Good evening. Evening everyone. I'm going to call to order the uh August
24th, 2026 meeting of the PaloAlto City Council. Madame Clerk, would you please
call the role? >> Of course. Council member Lowing
» here. >> Council member Rectal
» here. >> Council member Lou
» here. >> Mayor Vinker
» here. >> Council member Bert
» here. >> Council member Liths
» here. >> Vice Mayor Stone here for the record.
All present. >> Thank you, Madam Clerk. So, we'll move
first to item one, which is a special order of the day, which is to uh review
applications and select candidates to interview for vacancy vacancies on the
historic resources board. Madam clerk, did you have any introductory comments
you'd like to make?
» Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Nicole Bissell,
deputy city clerk. I'm joined by Mahani Aun city clerk and tonight we will be
presenting the applications for the historic resources board extended
recruitment. Included in the extended recruitment for
the historic resources board is three full-term vacancies expiring on March
31st, 2029. As for a quick summary of our recruitment timeline, scheduled
recruitment opened on January 13th and closed on February 18th with three
applications received for the HRB. City Council reviewed applications in March
and provided the clerk's office with direction to extend the HRB recruitment.
During the time period of extended recruitment, we continued additional
outreach and advertising efforts. One application was withdrawn and one new
application was received, bringing us to three total applications for the HRB. At
today's meeting, we are al ask asking council to review the current HRB
applications with interviews and appointments tenatively scheduled on
September 9th and 14th, respectively.
Go back.
This slide just provides a quick general refresher on council's current interview
selection process, noting that per the current process, all candidates would be
interviewed if there are six or fewer applications.
And moving on to our applicants, as mentioned, we currently have three
applications received for the HRB. Per the process on the previous slide, all
three candidates would typically be invited to interview. However, it is at
council discretion to authorize a different process if desired. Council
may also provide direction on continuing HRB recruitment efforts if desired.
However, as outlined in the staff report, further extending recruitment
may not be sustainable and could result in a lack of quorum for the HRB.
And I'll turn it back over to you, mayor.
» All right. Well, thank you to the city clerk's office and thank you to those
who have applied for the historic resources board. We appreciate that. Um,
colleagues, I'm told that we don't necessarily need a motion uh that there
that all of these applicants can proceed forward unless there are any objections.
[gasps] I've looked at them. They they seem solid uh for interview purposes.
So, now would be the time to tell me if you have any reservations about whether
at least one of them has the academic uh qualification or uh whether there are
any that you believe we should not advance to interviews.
Seeing no uh concerns, objections, or comments, um madame clerk, I think you
have the uh go-ahhead from the green light from council to move forward with
scheduling the HRB interviews. >> Okay. Thank you, mayor. Uh we will move
forward with scheduling. That date is tenatively scheduled for September 9th.
So, we'll work on that. >> Great. All right. Thank you. Well, we'll
look forward to that on September 9th. Moving on to agenda changes, additions,
and deletions. Mr. City Manager, are there any?
» We uh Thank you, mayor. We just had one small change on your consent calendar,
removal of item five, which will come back at a later date.
» Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, now we're going to move on to in-person public
comment for matters not on tonight's agenda. Madame Clerk, how many uh
speakers uh do we have at this point? We have one group speaker um or speaking
on behalf of a group of eight and then one individual speaker.
» Okay, let's go ahead with the uh regular time
amounts would that be three minutes and then for the group
» um let's go with eight minutes.
» Okay, our first speaker is Herb B.
Uh good evening. Uh recently uh the school board had a agenda uh where it
discussed uh its opposition to an ICE facility, immigration custom enforcement
facility in Gilroy and also had significant budget issues. uh when the
Palo Alto Weekly uh posted a news story about it, it was just about the ICE
facility and the public comments though were
about the budget. Uh and it occurred to me that maybe uh that wasn't the only uh
difference going on. And I'm not a member, I wrote a letter to the Weekly
uh with full knowledge that they could post it online, but they did not. uh and
I tried to uh put it in the Daily Post but the Deli Post has a policy of uh not
uh printing things from other newspapers.
Essentially, it appeared that the school boy may have been trying to focus
people's attention on the ice facility in Gilroy instead of paying attention to
the significant budget issues uh at the school board. Uh
although the public felt differently based on their comments,
uh the the weekly subsequently posted two news stories, one by the original
reporter which was only about the budget and one by the San Jose Post uh uh uh
paper uh which is only about the ice facility. It seemed to me there was one
other item that might be considered. That is if people are spending all their
time uh opposing uh a facility of immigration and custom
enforcement uh in Gilroy. That doesn't mean there's
not going to be such a facility. And I tried to think of where else it might go
and it occurred to me one possibility would be the Stanford Stadium. Thank
you. >> Our next speaker is Raymond G.
Oh no.
Good afternoon. My name is Raymond Gones and I stand here representing eight
community members that live here in Palato.
We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our prosperity do ordain and establish.
Those words were drafted through the lens of profound inequality. When the US
Constitution was drafted in in 1787, it was presented as a document for we the
people. But it was also built through compromises that protected the power,
property, and economic interests of those who already held influence through
enslaving Africans. The constitution promises of democracy
existed alongside a system that in excluded enslaved people, women, indigen
indigenous people, and many poor men from full political participation in
equal rights. Enslaved people were counted for representation while being
denied the right to vote, control their own lives, or claim their full humanity.
The original system con concentrated political power largely in the hands of
people who own property and in many cases other human beings. But the fabric
of American democracy did not evolve on its own. It changed because ordinary
people organized, resisted, voted, marched, worked, and demanded that the
nation live up to it stated ideals. Labor tilled the soil, built
communities, and sustained the nation. People denied freedom and representation
refused to remain invisible. They resisted, organized, and fought for
their humanity. Nearly 250 years have passed since the Declaration of
Independence proclaimed that all people are created equal. And more than 235
years have passed since the Constitution was signed over that time.
The citizens of enslaved people, people whose ancestors were forced to build a
nation designed to exclude them, have entered and led some of the highest
institutions in the United States. The White House was built in part through
the labor of enslaved people whose hands helped raise its walls while they lived
in servitude, denied freedom, and forced to endur despair. Yet they resisted and
generations later their descendants walk through those same halls as citizens,
leaders, and ultimately as a first family. When Barack Obama became
president, a house built in part by enslaved hands became a house filled
with hope. A reminder that even institutions created amid inequality can
transform when peoples organize, resist, and demand to be included.
History has taught us something important. A government can use the
language of equality while it policies still preserve inequality. A system can
appear open while remaining accessible mainly to people who already have
wealth, property, connections, housing security and influence. The challenge
does not exist only in Washington DC. It exists here in Palo Alto as well.
We as I represent the people are running for Palatoto council because we see a
city that is not being properly cared for. The lens of inequality from which
our nation has evolved has found ways to evolve with us. We do not have the same
laws or the same forms of exclusion that existed in 1787. But we can still see
the consequences of systemic inequality in our neighborhoods in our in our local
government. When I walk out my front door, I see people who are once my
neighbors now live gun unhoused across the street from places they once called
home, waiting for people to arrive for help. As members of my as members of
this community and through conversation with workers who travel in and out of
the city, we hear the same message again and again. People want to live here, but
they cannot afford to. They earn a workingclass wage and many feel that
living in Palo is simply impossible. We applaud we applaud Palato for
building affordable housing and for recognizing that we must address our
systemic homelessness crisises. But we must be honest about what affordable
means in Palato. Affordable to whom? Will the bartender attending the bar,
the workers serving our food, the caregiver looking after our elders, the
person cleaning our yards, the teacher supporting our children, or the workers
keeping our city running be able to afford to live here? Or will affordable
housing be available only to people who are already economically comfortable in
one of the most expensive places in this country?
Affordable housing cannot be just a label. It must be a real path to to
stability for people who serve this community every day. We want a Palato
where affordable housing is a springboard where workers can live near
their jobs, raise their families, build savings, participate in civic life, and
have a genuine chance to thrive here. We also hear from community members who
want to change a chance to join these political circles but feel their voices
will not be heard because they will because they are not wealthy,
well-connected or ivy educated. I have listened to local coffee shops as
residents describe their fear of speaking out against a genocide in
Garza. People are afraid to speak because they care about humanity and see
the world through the lens of love, compassion, and empathy and not hate,
division, and destruction. Local government is where democracy becomes
real. It is where decisions are made about who can afford to live here, where
the people have housing, whose children can remain in our schools, whose voices
are welcomed at city hall, and who is represented at this table. Palatoto has
a seven member city council. Council member Julie Lot is currently
the council's lone black member, and her decision not to seek re-election leaves
one of those seats open. At a time when black residents and working-class
families are increasingly being priced out of Palo Alto, the possible loss of
black representation would be more than symbolic. It would be
it would reflect a deeper pattern of systemic displacement.
If our neighborhoods become less diverse while our governing institution also
loses the voices of people most affected by displacement, then gentrification is
not only changing where people live, it is changing who gets to shape Paloto's
future. We cannot say that we hope that we value inclusion while allowing
communities to disappear from both our neighborhoods and our city council.
Ordinary people need representation. We are not career politicians. We are
community organizers. We do not seek political power. We seek people power. I
may be the one running for office, but I represent ordinary people who want every
person to thrive and to have a real opportunity to live here in Palo Alto.
We the people must mean more than the people who can afford to stay. It must
mean every worker, every family, every longtime resident, every unhoused
neighbor, every immigrant, every young person, every elder, every person who
believes Palatoto can become a city where everyone has a voice and a place
to call home. Whether or not we join you on this council, our ask is the same.
Let us build a Palo that works for all its residents. Thank you.
And that concludes public comment on items not on the agenda for in-person
public comment. >> All right. So, thank you to our public
commenters. That closed public comment for general public comment.
» No, it's closed, ma'am. It's too late. >> Oh, for general for items not on the
agenda. >> Oh. Oh, okay. So, do do you have it,
Madam Clerk? No, we closed
» very first things that's on there and I put it in for the other speakers.
» So, I did check the basket before we were go before we started and it is
» I should have tapped you on the shoulder. I think I'm allowed to speak.
» We close public comment after the first speaker speaks.
» I'm allowed to speak. >> Yeah. Not not unless it was in early and
apparently it was not. So, we will welcome comments by email. We'll be here
every week and we're happy to meet with you. Yeah. All right. So, I'm sorry.
Those are just the rules. We have to be fair to everyone. We want to hear from
everyone on the two topics. So, >> okay.
» No, I'd be happy to, but >> let me just double check. So, madame
clerk, when did you receive the >> I couldn't
be polite.
» I checked the basket after the first speaker finishes finished speaking and
your comment card was not in the basket. >> Okay. I just got finished saying I could
have tapped him on the shoulder and >> but but if she checked it just wasn't
there. So ma'am we thank you for coming and welcome you next time. All right so
we need to move on to the next item. We have very busy agenda tonight and we
look forward to hearing from you in the future. All right so um we are now
moving on to council member questions, comments, announcements. Before I do, I
do want to say thank you to all of you who went like this uh after the speech
because we do encourage tonight um whatever uh you know you want to do that
way, but we don't allow any audible comments in chambers whether it's a clap
or a vocalization or or something. So just know that that's how we do because
we want everyone's opinions to be expressed and no one to be intimidated.
So, the silent thing that we can see is fine, but we won't have audible comments
tonight. All right. So, with that, uh, colleagues, are there any council member
comments this evening? Council member Bird, I go ahead.
Take your time.
Thank you. Um, so I I would just like to ask if we can
have an update um perhaps at the uh next uh city manager comments at the upcoming
meeting on um there were we received u a letter on concerns over
um the operation at the home key project. Um and uh maybe we can uh have
an update on whether those issues that were asserted are are um significant.
And um and that's all I have at this time.
Thank you. Thank you.
Well, I would just like to thank all of those who pitched in to make the state
of the city event a great one last week. um it really reflected our one community
theme. So, we appreciate all the residents and guests who attended.
Really want to give a shout out to city staff uh who made it an extra effort in
a new venue that was unfamiliar to run it for the first time as a formal public
meeting and so thank you for that extra effort. The tech team at the school
district was phenomenal and so we really appreciated them and the district for
hosting. Reverend Koma Smith, the Mwakma Aloney tribal leaders, Miss Araniano and
Ms. Dominguez, the vice mayor. Uh, and of course, uh, Lily Zang, our four-time
Olympian and, uh, first American to bring home a medal in that sport, and
six-time national champion who was nurtured right here in PaloAlto, who
adjusted her schedule, flew back and performed uh, free of charge for us. And
so, that's somebody who can make us proud. And, uh, and it was fun. So just
thank you to everyone for that. Colleagues, if there's nothing more,
we'll get right to it with our study session for this evening. All right. So
we will move on to our semiannual city council discussion with the independent
police auditor uh Mr. Janako.
» Thank you, Mayor. Let me uh invite our independent police auditor uh to join us
here at the table. I'll just uh take a moment to introduce the topic. As the
council is well aware and for community's awareness, uh the city
council has uh two times a year opportunity to meet with our independent
police office auditor, the uh office of independent review. and uh this is to
discuss trends in criminal criminal justice and policing policy training and
related matters as well as recommendations made by OIR uh over the
past uh several months. In addition uh this evening we are anticipating the
followup to prior council uh discussion and interest in uh having a scope review
for an audit related to automated license plate readers. And so with that,
Mr. Janak, turn it over to your your team.
» Thank you, Mr.
» I think Mr. Connelly will start off the discussion.
» Good evening, mayor and and council members. Steven Connley of O Group. Uh
we're very happy to be with you as as the city manager indicated. Uh we are
here tonight with with Mike Janako who has been uh working with the city of
PaloAlto for for a number of years now. And we're joined for the first time
tonight by another one of our colleagues, Teresa Magula. Uh she has
been with us for for seven or eight years now, but this is her first project
working with the city of Palo Alto. And we're very happy to have her um with us
this evening. And we're certainly happy to be to be back with you and and
looking forward to the discussion. As the city manager indicated, we have a
couple of different um agenda items for for discussion. And the first one is our
our usual standard uh just report out to you regarding our semianual public
reports on the various categories of of um
particular concern with regard to the department's internal review mechanisms.
Uh so if we could have the next slide please.
So, uh, our relationship with the city of PaloAlto goes back to 2007.
Uh, and we have had some different iterations of that and different
adjustments to the scope of work and to our our responsibilities along the way.
But the the kind of the meat and potatoes, the core of our contributions
to the city are are semianual reports. And what it basically does is
is uh it's a an audit of of completed investigations, internal investigations
that the department has has compiled. Uh we do it twice a year and basically get
um the all of the the completed cases from the audit period and we have the
chance to review those and then to provide summaries of the the cases and
their outcomes and also have the opportunity to kind of weigh in on our
sense of how the department handled these matters uh and make
recommendations if we think that there could be some productive adjustments to
department policy or protocol with regard are to these different areas. So,
uh we have been to to um meet with you folks directly on a number of occasions.
Our last appearance was in April of 2025.
Our um first the f first part of our council u uh audit scope for for last
year. In other words, it covered the first several months of 2025. and that
was presented as a as a public report and and it was kind of a receive and
file item for the council back in November of 2025 and we're here today to
talk about the second half of of 2025 and the cases that uh we worked on in
conjunction with that. The report I think was published in in uh June of
this year and as always the the public reports give a much more detailed
description of the the specific events and our recommendations. Uh and as
always the transparency of the process is a big part of the the feature of it.
All the reports are available online and we encourage the public to to um read
those and and to provide us and and the council and the department with any
feedback that that they consider warranted. Next slide, please.
So, as I said before that we we usually divide the year up into part A and part
B. In other words, the first several months and the second several months. Uh
we're going to be focusing tonight on the the second half of our uh of our
reporting cycle and [snorts] the the total number of cases. As you can see in
part B there, there were four different completed investigations into
allegations of officer misconduct, five uses of force, four weapon pointing
incidents. And so those are the the major categories that have been set out
by your council as being the the um areas in which you have asked us to
provide some additional scrutiny to the department's own processes. Next slide.
So just in terms of uh an overview of the second report, again we don't
conduct our own investigations. We actually get contacted a number of times
a year by members of the public who have a concern about an issue. They've had a
a a challenging encounter with the police or a concern has come to their
attention. And one of the first things that we make try to make clear to them
is that we don't do our own investigations into these matters.
Instead, our role is to ensure that the department's process is as complete and
thorough and legitimate as it can be. So we provide that outside scrutiny and
that window of transparency. And if somebody does reach out to us directly,
we are in contact with the department to help facilitate that investigative
process and make sure that their complaint is heard and understood and
addressed appropriately. In terms of the cases that were in the pool for this
year's this um part of the year and in this cycle, two of the the cases were
sustained. the department found that that the officers had in fact um
violated one or more policies in conjunction with the allegations and
then the other complaints within the the individual allegations were considered
to be unfounded. As always, one of the things that we're looking at apart from
the the particulars of each individual case and and I think there is value in
in letting the public know here are the kinds of things that members of the
public are bringing to the department's attention and also here are some of the
things that the department is doing in terms of initiating its own
investigations when it has reason to believe an officer has potentially
violated policy. So, we look at at both of those categories.
uh our our overall impression is is a favorable one in terms of the
objectivity and the thoroughess with which the department handles each of
these matters. We have access to all of the case file evidence that the
department uses and we also have uh access to the memos that the department
puts together in terms of of analyzing and compiling all the different evidence
looking at the body wararm camera and reviewing the contents as as relevant in
a in a given situation. And it is our sense that the
department's process actually does have legitimacy that they do take these
investigations, take these complaints and allegations of misconduct seriously
and and handle them appropriately. The other piece of it and that's the bottom
portion of of the the current slide here and this is I I would say one of the
areas where we have seen the most progress in terms of our time with with
PaloAlto is that the department has really begun to emphasize uh the
holistic review of each one of these incidents and rather than just kind of
focusing narrowly on the bottom line result of the specific policy violation
or the specific complaint that is that issue. It's true with the use of force
cases as well. We have encouraged the department to take each of these
incidents as an opportunity to kind of look at it in a 360 degree way and see
if even if there are aspects of the encounter that are not directly related
to the complaint or directly related to policy, but that are potential room for
officers to improve, adjust, try another option. We have for years been been
encouraging the department to to treat the process as an opportunity to embrace
those things and to look for ways to improve outside of the narrow parameters
of the discipline process and we have seen a marketked improvement in that uh
area over the last few years uh the department's willingness to do it and I
think the fruits of that and we we are we're always careful to highlight it and
discuss it when we see it because we really do think it is a positive thing.
Next slide, please.
There were five use of force incidents that we looked at. And just to provide a
refresher for the the public, a few years ago, I think it was 19 uh excuse
me, 2021, the department expanded our scope of work to add force cases for the
first time. I mean, there are specific categories and the the the way that the
scope of work specifically sets it out is that we are to look at each use of
force incident that results in medical attention beyond mere clearance in the
field. So, we looked at five cases that met that criteria. Three of the cases
actually involved relatively minor injuries, but because the person went to
the hospital to be looked at in conjunction with the incident that that
became it fell under the umbrella of our scope and and we had a chance to look at
it and see how the department handled it. Two of the injuries that we looked
at in this cycle were more significant. There was a broken arm and that was
actually the result of a a relatively standard and minor use of force. It was
a resisted control hold that that in sort of an unfortunate accident ended up
resulting in a broken arm of the subject. And the other case was a a
fairly significant canine bite that resulted in significant injury to the
subject and and that person was hospitalized in conjunction with that
that arrest. As always, we break down each case and
the the department's review of it. The department found each of these uses of
force to be in policy. Uh we agreed with that, but as the report says, agreed
with some but with some reservations and and so we kind of drill down into the
concerns that we had and again those fuel the the recommendations that we
have for the department and and we have found the department to be very willing
to engage with those and and to be responsive to them. Next slide, please.
Uh, one of the categories again that that was an expansion of our scope from
the early days and that was a a request from your council had to do with our
evaluation of all pointed firearm incidents involving the police. That's
anytime that an officer points a gun at a subject in the course of a law
enforcement encounter. The department, and this is a relatively new thing, the
department is expected to document that. the officers have to take responsibility
for it, write about that in their reports, explain the justification for
it, and then that um force deployment and it is a type of force deployment is
subject to a fairly comprehensive review by the department. This is the fourth or
fifth year that we have been doing this. Uh and
it was a little bit rocky at the beginning. I think it was a a big change
for the department. And it took some getting used to, but they have really
become um much more adept at the efficiency of making sure that they're
capturing all of these incidents and that the review of them is is meaningful
and productive in terms of the the u not only the justification of it and are the
officers acting and and using that authority in a way that's consistent
with their training, consistent with department expectations, but also
looking at the totality of the vent of the event and looking for ways to to
again potentially adjust or correct behavior. And sometimes they can be
technical things, minor things, things that the subject would have no idea
about, but that the department is flagging and and following up with as
far as uh engaging with its own personnel.
So that is certainly one of the positive things that we want to highlight. One of
the things that we have uh that has been a little bit of a struggle uh is is the
bodywn camera activation issue that has been for a few years now a a source of
concern for us that there are times in which one or more officers do not have
their body warn cameras activated in the context of a given event. We've talked
to the department a lot about it. I know that it has been a point of emphasis for
the department as well. They have some new equipment that they hope will uh
help reduce some of the inadvertent uh issues that that officers were having,
but it's something that we will continue to monitor going forward. Next slide,
please.
