Good afternoon, we're back on the record from the 430 PM closed session. City attorneys, anything to report.
There was no reportable action from the two items on the 430 closed session at the special meeting.
All right. We will now close the 430 session and start the 530 session.
So again, the town of Los Alto sales. This is the regular meeting called the meeting to order.
It is now 536 PM on June 18th, 2026.
And Erica, can we please have a roll call?
Yes, Mayor. Council member Monk?
Yes.
Council member Swan?
Here.
Council member Tonka?
Yeah.
Vice Mayor Tyson?
Yeah.
Mayor Vittasia.
Here.
Thank you, Mayor. We have a call.
So do we do the pledge of leisure now or do it?
No, no, no.
Later.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
So.
At this time, the Council will receive public comments which is limited amount matters to the subject of the closed session.
Please complete a speaker card on located on the back table and submitted to the city clerk.
Comments are limited to two minutes per speaker speakers and members of the audience are reminded that public comments must comply with the towns rules of decorum for a fine language or destructive conduct is prohibited under the towns municipal code.
Are there any members of the public present who wish to me public comment?
Mr. Grady.
Good afternoon.
I'm aware that a group of residents living near the O'Keefe property have threatened to bring a suit for alleged brown act violations and have made certain demands of the town and reported settlement of those claims.
Well, I don't believe that a brown act violation occurred.
Even if it had the O'Keefe groups, so-called settlement demands is set forth in their attorney's March 30th letter, bears no relation to the supposed offense.
Furthermore, I believe it would be a breach of this council's fiduciary duty for the town to agree to the O'Keefe groups demands.
The O'Keefe group asks the council to declare that, quote, housing is not a public purpose, closed quote.
That is simply absurd.
The California legislature has made it very clear that housing is a public purpose.
And the fact is that the best way for the town to meet its affordable housing arena is to use town-owned land, because the town can require development of land that it owns to provide the number of affordable units needed to meet its remaining need of affordable units.
If the town relies on for-profit development of privately owned land, such developments typically yield only 5% affordable units and the rest market units.
And so after the ADUs and SB9s, the town has a remaining need of 45-50 affordable units, assuming nothing comes through on the other currently designated sites, if that's possible.
The town would have to rezone to make those 45-50 units based on a 5% affordable rate.
The town would have to rezone 900 or more property to facilitate 900 or more affordable units, multi-family units, to meet 45-50.
So I submit that the town should not accept not a seed to the demands of the Yokeef Group.
Thank you.
Anybody else in the room?
Okay.
Anybody online?
Yes, Mayor.
General.
All right.
Please unmute.
I have done.
Hello again.
As I mentioned earlier, we're spending a lot of money on lawsuits and lawsuits that shouldn't really be happening.
The city attorney has spent 140 hours and greater than $60,000 on the shield threatened lawsuit, and it hasn't even gone to a lawsuit yet.
I've been discussing to try and avoid it.
But why we don't know because nobody has even told us what this is all about.
The only reason we know anything is from public records access.
I believe it would be better if the council came forward and told residents what it is that they're being held or blackmailed for.
In place, the goal was designed to stand having read it.
Of the proposal on May 18th was as Mr. Grady has just said to get the town to declare housing not to be a public use, and then under the terms of the conference transfer agreement to invalidate the use of the Yokeef parcel.
The only way the Yokeef parcel or any other town owned land can be used for multifamily housing is a vote of Los Altocittles residents in November.
It is clear that the city council see codifying the green sheets as a higher priority than obtaining the use of town owned land to take control of our rena.
It's also clear as might just point it out that if we don't have land which we can control the development, the town is going to have to zone many, many, many acres of land for public, that's all private development in order to get a house.
In order to get a handful of lower income housing units.
Number one, the city council should stop wasting money on shield and put O'Keefe and possibly other town owned land on the November ballot.
Number two, in the event the city council does not do this.
They should not.
Okay, anybody else online?
No, me.
All right.
Do we want to.
I mean, this is somebody else, I don't mind.
We can allow Mr. O'Connor to finish if you are if the council is okay with that.
I think.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Please let it know you could continue.
Could you please come from item two?
I'll just repeat number two since I'd almost finished anyway.
In the event the city council does not put O'Keefe on the ballot.
You should not on the any circumstances overwrite the ability of other residents to put it on the ballot by entering into an agreement with shield.
That precludes the use of O'Keefe for multifamily housing and meeting the town's rena.
Thank you very much.
Thank you Mr. Carl.
I take it there. Nobody else online.
No, me.
All right. Well, then we will close public comment.
And before we adjourned a closed session.
Assistant attorney.
Do you have any response to Mr. O'Connor's request to share more information?
Is there anything that you feel is appropriate to share out in open session?
The the latter that came in from the shield organization that.
Essentially group of residents around O'Keefe is a public record.
It has been provided to Mr. O'Connor and it's available to anyone who would like to see a copy of it.
It does propose a resolution of their claims their alleged claims against the town for what they say or violations the brown act.
The political reform act.
As well as the public record act.
As we have advised before we don't believe that those allegations are correct.
But there is a proposal that they have put forward.
And the council is considering that as part of the closed session.
Because it's under the threat.
They've threatened to file lawsuits on all of these.
If they're not able to reach a successful resolution with the town.
Thank you, Mr. Mattis.
With that I think we can adjourn the closed session.
Good afternoon.
We're just returned from the closed session.
So city attorney, do you have any reportable action from the closed session?
Mayor, I do not have any reportable action from the closed session regarding the shield coalition matter.
But I do want to report out the city council met on June 9th as part of a special meeting.
And one of the items on that was a closed session that was entitled public employment for the city attorney.
As part of that process, I had advised the council of my intention to retire from the position to resign later on this year.
And the council graciously accepted that.
I appreciate that.
And the council also established a subcommittee of mayor,
and council member Tonka to lead a process where the city would issue an RFP for legal services with the ideas.
I understand it to find the next city attorney before I step down.
And so with that I do want to thank the council.
I want to thank the citizens of Los Alto seals for the opportunity to serve,
but I wanted the council to be aware of kind of what my plans were and be able to assist in any way.
I can as the council moves forward to your next city attorney.
So thank you.
We certainly appreciate the many, how many years of service has it been as the city attorney of our town?
24.
24 years.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your service.
And any comments from the council?
Anything you want to add?
Well, just to say thank you for your steady hands and your steady demeanor in leading us through both good times and bad times.
And we've been grateful for your support and for your help as we've navigated all these times.
Anybody else?
Stan?
Thank you Steve.
Send it just a tremendous job through all the good times and all the bad times we know that you are not perfect.
But whenever you had a mistake, you always came back and you said,
I mean, a mistake.
And you told us about it, not everybody does that.
So thank you for all your time, your effort.
And hopefully you have a great retirement going ahead.
I'd like to say thank you to you.
You've been a very steady hand, very calm amid some of the turmoil that happens around town.
And I appreciate that.
We're definitely going to miss you.
Thank you.
I appreciate all those things.
Then also your very responsive at all hours, which I guess is not helping our legal bill.
But you can't blame me for that, can you?
So I've always appreciated that as well as your steady hand and solid council.
And speaking from myself, Steve, I've always found you to be the picture of economy.
Never ruffled a feather, never lost your cool.
I don't know how you do it.
It's it's not an easy job.
And I've also really appreciated the calm kind of perspective that you've given us on each issue.
Some of the very difficult issues.
And always said, this is the council.
Here are the options for the council.
We've never seen you try and sway us inappropriately.
Always just given us the advice and ask us what we want to do.
So really held yourself to a very high standard and I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Mayor and council members.
I appreciate the comments and I think we've got about as far in the scope of report out of closed session as we can.
Thank you.
Okay.
Moving along.
When I came out of closed session, I laid my stuff on the back table and my pencil disappeared.
So if anybody picked up a lab under colored mechanical pencil.
If they could.
Or if anybody would like to donate one to miss one.
I like the one I had.
But I can't find it so.
All right.
Okay.
I guess the next step is to reconvene as a regular meeting.
And the meeting is both in person and zoom.
City clerk comes Miller.
Could you do a roll call please.
Yes, Mayor.
Councilmember Mark.
Okay.
Councilmember Sloan.
Here.
Councilmember Tanka.
Yeah.
Vice Mayor Tyson.
Here.
Thank you.
We have a core.
Yeah.
And Mr. Maris given that you're going to be retiring.
Why don't you lead us in the pledge of allegiance.
That's the end of the call.
And do not.
We just say.
One nation under guard.
Individual.
With liberty and justice.
All.
Okay.
We would now go through an agenda review.
Does anybody have any.
Does anybody have any changes to the agenda.
Anything you'd like to pull from consent or any other changes.
Mayor.
Every my recommendation that we can move.
Item six A.
That has to do with Los autoses community fiber.
The extension on their agreement to consent.
Okay.
Mayor.
Also.
As the council recall.
Item.
P. I believe it is on the.
Sorry.
Tony, which one's your.
Six A.
Six.
About.
Yeah.
Item K is an amendment to Cody's contract, which was recently adopted. It modifies his benefits in a net zero approach to have Cody pay more of the employees share of his purse contribution.
At the same time, the council would contribute towards his non-purs retirement program. So it's a no cost item, but it is an amendment to his contract and under state law.
Whenever there's a change to executive management contract provisions, we need to verbally report that it can stay on the consent agenda, but we need to report it into the record.
All right. Any other changes we want to consider?
No. Okay. So I guess we will move six A2 consent. Do we need a motion for that?
We can just.
Yeah.
No.
Okay.
All right.
Okay. There were a couple items that I had on on the council initiated that I've since deleted. So those are deleted in the latest agenda.
I believe so.
Okay.
All right. With that, we will move forward with the agenda as as recorded now and let's move forward to presentation appointments.
Let's move.
Okay. The first item is the appointment to the youth committee.
We have five youth commissioners that are well five youth that are seeking appointment to the youth commission.
Some of them are in person. Some of them are on zoom, but they except for some of them are traveling and couldn't be here.
But they've all met the minimum qualifications, which are they've attended at least one meeting and they volunteered at different events, whether it be the pathway committee or the town picnic and some of them assisted at the leadership academy that we had a couple of weeks ago.
So they've all met the qualifications and after if council appoints all five of these kids based on my records, we would have 17 youth commissioners.
Okay. Good. And we, we're allowed to have up to 20 up to 20.
Right.
Very good. So can we call up the candidates?
Oh, absolutely. So I know I have Calista. She's here. If you want to just go to the podium and just introduce yourself to council that will be perfect.
Get a little bit down, bend it towards you.
My name is Calista. I'm going to be your next year.
Oh, we go. I can barely hear you as probably a reflection of my hearing.
I'm trying to get closer to the microphone.
I think I would be a good addition to the law's autos.
I felt as youth commission because I'm very involved in my community.
And I love volunteering at like town events and participating in school activities and clubs.
I would love to be able to advocate for the problems of the other youth in my community who might not always have a voice.
And I want to help people to feel heard and understood.
I think that I'm patient and empathetic and good at listening and coming up with solutions and listening to people's problems.
I am also responsible and good at saying organized.
And I think that these qualities would make me a good addition to the law's autos youth commission.
Thank you.
Anybody have questions for?
No, just to say thank you for putting a hand up and volunteering.
It's not easy to come out here as speak and I think you'd be great asset.
Thank you.
And I would like to speak in support of Kalista.
I can save having worked in the ice cream booth during the picnic.
That she's very good at rainbow sherbet.
I can think of no higher qualification.
Okay.
Well, I do see that you've volunteered and you've attended how many youth commission meetings have you attended?
I think quite.
Or maybe?
Okay, good.
And what, what greater are you in?
I'm going to be a junior next year.
Junior, very good.
Well, I compliment you for wanting to do this.
It's a very rewarding experience.
I applaud you for taking the initiative.
Thank you.
All right.
We get a more.
I got some more people on.
You want to do one at a time or do you want to do one together?
Okay.
So we, you are.
We are asking you to unmute on Zoom.
She's on Zoom.
Hello.
My name is Zoe.
And should I turn on my camera or is it fun with my camera off?
It's okay.
Whatever you wish.
Oh.
Okay.
I don't know if I can open it on my end.
I'm.
So I guess the main reason I want to join the Lots of the Hills Youth Committee is because
just from being on it for the past year.
I really loved helping out with the pathway run.
I was able to see like a bunch of, a bunch of like the community members and families and volunteers.
I'll come together and I also really enjoyed meeting a lot of the people of my community there.
And a little bit about myself is that I love doing speech and debate.
In fact, the reason why I couldn't join you guys in person today is because I'm currently at a speech and debate tournament.
And I hope to be able to use my speaking skills to be a voice and an advocate for my community.
And it's taught me that like communicating is about about how important communication is about how I can use,
once again, use my voice to sort of connect to people, make others feel heard.
And I want to bring that mindset to the Lots of Hills Youth Committee.
And yeah, so I guess.
My main goal is I want to help more students sort of learn about more students like my community learn more about the events that
we have and opportunities and different ways that they can get involved.
And I'm very excited to continue contributing to the Lots of the Hills Youth Committee.
Thank you.
Any questions or.
Well, thank you for stepping up sounds like you've got a really good motivation to do this.
I applaud you for wanting to participate in public service.
All right, who's next?
Mayor, I got some people on Zoom, but they're not, they don't have a name.
So I don't know if it's one of the youth commissioners applicants.
If you are, can you raise your hand on Zoom?
If not, I know that some of them were traveling and couldn't be here tonight,
but they are incredibly dedicated to the position and they are eager to join.
They just couldn't be here tonight.
So because I don't see any other hand raised.
I'm assuming that none of them, the rest of them can make it tonight.
Well, I've read all of the applications and I'm certainly happy to support all of them.
Mr.
I wanted to make a comment.
So throughout your lives to the young people here, you will make friends.
And some of the friends that you need are going to be when you're younger.
Those friends that you meet today.
And I'm sure that this is going to be important for all of us as well as adults and as youth.
Those friends are going to be lifetime friends.
You're going to look back 70 years from now.
Going forward 70 years and looking back and you're going to say,
I remember meeting that person in Los Alto's Hills at the Youth Commission.
So again, congratulations for doing this.
If I've well done, you're going to get a lot out of that.
Thank you.
Second.
All right. Can I get a motion?
I am moved that the candidates listed on the agenda be appointed to the Youth Commission.
Second.
All right. We get a roll call.
House member Mark?
Yes.
House member Tonka? Yes.
Vice Mayor Tyson? Yes.
Mayor Patija? Yes. So congratulations to our five appointees.
Aria Basker, Colester Shaker War,
Preiti Wary, Theo Dupont and Zoe Lab.
Congratulations.
All right. Moving on to the planning commission.
Okay. Next up, we have two expired terms on the planning commission currently and four applicants.
All of them, I read all the applications, all of them are very qualified.
Two of them have served two terms on the planning commission and all of them are asking to be appointed or re-appointed to the planning commission.
I think one of them served one term.
This is only done one term.
I'm sorry.
So two expired terms, one term, one two term, but all seeking appointment to the planning commission.
Tonight for this item, I do have ballots in front of everybody that we could use to vote on this item, but I also have some public comments for this item as well.
And do we have all four candidates here?
I know. I see.
Some people are online.
I believe it was Dana Stolder and Katherine Frey with the other two.
I don't see them online.
Okay.
Well, if the candidates are here, I'm happy to entertain a statement or if you want to say something.
Hello.
I'm Alyssa Brado. I need you all.
No need by now.
So I've been on planning commission.
One term is as noted.
And it really has been a whirlwind.
I think before I joined SB 9 had just passed.
And so I that was part of my motivation for becoming involved with that.
I've been very involved with that with ADUs with housing element.
You know all the things that we've been have had thrown at us.
And it's been a real learning experience.
I really enjoyed it.
And I would like to continue.
I have certainly appreciated the long hours involved.
I attend some of them, but I don't state as late as you guys do.
And I know there's a lot of technical decisions you have to make late in the night.
So I really appreciate the service.
Thank you for that.
I am Rajiv Patel.
Again, have been on the planning commission for two terms.
Most of you already know what all challenges we have.
And today we've added one more challenge to that list based on the announcement of our attorney,
attorney retiring.
So that's good to add to even the planning commission challenge.
Because there are some ordinances which need to be resolved pretty soon.
Having said that.
Recently we also had one of our most senior planning commissioner.
It's he Cooper's resigned.
And so.
One thing we got out of yet see was the deep knowledge and history that he brought to the planning commission.
So as you build the planning commission in future.
Keep that in mind that you need to have some history.
As you get new people on board.
So that's something you want to keep in mind.
Thank you.
Did you have any further comments that you wanted to share with us?
I think you sent us an email.
I will have comments on other topics.
Okay.
But right now I think.
For this part which is the point lens I don't have anything else.
Okay.
I've seen the level of knowledge that you've brought and the.
Insightful and incisive questions you've asked.
And I applaud you for your many many contributions over the last two terms.
Thank you for that.
With that.
Any other questions from council.
Are we ready to make a motion.
Oh.
We thought about it right.
But we have to take public comment first.
But I just want to see if anybody else has questions first.
Okay.
Can we open it up for public comment?
Please.
I have Cheryl Evans.
In the midst of.
So very many housing mandate issues that very significantly impact our town.
I strongly recommend that we reelect commissioners.
And.
Patel to the planning commission.
They have the experience and understanding of these issues to move this forward.
And I don't think that this is a time to bring unseasoned commissioners on the board.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Sue Welch.
And I respectfully request that you re-appointed both.
Melissa and.
Regeve to another turn to the plan on the planning commission.
The State Housing mandate is the most important thing that we face right now, and they both have enormous
experience in-depth working knowledge of housing elements, as well as the general plan, zoning
laws, the standards, well on their way to the deep history. They've worked with unflagging energy
and creativity to adapt the one-size-fits-all state regulations to our unique town.
Their experience is an absolutely invaluable resource that the town should continue to utilize
by re-appointing them. Again, absolutely invaluable in these times. I understand the value of rotating
commissioners in normal times. However, in our current circumstances continuity of institutional
knowledge is critical. Given the pressures and the complexities of the state housing
mandates, an exception should be made to retain these skilled and knowledgeable commissioners.
The State is not finished with us. New housing bills are rolling out as we stand here.
Our town needs a strong experience, highly knowledgeable planning commissioner, commission,
and we have two who are willing to take on another term. Please appoint a list of
re-appointing, a list of breter one of the Chief Patel. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Milch. I don't think I'm going to add a great deal to what has already been said.
I completely agree with the past comments. I would just like to provide a perspective.
I had a conversation with Jay, Mr Bradford this week, and we say it's a challenge.
We have very, very few people in the planning department. We've got very few people that understand our code.
People are growing into the job, but we have some planning commissioners that
know our code pretty well. I want to specifically draw on the knowledge and experience that I've seen
regime patelbring both in terms of state law, our code, and providing guidance to the planning
department. So I really think although he's served two terms, particularly since we're all so
losing commissioner washura, I think it really is important that we continue with the experience that
is there. I'm not going to be critical, but if I was applying to be on the planning commission,
I think I'd have been here tonight. I'd certainly have attended some planning commission meetings.
So, on the one hand, we've got demonstrated track record and commitment, and let me tell you,
I've stayed almost to the end of some of the meetings. So I really back up what everybody else has said.
Please reappoint at least the breedow and regime patelbring for the planning commission. Thank you.
Yeah, what everybody else said were fortunate enough to have two commissioners who are willing to
sit for additional terms. They've shown themselves to be diligent, dedicated, and they're fully up
to speed on the challenges and complexities of the housing element. The other two new
applicants, one of whom, according to the application, hasn't attended a single planning commission meeting,
and the other, the application indicates, has attended three of the meetings, presumably
those three related to his own house project. This ought to be an easy one. The issues that the
town is facing with respect to meeting the state's mandates are two complex. We've got experience people.
It's a no-brainer reappoint regime and a list of thanks. Thank you. I don't see anybody else in the room.
Is there anybody online? Not with their hands. We're here. All right. Thank you. All right, we will close public
comment and bring it back to council. I would move to a point, Rajiv Patel and Alyssa Brado for another term.
They've done tremendous work, but I guess we have to vote on it, right? Yeah. And I think you all all have
a ballot. And if I'm not mistaken, it does require a signature. So hopefully you have your pencil or pen.
I got a pen, but hey, my pencil's lost in space.
Mayer, we have a unanimous decision for re-appointment for Commissioner Alyssa Brado
as well as Commissioner Reggie Patel. Congratulations. You know, get to spend many more late nights here.
I think we have another set of appointments to EPRC. Yes, Mayor. The first one is a reappointment
of Ben Geek. Ben Geek is. He served a term and his term expired and he is seeking reappointment.
He is a from everything I hear from the EPRC. He is a great addition to the committee.
And he is seeking another term. Okay. And I don't see him in the room. And then we also have another
application for Bill Latin. Yes. And Bill Latin right now is an associate member. And he is asking to be upgraded
to a full voting member for EPRC. Okay. I've been the liaison for the EPRC and both of these gentlemen have
contributed and participated very keenly. So I would certainly be happy to support him any anybody else.
I'm happy to move that vote to see here. Oh, I see his bill here.
Oh, Bill, would you like to say a few words?
Well, the EPRC is supposed to focus on the worst of times.
It's true. So thank you all for considering me. I do believe in the EPRC in its mission.
I think, you know, this is a committee where I have a chance to get back to the town and not just to the
town, but also to the broader Los Altos Hills County Fire District for the record. I live in
unincorporated space. And I wish to thank the town and the council for opening up the EPRC to full
participation to folks who live in the LAHC FD. I've been on virtually every EPRC meeting. I've been
with a certain program forever. So I really believe in this mission. It's about emergency preparedness
and response. I think if you all are looking for helping the community in a positive way, this is a
great chance to do it through the start program or through the EPRC. And with that I'll stop talking.
Thank you. Is there any public comment in the room?
No, anybody online? No, me here. Okay. All right. Then we'll close public comment and bring it back to
council. I would move to a reappoint these two gentlemen.
Four point and reappoint as it is. Second. Sure.
Are you seconded? Yes. All right. So how is Miller? Can we take a roll call? Yes, Mayor.
Councilmember Mark. Yes. Councilmember Swan. Yes. Councilmember Tonka. Vice Mayor Tyson. Yes.
Mayor Beteja. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Congratulations, Bill. And I don't see Ben here, but congratulations to
him as well. Thank you again. All right.
The next item is me, too. Mayor is the Housing Element Implementation Committee of
date. So staff just wanted to provide an update to council. The town has received fewer applications
than the number of vacancies available on the Housing Element Implementation Committee. So to encourage
additional participation and provide interest and provide interested residents with more time to
apply. Staff recommends extending the application period through August 13th, 2026. And hopefully we
could reappoint at the August 20th city council meeting. The extension will allow the town to continue
outreach efforts and seek a broader pool of applicants to serve on the committee. Council appointments
will be scheduled following the close of the extended recruitment period if approved. Any comments?
It's a good idea. All right. And we open it up for public comment. Anybody in the room?
No. Anybody online? No, Mayor. All right. We'll bring it back. Are we okay to extend the talk?
I will that we extend the period. Second. Thank you. Will you roll call?
Councilmember Swine. I'm sorry. Looking at councilmember Mark and I said councilmember Mark. Yes.
Councilmember Swine. Yes. Councilmember Tonka. Vice Mayor Tyson. Yes. Mayor Beteja. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you.
I think next we have a report from the County Fire District. Ms. I see, Mr. Jay Logan here.
Welcome, Mr. Logan. Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Vice Mayor, council staff and public.
Very happy to be here. I'm Jay Logan, the General Manager for Los Alto Hills County Fire District.
And with me tonight, I'd like to bring to the podium, Yajenea Woods. And she is our program planning
in grants manager for Los Alto Hills County Fire District. And I'd like to introduce you to the new
project that we're doing right now on I280. And Yajenea has some slides and we'll present that program to you.
We have a time allocation for this presentation. And then when she finishes, I'll give you a quick overview
of recent events that happened at the Board of Supervisors meeting this week on our budget. So thank you.
Good, Jenny. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. And I do have some slides.
We could have as one second. We're pulling them up. Wonderful. So I'm here to give you an overview on the
I280 Shadefield Break Connectivity Project, which you've probably heard about in bits and pieces,
but we're thrilled that it's moving along. And I meet with Director Kim of your public works department,
every month. And he requested that I come and you know, present to the broader audience. And also we have
a communications plan to meet with each of your committees, four of your committees over the next coming
months to get more input for any questions concerns. And we'll have time at the end of the
presentation that I can also collect questions and concerns. So the things we're going to cover tonight
are the team, the timelines. And I'll give you some examples of the types of work that we plan to do
and the also the outreach plan, the visual impact assessment, which I know is of concern to multiple
you know, factions of the town. Next slide. Here's our team. I'm so pleased to hear the program's
project manager. We also have IE to Fairman, who some of you may know. She's a professional engineer.
This recently retired as the Director of Public Works from Los Altos. Many of you have met
Res Moriale, our finance manager. Of course, General Manager J. Logan. We have recently brought
on board a retired forester from Cal Fire to work with our national, national resources and outreach
liaison. Operations, county fires generously given us chief fortune to help with this and the field's group
program. We also have a drone firm. It's been working extensively with this program since 2021.
And then our engineering design firm. Next slide. So some of you may know or have heard that we
were the recipient of the Governor's Emergency Priority Project. We got the exemption through the
March 1st, 2025 exemption that he put out to accelerate wildfire projects across the state. There's
200 of them approximately so far and we're one of them. A few of them are on interstates and roadways.
So super excited that this is one of the bigger priority projects. The secretarial suspension allows
us to move through a much more quickly, sequence usually a 69-month process. It does give us some
requirements and it doesn't wave environmental protection. What it does is accelerate the analysis process.
We still have to comply with the laws. We still have seven or eight pages of the program protection
that they have put into place just for these priority projects. And one of those mandates is that
work has to begin by this October and it has to be done by next October. And our future maintenance,
which you'll hear about as you get into the maintenance cycle over the next few years is not covered
under this suspension. It also compels us to work with the state agencies that are listed up there,
which we have been doing since last July when we were approved.
Next slide. Here's our current timeline. We're in June, of course, right now, where we've received. We've put the RFP process out there. We received proposals. They'll be going through evaluations. Next month, we'll be in the contractor services agreement. And in July, we'll start the project kickoff meetings, which means that you'll hear more and more about all of this soon.
We would like to put boots on the ground so to speak and begin the contractor work in August. So we're really ramping up the RFP plan. Now currently, you're effectively one of the kickoffs, if you will, of our RFP plan. And then we'll work continuously until the rain puts us out of work and we'll start again in the spring. Next slide.
Here's the project. I'm sorry, you have to squint at this. These are also in your agenda packets. We start down at St. Joseph Avenue, which is mid peninsula land right up. It's mid peninsula managed Santa Clara County Park's land right up against southern end of the district and we go all the way up to the page mill interchange. The three interchanges and circles have been pulled out. We put those into our regular evacuation route program.
But the interstate itself remains in the connectivity project. Next slide.
So here's some examples of what we will be coping with. The lower right corner is underneath row where we'll let us underpass. You're looking up at the freeway median. You can see how the trees overhang at interstate lanes.
And then you've got, sorry, squinting at it. And then on the left side, you've got some before you've got either side of over by the partial near a rastered arrow and per other some apart.
You can see from the residential road on the top. You can just see the gate. You can't see the interstate. Believe it or not, behind those trees is the interstate.
Then the same picture on the lower is the interstate looking back towards that gate. Again, you can't see it at all. So these are examples of where we need to reduce vegetation because it's just one continuous stream of fuels.
Next slide.
More examples of the same type of thing. You can see the freeway lanes are just overhang with.
Oh, so you could lift us some pines and other types of things multiple different examples of where these trees were to catch fire or to fall onto the freeway like winter of 2023 where we lost a lot of vegetation.
Lane's could easily be blocked and people would either be slowed down or would be able to get off the roadway at all.
Next slide.
And we wanted to address a director, Kim, especially asking me to address the visual impact assessment. He knows that that is a concern for many folks here as you remove vegetation.
What's going to be left and what are you going to see.
This was performed by due to environmental consultants services when we applied for the FEMA grant originally in 2022.
And this is one of the requirements for cow chances as well because this is a scenic highway or eligible to be a scenic highway.
So there's a lot of protection and concerns for the visual impact.
So this report they came out did feel surveys. They put together the report.
And it's based on standards. It's not just one opinion. There's their standards for the federal highway administration of how you measure and what you measure.
So we'll go through a few of the highlights of this report.
Next slide please.
So your current view shed is what they talk about when you have near and far views are near views are the grasslands, the Golden Hills of California, if you will.
And then the far view sheds are the foothills. So what this report talks about what will happen as we remove remove some of the vegetation up close.
The presence of the grasslands and the Oakland lands up into the foothills.
The majority of the opinion in this report is yes you will have the near view shed change somewhat, but the far view shed will remain the same.
Next slide.
So after completion it talks about the visual character and this is an example of it. You'll see more guardrails.
You may see more things immediately behind the guardrail on the left side of this picture. You see there's a sound ball back there.
So you will have you will be seeing more sound walls.
