to figure that out and then maybe the council might say let's make a supplemental install it in a contribution to the pension plan to shore it up even more. Tom and I'm in complete agreement with the mayor suggestion. Also, Reverend. Yes, I think it's a great suggestion. It sounds like a physically responsible thing to do. And, and you know, while we have the funds right now. And the shape of the market, it seems like a great time to think about something like this. So I would be fully supportive. And then yeah, I'm happy to I think at the very least to open the discussion about it. Thank you and Council Member Wall. Yeah, I don't have really anything more to add. I'm supportive of doing a session on the topic. Great. Very good. I think that's all I that's great. I appreciate the opportunity to bring it before council With that I will motion to prove consent and agenda item four Now second item four Councilmember Aureish yes Council member Brown. Yes, council member Gold. Yes, Council member Wall. Yes. Mayor Dom Kelsi. Yes. Okay. We're going to move on to the public hearing. We've got a public hearing tonight on the annual update to our fee schedule. Cindy, do I go to you or? Terry, okay. I. Cindy always wants to hide in the back. A bunch of numbers and be done. So I'm going to. You're a little taller, but once again, introduce. I think many of you may be all of you remember, except for Council member Bruce Terry Madsen helped us. do a substantial update to our fees and charges as well. Two years ago. And so he's back for the update. Great. Welcome. Thank you for allowing me to speak with you this evening. I will be brief. Thank you, Clerk. My name is Terry Madsen. I'm here from ClearSource, and our firm helps communities throughout the state identify the cost of performing specific services, and then think through the idea of recovery of cost of service. We are here tonight to discuss the annual update of what we call the city's, or the town schedule of user and regulatory fees. This would be an update effective for fiscal year 2526. I have about 10 slides, but I'll make my way through them and then be available to answer any questions or receive any feedback you have. Just we'll be talking through background and then the recommendation before council for fiscal year 2526. Next, please. So just by way of background, in California communities primarily use their tax revenues to fund services that provide this broad community-wide benefit. We think of these as like public work services, public safety services, park maintenance services, and so forth. And they use things like fees and charges when they see a direct receiver of benefit. And so it's sort of like direct service provided, direct cost recovery. And in woodside, we think of this primarily as when you're doing plan review for construction, permitting, inspection of construction, review for entitlement, requests, and so forth. This study and this schedule that's being updated is limited to what we think of as user and regulatory fees. So I mentioned there are the building fees, the planning fees, engineering fees, you have some administrative fees. But the idea here is it's service-based fees, some human is providing service, and their discrete services are periodic in nature. So they are not taxes or assessments or utility rates, sort of those things that as woodside residents and businesses, we may say, you know, we feel the effects of those on a daily basis. This would be periodic sort of action-driven items. And we're limited to service-based fees, so we're not thinking about impact fees, development impact fees. They're not part of this topic either. Next slide. As part of normal town operations, woodside reviews and updates its fees periodically. As the town manager mentioned that the fee study was most recently completed in 2023. That was a comprehensive study of building, engineering, and administrative fees. At that time, the council authorized annual inflationary updates in between studies. That's what we're here to discuss this evening. In 2024, last year, you performed an inflationary update and then planning fees were also updated at that time. Staff anticipates that you would see a comprehensive type study, townwide fee study every three to five years. In these interim years you would just do these annual inflationary adjustments with some minor refinements to enhance fee schedule clarity and so forth. Next slide. So now just thinking through 2526 and the action or recommendation before the council this your annual change in CPI for the region is 2.76% so most fees in this schedule are proposed to increase by 2.76% that aligns to the council's adopting action by resolution and then we mentioned we always give staff the opportunity to recommend some minor changes and there are just a few changes intended to enhance fee schedule clarity, more closely aligned fees to services provided, reflect change in legislation and so forth. So the action recommended for Council this evening is to adopt a resolution establishing user and regulatory fees for fiscal year 2526. If the Council adopts the fees, any changes would be effective. July 1, 2025. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you. Appreciate it. Do we have any questions from council? Yes. Go for it. Council member Brown. Yeah. ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to ask the council to fee. If somebody builds and continues to continue building, building, building, beyond maybe a three year limit, with a fee that could be substantial, I can tell you right now that talking about revenue and and the answer to the town, afterton probably gets over half a million dollars or more, just from these fees. I just wanna get on the table for the next discussions Sure, I'm on the fees that thank you Thank you for that any other questions or comments or Terry Okay, I don't have any myself the memorandum and the simplification here is seems all very streamlined. I will open this up to public comment. Anybody in the Zoom room or here in the audience that would be interested in commenting on the proposed changes to the town's fees and charges. I am not logged down, so I need to, I think. Nobody online. Okay, we'll then close public comment and we'll move to any deliberation from council if there is any. Just, I wanna thank Terry for the, I think my first meeting here two years ago, you actually presented, I think at that time, and went through the full tutorial on this, but I know that we're limited by law over what you can do. You can't know beyond inflation, and you can't just arbitrarily target something so that you can sort of cherry pick money from the public. It has to be justifiable, and I know all those things. and you went through that in great detail a couple of years ago. So I appreciate the work that went into this. But I'm fully supportive of this. And I think that since we bit the bullet two years ago. These are much easier steps. These inflationary steps and certainly less controversial to the public. So I'm actually not surprised that members of the public are not in here. Or curious. But they ever do any any other. Belaborations. I'll just maybe I'll just add that obviously we're in an inflationary environment and we have to be functional as an entity and the simplifications on the deposits to a straight fee approach. Also a great improvement for hopefully everyone our side and of course the customers are our citizens here in town. So I think it makes a lot of sense to accept the proposal. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion to approve a resolution of the town council of the town of Woodside adopting a schedule of user and regulatory fees for various town services. So I think okay. Back to you Julie. Council member Aubrey's. Yes. Council member Bran. Yes. Council member. Yes. Council member, Wall. Yes. Mayor Dom Kowski. Yes. Thank you very much. Appreciate your work. Okay. Moving right along tonight. New business item B, the Woodside Fire Protection District presentation on the hazards severity app. So welcome. Fire Marshall Giuliaci. Better known as Fire Marshall Kim by beloved fans. There's a lot of those. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I wanted to come before you all and just update you on the local responsibility area hazard maps that were released on February 24th to us by Cal Fire. And basically the maps they were developed by Cal Fire. They haven't been updated in a long time. So it's long been many years awaiting for these maps. They are finally out. Now there's a lot of questions that have come up from the maps. I won't say a lot, but the few that have, they're very common. You know, people have asked, why is my parcel split in half? Why are there jagged lines? Lots of questions as regard to how the maps look. But I wanted to let everybody know that I just got word today because I've been waiting for this. On April 26, there will be a public forum that is being held by Assemblymember Papin, and it will be on Zoom as well as in San Bruno, and it's going to have a representative from Cal Fire, from the California Insurance, State of California Insurance Company, and another insurance company that is largely in our state makes a lot of our state decisions. But it is on our website. It's as soon as you get to our landing page, I put a big link on the top that directs you to everything, how to RSVP, so you can get the Zoom link and all the details and information. So I hope that does answer a lot of those questions because it wasn't a map that we designed, so I don't have a lot of those answers that people are looking for. What I can say is that these maps that we will be adopting, we're conducting the second reading on April 29th of this month before our fire board at 7pm. That information is also available on our website. We have put together a well-developed Fire Hazard Severity Zone page on our website that gives residents a lot of details, history, what the maps mean, how they affect people, how they use, that they're hazard maps, not risk maps, the differences, lots of videos and information. So there's a lot of information. If you want to get more educated on those maps, I do recommend that you do visit that page. In addition, these maps will not impact our already established ordinance or fuel mitigation ordinance number 2401, which does have in there the zone zero requirements. So these maps do not affect that. And the main reason is because our ordinance applies to the entire district. And by government code, it does not govern our ordinance is more restrictive. And therefore it's what is applicable. The maps do not limit or restrict the district's authority to impose more restrictive as far as the hazard maps go, but we are not doing that. We are not changing what the map show much of the district, if you will see, has been reduced to moderate. That includes woodside, a lot of areas and woodside. some areas that were higher moderate, some areas that were very higher high, very minor amounts. So there's only very small amounts of very high left in the district. However, this is not to be confused. Some people think because on the maps, it shows that they're moderate. It does not mean that they're less at risk. So the risk is very different. These hazard maps do not incorporate structure density. They don't include roads, evacuation routes, anything like that because it's just specifically hazard, which is due to climate patterns, topography, fuel load, and let's also remember that because Cal Fire is doing such a large state, the magnification is a lot wider and broader than someone who's walking the district and seeing what it actually looks like, which