So in terms of our our recommendations for for this year's report, again, one
of the hopefully added value aspects of our role here is not just to provide
some transparency and some outside scrutiny into the department's handling
of these events, but to take advantage of our familiarity with best practices
and our experience to make recommendations about potential
adjustments to department practice, policy, um, investigative protocols,
etc. And I'll turn it back over to Mike to to talk about some of the
recommendations in this most recent report.
» Thank you, Steve. Um, so, uh, these are the the four probably major
recommendations during this report cycle. Um, they're pretty
straightforward. Um, interestingly enough, um, and I'm not sure it was this
will be attributed just to the adjustments of the K9 protocol, but
since, uh, this report, there has not been a deployment of a K9 bite, uh, over
the past several months, which, uh, you know, ideally, you don't want a dog out
there, uh, and unless absolutely necessary, um, using um, his his or her
teeth to uh, to detain a subject because of the injuries that that could ensue.
Um and so um we hope as Steve said that the bodywn camera equipment and upgrades
uh will lead to more activation. Um and then we also would like to see um more
robust in and fair objective intake interviews by supervisors which is how a
complaint gets into the system. So those are our four recommendations from this
past report. If we go to the next slide please.
I'm now going to transition to the second piece that Mr. Shakott had talked
about
that that we are going to address um and that is a
potential uh scope of the ALPR audit uh that you all have talked about. So, uh,
in preparation for that, uh, we did develop, um, a list of ideas or topics
or potential areas of inquiry that we could use to develop our audit. Uh, we
have also uh, increased our resources. So the person on our team who is the
most experienced in learning about ALPRs, identifying issues with regard to
ALPRs and actually conducting already conducting audits of ALPR systems
throughout the state of California is here with us this evening and that is
Terresa Maggula. Teresa, if you could just introduce yourself and then talk
about some of the audits you've already performed.
» Thank you Mike and Steve and thank you for having me this evening. council. My
name is Terresa Maggoula with OIR Group. Um, as Mike mentioned, our team has been
actively engaged with issues related to automated license plate readers for
several years, but obviously this has become a heightened topic of awareness
um, both because of community trust and concerns um, as well as more information
that's available about these systems um, that the public has become aware of. Um
one of the factors that we've looked at um is and is the sort of the essential
function of governance. Um obviously this council um as well as the police
departments themselves um can choose to um internalize and and have strong
governance within their own organizations and within their cities.
And so we've looked at uh three very three different jurisdictions um in the
past few months with relation to audits of ALPR systems and in particular around
governance. Two of those are counties um Santa Cruz County and Santa Clara
County. Both of those counties are what are defined as endusers. This means that
those counties do not operate their own ALPR cameras, but they are users of the
systems data. And so what we were looking for in those particular counties
was the governance around the use of the data, the access to data and the best
practices and policies surrounding that use and access. One of the features that
we provided early on to our jurisdictions uh that we work with is
some model best practice policies including language that aligns with the
state law uh the two state laws that govern use of ALPR and data sharing
within the state of California. Of a predominant importance in both of those
is the concept of not sharing with federal agencies or agencies outside of
the state of California. That of course has uh direct implications on some of
the data sharing that was occurring uh with federal partners uh early on in the
use of the flock system. And the other piece that we look at as well is whether
individuals uh or agencies, excuse me, agencies are preventing data sharing for
the purpose of any type of immigration enforcement, any type of gender
affirming care, any type of individuals seeking medical care uh outside of the
state or within the state borders. So those are the audits that we were
conducting of those two end users. The one that is more relevant to the city of
Palo Alto is the audit that we recently completed and presented to the city of
Pasadena which is in Southern California. The city of Pasadena is a an
owner and operator of their camera system. Um they have both cameras from
uh Motorola as well as Flock. And so we took a look at the various issues
surrounding the data and governance. Um, in particular, what we were looking at
in the city of Pasadena was whether their own internal audits were effective
and identifying the types of data information uh the sharing that was
occurring um within the agency as well as with external partners uh in the
state of California and to assess whether they were capturing any uh uses
of data that may not align with state law. The other piece that we were
assessing for the city of Pasadena was the placement of the cameras themselves.
Um, and we were looking there for whether the cameras were placed in uh
disproportionate uh with disproportionate rates in
communities uh that may have been populated uh with higher persons of
color. And so what we were looking at there was were they placed with the
intent to overp police or over surveil those particular communities or were
they placed there for uh operational law enforcement purposes. Uh and so those
were the two main features. The city of Pasadena is also currently revising and
revamping its ALPR policy and we are working with them on setting the
appropriate guard rails as we did with both Santa Clara and Santa Cruz
counties. I think it's important to note that the purpose of these audits um is
really to provide an independent and unbiased perspective on the data that is
available. And so what we're looking at is what the system actually does. What
are the actual functions of this system? What data is it producing, storing, and
retaining? And for how long? We're looking at who can access the data, what
kinds of controls exist, and whether those exist internal to an agency or
from the vendor, and whether those controls actually work. So, is the
agency able to identify any misuse of data or any data sharing that is outside
of compliance with state law? and whether and where additional
safeguards might be necessary. Whether that looks like uh safeguards with
respect to policy and procedures or training or it looks like any safeguards
that might be put into place with memorandas of understanding or with
contracts directly. And so essentially our our audit scope is developing as we
are working with various agencies. And so we're very pleased to have your input
and insight into the scope of this particular audit um as we're developing
it sort of here in real time. >> Thank you Teresa. Um so this whole issue
of automated license plate readers ALPR is the word that I will use as an
acronym to try and shorten our presentation a bit. Um
is something that has raised uh that has reached the national consciousness. I
mean there is discussion about this issue and the competing concerns
throughout the country. Uh in particular California because of the uh
legislaturator's restrictions on sharing information with uh immigration uh
customs enforcement and as well as concerns about sharing information for
those who might want to use the information to restrict uh access to um
reproductive care. uh the issue has has has become even more
significant in this state. Um so you're seeing a lot of concerns, a lot of
issues being raised up and down the cities uh in California and many of the
cities that we work with as Teresa indicated. Um I think there's a lot of
reasons for it. I think that there are some competing values here in which it's
uncertain uh whether the potential efficacy in using this technology is
outweighed by the concerns about increased surveillance of people uh who
are driving around this area. Uh and those are competing in uh concerns that
people would have potentially different views or opinions about. How important
or how effic efficacious does this technology need to be to override the
concerns potentially about uh increased surveillance of individuals who are
driving to the grocery store? Um the there the issue has that that's kind of
one of the basic issues, but it's become conflated uh and uh as a result of some
other concerns that have come out as a result of that as a result of some
potential missteps or actual missteps by the vendor. Uh and that is the concern
about inappropriate data sharing with uh agencies that state law says you are not
supposed to share this information with. uh as well as a as well as uh the
concerns about are there enough internal controls. Does the vendor have enough
external controls to ensure that the data that is collected will be collected
for limited purposes that officers will not have access to information and use
them in an appropriate ways uh and a whole other host of concerns. So this is
a uh uh an area that is wide ranging and um the scope of work uh will hopefully
try to identify this my vision uh but certainly we are here to hear from you
all but one of our visions is one to make sure that we tell the story in
PaloAlto which means how did we get here? What happened? How did this, you
know, contract begin to exist? And how did it end up being a big surprise when
um the city learned uh after months of the LPR cameras going that there were
some concerns or issues with regard to inappropriate data sharing? How did that
happen? And then most importantly, uh uh one of the things we want to talk about
is now that it's happened, what level of trust do we have in the vendor? What
level of trust could we have in internal controls, vendor controls to ensure that
on a forwardgoing basis should the program continue whether or not uh there
is enough confidence in those internal controls to ensure that the missteps of
the past will not be repeated in the future. Um what we liked about the
city's approach here is the fact that ordinarily in Pasadena, Santa Cruz,
Santa Clara County, we were given a scope of work um and then we completed
the task within the scope of work. But here the scope of work appears to be a
living breathing document uh with input from elected officials. And what I what
I particularly like and I think my teammates would agree with me about that
is we're not going to write a report in an audit about what we think you want,
but we will actually have the ability to hear from you what you want in this
scope of work. So we're pleased to hear from you unless anyone on my team has
any additional comments. I think we'll end at this point, but certainly
available to uh talk with you about some of the issues and some of the potential
tasks uh that would be, I think, important and helpful for you as you
ultimately make your decision about what to do with ALPR programs in your city.
So, thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. And we'll end at this point,
but certainly available for discussion and questions.
» All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Connelly, Mr. Janako, and Miss McGillo.
particularly helpful to have you here tonight. Um, you know, as you've all
heard, we have both our uh typical uh semiannual uh report um uh that the uh
independent police auditor gave. Um we are proud here in PaloAlto to be one of
only two cities in the county that have an independent police auditor twice a
year reporting to council on the behavior of uh our police uh officers uh
including as was mentioned um use of force and uh uh pointed uh firearms. So
uh thank you for that. Uh but we also uh previously uh requested that this um
that there be an audit of uh ALPR systems and uh so tonight uh it was
agendaized as a study session because that's typically how we agendaize the
IPA uh report and so we can give feedback on the uh scope of the audit
and uh related questions. I mention that because this was not agendaized as a
decision-making final uh decision tonight on what we do about this issue.
That's obviously of great community concern, but we are concerned as well
and want to hear from you. And so that's why we uh are grateful you're here and
look forward to the conversation. Um
so with that um you know this this audit hopefully will answer questions uh that
we aren't in a position to decide tonight but obviously things like do we
use ALPRs at all and if so do we use flock and etc etc. So um let me first
open it to my colleagues to see if there are any clarifying questions that you
have for uh our uh independent police auditor team. Um and then if not we will
hear from the good folks here in our chambers through public comment. Council
member Bert.
» Thank you. [clears throat] So first I want to say that um I having reviewed
your uh scope of work um I found it to be very comprehensive. Uh I was pleased
at just how many aspects you intend to uh dive in on. And then uh I I was not
aware when we uh asked you to take this on uh that you already have had um
similar not identical um uh task for three other government agencies. So
that's gives you a lot of foundation there. Um I I I found under the section
six the the um vendor governance and platform evolution to be really
important because this is an evolving area where we certainly have been
concerned with um actions that have happened up until now. And a big
question we have is how well um uh has the vendor uh addressed many of the
concerns that we in the public have and and how well haven't they? Um but then
um under section 8, one of your questions uh that you identified is
whether uh this effectiveness and value, whether the um uh program contributes
meaningfully to investigative outcomes. And I wanted to
ask if that's going to be answered in a quantitative way. I know that you had
wanted to uh distinguish between um uh uh uh where it was central versus
it was supplemental. Uh but is are you in your discussions with our department
will you be getting uh some form of quantitative data?
» Thank you for that question, Council Member Bert. And it's my understanding
that the Palo Alto Police Department is currently quantifying that type of data
and we will be receiving that data from the department itself. Yes.
» Great. And then under best practices and benchmarking,
I didn't see anything referencing um alternative providers. I mean, we've had
uh the city of Campbell who's taken uh one approach, Stanford University
another. Um, is that something that would be in your scope of work or is
that within what the department would be looking at
» with alternative providers? Are you speaking of just different vendors that
have the same solution or different types of solutions?
» Different types of solutions as well as different vendors with might have uh
better security that we're looking for. Yeah, I would say that we have the
capacity to look at different vendors and the types of programs that other
agencies are using. Um, as far as other types of solutions for the same exact
sort of use case, I'd be more limited in in providing that kind of information.
» Okay. Um,
so for example, we we have we know locally that um the two I'm aware of are
Stanford and and Campbell. Would you be looking at the the
approaches that they're taking? Is that >> We certainly could. Yes.
» Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Council member Lowing.
» Yeah. To start, I just had uh one question. The item
Too much paper here tonight. Oh yeah. Item three, bullet point two,
whether currentus adequately define and limit access and use.
» And my broad question there is whether this issue [clears throat]
has any merit since someone can break the law. Maybe that's the way I would
put it. So we have anou, you're supposed to act this way, but then the officer
doesn't act that way. They actually break the law. Um, doesn't that mean
there's automatically a a a data leakage there that gets in the way of thisou?
» I mean, maybe I'm not phrasing it exactly.
» No, I I think I understand what you're looking at.
» I mean, there's like human factors that go into this that that can release the
data as has happened by some officers around the country that not not here. I
think with respect to theus what we're looking at is data sharing between
different partner agencies and so we're really looking sort of a level up from
the individual actor. Okay. When we're talking about the kinds of audits and
internal policies that a department might have that's where we're looking at
those act sort of the individual human factor the individual actors. And so
what we're looking at in these systems as well is does the department
internally have the sufficient safeguards and the the uh frequency of
audits to be able to capture the individual actors and the access and and
sort of the the searches that those individual actors are using.
» Good. That directly uh addresses my question. Thank you.
» And council member Long, if I could just be a little more specific, we're going
to I think we would look at it two ways. One, as Theresa indicated, uh whether
there are sufficient uh safeguards to identify officers or other personnel who
inappropriately access the database for the wrong reasons, for personal reasons,
but also to prevent that upstream from happening through training, guidance,
and the kind of information to future officers about these are going to be our
expectations, and you should be assured that if you violate
uh the need to know and use it for personal interests that uh we're going
to take appropriate action. So there's going to be need to be a training
component as well.
» Council member Leth. >> Thank you, Mayor.
Um Mr. Janako, Mr. Connelly, Miss Maggula,
thank you very much for your presentation. I'm wondering if the
benchmarking item could be augmented to include reference to how many
municipalities in California have terminated flock contracts, covered
cameras, and maybe a subset, how many in the Bay Area. Um, it'd be helpful for us
to understand what is happening in our peer jurisdictions as we undergo this
conversation here.
» That is an excellent ad and we will certainly add that in. I think the other
component would also if if I may be to take a look at the various jurisdictions
that might just be end users of the system um that are not operating their
cameras but that are still accessing the data. I think that's an important
distinction to know whether an agency has access to the data even if they
don't operate their own cameras.
» Council member Rectal. >> Okay. Thank you.
[clears throat] Your scope has both internal access within PAPD using the
data and also external the people that we share with the other departments. Are
you going to be looking at all vendor access and our data is shared with the
vendor and can we investigate how they use it and what kind of safeguards they
have that they aren't misus using it. >> And that's kind of in a black box which
makes it hard for us because we have to trust what's going on in that black box.
and should we be trusting what's going on in the back that that black box? So,
is that something that you'll be doing in your scope?
» Item six contemplates some of those vendor governance and and sort of the
platform evolutions, but certainly it I agree with you. It is a black box. It's
one that's difficult to get into. Um, and so it would really highly depend on
the type of access that we're able to get uh at that level. So I don't want to
overpromise and underdel but certainly it's an intention that we would take a
look at some of the ways that uh the vendor is both protecting and
potentially using the data that is going into the system.
» And in your past audits have you looked into the vendor being able to look at
their internal use um policies? >> No, those were not part of the scope of
work uh for the prior three audits that we've conducted. That would be a net new
component here. >> Okay. I think it would be useful. Thank
you. >> I agree. Thank you.
So just following up on that point, um when we discussed this last time, um uh
we talked about uh your bullet point three and or the third bullet point
under item four, whether data deletion practices are automatic, verified, and
consistently applied. And the question was also um could we check whether they
audit that? So not just whether that's part of their practices but in you know
are we auditing that the vendor is actually deleting. So have you seen that
or is that something that is could be added to this uh scope of work?
» Just for a point of clarification the particular item here is around uh the
the police department's own data itself. And so when we're looking at whether the
vendor is um deleting or retaining in a different way in a different system, I
wouldn't be able to answer that. But the police department's own instance of its
flock database is what we would be looking at here.
I don't know if that quite >> No, I understand your answer. I'm just
want to I guess I would be curious if there's anybody out there who not only
has the policies on their own servers of data deletion and all that, but there's
some kind of auditing that there's actually compliance with those policies.
That's a whole another level. and if there were any way to assess what you
know what current practices are or could be or what success rate they've had on
that because um you know it's one I have I have greater confidence in in in the
folks that we see every day than than the vendors on that.
Um okay and then my other question is um go back to my other question
uh
got so into that I may not remember. Just give me a moment here. Um
well, let me just ask you generally, have you seen for however long you've
been doing these audits um you know improvements in uh practices by vendors
with respect to um you know trends improving uh controls usage and
compliance and all of that like what have you observed? Yeah, that that has
absolutely been the trend over time and and perhaps rightly so because they
started on rather shaky grounds. Um but most recently, I believe it was last
week um on the 13th um in particular, one vendor released a host of new
functionality within the systems platforms. Um I could go through those
but it's certainly something that the audit will be looking to ensure that uh
both this department as well as the vendor is adhering to those new
standards that they've applied um and that they've given to themselves. So we
will be looking at those as well. But certainly over the course of the last
almost a year um there has been a lot of transition in the particular platform
and and the effectiveness of kind of that tool itself. Um, one of the most
important things that came to light, of course, was that the feature called
national lookup, which was allowing agencies outside of the state of
California to view data from the state of California. Um, that was turned off
for the state of California. So, thankfully that was captured. Um,
unfortunately, it was something that was in violation of uh various contracts as
well as state law. Um, but that has been turned off. Another feature that has uh
recently come to light was terminating the access by national um what what are
sometimes called fusion centers. There's one here in Northern California referred
to as Nickrich and one in Southern California referred to as JRIK. These
were agents agencies that were essentially looking at kind of the
regional partnerships in collaboration with various federal task forces. those
agencies had access to the database directly and were able to be users of
that data. Those contracts were terminated and the access was turned
off. In other words, the any any partner potentially at the federal level that
was happened to be sitting in one of these regional centers can no longer
access this department data um that's within the state of California. So
that's a feature that was turned off recently. Um and then of course
individual agencies are determining sort of how they want to adjust their
governance and their data sharing. And so some agencies are saying we're only
going to share with regional partners because that's what makes sense. We're
only going to share with um you know agencies that have a ne a direct nexus
to our agency. There are others that have determined we're only going to
share with agencies that are committed to doing their own types of internal
audits in the same way that we are. And this is sort of going back to theus um
that we highlighted earlier that agencies are now taking more control and
ownership of where their data goes and the data that they themselves access. So
that's something that we're seeing agencies sort of realize we can control
this for ourselves to be responsive both to the needs of our public as well as
the direction and the concerns that our public is is having related to the
surveillance technology. >> Thank you. And finally, uh, would it be
within the scope of something you could do to look at, um,
vendors provisions or agreement to remedies for non-compliance because we
had a non-compliance and as far as I can tell, there was no recompense for it.
And so, the point isn't to get paid for a
violation. The point is to deter the violation in the first place. And it's
one thing to have high expectation of our own police department, but these
entities are businesses. >> Businesses operate on profits. Money is
a deterrent. And if you have the appropriated liquid appropriate
liquidated damages or other um things written into a contract, they're more
likely to comply and self self enforce. So have is it within your scope to look
at provisions like that and come back and tell us what has worked or not?
» Yeah. So this is another one of the kinds of controls that's happening sort
of in real time. So what we're seeing is agencies, especially large agencies like
the LAPD in Southern California are really taking ownership of the contract
language itself. And it is something that I think both both the city and
counties as well as the vendor are cluing into. It is important that we
have the right language and the appropriate language within our
contract. And so it's a space that is evolving sort of as we're talking here
tonight. Um and it is one that we're certainly willing to to report back.
Whether or not it's effective or not, the window might be a little too short
for us to be able to assess that. But we can certainly provide that kind of
language and modifications um as other agencies have taken it on.
» Thank you, Vice Mayor Stone. >> Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you
for this scope. I think it's an excellent starting point. I agree with
the feedback already provided. One question, not quite sure if the scope
gets to it, and I would kind of call it examining like pattern of life
capabilities. Basically, like can this system either
by itself or in combination with other databases tell us where a particular
vehicle has traveled over time, how frequently it visits particular
locations, or identifying recurring travel patterns or associations between
vehicles? And if so, do our policies then
distinguish between LPR uh to investigate a particular incident, for
example, recovering a stolen vehicle um or using historical data to be able to
reconstruct someone's movement over a longer period
of of time. I mean, because for me, those are very different uses of
technology. One is for a legitimate law enforcement purpose and the other is big
brother. And does this so does the scope kind of cover that?
» Yes. So it does in in a bit of a an roundabout way. And let me let me
address that. What we're looking at is severalfold. One is are the uses for
legitimate law enforcement purposes. So we'll be looking line item at the
searches that are being done to determine whether those have a direct
nexus to a legitimate law enforcement purpose.