The way the sound balls are constructed in our district's area is they tend to block headlights and direct visuals of the interstate. So that's a benefit to all of you all of you.
And we will be removing dead dying in diseased fuels. We will not be taking out very much live fuels, especially the ones that will be taken out with a ladder fuels.
So if there were to be a vehicle fired it would catch the grass. It wouldn't be able to reach into the crowns.
This area again because it's a eligible scenic highway.
Caltrans has a very strict rules about which species we can take out, what we can do, how far we can limit up.
They effectively let you limit up over the roadway 17 feet. If you think about an engine a fire engine is 13. Six.
Some of the other bigger trucks are higher than that. And then over dirt areas they let you limit up eight feet.
So they have a graduated look or they call it. Caltrans calls it feathering.
Not just a stark you know we cut everything down to 12 inches and we limit everything up to 17 feet. It's a graduated look.
So yes there will be you know some places you can see through they'll tend to grow back within a year or two.
But the benefits to the fuel reduction and removing the dead and dying is expected to outweigh the change in the visuals.
Next slide.
Oh my lots of reading to do.
So these examples I've been out in the field lately with part of your maintenance staff and your public work staff is recently yesterday.
You're maintenance supervisor, Mike.
And these are some of the pictures and examples from right here that I wanted to walk you through.
So the red lines in the pictures are your pathways or part of your pathway system.
And the blue line, the blue circles are areas where we want to reduce vegetation as an example.
So some of these pathways will be able to see the freeway a little bit more.
And vice versa the freeway will be able to see some of the pathways.
But you can imagine especially in the lower picture that's just all grasses and thistles and not just weeds mostly that effect your pathway users.
And the pathway users can also be a source of ignition inadvertently and it leads right up to the freeway.
There's a continuous amount of fuel from your pathway to the freeway advice versa a vehicle fire or sparks from chains can come right up to your pathway.
So that's what these two examples help you notice.
And of course this is one of the many reasons pathways are not a great option for evacuation route alternatives.
Being on foot if you were in a wildfire or vegetation fire is is overwhelming.
It's it's a path of literally last resort to get out somewhere.
So we just wanted to highlight why some of those things are here.
And then I italicized part of this excerpt so that you would be able to tell what the landscape effects from removed shrubs would be.
Again, not a huge change in the view said.
Next slide.
The next thing that we were asked to discuss a little bit was our public information and outreach plan.
So again, here we are today, and you're kind of our kickoff.
On a formal basis, we will be working with multi prong approach, including media releases.
We've already begun regional parking liaison meetings, monthly presentations.
And if we're right back to city council, our commission has been getting monthly presentations for quite a while.
We'll start working with the committees.
And then we also have four and two week planning notifications.
Thank you for the construction firm calls those look ahead meetings.
And those will be very specific and operational, which lanes will be closed, who will be impacted, which exit ramps will be impacted, et cetera.
We will have set up mailing list for joint messaging for the impacted partners.
And we also have opt-in for emails.
We really want to make sure that we're communicating with all the people who, I280s of feed or two.
We're going to affect school.
We're laying closures.
We're going to affect getting to work on time with or not in the morning so much.
We're not expecting to work on the freeway until 10.
That's what usually the encroachment permits give us.
Coming home and midday.
So there will be an extensive communications plan.
Some of you may or may not know.
I also participated as a leadership when we did the SR-17.
You might recall that in Las Gatos from 2019 and 2020.
And we had an extensive plan there too.
Caltrans requires an extensive communications plan in order to do the work and give us the encroachment permits to.
And it involves everyone.
The Sheriff's Office, law enforcement, PHP, both fire agencies that serve this area, etc.
And then for residents on the right hand side, there will be signs, flyers, mailers.
Again, the opt-in to the email list.
And we will make sure that the media releases have two stages where we're working this week.
We're going to have a couple of weeks on deck for next week so you can plan ahead.
And then social media, sign up for all your social media sources.
And then you'll be able to reach and need directly as well.
Questions?
And we already have been pushing forward things in your town weekly in the news letters.
And we have, we press cross-amplify each other social media posts, so that will continue.
Next slide.
How it will be affecting a traffic is this plan has been developed by licensed traffic control engineers.
That's what they do.
It's also approved by Caltrans.
Caltrans says extensive amount of requirements around how you close lanes, closed shoulders, that type of thing.
The request in the encroachment permit is only for slow lane for your freeway closures.
The freeway will never be all the way shut down unless something unexpected happens like a tree where to come down, something like that.
And it's a rolling lane closure.
So it moves down the side of the freeway rolling along at about half mile, you know, start to finish.
And pathways we will be getting a town permit.
We've been working with your staff for that.
And there will be pathways sometimes that are completely closed.
And those will be noticed at least a week in advance.
And then we open again by the time we're off of the pathway.
Unless something happens that we weren't expecting like tree fall,
or we're not able to remove all the debris and that are remain closed.
And we will have signage and workers because we know people tend to want to go around the layframes and things.
So we'll have escorts as well as signage that it's closed.
Okay, next slide.
These are the types of signs that will be out there.
And this is the a little update on the.
Magdalene interchange and the Magdalene East Brook project.
So Magdalene interchange is technically part of the I280.
Freeway project and at the same time we will be doing the Magdalene East Brook evacuation route maintenance.
This will be its third cycle.
And instead of impacting residents twice we're going to put these projects running simultaneously.
So that the rolling link closers can happen all during the same two weeks cycle.
So we won't have two projects back to back effectively stretching out things into a month.
We decided run them concurrently.
Next slide.
A little bit more information on the field operations planning for the Magdalene interchange.
So that again, the big benefits here are that will be two weeks worth of work instead of four weeks worth of work.
Next slide.
And here we are protect life property and community safety.
That's what we're all about why we're implementing this this large connectivity project.
Here's my email.
I'd love to have your comments concerns.
The goal is that we'll be assembling a FAQ section on our website and we'll just continue to grow as people.
Bring forward the things that they want to know about the project and the things that.
The questions and ideas and things like that the scope of work is pretty much already finished and set.
It's been approved at the state level with the exemption and in the RFPs, but we'll do everything to make it.
Easier and understandable on all of the residents that it will impact and the people passing through our area on the University.
Give and report.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate that. Any questions from the council.
Not really a question but this has been a long term time coming is a giant project.
I appreciate the efforts on outreach.
I think it's a great experience. You've gained from the Cloverley work that was done last year because we're working with Caltrans.
I think it's some experience helps.
And so I'm really eager to see this come to fruition.
Yeah. I think I brought this up five or six years ago and I'm glad it's finally going through and I was talking to somebody from Pacifica.
And they're interested in doing it too and I said well talk to us because you guys are doing it.
I told them we were paying for it and they weren't happy about that.
I said no count times I don't think it's paying for it.
But there's a lot of interest on up the peninsula about doing the same thing because it's a big issue along the freeway.
So thank you.
Yes.
Welcome. Thank you.
And Caltrans is a huge contributor.
They are the largest in kind contributor with the encroachment permits, the traffic control and the debris removal.
So they're not writing a chat.
So I really appreciate the work that's gone into planning this and the focus and the coordination with
council trends. I'm sure this was not easy. I have a few questions. One is, so this fuel break along 280,
how long will that last? I mean, when do we have to do this again?
I like that you're planning it for maintenance. Very good. Our evacuation route maintenance projects.
We reach those every two years. There's some variables, of course, on a freeway. The strip is wider. The work is wider.
It depends on how much rain you get, how hot it is. You know, mother nature gets the vote here on how fast vegetation returns.
It hasn't been done before. So we don't have a specific maintenance cycle.
And of course, the impact of the budget will have something to do with it.
The SR-17 by the third year, we were finding a lot of ladder fuels that come back, broom, some small saplings, things like that.
And the cow trans came in and did some maintenance, not as extensive as a shaded fuel break at about five years.
And then Santa Cruz County did its side, and their maintenance happened at about between three and four years.
So I would say three to five year range. We really need to figure out how to keep the maintenance cycle going to keep to maintain the safety.
You mentioned evacuation routes. One of the other questions that has come up before, and I don't know if there's any update from your site on this is, you know,
making sure that the pathways are also addressed as potential evacuation routes, because in our town, there are places where, because there is no alternative route, there's only a single route out that the residents may be using a pathway as an evacuation route.
So is there any effort to kind of clean up those pathways?
Just started talking with a director, Kim, and the main supervisor of what kind of program that could look like.
But again, we're going to discourage the use of pathways as a very, very last resort.
It's just, if you've been imagined waking up at midnight in the dark can't find your glasses, you're trying to walk somewhere, and it's a very, very smoky and you can't see.
There is such a large chance that you will not get out, you will not know where you're going, even if the wildfire doesn't directly impact your survival, just being lost in the heat in the dark will impact your survival.
It's, it's very unlikely that pathways need to be, you know, in any of the top of the planning, and it's also draws down your fire response, because life is first, then property, and then environment.
So they're going to go looking for people that are on pathways, and they're not going to be fighting.
Let me give you an example of, of actual situations, so you're familiar, possibly with the saddle mountain area, there's only one road that goes into saddle mountain.
And if that road were somehow obstructed because of fire, there's no other way for people to get out safely, other than the studs pathway.
It was during a place inside a house with clean air is safer than wandering in the dark in spoken air.
No, no question. I don't think anybody would voluntarily choose the pathway over the road, but the point is that if you only have one way out by road, and that's not available, then you're going to use a pathway.
But, actually, in that situation, you're incident commander will tell you, if those, if it's even viable, if it's easy.
Anyway, that's the source of the concern, is that there are certain pathways that we think merit, you know, closer review, because they are the only alternative in the event that a road that a single road that you know, exit is blocked.
And like I said, we have, I have started talking with your director of public works and your main and staff about what could that look like.
All right, very good. We should that.
And I can say something about that.
I agree that evacuating early is your best solution, but if you look at the eaten fires and the Pacific Palace aids, there are blocks would not a single house survived.
And so sheltering in place was not a good option, anybody who sheltered in place in that area did not make it. So it's hard to weigh what you should do.
First of all, get out of there, but if you don't in time, you know, I think we have to try to give them another way.
Yeah, definitely use many alternatives as possible.
Okay, my last question has to do with my favorite topic is the H.I. Z, which I love that program.
I wish that everybody in town would get one.
Folks, if you haven't yet gotten your H.I. Z, please get one.
It's free. It's very informative.
It gives you great input on how to keep your home safe and resilient for against fire.
But my specific question is, is the rebate still $3,000 or is it going to go up?
Under discussion. Yes, it is still $3,000 and raising it is under discussion that has come up several times.
Okay, is there a timeline for that?
The county budget is our timeline in our guide or so I'm sure Jay has an update now or after the budget's approved.
Thank you very much for all your work and for the presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That's a good segue into my conversation of the two partnerships with the town.
And thank you all, Council for assisting us and being our partner in this I280 project.
You're a very important component.
And as you can see, we're working with a couple of your committees and commissions and also working with your maintenance staff.
So this collaboration is just really exciting when we meet in collaborative conversation every Wednesday with the office of the fire marshal.
Jay Bradford in in in that community development and the lost out to the sales county fire district.
So we're very pleased for this this kind of cooperation.
The last three days we have been in budget hearings with the Board of Supervisors all day.
I will announce that back in April when I presented here.
We talked about the two partnerships, which is the enhancement to the HIZ program, which would be a tree hazard assessment.
For eligible for rebate and then also a shared services resource to work with the town on its emergency plan emergency preparedness.
Those two have gone forward.
I went from the April meeting with this council to the commission then spoke with the commission and the commission was the fire commission was very supportive of those two programs gave me direction to follow through and to make progress.
And so I've spent that time doing that.
To make the tree hazard program work from a budget perspective.
We had to go back to the county with a budget modification for $109,000 to elevate the total amount of $600,000 in that program.
That just went in front of the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday of this week.
It was not contested. It was not pulled off a consent. So it passed consent went to the Board of Supervisors today and about three o'clock and was able to make it through that round.
So at this point I can stand and say you're the first to know even the commission doesn't know this yet except for the two council members or commissioners that the $109,000 is now added to the modified budget for the district for the fire district.
That's the funding part. Now what I have to do staff has to do is go to the program part.
And so we're putting the program part is to how this tree hazard assessment program is going to work.
That will be part of the HIC advisory and part of a written memorandum to the commission and then ultimately up to the Board of Supervisors for approval.
So that's where we are with that program. So making progress a lot of steps we have to go through and it's that same rigor of steps for the shared services have to get a budget.
It's not been approved yet but we've got to get a budget and then get a MOA memorandum of understanding with the with central fire the fire department as to how to make payment for the hours that are being logged right now for the town to help with the emergency management assessment.
So that's pretty much my update wanted to give you that and you're the first to know. I will be reporting this on to you see at the fire commission meeting. Thank you.
We certainly appreciate the support of the emergency management role as well as the enhanced tree rebate our trees program. So I really appreciate all of the efforts there any comments from the council.
Now just to say this extraordinary progress we've come a long way.
Yes, our residents for asking for this for a very very long time and it's the fact that it's approved it's huge. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate your efforts. Thank you to your team. Yes, thank you.
Okay, moving along. I think the next one is our proclamation recognizing the 250th Anniversary.
With Anniversary of the United States. That's one.
Thank you. As you all know, this is the 250th Anniversary, which is the sesquist Centennial. And so we have a population.
So I'll read it. Would you like to wear your hat with us?
So red white and low.
Whereas the year 2026 marks the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States of America.
And whereas the United States semi-quince Centennial provides an opportunity for communities across the nation to reflect upon the ideals of liberty, self-government, equality and civic participation that has shaped our nation's history.
And whereas local governments are cornerstone of American democracy, delivering essential public services and providing residents with accountable, responsive, inclusive, ethical, and transparent governance.
And whereas the nation's smallest villages to the largest cities, local governments have played a vital role in the growth, prosperity and democratic development of the United States of America.
And whereas the town of Los Angeles is incorporated in 1956, 70 years ago, has long been committed to preserving its unique rural character, fostering civic engagement and serving the public through dedicated elected officials, commissioners, staff and community volunteers.
And whereas the semi-quince Centennial presents an opportunity for the town and its residents to celebrate our shared history.
Honor the contributions of past generations and inspire future generations through education, preservation and innovative and innovation, and whereas the residents of Los Angeles can commemorate this historic milestone to civic educational, cultural and community activities that strengthen appreciation for our nation's heritage and democratic institutions.
Now, therefore, regime, battasia, mayor of the town of Los Angeles, together with Vice Mayor George Tyson, and Council Member Skavita Tonka, myself, Linda Swan and Stan Mach, do hereby complete proclaim, June 18, 2026, as a day of recognition and celebration of the United States's 250th anniversary in the town of Los Angeles.
We encourage all residences, businesses, schools and community organizations to participate in activities that commemorate our nation's 250th anniversary.
We reflect on our shared history and contribute to a stronger future for generations to come.
In witnessware of we have here unto set our hands on this 18th day of June 2026, celebrating the United States 250th anniversary.
And now I believe we have the poet laureate of the town is going to give a form for us.
Our first contribution from.
Will you mention we are asking you to unmute yourself. You are good to go when you're ready.
Okay. Hi everyone. My name is William and I just want to say thank you for giving me this opportunity to present my poem.
In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the U.S.
So I remember my poem basically it's called Flimphritum and I just wrote it basically about the U.S. and what I believe it's like core values are in just try to express it basically in a poem.
Okay. So freedom of flame passed hand to hand, running bright through dark days.
Hope rises like the sun, living on rooftops, sparking on fields, the same first life for everyone.
A thousand hands sparked the same fire, a thousand different poems holding a single strand of hope that ties them all together tomorrow better than today.
The Flimphritum.
No waves, red like the blood, fighting to keep the fire burning, while like the stars like guide our dreams, blue like the purpose, the every voice will rise and carry hope.
Freedom is not the end. She is a garden, tended to still weed's pulled, seeds sewn, season after season.
250 years later, and still the torches pass. Still hope rises, stubborn, golden, and free.
Okay, and that's my poem. Thank you.
All right.
Thank the next item is presentations from the floor.
Persons wishing to address the council any subject not on the agenda may do so now.
Please complete a speaker card located on the back table of the council chambers and submitted to the city clerk.
Comments are limited to two minutes per speaker. California law prohibits the council from acting on items that do not appear in the agenda.
Upon resolution previously adopted by the city council, such items can be referred to staff or appropriate action.
Which may include placement on the next available agenda. Please come to the podium, stage your name and address for the record before your comment.
I see some people already lined up. Mr. Grady.
Yes, Michael Grady. Thank you.
Last year, the town received an SV 330 development application for greater than 300 units on the Twin Ops property.
It's my understanding that the town has advised the applicant that the application was not complete.
But even aside from the issue of the completeness of the application, I've recently become aware of fact showing that the application is invalid.
The application asserts that it was authorized by an entity that purported to own the Twin Ops property.
But that entity did not in fact own the property.
Take a look at California revenue and taxation code section two three three zero two sub paragraph D.
So I submit that it's appropriate and indeed, I believe the town has a fiduciary duty to reject the current SV 330 application as invalid. Thank you.
That's my servants.
Sure, let's.
For 25 years, Hills 2000 protected Los Alto Cills.
Now they've passed the torch to new organization operating under the banner of friends of the hills Los Alto Cills residence association.
They've planned to carry forward their legacy of preserving the character of the hills.
Our mission is to keep residents informed connected and engaged.
We are neighbors who love this town and believe it informed engaged residents produce better outcomes than any individual advocate could alone.
We look forward to collaborating with the town on the complex issues that we are currently facing and we hope you will all join our organization.
In addition to our brochure, which I will hand out, I'd also like to provide each of you with a hard copy of it in the analysis we sent you today regarding the towns alternatives in closing the gap in our 2031 arena allocation.
They have very different implications for our town.
One leads to a little over 5% increase in homes and residents in population growth.
The other nearly 30%.
I urge the town to appoint members of the Housing, Element, Custian and Committee and let them get to work, finding solutions to protect our town.
Time is of the essence.
You can always add to the committee as new volunteers come forth and I'll pass this out to each of you.
Thank you, Miss Jones.
Good evening.
Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council.
My name is Rose Morinam.
I live at 10869 more a drive and I've been living there since 2011.
I'm here tonight to bring to your attention an annexation issue that's been overlooked for far too long by the town.
And I hope you will take this matter seriously.
So back in 2000, when I was not living on more a drive, and the entirety of more a drive was in unincorporated county.
The town entered into sewer extension agreement with 28 property owners.
And I have a map that I would love to refer you to.
So you can visualize the location.
So yes, the dark yellow.
Thank you.
The dark yellow line is more a drive.
And if you could just orient yourself properly.
What I, the top of Mora, upper mora starts at the bottom of the map.
That's the top of Mora that butts up against Rancho San Antonio.
And then it goes down.
It's less than a quarter mile long.
Very windy, very hilly.
And then it ends at Eastbrook.
That's the only section of Mora that is at issue in my request tonight.
So back in 2000, the town entered into a sewer extension agreement with 28 property owners.
None of the properties were in muscle to sales since then in 2011.
2012 upper mora was annexed.
And then and then five more houses.
But the pockets that still remain in unincorporated county.
Still remain the red outline sections and the two blue outline sections.
So I have provided a detailed email to all of you previously.
I hope you'll be that carefully.
And that we can complete the annexation as it was originally intended.
Thank you.
Good evening council members.
My name's Bella and I am a property owner on Terry way.
So I respect my neighbors perspective but I would like the council to also consider the entrance.
This is our properties and made investment decisions based on the existing county jurisdiction.
Not on assumption made by prior owners more than two decades ago.
And my property is currently going through an active county review process that has required substantial time.
Expense and reliance on the existing regulatory framework.
Well, I respect different opinions on a decision.
But I don't believe there's any urgent public health or safety issue requiring immediate action.
After more than 26 years it's reasonable to fully evaluate the impacts on current property owners and ongoing county applications before moving forward.
An decision should not disadvantage property owners who have acted in good face under the existing county process.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to add to what Mr. Grady said earlier.
The SB 330 that was submitted in August of 2025 was for approximately 330 and change single family lots subdividing the 612.5 acre parcels.
The town's position and documentation from public records says that the SB 330 preliminary application was incomplete.
And it states that no vested rights have been obtained and the process that follows if it had been complete has not been followed.
Without going through all the back and forth occurred between August and January of 26.
On January of 30th, 2026 the town received revision one of what was called a complete application.
The significance of that is it was three weeks prior to the 180 day deadline required in order to go from a preliminary application to a complete application.
Clearly the applicant still believes the SB 330 is valid and vested.
The town's position appears to be unchanged but it's less than clear.
The discussions with the town are to say the least not very responsive.
I have raised this issue with you in the last three months and I see no action whatsoever on the part of the town attorney to do anything about it.
Stephen I have been in communication on it and I appreciate some of the points that is made as to needing more time.
But if we allow the applicant to continue to spend money on an application that the town believes has not got any vested rights.
I believe that is very poor judgment and could prejudices if we end up in court and as we went through today we seem to have a lot of legal things going on.
So I request the council to please get the town staff and town attorney to make the position clear one way or the other.
Thank you very much.
And by the way he has received the town attorney as received information from Mr. Grady and I did point out that a number of claims made by the lawyer that see where et cetera is exempt are incorrect.
So we're willing to put roll up our sleeves.
Thank you.
Hi.
My name is Beth most and I live at 26501 per cent.
I miss most.
I think you're if I'm not mistaken your item is coming up later on the agenda.
This is for items that are not on the agenda.
I know you may be new to this, but that's.
Thank you.
Okay.
Any public comment of.
No hands raised on the floor.
All right.
We'll close the presentations from the floor and bring that back to council now.
I think the next item is information items from on the disbursement report and the treasures report any anything reportable.
Nothing.
All right.
And then we'll move on to the consent calendar.
I think we've previously approved the contents of the consent calendar including the community fiber item.
I will need to recuse on one item because it's within 500 feet of my house.
And that would be the.
I guess.
Is item G.
So how do we want to handle that.
Mayor, since if it remains on consent, you can simply note your extension for the record and then the council can act on.
A motion that you can participate on for the consent agenda.
You do not need to step down when the items are consent.
Okay.
Would anybody like to make a motion on the consent item?
I move that.
We approve the consent calendar.
Do we need public comment on it first?
Sorry.
Good.
Mr. Mocker.
I actually wanted to have some short report on the fiber.
On enrichment.
I don't know if this is possible, but got them is here to do.
We could take that off of consent and have a make a two or three minute summation of what's going on.
Is that okay?
Anybody can pull something from consent right?
Okay.
So we'll pull it from consent.
Sorry.
Oh, we can just.
Just take a comment from him.
Yeah.
I'm okay with that.
Let's just.
Would that be all right?
We just approve it under consent, but allowed Mr. Agrawaldis.
Doctor Agrawaldis.
Speak on it.
Please.
All right.
Well, then let's entertain a motion.
But I think we need public comment first, right?
Okay.
Any public comment on items on the consent calendar?
Yes, sir.
This is on.
This is on item six C.
No.
Six is not on this.
Yeah.
I'm still.
All right.
Okay.
Anybody online?
No, me.
All right.
Public comment on the consent calendar and bring it back to council. May I get a motion? Sure. I move that for you
approve the consent calendar. All right. Second, Mr. Miller, could you take a roll call please?
Council member Mark. Yes. Council member Swine. Yes. Council member Tonka. Yes. Vice Mayor Tyson. Mayor Battasia. Yes. But the exception that I will not be voting on six. I'm sorry on five. G.
No, that's four zero on that one.
Okay. Now we move on to ongoing business.
I thought you were not allowed to go.
Go to help quickly. I forget.
Doctor, I'll go well by apologies.
Could you guys have the document, my chance?
I see if she's running the show now.
Okay. Thank you.
All right. So.
Just a quick update on the fiber project.
So lots of good news.
I'll go through stepwise what we're talking about here. What's left and then I can show you essentially what has been completed.
There were three large tasks in the project. We'll call them task A, B and C.
Task A was the portion that hooks cream on road up towards town hall area, which will lead to eventually town hall and further extension had to repeat that.
That is completed permanent as closed everything done task and that was sort of the middle sized version of it.
Task B is the stone book section which is quite large and that was by far the most large amount of boring and stuff.
That is also completed entirely.
And then what we're left with is has C, which was kind of a coordination with foothill.
Foothill was gracious enough to allow us to use some of their existing underground conduit to hook up our arc instead of having to dig through it.
And by doing that, we also will a lot foothill to use the fiber network and stuff.
So it was a kind of a partnership in win-win.
But then we had to run through the administrative layer of foothill.
That took a little longer than expected.
You're expecting everything to be completed in terms of physical work by the end of the month by June 30th.
However, technically to close those permits out, it may take a few more days and stuff for inspections and whatnot, but we're on track.
And so that was the reason for the short extension not to complete any additional work, but to make sure administratively we took care of everything from what it sounds like lots of lots of stuff is.
You know, if you can scroll down a little bit, I think I have a couple other updates.
There, maybe to the next page.
There we go.
Okay, so I'm not sure if you can see this, but essentially the foothill project A basically passed around 30 homes.
There are seven homes that are essentially signed up ready to connect or in the process of being connected, you know,
that we're going to be signing up soon. So that's about 25-ish percent of the past homes are being connected.
For Stonebrook, we've got about 14 total, give or take six of already committed committed and we've got eight more that are likely to commit.
And in addition, both of those have each of them have spawned smaller other projects with additional five and additional five.
So, you know, you're looking at what 14 plus seven is 21 plus another 10 31 houses, roughly speaking,
with the project. So overall between 25-35 percent adoption rate and that's just out the gates, we think that'll eventually get higher.
So, you know, all of this looks like it's been fairly successful.
Have any answer to any other questions or if there's any other details you'd like to know about it, please go ahead.
Are you on budget?
Well, one thing to point out is, no matter what the cost was, the town would not pay a penny extra.
So technically we're on budget. In reality, we went over and we absorbed some of the cost.
So the town should not see a penny over what we agreed upon.
There's a system work and if it does work, how does it work? Does it work fine?
Or is it just muddling long?
No, no, I mean, we haven't yet hooked up these folks, but when we hook them up, this will be, you know, you'll get 10 giga optical to the house.
So, and one of the nice things about this, I'll just kind of tune a little horn here.
It's very easy for us to move to 40 giga or 100 giga optical if we need to.
So whoever does get this will have an absurd amount of bandwidth that they need it.
Very good.
So I think we've allowed for a six-month extension to complete the third task.
I'm hoping it'll only be a few more weeks to get it in that.
All right. I'll thank you for the for the great work.
Thank you.
Okay. Now we're going to move on to items under.
I'm going, I'm sorry, public hearing.
I know you were right the first time on this.
I'm going business.
And I do know there's some we move six A into consent.
So we have six B and six C.
If it make please the council, there are people waiting to speak on six C as you've seen.
Is it okay for us to move that ahead of six B any objection to that?
Is there anybody here to talk about six B?
Yeah, I think six B is going to be a longer discussion potentially.
Okay.
All right. So with that, we'll move on to item six C,
which is review of the town's code enforcement program.
And I think we have a staff report on it first.
Yes. Sorry for the delay here.
The or reward.
Call me by surprise.
Thank you, Mayor council members members of the public.
We were asked at a prior council meeting to talk about our code enforcement program.
And it's efficacy in resolving code enforcement violations.
That conversation spawned a request to come back tonight with identifying gaps within the code enforcement program that the council could consider to add to the toolbox of
remedies that the staff would be able to apply.
If, in fact, code enforcement violations do exist and persist longer than what some of the, I think, expectations for the town residents are.
So with that today, we'll give you a review of the town's code enforcement programs.
And also look at some of the existing programs in other communities that we could utilize here.
And then give you a chance to discuss and give some direction to staff, which will ultimately if directed.
Resulting modifications to the ordinances that affect code enforcement.
So as part of the town's existing code enforcement programs, we have notices of violations that are tied to new citizens within the town.
And we also have an abatement process, we have similar criminal remedies and other misdemeanor prosecution that we can use for code enforcement.
Sometimes some of those later tools are a little bit more blunt than we need with the voluntary compliance, which is what we seek, often with education.
First, and then support of the residents to be able to make sure they can work their way through processes.
Most outstanding and long lasting code enforcement cases are related to those that often require additional regulatory review like approvals.
So we do have a fairly robust program currently, but we do have some gaps in those middleing areas where if we don't get immediate compliance, that it does take a lot of staff time to be able to get through.
So with that, you can see here that our code enforcement receives a complaint goes to investigation if a violation is identified, then it goes to a notice of violation.
From that process, then the the results do vary.
Most often times we end up recording a notice of a violation with the county and the violation then does not go address until the property sales or some transaction happens with the property.
So not very successful at getting compliance.
So the programs now that we want to talk about that other communities have are the administrative cost recovery program.
This is where if you found a violation then we would be able to start to build for staff time to help residents through that process.
And that could come in the form of any number of tasks that staff may be able to to utilize.
Certainly attorney time and other costs that the code enforcement program may generate using cost recovery mechanisms like this typically allow for the code enforcement program to generate some revenues to then offset the.
What is typically a general fund subsidy because code enforcement right now is currently subsidized 100% by the general fund.