is why our ordinance that we adopted last year addresses more of that information and makes it more restrictive. That is pretty much all I have for the ordinance. If anybody has any questions. Okay, well, let's open it up to questions from council. I see your hand raised over here already. Yes, if you can. Okay. Could you interpret for me, I live east of 280, as does Paul. I don't see any obstacles or colors in the areas used to 280. Is that because they're not centered to hazardous? They're not incorporated into any of the three zones anymore. So it's not. So the hatch marks, that's SRA that you might be seeing. So that might be the SRA map side. And then there's the LRA, but there are areas in the LRA that are kind of gray. And that just means they didn't meet any of the categories. They're not even a moderate. They're below that. So if I was to send this to my home and the owners insurance company, it would give them some comfort. I don't know about that. I hope so. I mean, I hope it does. However, insurance companies do use risk over hazard. Sure they do. They also listen to what the fire is. Yeah, hopefully they do. That's why that's a big reason why we didn't see a reason to change what zones people are in. We're hoping that if it does help them with insurance, that's great. More so our ordinance being in place will also increase that ability for them to keep their insurance or even get insurance once they're in compliance with the new ordinance. Thank you. No questions, but just thank you. The Suffer Council member, Abarish. Thank you. Hello. So what is state responsibility area? I saw that on the map and I just was very curious what that meant. So that basically means that is Cal Fire's area. So Cal Fire is the authority having jurisdiction for most of the state of California in that area called the state responsibility area. We are the local responsibility area, as jurisdictions here. So that's how they determine the two SRA and LRA is for which jurisdiction has authority for fire prevention within those areas. Got it. So if there was a fire within one of those areas in Woodside, for example, would your department still be involved in the response? Yes, we would. It still is with if it's within Woodside Fire District, but we also have mutual aid agreements, which means the closest engines to that area wherever something might happen. gets to sometimes cal fire gets to areas up on skyline before we can. So they they're that first do engine. So it does change depending on the location. As far as fire prevention goes, there isn't understanding between the state because there are there is a lot of state responsibility area within our district, but because we have ordinances and we have the staffing to be able to provide better home assessments and fuel mitigation measures and fire prevention, we have an understanding with the state saying we will take care of all the parcels in our district because we know that we'll be able to keep up with it and follow up with it. So we just let them know how it's going and they just check in. Hey, and it's just a conversation that as far as they have the ultimate authority, but we just do it because it's in our district. Thank you so much. Maybe just a quick follow up on that because when we got together recently, you talked a little bit about all the assets that can be called upon in a SRA and how fast maybe some of those assets can get here. I think it might be comforting for everybody to know. And this is our northern Western and southern borders are basically Cal Fire. What resources can be called in to help us out? So there is helicopters, airplanes, aircrafts. Those would be our quickest, fastest, largest deployments that can come to our aid, aside from additional water tenders and other larger equipment that the state can provide for support but the main is always the aircrafts. Right and pretty quickly right I mean where there's stations they can be here in a pretty quickly. Yeah now are in changes. Other questions before by our Marchal Giulio chief. We'll go to public comment just a second, I should. And so just follow up, there's because our building code applies everywhere. There's, you know, there's really no impact, if you will, in anything that we're going to be doing based on this map. Correct. Because because you adopt Chapter 7A already, these hazards., one thing that people as far as hazard goes, what the maps are really use for is for land use planning and development, future construction. And so it would require those in the very high and the high to apply the Chapter 7A requirements and certain fire safe regulations. because this town already adop adopts the chapter 7a, it would, it's across the board. Just like our ordinance is across the board, a lot of state laws are governed and are applicable to those in the very high in the LRA. However, in the SRA, which is always interesting, they require all the requirements, law requires it, state law requires that it be applied to moderate high and very high, but in the local for a long time it's just been the very high, which is one big reason with having our ordinance that we want it to apply to the entire district just as a town and forces for their building code in chapter 7a because fires don't have boundaries. It doesn't matter what zone you're in. If the fire is coming, it's going to keep burning as long as it finds fuel. So it doesn't matter if you're moderate high or very high. We've already seen that with fires in the state that they're not in a wild land urban interface and they burned to the ground. It didn't have to do with that. So that's why it wouldn't apply. So it's good that we have those restrictions here and we are providing a higher level of protection to the communities because of these requirements. So okay, any other questions from council? Seeing