The other piece is retention. Uh and so retention windows would come into play
when we're speaking about this kind of pattern of life. Is that the term
pattern of life? Yeah. >> Yeah. Um that you know we're trying to
sort of reconstruct a person's history. If the retention window is limited to 30
days or even the vendor is now suggesting a 7-day limit on the window
of retention of data. uh we'd be looking at how that retention policy impacts the
ability to look at data sort of historically over time to be able to
reconstruct someone's patterns. Um what we're seeing in the audits that we have
conducted and in some national studies that have come out is that the
predominant use of the system is for one-time cases, investigative purposes
with a legitimate law enforcement basis. So there are very few uses that um we
have been able to document and record where they're looking at a pattern of
someone over time or doing what we might call a broad sweep. And so we'll be
looking at that as well. So are the cases and the uses of the data for
particular one-time investigative use or are they looking more for a broader
sweep or a pattern um over time and we'll be be able to identify that as
well in the course of the audit. So hopefully that answers it's sort of
three parts to answer one question. >> Yeah, that that's helpful. And I think a
common theme here is it seems like both from the audit but also the limitations
of the audit is we can to some degree control our own policies and what our
own law enforcement can can access. harder to control downstream
bad actors. And maybe that is we're giving that information to an agency
that is authorized to use it, but then we can't control who is authorized or
who has access to their in to their data when their data is gathered from our
data. And we don't have any control over their their firewall, their internal
systems. And so I guess even if we had a 7day
window there, could that information be kind of seized within that limited
window from others to then construct this pattern of life of of individuals
um and then retained essentially forever. Is is that something that we
can I mean do you know that answer now or is that something that could be
understood? It's something that we could take a look at certainly, but it would
be within the realm of kind of those retention periods and understanding um
what this department is willing to do as well as what thoseus are requesting of
other departments and agencies using the data downstream.
» Okay. Yeah. Because there's all Yeah. There's all these unintended
consequences that it's so challenging to be able to um to make a a decision
ultimately like Mr. Janako said, balancing those is a a real challenge.
Yes. Okay. Thank you, >> Council Member Lou.
Thank you. Uh I appreciate all my colleagues uh detailed questions. They
really echo a lot of my concerns. But just for this round of questions, I want
to clarify whether you will actually look at the raw logs of searches or
whether you'll be more focused on the policies of the city.
» So my colleagues didn't say this, but I love data. I will be looking at the raw
logs. [laughter] Um I will be doing an assessment of the logs. um Palo Alto is
already uh far and beyond some of its uh regional partners as well as state
partners and that they provide that data in a redacted manner on their public
transparency site. Uh we through the nature of our agreement will be able to
look at the raw logs >> and so we'll look at the raw logs of
both internal searches and searches from other cities. That is correct. And will
we have any uh ability to judge whether maybe some of that data was used
inappropriately for stalking or sort of individual purposes or is that kind of
level of detail >> uh not possible to reconstruct from the
kind of analysis that you're planning on doing?
» So to be completely transparent about it what we do is we will be looking at the
raw data. So every search that's conducted both internally and of
PaloAlto's data. What we're looking at when we do that is if there is what uh
within the the search itself, each search has to have a legitimate a
legitimate law enforcement nexus. That means that when an officer, whether it
be within Peloto or elsewhere, accesses the data, they have to provide a case
number and they have to provide a code for the type of crime that they are
investigating. Now, could there be a bad apple somewhere that is making up case
numbers and inputting them into the system because he or she is a bad actor?
That is a use case that could possibly happen in the world. Um, we wouldn't be
able to tell about that. Um, what we can do and what the audits can do is take a
look at whether the case numbers are actual legitimate case numbers. That's
something that the department will do internally uh through its own audits and
we can check and verify that as well. >> Okay. It seems like you do have some
ability to actually sanity check though that you aren't using a case number from
years ago or using case number that >> doesn't need to have a vehicle involved.
Do you actually uh so I heard sort of a no answer that you
wouldn't necessarily be able to judge the appropriateness of searches but at
least you'll be able to detect and spot check some sample in
» correct >> okay I think that correct because keep
in mind we're talking and I'm not trying to to limit the scope at all but we're
talking about millions and millions of of searches and it would almost be um
» we would have to use some kind of tool that that we don't have at our disposal.
as this group um to be able to assess that on that global scale.
» Yes, certainly. I think just uh spot checking could be uh and sort of random
spot checking can be useful in building trust uh among the broader community. So
I appreciate that. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. And so with that,
let's go to our public comment. And so Madame Clerk, how many uh speakers do we
have as of now?
We have a total of 35 requests to speak and three of which are um there are
three groups of seven. Okay, great. Uh, well, we're glad you're
all here. We look forward to hearing you. What we will do is give uh one
minute to each individual speaker and five minutes to each group. And uh the
clerk generally announces who's next and who's right after that. So, you can be
ready to approach the microphone when it's your turn. All right. So, please go
ahead. Our first speaker is Carara S. speaking
on behalf of a group of seven.
Thank you, Madame Mayor and City Council. My name is Cara Silver. I'm a
20-year PaloAlto resident, a municipal attorney, and a member of safety over
surveillance, a coalition of 14 groups opposing mass surveillance in the Bay
Area. First, we want to thank PaloAlto for taking this important step of
conducting a third-party audit. I remember when a small group of us showed
up to the policy and services committee in March 2026 and requested the
committee to cancel the flock contract. At that time, most people didn't even
know what an ALPR was. Very few community members showed up to the
meeting and most people had never even heard of flock. Now, can everyone who
opposes ALPRs please stand up?
Thank you all. You can sit down. [snorts]
Obviously, um, ALPR concerns are widespread.
John Oliver ran an entire HBO episode on mass surveillance very recently, calling
out flocks abuses in particular. The New York Times recently ran an article
titled, "Flock cameras are dividing US cities." Here's what to know about them.
Police officers in at least 12 states, including California, have been accused
of misusing flock systems to stalk former partners and the like. The San
Francisco Chronicle reported that the Northern California Regional
Intelligence Center, Nick, of which PaloAlto is a member, allowed federal
agencies to conduct 299 searches of San Francisco's flocked data in violation of
California's data sharing laws. And this was just a couple of months ago. Closer
to home, the San Monteo County Grand Jury just issued an audit calling for
stricter ALPR oversight practices. And PaloAlto Weekly broke a news story and
how the city's own data was shared with federal law enforcement agencies for
over a year without the police department even knowing. Approximately
132 local agencies across the country have canceled flock contracts, including
our neighbors Stanford University, Mountain View, City of Santa Cruz, and
now most recently, Redwood City. 40 of those cons cancellations were in August
of this year. Even the Los Angeles Police Department recently canceled
their flock contract, citing privacy concerns.
While concerns about flock cameras are increasing, so are concerns about
overreaching authoritarian federal government. Recent reporting shows the
federal government launched an expansive surveillance program in Minnesota
against activists, labor unions, and community groups called Operation Puppet
Master in response to statewide ICE protests.
Mass surveillance is in mass surveillance in the wrong hands is no
longer an abstract concern. With this context in mind, SOS PaloAlto is
requesting a more robust audit scope as detailed in the letter sent to the
council earlier today. In particular, we would like the audit to include some
updates to the data sharing in section three. to include is PAPD approving in
advance all search inquiries in compliance with the internal policy that
it has. How does PAPD verify whether the reason for inquiry and case number is
accurate before permitting search? How does PAPD determine which outside
searches should be withheld under the CP and how much time is dedicated to this
decision of um redaction? Warrants and subpoenas involving PaloAlto customer
data. What are Flock's procedures for addressing them? When is Flock allowed
to share data for legal purposes and with whom? How is PaloAlto notified when
the sharing happens? Also some enhancements to section 8
effectiveness and value. Um we were surprised not to find a discussion of
the number of false positives both internal and external uses.
We would like to know the percentage of time an officer is is takes to verify
ALPR information with cleats before taking enforcement action. Again, as
required by local policy, information, including crime statistics
and closure rates that helps the community assess whether the
surveillance technology has been effective at achieving its identified
purposes. Comparison of cases closed before and after implementation and
specific amounts and types of closed cases attributed to FLO.
» Your time is up. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is Tim M,
followed by Brian E. Greetings, council. My name is Tim
McKenzie and I'm with the Silicon Valley chapter of Democratic Socialist of
America and the Safety Over Surve Surveillance Coalition. I'll start with
two asks. Uh immediately cover the cameras while the audit is ongoing. It's
a good natural experiment to be able to get some real data and add research into
the false positives as part of the scope of the audit. A truly independent audit
would consider the totality of evidence, including downsides, rather than trying
to find ways to justify mass surveillance. We already got off to a
rocky start when the initial plan was derailed by a clear conflict of interest
with the first auditor. It does not bode well that Mr. Janako representing the
new auditor was reported to say, "We want to make sure that value isn't
overridden by lack of trust in the misuse of the data." That sounds an
awful lot like conclusions have been drawn before any factf finding begins.
We know Roseville Police Department reported a false positive rate greater
than 70% and LAPD had a 1 in3 error rate. Studiously avoiding anything that
might challenge the perceived value of these invasive cameras is negligent. But
focusing on false positives makes it seem like there could be a safe way to
use this tool, which is elucery. If your criteria for decision-making is whether
something makes the job of the police easier, you are by definition building a
police state or at the very least the infrastructure for one. While our
democracy is under attack as we descend into fascism, is that really the pol
policy decision you want to make? Do you want to pay a private for-profit company
so they can harvest our data and train their AI model to sell to the federal
government? Will Powo Alto keep giving up resident and visitor data so Peter
Theo can get a return on investment in his attempts to destroy our democracy?
I ask you to consider how you'd like to be viewed when history looks back on
this moment. Will you be part of the decaying institutions that enabled the
rise of fascism? Or will you be able to look with pride on making a decision in
support of the community? If you are wondering how you would have acted in
1930s Germany, look to what you are doing now. Your decisions here are the
answer to that question. The police chief has said automated license plate
readers are an invaluable tool, but no tool is more valuable than the public
trust. Everything in policing is downstream of
that bedrock foundation. Startups move fast and break things and flock and
ALPRs in general have broken the public trust. Our data was illegally searched
tens of thousands of times by outofstate agencies.
[snorts] What we've seen is that at best we will capture abuses after the fact.
We cannot prevent harms from occurring. that was just admitted by the auditors
right here. The only safe data is no data. If you cannot protect it, do not
collect it. At the very least, drop to 3 minutes of data retention like the state
of New Hampshire. The problem isn't just one vendor. It is the technology itself.
The very nature of automated license plate readers means that we are all
constantly surveiled, constantly under suspicion.
How can we be expected to reciprocate trust that is not extended to us? Trust
is a two-way street, a mutual relationship.
How many times do we have to fill these chambers to tell you that the trust is
broken? How often do you do you speak to an empty gallery versus the full gallery
that is right here? Please
stop digging the hole deeper. Start building bridges to repair
[clears throat] trust.
Automated license plate readers violate our fourth amendment rights and do not
make us safe. A Texas sheriff said the tool is not compatible with a free
society when he took down the cameras. Paloalto sister city of Bloomington,
Indiana canceled their contract. How can all these red cities and states see the
light when supposedly progressive PaloAlto continues down the destructive
path of issuing public trust? Make the right decision.
Cancel the contract, cover the cameras, and never pursue any other vendors of
this dangerous technology. Repair public trust, safety over surveillance. Thank
you. >> Our next speaker is Brian E, followed
Bri by Brian J.
» Hello, my name is Brian Eaton. Thank you for holding this study session. Uh, I
also wanted to ask is it if it's possible to have Penn go next because
they are from Bloomington and they wanted to speak but it's getting late
there. Um, [sighs and gasps] so I've worked as an engineer in the tech
industry for 25 years. Most of that time in security, privacy and user safety.
I'm a member of the safety over surveillance coalition because of that
experience. Uh, Flock and the federal government are wildly out of control.
These cameras are dangerous to residents. I'm here to request that the
city cover the Flock cameras. Uh, Flock and their CEO have a long history of
lying to the public and their customers. They claim they've never been hacked,
but they've left the cameras wide open to abuse for years. They claim they
anonymize data, but they don't really. They claim they maintain audit logs, but
they won't tell the city who really accessed the data. Flock lies
constantly. It's obvious. In Los Altos, residents found evidence in the Flock
transparency portal that their cameras had been searched by the federal
government. And then when the city manager confronted Flock, Flock denied
everything. Instead of admitting the mistake, Flock told the city that that
was just a bug in the transparency portal. So Flock's willing to lie to
city managers. In Leland, Colorado, they found that their cameras were being
abused by ATF and ICE. And the chief of police confronted Flock. Chief Doran
wrote later, and I quote, "In July of 2025, after the previous issue with ATF
accessing Lovelin's Flock data, the LPD was assured by Flock that federal
agencies no longer had access to our license plates readers, which we took at
face value." This statement was also reiterated by the Flock CEO in a live
interview with Nine News on July 30th, 2025, where he confirmed Flock had no
federal contracts. Guess what? Flock did have federal
contracts and they were providing data to ICE. So Flock is willing to lie to
police chiefs. In Wisconsin, a Flock representative got
up in front of the city council and said that Flock didn't create heat maps to
track individual vehicles. The city council trusted Flock and they approved
the contract. The very next day, the chief of police got proof that what
Flock's reps had said during the council meeting wasn't true. So Flock is willing
to lie to city councils. They're willing to lie to cops. Their CEO is willing to
go on the evening news and lie directly to the camera. We would be naive to
believe anything that Flock tells us during this audit.
However, Flock is very honest about one thing. Their contract states clearly
that they own the cameras, they own the raw footage, and that they will share it
with whoever they want, whenever they want. Flock is run by Trumpup supporting
fascists. They do not care about the contracts they've signed. They've built
a nationwide surveillance network. And now it is being used to hunt down
immigrants, hunt down protesters, and hunt down anyone that opposes the Trump
administration. Just last week, news broke that DHS had infiltrated
anti-Trump church groups to spy on them. The Trump administration has access to
the entire flock network, including the Palo Alto cameras. The audit isn't going
to slow them down one bit. I wish the city had more options here,
but you don't. You can leave the cameras up and let Trump and his goons use them
to destroy democracy. Or you can choose to fight back. You can
cover the cameras.
Mountain View saw this. They removed the cameras. Santa Clara County saw this
choice. They banned city staff from operating the cameras.
Stanford saw this choice. They covered the cameras. They had the sheriff
deputies come and do it. That was nice. And Palo Alto's sister city,
Bloomington, Indiana, they had this choice. They canceled their contract.
They got rid of the cameras. So, I am here pleading with you as your neighbor.
These cameras are dangerous to me. They are dangerous to my family. They are
dangerous to everyone in this room. Please cover the cameras now. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Brian J, followed by Winter D.
Good evening. My name is Brian Jones. I worked in Palo Alto for many years and
I'm a systems engineer uh for about the last 25 years specializing in hardware
systems with a strong data component. Uh the technical reality of data systems is
that if you do not control the server, you do not control the data. We cannot
be assured that the audit logs report all of the access to the data. Backdoor
access does not necessarily come out in the logs that were provided by the
company. Um, so the logs are only as good as our trust in that provider. No
city policy can ensure vendor compliance. Whatever policy rules we
make here don't apply to people in other states running their company.
Furthermore, data breaches are inevitable as I'm sure you have
personally experienced many times probably in the last month when you get
those letters in the mail, right? If it does not happen, um if if that data
breach, even if it doesn't happen, there's no guarantee that we will even
know that it happened. The only way you know from those is is that your data has
been breached is that you get those letters if it's in Flock's best
interest. >> What time is that?
» Sorry. >> Our next speaker is Winter D followed by
Will O.
El Certo made big news last week when 70 days after its contract ended
with Flock, it still hadn't removed its cameras or even shut them down. Flock
hadn't.
Flock knows more about how to manipulate its tech than we ever will. Flock's
behavior and its black box um certainly will never engender trust
in this community. Any speculation that flock lowers
PaloAlto's crime rate is conjecture. Our crime statistics have been cyclical
for decades, up and down, up and down in all crime categories, verifying our very
low crime rate.
Not only did flock endanger, it damaged our city. As a prior at a prior city
council meeting, our mayor asked the city attorney if the city can recover
damages for Flock's 2-year long breach of contract. I hope this audit is useful
for that purpose. >> Our next speaker is Will O followed by
Annie G. >> Good evening. My name is Will Oler. I
serve on the Menlo Park housing commission, but tonight I'm here as a
private citizen. I'm in Palo Alto tonight because my therapist works here.
On my way here tonight, my location was recorded by multiple block cameras
across several municipalities. Um, and that information will be
available to most police officers in the state for the next 30 days. Um, it's
invasive, it's creepy, it's unnecessary, and it didn't used to be this way. It
shouldn't be this way. Um, if other municipalities are any indication, the
deeper you look, the more problems you will find. And so I encourage you to
look deep and then to do the right thing and to remove the cameras uh remove APRs
from your policing approach entirely. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Annie G followed by KBT.
» Good evening everybody. Was a constitution written for flock?
I want to ask that question to you because you're responsible [sighs] for
making sure our constitution stays a constitution.
And if you vote for flock, you are voting for fascism. Thank you.
Our next speaker is KBT followed by Raymond G.
[sighs] want you to know that I haven't been
visiting Powo Alto for any reason in the last year other than to get you guys on
board this cancellation boat. Just like in Mountain View, we're at the loading
dock. It's time to sail away from mass surveillance, cover the cameras, cancel
the contract. ALPRs like Flock serve up a massive catch of data for invisible
DHS ice searches and to line rich billionaires pockets. City government
trying to control the surveillance industry is like Ahab trying to catch
his white whale Moby Dick. It will never work. It is untameable and is at great
peril to us all. Prevent most crime by taking care of people, not spying on
them. We need freedom over fascism, community over capitalism, safety over
surveillance. All aboard the cancellation boat. Cover the cameras.
» Our next speaker is Raymond G, followed by Renee R.
Good evening. My name is Raymond Goens. I am the founder for the liberation and
justice working group for Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America. I
agree with all the prior speakers and I would like to yield my rest of my time
in a moment of silence for the rights that will be violated by our citizens by
these cameras.
I ask that Palo Alto does not I ask that the council members that does not turn
Palatoto into demolition man. For those that are old enough to watch that movie,
you know what I'm talking about. >> Our next speaker is Renee R, followed by
Young.
Hi, my name is Renee Rasheed. I'm here supporting safety over surveillance. I'm
here urging city council to cover the flock cameras while the flock audit is
conducted and to cancel the flock contract. I commend OIR and council's
audit investigations into policies and comp compliance. I think you can improve
policies and do research, add infinitum, but if you don't enforce any
repercussions for violations, they are of no use.
Flock business model does not generate enough profit by camera systems alone.
The value is in the data, our data. It is time to take action against mass
surveillance systems and I urge you to cancel Flock.
Our next speaker is Young, followed by Henry E.
Um, Flock claims that it only tracks license plates, not people, but it was
reported that Flock was planning to incorporate people's data that is being
bought and sold on the dark web. This is hacked data. They only backed off of
this plan when the the news was leaked and that created a public uproar. Flock
is currently the biggest villain in the ARP ALPR market because they have the
most cameras out. But don't believe that other vendors would be better behaved.
They all run on the same predatory business model of tracking people's
movements and eventually all our activities. Um I urge that uh the
council look at ig.org. That's the um website by the Institute of uh justice
uh Institute for Justice. They have a database of um known
abuses and um errors in um ALR systems. Um it's uh being updated all the time
and for your due diligence you should know
» your time is up. >> Our next speaker is Henry E followed by
Hamilton H.
» What's covered can be uncovered. The cameras must be not only removed, we
must have a contest in the public square to see who can do the best job with a
sledgehammer of smashing them to smitherines.
We don't need this expensive contract. We know the answer. We don't need this
audit. The council has to vote tonight to remove the cameras and hold the
contest and give a prize to the person who does the best job in disintegrating
the cameras. We need improved public safety. That'll come from neighbors
keeping an eye on neighbors. This was the premise of sociologist my colleague
Jane Jacobs. Neighbors keeping an eye. Real window the movie showed that. And
then from top down, the city of Helsinki in Finland has no pedestrian fatalities
in the past year. 1.4 million. We've had several. We must change our way of
organizing public safety. >> Your time is up.
» Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Hamilton H followed
by Gabrielle P. >> I've sent you a letter requesting six
additions to the audit scope. My biggest concern is that up to 200,000 searches
every month of Palo Alto data, 99% of it from other jurisdictions, and most of
those searches are not related to the specific crime. For example, CHP does
about 40,000 searches. Why does a police officer have a right to see everywhere
you've been in the last 30 days when pulling you over for a speeding ticket?
Therefore, one of my requests is you review limiting outside agency searches
as narrowly as practical to felony sex crimes and to find crimes of regional
theft. With the flock architecture, it's on a
shared server, which the government can and clearly wants illegal access to. As
long as that architecture is in place, the chance of federal access covertly
acting is high. That's why I'm also requesting you evaluate Janentech, which
Stanford's using, which does not retain the data server, but on their local
sheriff servers. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Gabrielle P,
followed by Penn B. >> Hi, mayor and city council. Um, just to
share a personal an anecdote. Uh I was raised in PaloAlto and um went to
college in the Bay Area and I spent my childhood
sleeping in the back of the chambers when my mom came to the city council to
advocate for our community. Um so I have very strong memories of this location.
Um so I don't have any facts or figures to
add to all of the fantastic information that the other speakers have presented.
Um, I am strongly opposed to ALPRs in our community and instead of voicing an
yet another um opinion that you know I already have, I would like to share um
how the book 1984 ends as a an example of what mass surveillance can do. Um, at
the end of the story, the protagonist has been jailed uh due to his efforts to
resist >> the author.