The next option we have our administrative citations.
These come in the form very much like a ticket and can have escalations.
You can have.
Penalties that are are by a currents of violation, which you can also have penalties that escalate by.
The duration of penalty and so these are meant to be.
First you know soft and then you know as you know potential delays occur start to ramp up.
And these are tools that we don't necessarily plan on using immediately but we want to have them in our toolkit if in fact we do need to help motivate in some of these instances.
Some of the reasons why the sorry.
The citations are effective are are because of that escalation.
But there's also another potential way to to get compliance using a similar form of which is not necessarily detailed within the staff report.
This is an administrative compliance order.
Very much like our new sense process.
You receive a complaint you investigate.
It didn't if a violation is identified.
You set a compliance deadline and associated that with adhering.
And so that hearing then allows for a hearing officer to apply similar penalties to the citation program.
But can also order other types of activities and and their.
When asked of our code enforcement attorney Lance Bear who works under.
An authorization from redwood public law with us.
CGS that this is probably one of the the better tools to use along with the citation.
So if you're going to do anything and code enforcement first recommendation with citations.
The next is then the administrative compliance followed by cost recovery and then a few other things that we'll talk about in the next slides.
Right now and you'll see in the budget conversation that we're going to have later.
We have a current penalty of 10 times.
In the budget process we're proposing the four times the penalty and also we do have a retain the misdemeanor authorities and the municipal code.
The reason why the proposed four times permit is because in addition to other things that regulations that we have for fees and impact fees things of that nature.
When you look at a violation typically there's some proportionality to the violation that is occurring.
And so if if that exceeds the proportionality then there could be the thought that there's the the the the the fine or the penalty becomes a fee.
And then there need to be a nexus so best practice and again our code enforcement attorney recommends also the four percent are the four times multiplier.
Just as a general concern when in your in code enforcement it's due process but some of the things that may be interesting to council are underlined at the very end here which are things like.
Consideration of caps for penalties or fines hardship provisions and other options like payment plans if if individuals do happen to occur a number of costs associated with the code enforcement problem.
There's in noise inshits is drainage lighting landscaping want to be able to have a framework spelled out within the municipal code that they can work with their neighbors to be able to get a resolution without maybe having to to tax the code enforcement program and use again general fund subsidies to be able to.
Resolve neighbor disputes with that then there'd also be a potential for a policy related to civil disputes and the towns emphasis on.
Our interactions with those types of requests from our residents so this would help set expectations for when the town will be involved and when the town won't be involved if a request comes to us.
Those were the the suite of options from a code enforcement perspective that other communities have that we don't currently have within loss out to sales staff would ask that you you you direct us to come back.
We'll go back with ordinance modifications that include all of those, but certainly what you'll see here is the list in its, I'm sorry, this order is a slightly off here, so it would go 2, 3, 1, 4, 5, 6.
That's in order of what you're proposing.
Yes, that's more, most valuable to least.
Well, so when we talk about effectiveness of these tools, our code enforcement attorney suggested the citation program is the one that really drives home a lot of the compliance and other communities.
So you would move number one to under four.
Under number three.
Under three.
Correct.
All right.
And if it's helpful, I can make that modifications of the slide.
Yes.
Is that the end of your slide?
That was the end of the slide.
Any questions from council?
Collaborations.
So the major focus of this, what would you say is it regarding construction activities?
Yeah, when we gave the report in May of the, going by memory here, roughly 60 code enforcement cases that were currently managing more than half of those.
Were cases tied to to some level of work without permits.
And if you, if you'll recall, looking at the distribution of time that those have taken to resolve, they were all over a year somewhere well over three years.
Okay.
Because when it comes to say things like grass and brush the fire department, then go through a process where neighbors are, they're inspected by the county fire.
And then they're issued a notice.
And my sense is it's a relatively organized and thorough process.
And in effect, once a property, let's say, refuses or fails to do their grass removal, then they're put on a list.
And then they get a fee for three years.
And that seems to be a strong disincentive or strong incentive for them to get off that list.
And so I just seen as though I've found that to be effective.
And frankly, you know, we're all here representing everybody in all capacities.
I have a pet peeve a few properties away from me.
I can't get resolved all of the, the wooden junk that's piled up there.
That's just a noise, the noise, a lot, a lot.
There have that.
And so.
So that's the end of my questions, but I'm, I'm quite interested in beefing this up.
And also in particular for fire safety things that are not currently covered.
Okay.
Should we open it up to public comment right there for the questions.
Mr. Mark, did you have something?
Okay.
All right.
And that case we will open it up for public comment.
I think I am.
Yeah.
So I'm one of the over three years issues involving landslides and undermining my property.
So last month we had a little report on this.
I won't go over the whole thing again.
But well.
The issue is that the town hasn't been able to enforce its codes on unpermitted work to mitigate a dangerous situation on our property edge.
And it's significant compromise of a creek bed and conservation area.
As Jay was explaining in some of these gap cases.
LAH doesn't have the procedures in place to really enforce the codes involving unpermitted work.
Thanks to our mayor and new manager.
We were able to attend a meeting with the code enforcement attorney and land spare and code enforcement officer.
Jamie Evoos and as well as Jay I'm Cody.
Mr. Bay is bear is working with Jaime.
Sorry.
I said Jamie.
But to see how LAH may adopt procedures.
Similar to surrounding cities for enforcement.
We encourage the council to support a normalized structure for handling significant violations and forcing codes and restoration.
We're particularly interested in restoration since our hill is undermined and there's already been one landslide.
This will preserve the town's culture and respect for one another's neighbors and open space guidelines to keep our hills beautiful.
I just wanted to look.
There's a long report.
We presented last time.
I don't want to go over it.
But if we could just look at page 12.
And.
Two.
These are some of that violation codes in page 12 13 and 14.
There's three pages of them.
And the point is merely that there's.
A ton of violations here.
So it's like a big deal.
So we've made a list of ones that we think are being violated.
Thank you for your time.
We didn't get your name for the record.
Please.
Can you state your name for the record?
I'm sorry.
I'll wait a minute.
And two, six, nine, two, five.
Next please.
Hi.
My name is Beth most.
And I live at two, six, five, one.
I'm a puristima.
And I've had the pleasure of living in Los Alto Cells for 20 years.
And I spoke last month about code enforcement.
I'm greatly encouraged by the report and the proposal.
Unfortunately, I feel like it's too late for my experience.
And I'm just going to run through my experience.
Again, just to remind everybody how difficult it has been.
In October 2024, I reported an unpromoted pickleball court.
That was constructed right next to my home.
I waited patiently.
Six months later, the town's own removal deadline passed with no action taken.
Over a year later, I was still waiting for any sort of code enforcement.
And I was becoming increasingly frustrated.
And at that point, I felt I had no reports other than to hire an attorney to write a letter to the town.
I was simply asking the town to enforce their own rules.
I understand you're giving the town more tools.
The town did have tools, in my case, but they chose not to use them.
As a result of that letter, the town finally imposed deadlines that were subsequently ignored by my name.
The town granted him extension after extension until 19 months later.
After zero enforcement and zero penalties, he simply moved on to the planning commission.
I'm assuming that he's going to sail through and be rubber stamp by the planning commission,
because as the neighbor was impacted by this illegal pickleball court,
I have not heard anything about what's going on.
I'm leaving a handout with the full timeline and the violations for your reference,
but I just still ask, how was this possible?
And why did I, as a resident, why do I have to spend so much time, energy, and my own resources to try to get the town to enforce their own code?
It's not right.
And I'd also like you to consider what messages the town's sending to all the residents who abide by the rules and abide by the town code.
Thank you very much.
Hello.
I'm Donna Grishinski and I live on Casimir Way.
And I have a situation that has come about where a neighbor started grading the property.
They're higher than I am.
They're higher here.
And they're sort of grading right next to my fence to put in a supposedly parking strip all the way down,
which would have gone by my pool and my backyard.
So that they could have parking for their big parties.
This came about on a Saturday and they had three bobcats over there working.
And Sunday morning and went over because the contract was there working on Sunday and I thought, well, they're not supposed to be working on Sunday.
So I asked them what they were doing.
They explained to me that the owner wants more parking for his big parties.
So he's going to put in this as it turned out to be a 1200 square foot gravel driveway all the way down by my fence past my family room living room master bedroom and pool and patio area.
So I said, I called on Monday and told the town asked him if they had a permit.
It just turned out they did not have a permit.
So Jaime came out the code enforcement man came out on Tuesday and asked him to stop the project.
Well, they took lunch and they came back and started again.
So they went and I kept taking pictures and sending photos in to the town telling him they're still working, sending things to Jaime telling him he came out the next week.
He told them again to stop working.
Well, another lunch time went by and they kept on grading and working.
This went on for almost four weeks.
They have graded a huge amount of their property and they were supposed to go back and put it back into place.
I was told they're going to put it back because they actually got refused for that particular situation.
Okay, so anyway my concern is what can we do about getting something done quicker and something.
So that I know there's only one code enforcement person but we really need to have something done so that they will stop.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Rajeev Patel speaking as a resident.
All you heard till now has been even longer process where a lot of residents over the years have come to the planning commission and complain.
And we've heard so many cases. In fact, for the last two years.
The planning commission has been asking for staff to do something about it.
Now we know where the cloud is and who can get things done here.
Not the planning commission unfortunately. Anyway, I think this is a great initiative.
It's long overdue code enforcement in our town.
That maybe blunt is totally absent and it's been absent for decades not for last couple of years or so.
So I would really like the council to take this as an important thing to fix because over the years.
A lot of people who are violators have become more and more aggressive and egregious in what they've been doing.
And there is no systems in place in our town to cite them penalized them collect fees and lot of the towns budget is being used for no real valuable purposes.
So please take this on and get it done.
And if you need extra help, there are other committees which could provide you a lot more information because they've seen a lot more of this than probably you have.
Thank you.
Thank you again.
I think there's obviously a lot of violations of the curve and we tend to take a perspective of it of fees and et cetera for this.
And a lot of people that commit these violations, I don't think are necessarily bad people and the violations are not necessarily bad.
But there are some people that commit violations and basically just ignore.
You can say what you like.
You can charge fees, probably won't pay them.
Now councilor Tyson referred to the Weed Abatement Program.
And I would contend that the actual being on the program for three years is an annoyance.
Not really a motivator.
But if you don't do it.
What they do is they send out contractor to do it and they put it on your property taxes.
And if you don't property taxes then you know you dealing with somebody else.
Now I've got violations in letters from the town and John Chow is here and he sent one in 2010.
Nothing's happened.
So I would contend it's not the George Pelagos that is getting somebody to clean some dirt that's run over his driveway so that you can get Lee and Braised to come out and make the assessment that should be getting a fine of 5,000 bucks.
And George hasn't paid me to say this and he doesn't really care.
It shouldn't be people like that that are being picked on.
But it should be people who are committing code violations if you've just heard.
And don't do anything.
And I think rather than fees put it on their get somebody to put it right and put it on their property taxes.
Thank you Mr. Carl.
Anybody else in the room?
I don't have steam over in town.
Anything you don't measure.
Here, you can't control. And the fundamental problem that's gone on for years is that there's no reported about these. We don't know how many cases are outstanding. We don't know how long they've been outstanding. We don't know the characteristics of the cases that are outstanding. We're totally, we're totally blind. So we need to get some reporting on a regular basis. So that we have some idea whether there's a problem or there isn't a problem. Yes, we need more tools.
To be able to address these problems. And these people are absolutely right. The town needs to take action. We've got to that. But the council needs to have awareness of what the magnitude of the problem are, so that we don't have to be reminded by citizens that there's a problem in town. So my recommendation is you need to get on top of this with regards to some metrics that you can measure it and get it into various areas. I should also point out this topic is not on the work plan for this for this year. So you're going to have to amend the work plan if you want to spend
any time working on it. Thank you very much.
Anyone else in the room?
Hello. I don't know whether it's my best interest to talk about this topic or not. But I would look at the code violation at a different angle as well.
That is, when somebody violates the code, when they want to mitigate it, how we are helping that, right?
But on the other side, what it is the reason that people are violating is do we have the right codes?
Do we have the right process for people to put the permit? We had this conversation I talked about it last time there. We were discussing about the last city manager.
And we got promised from the council that you would look at the codes that does seem unreasonable.
Did we?
Thank you.
I didn't get your name for the record. Please.
It's Maggie Hamza.
Thank you.
Thank you. Anybody else in the room?
Okay. How about online?
No, me here.
All right.
Well, then we will close public comment and bring it back.
The council.
What do I think?
This is for Jay.
Can you give us some of those numbers and if you've given them to us before, can you just go over them again?
What the metrics that I'm looking for are how many code violations are there?
First of all, the nature of those code violations, the time that they've been in violation.
And then lastly, I guess there might be some, oh, there you have it. Okay. Never mind. You got it.
Thank you. Can you go over those please?
Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. So again, I think I'll just summarize. If you look in the bottom right hand corner, you see a total of at the time when we gave this presentation 58 open cases.
If you go two lines up from that, you'll see the work without permits is 39 of those.
And then if you move to the left, you'll see that most of those have been within the one to three year mark or three year plus.
And then there's certainly another swell of those in the 180 to one year mark that are also probably going to be moving to that one to three year range year very shortly.
The person decides to buy a property.
And it's not a new property. Let's say it's like 60 years old.
And they decide to do some work on it. And they look at the work that's been done already.
If it has not been permitted, does it grandfathered?
So we do spend a lot of time within code enforcement and within our planning process looking at property owners rights and prior development of those properties.
And so we do an assessment every time to be able to see if there was permitting activity.
If there's not those repairs or those modifications are not grandfathered in per se.
So the answer is now correct.
So that means that if a person buys a property, they should actually have the city come out and take a look at it first.
There are towns that do have real estate resale programs.
And it's not necessarily one of the tools that we thought would be most successful.
But certainly it's something the council could consider as well.
And then you have programs to, let's say that a person has a house that has a whole bunch of unpromitted work.
So there must be programs to get that property up to snuff.
In other words, get a totally permitted.
So we did during the building code process talk about administrative remedies that could use programs that would look at concealed construction.
And then verify said construction based on the type of construction it is in first non-destructive methodology to evaluate it and then destructive methodology.
If you'll remember, council did not move forward with any of the administrative portions of the building codes.
So at this point in time, when we have code violations, we really are relying a lot on designers to be able to evaluate the work.
And then be able to show compliance with codes and standards.
With respect to non-compliant properties.
How are those properties being brought to your attention?
Are they by neighbors, are they by realtors?
Are they by, I don't know, people from out of there.
Yeah, I would say our code enforcement program is a reactive program for the most part, meaning that if a resident makes a request of the town to investigate, we will go out and investigate.
If there is obvious violations, like some of the ones that we've heard tonight, mass grading, large structure is being built without permits.
Those we tend to find ourselves.
And then those are the instances of which we will go out and proactively enforce.
So we're not necessarily looking for, you know, everyday kind of maintenance and things of that nature.
If it's egregious, those are where we, and certainly if it's a danger to life health and safety, then we will act immediately.
OK, thank you.
Are you back by time to the bias?
I have a question.
Why have we not been able to enforce a code to now?
For example, a neighbor who builds this road for parking.
Why not?
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the pathway to being able to get to resolution.
So in the slides, I was showing before that there's the notice that there's a specific violation.
Sometimes we can't get on these properties. They're very large. They're screened very well.
That could prevent code enforcement.
We go out maybe.
But a neighbor has reported, it's not a question.
You can't see it. I mean, there was another lady who said that the pickled walk court.
I mean, there are two instances.
What happened to that?
Yeah, but we do need to verify that.
Sometimes we don't have necessarily access at the right time in place to be able to see or affect the violation that may be occurring.
But what in this new code that you're proposing deals with that?
I don't see anything.
Well, those are tools and remedies that we've already had access to.
They're typically first an inspection warrant.
And then then we would move forward with our notice of violations.
From there, we would have orders to abate.
And that's where the process starts to drag because then we may need engineers and plans and specifications.
There may be multiple rounds of review by the reviewing agencies.
And ultimately, the town is not in the best position.
If it's a grading activity to then go do the abatement.
Those are significant activities that then we would have to rely on those same types of mechanisms to be able to do the work.
And the town really is not in a position to do it abatement in that form, especially if it's a warrant hit through a warrant.
So it leaves the the the the matter outstanding.
And so what we've typically done is we've recorded a notice of violation on the property.
And then we've left it.
And how do you propose to address it going forward?
I think we're still running into some of those access issues associated with gaining access to a property.
And though what we're hoping for and this is kind of the broken window theory when you look at code enforcement right and you have one house that has a broken window on it.
Okay, maybe not so much.
But you start to get two three four five six because nobody's doing an enforcement.
That's kind of where we're at today.
So the fact that we have more tools the fact that we have and are starting to actively enforce and use things like inspection warrants and and to gain access.
Those are the types of tools that will continue to to help and educate our residents that we have them and we're very built well worse that using them now, which we haven't been in the past.
And that will help I think be able to stem the tide of these maybe overly egregious violations that we've been seeing.
I don't know.
I have a question based on what Stan asks you at what point did codes come into force in Los Alto cells.
What year?
Because we have a house that was the lambs divided like 1908 and so I assume that the house was built soon after that and there were no codes at that point.
At some point codes came in but most of the house was probably built without codes and we've done you know we put in a furnace and there was a a permit but most of the house has no permits so at what point.
To permits come in and you have to start worrying about whether or not.
If you buy a house there were any permits.
That could have been as early as the town in corporation now your specific question might be hitting on a specific code or a building code and that's been updated continually.
So 70 years ago when the town was incorporated was at the first permit so anything built before that.
Yeah, we would think of those is legal done conforming structures because we wouldn't have records of those and from a construction perspective but certainly we would have other evidence of their existence whether it's county records.
Prior to incorporation.
I think to a certain degree of surety identify existing legal law and conforming structures.
You know I'm getting the impression this per first off this is quite a complex subject and we have a very long agenda and so I just want to clarify.
This is in effect a review of the program and so I believe what you're looking for a staff is some guidance or feedback from the city council on the direction that we might pursue given some of the things that we've heard about is the complexity of the number of items here.
And how to enforce some whether it's in our work plan what are the remedies that we could look at so I'm gathering I think what's achievable for us here tonight is to give you that kind of feedback.
And so I will go ahead and say I'm hearing the feedback and I'm feeling it that I would like you to have the tools and put that in and consider things such as fees or whatever structure gets the enforcement would be helpful.
Okay.
So yes but you know what when I saw this I thought this is a big long list and I'm having trouble grasping it.
Okay and so that's why I would say I would rather have it be narrowed down based on the feedback you're hearing from us tonight and from the residents who've taken their time to come and tell us their story which is really you know we tend to be rule followers up here and so it greats against me that people aren't following the rules they're just doing stuff.
And so what is the best thing that we can do that's fair to most most parties to move this in the right direction.
Okay well I did not understand your answer to council member Tanka's question of what in these recommendations or potential recommendations that you have will allow you access to a property that you were saying previously.
Was an obstacle to addressing the violation.
So the access issue.
Did you give me like a short answer to that?
Yeah again these aren't going to fix access right but certainly if we have.
As in some of these cases that we've heard tonight.
On going.
Activities.
We have a much better chance at being able to catch those types of things.
Okay.
But there are those instances where we may not have access and we may have to to wait till we do get access whether it's through a permitting activity whether it's through some other activity but we don't have a solution to that.
All right well I think the technology committee might be able to help you with a drone program on that.
What's out for that one.
Yeah that's so.
Mayor if I can add it to an in Jay's references earlier.
There is a process for getting an inspection warrant.
The threshold to get an inspection warrant is lower than for instance an abatement warrant which allows you to go in and actually correct the violation.
But so there is a process right now that exists under the under the current codes for that to happen.
What that requires is you first try to get voluntary access.
You have to have some understanding that there's a potential violation on the property so it can't just be.
We're just going to decide we're going to go inspect seven properties today.
You have to have some cause to go but if you have some cause then you go and you try to get voluntary access and if the property owner won't give you voluntary.
There is a process to the courts where you can get an inspection warrant that allows the town or the town inspectors to go on to the property solely for the purpose of seeing whether or not there's a violation.
So it doesn't allow you to fix the violation, but it does allow you to identify it. And one of the points Jay was making before is that, you know, when you're trying to get access, sometimes you'll have property owners are just going to refuse you access.
But there is a court process where you can go in, get an inspection warrant, go on the property, then the code enforcement staff will actually see if there's no violation or see if there is a violation, and then they can take action from that afterwards.
And you can certainly go on to a neighbor's property, like some of these people have had issues with their neighbors doing illegal stuff, right?
And you can certainly go into the neighbor's property and see the with with the permission of the neighbor's property, but the the code enforcement staff need to actually be able to observe it.
So in the hypothetical that you have a line of sight, yes, but where the neighbor has a lot of screening and you can't see it, then you don't have that.
Well, I mean, I think in several of these cases, these people have actually been able to see the pickleball court or see the illegal.
I don't think there are parks and everything, so those cases certainly you already have the ability to address, right?
Correct.
I would say not address that, but I'm trying to understand.
Yes, they have been addressed, but they're going through processes to be able to to determine whether or not they're compliant with our municipal code now.
So they're going through a building permit or a planning permit process, which is what they would be required to.
Anyway, and I would point out the reason why we have a code enforcement attorney now specifically is so that we can work through those processes to gain access to properties that we haven't.
So that was the tool that really was useful to solve that problem.
And it's not that the city attorney before wasn't capable in that instance, but to have someone dedicated that works with the criminal sought courts and things of that nature certainly helps to be able to show the reputation and the fact that when we are bringing code enforcement matters, we're not bringing things that are frivolous.
If things that we have and think are very egregious and would warrant us to be able to gain access to a property.
So I think what you're looking at your slide on the council direction.
My, my inclination is to say, go ahead and come back with a specific program that you think would best help the town enforce the, you know, address the violations and do code enforcement effectively.
But I also say, to other things, one is I think I think a couple of council members have pointed out that there is a kind of timeline aspect of this.
So what was legal in 1960 is may not be legal today, but it's it's not conforming, but it's legal.
I'm sorry, I use the wrong terminology.
So it was conforming in 1960 may not be conforming to the, but because it was conforming in 1960 it is legal today, it's not a violation.
Is that right?
Correct.
Yeah, and so I think that needs to be kind of, I think you're already going to factor that in, but the other thing I would say is if somebody comes forward and says, I have code violations, I want to address them.
I would hope that that voluntary compliance initiative would not result in a violation that that town would say, okay, we'll help you make your property.
Bring it into compliance.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I believe that's how we would treat those individuals.
We haven't run into an instance like that, but it's also sometimes hard to tell whether someone's just completed work or not in some of these instances too.
But if you have just completed the work, but they approach the town and say, we want to make it compliant.
I would like to, you know, give them the allowance and encourage them to come forward, right?
Agreed.
And I think one of the, one of the members of the public referred to some of the town's rules are either owners or, in some cases, in my humble opinion, don't make sense.
The favorite example is the deck, which, if your deck is wider than through six feet, it can't be more than three feet off the ground.
You drive around Los Altersos and see tons of exceptions to that.
And I don't see a reason why a deck needs to be less than three feet off the ground.
So that's, that's why favorite example, but I'm sure there are lots of those.
And I, I actually been working with a few architects and also with the art department on coming up with a list, which is, I think, overdue.
To, to help simplify and streamline some of the rules in town.
I'll also then a comparison with Portola Valley, Woodside and Los Gatos to see how our rules compare with theirs.
And I'd like to work with you and the planning commission, hopefully on that.
But coming back to the council direction, I would like to offer that we make, I'd like to make a motion to ask staff to come back with a more detailed proposal.
On exactly what you think would be useful out of this list.
Maybe not all of them would be useful, but and also you have to think about how much effort it's going to take to administer these.
So look at it from an ROI perspective as well.
Yeah, part of what we are also looking for is to see if there are any walk away options up there, which it sounds like you're open to all of them.
We've gone to advice from our coursemen attorneys that all these tools would be helpful.
So, hearing the potential motion on the floor, yes, that's what exactly come back, but what we said in the public is also going to be taking to consideration with our workload.
So to do everything is not going to be able to be absorbed all at once.
We may think of like a phase approach when I just piece it together one at a time.
So that's what you could expect down the road.
I think that's that's reasonable.
So I would make a motion to say come back with a subset of this that you're willing to put in place, you know, over this next, next financial year.
And and come back to council with that specific list.
One of the reasons why we do have the code enforcement attorney is because they they do and have written these types of ordinances in the past and so if it would be helpful.
I do think flushing out these programs with draft ordinances is is probably helpful to be able to understand the complexity that that may be as lost in some of the summary here.
And if that would be amenable to council that would be what we would work on.
So what you're saying is you'd come back with with the proposal for all of these.
To some to some extent with with the advice from their code enforcement attorney.
Okay.
So I don't know how I should word my motion anymore.
Direct staff.
There's come back with the proposed motion that deals with.
I believe it could be done not even with the motion in a vote.
So much as.
I provide.
It's a very extra city of provide.
Direction.
The council can just provide direction if it's coming back.
I would like to see it kept very simple.
I would like to see AI highlights on this.
So we're going to promote AI at this point in time.
Like to see the highlights and then if you'd like to get more complicated and more detailed one death.
You may do so you may do so.
I think that this is a very complicated area and no matter when you but build or buy the house.
Your laws.
The other always going to be changing.
So you could theoretically never pay in total compliance even after the day that you sign off.
Okay.
Also I was wondering you know.
This very valid point about a lot of our codes being outdated.
The balconies is one you know building on some other areas.
But modern construction tools engineering.
There's a lot more we can do.
So why are we restricting the residents on what they can do with their properties.
So I think maybe.
Direct the planning commission to take a deeper dive into it because they see this all the time.
And come back with realistic solutions and maybe a little bit of update on what more we can do to our properties.
People are scared to go into town hall because they feel that we can do this.
We can do that.
Let's see more open about give them some leverage give them some flexibility.
We're harming our own property values by putting limits on what you can do.
So I feel it's time to take a fresh look at our ordinances and see where we can do things which reflect the spirit of our town.
I'm not talking about a regime change, but I'm just saying.
Keeping our values but still allowing the residents do things given the modern engineering tools are available at our disposal.
Should I be worried about regime change?
I wouldn't mind a regime change in another level of government.
Okay.
Well that that input came from a former member of the Plan Commission.
So I think that's very valuable and put so appreciate that.
Should we close the site and move on?
Okay.
Thank you.
Moving on to item six B.
Which is the San Juan but just.
Bathway.
Is there staff report?
Sorry, the one but just at the ends of trail.
Oh.
Good evening on a real mayor and city council.
In the Eonn law code he will appear from the 62
Roughlands once as in the last slogan by the last one of the city council.
I will ask the KnoL and be associate engineer for the towns
And I'm here with Mike Orlando he's the by share of the pathways committee and we're here to present this item.
To for the designation of the one.
The T. studiy, and so national historic trail.
this item at last month's city council meeting, and we are here to follow up on that presentation.
You can go to the next slide.
So this is the map that Nick also presented last month, and it's the map of the National Park Service.
It has on their website that shows the original route of the 1775 to 1776.
Expedition by the Spanish Explorer and Military Officer, one of the Tista Danza.
So the route that you see here spans 1200 miles from President Day, Mexico, and it goes through Arizona,
and then along the Pacific Coast to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Then you can go to the next slide.
So to provide background on this item, the one Batista Danza National Historic Trail,
commemorates the route of the Spanish Explorer, one Batista Danza.
It's historically significant and it's founding of San Francisco and in California history.
And in 1990, Congress designated the one Batista Danza Trail as one of the few National Historic Trails.
And it is currently administered by the National Park Service, which works with local agencies to provide trail signs, historical interpretation,
and as educational materials about the trail.
Although the local agency, of course, they're the ones who manage the trails.
And the Pathways Committee originally introduced the item for the trail designation to City Council in November 13,
2023 at that City Council meeting.
The Pathways Committee then established an ad hoc subcommittee in December of 2024,
and then the last city council meeting introduced the two alignments for the proposed designation,
which now might be Orlando by share of the Pathways Committee.
We'll now discuss.
Thanks, doctor.
So I'm here next to and in pathways we kind of narrowed down two different alignments to possibilities.
They each have their opponents and cons, and I think it's sort of staffs, you know, charge the council on that to the side, which one you want to adopt.
This first alignment goes through the town itself.
It uses these kind of major on road paths.
It goes down from the trailhead down that road and then on these various pathways all the way over to Aristodero.
I've walked these paths many times and pretty major pathways going through town.
And the proof is when it leads the trail through town itself.
It's flatter.
It's sort of easier for folks to access a lot of residents walk these pathways anyway.
You know, I'm out there all the time I live near here.
And so it offers those advantages.
It protects those advantages.
It does go through town.
I mean, this could be a national store trail.
I don't know how many people are going to make a special field trip to Aristodero.
But you know, it's going to publicize it more than it's publicized now.
I'm going to switch the slide to alignment too.
So this is an alignment that doesn't really go through town at all.
It kind of goes over the top of black mountain and then back down to Aristodero through mostly.
Mostly mid-pen land.
I've hiked most of these trails too.