none, we will close questions and open up public comment. Richard, you had something you wanted to say. You can come to the microphone though. I want to speak to you. So my question is kind of a general question. When a fire first starts, a small fire lets chain the hills and it's still small. Why typically does it expand so quickly that the fire department cannot compensate for the enlargement of the fires? Is it because of the winds? Because you just mentioned aeroplanes and helicopters are available, I'm sure they're available for other areas also. So why typically like in in the last fire season that we just had, do these fires, I'm not going to say they're allowed to, obviously they're not allowed to spread, but they do spread. And if we have all these resources, such as helicopters and planes, why do they spread so quickly? Because you can see these fires. I'm sure there's observations of hills and stuff and the fire department is always at the ready. And they're just not dependent on somebody calling that there's a fire there. So that's my question. So first, that's somewhat true except for the fact that when it's in the hills, you can't, you know, the fire department firefighters aren't standing outside the building looking to see if there's fires. So yes, a lot of times it's dependent on people making calls, people recognizing maybe people driving by, maybe hikers. There's lots of different scenarios. And wherever that is, it's not, there's rarely a case where there's a road that takes them directly to where that fire is, especially, you know, in a place like this, there is no road that takes us directly into a specific foothill. There's one way windy roads, very narrow. That is a lot of how the state is made up. So they don't have the quickest access. When we say quick with resources, we don't mean five minutes. We're talking, you know, an hour. And an hour, fire spread within 15 minutes can go many acres alone in just 15 minutes because of wind, because of topography, because of the fuel, the density of the fuel, how dry it is, where it is, if there's structures around, there's lots of different elements that contribute to the growth of a fire and how quickly it will burn, when there's certainly a big trigger and so is humidity. Humidity plays a large role on how fires are burning. So there's a lot of different elements involved in understanding the science on fire growth, but this is why one of the things that we have in our district and we're looking at how we can always increase early notification is we do have the N5 sensors that have been placed strategically throughout the district to give us those early warning. So we're not depending on just people seeing it. But more of a sensor noticing it. And we've already had three activations with the N5 sensors that have all been successful. As far as they did their jobs, they weren't false readings. They weren't fires in the sense of vegetation fire. But for example, one was off of 280. There was a vehicle accident. Sheriff's let off road flares about two miles up at the top of the mountain. There's a property that lies there and there's a sensor further into the property. The sensor picked it up because of the wind that's blowing the road flares. And so it confirmed a fire alert. We were on the accident. We knew that that probably was it. They sent someone out just to verify, but it was that it did pick up the road flare and the road flare has products of combustion that would support the N5 sensor for going off. Another time that the sensor went off was there, this was actually in Palo Alto's forest in lands because we do share with Palo Alto and Palo Alto has a new ranger that is actually living in the forest, a house that's been not used for a long time. So no one was aware of the new park ranger who is actually living there now. And he has those old pot stove belly fireplaces. And he was lighting that and cooking. And it set off a sensor that was nearby because it sensed the all the products of combustion. And on the third incident, it was actually a fire warning, not a fire alert. But this fire warning was drift smoke that was picked up back from Cal Fire doing prescribed burns. Many, many miles away from where we are, but with the drift smoke, it picked up a warning knowing that there was some kind of particles in the air that were not common to the normal air. So things like this or the things we're trying to always look at implementing into the district for technology for early Notification so that we can get to those fires as early as possible to try and contain it from growing. But if you've ever put water on any kind of fire depending on wind, when you're putting water, the wind is blowing the water. It's blowing the product. So wind doesn't help with extinguishing a fire, because it's just blowing everything away. So, that makes it difficult to contain fires as well. So, there are a lot of things that gather around that. I hope that answered most of your question. Kim, are we also using drones? Yes, we now have some drones. We're getting our program often running in the district. We have some pilots that are still going through school to finish getting their certifications. We do have a few pilots now and there is a drone on the battalions rig. So that will be, that is, we're looking at how that's going to be deployed and used on scenes, on fire scenes. And so that's just a future in the making. Any other public comments online? I mean, okay, well thank you very much, Fire Marshal. Thank you. Have a good evening. Have a good evening. And there's no resolution here. We are just taking a presentation tonight. Presentation if you had any comments, questions that's what this was for. And when the fire district, after they adopt the ordinance, we will have it on a agenda for ratification. Okay, thank you very much. We appreciate everything you do and we are overdue for the next breakfast, so I'll get that on the count. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, can I ask a quick question? I'm sorry, I just thought of something. You're doing inspections of homes. And I think it was a three-year project where one-third of the homes in the district would get, this is for home hardening, I guess, every every three years so that over a three-year period you would essentially cover all the residences and properties in the fire district. What's the status of that? I just thought of it this very second. No, that's fine. I love to give a quick update. So yes, we are still in the first year. We started doing them July 1st. We started with zones 1 through 4. We broke up the district in 12 zones. But the first four are mainly in the woodside area. We have been conducting them. We're about a little bit over a thousand inspections in like completed for woodside. Our biggest challenge has been people not home. When we come around we leave door hangers hoping that people will call and schedule their home assessments. We haven't had too much luck with that. It doesn't seem like people have. So the the inspectors spend time going back over and over trying to get those houses completed. It's delaying our movement into the next zones, which we're supposed to start this year, but we're just going to keep trekking away and try it. So that one to three year period is kind of a range, I think, because this is new, we just have to give it time for it to catch on and for people to get used to the idea and get it custom to this being something that's going to hit their house once every three years. I think after our first three or four years of doing this, once we get everybody done, I think moving forward, it'll make it a lot easier. But till that time, we just encourage residents to please call and schedule their home assessments so that we can get them completed And we also encourage residents to please sign up for our town for our newsletter and Our e-notification system on our website. It gives you like every public event events and news and information A lot of information goes out on those so please people can go to our website and do that too Thank you. Oh Thank you. Oh yeah, by the way, Jim is going to be giving us a workshop presentation about fire prevention. Including the home hardening. May 22nd. Workshop. Yeah. Yes, it'll be a while while fire preparedness workshop, lessons learned from our past fires home hardening and our ordinance and defensible space. To do that. Okay, moving to our last new business item. Last but certainly not least. Obviously we're saying goodbye to our beloved town manager and that is something that we can celebrate in an upcoming event next month. But our eyes are focused on the future and we have a contract before us and I know I can speak for everybody on the council to say that this has been an honor to be a part of this very rigorous process. and to get a chance to meet so many incredible candidates and to have such great guidance from our external talent consultants throughout this. So, Jean, I think I'm handing this off to you to walk us through the contract. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. The government code requires that when you have a contract for a city manager that'd be placed on an open agenda at a regular meeting and that the terms of the contract be outlined for the public. And so with that in mind, the contract was attached or the public to take a look at and I'll run through the provisions of the contract. So the agreement with Mr. Leadbetter, who is your identified candidate, would commence on May 15. It is and it has an initial term of three years. years. At the end of those three years, it would automatically renew for successive one-year terms unless terminated by I.O.V. counsel or Mr. Leadbetter. His annual base salary initially is set at $300,000. He's an at-will employee and not entitled to any overtime compensation. He will be evaluated after the first six months in the position and then annually thereafter. He may be entitled to compensation adjustments after each of the performance reviews, but that is not assured and the government code prevents a contract with a public employee having a guaranteed salary adjustment. He's entitled to the same benefits as all your other full-time town employees, and that includes paid holidays, a per's retirement, health insurance, and administrative leave. In addition, he will be credited at the beginning of his contract with seven years of service for personal leave accrual. He will be given a life insurance policy equal to one year's salary, a monthly auto allowance of $300, a moving allowance for actually incurred expenses of $7,500 total, and then a $2,500 per month housing assistance during the term of his employment as town manager. He's entitled to reimbursement for expenses for job-related activities, but those need to be approved by and budgeted for by the council prior to anything being expended. He has a right to terminate this agreement. Should he choose to do so as Mr. Bryant has in happily moving into retirement? You also have the right under this contract to terminate his employment or cause or no cause. If he resigns at any time or retires from employment or if you terminate without cause, excuse me, with cause, then there would be no severance paid. If he's terminated without cause, then he is entitled to six six months of severance and as is typically found in contracts of this nature, he cannot be terminated without cause within six months of the election of new council members. Six months? Six months, yes. He, we you will bear the cost of any bond that's required to be posted by Mr. Leadbetter and that's in your municipal code. Finally, you are agreed to defend and indemnify him for any claims that are made against him that arise from actions taken within the course and scope of his employment. But as provided for in the government code, if actions are taken during his employment which are outside the scope of his employment, you would have no obligation to defend and indemnify and as required by the government code. If he is ever convicted of a crime that is defined as abuse of office by the government code, he would need to remit to you salary that was earned during any leave that he was placed on while there was an investigation being conducted. And finally, if there is ever dispute under this agreement, you would enter into mediation before litigation could be initiated. Those are the terms of the contract. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any. Okay, thank you, Jean. And I know everybody on the diast is been very involved in this. It's been an iterative process. But if anybody has additional questions or would like to elucidate anything further for the public and their questions. Questions for staff. Good. Good. I don't have questions. I just want to say that it's been a very deep, thorough search. Some very, very great candidates. And I think Jason's going to be a terrific town manager in every respect. And I'm looking forward to it. Any questions from Council members? Is Abberie Sherwall?all. No questions, but yeah, I look forward to working with Jason. Okay, very good. With that, why don't we open up public comment? Any member of the public that would like to make a comment. on the employment contract for Jason led better. Hey, buddy. Sorry. No public comment, but we have promoted Mr. Ledbetter to the panel to the panels. If he's like to, he's, well, can we take a, can we take a vote first and then have him join us? Okay. Here's the mayor. Thank you. Okay, I think we're going to close public comment for a second and for we're going to close public comment any further deliberations by council. I'll make a motion. Okay. That we approve employment agreement for Jason led better to service town manager. Check that. Council member Overeach. Yes. Council member Brun. Yes. Council member Gold. Yes. Council member Wall. Yes. Mayor Dom Kowski. Yes. And Julie, if you could promote or Kevin could promote Jason to the panel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to just thank the Woodside Town Council. Jason, welcome. It's a great honor to introduce you as our new town manager. So congratulations and welcome aboard. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to just thank the Woodside Town Council. Obviously, it's wonderful to see you guys again. And I want to thank Jean and Kevin, obviously, for just working with them so far. I'm very happy to be beyond this point. And I just give a brief kind of understanding of my history to the folks that are in attendance that I had especially the staff members. I grew up in the North Bay in Napa Valley and moved into wine making after that. Ultimately decided to go into local government so I went and got a master's of engineering from UC Riverside. Worked for Riverside County, Sisky County, and currently I'm the city manager for the city of Wairika. I am just so ecstatic to be joining the team in Woodside. And really honored to take the baton from Kevin. As I stated multiple times in the interview process, it's pretty remarkable that a community has had two town managers in the last 33 years. And so one of the first things that I'm focused on coming is just really stabilizing for the employees because they've been just really utilizing or used to cabin for so long. I just want to make sure that I stabilize things for the fantastic employees that we have at the town of Woodside. And then ultimately I heard tonight that I'll probably be working on some unfunded liability issues and some financial planning. And obviously the town center plan and rolling out the housing element. But I'm happy to be past this phase. I will be down on the 21st that week to meet with Kevin and the staff and hopefully some city council members. And then we have some friends in San Carlos. So we actually will come down very briefly. The 10 year old son and will be bringing my wife down to hang out with some friends in San Carlos and really enjoy the area and think about our future down there. But I am just beyond ecstatic and cannot wait to join the team on the 15th. That's wonderful Jason. As you point out, we've got a lot of opportunities and challenges ahead of us as a community and we're really looking forward to your dedicated leadership to help us chart that course through it all. And so on behalf of the community and the counseling staff, we look forward to working closely with you. And I think as you point out so eloquently in past remarks that you have this great balance here, this passion for our history and our ethos and the demands upon us for the future. And on behalf of council, we really feel that you check all of the boxes that are going to help us get through this in a very proactive way. So welcome aboard. Congratulations and we'll look forward to getting to work. All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it and I am so just excited. Can't wait to get down there and I can't wait to start working. Wonderful. Well, thank you, Jason. It's going to be a real pleasure. Okay. Well, I think we've got reports back to the more mundane for a moment, but anything further on volunteer committee updates with Melissa out. Yep. She always provides me a little list. So, yeah, I mean, from going over sort of here on my list, History Committee, they do this every year on the 27th. So actually, that will be Jason's first council meeting in this chair. History Committee will be doing their preservation awards. They do a ceremony before the meeting down at the museum, which