» Go ahead and finish your sentence. >> Thank you.
» Sentence >> to to uh resist the authoritarian
government and he did not um confess. He did not give up the names of his
co-conspirators until they presented him with a cage full of hungry grats, if you
remember the story. And the way he escaped his please finish your sentence.
The way he escaped his fate was to ask them to do it to her, his most beloved
person, and to have them kill her. So, not only did they control his actions,
but they controlled his mind and his heart. So, we must stop that. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Pen B.
» Hello. Hello, I hope you can hear me. Hello from Bloomington. Uh, we are a
small city with deeply Midwestern small town vibes. Uh, and our mayor stance on
surveillance tech and her disrespect to our concerns has just sundered her
reputation amongst friends and voters alike. It's a very sad tale and I do not
believe this has to be the story of Palto. Your community has come here
tonight telling you to mans that they fear for their rights, their safety, and
their representation in these matters. Our council has repeatedly admonished
our trust in them. Our mayor has immediately repeatedly admonished our
trust in her has disrespected our concerns in our time. And this does not
have to be the story for Palto. It is crucial that the council goes above and
beyond to show that they are listening, that they respect the concerns of their
people, and that they will be going above and beyond to protect the public
safety and their interests. It is time to cover the cameras and take them down.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Aram F.
» Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin. Now let's take a
look at the fourth amendment. Once we start to diminish the obligation to do
to create or establish probable cause before we violate the Fourth Amendment,
the the right to be free against illegal searches and seizures, the it becomes
that much easier to diminish other constitutional rights, particularly when
we have a fascist in the White House that doesn't follow the rule of law at
any time. We have an obligation to do this. And let me tell you, with no
disrespect to OIR, when you look at all the contracts, it's a cottage industry
for them to do audits. They're going to come back and say, "We can do this just
fine with appropriate guidelines." That's what they're going to tell you.
No audit. Don't waste your money. No cameras. Smash them like Henry E said.
Let's have a parade in the park smashing those bad boys now.
» And that concludes public comment on study session item two.
» All right. Well, thank you, Madam Clerk, for managing all of that and thanks to
all of you for your comments. Uh we certainly do appreciate your your time
and and thought sharing. Um I'll bring it back to the deas uh for additional
comments, questions, any direction to uh staff and the auditors on the scope.
» Council member Bert, >> thank you. Uh first, um when do you
anticipate your uh review to be complete and reported to the council?
» Uh the goal, uh Council Member Bert, is to finish it within 90 days of the
assignment, assuming all goes well. >> Thank you. And
we received written comments uh from both a whole bunch of public speakers.
Uh several were uh very concrete um and
some overlapping a series from SOS. I don't know if you were able to review
those. Um others from uh Mr. Hitchings um and uh we don't have the opportunity
tonight to go through each of those and really square them with the scope of
work. Uh but I am interested in really the need to do that. I'm not I'm
not clear in my own mind how those two things uh line up between your detailed
scope that you already have and some of these other points including the false
positive rates. Is that part of your current scope?
Uh certainly it can and will be incorporated. Um, Council Member Bert,
we have been advantaged by receiving information directly from advocates. Um,
and uh, the initial questions that we uh, put put to you all were informed by
that feedback. But we have additional feedback this evening which will also
digest and potentially reform our scope. And this issue of being able to um
narrow outside agency searches to higher level crimes or conversely um uh
prohibit um searches after traffic stops and low-level uh crimes or infractions.
Is that something that um one do you already know whether that is uh an
option for us to uh adopt? uh council member Bird I believe that is uh an
approach that uh other jurisdictions are currently considering.
So that goes to a question that is not so much of the audit but of the council.
Um are there interim measures that we would
like to take before we have received the uh the independent audit and if so which
ones? Council
member Lou, thank you and uh thank you both to OIR and to the public for the
comments. Um I found the written public comment from SOS and also Hamilton
Hitchings uh like Council Member Bert um uh particularly relevant and I think
worth including most of that scope. I think uh from reading those comments, it
seemed like those questions were likely going to be answered anyways, but I
think having uh more explicit scope covering those questions is useful for
building community trust. Um, a couple of extensions that I would want to look
into are uh based on the data we get about actual safety incidents, whether
uh what the data would look like if we had shortened the retention window to 1
minute or 1 day. Um, uh to see
yeah whether we can get 90% of the safety benefit with one minute retention
for example. uh to the extent that we find a measurable safety benefit. Um I
similarly would be interested in understanding if we uh did something
like a Stanford approach and had our own data uh hosted on premises
and therefore had much more limited or more deliberate sharing and maybe lost
access to data from other agencies and other
agencies lost data lost access to data from us. uh whether that would affect
any of the safety outcomes or case studies that the uh department puts
forward. Um uh
yes um uh because I am very interested in Stanford's approach. Uh I think in
the short term I'd be uh open to waiting the 90 days to get
some actual data, but I think shortening the retention period uh is and
restricting the crime list is a what I imagine baseline action that I would
feel like is basically no regret moving forward. um while we figure out the
larger picture about Flock versus other LPR providers,
» Vice Mayor Stone, >> thank you. Um agree, including
recommendations from SOS, Mr. Hitchings are all great recommendations in this.
Um, I would like to review specifically I want to make sure I review
specifically addressing immigration in enforcement. And I know it talks about
compliance with California law and essentially California law precludes
that, but just to make sure that we're really doing a deeper dive um to make
sure that searches performed on behalf of federal immigration authorities um to
make sure that we're catching potential sorry potential searches that might be
done on behalf not just directly because I know that again is more of the the
challenge um to make sure that we're assessing
whether our safeguards are beyond just mere merely kind of policy based but
making sure that the system is actually configured to be able to prohibit that
type of access and and sharing because again I think that's just another theme
here is there's the policy and then there's the actual technological
limitations on what we can um ensure another area I'd like to see strength ED
is kind of the the accuracy and the false positives. Again, I don't I don't
want to see just technical accuracy rates of the cameras. I really want to
understand the consequences of when the system is is wrong. So, how many of
these alerts have resulted in in traffic stops or other police encounters? How
often was the underlying alert subsequently determined to be incorrect
or or stale? And what is the real life consequences of that? I feel like every
single day that I turn on the news or see social media or anything else, there
are more and more stories of these type of interactions. And you can you can
read a report and see data on all these false positives and and stops, but the
impact on an individual experiencing that interaction with law enforcement
when they've done nothing wrong is in can be incredibly terrifying and and
lifealtering in in serious moments. And so want to really understand that. Um I
also want to see the audit examine the surveillance implications of of camera
placement. I think it kind of goes into that, but I'd really like to be able to
see a map of where all these are are located and an analysis of what those
cameras allow us to learn about people's movements. as I talked about, but before
I I really do think there's a meaningful difference between cameras positioned
primarily to identify vehicles entering or leaving to be able to capture kind of
the original intent of of all this and and then those really tracking people's
movements and being able to kind of reconstruct that. Um especially when
we're talking about movement to sensitive locations such as schools,
house of warships, medical facilities, reprotective health providers, political
demonstrations, etc.
I do think we need to strengthen the effectiveness section to to just better
understand outcomes and
and and again how many how much crime is this actually solving? never know
preventing but to be able to really understand that that
and
yeah, I think those are the kind of the areas that I that I'd like to see this
having a a deeper dive. I guess a a question. I don't know if this would
then be for city manager or the or the chief of police as far as just the the
ease of being able to turn off the cameras. Um is that a simple switch? Is
that literally covering the the cameras? Um since you don't since it's not an
action item, council cannot formally direct it this evening, but kind of
curious what that what that process would look like.
Thank you, uh, Vice Mayor. Perhaps this is a good time to ask our chief of
police to comment maybe specifically on that question, but, uh, more broadly on,
uh, what he's heard at this point. >> Thank you, Chief Rice Schneider.
» Thank you. Uh, James Rice, center, police chief. Uh, good evening, madame
mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, and council. U, I don't know truthfully the answer to
that, uh, as we've never had to do it previously. Um, I think that if we made
that decision, I would assume that we would want to do it in a proactive way,
in which case we would probably just take them down ourselves through public
works, um, rather than wait for the vendor, uh, if for no other reason than
if the vendor said it would take us a period of time to do it. If the council
made that decision, I would assume you would want that to take effect
immediately. So, we could affect that. Uh, they're all installed on existing
city infrastructure, so I think we could accomplish that if that were the
mission. Um, if I may, to the city manager's point, I did want to point out
that uh, as this audit goes forward over the next 90 days, and frankly going back
90 days, uh, the department has been taking efforts to sort of attack
lowhanging fruit where we could make improvements that we already had control
over. So for example uh theus that we have with the individual agencies with
whom we share uh we have actually revised thoseus to be more clear in
terms of the expectations we have over our partners. Uh we have incorporated
specifically a clause that also has them attesting at the uh executive level that
their departments have a robust audit process of their own officer search
behavior. So, uh, in addition to complying with California law, that they
also have an audit process in place that's comparable to ours. And that was
directly in response to some feedback we got from council here. Uh, the other
thing that we are going to take advantage of is a feature that the
auditor mentioned uh that did not exist until literally 10 days ago, which is
the ability to limit the types of crimes for which outside agencies can search
our data. So, uh, we have a meeting set this week to go over the full list of
crimes that presently exist because, as you may know or may not, when an officer
conducts a search, there's a drop- down menu with a finite list of crimes that
they from which they must choose one as the basis for the search as well as a
specific case number. Uh, up to now, we had no ability to restrict by type of
case they were searching for. Now, we're going to take advantage of going in and
identifying what I would imagine as low-level crimes and limiting the types
of cases that would justify a search of our data. Uh, one last point, while we
have been thoughtful in identifying regional partners which with whom we
felt we had a nexus and crimes in PaloAlto may have a nexus and so we only
partner with Northern California law enforcement, local law enforcement
agencies. uh we are going to take a fresh look at that list and see if it's
it if it's at all expansive or too expansive for our needs. One last point
I wanted to make was on the reference to the Northern California Regional
Intelligence Center or Nick Rick. It's a fair observation to say that the city of
PaloAlto is a member in the sense that we receive data from Nick Rick, that is
intelligence bulletins from from Nick Rick, but we've never had an officer as
a task force agent at Nick Rick and we've never had Nick Rick as anou
agency. Other local law enforcement agencies in California had had
partnerships with Nick Rick, but we did not.
Can >> I ask one followup question? I know I'm
over o over over time. Uh glad to hear changes in in policy to require more
more serious crimes for the for the search. But is that again more a policy
safeguard or is there is there um actual kind of technical controls that would
prohibit an officer in another in another agency being able to access if
it is not a serious crime. So, as would as would be the case really
with any police database, to be quite honest with you, if if you have a
dishonest officer who's going to falsify a report number and deliberately
indicate a different call, a different type of crime, um, then yes, uh, if
someone could in theory do that, um, we would have, as was pointed out, a much
easier way to identify those instances internally because we have access to the
the detail. Um but uh the the reality of it is with externals uh to a certain
extent there is there is a professional you know assumption that they're both
complying with policy but also complying with California law that would pro
prohibit the behavior. Well then sorry one more followup to to that. Are there
any repercussions that you're aware of at a state law level that would prohibit
an officer from making a a false request in another agency to be able to access
that data? So at the very least it would be grounds for descertification under
SB2 that was enacted a couple of years ago that allows for uh California peace
officer standards and training which is a state regulatory agency over that
provides licensing or certification that's required to be a police officer.
Um that would be a basis for descertification which would mean they
would no longer be able to be a police officer in the state of California.
Okay. Thank you.
Can't remember which of you rang in first. Uh, Council Member Lowing, I
believe.
Okay. Thanks. Um, I'm always interested in getting more data to make a decision
uh particularly on a on a data issue, but um I I do have concerns that it
sound like you weren't going to really be able to go too far on looking at
alternative vendors. Is that correct? Or you are going to be able to
we can certainly bring forward some of the alternative vendors that are
available. >> Okay. I didn't understand that before.
That's why I wanted to throw that up. Um because my my concern is we, you know,
get into this for 90 days, we learn a lot of stuff. But that same CEO is
sitting there at that company. Uh and there's all kinds of uh handprints,
footprints, fingerprints all over the place that the guy is just not
trustworthy. So, I mean, that's fact. There was some of this discussion
tonight. I read articles about that. So, um, that's part of the process here is
under under what circumstances, if any, could we ever actually trust this guy
while he's still there. So, um, that's a big barrier for me. Um, a big barrier.
Uh, I just want to also just kind of point out that as you're doing your
comparisons, I mean, you you know this stuff better than we do, but I know that
all cities are not created equal. Um, Pasadena is not exactly the same as Palo
Alto. Um and Pasadena and Palo Alto are way different than Stanford. So the
decision for Stanford to drop it for XYZ reasons, it's just not relevant to the
way that our department's going to use it. We want a broader, you know, across
the bridge access. Uh I read that they just wanted like 60 seconds after
somebody left the jurisdiction of Stanford campus, they wanted the the
data to go away. So that's just not the use case that we're we're using. We're
we're actually catching people that stole cars three days ago uh now
stealing one in Walnut Creek and then we get reported on that. So that's the kind
of I mean I'm paraphrasing here chief so you can improve that statement but
that's just a different kind of use case. So we just have to be careful of
which jurisdictions we're comparing to is is sort of my only point on that. Um
so the question becomes do we invest in this literally money and 90 days uh and
get back to saying that well we might want something else but it's not flock
meaning should we in the interim whoever brought that up was it council member
Burke should in the interim we be doing something else like jumping on new
vendors right away or do we need this uh anyway to know what kind of vendors to
go Go.
» That's all. >> Council member Li cuts.
» Thank you, Mayor.
I'm going to begin by reiterating that I'm not concerned with Paloto Police
Department and I appreciate our independent auditors. I am concerned
that Flock, whose leaders are aligned with the policies of the Trump
administration, which now has a true 21st century weapon in their
authoritarian authoritarianism arsenal, are on the rise, and I feel like the
dictators of the 20th century would have given anything for this kind of
surveillance technology. According to a KQED piece that ran just
last week, here are a few examples of what is happening. Police in Texas
hunted a woman who traveled out of state for an abortion. ICE agents asked local
police in Illinois to track undocumented families. A police officer in Wisconsin
used Flock to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her partner. And right here in
Oakland, a 62-year-old woman who was driving to her job at a nursing home was
pulled over by police, guns drawn. Flock had connected her plates to a serious
crime. She didn't know that her plates had been stolen and replaced with the
ones associated with the crime. These scenarios have already happened. And we
know that black or brown drivers are disproportionately likely to have an
adverse outcome when pulled over by law enforcement. Our very own Riley Cook,
reporter for the PaloAlto Weekly, who is in the back of the room, did a records
request for these search audits that Flock and the Police Department maintain
on our data. The records revealed that police departments from all over the
country were searching Palo Alto's flock data without the permission of the city
or the Palo Alto Police Department. To quote Miss Cook, they went above and
beyond existing California law about not sharing with any outofstate or federal
agencies. And what my reporting shows is that Flock was still able to bypass
those without telling anybody. They didn't tell the police department. They
didn't tell city officials. They just quietly rolled out this nationwide data
sharing effort which completely went past Cal local and California
regulations. I think city officials, she said, were really confident at first
that they had enacted these protections, that they were protecting residents and
heeding those surveillance concerns, and yet at the end of the day, the company
still did what they wanted to do." End quote. So, for me, this is primarily not
an audit question, even though audit is the subject of our study session. For
me, it is a trust and governance question. Flock changed the capabilities
of a surveillance system that PaloAlto entrusted to it and the city did not
know it was happening.Uus are being violated. Misuses of data have
happened elsewhere. As they say, if you can't protect it, don't collect it. I do
not think it's smart to continue operating that system while we
simultaneously investigate whether we can even trust it. The wolf is in the
hen house and we're wondering if we need to build a better gate. Therefore, it is
my hope that we seven will have the courage to join the growing list of
municipalities around the nation and state that are refusing to let this
authoritarian intrusion into our streets and into our private lives. A list that,
as we've heard, includes Mountain View, Santa Cruz, Elserto, Stanford, Santa
Clara County, and our sibling city, Bloomington, Indiana, among so many
others. My fear is that a three-month audit is
three more months of surveillance with consequences we can guess at but can't
fully appreciate the effect of. I would rather direct staff to agendaize the
termination of the flock contract and in the interim to council member Bert's
point about things that might be done in the interim to take them down or cover
the flock cameras as we await the longer term decision.
Council member Rectal. >> Yeah,
as you can guess, we don't have a lot of faith in flock. They've had a lot of
missteps and we don't know what they're doing behind the closed doors and that
that really bothers us. And so comparing vendors, I think, is a high priority for
us. But just not the vendors, but also the architecture. If you have uh if
you're just switching to another vendor that controls the data, then you're just
maybe in the same boat as opposed to if you control the server and you control
the data, that seems to be a much more robust, but that also adds wrinkles to
it because now you have to have it. And so I think we want want you to work with
it and understand is this architecture look good on paper
but it's not implementable at the city of Palo Alto.
And the second thing is that we share our data with our neighboring cities and
that's very valuable because they catch crimes that were committed pal ultimate
they help each other right now they all do that through flock through that
interface if we go our own route and go with Campbell go with Stanford uh we
won't have that same data sharing and can we recreate that or are we just now
on an island by ourselves and that's a really fundamental trade-off so I would
want you to work with the police department understand what are their
uses for their sharing how do we catch criminals for other cities and how do
other cities catch criminals for us and how can we manage it and uh build it on
the our IT system. So thank you
» council member Leing thanks. So I'm wondering if we can
somehow redirect this [clears throat] audit. It's not an action item for
tonight. It's only a study session, but if there's some process that's
appropriate to redirect the audit to emphasize uh new vendors uh as the first
step and give a report out on that before you press on unless there's
necessary stuff you need to do. I'm not going to tell you how to do your job.
I'm just saying if we can get an early read on the alternatives.
» Yeah. And maybe I'll just pick up here because I haven't chimed in because I
was going kind of the same direction. Um, from what I'm hearing, it seems to
be the sense of the council that we are unlikely to retain flock. We have not
made that decision. It's not agendaized for that decision, but that's clearly
where it seems to be leaning. Um, so the question is likely to be whether
we want to retain any other ALPR and that, you know, aspects of that will
factor into whether or not we do that. So I guess I mentioned that because I
think the way this audit could be the most useful for us is to focus on an
helping us answer that question. Um the reason um and so be before I go on
and say more about my thought process, I do want to ask a question. I think it's
to the chief. um if we were to agendaize um uh an a an
action item on whether or not to cancel the flock contract within the next 90
days and if there were if that happened and if we were then to decide we were
comfortable enough with another ALPR reader I don't know whether we will be
[snorts] is there a problem with having a break there that makes it harder to
start up again or is that just irrelevant we just would start over in
any that if I understand your your question
correctly, Merittz, if we were to take down the flock cameras today and have
another vendor up a month from now, is there a problem with that? I think the
answer is that there wouldn't necessarily be a problem other than if
we if we see the technology is a valuable crime fighting tool as well as
a deterrent then the very public uh proclamation that the cameras are down
effective immediately without with being coupled with uh new cameras are being
placed immediately uh then there's a gap in that regard.
» Okay. But that's something we could discuss uh if it were agendaized. But um
yeah, in more detail. So, okay. Thank you. Yeah, I I guess the reason I'm uh
still remain curious about other vendors despite grave concerns about the the the
cameras generally um is just personal experience. We all can't help bring to
these decisions and thoughts uh you know, our own uh lived experience. And
on my block there were two homes where children live uh that were broken into.
And it was a a ser a group that serily did this in neighborhoods around Palo
Alto but in other cities. And in one of those homes the child was there home
alone facing intruders. um they were ultimately uh apprehended through use of
ALPR and so who knows how many other children were spared that traumatic
experience and potentially you know worse than just uh trauma. So but maybe
we could do it other ways. Maybe we could be just as safe or maybe we could
curtail uh misuse possibilities enough we're comfortable with this. I I don't
know. I would like to learn more but um that I think is is is so it's not about
the tool so much as um instances like that. Um
so I I guess um it would be interesting. We could do
almost a a straw poll to see if there are interest in agendaizing but I think
the city manager has something to say. >> Yes, mayor. Thank you. Uh I would be
remiss if not pointing out to the council that the scenario that chief uh
suggested was that we take down the cameras now and we have a new vendor in
a month. I think that latter is unlikely uh and uh to
perhaps even an order of magnitude in terms of uh I would expect based on your
discussion tonight that the conclusions of OIR's work will be very important for
defining the product we seek. Uh and then there is the procurement process
that would need to follow. So, you know, we routinely quote 6 months as the time
frame with which it takes to complete a public procurement process and uh so we
would certainly want to prioritize this. Uh but that should at least be the the
starting point for setting expectations on the time it would take to identify a
successor provider.
Well, perhaps though uh if there's interest in agendaizing this item, we
could at that point decide if uh we wanted to have it be effective upon
procurement of a a later one or immediately or or whatever. Um
but thank you for spelling out that timeline. Um,
I would actually just be interested uh for colleagues to say how many would be
interested in agendaizing just the the consideration of the the the FL contract
itself. >> So I guess um I'll let
» you kind of figured out at the end >> oh uh just agendaizing uh whether or not
we would uh agenda the cancellation of the flock contract itself. I think
that's where you were going. So I think I heard from you. Yes.