This is considerably more rigorous.
You know, I didn't do this today.
This is a real commitment.
I'm going to manage with this.
It is more of exercise and you're going up black mountain and down it again.
And it doesn't go through town proper.
It goes around it.
So it wouldn't, you know, whatever minor privacy concerns are kind of, you know, violated through alignment.
Wouldn't have those.
You're going through the forest here.
But it doesn't go through town.
And, you know, I mean, I think pathways is slightly more, slightly more inclined to a one, because we really want to support our residents using the pathways and anything that can bring folks out there is, you know, something we support as pathways committee, but I think we leave it to council to kind of decide what the priorities are for the town as far as designated in this trail.
So, at this June 18 city council meeting staff is looking for direction from city council to vote on the preferred trail designation for the one, but he's the dance trail.
Additionally, we would also like direction on the four bullet points that you see there.
One is to direct staff to notify residents for public hearing in August of formally designate the trail.
The second would be to direct staff on researching the next steps for submitting to the national park service.
The third is to direct staff on researching any potential seek or meet the implications, so that's the California and also the national environmental agencies.
And then the last one is to recommend a public hearing for the formal local designation of the trail in August.
So staff in the pathways committee will work on any minor modifications required for the trail alignment to prepare for the public hearing for whichever alignment, whether it's one or two that city council prefers and votes on today.
And the general process for staff currently is to especially specifically for public hearing is to mail out notifications to the nearby properties within 500 feet of the proposed alignment of the trail.
So that would be a long the entire length of the designation we'd mail out.
We would have mailers to properties within 500 feet of proposed trail designation and then we'll also publicize the hearing through social media as well as through the city manager weekly report.
And as you see here, if depending on council direction, the public hearing would be scheduled for Thursday, August 20, 26, where city council would vote on formally designating the one but he's to dance a trail.
That's the end of the staff report, all right. Any questions or clarifications from council.
Yes.
Yes, in terms of the decision of the two pathways and I have a strong opinion, is there was there a it is a thought on what path was actually taken by the DNZ expedition.
So the map that you saw on slide two that was the actual route taken by the by one but he's himself.
However, it's not it's not only about 300 of the 1200 miles are actually trails today, but that's can be fine more information on the National Park Service website, but not all of it is designated trails currently.
I'm not sure that exactly answered my question because frankly I'm picturing having been up black mountain a few times myself.
No way would I take that trail if I were traveling to explore California in 1776.
So I think the answer is that we don't know exactly where they want.
Yeah.
Okay, let's open it up to public comment anybody in the room.
Hi.
Good evening council and staff and everybody and anybody online.
My name is Alice Mansel.
I've been involved in the residential real estate business for over 50 years mostly in Los Altesales with my office in Los Altesales.
But for some I've repaired in the city hall was more than 30 years ago to represent a real estate client who had a pathways committee wanting to run a multi use trail through his septic field on a steep slope.
So.
Been around on this.
But I'm here today to kind of give you an expert opinion on the Anza trail because I've been working for more than a year with many groups including the National Park Service on this trail.
So to answer your question, the first thing I'll do is I'll pat I'm going to go to a little show and tell her.
I'll pass around a National Park Service map that shows the actual Anza trail going to our area.
And this is online on the jube as we call the one about one J you a n.
About Tuesday, Anza that's how trail which is out of the National Park Service refers to this.
Second thing is.
Because this expedition happened in California mostly in 1776.
This is a 250th anniversary.
The whole point of this was to bring 30 families to California to create the San Francisco procedure and mission Dolores.
Bunch of them also created the first Pueblo of the Spanish Empire and all the Californias that the San Jose.
So there's a huge marketing a campaign to get not just more auto route signs, but also off road dirt recreational trails, which is where some of the big National Park Service push on this.
So one of the things that I'm going to pass this right I want it back.
Cute little postcard National Park Service gave out and they even have a special hopping pin for Anza to.
You can see that.
So the bottom line is.
You're on the National Maps already.
You're also on the Indian National Tourism Maps.
There's a huge booklet that came out in 2025.
You're on it because the trail does go through there.
Well, I think we're over your time. Can you please wrap up.
Right. So there were the actual trail that Anza took was basically somewhere between what we think is El Camino and Foto expressway.
So you could have National Park signs on Foto expressway.
Work with low cellos.
And then that's it.
The black mountain route was done by Anza second commanded June of 1776.
He went up skyline to go from Monterey to the San Francisco Precidius site to build it.
That's where they took the nine families going up there to make that.
So that is actually also legitimate. So I would suggest that you work.
Thank you. Thank you for your comments.
Does anybody else in the room?
All right. Anybody online?
Yes, Mayor.
We are promoting them to speak.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Just a little louder. Please.
Okay. Sorry.
I just had a question on map option one.
It says it goes to rest area preserve.
But that seems to be Stanford land.
It doesn't seem to be a rest area preserve.
It's on the east side of 280 not the west side of 280 like a rest area preserve.
So.
Not sure if you can hear me, but just wanted to confirm.
That seems odd.
I don't understand the question.
Okay.
So the for map option one, the one that went more through town.
And ended at a rest area preserve.
I don't believe it. That's actually a rest area preserve.
That's not a rest area preserve where it's marked on map option one.
If we can have that slide up again.
You can look into that.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah.
Either way, that's outside the town boundaries.
Yeah.
Yeah. I guess my point would just be if it's trying to connect to a known preserve for walking.
That's not where that red dot.
That's located there is is not.
Yeah. That is not a rest area preserve.
I think she's right. That's not I think that's actually Stanford land.
I mean, in case it's made to the town jurisdiction as it were kind of in right there on rest.
So it's whatever other open space that folks would naturally walk into from the pathways.
All right.
We can correct that and the alignment.
All right.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Specific mark.
What are we.
Oh, we can already. Sorry.
Anybody else online?
Yes. Public Works Director Wu J. Kim has his hand raised.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
I apologize.
My hand was not raised.
Sorry.
But I'm here for any questions and comments. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next up.
We have Joey.
No, you just had to.
Okay. Okay.
We'll close public comment and bring it back.
Mr. Mark.
Somebody has to talk to me about personal privacy issues.
Because I think that if people are walking through my property that I don't know.
I mean, it's not going to be my property.
But we're going to be walking in areas that have population.
So we can either pick the least populated route or the more populated route.
One is more populated too.
It's not.
I'm just worried about the people that are living there now.
Having more people come in the town or through town.
And intruding upon your privacy.
Because I think that's one of the things about loss out those hills.
Which is very special.
We have the one acre loss.
And we do have our personal privacy when we want it.
And what we're doing now.
If we decide to do it.
And so we.
I haven't made a decision on this.
So it has to change my mind or make up my mind on personal privacy issues.
Is this okay or not?
They're not walking through your property.
Well, you're walking through the streets.
They can still walk through the streets.
Yes, they can still walk through the streets.
Just not like we're advertising it to everybody.
That's the thing.
Okay, so I think there are two different issues.
One is whether they have the right to traverse those.
But those paths or streets.
And the other is I think what you just brought up is how.
How.
How well known is it that they can walk through and help up the size.
Is that path.
Is that right?
That's a generalized question.
Anybody could answer that.
Right.
Okay.
Yes.
Well, this path.
This.
The answer pathway was established.
36 years ago.
And so I can't imagine that holds are all of sudden going to start walking this path.
We have to 36 years if they haven't done it up to now.
And once if they're on the pathway and it ends at Bruce Ridge and they come down.
They can look at their phone and see where they're supposed to hook up at a restaurant to zero preserve.
And no matter what.
Sting we pick what.
Stanford.
Whatever.
Over on a raster to their own.
That's where they're heading.
All the have to just look at their phone and say what's the most direct path.
And they'll take it.
They're not going to go 16 and a half miles out of the way.
Just because there's no.
Danza.
Freil marking at that point.
They're just going to walk across town anyway.
And.
I can't imagine there's going to be a lot of people doing us.
Any comment from staff on this.
Let's say that the answer is correct.
It is a public right away so that the public can walk on our those paths for that question.
And this did come up as a public comment in the prior meeting.
That there was concern about.
No off road pathways and the proposed.
One of the ones that were considered in the prior meeting.
Did address that saying that they would not be going through off road paths.
So we are on our main thorough fairs through town.
The direction you're looking for from council today is.
Are we going with option one or option two?
Yes, so if you want to go to that slide.
We can start working through the questions that we were looking for direction on.
Yeah.
We are.
Well in this.
Hmm.
Go ahead.
Put it up.
Well, the way I understood everything else follows from that decision of which one of the two options we choose.
Everything else just follows not naturally from that design standard.
Yes, we can take the first question so the preferred route.
There were two routes presented as part of SaaS presentation.
And actually I think the first question is do we want to establish a route.
Well.
We heard questions about should we be encouraging people to walk through our town.
Frankly, I don't have an issue with that question.
So I would say we could agree.
Are we going to designate a route?
Okay.
Yes.
All right.
Well, can we go to the slide which talked about council direction?
Yes, that was the last slide, Karen.
Yeah.
So what I saw from this is that you're looking for us to vote for the preferred trail designation.
Is it option one or option two?
And I think the concern that was raised earlier is do we want either of those or
or neither of those?
That's what I kind of heard from you.
So I moved that we received with option one.
Second.
Council member Mark?
Yes.
Council member Swan?
Yes.
Council member Tanka?
Yes.
Vice Mayor Tyson?
Yes.
Mayor, if I could to if the staff would understand that that motion incorporated all that list of setting the public hearing.
That's what I meant.
Thank you.
Okay, I vote we take about a tenant in brick, is that okay? All right. And I think one of our council members is celebrating a milestone today.
So we have a little cake. Happy birthday. Council member Mark.
Okay, we're back from our break. Many happy returns again. Council member walk.
All right. We're going to move now to ongoing business. Let's see, we finished our main business. We're going to go to public hearings.
So item seven A is the cost allocation plan development.
Yeah.
So I think we have to look at exparty discussions in connection with the green sheets and also in connection with the Martha Lynn tankhouse.
Those are the two items and the density bonus ordinance as well.
Thank you. Any exparty communications? Anybody would like to report?
This one.
A couple of residents have asked me about it, but I don't, don't even remember who I mean to just ask the question.
I think Carol got leave and I talked about it about which one.
Green sheets.
That's a lot.
I have an abstine cost allocation.
Open space committee, the entire committee regarding green sheets.
Would you like for me to name the committee?
No, that's fine.
I have talked with the FIC on the cost allocation plan development services free study.
I haven't discussed the density bonus for anybody or the tankhouse.
I'm sorry. The other one was the green sheets.
So I have discussed the green sheets with a few people.
I came up during the planning commission meeting.
I also talked about it with Adam Epstein and a couple of other people.
So with that, we can move on to 70.
Is there a staff report?
There is.
Today we'll have our department analyst from the Community Development Department.
There's an Edmund Badby provide the presentation with that.
Good evening, councillors.
My name is Bruce. I'm a bad fee.
Analyst with the Community Development Department.
And I will be here this evening to speak about the cost allocation plan.
The user fee study and the master fee schedule.
So thank you for your time to discuss this matter.
I will begin.
So just a little bit of an update to the work that we've completed so far.
So this has been a month's long process of working with the contractor and BS on the cost allocation plan.
As well as the user fee study.
Um, staff and the finance committee as well as the city council of all met on multiple occasions to discuss this.
Um, I believe we have presented this to there.
If I see about four times so far, and the second time at the city council,
we appreciate all the feedback that we have received thus far.
So today's meeting, we just want to review the methodology again.
Address some of the questions and concerns that was brought up at previous meeting.
Um, and today's discussion is going to be focused mainly on establishing those cost recovery targets of which we have presented those recommendations in the packet.
Um, as well as the adoption of the master fee schedule and the local building valuation multiplier.
So, um,
At the prior city council meeting last month, we have received direction from the council.
Um, on some priority lists of which, uh, one of those was reducing the ADU permit fees to achieve a 80% cost recovery target instead of 100 to continue to incentivize ADU production and town.
Um, we also for public safely related reasons.
Didn't want to continue to promote unpermated work of which we've had plenty of discussion already tonight.
Um, so for in cases of heat pump water heaters, which we already have a rebate program in place.
Um, as well as HFAC systems.
We'll also be achieving an 80% cost recovery goal there.
Um, and at the previous meeting with FIC on June 1st, we also reviewed the methodology again with them.
Um, there we walked through the methodology, the inputs, we presented additional information on the planning and engineering department fees,
Um, and reviewed in detail and pretty with a fine tooth comb kind of all the subsidies and our reos cost recovery percentages.
Um, historical percentages that we've achieved through the town.
Um, and particularly some members of the FIC talked about the implementation program and what we want to set out to achieve as well as given all due diligence and communication with afflicted applicants as well as contractors.
Uh, next slide.
Um, so staff presented a little bit of more detail since this ties in with our budget proposal, which is being presented today as well.
Um, so we really want to highlight that particularly across the three divisions we've seen recurring and pretty large revenue gaps.
Um, and we're not currently reaching those cost recovery percentages.
Um, in the previous presentation, I presented last month.
Uh, really kind of touched upon very briefly what those current cost recovery percentages look like for the respective departments.
Um, engineering is lagging and they haven't typically had fees or ways for them to recoup the revenue on work that they're already completely completing.
Um, and then as well on planning as well as you know, we have a lot of work on long range planning housing element implementation that is currently not cost recoverable.
Um, we're not able to build against those.
Um, so today we want to to kind of present you with three options.
Um, 100% 80% and 90% cost recovery targets.
Um, staff believes through analysis that we completed that at a 90% or 100% cost recovery level.
Um, we're able to balance the budget.
Um, if we do drop below that to 80% we do project a budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year.
The staff's recommendation is a 90% or above cost recovery target with those additional exceptions for ADU fees as well as heat pumps and water heaters.
Um, for each drop in 10% cost recovery target we anticipate about a $340,000 drop in overall revenue.
So as you can see even small percentage differences can lead to a large gap in revenue collection.
Next slide please.
Um, following feedback that we received last time as well as through our meetings with the FIC.
Um, we really noted that ADU policy is a area of strict.
Um, kind of interpretation as well as is a very key goal for the council to continue to prove promote ADU development in town.
So as you can see right now I've broken down most of the fees that are expected to go into a sample build.
Um, with this I use the assumptions of a $337,000 ADU.
Um, which is roughly about 900 square feet that fits in line with the historical valuations and sizes.
We've seen an ADUs so that 337 and 900 square feet is on average what we've seen over the past year of permit data in the ADUs a lot.
Of course, I can extrapolate that out further, but just to kind of give us a range.
We typically see about 30 to 35 80 use per year.
And I've noted that at the specific subsidization levels 90 to 80% subsidization.
Um, we would need about a up to $75,000 subsidization from the general funds and of the feedback with members of the public.
We also rounded analysis on a 50% cost recovery target on 80 use to really promote.
Um, incentivization in town, but that would lead to nearly $200,000 subsidization per year on average if we were to go down to 50% level.
So staff would not recommend that, but we wanted to present that option just for due diligence and for us to get all those options available.
We also did do some review on the city of Los Altoss as well.
Um, and we can confirm that on their side, they do not charge any fees for building permits, plan check or plan check admin for 80 use.
So that is why they're able to keep their costs pretty low on the 80 you build.
But I do want to know that they then charge a ton of money for single-family houses.
They use a $577 per square for minimum valuation, whereas the anticipation for all level of work and analysis notes a $394 square for valuation for Los Altoss Hills.
They also charge 135% plan check fee on single-family residences.
And that in essence, we believe subsidizes the 80 you policy that they prescribe, but in terms of promoting and pushing forward a fiscally sound measure.
And methodology, we believe our current paid valuation model and policy prescription of 80% 80 you policy would make money sense, not going down to the levels of 50% or zero.
Next slide, bless you.
So just kind of a summary, because I know the use of fee studies, a large document as well as the cost allocation plan.
So I kind of wanted to condense the real through lines of these reports into the presentation today.
So typically we completely use a fee study every three to five years as a recommendation.
The last one we had completed was in 2020, obviously in the economy and in life in general a lot has changed since then.
So this is basically updating our fees in line with where our current costs and current operations lie.
So we believe that these updates are going to ensure fairness.
We think that our methodology is sound and we've got an acceptance from the FIC that the methodology and the numbers behind it are sound.
So really we're just here today to kind of get a prescription and direction for what specific policy prescriptions you would like, particularly on those areas that we've kind of touched upon already.
We're also removing a ton of fees, MP fees, removing a lot of deposit changes and really streamlining our theme model to kind of be in line with the work that each department currently does.
So we believe that the fees actually matched the true level of staff effort.
We've been through multiple multiple rounds of review of the consultant.
We've gone through line by line each revenue code.
We've gone through line by line each fee that we charge.
We've worked with the planners building officials to understand.
A, what is the historical average of the work put in? B.
How much do we believe each of these projects really takes to complete and what as a result would be a fair allocation of prices that applicants and people would pay for the level of work that staff completes per project type.
So just to summarize, we received the prior direction from the last city council meeting and we staff believes we can handle the 80% cost recovery and 80 use will continue the 80% cost recovery targets on heat pump water heaters and hay track systems.
Right now, we, we really just need kind of direction on.
What kind of cost recovery percentage we want to follow for 80 use in particular and any other project types that might be of interest.
Except the cost allocation plan and the development services fee study and adopt the resolution that would approve the town of Los Artuses Hills.
Master fee schedule and the local building valuation multiplier.
That's all I had on my presentation. I have more notes if you wanted to go more in depth. We believe we have the consultant online as well to flesh out any details of the methodology of the work that they've completed and we are available for comments and questions. Thank you for your time.
Any questions or clarification.
Just a clarification, we don't charge any fees for ADUs currently. Is that correct? No, that's not correct.
That's not correct. We do. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yes, we do.
Los Alters does not charge. What do we, what do we charge? So right now we, for building permit fee would be the
radio for ADUs. Could you bring up the table? Yes. So if you could go back to slide five.
That one. Yes, so right now we charge the project fee as well as the building permit fee. And that is based upon the
resolution methodology that we currently have of 0.9% of the valuation. And then moving forward, we're going to be
adding the building plan check, admin fee to cover the cost of the admin related costs to town.
And then moving towards that tiered valuation model to kind of recalibrate the fees that each particular
valuation type costs. So is the current percentage of recovery? So typically, historically, we've
generally had a 80 to 90% cost recovery target. So currently you recover 80% only. No, that's our goal.
But in terms of cost recovery and building, it's 53%. But overall, what's overall? Overall is about 42%.
Overall, it's 53% cost recovery across the three departments. That's across all types of projects. Yes.
And so currently on this table, as of today, the subtoral for 80 of fees and impact is 12,
1500 roughly. Correct. And it would increase to 15,200, according to this. Correct.
That is with the assumption of 100% cost recovery. And I think what you're point earlier was that at 80%
of the of these numbers of the proposed 26, 27, 700% number, we would be very close to what
are cost today. That was a point you made earlier. Correct. Yes. And in the comparison with
Los Altos, I think what you're seeing is that the number of their fees are zero. But I think because of the
certificate of occupancy and address and so on. And the school fee is the same across the board, right?
Yes. That's the joint school district. Right. But their total for the same
year to you today would be 5,000, so 5171. Yeah, all in cost. Yeah. And even with the 80% we would be
had more than double that. Currently, yeah. But if we proposed number, proposed number, yes.
Yes, this is just almost three times, almost three times that number at 100%. Yes. Correct.
These fees, of course, we have a public policy here issue. And that is we need to do cost recovery.
So, so we and we can't do more than that. The whole idea is that this is cost recovery. We also though are
involved to encourage ADUs. And so my first question is, I noted the heat pump water heater
and the HVAC that your proposal was to have that at 80%. And I was, I want to encourage that, but I'm not sure
what those fees, whether they're much of a driver. And those would tend to be fairly small. Do you have any sense for the size of those?
Yeah. Do we have a sample schedule that we could show? Yeah. I believe we had about 80,000
dollars in the fee study that was attributed to MMPs that you were describing. But that I need to turn that into
if I put in a water heater. How much is it? How much we cost me to put in a heat pump water heater or solar or
a heat pump HVAC that's the nature of my question. And if it's a small number, then we don't need to worry about whether that one's 80% or 50%.
Yeah. So right now, gas lines water heaters and other standalone building permits, the new fee would you show your screen?
Yeah. Yeah. It would be attachment for in the packet, but let me, okay.
Okay. He's going to share that.
I'm going to assume that that's a relatively small number in that we don't need to mess with that so much.
But I can tell you what I'm thinking is maybe I'm getting ahead of us is
if we did something, if we did a better
reduction for the ADU, let's say we focus on that and that's going to cost us in terms of our general fund.
But if we took our standard and made it more like 93% just saying it doesn't have to be a 10% increment,
we could make up for that difference and I'm wondering if there's some possibility in there.
I like the, I don't know that I need to go toe to toe with Los Altos in terms of an ADU, but we want to make it an encouragement.
We don't need to make it zero because people need to have skin in the game. If they're going to go do something, they need to pay something.
But if we make it less to encourage that, that is our larger goal.
So, you're showing that there's a show me where to look here.
So, so.
So, why in B-008 through B-0012,
show that the cost that would be the new fee attributed to the fee model within the study that we've just completed.
Because Council had given us prior direction to consider 80% we did not do the calculation at 90,
But then this would be at 80% what those costs would be and in a second I'll go to the fee study and give you what the the impact of the budget would be as well
Okay, those numbers are higher than I thought they would be yeah
And in the italics below that you say will be charged at 80% cost
So is that 80% of the 579 or is the 579 already reduced by 20%?
Yeah, the 579 is showing a 100% loss of the delivery and then the 80% that it's talking about of the cost that's of the new cost that was shown in the the new fee
Roughly 50 bucks lower. Correct. Yeah
I'm not gonna focus on that. I'm because the bigger issue with water heaters is I think people skip the whole process
Okay, let's and so we we we can monkey with that fee
And I don't know how much difference it will make so I'll just say I think I've gotten the information
I want to know I was slipping into comments before at two early and so I'm gonna back off now and we'll get back to
All right
I have comments too about that because
With the water heater if you're putting in a gas water heater then that's fine, but I think if we're gonna do
The heat pump we ought to maybe think about going down or making it zero in the same thing with the 80 you
I'd rather see
100% cost for serve recovery on
Howls and zero on 80 use and so that it comes out. We have to you know not
Charge too much not more than our class, but if we could make it a hundred percent so that we could all right
We're doing questions
I know I
I wanted to respond to what he said right
Do you have a question or should we go to public call it?
This is actually a question, okay, and it's a question for Thomas
So here's the question
$360,000 in our general fund budget
What difference does it make to us Thomas how much is three hundred and sixty is is it a lot of money or not?
Not a large percentage of our budget and currently in the proposed budget that we attached to this agenda
The sit bus is about
500,000 that's down from the 700,000 that you saw in May 15th and primarily that was going from a hundred percent cost recovery to a
average of 90 percent cost recovery worth 80 percent for 80 use what it it is each that can heat pump okay
I'm walking between 90 percent and a hundred percent and I'm also a green with lender on the 80 use that we should
Reduce the charges for that as well as some of the others that those are comments
I lost my question
All right, so we open open it up for public comment
Is your mic on
Can you am in it? I attended the FIC meeting and I thought the report that you've just heard admitted some major things that we discussed
For a $50,000 project in Los Alta Cells
It's increasing by a factor of four
However, that's not the end of the story
It's
Plancheck fees because plancheck is based upon the permit fee
Are increasing also by a factor of four
Now if you're doing a bathroom remodel for 50,000 bucks
You don't have 80 pages of stuff in a plancheck fee you might have two pages in there
So they were given specific direction to go and solve the
Overcharge the ridiculous overcharging that this will create for plancheck fees on small projects
Wasn't even mentioned in the report alone anything done on it
The next thing we need to understand
Is we're not paying for the cost of the six people that are doing this permit stuff
We're paying allocated cost
They're costing 600 and some odd thousand a year
Person the allocated costs that are being allocated such as
Tertown manager and other administrative staff are pay for from the general fund
We pay property taxes to pay for those
So
I hear you on the ADU
But I think your opinion on ADUs would change
If somebody says you need to go and do a study and
Determine whether or not all these ADUs that you're building are even going to count to you towards your low income rena
So deciding to just oh, let's grow go on ADUs
I would propose the following
I think we should look at the increase in the amount of the permit
We should take the reciprocal of that
We should add 25% and the answer can't be greater than a hundred percent and that should be the recovery rate and if you take that recovery rate
We will normalize well equalize that the
fees are going up by a factor of four will go up by a factor of two and the fees are going down
We'll have a recovery rate of a hundred percent because obviously we're lowering the fees
But I would not accept the report as being shown because I don't believe it summarizes correctly the FIC meeting this question. Thank you. Thank you
Anybody else in the room
Again, Roger you for tell speaking as at home resident
Being on the planning commission. I have a slightly better understanding of the topic in terms of what it takes to build in town
Okay, since I've not got too much time. I'm just gonna put it on the screen some of the topics that I want to talk about
And then if you have more questions please do ask because all of these are loaded issues
The justification for higher fees. I think for ADUs is because they're ministerial approvals
Where no committee support is there remember most of our towns
Work also is supported by a committee support the staff. So that part's missing
Again, because there's no support you need some time senior planners. They are more expensive
The time to review actually depends on a lot of things we don't control like sewer fire and other search services
And the ADU fees are higher as a placentage compared to the large homes because services whether you have a large
Or more a small home has the same impact. So
Though you may get a shock on the fee structure. This is just like the pathways
But even in the pathways there was a shock
As to how the pathways fees goes up so expect the fees to go up you need to figure out how to recover it
And I just put some suggestions here
Because just having too many ADUs is not gonna follow your rena problems
You need affordable ADUs and try and fix the affordable ADU fees not all ADUs
I'll wait here and see if you have any other questions. I'd like to understand more of what you have on this slide
Is that okay with the console?
Can I ask you what is it a affordable ADU versus regular ADU? How do you determine that?
So if you look at the broad brushes in our town
You have to remember that everything is based on the high property tax or high value of the land and the dog
Aller per square foot that the valuation you get on your property, which means everybody wants the largest homes and the largest ADUs.
So if you come up with approaches where you go and build 1000 square feet, 1200 square feet ADUs, you don't get much benefit.
But for rena, I'm talking about affordable housing. Even 800 square foot affordable means ADU, people will argue is not affordable by standards.
But at least we should try not to have larger ADUs. So if you want to adjust the fee structure, incentivize smaller ADUs is one of my suggestions.
Or I would say if you want zero fees, fee waiver. Let's see if anybody wants to build a deed restricted ADU.
Those are the ultimate affordable rena numbers that you can come up with. Just way fees for those type of ADUs.
So come up with some creative ways of incentivizing ADUs but the right kind of ADUs.
And you know, if you look at the ADUs, the fees. Okay. The other thing in town is we can't compare with Los Artos.
Los Artos has all flat land. All the properties have good sewer, water connections. There's no fire issues, nothing.
Here, the amount of work, the planners need to do to work with the sewer, with the fire department and other PG&E water is way, way more expensive than other towns.
And then complexity of terrain, which means grading and drainage, all of these are factors that you have to realize not only increase the cost of construction, but also increase the plan check and the fees, which are required because it takes up more staff.
So I think what you're saying is, if we were to put in a fee waiver program for deed restricted ADUs, so those would be ADUs that are restricted to a certain rental value.
deed restricted ADUs can only be sold or rented to affordable housing causes.
So for example, when we do our multifamily housing, we will have some of those units to be deed restricted to make them affordable.
And this is similar. And your point is that if we were to do that, it might help us hit our renown numbers better.
It might. Now, having said that, let me, but it also is a good, good policy.
It's a good policy.
Yeah.
And you know, maybe nobody would take up this offer, but having it on the books is always helpful. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.
So all I'm saying is these are just ideas, right?
Once I'm sure that if you talk to others, many such creative ideas can be brought out, but keep them such that it is helping the town in some way.
And right now, the biggest area which the town needs help is affordable housing in our renown locations.
Do you have a couple other points on this, right?
Well, the other thing is, it's, you know, again, it's interesting that fee structure, you know, discussions do not come to the planning commission.
Though some of these land views issues, pathways was a good example before this, are best understood by the domain experts there.
And they can provide you the best options and suggestions.
So in future, maybe that's another thing you may consider that any land use issues, just like the FIC reviews them, maybe should go to planning commission.
This is for the future.
All right.
Thank you very much.
This is Indico.
Hi, Brigitte Indico. I always love regimes insightful perspectives.
Anyway, mine's pretty simple. You know, we already have incentives right now for ADUs with giving away 800 square feet of MFA MDA.
That is huge incentive as a nest from market rate ADUs.
And we also have the incentive with pathway fees being zero for ADUs.
So I feel like when I see the building permits up there, but be it 12,000, 15,000, compared to the cost of construction is like a drop in the bucket in the sense.
Because any else that's all the PG anything. So I really don't have a strong feeling towards creating subsidy towards ADUs because they're being built regardless because I've got the incentives of the square footage which translates into real estate value.
And also having, you already have an incentive with pathway fees.
I really like Brigitte Patel's suggestion about the affordable ADUs.