I recommend that you put on your calendar. And do we know who it is? I do not. I do not. Who's great last year? Yeah, I was just reflecting on Adolfo's Cran and some of the stories he was sharing last year. Reck-Middi, so early in the month, obviously we've got the Mayday Fun Run. It'll be the 32nd Fun Run. So Mayday, I'm sorry, the Recreation Committee are taking registration for that. And then that's a conjunction with the Mayday activities. And I think we're over 100 years on the parade itself. They also have other things going on that they're doing a sound immersion workshop on Friday the 25th, 7 to 8 p.m. a Myos They also have other things going on. They're doing a sound immersion workshop on Friday the 25th, 78 PM. A miles, not a further pronounced that you can yoga workshop scheduled for the 24th of September here, I'm 2130. All of this can be found on the website under the recreation department. And then lastly, also in conjunction with Mayday, the Environment and Open Space Committee have asked for applications and nominations for heritage tree awards. I know they've already gotten some of those applications and they announced those as part of the Mayday event as well. Okay. Smart board. Any questions? Volunteer committee. Just a quick comment on the committee, the best committee. I just I wanted to note that Richard may I've talked to the mayor about this, but Richard mains who is the chair of the rec committee recently handed off to Rowan McNeven is the new chair of that. But Richard has served as chair of the Reccomit for 25 years and there was quite a ceremony for him in this room at our last meeting last week. But with the mayor's consent here, we're going to have some sort of honorary presentation to Richard for how many people do 25 years of service for anything and let alone the rec committee and so I think that we'll be having some demonstration of our gratitude to Richard in one of the coming meetings. Wonderful. Okay, I think with that we'll move on to council communications, anything anybody wants to throw into the mix. I just wanted to thank the personal Kevin for his cooperation with the search that was officially completed tonight. Well, you know something, you showed real class, which you have for many, many years here. And it didn't go unnoticed by members of the council. And I think that it was very consistent with the way the professionalism that you've operated in. And we do appreciate that you saw this thing through with great style and our gratitude to you for that. I do appreciate it personally and I know that the members of the council do as well. It was a real show of grace and class. Thank you. That's it. Great. Thank you for saying that. I'll jump on a couple things. One is to say thank you to councilmember Brown for putting on the Crime Stoppers event with the sheriff's a couple of weeks ago. A lot of great home security ideas and a great update on crime and statistics and woodside. And I thought an amazing update on how wonderful license plate readers have been, which I couldn't those two guys have presented this. I mean, that was pretty impressive. So I just want to say I know you got another one coming up. It's just amazing work that you're doing really with the reach out to the public. So thank you. I hope a lot of folks had the chance to attend the grand opening of station number seven. Should have mentioned this while the fire marshal was here, but under th anniversary it was really well attended and really energetic and wonderful to get a tour and they spend 30 million dollars on that which is quite an investment on our protection of our community and I did learn by the way the property next to the warehouse that they did purchase which maybe some of us had our eyes on for density at some point, but they want to put their administrative building there and rebuild the multistory fire tower that used to exist. So that's their plan for what they want to do there ultimately. And then we just heard about the Mayday Parade, but it is coming up the 103rd Mayday Parade. And of course, there is the town council car for the Mayday Parade that we can all participate in. The theme this year is giddy up woodside so I don't know if we want to wear cowboy hats or something but it's Saturday May 3rd the parade starts at 10 a.m. you got to be there a little bit earlier so if you would like to be a part of that just just let Kevin know. There is one new thing this year. They are no longer allowing us to throw candy from moving vehicles and horses. So which makes sense that little kids run up when the cars move in. So you're gonna have to be more of the world class politician you can ride, but you can also walk alongside the car and just use use the car to carry your candy if you'd like. The town is going to have some base level of candy. Please if you show up bring your own candy these kids it's an endless pit that you have to you don't want to run out of candy it's not good for a politician to run out of candy. And yeah the only other thing that I just heard which I just wanted to point out, and we do have a planning commissioner here tonight, but I did hear from the chair of the planning commissioner that they've only done three meetings this year. Maybe they've had a fourth since I've heard this, but I just wanted to mention that if there are things that we want to sort of send their way, that's just to be on your mind. because they're asking for something to do. So I think with that is there anything else that folks would like to weigh in on? Well it's what's going to be great is in my year-end mayoral proclamation. It's really going to be about the number of hours of closed session that are going to be emphasized. These public sessions have been fast. So, I think with that, at the 806, we're just gonna, we're just going to call it meeting adjourned.