Okay, I'm hearing it from that NDS. Then some other contemplations.
» I'm sorry. >> No, I'm saying agendaizing in the
future. >> Are you you
» sorry? At the at the conclusion of the audit?
» No, between now and then if there were time. I mean, our agendas are packed.
» Yeah. And if we're able to agendaize it between then.
» Okay. All right. All right. So, Council Member Bird.
» Yeah. Um, so I am in favor of agendaizing an action item. Uh, I I uh
really would caution the mayor on characterizing what the seven of us had
indicated. I I did not hear the same consensus that you did. Um and under the
action item, I would be interested in um other potential measures we may take
while we await uh the audit and a final decision. Those might include uh further
restrictions on on the um uh offense uh specific filters and other restrictions.
It might include a disabling until we um uh take action on the autumn audit. Um
or it might be a a full decision. Um, when we get that action item, I would
like to at that time have um at least some preliminary information on
alternatives so that we aren't starting that clock 90 days from now, but we
would uh potentially start it much sooner. So, I would support an action
item uh uh but I I would not support uh a narrow uh pre determination of what
that might be. Yeah. No, that's fair. I did overstate it in terms of the
labeling of it. Um but I think we have the same in intent in terms of what we
would want to discuss. Um okay. Um I think we've given a fair amount of
direction. City manager, do you need more?
» Well, I think the question is really our ability to meet the
information expectations that were set there and in particular both with OIR as
well as uh the parallel staff work. Uh I think if if you're prepared to speak to
that tonight, that would be fine. Otherwise, I think we have some work to
do with OAR to identify when we would be able to bring that information back.
» I'm just looking at OR to see if they're able to speak to that tonight. And if
not we can uh
yeah tenatively I think there's a way in which we could construct the audit where
some of the issues that you want addressed sooner rather than later could
be addressed. So if the question is for example,
are there other other vendors there and what are the pros and cons of trying to
engage with other vendors? That's a fairly discreet question that could be
answered in less than 90 days. Um if it was, what other steps might the
department consider to restrict access use um before an ultimate decision about
whether or not to eliminate ALPRs entirely was made one that also could be
done probably in more like 45 days instead of 90 days. So, yes, if uh
council's interest is in carving out some discrete questions that you think
are priorities um and important uh to evaluate
how you respond sooner rather than later, we can do that.
» Okay. Thank you. I think perhaps we can take this offline after staff
contemplates it and in the agenda setting process, but with I believe what
we're hearing is an interest in having something before 90 days that would talk
about um the continuation you about the status of the flock contract and
alternatives for action before 90 days and uh any information that you can pull
together by then about alternate vendors.
Does that capture that's a lot that's a lot and and we have a very busy agenda
but I think that's >> we have a very busy police department as
well. So I think that uh we will take that feedback and see what we can come
up with. >> Okay. I appreciate that. Chief, did you
anything you need to comment on that? >> No, I think I understand. And I I I
would just add that uh along with the other work we've been doing in parallel
as the audit's been sort of in design uh I have been regularly meeting with my
colleagues in the region to discuss what they're doing and I have obviously been
tracking what's going on elsewhere in the state. Um I can offer at present
that uh with the exception of Stanford who uh and the uh the historical from a
few months ago example of Mountain View um in the county there's no one else
that's in the process of moving away from flock or actively pursuing another
uh another option. Um so we don't have any obvious partners other than perhaps
Mountain View. uh if we were interested in collaborating with someone in the
county. >> Okay. All right. Thank you, Council
Member Lithcot. HS. >> Thank you. Just wanted to clarify one
additional thing as we were putting together the list of requests for what
we'd like to see brought back with regard to this question of a
discontinuation. Um as we analyze whether that is
attractive to us, it would be helpful to know there's turning it off. As we've
heard, there's also covering it. These are things we hear out in the news that
other cities have done and it would be helpful to understand what does that
cost, how quick is it, you know, do we have the materials to cover them or is
that a procurement process and that's going to take months. Um so the details
on that which will help us understand how quickly that could be uh affected
would be helpful. Thank [snorts] you.
» Thank you. Uh I see no further lights. So I think we've talked this over uh
sufficiently tonight. Uh want to thank uh the uh OIR. Thanks the chief and
staff and thanks to the public for uh helping us uh noodle through this one.
Okay. So with that we will move on to our consent calendar.
So Madame Clerk, do we have any public comment on the consent calendar?
And I'll ask you if you would kindly keep your voices down as you so we can
move on. [laughter]
» I know that's all right. I think she's still she's still sorting. So
um
» yes, it looks like we have uh two requests to speak on consent calendar
items. Okay, give it just a minute. All right. Thank you. You have been a lovely
and orderly uh audience, but we're going to need you to uh
what are you trying to get? >> Yeah, that's true.
I can use the G.
Turn up my Are you turning up my volume? [laughter]
How are we doing? Okay. All right. Thank you all for coming tonight. We
need to move on. So, I'm just going to ask for a little silence in the
chambers. Thank you. We want to hear our our next public commenters. All right,
madame clerk. Do we have any public com you have we have two? I think you said
» yes, we have two requests to speak. Our first speaker is city council s.
» Thank you.
City Council S, you should be able to unmute yourself and speak.
Moving to our new next speaker, Aram F.
Okay. I want to speak on item number I want to
speak on item number eight again. I'm not comfortable with Ed Shicata.
Um, and I'm not going to call him the drunken sailor tonight like I did last
time on this item. That was disrespectful. Um, but listen, why how
can we why can't the finance committee audit Chicago? Why does are we raising
the limit on contracts that he can approve when we've had all of these
consulting fees and he acted like the b the buck doesn't stop with him. Like, I
don't know how that happened. Well, you damn well should have. You should have
been paying attention to those millions of dollars worth of of consulting fees.
Now you all want to charge uh the RV folks $15 a month to re reup each month
when Chicago's throwing away tons and tons of money on useless consulting
fees. You are the elected people in the city
of PaloAlto that are responsible for keeping an eye on our budget. Not
Educata. He's not an elected official. Okay. The man has way too much power. He
wasn't listening tonight up to the flock folks. He was like saying, "Oh, you
know, we're gonna we're gonna have to check. He wants flock." Okay? He wasn't
paying attention to you or the the people of PaloAlto.
How can you unilaterally give this man the trust to continue to approve
millions and millions and millions of dollars and up the cap on that? It's
irresponsible. Let your at least let your finance
committee let you know those folks audit Educata. We got to reign that man in. I
mean, come on. Please think about it at this point. We don't have an endless
amount of money. We're more than a half a billion dollars in the hold of PERS.
Okay? We don't have a balanced budget. That's a joke. You just put aside the,
you know, the the PERS debt. That's all I've got to say tonight. But reign
Chicago in, okay? Don't Don't let him just make the decisions for you. You're
the elected officials. We elected you to oversee our budget. It's critical,
folks. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Lynn C.
Lind C, you should be able to unmute yourself and speak.
» That concludes public comment on consent calendar items 3 through 4 and 6 through
8 as agenda item five was removed off of the agenda.
» All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um colleagues, do you have any no votes or
requests to pull or recusals? And if not, may I have a motion to approve?
» So moved. >> Second.
» Right. Thanks very much. I don't see any other lights on. So madam clerk, please
call the role.
» Just confirming that was council member Lou and council member Rectal.
» Yes. Thank you. >> Council member Liths.
» Yes. >> Council member Rectal.
» Yes. Council member Lowing, >> yes.
» Council member Bert, >> yes.
» Mayor Vinker, >> yes. Council member Lou,
» yes. >> Vice Stone,
» yes. >> Motion carries unanimously.
» All right. Thank you very much. And with that, we will move on to city manager
comments. >> Thank you, mayor, members of the
council. Uh, let me ask city clerk for some assistance with a few slides.
Thank you. Next slide, please.
Just a few items we wanted to highlight for community awareness. Uh first off
that our police uh public safety building is uh operational. In
particular at this uh date that uh should members of the public need public
counter support including obtaining uh police records uh or reports uh that uh
they can now visit the public safety building at Forest uh Avenue location.
In addition, uh as of uh this week, uh the police patrol division where our uh
patrol officers will be rolling out of on a daily basis uh will also be from
that building and uh so community members will see additional police
activity in the Cal area. So nothing to be alarmed about. Uh this is their new
home and I'm sure they will be welcomed. Uh do want to note that on September 2nd
uh we will have uh the department's of police and fire honor guards uh raising
a ceremonial flag just to mark uh the fully operational uh date of uh the uh
building uh and community members are invited. Also note that our dispatch uh
center uh transition and cut over uh is ongoing and will occur uh late
September. Next slide please. Also
want to flag for community awareness. Uh we've spoken a lot here of the city's
partnership with the Jed Foundation uh a nationally recognized uh organization on
suicide prevention in particular related to the youth and uh that the Jed have uh
put out a uh initial findings uh report that is now posted on the city's website
at pelala.gov/jed.
Uh in addition the uh uh report itself and next steps will be discussed with
the city's school liaison committee on September 1st. That is a new date. We
had previously been carrying uh a date the week before uh for that meeting. Uh
so do want to note for anyone tracking that uh topic that September 1st is the
date for the city school leaison committee meeting. Next slide please.
Also uh coming up uh really in advance of your next uh uh council meeting is
the uh C training that's occurring starting on September 1st. This is our
annual plug for community members to get involved with uh uh looking out for
neighbors and being involved with our city emergency preparedness activities
through community emergency response team training. Uh you are able to sign
up uh for this training at our website pelaltto.gov.
Uh it's noted here a three-week training and a variety of uh skills and uh uh
connections uh to participate in uh really safeguarding and responding in
the event of a major emergency. And also note that certain members who have pre
previously been trained uh are invited to participate in this as well. Next
slide, please. Then also a plug for other ways to get
involved with the city. In this case, it's to serve on one of our boards,
commissions, and committees that uh we have a recruitment ongoing with
application deadline of September 2nd open on our human relations commission,
parks and recreation commission, planning and transportation commission,
public art commission, and the storm water oversight management committee.
Again, uh information on this available at the city's website,
palto.gov/bccrecruits.
I'm sure our city clerk also would love to uh respond to any questions about
this recruitment. Next slide, please.
Then also upcoming uh we do have a city council meeting on September 9th, but
given that this is just the following day on Thursday, September 10th, there
will be a ribbon cutting along with uh tours of the horizontal levy project. Uh
the uh uh community is more than welcome to participate in this. This is
Thursday, September 10th at 11:00 a.m. location at the end of Embaradero Road,
2470 Embaradero Road, uh including both the ribbon cutting and community uh
walk. And next slide, please. [clears throat]
Then finally, want to review uh your upcoming agendas. Your next meeting is
on September 9th. uh recognizing uh the Labor Day uh holiday on September 7th.
Again, this is Wednesday, September 9th. It is an early start because you have
scheduled a two-hour performance evaluations close session. Uh then we
have uh a number of action items on that agenda. 470 Olive League of California
Cities delegate de designation and an anticipated colleagues memo would note
that we had previously been showing the study session on consultant management
on that date but recognizing that's a heavy agenda we've moved that to October
5th. Uh also note that the following agendas on September 14th, you've got
the uh proposed parking structure at 375 Hamilton Avenue, water revenue bonds, uh
which will be your light reading for that agenda as it is the official
statement for the issuance of uh financing and then a stream corridor uh
protection ordinance uh changes. September 28th, a pre-screening for
proposed development at 706 Kalper uh Street and then uh the grade separation
direction related to alternatives that will advance to the next phase of design
work. And then noted here upcoming uh agenda items on October 5th and beyond.
I would flag that you have uh the work plans for the architectural review
board, historic resources board, planning transportation commission, and
utility advisory commission also scheduled in this October window. With
that, mayor, back to you. >> All right. And with that, uh we will
» Can I add one thing? Uh, one thing that wasn't mentioned was the grade
separation outreach meetings tomorrow night and Wednesday night uh at Mitchell
Park Community Center 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. both nights.
» Thank you. Previously covered uh so appreciate the reminder.
» All right. Well, thank you. And with that, we will uh recess uh into our
break and be back in 15 minutes.
the meeting back to order. So, we need some order.
Okay. All right. So, we're going to move on to
action item nine, which relates to the Bueno Vista Mobile Home Park
redevelopment. Uh, so I'll turn it to staff. And is
that you, Deputy City Manager Cotton Gains?
» Yes. Thank you, madame mayor and members of
the city council. Chantel Cotton Gains, deputy city manager. I have a very brief
presentation this evening about the item before you, as well as having Mr. uh
Albert Yang on the line working on this item with me and members of the housing
authority present this evening as well as someone from Santa Clair County
Office of Supportive Housing to help with questions. So, very briefly going
over this. Uh, nine years ago, the city and the county, oh, next slide. Thanks.
Uh, the city and the county um joined with the housing authority to preserve
affordable housing at Buenav Vista Mobile Home Park and the parties put
together a triparty regulatory agreement which established the baseline of what
the expectations are for the redevelopment that was happening there
at that time. So on the slide that's in front of you, we summarized just the
existing regulatory agreement, which is the one that was entered into in 2017,
as well as the two new regulatory agreements that are before you this
evening for adoption. So for the three key terms, as this um item has been
discussed before, the affordability requirements have remained the same
between this proposed regulatory agreement for parcels A and B compared
to the existing regulatory agreement. The expiration date, the original amount
was that it would expire in 75 years. And because the redevelopment has taken
some time, as you recall, in 2024, there was a proposal before this council for a
project and that was put on pause. And so, right now, the housing authority is
moving forward with the utilities upgrade project. And that is the reason
we're bringing the regulatory agreements to you this evening. We wanted to
maintain that same 75- year time period from the time the work was done. And so
the all parties have agreed that uh the 75 years would be the end of 2020 21101
which is really far away. And lastly, the total number of units. The original
regulatory agreement required that we maintain a minimum of 100 residential
units or mobile home spaces at the park. We brought an item to council in June of
this year to do an official parcel split to approve that map. And so that is what
created parcels A and parcel B. and the regulatory agreements that are before
you today in total equal that 100 unit minimum. So for parcel B which is where
the mobile homes are the minimum is 46 mobile home spaces and the housing
authority believes they can probably go a little above that but they're at
minimum doing 46. And then for the parcel A which would be the future
depart apartment development it is uh maintaining a minimum of 54 residential
units and that'll be delayed until implementation until 2033.
All of the other terms of the agreements are pretty much the same from the
existing triparty agreement and the two new regulatory agreements. Next slide.
And so the recommendation to the city council this evening is authorizing the
city manager to execute and make non-s substantive changes such as editing the
recital or the APN's and legal descriptions to the new and amended
regulatory agreements and related documents to facilitate the improvements
of the Buav Vista mobile home park at 3980 El Camino. And just of note, if you
looked at the attachments with the two new regulatory agreements, you will
notice exhibit A with the description of the legal bounds of the two sites that
it was similar in both regulatory agreements. And that's because we don't
have the final language yet uh for those official legal descriptions of the
parcels. And so that's one of the things that you'd be authorizing the city
manager to update once we get that official legal language. But most
importantly, we're really excited that the three parties work together to bring
these recommended agreements to you this evening. And we are ready to answer
questions and hopeful that this will be approved so we can continue to move
forward with the housing authorities work and utilizing a large state grant
that they have for the utilities upgrade work at the park. Thank you.
» Thank you, Deputy City Manager. Um, actually, I think I'll just go to public
comment on this matter. Madame clerk, do we have uh people requesting to speak?
We have three requests to speak on action item nine. Okay,
our first speaker is Winter D.
Hi. Um, so I read over very carefully both of the uh
uh regulatory agreements. Um,
I didn't see a lot of problem with them, but there was one thing that wasn't in
there. Now, I sent it to council. I don't know if all of you saw my short,
blessedly short email. Um the it had been previously by I believe uh Vice
Mayor uh Stone uh suggested that there be an internal waiting list for
residents at Buenov Vista Mobile Home Park to be able to move into uh for
instance a larger unit if it were to be made available rather than going
immediately outside of the park looking for a completely new applicant from
somewhere else in the county or wherever. And I think it would since
this is going to be kind of set in stone once you approve this, it'll be the
entire agreement. I want you to really think about that because uh and of
course we're talking about if they would be qualified the
within uh Buenov Vista, but I want you to seriously consider it. I think that
kind of internal preference is really important. I don't know what happened to
the larger PaloAlto preference that was also talked about in some length but I
leave that to maybe you get more information and thank you so much.
» Our next speaker is Herb B.
Uh my recollection was that the housing authority said that uh they did not have
a viable project because uh of being unable to finance uh the apartment part
of the the project. uh since this apparently is extending the the time for
them to be able to do that. And I believe a ballot measure
» [snorts] >> u statewide uh that state senator uh
Scott Weiner has placed on for affordable housing. Uh he indicated that
uh that funding could be used uh to
uh change a mobile home park to a multiple family, you know, apartment
uh dwelling and I believe also could be used to uh provide funding for uh the
housing affordable housing on religious institutions you know where 25% of the
uh land can be used for affordable housing. So, I was wondering uh how how
this connects or changes uh the previous statements from the housing corporation
that they didn't have a viable project because they couldn't have the funding
for the the I guess it's parcel B for the apartments. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Henry E.
This all represents a small effort of palative to allow people of working
class to continue to live in Palo Alto. My first concern is in moving people
around that nobody loses their trailer, their residence, that their right to
stay either in that where they are now or move to a better location where their
trailer can be protected. So secondly, the amount of housing to be built
apparently will not even start until 2033.
Why so long? What's going on? It looks like another attempt to stall to stall.
And also the scale of this. We must think on a much larger scale to build
housing so that people of all class levels, working, middle, and upper class
can live safely in Palo Alto. Everyone should have the right to live near where
they work. That's how we solve all this car problem. We won't need cars if
people could walk to work. So, it's all interrelated and the housing issue can
be solved in the city by bringing together Stanford University that has
the land, the business community that has the resources and Palo Alto city
that has the zoning and other authorities. So at the same time that we
must build housing to scale, we must also disassemble the billionaire's
compounds and return them to single family housing units. We need equitable
policy at all levels for this city. This project to save Vista is a small but
necessary part of it. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Aram F.
» Okay. So, I lived on Los Robos for I don't know 30 40 years and um you know
um Guav Vista is a is a gem. I'm a little confused though because it it it
seemed as though a few years back we were about to start the building process
to build the apartments and then all of a sudden there was some disputes. Some
tenants uh were unhappy about the size of the units they were being offered and
so the county backed out. now and maybe somebody on the dis council member can
explain to me. It looks like we're having the the the present tenants move
out so that we can do the underlying utilities and they're going to move back
and then correct me if I'm wrong going to have to move out a second time when
they actually get to the building of the units.
problem that I raised a few years back when I sent my oldest son over there to
apply to be uh in a unit there. Uh they were it very uh adverse it appeared to
him to having African-Americans be part of that uh
project at Buenav Vista. As you all know, we've pushed out a lot of the the
black community gentrification going on in Park Boulevard area. I've asked
repeatedly as part of the reparations that PaloAlto owes to the black
community to make sure that we preserve housing for underresourced black members
of the of our our county. Uh we're down to 2%. Um, you folks have never even
been willing to say the word reparations even though it's now in the vernacular
in the state. There's some cities in the country that have moved on that. They
all been lame, lame, lame on that. I don't understand that. So when we look
at the project, I also want to make sure that yes, we keep the Hispanic
population, the wonderful populations that's there, but open it up to some
other people of color as well. That just seems to me to be an obvious. So, thank
you much.
» And that concludes public comment on action item nine.
» All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um,
I just want to just start um by asking staff um
uh M. Delen Bach's uh comments about um the
families who are there that have grown through natural ways various ways and
are uh may need uh an additional spot over time or something. I do remember
there was a discussion um at least among some of us of an intent that existing
expanding families could have first choice in any sort of new or vacated
spots. Um while our goal was not to displace any residents, we we thought
about giving [clears throat] them the opportunity to have a more appropriate
amount of living space like current uh tenants before new tenants might come
in. this may not well I what I'm asking is where if if we were to memorialize
that where would be the right place to document that because I'm I don't know
if the regulatory agreement is but could we somewhere somehow record that idea if
in fact it's a consensus of our council. >> So I [snorts] I can take that answer. Um
so I mean there there will be other documents that establish tenant
selection policies um not necessarily ones that have to be recorded against
you know against the world uh you know to give notice to the world. Um so those
kind of policies could be embedded in those documents. I would say with that
specific policy um we would need to look uh closely at fair housing implications
um for for any policy like that before we implemented it.
» Okay. Yeah, I just ask that we do that at the appropriate time. I think that's
um an important part of of us uh maintaining this community uh in our
midst. Um and then just uh while I have the mic,
» madam mayor, we also have uh Flareity from the housing authority who can speak
to how they work on some of the um related to that issue as well.
» That'd be great. Would you be willing? Thank you.