That makes sense. But the others don't make sense. And then also you got all the SB9s which are being treated as normal construction too, which they also counter to the arena numbers.
I mean, that's just my perspective of it that I just feel like these fees.
And we can't compare ourselves with the loss out does that's not really fair.
So these fees, compared to when you're having a construction project of a 330,000 or higher for an ADU, 15,000 is just the beginning.
You know, think architectural fees, PG&E fees, all that other stuff. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's more important that we allocate our money is very wisely here in town. And I really like receives idea. Thank you.
Thank you.
Carol Gottlieb is speaking as an individual.
However, my experience has been that so many of the ADUs are just an expansion of the house. They're not being used for anybody's rattles or anything.
That's the way to get the extra bedroom with a minor kitchen or two bedrooms in the house.
So I don't think we should be subsidizing those kind of ADUs. I do figure the idea of subsidizing an ADU if it's restrictive and it becomes a really low cost housing.
That that is a good way of increasing our low cost arena numbers.
Otherwise, we're going to be subsidizing ADUs that for most people are just an extension of their home.
Thank you.
And I shall call on speaking of arena numbers, which is like really it's about the junior ADUs that built in fire square foot.
It's for a sign. I never heard anybody say that that does not count towards Reno numbers like that counts towards them, right?
So if they do, that could be something to be looked at.
Because that's super low hanging fruit. So in set device when people bring in a big home, I want to build this.
Well, including the JADU, if that counts towards arena numbers, wonderful.
Because that's really lowing. That's just a room, right? It's not a separate rental unit.
It's a it could be it's worth looking at it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Now on Epstein, I'm the chair of the Finance Investment Committee, but I'm speaking as an individual at this time.
The overhead in town is just increased tremendously, 75% over over the years.
And as a result of that that's driven a lot of the increases that are necessary.
What you didn't see is an actual schedule of the current costs for all of the fees and the new costs for the fees.
And as Donald corner pointed out, some of them have gone up three or four times in terms of magnitude, which people may find as significant change.
The comment I'd like to make about the overhead actually relates to the allocation to the sewer fund.
In the budget document, you're going to see that there's $500,000 allocated to the sewer fund.
And for any of you that has spent any time looking at the sewer fund to think that the sewer fund encourages $500,000 of this town's expense is pretty, pretty inconceivable to, to believe.
My last comment will be in support of John statement about the plan check fee.
We've we've we've we've we've changed the structure of the permit fee.
And since the plan check fee is just a multiplication times the permit fee.
We've pushed the we pushed the cost down.
That is we've we've made small jobs cost more.
And as a result of that small jobs we're going to have plan check fees that cost more because it's to direct proportion.
And I don't think that's really indicative of the cost associated with the plans.
And I really feel that the town should take take a look at that to be sure that the plan check fees don't exceed the, you know, the cost of performing the work.
So thanks very much.
Thank you.
Anybody else in the room? Okay.
Take your response.
So I need to get the microphone.
The last meeting that you had you directed this to go to the FIC and for the FIC to go through this methodology for.
And whether or not if you like how much the costs that will be in allocated based upon time, you ask the FIC to go through this.
I I can't say it any other way.
I feel the report you had tonight was not a reflection.
The motion that was passed at the FIC was to go away and look at the recovery rates.
As a mechanism to avoid the extremely large increases that will be seen by some permits.
They were also given direction to go away and look at what to do about the plan check fee.
And I don't feel that tonight's report did either of those things.
So I don't and unless town staff take this on board, just keep saying the town needs to look at it is doing well good.
Thank you.
Any common from staff on what happened with the FIC recommendations?
Yes, so the proposal before you tonight was trying to meet the intention of the FIC.
There's one comment that stands out where in every time we went back to council and to the FIC we were providing clarity on the assumptions that were put in.
How much time per task was dedicated how the cap was built out.
And what we got to the point was there's no questions there.
We validated they went through a lot of the actions and they're on board.
But what the model was speeding out is where they had issues.
And so one of the numbers of the FIC stated, you need to come with options.
You need to come where there's stop only defending it because we're with you.
But you need to come back or some possible changes to consider.
So that's what the proposal was before the council this evening where we looked back at it and without changing the model.
We were thinking how do you change the fees and give the council some options.
And that was the hundred eighty and ninety percent.
And that's what's been presented this evening.
Okay.
Was anybody online?
Yes, I'm here Jim Mushara.
Yes, council are you able to hear me?
Yes, we can.
Wonderful.
It seems like we're trying to do two things.
Largely balanced the budget, but also then to do that by trying to balance the fees between the small and the large types of projects.
I'd like to I'd like to agree with both Alan and John that the overheads in the town have just been dramatically increasing.
And that whereas we're all talking about the top line trying to solve this problem by bringing revenue in.
There's another way to solve this problem, which is to look at the costs associated with with providing these services and predominantly that is the overheads.
I think that that.
So the council members should try to internalize that fairly deeply to see how we might be able to address our overheads.
If this if this subject sounds familiar, it's the same subject going on with the sheriff's contract debate right now.
And it seems like we're experiencing some of the same things that they are.
I don't like the idea of quadrupling, tripling, quadrupling the fees on this, these projects. And I think, unless we can use our property taxes to pay for our city manager and pay for these other things so that they don't get allocated into these other fees, I don't see how we're going to be able to
do to square this circle. I do think that we have to consider the notion of using property taxes to pay for some things and not allocating them into these fees. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Fisher. Anyone else on my?
No, Mayor.
Okay, we'll close public comment and bring it back to council.
No easy answers on this one.
Getting back to my 90% or 100%. So let's take a house and rebuild it outright. So we're talking about maybe 55,000 or 60,000 dollars in terms of taxation per year.
I'll take you 11% of that. That's about $6,000 approximately just not exactly get that over the next 40 years. That's not too bad for the town, right?
What do we need to do to get that? We need to approve a building. We need to build the building. We need to make sure our cost is covered in some fashion.
But it doesn't, now I'm thinking it doesn't need to be 100% because you see, we're going to be getting all this revenue in the future.
And I see our town as sort of a real estate investment trust type of scenario where we take properties that have really low cost basis.
We develop those properties and then we finally get a cash flow generation device. In other words, we get money from not doing very much from it.
So the more we do this, the better off we are.
And that sort of answers my question, am I going to go 100% or 90%. I don't think I'm going to go 100% I was leaning towards that direction. 90% would give us a cost recovery.
I can even go 80% part of the way.
But that 90% is good because we do have some costs in our town that we have to pay for and we don't have any other real source of revenue other than the real estate taxes.
So, excuse me.
What was that?
Okay.
I don't think that doesn't matter.
You took me with me.
No, really.
Somebody said something on Zoom, that was the problem.
Okay. You guys don't have to agree with me.
But what I've got to say here is that we have a real estate investment trust.
We have to manage it properly for the long term.
And we can do that with property development.
And we can encourage somewhere that development by not charging the 100% on our developmental fees.
And I want to go back to ADUs again because I thought we would subsidize those.
And I'm going to waffle back on that because there are some good comments on that.
I'm seeing every single development that's out there has an ADU.
I don't think they're going to be written that stuff out.
Let me tell you.
I think that the types of ADUs that we need in our town are those types of ADUs where our kids could go into and rent from us.
It could be like that extremely low type of income people.
I think I may have some of those.
I think that that would probably work.
My two cents.
Anyone else?
Well, what's in front of us here is to receive this cost allocation plan and development services fee.
And I'm trying to figure out how we can get to a resolution here.
And one of the things that strikes me is that we're hearing some some I think some useful thoughts about our overall structure.
And so it's I have caused my impression is shift during this meeting because the thought of really incentivizing ADUs.
I'm hearing some really worthwhile thoughts from other people that we already have a strong incentive and what's actually happening is people are building them as we said.
I did hear some serious concerns about the review of the FIC and what came from that.
And I would say, overall I'm my conclusion is.
We should make this close to revenue neutral so that there isn't a big deficit and the reason then is we can afford to fund our other town services.
I'm inclined to say I like the 90 to 95% for everything except for the 80% for the 80% and the and the electrification heat to features.
And I would also say I think it's worth directing staff because I think that might give us a little bit of a question to just take a look at the small project plan check fees and say let before we fully resolve this that we take a look at that because that seems to be the thing that stands out.
I think that sounds very reasonable that what you said because.
Except well JD have a comment on that.
Yeah, I think one of the things that that we're talking about in the the the fee schedule is the fact of its impact on the budget and if we continue to go back and analyze we continue to delay the the.
The incentive that is the the cost that we would recover within the budget process and the more that we delay that the more impact that we will have to the budget.
Okay, so maybe we could go ahead and and.
Put this fees.
And then if we need to later on revise some of the smaller permit fees and look at that again later but go ahead and move forward so there are not.
I think we can just ignore that for right now, so that may be my.
I would go with the 90% and the 80% for 80 years and take a fresh look to see how we can.
Make it easy for people to work.
You know, to have a.
I think.
I would go with the 90% and 80% for 80 years and take a fresh look to see how we can.
You know, to have a lower fee on smaller projects later on.
I mean.
Or not simultaneously that started working on it to see.
I mean, shouldn't hold this back.
All right.
Yes.
I would like to have a review after we have this implemented and I would advise as soon as we possibly can.
I would like to have a review period after maybe one or two years.
So if we can build that in, I would be happy because there may be amendments that we have to make after that time period because we may have made.
Some misjudgments along the way.
We're not perfect.
That's news.
Okay.
Well, I think where I'm at on this is I'm perfectly comfortable with the 100% on large projects.
I don't think we're increasing large projects significantly at all with this fee schedule.
And I'm perfectly okay with new new residences, you know, over the 100% recovery.
I'd like to be at 80% for the 80 years.
I think that seems to be the general consensus.
I do agree that for small projects we should be going back and looking at why the plan check fees are as high as they are.
Maybe they need to be lower.
I think one example was given about bathroom remodel or kitchen remodel.
It's a small project.
You really shouldn't be doing that much plan checking on it.
So maybe we need to tweak the formula a little bit for those projects.
I'd also like to propose that for environmentally beneficial projects.
And I'm thinking specifically solar and heat pumps.
Whether it's heat pump water heater or heat pump furnaces.
I'd like to drop that to 50% because I really want to make sure that people feel like we're encouraging that.
So that's where I'm at.
I like all that.
Okay.
Well then I'll make a motion.
I move that we go to 100% for large projects and by that I mean new homes.
80% for 80 use.
Review the plan check fees for small projects.
Let's call those projects under 250k.
Or if you want to prefer a different number I'm okay with that.
That's a good number.
300.
Okay.
Then 50% for heat pump and solar.
Fire application.
What about just remodel projects that are not whole.
We didn't specify that.
Okay.
We're going to review the plan check fee and see if we can reduce that.
This is just a plan check fee though.
We didn't specify the percent recovery for those non large projects.
Yeah.
Because you're not going to go home.
You're going to be redoing existing home.
Yeah.
I think the issue there was the formula that's being used for the plan check fees is sort of the plan check fee.
Yes.
Also just use a number for it instead of guessing that you said that for a large projects like a new home construction go with the 100% recovery.
And I'm saying we have a gap.
We haven't said what if you add two bedrooms.
What is the number?
And I would say all other projects 90% for the things that we didn't say.
Can I just make it to complicated?
I did not understand that.
Okay.
I think maybe another way to look at it is say anything under 500k you go at 90%.
There.
Is that fair?
Okay.
Is that okay?
But what about the bathroom that's just 50,000?
So you go at 90%.
Okay.
Anything.
Okay.
But we're concerned about the plan check.
No, I'm saying anything under 500k.
You go with 90% recovery.
Right.
But we also had a question about the plan check fee for the very small.
I think a bathroom was a 50,000.
So then we asked staff to look at smaller projects and come back to see what.
That's what I had said.
But I think I heard from George that he wanted to use a number on that rather than.
No, I don't think so.
You agreed.
No.
We're talking percent.
Then we're talking.
We're talking about the dollars.
But then we're also talking about the plan check aspect.
That was.
You want to vote.
The plan check.
And the percent for the smaller projects.
That's what I meant.
Yes.
Okay.
I did not pick up on that.
But thank you for clarifying.
Can I get one point of clarification.
Did you mention solar?
There's a set by the state.
So I don't believe we can subsidize those.
We certainly can subsidize those and collect under what the state's.
Minimum maximums are.
Sorry.
Could you say that closer to the mic?
So the state does set for solar projects, both for thermal and for photovoltaic.
It can be a bit of a feels to us that provide a maximum minimum that we can charge for those particular features.
We can just allow to a minimum minimum minimum.
So it allows for us to, to charge.
For.
Cost that we incur up to a certain point and time.
If we show that we are cost exceed that.
We can do a study to be able to exceed that but otherwise we have a maximum that we can charge.
Per, Per those projects we can still incentivize.
a study to be able to exceed that, but otherwise we have a maximum that we can charge per
those projects. We can still incentivize those. Still, though.
Okay, what is the maximum? There's a formula based on the number of kilowatts or the capacity
of the thing. We could find that for you here, but it's what you're saying. I think is that
the state says you based on the kilowatts, you charge a certain maximum fee. Correct. But we
can certainly charge less than that. That's correct. Okay.
But you said something about a minimum fee. Is there a minimum fee, too?
It's a reason why I say maximum minimum is because in those instances, we're being told
what we can really charge for our services, unless we do those things. So it's not necessarily
a cost recovery. And that instance, so it's like we're really a minimum, it's a minimum value
for what the service actually is, but it's a maximum that we can charge.
All right. I would say, I don't know what the maximum is. Can you give us some idea? Like if I had a
time to bring a lot of people to give me, I'm like should we be talking?
If you say 50%. But we don't care. We could just say maximum. We don't need to know what the number
is, right? Well, if we are just going with the state number and the state number is $2,000,
I think we need to know that. I don't know what it is. But it doesn't matter if the state is mandating it,
then they're mandating the maximum that you can charge. Okay. So you may want to go lower.
Exactly. Okay. I can tell you what the state maximums are if you want. It's $450 for a residential
solar up to 15 kilowatts. And then I believe it's $7 per kilowatt over that. So that's for residential solar.
Sorry, that's $450 for 15 kilowatts. Yes, for 15 kilowatts.
It's reasonable. It's for the record that was our consultant with NDS. Yes, I am. So I think for solar, I'm okay with the state number that you just, that we just heard. But for heat pump, I'd like to go with 50%.
Yeah. 50. And then I do want to clarify on the reduction based on valuation.
The implementation when it was one deviation related to the base tearing structure was fairly simple to implement.
The more variations of the that tearing structure that you offer introduces complications that could cause staff to not necessarily always follow the practice.
Because it's difficult to then automate. How about this? How about you understand the intent here, is that for smaller projects, the fees seem to be disproportionately high.
Yes. And what would you suggest as a remedy for that? Excuse me. I move that we go past 10 o'clock.
Thank you.
Let's take a vote.
Sure. Sure. That's my job. Yes.
Yes.
I second.
Councilmember Mark. Yes.
Yes. Councilmember Slyne. Yes. Councilmember Tanka. Yes.
Vice Mayor Tyson. Yes. Mayor Patija. Yes. Thank you, Mayor.
All right.
To answer your question, we would staff recommend. So I was writing down what you were with the numbers and percentages. So 100% for new residences. 80% for 80 use 50% for heat bumps.
For the portion about small projects, staff would recommend that we could come back with what could be feasible. So we could implement this.
And then we could come back at a time with revisions of the fee schedule with ways to address specifically. I know you were talking about projects less than 500k.
There's going to be some issues as noted with basing it off evaluation. But we could figure out a way to address the intent of your comment.
Right. So just one clarification. I did not exactly say 100% for new residences. I used new residences an example, but I was raising 100% of large projects.
Keep you more specific to understand what that more than 500k.
Okay.
And this solution.
I think helps with Jay's concern about if we sit on this, then we're losing our chance to.
And so the ones that are less that we're still delaying are going to be the smaller lower revenue projects.
Yeah.
So I think I think what I'm hearing that we approve these things and then they come back with the small projects and I'm saying that has less of an impact on our revenue.
So what do we do this right now? We do 100% for any project over 500k.
You can.
That might have the same issue of evaluation.
So I've both for now.
I don't know.
Well, that's what we were trying to describe throwing in the evaluation right now is going to cause implementation issues.
Well, you are basing your fees on evaluation.
Yeah.
So the way that that works though is that we build a table that mirrors this fee schedule within the database, right?
And so every time that you want to then provide a discount for that, we're creating a new table that's 80% reduced.
And now what you're saying is that part of our table has to have a cost recovery reduction on it.
Our system doesn't give us those types of options to be able to program into it.
So we need to either have the full tiered structure for that fee discounted.
Or we need to be able to then come up with very specific projects that fit in those tiers to then create just cost recovery targets for them specifically.
Because then we can change we can tie that fee table to those permit types to automate it.
Otherwise, you're going to have a staff member picking every single time, which table they're supposed to pick.
And then make sure that it's the right table and I guarantee you we're not going to do it with all the value that we have.
And understand what we're trying to do, they can come back to us.
The problem is that they've come back to us in the past and we're still here.
Yeah.
And we need to make a decision.
Actually, these are smaller projects as they are for now and at least implement the rest.
So then you're going to 100% for everything.
100% and we said 90% for 80 years, how much do we say?
80. 80. 80 for 80 years. Yeah.
Yes, yes.
Question, what if it's like a $700,000 a year.
If you're trying to break this into what you can do tonight versus what has to come back to you.
Yes.
Then you can do everything, but the calculation that was based on less than 500,000, if you will.
And so you could direct staff to implement all of that.
Now, and then as Cody was indicating come back to you with a recommendation about how to deal with that lower value.
Nice.
Let's go with that.
So I think based on that we're saying 100% recovery except for 80 users should be at 80%.
Heat pumps should be at 50%.
And you'll come back with a refinement on small projects below 500k or something like that.
That's fair.
So that's the motion.
Second.
And also revisit it in a year.
Revisits the cuts.
It's a two years.
It's a very very.
Yeah.
I've been through this two projects.
It's extremely complex.
I know this is out of order, but I saw Alan shaking his head violently back there.
That means that he doesn't agree with something that we're saying.
And if I could just ask him.
What he was shaking his head on, he may be able to describe it for us.
So a new way of running coastal meetings.
Okay.
I understand that.
I apologize for shaking my head.
But George was right in terms of breaking up these two things.
We had the issue about the plan check fee, which is separate from or we're trying to make it separate from the permit fee.
Because the plan check fee right now is a percentage of the permit fee.
So we do want to be sure we separate those two issues.
Because it was the plan check fee at the lower project level that was the that was the concern and the issue about setting the your your table.
I thought you already had the table set.
So for instance,
The fee is X for up to $500,000 and then incrementally for each.
$1,000 above that.
Isn't that how the fee structure works now.
Isn't that how it's built.
Yes, you're correct.
So if they so if they pick a number that.
At one of those breakpoints.
It's relatively easy to implement because you just change the incremental rate.
Or the base rate to make to effect.
Is that I would agree.
Yeah, so that's what I was shaking my head above.
If you pick the breakpoint at one of those those levels, then I think it's it's relatively easy for you to implement.
Yeah, yeah, so from from that perspective, but then as you go through when they were doing large small 80 years.
Yeah, then there was a different table for every single one of those types of permits at that point in time, which then could cause some complications again.
Well, you have one table for eight years.
Correct.
One table for everything else.
Okay.
And with the everything else.
It's based on these tiers.
If you're below 500k, you have a different discount.
Okay, except for the two specialties, which are the heat pumps.
And there's our base.
Just the heat pumps.
Yeah, so I think it's I think it's real to be easy to implement.
Thanks for the extra time.
Great.
My apologies.
Near.
I don't know if that changes.
That was extremely helpful, actually.
I think that if I understand it right, that means that you can go ahead and implement it the way we asked.
Yes.
I was not expecting.
I was not thinking of it in that terms where the the variables would change associated with cost going through the table, but that would work.
Okay.
So then.
The.
Yeah.
It was actually.
Okay.
So 100% for projects.
So we're 500k.
80% for 80 use.
50%
What was the percentage for below 500?
For what?
For below 500.
We didn't come up with it.
We didn't tell.
50% for heat.
So for projects and the 500k, we go with.
We come up with it.
With 90%.
Let's do that.
90.
Okay.
90%.
I thought we had to go lower.
80.
Yeah.
Now.
It is it is just proportionally high.
Like like we've heard some of those.
It's a different portion.
Yeah.
One thing that I really want the council to know is we're knocking on the flag and understand what the impacts the budget are.
With all these changes.
It's being implemented right now.
Yeah.
Now.
So if you're going to ask us to approve a budget and we don't know what the surplus is.
That's going to be an issue.
Yeah.
We understand.
So if you want to go.
Lower percentage.
Then make that 100k or something because we're talking about bathrooms or something small.
500k is a major model.
That's that's not.
I'm okay with that.
200k and make it 50%.
50%.
Yeah.
Okay.
Can I just show you guys what the values of where we're talking about these break points are on.
Yeah.
So we have in our projecting revenues for for all of our projects that are additions, remodel
sulturation's 80 us SB 9's whatever.
If it's under 50,000 dollars, we're expecting around 345,000 dollars worth of revenue.
So if you reduce that by 50% it's going to be half that number.
But you also increase the rest 100%.
Well, these are 100% cost recovery are already shown within this table here.
So this is going to be reduced.
Anything that you reduce is going to be a reduction to what we would expect for revenues in the budget.
So it is a $570,000 impact is what you're saying to the budget.
Correct.
Okay.
50%.
Yeah.
You were recommending 90% of the rest.
And we said 100%.
So you have increased too.
Yeah.
The budget right now is based upon 90%.
And 80% for 80 years.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
So when you take part of it and go up to 100%.
You can tell you exactly how much that adds.
Yeah.
You can tell you exactly how much if you take off the lower numbers.
Yep.
What the adjustment is.
We can get a very close approximation of where the budget is going to be.
Make it a recess to do that.
Okay.
I think we need to make a decision and move on.
We are in agreement in about 80% for 80 years.
We're in agreement on 50% for heat up heat pumps.
We're in agreement that for projects over a certain threshold.
And we'll have to figure out what that is.
We're going to go to 100%.
But we just have to figure out at what what point.
We offer a lower.
We offer a discount.
And what's threshold?
Those are the only two questions left.
I'd say 100,080%.
Any other thoughts?
Okay.
We'll be 30%.
Still very high.
400,000.
What's this?
60%.
Maybe.
Fine.
Because we all agreed that it would really disproportionately harm smaller projects.
So, you know, from 90% you come to 80%.
It's not that much for different.
We're going to do a plan check, not the C.
Cost recovery.
We're confounding a couple of issues.
And that is we say that lower projects say they're the fees are higher than they have been.
Some element of that is because they ought to be because those smaller projects do cost more.
I think what we what we jipped it away from was the whole issue that plan check fee was a specific issue that would,
we wanted some study.
And so, if we can find a way to just look at that specific thing and work that into our plan,
then I think we resolve that.
Because I think it's actually okay that smaller projects have higher fees than they used to.
How about this?
Up to 250k, we go at 80%.
And above that, you're at 100%.
Okay.
All right.
That's that's the baby.
This one will stick.
So we agreed on everything else already.
Now the only other refinement is for 250k and below we're going to go at 80%.
Everything else is 100%.
And that should not create a budget problem.
I believe.
Is that correct?
Because we're getting 100%.
The numbers that J and I are looking through.
Yes, it would not.
We would not go into a deficit.
I can say that.
Yeah, better off.
I think you'll actually come out ahead a little bit.
Yeah.
All right. So things are going on.
I was second.
How are I on basing that determination?
Yes.
The budget was determined at 90% across the board.
Raise some.
You've lowered some.
Right.
So we've raised the big.
Yeah.
We've raised the big ones as.
Yeah.
Okay.
So do I have a second?
Can we get a vote please?
Yes, Mayor.
I'm sorry.
I just want to make sure I got the motion right.
I think I'm good.
You said everything above 250.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. 80, 80 percent. Yes. And 50 percent? You said the solar you want to do the state number. You were solar. We're going with the state number. That's right. Thank you. Okay. Wonderful.
Councilmember Moch. Yes. Yes. Councilmember Swine. Yes. Councilmember Tonka. Yes. Vice Mayor Tyson. Yes. Mayor Vittagia. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Oh, well. Thank you.
Okay. Let's see. I'm back at number nine.
Mayor. Next is the work force. Sorry. If I may just just for the the prior motion that the council just approved, you identified it all the numbers.
All the numbers we got that, but that report was also accepting the fee study report. Anything else?
Yeah. We need acceptance of the fee study, the cap study, and then with the approval of the fee schedule itself, the local valuation multiplier.
Okay. So this moved. Yeah. If those are all part of your I would suggest that be a second motion. That finishes what you did. So you're you're giving complete direction. Okay. So moved.
I don't understand all that, but so it's there were other aspects of the staff report that were the underlying documents that relate to the to the allocations that you just talked about those documents need to be adopted.
Okay. All right. That was the second. Thank you, Stan. We get a vote.
As a member of Mark. Yes. Councilmember Sloane. Yes. Councilmember Tonka. Vice Mayor Tyson. Mayor Vittagia. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.
Now we're on to the annual workforce, we can see recruitment and retention report.
Good evening. Honourable Mayor and city council. So for this one for the purposes of time. I'm not planning to show a presentation, but yeah AB 2561 was effective January 1st, 2025.
It requires an annual public report on the status of job vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts and any obstacles in policies, the procedures that may handle hiring.
It primarily impacts agencies that have bargaining groups as if they can seize exceed 20% for any bargaining group. You know, there's certain reporting that's required.
The town of Los Altos Hills does not have any bargaining groups. So I'll just talk about the town as a whole.
We have 30 full time employees budgeted. We have two vacancies currently. One is a deputy city manager. The other one is an assistant planner.
This assistant planner is currently in recruitment and is the employees expected to start in August.
And then for the deputy city manager, the city manager, I thought plans to reclassify that to an assistant to the city manager once a budget is adopted.
You know, in July, he would begin recruitment for that position. So currently we have two vacancies, the deputy city manager and an assistant planner.
Any questions?
I thought we were also hiring a principal planner in my mistake.
Correct. We have begun recruitment for that. Although that position won't be approved until the budget is approved, but yes, we have begun recruitment for that.
Okay, so this is as of the current fifth financial year.
Okay, and you don't need a motion, I believe.
Mayor, this is a public hearing and the state law requires that you open and close public hearing for this one.
Open the public hearing, take any comments, thank you.
Okay, we'll open it up for public comment.
Any in the room?
Any online?
No, mayor.
Okay, close public comment. And move on.
There's no motion, right?
I just received just a motion to receive the report.
I move, we would see the report.
Second.
House member Mark. Yes.
Yes.
Mayor Patasia.
Yes.
Thank you, Mayor.
Okay.
Item 7C.
That's just coming back to the budget now.
So.
So I'll be sharing a brief presentation on the budget.
You know, we've met multiple times with the FIC and the city council in the months of May and June.
And so right now, I'll just focus on the changes since the May 15 study session, the joint city council FIC study session.
So the main change since that study session was that changes to a fee revenues.
So this is about a $340,000 decrease.
This is assuming 80% cost recovery for 80 year water heaters.
H fact heat pump permits and a 90% for all fees.
Obviously, we've had a really discussion.
So when we do publish the budget, we will update it with the latest recommendation from the city council.
We also did update allocations as well.
That was to update the allocations from the NBS support to align with actual costs in our budget.
And, you know, actual costs for service providers like city managers office, city clerk, city attorney, finance, etc.
Those costs have gone up every single year.
But it's a net zero impact across all funds.
It's really just transfers of money between funds.
And then the operating surplus was 700,000 in May.
Now it's about 500,000 in the budget.
You know, that was published in the agenda, but we will give updated numbers once.
You know, we calculate the impacts of the fee schedule changes.
In the version that was published, yeah, the general fund revenues were $20.9 million.
General fund expenditures, $20.4 with a half a million dollar surplus, $5.1 million to what's capital projects.
And then 32 FTEs, that's an increase from the current budget of 30 FTEs.
That's an addition of a code enforcement officer, as well as the addition of a principal planner, which we've already begun recruitment.
And then the big driver in the budget, of course, is the sheriff's contract increase.
You know, we're currently still negotiating that contract and have begun working on an audit with Vastez and company.
Next steps for the budget, you know, adopted budget would take effect July 1st.
In December, 2026, you would see the actor, which is annual comprehensive financial report.
And you also see it FY2526 year and updates.
So you'll look at the, you know, year and status, surplus and deficits.
And then in February, 2027, you'll see a midyear budget review where we make any midyear budget adjustments and reflect on the status of the budget as of December, 2026.
And so I recommend that action is the proof of resolution adopting the fiscal year 2627 operating budget, as well as a five year capital budget and again appropriations limit.
And then also adopt the fiscal year 2627 salary schedule.
Thank you.
Okay. Any questions?
All right. We open it up for public comment. Anybody in the room?
I don't know.
And on epsilon, first I'd like to thank the staff for all the hard work and nice budget document they put together because they really did work hard and put together a very good budget and it's integrated and and very very very comprehensive.