» Hi, council mayor, vice mayor. It's nice to be here tonight. um Flity Ward with
the Still with the Santa Clair County Housing Authority. Um happy to be in
front of you all tonight. And to speak to this specific issue, um and this is
the same throughout the housing authorities portfolio. It doesn't just
apply to Buista. When a family is in need of a larger unit, they are placed
on what we call an internal eligibility list. So we have our our natural weight
list that we manage, but then there's an internal eligibility list for people
that need a larger home. And then when one becomes available, it is we refer to
that list. Um, so you know, we're not displacing people from the park who
can't uh, you know, be there anymore due to their family size. So that's the
general policy throughout the agency. >> Got it. And so that's that's what you do
now as a matter of course. And >> that's what we do now as a matter of
course um throughout our entire portfolio.
» Okay. Great. Good to know. Um, >> because families do change.
» Exactly. Exactly. And uh, so all right. Thank you. And then um could I ask her a
followup while she's there? >> Sure. Is that okay? Um just to follow
up. Thank you, Mayor. Uh on Miss Dylan's other prong of her question about Palo
Alto eligibility. Um we're of course very interested in low-income residents
of our city being able to have priority, but we understand this is something that
is being organized by the county and the housing authority. And so we know there
are probably limitations on that as there are with our home key. Can you
give us a sense of what whether any preference is given to a PaloAlto
person, a person with Palo Alto ties when it comes to where they are on the
wait list? >> Yeah. Well, currently there is no, you
know, we're not accepting new applicants to Buista only because we're getting
ready for this um improvement. Um, if the city council is interested in
exploring a local preference, I think that's something that, um, we can take
into consideration and look at, you know, all applicable fair housing rules
and regulations and funding programs. There's a lot of different things at
Touch Point of Vista that we would need to ensure we're not running a foul of
and get the necessary approvals. Um, but if that's something the city council
would like us to look at with staff, we can.
» I think I would. Thank you. Good to see you again.
» Yeah, you too. >> All right. Thank you. And then uh my
other question for staff is whether they had any response uh to Mr. Borak's
question.
» His question specifically on the financing of the project.
Okay. I will take part of this and then I will let Miss Ward provide the rest of
it. So, the project that came before the council in 2024, uh, which was for the
changes at the mobile home park in addition to the apartment building, that
project, given all of the multiple aspects of it, the housing authority
determined was not feasible to go forward with at that time. They did have
a large grant that came from the state for about 25 million as an estimate. And
that is the funding that they're using for this utilities upgrade project,
which is what we're moving forward with right now. So, some of this work was
included in that 2024 project, but they couldn't do the entire project given all
the elements, but I'll let Miss Ward add on from there.
» That was a great summary. Um, the total cost of the improvement project is about
$30 million. So, the balance that is not paid through uh the more funds will be
paid by the housing authority as well as we received a small grant through um
ESU's office to electrify the park. So, we plan on using that in those efforts.
and then the housing authority um providing the gap financing to get this
project started and finished. >> Great. Thank you.
All right. Um colleagues, any further discussion or a motion?
» Council member Bart. >> Yes. Um I wanted to understand um better
on in the [snorts] 9-month interimm period
where uh current residents are relocated. Not all are um being
relocated within PaloAlto but they're all being accommodated. Um we had had
previous discussion about students in PAUSD
and um and my understanding is that there there's collaboration with PAUSD.
I just want to understand better about the transportation of those students if
they're um um residing outside of PaloAlto. What is that that uh
transportation program? >> Absolutely. So, Miss Ward can share the
specifics, but I will share on her behalf before she gets up here. The
housing authority did a pretty extensive search to find apartment units within
PaloAlto. She can share the statistics, but they asked a lot of people and got a
response from one. And so with that in mind, they went to as close as possible
to PaloAlto, which is why you hear of some in Mountain View. And so Miss Flity
can speak to how they plan to keep the Peloto students uh whole. Um let me give
some background to to explain. We have been in kind of constant communication
with the school district for the past almost year at this point, having
regular check-ins with them. So letting them know about the timeline impacted
families um so that we can on either side uh make sure we're gathering the
appropriate data to prepare for impacts. Um so that has been open communication
and has been really great. Um we are utilizing actually the same um
transportation service the city of PaloAlto does to hire private transport.
Um so similar to the number that folks can call in the city of PaloAlto if they
want a a private ride somewhere um that service is also being made available to
um Buen a Vista families while they are relocated to assist in getting their
children to school. Um our relocation um our folks that are managing that on our
behalf are regularly meeting with the residents to figure out what their um
impacts might be uh and if they need to take advantage of that transportation
option. Um, and then we're also reimbursing families can also get a
reimbursement for mileage if they are traveling farther to get their children
to school as well. Um, and then we plan on being in touch with the school
district on whether there's any um issues with kids getting to school late
or any impacts to their attendance as a result of this so we can help coordinate
from our end with services and support the families to make sure their children
can get to school. >> So, are you referring to the Palo Alto
link program? >> Yes. Oh, but can staff comment on
our windown of that program and how it aligns with this ninemonth period?
» I will uh check with staff and loop right back. I don't I don't know that
it's officially the link itself. >> Oh, it's Sevilla. Is that the name of
the >> Yeah, same company but not our contract.
» Yeah, it's a different contract. We're not using the city's contract. We're
using a similar Yeah. >> Okay. Uh, and I I do want to support um
uh to the extent we can that PaloAlto local preference for additional spots
um should they open up. And the um the staff report said a minimum of um 46
spots I think it was on um parcel B, right?
» Yep. >> And what do you anticipate is the likely
full capacity? Uh we think it's around 56.
» Oh, good. >> Yeah. If we're able to create some
efficiencies within the park. Um uh but it remains to be determined once
we finish the infrastructure project. We have $5 million through the state of
Calhoun to start a launch a voluntary home replacement program. So some of it
will depend on who the final kind of spacing will depend on who participates
in that program >> because our our next item is our
oversized vehicles which we're looking at a variety of measures to try to help
um uh some of those uh families especially when they're they're um local
families and uh very low income. Would would those additional 10 spots up to 10
spots um would they be uh need-based on on um uh being unhoused uh or uh income
based? How would how would that work? >> Yeah. Um it will be income based. So the
regulatory agreement outlines the uh we call them like affordability buckets of
each of the levels. So what happens is we analyze the current rent role against
the required affordability set aides and then the spaces that become available
are subject to where we need to fill buckets right if we need more certain
income levels and then we would we would um you know take people off the weight
list. So conceivably within the the local preference, we could include uh
people in uh uh in RVs on uh currently on the street uh within a local
preference depending on whether they qualify within those income buckets.
» I would probably need to talk to our attorney about how like specific you can
drill down on a local preference. I don't know the answer to that.
» Okay. All right. Thank you. All
right. Thank you, colleagues. Any other questions [clears throat]
or comments or motions?
» Council member Lou, >> I'll echo the point about a uh local
preference and um uh also echo the broader theme and point of uh potential
space for RV residents. Uh and with that, I will move the staff
recommendation as well. Thank you.
» Second. >> Thank you. Any further discussion?
» Yeah, I just want to make sure that the um that local preference request is
included in the motion.
» I think that's a referral for staff to work with the housing authority on next
steps there. Yeah, we just want to codify it as a referral
» and we could just add an extra bullet point under the motion with uh just the
word uh with a referral for uh local preferences.
» Secondary
referral to staff. >> Yes.
Do >> you want to speak further to your motion
or second? >> To work with staff to to work with
housing authority. >> Referral to staff.
» Staff to work with. Okay. >> Referral to staff to work with housing
authority for local preference. Yeah.
Yeah, I I know there's more words smmithing we can do, but I think the
point is >> that covers it
» clear enough. Um, so uh no other comments. Um, uh, glad that we can have
utility improvements, electrification, a bunch of facility improvements. I think
it's the right step and I think we really look forward to working
productively with the housing authority and um uh getting the ball moving as
quickly and clearly as possible.
All right, great. Well, this has been a long time coming. I'm eager to see the
next steps. And so with that, I will ask the clerk to call a role.
» Council member Rectal. >> Yes.
» Council member Lads. >> Yes. Vice Mayor Stone,
» yes. >> Mayor Vinker,
» yes. >> Council member Lou,
» yes. >> Council member Lowing,
» yes. >> Council member Bert,
» yes. >> Motion carries unanimously.
» All right. Thank you. This item will go to the county tomorrow for approval and
then uh within a week, it'll go to the housing authorities board for approval
as well. >> Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you,
Deputy City Manager. Thank you, Miss Ward. I also see some other colleagues
up there. Um, so anyway, we appreciate this and look forward to seeing the next
step happen. All right. And with that, we will move
on to our next and last action item of the evening. Item 10, recommendation uh
to launch two pilot OSB parking programs, etc. Um
we'll give staff a second to shuffle.
Okay. Um, all right. Well, this is one where uh we have had an ad hoc committee
diligently working with staff and so to kick us off tonight, I'm going to turn
to the chair of that ad hoc, Council Member Lowing.
» Okay. Thank you. Yes. And I just want to begin by
giving you giving you an overview of where we've been. Uh that includes the
original direction from council. Uh brief view on our outreach and comment
on what we learned. Uh then comment on the staff proposal both the content and
the timing. Uh and then later after staff gives a presentation uh all three
ad hoc committee members uh are going to speak individually from their own sort
of personal point of view of uh where we are and what we each think uh we should
do. Um so we all know that the large
population of OSVs is a [snorts] issue in cities around the country uh
national, state, um and local. Uh that said, our jobs here, so we have to focus
on what we can get done here. Uh we we know that the RV population,
OSV RV, is made up [clears throat] of people in varied circumstances. We know
that by talking with a lot of them. Um, some just simply can't afford to live
here. Uh, but they have a job here. Uh, some have med medical or substance abuse
problems. Um, some simply want to have free rent. Uh, some have a home
elsewhere and, uh, stay here during the work week and sort of go home. Uh, some
like the mobile lifestyle and and a lot of other different categories. Uh, it's
not just one thing. So, the council asked us to address this
issue with a sort of a two-pronged approach. And the first is toward leg
what I call legitimate lowincome folks that just need a helping hand uh to get
to permanent housing. And the second prong is the waves of OSVs that are
really interfering with uh commercial businesses and in some cases residential
areas. And this has been going on for a long time. Uh both of these problems are
real, they're chronic, and they're high priority.
So, as the ad hoc got going, [clears throat] we came up with a list
of initiatives starting with how do we find new places
for some of these vehicles to to park. At the time, the count was about 200
OSVs. Um sometimes that and that did not count sometimes the commute vehicles cuz
some folks have a car to actually literally do their commute to a job. So
but the OSV count was uh was about 200. So we did extensive I mean very
extensive outreach to commercial uh developers, property owners and
businesses in our city and beyond. um especially those that were empty, not
least, and had empty parking lots looked like a great opportunity. Um
secondly, we talked to faith communities. Uh a number of them had
already allowed day use for um homeless in uh vehicles.
We appealed to the county of Santa Clara for land uh including uh the very large
uh fairgrounds that are only used sporadically throughout the year.
Overall, this problem really needs a regional solution led by the county
because the county's whole sort of reason for being is a safety net for
those in need. And they understand that. They embrace that. but they'd just been
slammed with budget cuts caused by uh federal cuts.
And we were also very eager to have the 88 bed transitional housing at Homekey
open uh so that we could use some of those units there for some of the OSV
dwellers um particularly since it's in Palo Alto and we invested in it. And
then we found out that when it opened, it was backlogged
with units for residents that had previously been housed in hotels because
of the late construction. So we ended up getting none of those beds of the 88
beds that are in Palo Alto. So the bottom line is that everything we
reached out to try to do and all these initiatives did not work. None of them
after all this time. And I mean we worked on it. Um there's one help hope
help hope help hope help hope help hope
help hope help hope help hope helpful
footnote and that is that we now do have a a nibble from the county that they
would like to work with us uh to get some safe parking but no details so
that's still a stone that's not overturned the estimated count is now
about 130 to 140 depending on the day you count uh and that is down from 200
due to the citations and towing um of course now we need to take further
action to address the OSV population. Um, but I do want to salute the folks
that worked on this in the uh in the city, the police department and public
works around the firing line there, but a lot of folks in the city manager's
office and and elsewhere and and legal. [cough]
So, I've come on staff proposal. Uh, it's it's just time to come back to
council now uh given what I just reported on and come up with an
alternative proposal than than what we have. Um, so this particular proposal uh
came from staff to be debated. The objective being direction, turn around,
send it back to staff with direction on what council wants them to do.
So the council ad hoc committee uh is three people and it's really part of a
bigger ad hoc committee which is all the staff which is 10 to 12 folks that meet
with us every time we meet including the city attorney, the city manager, um the
director of uh of um public works and all of their staff. Uh you'll hear from
the city attorney a little bit later tonight. Um, but I also want to point
out that this actual proposal was not um created by the council of three people
um uh nor was it reviewed by the council three people uh before it went out. So
the staff report includes you know a lot of elements that were discussed by the
full ad hoc um and also introduces some some new material uh such as the
proposed rollout schedules that uh that we hadn't seen. Um, I think there are
also some some items in the report that need clarification and I just want to
take this moment now to give a couple of examples before we go to public comment.
Uh, many folks have written us saying that the staff report in uh, pilot 2 of
putting half the vehicles uh, on one side of the street actually makes them
permanent. And that's not correct. There's no indication here uh, that
those are going to be permanent. uh it was intended as a an option as a stop
gap measure to remove half to remove not keep half of the OSVs to relieve half of
the problem uh as soon as we can. Uh so there's no current recommendation to
make that other half permanent and we can do whatever we want with that but
that was the concept and the other side of the concept was to be equity uh uh
amongst all the businesses there. There's also some concern on the street
as expressed in the many emails that we got um that the streets targeted in the
report are not comprehensive enough and we sort of quote left some out. Uh but
that list is not fixed and is easily amendable you know one way or the other.
So I just want to mention those before public comment. So the desired outcome
tonight is simply uh direction to staff on what direction our seven folks want
to go. Uh we can vote on proposal that's here. we can vote on new items. We can
send stuff back to the ad hoc. Uh so that's the overview and uh we'll chat
again back to the mayor. >> All right. Thank you. And with that, I'm
going to turn to staff and uh to the city manager.
» Sure. Thank you uh mayor and members of council in particular the ad hoc uh
committee. Uh as noted, ad hoc committee has spent extraordinary time uh working
with staff as well as doing direct outreach uh as was noted with uh uh
community members as well as our regional uh partners and those that we
hope to become regional partners with. uh in particular just want to note uh
that uh in wrestling with this topic the ad hoc committee has has clearly uh uh
expressed uh the uh recognition of the difficulty of the issue and uh also
wrestling with the lack of a permanent solution or even necessarily
straightforward solutions given the complexity of the issue. Uh so as such
uh what you'll hear from staff tonight uh is uh very specifically not intended
to be a permanent solution um but is reflective of the incremental next steps
uh to as uh chair Lowing pointed out restrict uh OSV parking while also
providing capacity to meet identified needs. Uh we also expect that we'll be
able to speak to uh some of the perhaps misunderstandings uh that we've heard in
uh some of the uh comments received including uh experiences of other
communities. So with that, let me ask our assistant city manager Melissa
Mcdana uh to walk through our uh overview of the item tonight and look
forward to your discussion.
» Thank you. U Melissa Mcdana, assistant to the city manager. Uh as as you've
heard already this evening, homelessness and vehicle habitation continue to
present complex policy operational and community impacts in Palo Alto. Uh
tonight's item presents recommendations to launch two coordinated pilots. We
recognize these are not ideal solutions to this complex issue, but have found a
way to address and reduce uh the impacts in our city. Next slide.
since policy and services direction on a phased approach in August of last year
through council creation of the ad hoc and the approval and launch of phase one
in October of last year. We've continued to move this work forward. Um this
January the ad hoc and staff engaged with the community at an openhouse
followed by a council study session in February and an update report in June.
Through phase one, we learned that focused cleaning, signage, enforcement,
and service connections can improve conditions in specific locations.
The proposed pilots developed and refined by the ad hoc apply those
lessons through a more structured and measurable approach. Next slide.
The city has created new ordinances to prohibit vanlording and to prohibit the
parking of detached trailers and inoperable vehicles and public streets.
Uh as part of phase one, there also have been increased enforcement efforts,
added street sweeping and cleanings to 18 identified impacted streets, and
explored approaches such as safe parking expansion and OSV buyback and storage
programs. At the same time, the city continues to
prioritize expansion of off- streetet safe parking. We know that a stable
service connected setting can support participant well-being by reducing the
uncertainty of frequent relocation and by improving access to housing
navigation, case management, and health and mental health supports. The city has
also engaged county officials to support a more unified regional response as
Chair Lowing mentioned. And uh the city continues to invite commercial property
owners to the table to discuss utilizing vacant lots as potential safe parking
sites. Safe parking remains an important
long-term strategy, but expansion is constrained by available land funding,
site operations, and service needs. The pilots proposed this evening are
intended to complement, not replace those efforts by providing near-term
targeted options while the city continues pursuing additional off-
streetet capacity. And finally, we we also in phase one
have met and continue to meet regularly with other cities and jurisdictions to
share information, problem solve, and look for ways to work together to
address this complex issue. Next slide.
The recommendations before you this evening are to launch two 12-month pilot
programs and approve related ordinances, resolutions, and budget amendments.
Together, these are intended to address a more structured to address ongoing
neighborhood business, public health, and safety impacts while providing a
more structured and humane response for people living in oversized vehicles. The
pilots are a cost-effective way to test targeted parking management and service
delivery before considering a broader citywide approach. The total pilot cost
is estimated at approximately $823,000800.
Staff would return to council in March and September 27 with status reports and
recommendations regarding continuation, modification, expansion, or termination.
Next slide.
The first of the two pilots, the oversized vehicle parking permit pilot
would create designated permit areas on the city managed side of Coyote Hill
Road and on Embaradero Road near the wastewater treatment plant with capacity
for approximately 37 oversized vehicles. Through negotiations with the county, we
may be able to switch the Coyote Hill area to the county side. For Embaradero
Road, we would deploy restriping to create space for permitted vehicles to
park while retaining the bike lane. This pilot is not intended to serve every
person living in an oversized vehicle. It is designed for individuals and
families who are ready to work towards stable permanent housing and can benefit
from a structured service connected setting during that transition.
The path to permanent housing is often not linear and can take time. By
providing a designated safer place to park, the pilot can help participants
focus on working with staff, accessing needed services, and building the
foundation for a successful transition to stable housing.
Staff will also uh as part of this pilot communicate with adjacent businesses and
property owners as well as current oversized vehicle dwellers as the sites
are prepared and the program is implemented. An estimated firstear cost
of $400,800. This pilot allows the city to test a
targeted alternative to more costly off- streetet safe parking expansion which is
as I mentioned constrained by availability and cost. Next slide.
To be eligible to participate in the permit pilot, uh, oversized vehicle
dwellers will need to meet a set of requirements to participate. These
requirements establish clear expectations for safe and responsible
participation while keeping participants housing focused.
Participants will need to have a valid registration, active insurance, agree to
sign a good neighbor agreement, agree to engage with outreach workers to receive
support in transitioning into permanent housing, have connections to PaloAlto,
be income eligible, and be able to pay a $15 per month permit fee. This modest
permit fee is intended to support an administraable program while maintaining
affordability for eligible households. Next slide.
» While the permit pilot is directed at supporting those who are wanting to
transition into permanent housing, the parking prohibition pilot is designed to
help reduce the count of oversized vehicles on heavily impacted streets.
This pilot would prohibit oversized vehicle parking on one side of
identified streets for 6 months, then alternate to the other side for the next
6 months. All existing regulations, including 72-hour limits, phase one
street sweeping restrictions, the van lording ban, and the ban on detached
trailers would remain in effect. Passenger vehicles may continue parking
on both sides year round. Staff will provide advanced notice and
communicate directly with affected businesses, adjacent property owners,
neighborhoods, and oversized vehicle dwellers. Feedback from residents and
businesses along with calls for service, complaints, warnings, and citations will
help us evaluate this pilot. An estimated firstear cost of $423,000.
This this pilot provides a lowerc cost opportunity to test operational
effectiveness and refine the approach before considering something broader.
Next slide.
On this slide, you can see all of the streets that will receive red tips as
part of the second pilot. In blue are the street segments included in the
alternating sides parking prohibition. We know this is not a perfect list. It
is a preliminary list intended to address impacted non-residential street
segments first identified in phase one and we will be rep uh refining it
through confirming locations and uses as well as outreach to neighbors and
property owners. Next slide.
Um here you see a cost overview for the pilots. This is an updated cost table in
the staff report. This table inadvertently omits that top row where
it starts with the word site amenities. However, all of the totals in the table
were correct in the staff report. We can refer back to this slide if there are
questions relating to costs. Next slide. And I'd like to thank you. I
know that was a lot of information uh spoken very quickly. And I would now
like to seed the floor over to the city attorney for some legal context.