As I mentioned the overhead is the issue that the town needs to, you know, really pay attention to because the number I can find the right page.
The overhead the overhead allocation for this year is 5.75 and 3.4 million dollars.
That's the administrative departments total. It's being allocated to the operating departments is how much five point.
Five point.
Am I right Thomas 5.75?
Yes, that's good.
Right.
5.75 million dollars.
Correct.
And you know, half a million of that is going to the sewer fund and then, of course, the rest is going out to the various other departments, which affects the fees.
I just want to call call attention to you that that's a very large number. It's increased 75% over the, you know, last five five five years.
But I think there's a good this isn't a good budget.
I think it represents what the costs are going to be based upon the decisions that the council and the staff have made and I support budget as proposed.
So thank you very much.
Thank you.
I just want to comment that in terms of yes that 5.8 is a reflection of the overhead costs in the current budget.
But NDS says fee schedule used a 3.7 overhead cost number.
That was based on, you know, an earlier budget of fiscal 2425.
And also it doesn't include some of that cost related to the internal service funds.
So NDS says fee schedule and fully burdened hourly rate is based on a $3.7 million overhead cost.
Okay.
So that mean then that we're not getting 100% over.
Okay.
Recovering.
We're not.
Correct.
Yeah, because a fee schedule would be a point in time.
So they're using the best information they have about time.
And so for example, they would not have been able to incorporate this budget, you know, because that comes after they did this study.
And so their cap was based on the 2425 budget.
And then the fee schedule was based on the 2526.
Their fees are based on older data.
And that sort of gives me more confidence that the 100% numbers.
Okay.
You know, that's just where I was going.
Because we can't go over 100%.
This tells me we're not going to.
We're not going to.
All right.
Okay.
I don't see anybody else in the room.
Is anybody online?
No.
Okay.
Well, we'll close public comment.
Come back to the council.
I have a few questions.
Can you put up your slides again, please?
Yes.
Just go back to where you had the revenue and expenditure numbers.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I'm always a little skeptical looking at these numbers.
I'll tell you why.
I think sometimes when you report these numbers,
they include allocations.
And allocations are what I would term funny money.
Because they're money.
You're getting from one department and pouring into the other department.
But it makes your total number look higher.
Correct.
Kind of like what inron might have done.
But my real question is,
how much money is the town actually receiving?
Hmm.
Excluding the allocations.
And how much are we actually spending?
Yeah.
So revenues excluding the allocations
that would be 16.6 million.
Excluding allocations.
Yeah.
16.1.
16.6 million.
And the expenditures?
15.5 million.
15.2.
15.3 million.
That's right.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the challenge, of course, is now three and a half million out of that.
Out of the 15 is just going to go to the sheriff.
Whereas was two and three quarters before.
And then we also have private security on top of that.
In terms of public safety.
So our public safety expenses have gone up significantly.
Okay.
All right.
I want to.
I want to want to acknowledge a couple of things.
I think as Alan said, this is a really well well done document.
I know you put a lot of work into it.
But I especially want to acknowledge the fact that you were able to unlike the previous year.
We were able to take it.
You were able to in your team.
We're able to take it to the FIC.
Review it multiple times and then bring it back to council.
And I really appreciate the fact that you were able to do that.
It gives us a lot of work confidence and and validates the work.
So thank you for that.
With that, I'll entertain a motion.
It's going to be staff recommendation that you do need to incorporate the changes to the fee schedule,
which you did in seven A in the motion when you're adopting the budget for this item.
Fine.
Just a comment.
And that mirrors your comment.
It's a tremendous amount of work, a lot of dedication, a lot of detail work.
And sometimes people don't get recognized for this.
So thank you very much.
Both of the FIC and for Thomas.
Actually, it rolls all of the partners too.
So well, it goes for everybody in the departments.
And I like the fact finally we have in the finance staff looking really well with the FIC.
Yeah.
So that's a huge achievement.
That's not easy.
And difficult.
So maybe I'll make a motion to accept the budget.
But with the changes that are being proposed to the fee schedule.
Is that specific enough wording?
Because I was going to ask Thomas to put up that recommendations like, because it had some
Finance.
Yes.
We should product that sound.
That's right.
So see that.
Yeah.
All right.
A Prova resolution adopting the towns of financial year 2627 operating and financial year 2627 to 232331.
Five year capital budget and the financial year 2627.
Again, a Proparesions limit subject to the fee changes that were voted on earlier.
And also a Prova resolution adopting the towns of financial year 2627 salary schedule.
Second.
Okay.
Thank you, George.
Council member Mark.
Yes.
Council member Swan.
Yes.
Council member Tonka.
Yes.
Yes. Mayor Bateja. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. All right. We're going on to 7D. This is about the green sheets.
Do we have a staff report on this? We do. We're going to pull up the PowerPoint and then we'll do it.
There we go. You can go ahead and go to the next slide, please. Thank you. So that the council is aware there is the initiative that's been drafted.
It's been narrowed down to these two issues that would be changes to the land use element. One is to put better definition on the types of domestic animals that are permissible within the within the town on residential property.
And the second one is to prohibit new industrial large scale or retail land uses on private property with certain limited exceptions for home base businesses.
And as the council recall, that also exempts out existing commercial uses like like three monials, which would just continue them in their status as a conforming commercial use. Next slide, please.
The council asks that the measure be presented to the commission and the committees and that has occurred the planning commission on June 8 heard this matter.
They made a procedural determination that the measure as drafted was internally consistent with the general plan that's a state law requirement when you're amending the land use element.
And so the commission did that. The commission also discussed the draft initiative measure and the commissioners, I'm sorry, it should say commissioners felt that if the town council was going to place a measure before the voters for consideration that the measures should include more substantive changes.
The commission was aware that the earlier version had included changes such as prohibiting vacation of pathway easements in certain circumstances.
The commission talked about some of those issues, but did not reach consensus on exactly what the substantive changes should be instead they were just saying they thought that a measure of this sort when you're going to the voters should effectuate really more substantive changes that were there.
Next slide, please. The pathways committee also took a look at this and recommended that the council to the council that the current green sheets ballot proposition move forward and there was also discussion about whether the pathways again should be included in as part of the green sheets. So those are the pathway provisions that we talked about before.
Next one, the EDPC also looked at this and they voted to add in the proposed pathway language to the measure and recommended the language shall not be changed or rescinded without voter approval. So that's essentially going back to the same language, sorry if you could stay on that one.
The again, this is just the slide to show the council the schedule from a practical standpoint, if the council does not act on this tonight.
You would likely have to come back in either in July but you'd have to take action before August 6 to place this on the ballot August 6 is the latest date that this could be considered and then the November 3rd date is the initiative language.
Next slide. So the next steps are the council can consider the comments that you've heard from the committees and the planning commission and any more comments from the public tonight and decide if there's any further changes you want to the initiative.
It remains the same initiative that you saw last time so if you wanted to stay as it was you can take action on it tonight. The council can act on the resolution tonight so you can vote to put it on the ballot tonight if you want.
If you do that then there's a portion of the resolution that allows the council to designate two council members to write a ballot argument in favor of the measure.
That would be either on behalf of the entire council if if that was the will of the council or it could just be on behalf of those two members of the council.
The initiative also allows those members to have additional people sign the measure but it wouldn't be additional council members so they would decide who else would sign the ballot argument.
And it also allows that same subcommittee if you created one to write a rebuttal argument if there was a argument against the measure written.
Under state law if the council writes a ballot argument the council has the top priority for the ballot argument if the council doesn't write a and doesn't authorize and write a ballot argument and there's a.
There's a there's a prioritization under state law that would allow different groupings of folks to write the ballot measure.
And again the council has until August 6 to decide whether to put this on the ballot if you want it on the November general election. Next slide believe that's it and so we're happy to answer any questions that the council may have.
But that's where it's at.
Any questions.
My question at the last meeting.
It was stated that we would have a poll in the city manager to report or or whatever in form or not an official.
That would go but I haven't heard anything about that but I we did also ask the pathways committee and EDCP and open space to look at it and I think they did that but.
I don't remember seeing anything about a poll.
I don't think there's been a poll.
No, there has not been a poll and I'm going back to the recap in the minutes I don't think that was captured in an action requested by staff.
But I could but to answer your question the city manager's weekly did not run a poll. Okay.
I got it.
The other question.
I think our next city council meeting is August 20th is that correct. We skipped July.
So this August.
Doesn't work.
We have to do something tonight.
Do something before August 6th tonight is the only schedule tonight.
Yes.
So we'd have to reschedule the July meeting if we need another meeting because we would have to either reschedule the July meeting which is currently not going to happen or you just call a special meeting but you have to act on it before August 6th.
Okay. Should we open it up to public comment.
Anybody in the room?
It might microphone.
Hello again, Alice.
I'm so extremely brave.
So late.
Speaking with 50 years of experience with helping clients buy and sell residential property and sell to the sales I can't emphasize how important this is to enshrine your
green sheet principles in your ordinance because the pressure is always by people who want to make a quick buck.
And if you don't do this.
Before I die this loss of those sales is going to look like the redwood city hills with dense pack housing, sky rises, apartments and condos everywhere.
But this gets it enshrined so it has some teeth and having the idea of having any big changes to this.
Have to go to the voters.
Even more teeth.
So thank you so much to everybody who worked on this and all the committee commissions and staff and council.
This is so overdue because the reason Los Alzos hills is so valuable.
And where that value comes from is this differences.
It's one of the last places like redwood city of like wood side that allows live stock and equines and all that and that's something you have to hold on to high.
Because there's always newcomers who will say, oh, we don't need that or we want sidewalks everywhere. So thank you very much.
Here I'll go.
Since the people that were here that were going to talk to the green sheets because of the late nests went home.
But at the last meeting the pathway system was mentioned that we would like it included in this.
And I think the pathway system is one of our treasures.
And I have seen it in the past almost go down with the vote of the council.
We had to do a referendum to keep the easements and some of those easements turned into our most treasured pathways.
So I urge you to act to add to this the pathway system. Thank you.
I think the public has been misled.
The staff report has consistently said that the cost associated with this project was five to ten thousand dollars.
We have already spent twenty thousand dollars more and we go expenses and we're not even half way done.
We learned from the staff report that over your told was five thousand dollars in expenses and putting it on the ballot is forty six thousand dollars in terms of putting it on the ballot.
So I think we've been misled all along with regards to the expenses associated with this project.
Secondly, it's the project has been whittled down to being basically we're going to keep horses and we're going to prevent large, large retail activities.
I think the likelihood that a council in the future is going to do something that's going to preclude horses or make large retail happen in town is extraordinarily small.
And I think they're worthy to do that. There are options available to the citizens at that point in time to try to prevent that from happening.
So I think this measure is much too expensive or the likely benefit that it's going to provide the residents in town and by the number of people in this audience.
As you know, people turn out when they think something is important.
I don't think it's indicative of the interest of the public.
And if they wanted to go ahead with this, then I say do it as a real initiative.
Go out there and get the people to come out and put it on the ballot.
But don't shortcut it by getting three votes on the council. Thank you very much.
Okay, yes, so I have a different take that out.
I think the cost is relatively minor in the big picture.
I think it's still within the realm of what everybody envisioned.
I think it's a great way of getting the process starting because this is something's going to be on the ballot for the residents to actually fill in something about their town.
But it can actually think about it.
Lobby the neighbors.
This does a lot more to build community than you think.
I think it's super important as I said, yes, well, maybe get people to round about.
This is the anchor that this is what gets it in motion.
The rallying around that will come if three of you guys vote for this today.
And think about it like in half a year, two of you guys are gone.
And another two years after that, two or three of.
Reft is a whole different group of people here in a couple years.
And let just think about what happened with Sacramento.
Think about the state of some of the people and state senators.
Oh, yeah, I will love your community and all that.
Then they went there and voted as be nine as be ten.
All that nightmare that be followed us.
That was all nice people that said, oh, yeah, we will totally hear you.
We respect your community.
One money money talks.
And you can very easily end up with three people here that, you know, they don't care about the money.
So this is actually more urgent than you think.
So please kick this in motion and write a good write up.
And if you need a rebuttal, I'm sure.
Talent people and that feel for it will write the rebuttal.
Thank you.
Brigitte and I go private citizen here.
I'm just kind of weighing out this.
I think I would rather err on the side of caution as well.
Preserve what we have with the reason she's I just wish we would keep the pathways in it.
And give it a little bit more of it off to it.
So I don't mean to muddy your waters, but there you have it.
I support trying to firm up some of these things to protect for whatever else we don't know is coming down
in Sacramento.
And this is one way of doing it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, John's one resident.
I've talked with his topics since pre 2020.
Way before SB 9 and the whole taking land use control away from the town.
It was decided by a majority of the council to not proceed.
That was a very flawed conclusion.
So what we have now.
Is not protecting all the key pillars. But to second what Shell said, it's a start. And if people realize
that we want to preserve the rural environment, that's the key. And so I, I strongly encourage you, I'd like to
doesn't impact the timeline. I'd like to put back the pathway easements, the protect us because we came within one vote of removing all the pathway easements, which
that would have been a catastrophe. Thank you.
Okay, I don't see anybody else in the room. Is anybody online?
Yes, Mayor Jim Mochara. Hello council members. I wanted to alert you to the
supplement that I put in. We discussed this at the Planning Commission recently, part of me. And it came to light that
the amount of expenses and estimates of these costs only included going for the election and getting it on the ballot.
And that after that, there's a whole series of additional work that will be required by staff and by the legal and planning commission and city council
to actually redo ordinances and policies to implement this project. And so I just urge you to get a updated estimate of the grand total cost for the entire project so that you can
make your minds up based on the best information. And I concur that if these things could prevent us from being overblown by state mandates, I'd be all for it.
But of all of the concerns that I have heard about overdevelopment and other issues looking too much like Redwood City Hills,
this isn't going to do that. Those risks or those threats are coming by state coming from state mandates in the area of housing and it's not related to horses or to commercial development. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Shura. Anybody else online? Yeah, take up here.
Yes, we can. Sorry, you needed yourself again.
I keep getting a thing of mine. Can you explain me? Yes, we can. You see. Okay. Yes, Sacramento is taking away a lot of our democracy, but this is a small cost relative to what we quite lose.
If you can get some protection from this, get it while you can. It may not protect us all away. Sacramento may still override it.
But we've been down this path before on a previous initiative. We narrowly escaped Sacramento's depredations because we passed the open space ordinance and our council members decided to pay attention to that.
We need to do that in these other areas, but this is in the perspective of history, not the next two years or five years.
In the next 20 to 50 years, if you can buy insurance, even though not be perfect, do it. Thank you.
Thank you, you see. No, no comments. No more. No additional comments. All right. Well, close public hearing. Oh, sorry. I did want to go ahead.
What into the record, council and person on you were correct. The motion from last meeting had three parts returned in June.
Go to the communities and commissions and conduct a prompt public survey via email.
It's not to knock it up. That survey.
Okay. Well, we all where we are. So back to council.
Question for Steve Mattis. We're guarding pathways. Is it possible to incorporate pathways into this?
It's legally possible to do a we had drafted the language for that previously. The measure that's before you tonight.
Doesn't have that. So if the if the council wanted to include the pathway language again.
I would recommend one of to my primary recommendation would be that you just continue it to another date before August six and then it will come back to us a final measure.
And then if you wanted to do the survey, you could do that if the council wanted to move on it tonight.
I would ask that you move this item to later in the agenda for the final action would allow me a little time to bring back that other language.
That is out there if the council wanted to do that.
We drafted that language. It was in it was in the earlier version that the council saw.
When the council votes on this team, do you need to have three out of five or do you need to have five out of five?
No, the placement of the measure on the ballot is a simple majority of the council.
Thank three out of five.
Okay. Well, I think that we need to add the pathways to this.
It's always been important to have those three and we talked about it last time.
So anyway, I'd like if we need to move it to later than the agenda that's fine, but I'd like to make a statement.
How much are the pathways worth to the town?
The packet for September 18th, 2025 town council meeting contains a report from Matrix Consulting Group, which valued our current pathways.
At 91 million, 89, 91 million, 890,000, 362 dollars.
And the register of voters estimates the cost to place the measure on the ballot is 45,842.
This amounts to 5100% of the value of the pathways.
So that's what you're paying to reserve these.
5100% of 1%. Very, very small.
And that value doesn't include the intangible benefits to the paths to our health and our mental health.
And so most residents would not want to lose our pathways or any part of our rural environment.
And MS hasn't been noted before. We almost lost them before when the council voted to release the pathway easements.
So we don't want to be penny-wise and pound foolish.
So I would suggest that we move it to later in the meeting because of already late anyway.
And then try to add the pathways to that.
So we don't have to have a separate meeting in July.
I understand what everybody's saying about valuing the qualities of this town.
I'm sure those. I'm spending time on the pathways virtually every day and enjoying the rest of the atmosphere here.
And in looking at, I'm going to keep myself and I hate to do that.
But when you look at the green sheets, it's got certain aspirational and visionary statements to it.
Some of which are relevant and some not so.
And I take a parallel of that to the declaration of independence where you don't.
You look at that as being your state and your vision statement and then that's not your governance statement.
And I take the same parallel to say, well, so how do we do our governance and that's to our general plan.
And the things that we're talking about which and it's difficult to change our general plan are already in our general plan.
It's like the Constitution then we've added amendments over the years to modify as things change.
But so so backing up here.
Any kind of activity we're looking at.
We have limited resources and I look to say, well, what's the benefit and then what's the cost?
And I went into this year thinking the things I really want us to work on are housing element issues and fire safety.
And I still feel like that way, like those are the things we should be focused on.
And so this whole issue about the green sheets and memorializing them in this ballot measure.
I find I found less compelling at the beginning and even more so now.
Because as we look and think hard about what are the issues facing us, are they the fact that people want to take away horses?
They are not that are they the fear that people are going to build large retail and town?
They are not that.
Are we in danger of losing our pathways and so we should value the calculated value of them?
No.
Those are not risks that we face.
And so then if something's not much value but it doesn't take much effort then that's another way to look at that.
Look at the effort.
We are hundreds of person hours beyond where we were a month ago with the study that we've made on this.
Those issues we talk about.
What's coming from Sacramento?
Let's direct our attention there.
That's the threat.
The threat is not large retail.
The threat is not what kind of animals we keep where.
The whole issue that's come up now about pathways.
I see it's another red hearing in the sense of.
So now are there pathways segments that now it takes a photo of the people because to vacate it.
For certain instances we have pathways that frankly are not necessary that we keep that easement.
That's why we took it out before.
So I'm going to say I am most vehemently against proceeding with this.
The costs have gone up and we are just starting to see them.
And so the value and benefit proposition is way out of whack and I would rather have to focus on real issues facing our town.
So I do appreciate the vision and the commitment to the green sheets.
But my George said, you know, that is not a founding document.
It's aspirational.
Everything we're trying to achieve here is already embodied in our general plan.
And now when it comes to governance, state law, Trump's, you know, local law.
So this would not prevent Sacramento from making any decisions.
And I just could not support the Spanish version.
I'm in a difficult situation on this issue.
I was the one that that actually moved to put it on to consider putting on the ballot last time.
And in my conversations with various residents.
I've changed my understanding of the issue.
I do think that Sacramento is not going to be limited by what's what's in our ballot measure, even if assuming it passes.
I don't think that's going to.
I don't think that's going to save us from Sacramento.
I my concern was.
Is it possible for a.
I'm going to call it a rogue council to reverse.
These policies of no large scale commercial or retail land uses in town.
Or reverse pathways or or change the policies for domestic animals.
And I think that's going to be a pretty steep.
Hill for a council decline.
The fear is that they could vote on it.
It would pass and and then, you know, it's it would take too long to do a recall.
But.
But residents could.
They could file a court motion.
They could they could file a lawsuit to prevent that.
And this is all in the unlikely event that.
You know, we get a council that that is of that view.
So that couple with the costs.
I have to say I am reluctantly.
I'm reluctant to kind of move forward with it.
I do love the pathways.
I hike on every week.
And I think they're a.
I don't think they're worth 91 million.
I think they're worth one that.
Right.
But, but my challenges.
Is this a real threat.
That we're going to be confronted with.
And we really need to put in the the safeguards.
I think there are safeguards.
And I think there are measures that can be taken.
So I'm actually not in favor of moving forward at this point.
And I regret that.
It looks like I changed my mind.
But I do I do need to be honest about.
What I've learned and.
And.
And face the fact that just because I said so.
I had a position earlier.
I need to be open to.
New information. And so I'm not favourable moving forward.
Okay. Well, just to get a vote down. I move that we go ahead with this ballot issue and adding the
pathways into it. And so that would be the virtual retail, the animals and the pathways
onto the ballot for the share. Okay. Your second. Okay. We have a motion in a second.
How's the member mark? Yes. How's the member swine? Yes. How's the member Tanka?
Vice Mayor Tyson? No. Mayor Beteja. No. Thank you, Mayor. The motion failed.
How about I proceed with the resolution? We have just seen in Washington DC over the last 10 years
professional norms. And the whole political process is up. Everyone keeps saying this is
unprecedented, unprecedented. And what amazes me is we're not learning from what happened in DC.
And we're playing dumb to say this will never happen here. I think it's incredibly short circuit.
Okay. We got a move on. Seven E. The Marta Lynn Tankhouse.
Thank you, Mayor. Council members. Today's presentation will be put forth by senior planner Jonathan Fox.
Jonathan, if you would. Thank you, Mayor and council members. We'll take me taking a look at the
Marta Lynn Tankhouse and the landmark designation application.
The city council approve conditional use permit 24 dash 0 0 0 2 for a new aquatic
building at the free my health country club in 2024. As part of the conditions of approval,
it includes a requirement for the for the club to apply for a landmark designation for the
Marta Lynn Tankhouse. That condition must be satisfied before final close out of the building permit.
The towns municipal code allows the city council to designate historic structures as the
townline mark. And if the city council chooses to do so, it must make the three findings on screen.
Staff has provided recommended language for those findings. And that's included in a test
for one, the ordinance that is before you this evening.
The club hired architectural preservation firm page in Turnbull to produce an evaluation report for
the Marta Lynn Tankhouse and provide recommendations as relates to the landmark designation criteria in
the town code. In summary, the report found that the Marta Lynn Tankhouse was constructed in 1906.
It is historically significant to Los Heltos Hills and the Santa Clara County at large
and it qualifies for the landmark designation under the town's adopted criteria. That full report
has been included in your packet. And that's the picture of the Tankhouse there on the free my health
country club property. That evaluation report was forwarded to the history committee and on February 17th
of this year, the history committee voted unanimously to recommend to the city council
that the Marta Lynn Tankhouse be designated as a historic landmark.
The notice of this public hearing and the potential designation as landmark was notified to all
properties within 500 feet of the club, as well as post being posted at three sites on the property.
No public comments were received as part of this application. One public comment was received in
2024 when the conditional use permit was up for discussion and it relates to the water tank. That same
public comment from 2024 is included in your packet.
So following the Blanton Mark evaluations report recommending designation of the Marta Lynn Tankhouse
as landmark and following the history committee's recommendation for a landmark staff is
recommending that the city council introduced an ordinance, attachment one, designated the Marta Lynn
Tankhouse at 1-2-8-89 this game of place. The free my Hills country club as a historical landmark.
As it is an ordinance, it'd be introduced tonight and would come back at a subsequent meeting for adoption.
Here for any questions, thank you. Any questions?
Okay, I'll show you up in a public comment.
All about the speaking as the history of the history committee, I urge you to vote for the
landmark. I think page and promo did a wonderful job. There's no doubt that it is the landmark and
there is a person that was a former free my Hills member that was willing to go out and try to find
raise to try to get the improvements done on the water tank. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Gottlieb.
Anybody else? Anybody online? No, I'm here. All right, we'll close public comment, bring it back to council.
I do have a question. If we designate this as a historical landmark, who gets to maintain it to be
kind of consistent with the historical sort of appearance and standards, it would be the
requirement of the property owner to maintain it. And if they didn't, if they didn't, it would be
in violation of the designation and the town could look at enforcement of the ordinance.
I agree. Do you have enough code enforcement mechanisms today, or would you be looking
at the New Orleans? I think it might depend on the specific case of what is being in this hypothetical
violated. Let's say they didn't maintain it. If it's a substantial change to the modification,
yeah, that's going to be one way to consider it, but if it's minor, I think we could work with them and see if
it's something that could be a fixed. If your question is more on the extreme side, I think staff
need to convene and understand that situation more. Mr. Bradford, your thoughts?
Yeah, so having managed historic structures in the past, certainly there's
Department of Interior guides and guidelines as it relates to the maintenance and modifications
associated with structures to be able to keep them historic. I think if we found activities
associated with the water tower, either lack of maintenance, improper changes of materials, things of
that nature, then we would have a reason to find the property owner in violation associated with the
designation and the lack of maintenance associated with it, or if it was the removal or
potential replacement of inappropriate materials. Thank you. All right, I think we need a motion as
that, right? Yes, that's correct. I'm moved that we introduce an ordinance to designate the
Martha Lynn tankhouse at 1, 2, 8, 8, 9, this guinald place as the historic landmark as
noted in their building permit when they agreed to do this. Second. Okay, we have a motion in a second.
Councilmember Mark. Yes. Councilmember Swan. Yes. Councilmember Tonko. Yes. Vice Mayor Tyson. Yes,
Mayor Petitja. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, moving on to 7F. This has to do with density bonus.
Consideration of a waiver of reading and introduction of an ordinance adding
article 17 to chapter 1, zoning of title 10, zoning and site development of the Los Altersville's
municipal code to implement state density bonus law pursuant to housing element program B3.
Mayor, I will make this presentation as well too if we could have that presentation come on.
And if you could go to slide number two, there we go. Thank you. So, in terms of background,
it's the council recall the housing element actually contains a program B3 that requires that the city
amend the zoning ordinance to update the density bonus regulations to meet the updated state
requirements. We are in our estimated timelines of compliance. It's a Q1226 timeline, but from a practical
standpoint, the way density bonus laws written in California, the density bonus law, the state provisions
apply right now anyway, but state law does require that each town have density bonus. It is important
to understand density bonus applies to projects that are five or more units. So, the reason the
Los Altersville's has not had a density bonus statute in the past is because you just
through this housing element and the recent adoption of the multi-family zoning now create developments
that are more than five units. The state density bonus law, California law, requires general
law and charter cities to grant density bonuses, waivers and incentives to qualifying affordable housing
developments or other eligible projects when we list some of those here. The basic premise of
state density bonus law is that developers provide either affordable housing or land for affordable
housing or housing for the elderly and there's also consideration for student housing and if they do that
and their deed restricted, so this is not voluntary, this is a deed restriction, then they get
additional density allowed and they also get what are referred to as waivers and
concessions which I'll talk about more as we go through here. Cities are required to comply with the
state density bonus law and they're also required to adopt local ordinances. I noted before,
a next slide please. Again, just getting the basics of the law, this gives
project proponents developers the right to seek and obtain a density bonus and other incentives
are concessions and exchange for the types of categories that I just talked about. The density
bonus is awarded based on a sliding scale so if you think about it, the more affordable the units are
so you think very low-income versus low-income versus moderate-income, the more affordable the units are
the earlier you get to the percentage increase in the base density and the higher percentages of
increases you get and so that's the scale that works on and there's a very extensive set of state laws and
tables that show what that is. Next slide please. A density bonus is calculated over the base density
so so the first thing that you look at is what is the base density that's allowed
under either the zoning, the specific plan or the land use element or the housing element if you
will but it's the housing element feeds into the land use element and you select whichever one is the
highest so for instance in Los Alto's fields right now we have a housing element that's part of the
general plan that has the zoning for the multifamily sites and so that would be the controlling
set of restrictions that in the land use element which the council recently adopted as well too.
We now have zoning in place and if the zoning happened to have a higher density then that would be allowed but
practically the way Los Alto's hills and most cities and towns operate the general plan sets the highest
standard and then the zoning sometimes can strange that. If there is no base density then a developer
can submit a base density study and the city is required to accept it as long as the study includes
all of the applicable objective development standards this is a provision that is frankly a lot more
applicable in other cities than Los Alto's hills. Los Alto's hills really has the three basic zoning
categories now you have single family residential slash agricultural you have institutional which doesn't
allow residential and then you have now multifamily zoning but other cities have many different categories many
additional categories. Under state density bonus law all fractional all fractional numbers are rounded up to the
next whole number so if someone's entitled to 6.1% density bonus you rounded up to 7% and the applicant
needs to use the same set of affordable applicants can use the same set of affordable units to satisfy
density bonus requests that they use to satisfy local inclusionary housing programs many other cities in
California that have rental or for cell properties have a minimum inclusionary requirement which means
that you can say like will approve residential but 5% of your residential units have to be
and that's what's referred to as an inclusionary requirement many cities in California have that
Los Alto's hills just not yet have that but this is saying that if you have an inclusionary and it
gives you enough units to qualify for density bonus then you can apply you get the benefit of density bonus
even though you're required by law
Law to provide the affordable units. Next slide. That's a state law requirement. The
density bonus law provides either additional units above the base density. That could be up to 50%
could be up to 100%. But it also provides for what are called incentives and concessions and for
waivers of development standards than it establishes parking standards too, which often
equate to parking reductions or reductions in parking standards. So the incentives and
concessions are reductions or elimination of standards that would lead to cost reductions
for a density bonus project. So the developer has to provide some information to support
that, but if they do, then you would grant them an incentive and a concession and I should
back up a little bit. The number of incentives and concessions that a property owner developer
would be entitled to is also related to the level of affordability that they do. So the more affordable
the project it is, the more incentives and concessions they get. So what are incentives and concessions,
the statute broadly defines them to include modifications and development, design and architectural
standards. So you can think about things like setbacks, it's standards, et cetera. And again,
this is state law, so the town can't override that anyway. And in some instances, some communities
throughout California have high standards that have been adopted by the voters and state density
bonus law allows you to override that as well too. The numbers of incessions and incentives
I said is based on the percentage and level of affordable housing. It's a maximum of five
incentives or concessions. And the town can not require a pro format to prove the cost reduction.