» Yes. Uh thank you uh mayor, council members. So I'll just I just want to
briefly address uh the current legal environment in which this discussion is
taking place. So, I I think you're all aware that the Supreme Court's US
Supreme Court's decision in Grants Pass um did change the landscape in this area
and did limit the city's obligation to provide shelter really, you know, almost
whenever it displaces an unsheltered resident. Um you know, that said, um
there are still legal obligations uh that the city has when it is managing
its unsheltered population. Um and and some of those obligations are the you
know subject of current litigation in this district uh in the in the ninth
circuit. Uh and so that litigation does create some uncertainty as to how uh the
city manages the situation. And you know, while
I don't and I don't necessarily agree with uh the theories that plaintiffs are
advancing in these cases, I think it's my council should keep that uncertainty
in in mind. And you know, one real risk is that the city winds up in a situation
where it's the court and not necessarily this council or this community that
decides how we uh regulate people living in vehicles in public spaces. And so
that's I think something that you know you know our advice as staff is is we're
mindful of that risk and mindful of avoiding it. Uh you know another thing I
think to think about is that the results from the the steps that you took last
year I think do show meaningful reduction in in impact of OSVs in the
streets. And so I mean one thing to consider is whether you know additional
incremental steps will continue to show that impact. Um that's not to foreclose
you know any option that council could consider. I think it's just one of the
many factors that you need to consider in addressing what I I think we all
acknowledge is a really difficult problem.
» All right. Thank you staff. Um, and with that, I'm going to bring it
back to the deis. Um, but first to the ad hoc to see if you have any further
comments and and the other members of the ad hoc have anything they'd like to
say preliminarily and then the rest of us can
» Well, [clears throat] yes. I think at this point we want to talk about the
specific two pilots and give uh three different opinions on that. Not
necessarily different, but three people speaking on it.
[clears throat and cough] Excuse me. So speaking first to what's
called pilot one. Uh that's where we're creating um a structure um a game plan
uh regulations and targeting that specifically to incomequalified folks so
that we know that these are what I'll call legitimate uh folks that are not
just hanging around town but are here for reasons that they can't afford it
and so on. So I think the structure of that is good and I think the direction
that that is there is is also good. Um because we have a lot of latitude
including if they don't follow the rules, they're very quickly gone and
that's totally in our control. So they have to be good neighbors. They have to
not have stuff in the front, they have to take care of themselves in terms of
the uh um um waste, getting rid of waste and all that stuff. And and we're in
control of that. So there's a good control and most importantly they have
to say yes I want to get into permanent housing. So these are transitional
therefore these the original idea is the 37 units. Uh they're not going to be
living in those 37 units for 5 years. They're going to be transitioning to
housing. So that's the that's the goal. That's the intent and everybody signed
up for the same thing. So I think that one is is is on point. By the way, none
of these uh new units are in uh South Palo Alto. Uh so that was another
concern that we got from some some residents in terms of where OSVS are
right now. Um I think the schedule is uh for implementation is is sorry to say
way off. We just have to do that a lot faster because we have this problem
that's been festering for years and we have made good progress but it's not
enough relative to where we need to be. So that has to be trimmed up. Um I think
there's some details that have to be looked at. Is it a $15 fee or a $50 fee?
You know, that could be chatted about. Um, I think we should be very specific
about which kind of income folks that we're looking for. I mean, do we want to
try to get to, you know, 80% AMI and under? Do we want to get that specific
or not? But whatever it is, it may not have to be in the ordinance, but it
should definitely be in the program so everybody knows that what we're what
we're signing up for. Um, I think that's on point. And then, you know, this also
is not fixed in stone that it's only going to be 37. uh if it works and we're
getting good transition and andor we need more spaces um I think that could
be easily ruled out. Now speaking about pilot number two
[clears throat]
once again uh that schedule is um too slow for initial roll out um and I don't
think we actually need any more outreach to businesses. Um, if you want outreach,
here it is, including the approximately 200 emails we got uh [snorts] in the
last uh week and a half. Um, I always stay up to speed on my on my city email.
When I walked in here today, I had 75 more emails. So, we understand that this
is touching nerves and we need to take action on that. Um,
I think one of the things that it says in the success criteria for the pilot is
that um we want to get fewer business complaints. Well, of course, but that's
not really the criteria. Uh the criteria is is there a radical reduction in the
number of OSVs that are not in uh the permitted parking area? [clears throat]
But here's a really critical point. Right now, there aren't any ordinances
that we have that can control incoming vehicles to our town or if we, for
example, remove these whatever it's going to be 60 or 65 people in the
impacted areas, uh there's no way we control spillover of those folks going
to another neighborhood. Now, you could say that's okay because
at least it's relieving the folks in the uh affected neighborhoods that have been
suffering for years. Um, but if we're just moving it to another part of town,
we haven't really fundamentally addressed the issue. Just moves moves
the problem down the street. So, I think ultimately the only way to address this
is to have all OSVs in permitted parking. So, we now have we're creating
this permanent parking district one or whatever it's going to be what we just
talked about in pilot one and that can that can roll out gradually
as needed and as available but we could also do other we should do other uh
parking programs to have OSVs otherwise they just can't park
here. So, it's OSVs in a parking permit or else there's no
[snorts] parking. That puts a cap at the top and it keeps uh the spillage from
happening. Signage for the law I think should be
placed like a number of uh resident businesses have written in at the
primary entrances to the city which is currently allowed by uh state law
followed up by first time warning notices placed on the vehicle if they're
in a parked illegally. Um we're not going to spend $4 million on sign signs
around the the city. That really makes no sense to me. Um, and I think that's
sufficient legal coverage through the entrance signs, the word of
mouth, and warning notices on parking violators. I think this will be a
well-known law in our city. Now, the issue is, can we find enough parking
spots for the displaced folks even in this half side of the street that we're
talking about in the impacted areas? And and there it comes down to sequencing
and timing. But I think we need to move very fast to eliminate all that um
illegal parking in the impacted areas. And the way to do that is to get to a
broader concept of permitted parking. There are there are other options and I
think other council members on the ad hoc will talk about that. Um one of them
that's been discussed before is we could also um reduce the 72-hour rule and go
down to 24 hours. um that's not going to be magical and
wonderful for the police staff to be able to instantly cover that, but as a
deterrent, it could tell people that if you come to town, you're going to be
changing your position every day, not just every 3 days. Um so I would hope
that that would be a a a deterrent. Um you know, we don't catch every speeder,
but we have up speed limits uh as a deterrent. So that's another option. And
uh at this point I'll pass it over to my next colleague.
Yeah, we realize the city is frustrated. We're frustrated with OSVs. I mean, this
is a really hard problem and our legal constraints make it even harder. And so
we've been struggling to find uh what action should we be taking. Now phase
one I thought was very successful. public works and PAPD really went
through and we cleaned up there were streets that hadn't been swept there for
20 years. It was a long time and so uh that cleaned up the streets. It uh it
ended up reducing the number the population but now what we're worried
about is that we've reduced the number of RVs on our streets. Will someone come
in and fill that vacuum? Will RVs from Redwood City if Belmont come down and
start parking? and there's nothing that's capping the the population
preventing from going back up to 220. That made us very nervous. And that's
why we're looking at this second uh pilot where you do one side of the
street. And by we we roughly will take half the RV parking spots in the city
and get rid of them. And that's trying to keep that upper level from growing.
We we don't want the RV population to grow. And I thought we think that's
really critical. And we're not increasing parking at all. We're
decreasing it. Half the parking spaces go away. And this is, as the council
member Law said, this is not permanent. This is meant to be a stop gap just to
protect us right now because right now there's a vacuum. We've reduced the RV
population and that could change and we don't want we don't want it to change.
Uh so uh so then what what's our next steps?
what how can you know now that if we do implement this one side of the street
we've temporarily protected the community but what's our
long-term goal how can we get out of this well one thing we can do is right
now um residential areas do not allow RV parking but there's some areas around
town that technically aren't residential for example uh if you have a PC zone
that's not considered residential so along Fabian there along like JCC, those
are homes and they don't get the same protection that we get in other areas.
Uh in North Ventura, there's mixed use. They don't get the same protection. Uh
East Meadow, same story. There's a lot of areas where there's a lot of RVs and
they really are residential and we don't give them the same protection that we
give the rest of the community and that's just unfair and we need to
address that and make a more uniform policy towards the residential areas.
The second thing is in the commercial areas. There's some areas where the
people who come have to park three, four blocks away just because there's so many
RVs clogging up or customers coming to the to the businesses and they can't
park. And so one possibility is that we do in the residential areas, we have
residential parking permits. If you go around and get half the signatures, half
the people sign the signature, then we institute a residential parking permit.
So we could do the same thing in the businesses. half the businesses in an
area sign the petition. We could have a business parking permit. And that means
that anyone, say a customer comes, they can park two hours in front of your
business. But anyone who's doing longerterm parking, they need a permit.
And those permits are only issued through businesses in those areas. And
so now that parking in that area would be there to serve the businesses, not to
serve the RVs. And that would be one way to relatively quickly mitigate those
parking impacts that the RVs are having in those neighborhoods.
But in the long run, we still have these RVs and if we're just shuffling them
around, as council member Lowing said, they're not solving the problem. and
safe parking, whether it's down at Moffett we're looking at, or uh if we
can expand other areas in the city and have more safe parking, and so we can
transition these RVs off the street and into a place where they're not bothering
us and we're not bothering them. We're not chasing them around the city, that
they can they can uh have a more secure life on the street. That's good for
everybody. And that's a challenge because we don't have a lot of spare uh
space in the in the city. But that's something that we can strive for. That
is as long as we can cap the RVs. We're not trying to recruit more people. We're
trying to get rid of the RVs that are on on the street right now. That that's a
very good option. And every time you get someone off the street and into sedable
parking or safe parking, that takes pressure off those neighborhoods. And it
also allows us from a legal constraint is we can have more constrained parking
limitations. And so it helps everybody if we can find more safe parking. So
I'll move it on. Julie, do you want to council member Ladines?
» I think we're trying to share some overview thoughts here. We're not uh I
have some specific questions for staff. I wonder are we going to we're going to
get to our council or our council questions once I'm done then you'll open
up to everybody else. >> Yeah. And if you want to start and ask
questions I would say go ahead because I was going to then let us all talk and
then hear from Thank you. >> Um
well to add to what my colleagues on the ad hoc had said and it has been uh
[snorts] in my four years I have not ever been on a committee that has had
this much work about it. Um, and I've been on a lot of committees that have
had a lot of work. So, this has been intense. And as the city manager has
said at the outset and has reminded us, this is we're we're attempting to do our
part to address one of the most seemingly intractable issues of our
time, which is the fact of homelessness and which in Peloto made 73% of our
unhoused live in vehicles. So, um, there's no easy fix.
Everybody's frustrated. This has been very hard. U we've heard
about impacts from my colleagues and I want to say that this committee has also
been deeply concerned about the quality of life lived by people who have no
better choice than to live in their vehicles. Asterisk, some people have
better choices. As council member Lowi said, some people have homes elsewhere.
They're choosing to live in a vehicle here for reasons that make sense to
them. But we know there is a percentage of the population who have no other
shelter than that metal over their head, which is their car or their RV. And we
are desperately concerned about the fact that our society has gotten to this
point. And we know it's not our fault. We know that leaders across this region
and residents and voters across this region and the nation have made choices
for some time that have led to these macroeconomic conditions that are
causing these impacts for businesses and residents and for the
RV dwellers. Um I want to say that um
I do have some questions um for staff. Um, so I I am excited that we have
gotten to two pilots. Uh, we got a lot of feedback telling us why we should not
be excited, that they are not correct. Um, we worked hard at this, but we are
ready to hear your feedback and to make it better. Um,
I want to be sure people understand because it was not in the in the packet
and uh the presentation tonight for understandable reasons was quick that
pilot number one, which is the Coyote Hill and the Embaradero pilot program,
approximately 37 OSVS,
offers folks the opportunity to come into the regulatory environment, come
come in from the cold, come in from hiding and running, get a permit,
give be given permission to park here or here and pay us a little bit of money
and in exchange for that based on what the city's interests are, hygiene,
trash, sewage, and what those humans needs are, hygiene, trash, sewage, we're
going to have a portaotty, we're going to have a dumpster for the cost of
$33,000 a year, which is a pretty good deal. Some may see these as amenities.
We see it as a win-win. We need those things. They need those things.
So, that's an example of what we're trying to offer both to meet our needs
and also to make the permit pilot attractive to people who are currently
parked elsewhere. Um, there is also a Margarit stop and a VTA stop near the
Coyote Hill. I'm less familiar with the transportation nodes available uh near
the Embaradero portion. But my point is in some ways Coyote Hill, out of sight,
out of mind. We [clears throat] don't want to push
people to the edge of society. People who are working multiple jobs, typically
workingass or poor, if they can't get to a bus, if they
can't get to a train, if they don't have a vehicle, if they can't get to their
job. And so we've been trying to pay attention to that as well. Um my
question for staff, the number of spots on Coyote we've said was 20 on our side
on the part of Coyote that we own, but you said Miss Mcdana that it may be that
we're going to swap with the county and use their portion of Coyote Hill. And if
we are that far along in our conversations with them, my question is
why are we not looking at both? because that could instantly perhaps double the
number that we have there. >> Yeah. Let me uh take the first uh shot
at response and Miss Madonna and others may elaborate. Uh as was described, our
original uh concept for this location has been to use the county segment
primarily because that area has existing sidewalks and existing parking. And so
for uh the uh purpose of uh providing an environment that is conducive to placing
the vehicles for longer periods of time and placement of the services that
you've described uh is preferable. The location under the city's jurisdiction
uh does not have sidewalks and uh current would require a restriping from
four lanes to two lanes in order to accommodate the proposed on street
parking. uh that's the reason that the initial and proposed uh focus or
priority would be on the county segment and we have had uh very recent uh uh
communications with the county that have uh indicated a path forward for that.
The other uh consideration has been the overall capacity to manage uh the case
management and the services uh that would be required for the two sites or
the total of 40 that has been uh described. If we were to expand it
conceptually to the order of 60 as uh I think you're suggesting council member
we would need to look at our ability to manage that uh as well as the associated
resources required to do so. Um but again if that's an interest of the
council uh then that would be a next step for us.
» So you're saying 60 would be if we add the county portion plus the city portion
plus embaradero that's 60 >> correct. Okay. That was my assumption as
to what you were suggesting. if that's incorrect. And
» yeah, no, so you're saying the county is approximately another 20.
» I think it's 13 to >> Okay. Okay. There.
» It's okay. >> It's in the ballpark. Thank you for
that. Um, as we look for additional spots for permit parking, um, I have had
the audacity to suggest that maybe the curb alongside the practice range of the
golf course might work because there are no businesses abudding it. there's no
customers who walk up and have to walk past and this and that and I have been
told that that's a sacred cow in this city and it's a good thing I'm not
running for re-election because I just said it. Um and sometimes it takes that
kind of freedom to say those things and so I just said it maybe we ought to be
considering embarcadero alongside the golf course. Um, I was also surprised by
the six-month timeline for implementation, and it may be that we've
said so many things at the most recent meeting, and I missed it, but um, I I
echo Council Member Lowing's concern about that timeline for implementation,
hoping it does not take until March to start this. Um, and with regard to pilot
2 and our concerns about um about that, we are deliberately trying to reduce the
density of OSVs on those impacted streets by half by saying you may only
be on one side, whereas right now you might be on both sides. We are reducing
that density by half. And it's density that's the issue. It's not the lone RSV,
the one OSV one, two, three, right? Unless you're objectly prejudiced
against these people, you don't mind if there's one or two on your street, it's
the it's the density. And so what we're trying to do is reduce the density on
these impacted streets. And we will be paying attention to spillover and
figuring out what to do about it once we see where that's happening. Um so that's
it for me in terms of clarification and questions that I wanted to ask at the
front end. Thank you. >> All right. Well, I think uh I'm going to
give the rest of us a chance to ask some questions, make a a few comments like
like has gone before here. Um but then I want to get to all of you who are good
enough to spend your time with us this evening and and hear public comment and
then we'll come back and people can talk for however long it takes. Um, so I I
did just want to ask um I did want to just uh follow up myself
and first of all um I want to thank uh the ad hoc because I know you've spent a
tremendous amount of time. I want to thank staff that spend a tremendous
amount of time on this. Um, I agree this is probably the most intractable problem
I've seen since I've been on uh council and uh it's something that we need to
spend a lot of time and attention because obviously there is a lot of
frustration um out there and uh but I I appreciate
that the time you've spent and just wanted to let you know that. Um
so I was intrigued. I I learned something tonight from council member
Rectal. Um because we had understood that RVs were not allowed in residential
areas, but there are these areas that are not technically residential because
I was wondering why I kept hearing about them in front of residences. So, I do
agree that finding a way to make that uniform is something um that we should
work on. Um, we've talked the proposal also talks about not having them across
from parks, not near corners or driveways. So, if we were to accomplish
all of that, we really are talking about those uh primaril or primarily we're
talking about those in front of businesses and around there. And my my
question, so as as council member Lowing
mentioned, there are variety of different reasons that people live in
RVs. um if some RV dwellers are Palton who've fallen into homelessness for a
variety of reasons and they're what I would consider the otherwise unhoused.
In other words, other than the RVs, they would be unhoused. Um other RV dwellers
are people who have a primary residence elsewhere and come here to work so that
their RV is like a second home. And my question is, do we have a sense of sort
of that split? what I would call the otherwise unhoused and those for whom
this is a second home.
» Uh thank you, mayor. I I don't believe we have that level of detail. Um we we
just don't. I'm sorry. Because that to me is they're they're two slightly
different problems we're trying to solve for. And so I'm wondering how much
impact there would be by the respective solutions to those um because
the um
if you're an employer and you're employing people who drive in here to
work and you don't pay them enough to live in a and live near here, then it
would be interesting to have a conversation with them about providing
parking spots on their property or paying into to a housing fund where
there were housing vouchers or just other creative things to address that if
we could figure out which RVs they were. So I guess my second question to staff
would be if we don't know now, can you imagine a way that we could go and
figure out figure that out shy of the permit parking program?
I do suspect mayor that as has been described there is really a spectrum and
even that maybe oversimplifying the the range of circumstances that we have uh
and as such you know I think that the the best way to do what you're
requesting would be to do some sort of survey of that and I don't know that we
have the ability to do that in a way that's reliable other than you know
again anecdotally that I think we we have all seen that
there are apparently uh vehicles uh and and
people that appear to fall into that category. So I suspect it would be more
anecdotal than than being able to quantify it with any reliability.
» Yeah. No, I appreciate that. It's just if we could discern um I think different
legal standards apply to them too because they wouldn't um otherwise be
unhoused or unsheltered. Um there it's just a way to uh deal separately with
the the problem. So it's something that I would uh suggest we look a little more
into. So those were a couple of questions. Um
and uh I think I will stop with that those questions. I I just want to
observe that if we it's different because we're when we
deal with those who are otherwise unhoused, if they're separated from
their vehicles, they could end up in parks, downtown areas, and parking
garages. That is not a good solution. So, it's just different ramifications of
our actions depending on the reasons that they're in the RVs in the first
place. Yes. >> Excuse me, mayor. I just I I do have a
little bit of context I can provide for you. Um our out our outreach team has
tried to get that level of detail, you know, knocking on uh the doors of RVs
and developing relationships with folks, but they've not been able to get get
that. So we we have tried. All right. Um
» he already spoke. >> Okay. Council member Lou,
» thank you. just uh a few preliminary questions and I'll try to keep my time
brief uh at this stage. Um so initially we were really uh looking at San
Francisco and some of what they were doing with their permit uh program. I
understand our permit program is quite different, but I'm wondering if you have
any color uh or any anecdotes uh or data that we might not be able to easily get
on just reading the local news about how the San Francisco permit program uh may
be different or may be going. >> Yeah. Um I I can try to answer that at
least at a high level. Um I I mean I guess
I will start by um you know not trying to avoid the question but just
cautioning that sort of different different
uh factors influence how programs are influenced implemented in different
jurisdictions. Um the San Francisco program it is um a citywide permit
program for OSVs. Um it suspends issuance of new permits. um you know if
you cannot prove that you resided in a vehicle in San Francisco after a certain
date um you know so that but that you know that suspension is coupled with uh
you know significant connections to services uh you know buyback program you
know other benefits that are intended to help people who are living on the
streets um in vehicles get out of vehicles um you know so um
you know I think it's quite an impressive program I One thing to keep
in mind is San Francisco has a unique advantage and that that it's both a city
and a county. So that makes it um you know there's less coordination with
other agencies as far as directing resources to do like do do that. So you
know it the city obviously has to work with Santa Clara County and anything
that we're doing in the provision of social services.
» Okay. Thank you. I think a sort of related question in trying to get to the
mayor's point about um sort of serving the most need and uh trying to like
clarify where the different problem uh or like sources of need are. Um, in the
second pilot, did we consider having some elements of the first pilot, such
as some uh permit or uh optin to accept housing? Um, that we have in the first
pilot, but not the second pilot, because that seems like that could address some
of those points that the mayor was making.
» Not at this point. Uh at this point the second pilot's really simply a parking
regulation and to uh add elements of a permit does then also require a level of
uh screening and then management of how that screening would work. Uh so again
depending on the direction council would like to provide uh we could certainly
build that out. um but would want to uh then come back to council in terms of
the resources required and and our ability to manage it. I um I would like
to go back to uh council member Lith's question related to the management of
the permit pilot to also point out that in that uh in that program we are
expecting to need to bring on uh nonprofit partners similar to what we've
done with our other uh uh homeless outreach and uh safe parking programs.