Earlier versions of the density bonus law did actually allow that in towns actually required it,
towns and cities did. And then this one of the many amendments to density bonus laws over the last
10 years or so have taken away the town's ability or city's ability to require a pro format to
prove the cost reduction. And similar to like the housing and accountability act in the builders,
remedy laws, if the town were to deny a density bonus request, it has to make very specific findings
of an adverse impact to historic property or a violation of law. So it's a very narrow set of circumstances
under which a city can adopt a density bonus request. Next slide, please.
The second part of it, so what I was just talking about was incentives or concessions,
there's also what are referred to as a waiver of development standards. And this portion of
density bonus law allows for the elimination of local standards that would physically preclude construction
of a density bonus project. So again, think of things like setbacks, height restrictions,
FAR requirements for a ratio requirements. These are broadly defined by statute and density
bonus projects get an unlimited number of waivers. So there have been projects in California,
but I've seen where developers have come in with 20 or so development standard waivers
to make a project viable. The city must grant the waivers to allow for the project is designed
by the developer. You cannot request the applicant to change or eliminate the need for a waiver.
So again, this is state law really stepping in. The town must also make specific findings to deny a
request. Next slide. State density bonus law also allows parking reductions and sets
parking standards for density bonus projects. And you can see the standards on the screen right now.
And then additional, this is not relevant to Los Altoes hills, but additional reductions are available
for projects in your major transit stops. If you think of Redwood City by the countering station or
Palo Alto by the countering station, you can actually have projects that have no parking requirements at all.
Right now, it's very similar to what exists up in San Francisco right now.
The next slide please. As should say, there was one little comment at the bottom of the last slide.
You can, you can leave it on this slide, but some developers these days are actually using state
density bonus law just to get incentives and concessions. They don't actually want to build the
additional units and they're not under state law. They're not required to build the additional units,
but they do sometimes provide a certain level of affordability and then they take advantage of the
incentives and concessions and they don't build any additional units. That's becoming more common these days.
There have been a number of state law changes over the last probably five to 10 years
under state density bonus law. AB 2345 increased the maximum density to 50 percent
lower to affordability thresholds for incentives and incentives reduce parking requirements and added incentives for senior housing.
So a senior housing project right now qualifies for a density bonus.
There for senior housing and student housing is a set percentage increase. It's 20 percent more.
It doesn't work on a scale with affordability.
SB 1763 extended expanded benefits for 100 percent affordable projects up to 80 percent density
bonus, certain hiding creases and an eliminated parking requirements and some.
And then SB 1227 one of the more recent ones added incentives for qualified student housing projects
that are now in play and all of these provisions apply across the state. So they apply in
less outdoors hills right now even if you don't adopt an ordinance. The next slide please.
So the proposed ordinance right now is structured to have an ordinance that complies with state law
but it does it by incorporating in a lot of state law provisions. The state density bonus law
has changed many times almost annually over the last five plus years and cities used to adopt
density bonus ordinances that were very specific to those cities but then the state kept stepping
in and overriding what they did and so the better practices these days is really to incorporate in
by reference to state laws because those are what are going to apply anyway and then that way you don't
have to keep amending your ordinance every time the state changes the law. It does have different effects on
you as they do change the state law but you're not having to go back and constantly update your
density bonus ordinance which cities did have to do over the last few years. So the sections 10-1-17001-703
implements the basic state density bonus law requirements that I've been talking about here and
send of concessions, waivers, reductions. It does include an optional conditional use permit process
for bonuses above state maximums and bonuses below state minimums. The some cities I'm
familiar with this want to want to creeks done this they actually provided additional incentives
that are beyond state law and they did that to try to promote even more housing opportunities. I will say
when want to creeks adopted that a number of years ago that was before the state density bonus laws
changed to further increase it because now you can get density bonus up to 50 percent on a number of
I think you can actually get up to 100 percent on a purely affordable project and you can get up to 50 percent
but the most recent changes to state density bonus law allowed developers to stack density bonus on top
so you can get even above 50 percent of a density bonus. The section 10-1-17004 brings in and
recognizes that you can get a density bonus if you provide a child care facility and 10-1-17005 just
implement in the state parking reductions that I showed you earlier. The next slide please.
17-06-1711 are just the procedural mechanisms state density bonus law when you do provide affordable
units it does require deed restrictions and covenants and whatnot so these are deed restricted
affordable for rentals for 55 years and so you need to have provisions to be able to administer those
and then as I said earlier we did adopt this proposed ordinance does include some local flexibility
which would allow the council through the discretionary approval not a mandatory discretionary approval
of a CEP to potentially even provide a greater density bonus if you chose to.
Next slide please. The environmental review and consequences this ordinance right now is exempt from
seek with the adoption of this is exempt from seek. It's implementing part of your housing element.
Again this is a requirement of the housing element and the risk of non-compliance right now
if there's an assertion that the city is not compliant with state density bonus law the town has the
burden approved to show that it complied with the statute we also and I think more importantly we have a
policy B3 in our housing element which says we will adopt this and so I would recommend you know that
that be a driving consideration on the part of the city council. Next slide.
And so our recommendation is that the council wave reading and introduce the ordinance
of this ordinance was reviewed by the planning commission planning commission recommended approval
as it was as it is presented to you today and if the council were to introduce it tonight it would
come back at your next meeting for adoption and then we would as we do with all zoning ordinances we would
HGD would have an opportunity to look at it they don't have to approve it but they just have an
opportunity to look at it we'd be able to show that we have wearing compliance with one of our housing
element policies and with that I'm happy to answer any questions Jay's happy to answer any questions as well
take thank you as Mattis any questions from council. Is it too late? Well we have to adopt it.
I have a question where you say they could get undeveloped we could get unlimited waivers
that sounds ominous. It'd be defined I mean it's really unbelievable.
It's unlimited development standard waivers so so if you have a development standard say a setback
or a you know a height limitation they can seek waivers of those standards assuming they've
provided the required level of affordable housing and if they do that the council has to approve it.
Well what does that mean let's say the point of waiver on the height limit so can they go 50 stories
in theory it does mean that but in practice it generally does not work that way because the
cost of construction gets so much greater as especially as you go over Jay's better at answering this
question but I think the current level is if you get over seven or eight stories it's a different kind of
construction that has to come into play and so what has been you know what you see all up and down
El Camino right now are these four to five six seven story buildings which those are the ones that we're
affordable if you talk to developers right now again this is not a less alto skills issue but it is everywhere else
even those kinds of developments are not affordable right now so that's why you've seen such a slow down
in the construction of those because they're very hard to make economically fee so you know so there
is no height limit in that case is what you're telling me the limit is really purely economic
that's correct and there's the same thing applied to setbacks like can they go right up to the property line
they can get development standards to waive setback requirements as well too
okay I don't have any further questions anybody else no
can we open it up to public comment it's a long day anybody online not me here all right
well close public comment bringing back to council I assume you need a motion for us to
we need a motion to waive reading and introduce the ordinance and then if that gets approved it will come
back to the council for adoption at the next next regular meeting I can do it all right
I move that we waive the reading and introduce the ordinance as noted in item seven f
second okay we have a motion in a second
council member mark yes council member sworn yes council member tanka yes vice mayor Tyson mayor potato yes thank you
hey on to item seven g thank you council
thank you mayor we'll be looking at the wireless facility renewal at 26140 do ball way
here is the project site 26140 do ball do ball comes off of rubbleeter road to the south
the project site is west of 280 and is also the site for the religious institutions Saint Luke's
chapel in the hills photo of the wireless facility under consideration for the renewal
the scope of work is a renewal and propose amendments to the conditions of approval there is no
proposed modifications to the facility so draw your attention first to the three photos at the bottom
there are three separate wireless facilities at this one project site the only one up for consideration
this evening is highlighted yellow right there in the middle so starting from left to right on the left
there is a wireless facility that is hidden within the flagpole in the middle the permit under consideration
there is a wireless facility
In the church steeple, and then on the right there is a cell tower that is designed as a tree.
So the church steeple facility was approved in 1997. That CUP requires renewal every three years.
It was last renewed in 2005. So it is expired. However, it has been in continuous operation since it's been constructed.
And that is the reason for the renewal requests this evening.
This was brought to the planning commission at its April 13 meeting of this year where the commission unanimously recommended that the city council approve the renewal and modifications to the use permit.
We'll take a look at those modifications to the conditions on the last slide.
The public notice for this CUP renewal was again published for the city council 500 feet to all the noticing radius with 500 feet to all properties.
No public comment was received.
And with that involved in the planning commission's recommendation for approval.
Staff recommends that the city council adopted resolution, the attachment one, making a categorical exemption determination under SQL, pursuant to section 15301 subsection B.
And approve the conditional use permit subject to conditions or approval.
Those two amendments that I referenced that the commission has already recommended approval of are to increase the renewal term from three years to ten years.
At ten year appeared more lines with the town's modern practices when it comes to CUPs.
And then also modifying the requirement for T mobile to produce a radio frequency emission report every year, changing that to add staff's direction, but no more than once per year.
But that I'm here for any questions. Thank you.
Okay. Any questions?
All right. Public comment.
Anyone online?
No mayor.
All right. Close public comment when you're back to council.
Anybody want to make a motion?
I can make it. We can just see I move that the.
Accept the staff's recommendation regarding adopting a resolution, making a categorical exemption.
Determination under SQL, pursuant to section 15301 B and approve the conditional use permit.
Subject to conditions of approval.
Increase renewal terms from three to ten years and modify RF emission testing from end requirements to add staff's discretion, but no more than once per year.
All right. We have a motion in a second.
Councilmember Mark.
Yes.
Councilmember Sly. Yes.
Councilmember Tanka.
Yes.
Vice Mayor Tyson.
Yes.
Mayor Vatija. Yes.
Thank you.
All right.
Moving to new business.
Discussion and direction regarding a potential Western community barn master plan.
I have a short presentation.
So this is going to.
It's a question of.
Council direction. So there's no motion or action that needs to be taken.
So a review of the current process of how staff addresses improvements at the barn.
Every year staff goes out and meets with the concessionaire.
And we compile list of all the items that we could potentially include.
It within two lists.
So as if you recall from the last meeting when we were discussing the VDE contract.
She does have a set of maintenance hours with our crew.
So within the two lists are the items that could fall with.
That could be addressed by those maintenance hours or ones that need to be put into a larger scale CIP.
And as a reminder, we did include a commitment in the VDE contract.
There is going to be an ongoing CIP in our budget anywhere from 50 K to 100 K.
So in this most recent year when we went to talk with Tory.
This is what the items that were identified and we've put them into the two lists.
So things that could be addressed under the normal maintenance hours have to do with some addressing.
So the road in activity and shed repairing erosion at the bottom of the hill.
And a general main main that's in clean up of a pasture.
But items that fall under a larger scale project include things from the place in the paddocks.
There's concerns about the barn doors, stall doors.
There's feeding pasture that may need to be built.
She addressed improvements that need to be made to the roof.
A possible removing of security wires with our bayon.
Security system that's up there.
There's a larger list of items and staff doesn't really have a good idea of the cost of these CIP items.
We estimated ones that we knew off the top of our head, but there's a lot of unknowns.
So the purpose of tonight is to discuss if there's a better way to handle these items that it continually come up year to year.
So option one is how we're doing it right now, a case by case approach.
Or as I mentioned, Tory comes and talks to us.
We identify certain things and we put it on the CIP, but it's really we're just picking what we think is the highest priority at the time using staff's best guess and Tory's best guess.
Another option would be to explore a master plan.
And we did this similar to the corp yard.
A master plan would take in with an external consultants expertise, everything that's happening at the barn.
All of the operations, the training, the long term capital improvement, prioritization, everything like that.
And it's acknowledging two things that staff is not an expert in barn operations and the concession area is not an expert in facility maintenance.
And the exit consider, this is not on the work plan.
We needed to go back out and see what this would actually cost.
There was a asked the public works director who has experienced in facility master plan.
He gave a range of around 60K to 130K given the scope of the contract.
There's no immediate impact on tonight's decision from the city council.
We're really just looking at is this something that you're interested in.
Should we consider a better way to handle the improvements at Westwood barn.
So that's the question that's before the council.
And staff could come back with if you're interested in learning more about a master plan.
We could come back with the cost impacts of the work plan and all of that.
We just wanted to see if this is not something you wanted to spend staff time on.
That concludes staff report here for questions.
Any questions from council?
Are we looking for comments?
Questions?
Disquestions.
No.
Any questions?
I've got a question.
What problem is this solution supposed to be addressing?
Is it things not working right now or why are we doing this?
It's admitting that we don't have a long term plan.
And we understood all of the issues that needed to happen at the facility.
We planned the mall.
We worked out the finances of them.
It was a more robust plan.
At the Westwood barn.
We don't really have that as I was trying to share with the process we're doing right now.
It's just a case by case year to year.
This is the funds we have.
We're asking toward what she prioritizes.
The question also came up because we heard that she thinks that the roof needs to be replaced.
But she also mentioned she's not a facility expert.
So it's all of these questions of, you know, what is the actual status in the integrity of these things around the barn?
And that's what we're trying to answer.
It seems like you can get a roof assessment for a lot less money.
And then because that's a major piece of money to fix that if it needs to be replaced.
But I don't think you need a whole plan to figure out whether or not the roof needs to be replaced.
But whether or not the roof needs to be, I don't know, it just seems like a lot of money that's not going to maintenance that.
Yeah.
That is one portion of it.
Another, as we're going through the VD contract staff also realized we're not an expertise in arena maintenance.
There was a lot of components to flipping, laser and replacing of equipment.
All of that, which we're not an expert in that either.
So we know that there are people that are and that really do know that the, how, what mean this is needed for those and how much duration you should have run for those types of arenas.
So there's all these unknown questions we don't know.
And we're just saying there is someone who does have that information and this is a way to get that.
But whenever the putting was installed in the arena is that you had a vendor and they probably have the expertise that can tell you what you need to do to maintain it.
And then wouldn't cost you anything.
So because if they install these all the time, they know exactly what it's going to take to keep it up over the years.
I just drew.
Anyone else?
All right, let's open it up to public comment.
Like council members swan said, I think it would be a mistake to spend a lot of money.
Trying to determine what's to be done as opposed to spending the money on getting the work done.
I think Tory has the expertise to handle the things outside the building, but I think with regards to the building structure itself.
I think she probably needs some assistance in that regard.
I agree if you need to, if you think you need a roof, you can get a roof or to come out and give you an estimate for free.
You don't have to actually pay for that.
But I do think it might be helpful to have someone take a look at the building and what things need to be done.
But I think that would be something in the 10 or 20 thousand dollar range, not something in the 60 to 160 thousand dollar range.
So I would say concentrate on the building.
See if there's something that needs to be done as far as the outside is concerned.
I think Tory has the expertise to determine what needs to be done in those areas.
And I think they're much kind of more obvious and important to do.
So that's my thought.
Thank you.
I just want to say one more thing though.
The town receives about a quarter of a million dollars from the operations of the barn.
Okay, so we've set aside 75 roughly 50 thousand dollars a year from the from the cell tower committed towards structural and other changes there.
But we also get a quarter of a million dollars a year from Tory from operating that barn.
We've just put that money into the general fund.
I'm not saying that's wrong.
I'm just saying some of that money couldn't could be used towards maintaining the barn.
So thank you very much.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
Nobody else?
Anybody on line?
No mayor.
All right.
We'll close public calling and bring it back.
Okay guys.
What we need here is something called a reserve study.
And what that does is it takes a look at a building.
It looks like at every piece of the building.
And then it determines how many more years it has left.
Now this is the expertise that you're looking for.
And then it determines what the replacement cycle is for each one of those items.
We don't have that.
And that barn, I mean, it needs somebody to look at it in that sense of the word reserve study.
But the barn was totally redone 20 years ago, so it's not like it's okay, so it doesn't have air conditioning, you know, it doesn't have a lot of...
No, no, no, no, in reserve study, they have this unit, whatever it happens to be, or let's say it's a roof, right?
You have a so many years on a roof, you have a lapse, like, let's say it's a 40-year roof and you've gone 20 years.
You still have 20 years.
So what you want to do is you want to fund for that rest of the 20 years.
And what this does for the city is that it gives them an idea of what needs to be replaced when,
when the maintenance items need to come.
And if we just keep up on that, what you'll get is something that's automatic.
It will come to the council, oh, this is what's happening with the barn, this is the money that we should place into the barn, because of this particular item.
Now, some items don't need to be replaced in the barn. Others do.
I'm not an expert in this area, but maybe that person that you're talking about, Cody, is an expert.
And he does know the appreciation, life spans of each component of the barn.
I like the, sorry, I'm looking. I like the idea of preparing for the future and having a systematic plan about
when these things will come up and having a plan on how to address them, but 100,000 esteem excessive.
And if that same money could be used towards actually replacing these things, I think it'll be better.
Could we come back to this? And maybe you can break it up in different segments.
And for example, the rules get a rule for if it's a building, get a contractor.
Maybe then we can make a domination of whether we really need a consultant and for a limited issue,
as opposed to just getting an overarching consultant for everything.
You know, earlier today, we talked about who's going to maintain that tank house or water tank.
And then we talked about the green sheets and what's important in this town. And I look at that barn.
And I think now that's a treasure. That's a treasure of this, and if I had a treasure like that, would I just do a,
if I've got it when something breaks, I fix it sort of approach. I say, no, I'd have a plan.
Now, I don't know that I like the $160,000 for a plan. And I'm just, I would say,
I think we should have a plan. We should look at it long-term.
Let's see if there's a way to do that, get for less money. We talked about who are the experts are.
And frankly, when I look down on the agenda for item 11 B on cherished loss out of those hills,
I'm thinking, if I were getting asking town residents to fund something to create a fund for that building
reserve, that's where I'd put it. And people would donate for that, I think. But I'm getting, I'm mixing
two subjects together. But my short message is, I like a plan that's toned, that's dialed down.
I mean, this is the reserve that council member talked about is essentially a budgeting document.
So we need to say, okay, this is how much we expect to spend on each thing, each aspect of the project of the building.
And this is when we have budgeted for it. So whether it's, you know, termite work or whether it's a roof work or whatever.
Right, you, you have certain projected expenses associated with that.
I think we're all in agreement that is a good thing.
So I support the master plan and I support creating this reserve budget.
It's a matter of how much you're going to spend on it.
And to me, 10K should do it because all you need is somebody to walk around like a building inspector to walk around and say, okay,
okay, these things need work and these things will probably need work in exures.
And that's it. So I don't, I think you're on the right track.
I just think that needs to be a zero removed somewhere.
So this is the direction we were looking for.
Perfect.
All right. So how are we done with that?
Yes.
Okay, great.
All right.
Next is the update on the alternative sites at our committee from Vice Mayor Tyson and myself.
If I could be promoted to presenter, I could share some slides.
Okay, I'm going to talk about we kind of introduced this a little bit last time.
And we can also give us some questions. We went back and looked at it some more. I'm going to let Vice Mayor Tyson kick it off.
Yeah, just in terms of background, I think it's important for people to realize without us sharing really too much information about the whole charter that we had.
And that was let's go out.
That's identified our souls of any interesting size and investigate property ownership and how amenable each property might be toward looking at being resumed to multifamily.
And we looked at things like topography distance from resources such as such as sewer and then also access to transit and I have to say one of the thing that's striking is we didn't get great response.
In fact, we had very limited response and and so the context of our continuing this work is we have an ongoing need to identify these sites and they're not rushing to to us.
So we have to find some way to how do we equalize this to and a part of it might be communication, but part of it might be some financial thing to sort of reduce that that overhead or that that barrier that keeps people from approaching us for that issue.
I don't know increasing the zoning of their property. So with that, I think I'll hand it back to the mayor and continue this.
Yeah, so just to reiterate that nobody came to us and said I want you to look at my property for our multifamily.
We actually went and we got lists from residents, we got lists from this the town.
List of vacant sites and so on sites with older homes and we went and actually talked to the owners and and we only got like a couple of people who said, yeah, I'm interested in discussing this more and now even even with that.
That they were that numbers also started to dwindle a little bit. So bottom line is it's really hard to find people who are willing to engage with us on this.
But there are like one or two.
So the question that we have is let's say we found somebody with was willing to have to entertain rezoning their their site their parcel.
What kind of support if any should the town provide?
And so one of the key point is if the town expense resources there needs to be a way to eventually recover those costs.
Or we have to get some kind of in kind benefit and the in kind benefit might be that we get you know affordable housing on that site because that's a real challenge.
And because you know fundamentally we don't want to do this with a large number of sites because we don't have the bandwidth to do it anyway there aren't even a large number of sites available.
You know we we when we're looking at candidate sites we have to look at terrain we have to look at evacuation we have to look at fire risk access availability of sewers and utilities impact of traffic.
All of that needs to be looked at so we have to kind of vet the sites before we can say okay we're going to maybe consider working with one of the owners on that.
So we have a proposed methodology that we'd like to share which is you know.
We recommend that the adult committee look at these candidate sites based on the factors that we just shared you know the suitability of that site.
And and then also share the information about that site with the housing element.
Implementation committee which of course is not yet formed but assuming is formed we would share it with them.
And then we would present the candidate site or sites to the full council of the public meeting you wanted to be a transparent process.
We don't want to make anybody feel like we're doing this behind you know closed doors one be completely open about it.
But with the neighbors being notified because then it's not transparent the people around don't know.
Well we would do it a public hearing how how much notification what kind of notification you want to do around that is absolutely valid question.
And so the council would then hear hold public hearings to get feedback on that site is a multifamily location.
So that's the proposed methodology.
So if the town decides that the site makes sense for multifamily housing the town can proceed with the rezoning.
Typically when when we're doing a rezoning it's up to the owner to bear the cost associated with the rezoning there's just a sort of normal process.
But because of housing element issues when we have to create sites for housing element we bear the cost of the rezoning.
So the council can elect to wave these rezoning costs and again it was only be done to a limited number of sites so the council could say we're only going to do this for two sites maybe.
But these sites would then become available for future housing element cycle needs and I'm going to share with you some information about future housing element cycles that I think is very important.
So the rezoning costs you know the the rezoning costs would be recoverable when the owner either sells the property or if they proceed with development we would say you need to pay back those rezoning costs.
So the town would give a waiver for the rezoning but then if if the development went forward or property was sold we would recover the costs.
We would also need language to recover the waived fees in the event the owner kind of walks up the aisle with us and leaves a standing at the altar and says you know I thought it was a great idea but guess what I'm not going to do it.
We would need to recover the cost at that point so they have to be an agreement in place.
So that's essentially the methodology that we're we're sir why you share with council but with that I want to share one other thing with the council that I discovered the aback meeting that I was at today.
And that is that the new cycle the new rena cycle is going to be pretty challenging.
So here are a couple of slides that were shared today.
In the past when each city considered the regional rate of housing like to determine whether it was affordable or or low cost they would look at rates of similar regions.
Going forward they're actually going to compare to the national rate which means that the what what is considered low cost be very different in you know basically be much lower.
And now they're actually going to include two additional tiers that were not there before before we had the low and very low income you know housing.
Now there's going to be an acutely low category and an extremely low category so two more categories of low income housing.
So what I'm trying to tell you with this is the demands of low income housing are going to increase and what is and and and the definition of low income housing is going to get.
Lower right so you're going to have you know even lower costs housing never going to need to provide.
So with that I want to throw it open to.
Council for any questions bring back the earlier slides.
How you ever going to make.
Building a building.
Possible with those kind of.
Low rental rates.
Zero to 15% you're going to charge them 200 dollars a month.
To move in and.
Who's going to build it if you don't have state the states going to have to build that that's not going to be a private development.
I'm just telling you what I heard today at a bag.
I mean.
This is what's coming down from each city.
I don't think they've been particularly concerned about how we're going to do what they're asking us to do they're just telling us what they need us to do.
We need a rebellion for that and it's just it's not going to work.
Yeah.
So any other questions.
Well, it's good to flag what's coming but there'll be many.
No recreation.
I mean there'll be many changes.
It's a lot many times before it's solidified.
So I think it's good to be a verified but I don't think we need to act on this right now.
Well, the question also is if we have somebody who's interested in proceeding.
Do we say no not right now, in which case it may not be available, you know.
We're seeding with what.
Oh, sorry with with waving fees for rezoning limited property for limited number of parcels and down.
That's the proposal here.
How much are those fees? What are we talking about in terms of numbers?
Yeah, it really depends on the the site, but you know roughly we've spent probably a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars on rezoning costs.
It depends how convinced we are because from us patterns.
The moment there's a public hearing.
We, you know, we don't follow through.
I mean, there has to be, I don't know.
It's tough. I mean, it's tough anyway, but what will happen is we give them a commitment.
And the rezoning costs only come in once has been approved.
So nothing happens.
So the town would wave the fees for rezoning.
And if the owner sold the property or developed the property, they would pay us back those fees.
No, and if they, if they went forward with the whole process and stop just before it got completely resumed.
And stay with that.
But because of the obstacle before that, it's having this approved in a public meeting with all the neighbors.
Right.
It gets derailed even before it gets red point and will the resident be okay being attacked by all the residents.
And we, we've actually discussed that with at least one owner and they have indicated they're okay with moving forward.
So in the event that they're okay with moving forward.
We've explained to them that there's going to be potentially acrimonious public hearings.
If it gets approved, I'll be okay with it.
The word is a low price to pay for, you know.
Here's your right.
We face residents issues and people are different levels of awareness.
And I think part of the, the wording here is to say, we're thinking long term and we're being proactive, which I hope would sell well with the housing people that are judging us in the mid cycle to say,
Here's something else we're doing.
We have the sites we need for this cycle and right now 2026 we're looking at the next cycle way before it's even set.
So I think we're kind of flinging out stuff people talked earlier in this meeting about being creative and trying new things and that's I think where we are to say,
Well, we can sit here and be moan our fate or think of what else can we do that's within our power and within our budget to at least per something and maybe that won't work.
But at least we know we tried something.
The real question is what are the financial impacts from the Sacramento mandates or if I don't know if these are mandates yet or they're proposing.
However, there are going to be significant financial impacts. And I was wondering if anybody
mentioned no unfunded mandates at all. Because I could see that it's going to be really
difficult to develop these types of buildings. And there she has some of you just give the land
and the building, not just the land.
Well, the the town doesn't build. So we can only resume. And, you know, at the end of the day,
the the viability of a site or building affordable housing is an economic decision
that's out of our hands. So, you know, all we can do is follow the state law to make
available sites, identify sites and say these are the sites we've identified. We resound them.
And they're available for multifamily housing. What's on my mind is that we may need to issue
bonds as a town. Because we don't have enough money for the infrastructure for the sewer systems.
We don't have it for the roads. We don't have it to grade. We don't have it in the properties that
we have in town. We don't even we can't even get the land. So actually the criteria that we're talking
about here, we would be looking at things like availability of sewer evacuation, you know, the
ability of the road in that area to handle traffic and so on. So those would be criteria that we would
use. And in fact, you know, we are looking at those kinds of criteria. So that we only bring
sites to the council that pass those screens. Right? Really difficult. Yes, it is. That's why we need
the town as well. That's why we've only been able to find one or two of these. Yeah. But can
ask, how do you resume if you don't know what your housing requirements are? Do you resume at a 20
unit sprayer or 40 or 60 or 80? You know, how do you resume it if you don't know what your
rezoning for? I would assume that you could resume based on today's criteria and, you know,
when the new housing element comes along, you can change it. But at least you've locked in a site
now from a family housing. But if the residents agree, if the owner agrees, the residents are
around agree, that's just do it. I mean, $200 if all that goes through and it gets approved.
You know, I don't think there's going to be a grand slam here. I think it's going to be a range of
options. And so your question about not knowing how many it's going to be is a fair one. But I think
that relates to who are in charge of making sure we retain a certain character of this town
would say, well, whatever it is, we're not going to build 80 units to an acre, no matter what. And so
it's going to be how many sites do we need of this type to get to whatever number that is? So that number,
I think doesn't approach effect our approach nearly as much as our sense of what have we got now
in terms of say 16 to 24 per acre and how far can we take that? Yeah. I think what we're looking for is
a decision from the council about whether we can engage with a couple of such
property owners in town under the criteria that we've laid out. In other words,
they're on board. We would take it to the housing element implementation committee. We would bring it to
council. We would send out notifications to residents to neighbors and we would proceed with a possible
rezoning. And if after the council, after the public council meeting council says yes, we should go ahead
with this because it meets various criteria. Then we would proceed with a fee ever and with the recovery
options that I mentioned earlier. So what we're looking for from the council is whether we should
proceed with the owner owners that we have talked to so far on this basis. But if you
reason say for 20 units per acre and then we find we need 40 and you go back and you've said you've got to pull
a scab off again and go to all those residents that they will, you know,
but thought about before. I think I think the point earlier, I think that's about a point. But here's the thing
right now for the next housing cycle, we have nothing in terms of a new site. And what we're trying to do
is be proactive and find additional sites. So the problem of, as you were describing in dripping off the scab,
it's probably not as painful as as then trying to figure out if we still have availability of
those sites or not. It's kind of one of those strike while the iron is hard situations. If we have a
couple of people right now who say we're willing to reason should we use that or should we just sit back
and hope that maybe they'll be around in two years. That's the, that's the question.
I could just add one comment to just to remind the council when we went through the last housing
element cycle. One of the criteria that HCD looks at is the willingness of the property owner
to be a participant in this. And so this program also does bring forward potentially willing
property owners. It doesn't mean that there will be community consensus. You might have community
opposition. You might not decide to do it, but but this kind of program does also address one of the
issues that is of importance to HCD that you have property owner involvement and support for the change.
So I don't know if we should entertain a motion on this or just get council direction. I would
entertain a motion to if the council's desires to give the ad hoc committee the authority to
proceed with what you're seeing on the screen today. And there should be some council should give some
initial direction to the initial budget authority that you do that. So if you wanted to say up to $200,000
or something like that, you could do that as well. Okay. So I move. All right, we get a second,
second. All right. Councilmember Mark. Yes. Councilmember Swine. Did you need public comment?
Oops. You can take. Sorry. Yeah. You should take public comment. Yes. Sorry. I'm the time of
that. Sorry. Sorry. I was hoping up public comment. Yeah, forget it. And to go speaking as a
private citizen, but you can beat our records to be honest with you. No, this is I feel like the housing
element implementation committee. That's what this is supposed to be about bringing it with them. I mean,
I know you're trying to strike a deal, but you know, if you act too quickly, you can end up in the
Sims dilemma that we were last year going through this whole development agreement and everything else.
I think you need to proceed cautiously. And you have a few different viable options through
between the friends of the hills. You get your cherished LAH. You've got the housing element,
an implementation committee that needs to get up and running. And I know you've got great candidates.
Just do it. Get them going. But for you to start negotiating ahead of even giving the public
committee's a chance. But we're actually sorry. We're actually not negotiating. We're just engaging
with owners and the ideas that we would then bring. Once we have vetted the owners. Well, you're talking
money and you're talking. No, we're not negotiating. No, no, we're not talking about it. Sorry,
Mr. Nicole, let me explain. We would just have a conversation with the owner and say, are you
interested? They say yes. We would take it at the housing element implementation committee, which is exactly
what you said. We would not spend a dime yet. We would then bring it to council. Have a public meeting,
assuming everybody's on board with that. And then we'd send notification to the neighbors. And at that
point, if the public meeting, the council says votes to go ahead, that's when we would start spending money.
Okay, I just want to make sure that you include all the powers that be that want to be helpful in this.
And I know you're trying to strike that. I don't know where it's hot, but that comes with a lot of
well, they're welcome. I mean, certainly, we would go with the with the town committee,
the housing element implementation committee is a recognized town committee. So,
recognized body of the town. We will engage with them and the friends of the hills or anybody else
is welcome to participate in public process. Again, if you're having a dialogue, I think Brigitte
brings up a very important point. The council made a decision that the council's subcommittee
would no longer be negotiating of doing this. It would be the residents of the town. I think we should
stop doing all of this. I think let's form it. Absolutely. We formed a committee,
appoint the members, let them do it. We said clearly, this should not be by the council,
this should be by the people for the people of the people of the people. I think we're taking control and
power. We're actually, we're all we're doing. Mr. Tanka is, all we're doing is asking,
asking property owners if they have an interest in this. But I think that's overreaching.
I think this is going to be my opinion, your opinion. My opinion is it's overreaching.
Just to ask them if they have an interest. Yes, because you made a decision that going forward is
would not be the subcommittee because the residents were upset. They didn't like the fact that
subcommittee was going ahead and doing this and excluding them. They wanted this to be something. Let me
finish. They said this, they wanted this to be something that the residents of the town decide
and explore for themselves and we decided to back out of it saying, yes, because anything we do
will be looked upon in a different light. So when the residents of this town
identified the properties, reach out to the owners, come to us and say, hey, how about giving this
the concessions? I think it will go down better than us bringing all of this to my opinion. And you know,
you know, my opinion, Carita is nothing will happen. Nothing will happen. And I will tell you
from having an experience. The residents will do it. Nothing will happen if you do it. I mean, I don't
think this is the decision that council need. So I mean, I fear who represents, who represents
the town and the interests. I mean, part of this will be a driving, let's face it, property owner is going
to face some tension with neighbors, which they may care about more or less. They also stand to have
a benefit in the value of their property through all of this. And for them to get to that point, though,
I think there needs to be more than just a town citizens calling up and saying, hey, you're interested
in doing this. So I will say from having been involved with this process, there is a certain
involvement to having somebody with some authority in the town. In other words, the subcommittee,
which you're saying shouldn't be doing things like this to go say, we, this would really help the town,
can we engage in a conversation? I think you're going to get that response and you're not going to get it from
subcommittee. There's a point that come back and tell us this, that hey, it's not working.
Maybe we need a council member to work with us because we also want your planning commissioner.
Thank you. That's finished. Sorry, let's finish the public comment. I'm sorry for interrupting.
No, no, I just had just one question there. Because I feel like if you're starting an engagement of a
conversation with somebody like a coal call, you know, either you can make a break it just for that first
initial meeting. And that's the part that I'm concerned about. Is that in first initial contact
point, can make a break? And I don't have an answer for you on that one. But I feel like you're already
bypassing the housing and implementation you're going to need. And I'll just leave it at that. It's late.
I'm trying to think clearly here for you, but just word a caution. That's all I'm saying. Next.
I think the two parties may not be understanding one another. I think what you're trying to say is
you're going to offer to this, to this property owner, the fact that you're going to wave the
internal internal fees. If the project is going to go forward, it's not that this,
these, the stuff that they add to our committee is promising to do that without the acceptance
of the of the town. What they're saying is, if you're going to proceed forward, the terms are going
to be that assuming this other committee finds this property acceptable and advisable to have the
development there, that will wave your fee. And that's the inducement to try and get the property
owner to want to come to want to come forward. They're not promising that the ad hoc committee
isn't promising that the project is going to go forward. They're just saying, if the project goes forward
that this is the, this is the, this is the concession that we're going to make. And the only thing I
guess I would add is, is, can we put any conditions on it? Because one of the concerns, of course, we have is that
they're going to overdevelop the property. So I don't know whether,
If you stick to the 20 units per acre, then we'll provide this concession assuming the committee finds
this property to be an acceptable property. So I'm just concerned, you may not be talking.
And maybe I'm, maybe I'm misunderstood.
I can respond to it once you finish the comments.
I don't have a problem with that.
If we have public calling, anybody online?
No, Mayor.
All right. Go ahead.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with that.
My concern is the feedback we got from residents in the past has been that the subcommittee
has taken over this thing.
We would like this to come from the committee.
The committee should be doing all of this.
And again, when we do that, they might eventually come to the same conclusion.
But when we you start as a subcommittee of the council starts spearheading it, the open ourselves to suspicion.
Yeah.
That's my concern.
I hear your concern, but I believe you're conflating two very different things.
The residents did not appreciate it when the town engaged with the owner of Twin Oaks without public disclosure.
The residents also had concerns when council member Mark and I were in negotiations.
Even though we were very transparent with the public about it.
When the fact that we were negotiating, I think was something that the residents were concerned about.
We are not talking about negotiating now.
We're talking about identifying a candidate and bringing that candidate to the housing element implementation committee.
And that's it.
So does it really not get to identify them too?
The committees welcome to identify additional properties.
We're not getting in the way of that.
We're just saying, we've already identified a couple of candidates.
And we would like to bring those to the housing element implementation committee and say, look, here's an owner.
Here's where the property is.
This is what it looks like, these are the utilities.
Why don't you guys give us your input on it?
And that comes to council.
Then you have a public hearing.
So all of the all the ad hoc committees doing is saying.
Here's an owner who is interested.
That's all ad hoc committee would do.
And I don't see any underhandedness.
I don't see any lack of disclosure or anything with that.
The moment that the owner says, yes, I want to talk.
It goes to the housing implementation committee.
So I don't see it.
I don't see it the way you do it.
I just see it because perceptions.
I know that that committee that we appoint is going to get all right up.
It's already a point in.
We've already engaged.
Nobody has come forward and said, this is a terrible thing.
And the next.
All that if you told me that you already pointed a committee, you already.
We already have an ad hoc committee.
It was appointed committee's ad hoc committee's appointed.
That's what George and I are presenting to you.
No, no, I'm talking about the commission.
She's talking about the standing committee that we haven't appointed.
Talk about that.
What is your concern about that?
I just said.
We said the residents came to us and said there was a decision to be made last time.
Well, we have a committee of the council that will do all of this work.
Or will we have a committee of residents with the planning commission that will do the work.
A decision was made that we will have a committee of residents with the planning commission.
Who will do this work?
So when the subcommittee of the council starts getting re-engaged and bringing things to them.
My belief is that it will change their perception.
Well, I don't agree with that because all we're saying is here's a person who is interested in rezoning.
And you know, they're open to it.
And that's it.
So if people are suspicious at that level, we've got bigger problems.
So I don't see the same concern.
So I think I think to to Mr. Madison's point, we need a decision from the council.
Whether we should move forward and identify these property owners and bring them to the housing element implementation committee.
Or whether you want us to sort of quit.
My recommendation is we bring them.
You know, we bring them because they're going to give us additional sites.
Okay, we have a process.
The process is going to take multiple steps a lot of time.
And I think that there needs to be like a pipeline of people who have these properties to go to the implementation committee.
And if that's all you're doing.
I think I'm okay with that because we're not going to stop the process because we don't have the committee.
What we'll do is we'll lose the time and we don't have that much time.
Basically, I suggest we have a motion and a second.
And also, let's face it.
I said before, there's no silver bullet.
This may not work.
Let's let's keep trying other things to as we go.
But let's let's not sit here and be moan our our situation and say someday I hope some way will come up with a solution.
Here is an approach.
I think let's give it a try and that's why I seconded it.
All right.
Why me was a motion.
I made the motion.
I still move.
It was a second.
And then it was this.
This slide with 200,000 dollars.
Okay.
Well, 200,000 dollars.
All right.
So that's the motion and we have a second.
Yes.
No.
I'm sorry.
Finish public comment.
I'm sorry.
We cannot hear you, Muscatly.
Would you like to come to the microphone?
Mayer, if I made that the council's action is simply establishing a budget.
Yes.
It's not.
It's not spending anything.
We heard a lot about the budget today and we're under budget and all of a sudden we have a council that's doing this is a volunteer.
You are pay also.
And now why are we spending $200,000.
So I think the.
Tell me about the housing element funds.
Where did those come from?
Operation.
Yeah.
So it was in previous buses.
A budget cycles part of a standing CIP.
But that has never been concluded now.
It's an operational budget.
So you would look into the planning department to see the expenses for that.
And we don't have anything planned or how much do we plan for the consultant.
Yeah, there's nothing in that kind of budget cycle.
So this is also not money that we're actually spending its resources that we're spending right.
So we're saying.
If, in fact, what would happen is if the.
If the.
Canada would come forward if the council were to agree to move forward that particular property.
And and the and the candidates said the the owner said yes we would proceed spending the resources.
And then if they backed out we would recover those dollars corresponding those resources.
Yes, and all of that wouldn't come into play until the project is approved.
So you still go through your public hearing.
Right. All of that in the council takes the motion at that point where it has the go ahead.
That's where the money starts to be.
So we're not even right now we're not even talking about a dollar figure.
We're just talking about a process to identify these candidates and bring them to the housing element and
So I don't think.
Mr. Senator city attorney.
I don't know that we have a budget issue here.
I think we're just talking about a process for the adult committee to.
Bring candidates to the housing implementation housing element implementation committee.
That that that's fine. If the if the council watches to.
If the motion maker in the second wish to remove the reference to the 200,000.
I agree with Cody and and Jay about the and and the mayor with regards to the allocation of staff resources, but ultimately, like if you consider a zoning amendment, you have to do a publish notice.
So that there will be some modest costs.
Right.
That's a direct cost that's associated, but that can be decided.
That's part of a future budget discussion.
All right.
So we have a motion in the second.
I agree to that change.
It was a change to the motion.
We're not putting the $200,000 number rates.
Correct.
Okay. And Stan, you need to agree to that change to as the motion maker.
I did.
Okay. Thank you.
Amanda and I agree to that.
And that is the motion.
Okay.
Council member Mark.
Yes.
Council member swine.
No.
Council member Tanka.
No.
Vice Mayor Tyson.
Yes.
Mayor Patasia.
Yes.
The motion passes.
Thank you.
Can we take a five minute break.
Sure.
Okay.
Okay. We're back on the record.
And moving on to item nine B.
So are our same dual of Vice Mayor Tyson and myself.
We're on a ad hoc committee to work on.
Service for the town.
So we've been working with town staff.
And we've actually come up.
We've worked together and developed a survey of 20 questions.
That pertain to planning and building experience in town.
And we don't have to go through all 20 questions.
I just want to give you a rough idea here.
We'll kind of project where you're doing.
When did you start this planning or permitting process.
You know, did you require site development permit or a variance or anything special like that planning commission hearing.
We ask about the experience with the town's planning and building process.
For the easy to understand how to submit a complete application.
So on.
What channels of communication you used.
You know, what stages your project act.
How long did this permitting process take.
What would with the requirements clear.
And so on a bunch of questions like that.
We asked for what aspect do you think needs improvement, including those that don't need any improvement.
And so on.
So about 20 questions altogether in the last one.
I'll ask a couple of them is what what was your role in the project.
Would you be willing to be contacted.
And if so, how and and that's pretty much the survey.
So this has been reviewed by the city manager by the community development director and we've worked on it.
We think it's ready to go.
So the city manager would would take the survey and send it out to residents.
We compile the data and bring it back to council.
That's the plan.
But we're not looking for any definitive approval.
But we're certainly open to comments and feedback.
Just a common will be low costs.
We're proposing full forms.
Advertising through the weekly.
Normal streams.
So we're keeping it economical.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's good.
All right.
That's the end of that item.
In talking.
Let's see.
We should go on to staff reports.
The city attorney.
Nothing to report, Mayor.
City clerk.
Just to quick update.
The next general municipal election will be held on Tuesday, November 3rd,
2026 to elect two city council members.
Each to four year terms.
The election period begins with the nomination period.
And the nomination packets can be picked up at town hall.
Between the days of July 13, 2026.
And the election qualifying period will close on Friday, August 7, 2026.
You can make an appointment with me by email, by call, however you want.
And we can set that up.
If you need any help with any questions, we are happy to help set those
appointments up as well as well as we extended the period for the housing
element implementation committee to August the 12th.
I think August the 13th.
So if you're interested in that committee.
Please fill out an application.
If you have questions, we're happy to help you.
But if we could just just any applicants, we're happy to help.
Thank you.
Mr. Bradford.
Thank you, Mayor.
I wanted to report and you heard a preview of this earlier.
We were going through the budget conversation.
The town has been recruiting for an assistant planner.
We've made an offer to an individual.
They've accepted it.
And they're going through background right now.
As I also was previewed.
We are recruiting for a principal planner position.
And then one of the other milestones I wanted to acknowledge here is more
that our our team has been doing as it relates to annual reports.
Certainly the council is aware of the general plan and the housing
plan.
We've also done reporting for solar for we low for the Department of Finance and also
for the census.
So I wanted to give you a total of how many hours of reporting that we've done for this year.
But it's a substantial amount.
And it's the last report for this year, which we're very happy to be able to move on to some other more.
Thank you. Mr. Liu. So we welcome the new summer intern, Emily Zhang. She's a studying business economics
at New York University and she's been supporting the finance appointments through reconciliation,
audit and budget prep, compliance reporting and financial records management. We also preparing for
an annual audit with final field work scheduled in October. And then thank you for your supporting
the budget process. The printed budget books will be published and provided the council as well as
posted online over the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you. I see we have a public work
structure online. I'm actually going to be giving that report. Okay. So for public works,
the first item is the summer health pathways program project. And back in February, the town submitted
an ADA memorandum to the county rows and airports requesting an exception to those requirements
for the pathways on summer Hill. And we just did not receive a response, but thanks to
council member Tyson reaching out to the county. We did get a response finally this week and they said
that the ADA requirements could not be waived. Now we were the justification, additional comments
behind that we are waiting for their formal response and with more pushing, we got a commitment that
they're going to give the full explanation by June 26. So I believe that's next week.
As for the heritage house, we have set a date for the ribbon cutting of the heritage house. It's going to be
on August 19th from 3 to 5 p.m. I believe we confirmed availability and set out some calendar
invites and we're now going to be advertising it on the city manager's weekly and update about the
Parks and Recreation remodel project. Yes, yes, staff is continually working with M designs and they're
going through and developing concepts right now or aiming to go to committees either in August or
September with conceptual designs for that building. Switching now over to the city manager's report,
I wanted to give an update on the private security patrol RFP that it was being conducted
over the last two months. The town had solicited bids from private security companies in the area.
We got five responses to our RFP. I formed a small committee of a panel to conduct those interviews of
neighborhood watch leaders, a person from the HOA in the quarry, just really active people that
were had to interest in the private security patrols. And what we really found was
there's no one doing what we are asking for the here in Los Alto's Hills. We were hoping to see if
there were the vendor out there that had the experience patrolling a vat like nine square miles. It's something
equivalent land territory of what we are asking for a palli-american do do here and no one's doing that.
And so we've decided to work with palli-american extent their contract for three months until September 30th.
Not increased the budget. There was available funds. I just extend the term of the contract
and try to work and fine-tune those issues of how to optimize the routes, include more reporting,
have GPS location for all the officers, all of those things that have been identified over the past few
years of palli-american. So we're committed to work with them. So you can anticipate, I would say at the
September City Council meeting either a decision to extend with palli-american or we're going to be pivoting
to another company. We'll provide rationale at that time. I was requested to give an update about the
speed feedback signs for just as a reminder some of the locations that we had the existing signs were on
Roblita, Altamont, Alena, Moody and Prisma, different locations. But since we've I last gave my report,
we've gone resident feedback that there are other roads such as Ninoela and other portions of Altamont
that really needed to have some help. So we moved the sign around to a few more additional locations,
and that's where we saw the most improvement on those new locations. So Altamont near Padre Court
and the location on Manuela. Other than that, the findings from the data of the speed signs is a
remaining stat. It has an improved or decreased and so we're going to continue to monitor it and I could come back
later with more information on that. A quick note about the Sheriff's contract as noted before
we have engaged with Vasquez and company to kick off their overhead assessment and the three
contract cities as of last night have all approved of the extension. It was all the same. Saratoga was on their
meeting last night. So this morning we all submitted our extension. The county has it and also now the
three contract cities, legal teams are meeting with Vasquez as well as we're meeting with the county.
So there's several reoccurring meetings now happening within this 12 week extension that was just implemented.
The last piece I wanted to talk about was the sound study. So I did say that we engage with the sound study
and through Genesis as the company that was conducting it and this was a project of the EPRC.
We got a first round submission of the sound study. They looked at 17 locations and gave their first pass
where the town could consider placing those audible alerts and working with now a subcommittee of the EPRC.
We're going to fine tune that with a nods that 17 is going to be financially infeasible to do all at once.
So they're going to be fine tuning that and coming together with a potentially a request for one or two locations and the specific prioritization of where we should look first.
And that concludes my report.
Okay, thank you very much.
Now I'm going to council initiative items.
So I've been talking with we get a lot of requests. This is item 118. We get a lot of requests for
proclamations and I was talking with the city manager and we thought we should ask the council.
If there is a approach or a policy that we should use in deciding whether or which items to use proclamations for.
Are there any kind of criteria that we should use and we may or may not want to do that but so if we should discuss that.
And to add more clarity there is a current policy what the is two step. As soon as we were not following is where every proclamation is first
first to come to the council and then the council as a whole approves it and then at the following meeting is put on that agenda.
Yes, and that was what it was a put into the agenda packet.
The information in advance I think is just way overboard and you have proclamations are okay for boy scouts eagle and golden eagle words but no girl scouts awards are allowed and it's not to be.
No, it's not included in what is allowed so.
Girl scouts are not are out of the picture is not to be used for celebration or events that are not local or regional in nature we just did one for us it was not that 250 vaniversy is not local it's a it's a nationwide thing so if we're going to use that it needs to be totally revamped because it's totally out of date.
Totally useless as far as I'm concerned I would rather just throw it out and just keep going like we have been.
And Mike.
We can agenda is it for discussion because this is just it seems that we can just stop to come back with a proposal.
Yeah, but he need to give them direction. Yeah, in terms of do we want only local to be on local and national.
Yeah, I didn't come forward with the recommendation I didn't want to provide a little bit of clarity.
I think you're only looking at the resolution portion our policy also has commendations and under eagle scouts it does say young men and women who are residents of the town of Los Atos Hills who become Eagle scouts or golden arrow scouts may be recognized by the town through a certificate of commendation so our policy splits it up into.
Proclonations come commendations and commemorations so there's three different sections.
Girls never become Eagle scouts.
Yeah, they do. What do you have to do? Oh, that's new. That's new. Okay.
It's been new for a while. It's been a while. Well, they combine with Boy Scouts but that's a Boy Scouts turn anyway.
It's called Scouts now. It's not like what Boy Scouts. So they finally the.
The barriers broken. Yeah, but anyway, and we just did one for national events, you know, that's it.
So I think I think to council member Tancos point, let's agenda is it.
With this recommendation and then we'll discuss that in the August meeting. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I don't want to underdo it. I don't want to overdo it.
Okay. And so I think so having some winnowing process because I believe right now all it takes is one council member goes in and approaches somebody next thing. You know, there's a proclamation in front of us and I think that comes from and then we could get dozens of them.
We definitely need to be a little more thoughtful and selective. And I think it's a great intern bench marking project.
All right. Oh, yeah.
Right. Okay. Moving on to item 11B. I have to give council member Mark credit for this. He is the one
came up with this idea of the at least he was the one told me about this idea that we should form a non profit for the town to enable some of our
wealthy residents to contribute to town to various town goals or needs. And so I just did what you said should be done.
Along with a couple other residents. And so let me just share with you. We formed this organization called cherished
Los Altos Hills. And it's say it's an IRS 501 C3. It's an nonprofit. And you know, we have initiatives around safety around preserving our environment and so on.
I'll give you a little bit more detail on that. These are the current officers. I think you know the first two may may not know Dominic grow. He's on the finance investment committee.
And then this is sort of our stated purpose. Let me bring that up.
This is what we consider we are our purpose is to promote public safety, wildlife preparedness,
environmental stewardship, community development, infrastructure improvements, social quality of life
technology for the benefit of the town of Los Altos Hills. So the idea is that,
you know, residents could donate. They could earmark their donation for certain purposes. Like somebody could say,
I want to donate, you know, this money for improvements to western bar or I want to
contribute towards the new parks and Rick building or or whatever, right? So they could donate from a tax
preferred tax exempt account. Like if they have a donor account, I think what are those called
donor documents. Thank you. Or 401k. They could donate from that in a tax preferred manner and the
organization would keep those funds give them to the town for that purpose as well in the town needed it
or the organization might do something on its own. So one of the things that one of the thoughts we have
the one meeting that I was in town that had more residents than any other meeting ever
was the one that talked about rodents mice in the house. That was the most widely attended meeting
in town. So one of the ideas is to get a deal on all boxes and make those available to residents
because that's a good environmentally safe way to address the problem. So that's one of the ideas.
Another idea might be that we might collect funds to provide for additional private security
because as I think we all know we don't get 100% coverage over the course of the year and so if we could
buttress that with a little more private security donated by residents that would be a good thing. So these are
some examples where we're not, this is still early days, we haven't yet sort of formed up what we will and won't
do but the ideas to collect these funds will make them available for the benefit of the town.
So I just wanted to share that with the council. Thank you. We really appreciate that that's probably
one of the best things that you've done for the town period. Just make sure you have a test ID number if we do
and a second early IRA contributions come into that really well and also appreciate it's stock.
Right. Which might be a little bit of that in town. Maybe a little bit but I need some from my
pickle box horse. Just to let you know. Thank you. All right. Sorry little you have a question.
I think it's a great idea. Thank you for getting this through. But I have a question on who decides
what projects get supported. Does it go to the town council and the town council decides or you have
a board of evaluates projects. So there are a couple different ways we haven't yet thought that through
to speak totally transparent. The ideas that have come forth on that are of course if people
designate the fund for certain purpose would be used for that. If they say I'm just going to give you
a donation and trust you to use it.
We, there are a couple of different ways we could go. One is we could see, you know, what the public sentiment is. We could do a survey and say, you know, we have these funds, here are some possibilities. What do you, what do you prefer? Another way might be, you know, that we, if we, we may at some point have an advisory board, you know, we'll kind of probably people who are willing to donate.
They might say, you know, be, for example, if somebody said, well, I want, I really want to have a more community space in town.
And I'm willing to donate funds for you to buy a property in your town hall or somewhere else in town and build a community center.
This is very ambitious, but was giving you a kind of an idea on the other in the spectrum.
Cost a little bit point in the old boxes, but those are the kinds of things we might do.
But it's all centered around what's good for the town. What's what's the benefit of the residents?
Well, I want to apply to your efforts, I see that this could turn into a really great thing having been involved with nonprofits.
I hope you're thinking ahead to what kind of tax forms you need to file and who will manage that.
We've got some people with experience with that.
I should tell you, we haven't yet cashed a check for this, but we have gotten already a commitment for $100,000.
That's awesome. That's amazing.
That's really nice.
Way to go.
So that's all I have on that.
I think that brings us to the, okay, sorry.
Okay, I got to find the email on this.
Let's bear with me a moment.
Were you bringing up a presentation?
I'm trying to find the letter that we got requesting the letter support.
If it's at all helpful, I do have the letter that's proposed to send that I could share on the screen.
Okay. Go ahead.
Okay.
Yes.
Right. So I got an email from Alex Reep of openspace.org.
And the, the gentleman said that they're looking to get a letter of support for midmen's wildfire.
Well, I'm sorry, wildlandfire fuels reduction project in the cold creek openspace preserve.
And make a long history short.
They're looking for a letter of support to do that field reduction project in the cold creek area.
So who's jurisdiction is that?
County. Okay.
Because midfins been doing this on their land already.
So I guess the question is, is Council okay with sending the letter of support for that?
I can share the email that I got if you want to.
What my short answer is yes, this is very much like what we're doing within our own territory.
Right. So this was the, is the government affairs specialist at midmen.
And wants to see if we could support there efforts in the cold creek area.
Cold creek openspace preserve.
I, I'd support it there very experienced doing this kind of work.
So I think it would be good.
Do we need a vote? Motion.
Equino.
That would be fine.
All right.
So I would move that Council authorize a letter of support for this purpose.
Second.
Okay.
Are we going to vote?
Council member Mark.
Yes.
Council member Swine. Yes.
Council member Tonka.
Vice Mayor Tyson. Yes.
Mayor Petija. Yes.
Thank you.
That brings us to the very last item.
To have our, our vice mayor in waiting.
Sworn in as vice mayor.
I want to start by thanking.
Vice Mayor Tyson.
For is is.
Great service and I've really enjoyed working closely with you as vice mayor.
You've been a source of.
You know, good advice and council and I appreciate that.
You know, it's been really nice to work with.
So thank you for that and with that.
We'd like to get your sword and I believe you have somebody here to,
thank you for everyone.
And you never would agree to it.
If you know, not time at once.
Thanks.
When we,
Sworn 15 list of records at the longest.
That's why,
but we've got a good one.
It's all,
Okay.
And now it goes until 2.
I've been here.
If all.
Okay.
against all enemy sworn domestic.
If it's all enemy sworn and domestic,
I will bear two faith negligence.
Then I will bear two faith negligence.
To the Constitution, the United States.
And the Constitution, the State of California.
And the Constitution and the State of California.
I will take this obligation freely.
I will take this obligation freely without any mental reservation.
For purpose.
That being meant for all of those organizations and our purpose.
Of occasion.
But it is.
Now I will, well.
And faithfully.
And I will, well, be faithfully.
The judge, the duties of the office.
This guy is the duties of the office of councilmember.
A councilmember upon which I will talk to you.
You're not ready to dance, do you have one?
No, okay.
I'll find who it's I'm about to get.
I'm going to ask you one last time.
All right.
Congratulations, Linda.
Provise me.
And with that we will adjourn.
Wow.
Oh, we didn't make it to one.
Oh.
We did a couple of them.