And so we need to uh learn their capacity as well to be able to assist us
uh with any of these programs. Okay. I think I uh uh with a little bit
of time left have a last question about just uh the level of demand um and the
sort of finality of the pilot streets. Uh it seems like the pilot streets have
capacity for 116 or 125 uh spaces from the staff report. It seems like there
are around 37 maybe 60 uh permit spaces available. Um, so it seems like there's
still some extra capacity even if we only have one side and if we have 37 or
60 uh uh permitted spots compared to say a baseline of 130 odd RVs. Uh if we
think that is the right baseline. Um, does that suggest that there's room to
trim down or uh reduce the parking in front of
residences from this list of second pilot streets or do we just have to have
some buffer for the parking to work out math-wise? Like how does how do we think
about those numbers? Well, first um in terms of just how to think about those
numbers, it's really as estimates and and to a large extent ballpark estimates
and and so from a staff perspective, we've been working within that ballpark
and and I think it would be fair to uh also just acknowledge one of the big
variables is uh that on the alternating side prohibitions that there are there's
demand for other vehicles to park there as well. And so we would expect that
there will be others in addition to OSV uh dwellers that will be using that
parking. So again that that introduced just another variable uh for
consideration and in how this ultimately will play out.
» Okay. >> And you you made a reference to
residential areas and I'm not sure I I followed uh how that connected. Oh. Uh
just responding to public comments about which uh uh streets in the second pilot
maybe should be prioritized or should not be prioritized. Um
» as being residential or close enough to uh yeah, I I would just
uh acknowledge and agree that the current
um prohibition for overnight uh OSV parking in residential areas is complex
in its definition. So through this work, it has brought to light the value in
simplifying that and making it uh uh more easily understood both by the
public and to administer. Thank you, >> Vice Mayor Stone.
» Thank you, Madame Mayor, and big thanks to the OSV ad hoc for all the work that
you've been that you've been doing. I know that's a that's a a big lift on a
really challenging issue. Few few questions for for staff. Has have you
prepared a a map with the proposed impacted streets in the in the in the
pilot? How we how we labeling this [snorts] in
the second? Yeah, in the in the second pilot because
I mean we have a we have a list of the streets. I would find it really
beneficial to actually be able to see a map of the city of those portions
highlighted because my big concern and we've been hearing um a a frustration
from the community is that these these streets are being concentrated mostly in
South PaloAlto and a general frustration amongst many
in in South PaloAlto. I'm a South Palton my myself u that so oftent times the the
the burden of so many of these kind of city programs has has shifted over
towards South PaloAlto and I I understand some some kind of maybe
limitations given for staff given prior council direction regarding trying to um
avoid residential streets and I know there is more of that in in North Palto
themselves so I can understand some of that But do we have kind of a visual
representation of of that? And the staff also, do you agree or disagree about
kind of the concentration of where these streets are?
» Well, at this point, I believe that hasn't been prepared, but it really
relatively easily can be prepared at a citywide level. I to be frank, the work
has been done at a much more granular level. So, um, it's just really
putting that together with a broader uh view. Uh as to the concern, I think once
again it does relate to some ways the the application of this residential non
or not uh definition in the current code and the limited uh way that that's
defined by zoning uh as was pointed out areas that do not have the uh more
straightforward residential zoning which I think does tend to
uh exist in southern parts of town makes it uh less likely that that has been
implemented over time. So that's another uh cleanup that could be done as part of
our next steps. Yeah. And I think it would be helpful to be able to have
asurances to know that it hasn't just been well it's it's more less
challenging maybe in South Palto to find these streets. Um, but we've still done
our due diligence to identify kind of in a more equitable approach across the
city on where we are where we're identifying these streets.
» If if I may, Vice Mayor, um, one of the ways that we ended up with these streets
was through the policy and services back in August of last year and then the
October meeting. And these were the impacted streets that we started to uh
do the phase one portion of the phased approach on. So I think we just
naturally moved to phase two on the streets we'd already started um
making interventions on. >> Okay. So still I guess not getting the
types of insuranceances of kind of where the these are. I I again I understand
the limitations here. Um, another qu So, another question because this has come
up several times. I know this has been a common theme in prior council
discussions is trying to cap these permits at a a particular point in time
count or whatever legal way that we are able to to do that under current state
law. I mean, what do we need in order to in order to be able to restrict OSV
parking to only being permitted based on again kind of some type of of count?
» Yeah. So, I I mean I do think that so there there is is the San Francisco
example which has so far been successful. I I wouldn't say that
there's, you know, sort of definitive law on that one way or the other. Uh but
but you could definitely point to that example. I I'd say the one thing um that
I you know I would point to that in cities that have been you know
successful in implementing these programs is they do have um you know
support um and resources made available to transition uh people out of OSVs. So
it doesn't uh you know you're it looks like you're trying to solve the problem
rather than than target people.
Okay. I mean,
okay. I guess helpful moving moving forward to really kind of better
understand. I I mean, I know there's no direct
road map to be able to get there because every community is different. But I I
guess at this point I would have hoped for some more kind of developed um maybe
theory and how we kind of how we achieve that. I I think a pilot is a good place
to start. Um I'm sorry I'm going now off of off of questions so I will hold up
until later. Thank you may >> Yeah. And and I would just, you know,
point out that that's something that that if if we got direction either from
the ad hoc committee or council to move in that direction, we would look at much
more more carefully. Um but that's those are just general observations that I
have now. >> Council member Bert.
Um, so maybe I missed it, but I couldn't find the staff report. If um, so we have
uh, currently 22 spots at Gang, 37 in the pilot, and maybe up to 50. Um, how
many uh, approximately how many RV spots would be enabled by the um, the second
half of the of the pilot? Um that's the alternating streets, sides of the
street. >> Uh Council Member Bert, uh this the
second part of the pilot would actually disallow
uh approximately half of the current spaces. So depending on the time of
year, I I believe one half of the year it would be
there'd be room if no one else was parking and only RVs were parking, there
would be room for 116, I believe, is the the low number.
» Okay. Um that's an important number. So, we've
got 116 plus uh somewhere between
uh 59 and 70 because I count the king as as accommodating RVs. Um and then
um so that that takes us up, you know, to a pretty high number uh higher than
what we have in RVs in our community today.
And um so I I think that's an important reference point. Um
the outreach that we had I I I read that we there was a focus group and um and I
think that was Mountain View and Palo Alto um folks in a maybe was a countyled
focus group.
» Uh thank you Council Member Bert. Um I believe you're referring to there there
was a regional convening led by uh Supervisor Abbe Koga and that involved
uh any any city that wanted to participate. There were also some
members of the business community there. >> No, that's not what I'm referring to.
I'm referring to I'm trying to cite where I I read it. Uh but I thought I
read that there was a focus group that um looked at uh a group of uh very low
income RV dwellers and uh their circumstances. Um it was it wasn't a
statistical sampling but a focus group. Uh I'll have to try to figure out where
I read that. Well, there was a if I may, I I don't recall this being in the staff
report, but I I do recall as part of the county community plan to
end homelessness, there was a focus group in North County with RV dwellers.
It was held at King Road. Um yeah, maybe
» that's what I'm referring to. Yeah, it was in a previous report. Um but uh we
don't have this long into this process we don't have any other data. Is that
right? Because the focus group didn't seem representative. They were very
important uh group I think because they were u uh really representative these
that we want to focus on helping the most um uh families with children in in
our schools and who worked here and and very low income. Um, so I think it was
an important focus group, but I'm I'm really uh mystified that we don't have
better data after all this time and um we have this outreach that's going on
and and somehow it's not resulting in data collection. Um, and has there been
a an outreach meeting with the affected
business community?
not since the uh release of the specifics of the pilot. Uh there was uh
outreach more in general on the topic uh really over the course of the last few
months. >> There was outreach in what way?
» We held a workshop that uh was a primary community workshop along with uh the
ongoing uh individual stakeholder uh discussions that have happened. And then
out of the anticipated participation in the uh the permitted pilot and the
alternating streets pilot, do we have any sense of what portion of the RV
dwellers will participate in either of those because it's can't force them to.
» Thank you, Council Member Bert. It's been um as I'm sure you appreciate
really difficult to speak about an item with members of the public before the
item had come before council. So we we have asked our outreach team and our
service providers um in a more broad way how how their clients would feel about
something like this and whether they would participate. And we used that
feedback and brought that feedback back to the ad hoc to help develop what is
before you today. And that feedback was what?
» Uh, thank you, council member. I I don't have all of that in front of me right
now, but questions like what what fee amount would people be okay with? What
minimum amenities would people be willing to accept a good neighbor
agreement? Um, >> things like that.
» Okay, so that's different threshold levels. I'm kind of looking for did we
get a a strong interest in participating
» as uh Miss Mcdana pointed out this is with the service providers not with the
potential uh permites as would be in the case here. Uh so we at this point really
we're looking to the pilot as a way for us to assess that. uh this this
represents the best combination of elements that uh uh based on the
feedback we received felt that could be viable and really needs to be tested in
real life. Okay. Um and the real life test is important. I I I'm nervous about
spending so much money without having um a stronger sense of whether we're going
to have an uptake. Uh I'm hopeful we will. Um, okay. Uh,
I I'll leave it at that. Uh, I have some other questions and certainly many
comments. Council member Lowing,
your light was back on. Are you Are you good? Okay. Are you good? Well, for now,
yes. Okay. Council member Lith, >> could I just speak to Council Member
Bert's question because I did take extensive notes in these meetings and um
just searching my notes quickly. What I'm seeing is what made the pilot um
more or less attractive was the extent to which there would be some kind of
service for sewage uh pumpout that would be much more attractive uh to RV
dwellers. And um that said um people did desire to participate in the pilot
because the alternative is certainly not better. Um so it you know we we felt we
had enough green light to you know that we would have uptake. Um but it is not
to say that it's seen as you know a panacea.
Okay. All right. So, with that, um, let's turn to public comment. Um, we
have gotten, as Council Member Lowing said, a lot of emails. Uh, we appreciate
those. It does help us think it through, as will your oral comments tonight. Uh,
we have a lot of them, and we will sit here and listen to all of them. Um,
one of the things that I would ask is just so that we can hear all the
perspectives is that there just aren't any audible responses to them. No
clapping, you know, cheering, any of that kind of thing. We'll just uh listen
to everybody. Um, and um, with respect to um, well, actually, so, madam clerk,
how are we doing on the numbers? >> We have 49 individual speakers and three
group speakers. Okay. All right. I think that necessitates uh for each of the
three groups, we will have five minutes each and for each of the individuals
that will be one minute each. And um the clerk will put up a list of your names.
Many of you have been through this many times and many of you have not. Um and
she'll call out your name and then the name of the following speaker so you can
be ready to approach the uh lectern. All right. Thank you. Our
first speaker is Barry K.
Good evening. I'm Barry Kates. I'm representing a large and growing number
of the roughly 400 households that comprise the Ventura Neighborhood
Association. It's true that we are not one of the
postcard neighborhoods of PaloAlto. Our streets are more likely to be named
after Mexican saints Margarita Fernando than English poets Cridge Tennyson.
But we are proud of the racially, ethnically, and economically diverse
community that we have built and we want to see it grow and flourish. Can I just
ask, do any of you live in the Ventura neighborhood?
I thought so because if you did, this stupid proposal would never have gotten
out the front door.
» Regarding the OSV issue, I believe that there has been a misunderstanding.
For the better part of a decade, Venturans have been pleading with the
city council to address the health, sanitation, safety, traffic, and
livability issues associated with long-term OSV parking in our
neighborhood. To be clear, we were asking you to
remedy the situation, not to reinforce it.
I'm not sure how this m miscommunication occurred since you have over the years
received hundreds, probably thousands of letters, emails, text messages,
telephone calls asking for your intervention.
Like our friends in the equally underserved and overlooked East Meadow
neighborhood, we are shocked, offended, and outraged by the proposed phase
three. It's as if you have not heard one word of what we've been saying. Worse,
you seem deliberately to have ignored and overruled it.
For years, we have been providing you with documentation of the damage to our
creeks, our pedestrian pathways, our bicycle routes, our drinking water, our
homes, and our businesses, and have listed the specific streets
where the blight is most acute. You have responded by taking that list and making
those very streets the centerpiece of your proposal.
Park Boulevard, the sole pedestrian corridor between Ventura and the
California uh Avenue Commercial District.
Olive and Ash, where residents have been threatened by OSV landlords and women
are unwilling to leave their homes at night. Your solution? Move them to the
other side of the street every 6 months. Are you kidding? Are you serious? Are
you out of your minds? Joe Simidian, who I liked and respected,
like to used to say, "Don't come to us with problems, come to us with
solutions." With all due respect, I think Joe had it
backwards. It is our responsibility as citizens to petition government for the
redress of grievances. It is your responsibility to resolve them.
Nevertheless, since you are apparently committed to long-term OSV parking on
our residential streets, I would like to offer a constructive counter proposal.
Invite them into your own damn neighborhoods.
» I'm sorry, we can't do that. We can't get up. We can't have applause. We'll
have to suspend. So, okay. I need no more applause. Thank you. All right.
Move to the next speaker. Our next speaker is Rand T.
Oh man, I've got some data for you. >> Okay, so I'm primarily here um
representing five of 15 um second homers. Um I'm a 1.5 homer myself. Um my
RV is my starter home. Um which I purchased because there were extensive
layoffs at my company and I didn't know if I was going to want to put a down
payment on an apartment. And so, uh, because I've saved so much on money on
rent, I've purchased a property in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and I'm about
three to five years away from building a house of my own. Um,
basically, all right. Well, amendment E is going to
backfire spectacularly because
basically we're just going to all condense onto one side of the street,
bumperto-bumper. The street swinging programs have been
very good at eliminating the methheads with their piles of trash and and the
people who don't actually work in the area. And that has reduced the East
Meadow population to about 45 RVs. Um I counted while I was passing out flyers
about this meeting. Um which is about half of the 95 RVs there were last year.
And by implementing E, you're going to have a solid wall of RVs all around the
circle again. Not just as it was in a year ago, but also in front of the
housing, uh, which we don't like to park in front
of housing because it's it's weird. But yeah, but we will have to take that
space because we can't park on the other side of the street. And we're going to
move all of our cars to the side that we can't park on. So, we're going to be
constantly crossing the street with our groceries and everything that we're
going to bring back and our laundry from the laundry mats causing more traffic.
But, okay. So, about two homers or 1.5 homers like myself, I am here to work
and I cannot if I did rent an apartment, I'd be living paycheck to paycheck. I'd
have no retirement savings or a way to get on the property ladder.
But if you were to require my employer who has a lot of parking lot acorage um
to give me a spot, I would be parking behind my workplace because I also just
want to bike to work and that that's an ideal commute. Don't even make it
constant requirement. Just for the working weekdays or any days I'm
required to be there, I can park on company property. It makes sense.
Um yeah, it's there's no point in forcing everybody to one side of the
street because um well density is the issue here and that is exactly what
you'll be increasing is density. Now, there there are actual parking
spaces on East Meadow Circle, which I haven't seen for a long time. And I'd
like to keep it that way, honestly. And I'm sure the people who live on East
Meadow Circle don't want a giant wall of RVs in front of their houses where
usually there is just cars, except for one RV currently. But um yeah, basically
amendment E is going to backfire spectacularly and put us right back
where we were before street sweeping, which um I mean not right back because
we'll still not have the methheads. So that's nice, but no, it's it's not going
to work is the problem. And the increase of of traffic concerns with people
crossing the street con constantly will be just an absolute nightmare.
Now, there was a recent incident with um one of the concerned business members on
East Meadow Circle um who has a personal hobby of writing down all of our license
plates and then submitting it to the Palo Alto Police Department so we can
move around in a circle and park where we were before. And he was followed by
one of our residents to a local park and where he said somebody would eventually
punch him in the face if he kept doing that sort of thing, which we as the AR
RV community took very seriously and disciplined internally
this person and made it very clear to him that that kind of threatening
behavior is not welcome as RVers and especially not in the housing community.
But he does need time. The the man walking around
writing down people's license plates is threatening every single one of us on
the circle. Every time he does this, he's wasting Palo Alto resources,
sending the cops out to put all these pieces of paper out, and then nothing
happens. It's his hobby. He's told me it's his hobby and that he doesn't want
the children of there to attend PaloAlto Public Schools. So, what is the
consequence for his threats against us? >> Your time is up. Our next speaker is
Jason R.
All right. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Uh, I'm a
Ventura resident. Uh, as is my wife. Uh, so I sent a much more detailed version
of what I'm going to say in email yesterday, so you'll have that data. Um,
I'm going to focus on four points. So, one is a deeper dive on the evidence
that we already have. Uh, the second is the proposed pilots's experimental
design. Uh the third is the cost and finally the city system these system
that these decisions are going to inhabit.
So first the evidence. So there's there's a really interesting study by
Bob Marinaro um and if you if you take a look at that
data it goes from October 2025 to mid July shows OSV counts going from 220 to
131 which is 40% reduction. I know the staff has another number. it's 191 down
to 133 if I recall correctly. Um but then it's flat. So your intervention and
now a ste a steady state baseline. Um so basically it looks like phase one's
reduction has done what it's going to do. So that's one key piece. But the
deeper piece is that what's really changing now is vehicle location, not
how many. So uh the speculative spillage is very much in that data. So concretely
the redistribution uh in Ventura is seen declining from 20
to 14 overall. So an overall decline but if you aggregate by geography so you
take Park Sheridan and Lambert that's going from 13 to two uh whereas Ash
portage olive and acacia rose from 6 to 10 peaking at 15. So that's going from
30% of the area total to 71% of the area total. So it's pretty cool uh to see
that. So yeah, very clear that there is going to be spillage when when something
happens vehicles go elsewhere. So number two is the experimental design
and basically there are three key problems I'll focus on. First is uh what
is exactly the benchmark. So we talked about the success criterion criterion
being the uh lower number of OSVs but are we taking 220 as a benchmark 191
there was also a 181 in there. So what exactly are we starting with and what is
success? Do we get to the 102 the 2023 point in time or where exactly are we?
Problem two. Oh. Uh, we also that's important because we don't want to book
phase one success as a success for the pilot. So, we have to keep those
separate. Causal attribution is also really going
to be a challenge for you when you're running two experiments at the same
time. So, you've got two treatments, staggered
starts, no comparison streets. Permit holders are essentially the well-
behaved subset. So, it's the RV dwellers who will actually do a permit and go
through that process. Um, a six-month flip. So, there's no
replication and it's inseparable from season, construction, school, and
traffic patterns and so on. And then problem three is that there's no
published protocol. So there's no hypothesis, no comparison
segments, no thresholds. Success is currently defined as business feedback,
although uh I I know that it was stated as uh the number of OSVs.
So I I really think that before committing 824,000 plus annual
maintenance fees on which are going to likely rise, uh that the experiment
experimental design should be really considered deeply.
Third is the cost. I think we've already heard that spending buy is relocation
not reduction. Uh and essentially I was going to reference Berkeley's buyback
rate but I am about to run out of time. So fourth is the system. PaloAlto really
needs a systems approach rather than peace meal approval. So projects along
projects along El Camino have been approved with parking reductions
waiverss and builder remedy density that assumed on street parking. So, I pulled
up 3001 El Camino. Uh, and basically it says the proposed parking supply of 103
spaces is lower than both the city requirement of 198 uh spaces and
estimated parking of 128. That's the first one I pulled up so I didn't have
to look any further. And then we have the bike lanes which further remove
parking. On top of that, this proposal is going to impact parking. So, you've
got three things to account for. Uh, so I'm going to request
» Your time is up. >> Thank you. So just a request addressing
those. Thank you so much. >> Our next speaker is Winter Deep.
» Well, this is very hard. It's not surprising that it's hard. It's hard all
over the country. Zillions of cities are dealing with something that approximates
this. This is as you know systemic income equality in a very pure form and
I do not envy you. I want to thank the ad hoc for their time and their work on
this. It's a work in progress. I appreciate that.
I couldn't help but think and it's so ironic that Buen a Vista was in here
tonight. subject of Buen a Vista and how we saved Buen a Vista. It took a a lot
of thinking, a lot of time. It took investment. The investment was okay. I
want to remind you everyone that a a below market rate unit today costs
around $1 million per unit. So when I hear the costs here,
» your time is >> I don't know exactly if they're right or
wrong, but I do know they're not it's not astronomical. And one last thing,
Palo Alto, our a basic value is we take care of
each other and the most vulnerable included. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Leanne L.
Leanne. Oh.
Oh. Was it Jean L.
Moving to our next speaker, Anapu Anopi. Sorry, Anu Pab.
» Hello. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. My name is Anupa.
I'm living here in Palo Alto for the last 27 years. But it seems like
yesterday that council member Rectal and Council Member Lavi were I working
together on the housing element working group. Remember that we came up with,
you know, lots of meetings, lots of discussions and came up with suitable
sites for over 8,000 additional units of housing in PaloAlto.
And throughout those meetings, I don't remember talking about RVs in this kind
of scale. We talked about a couple of church parking lots with, you know, RV
uh parking, but this this seems to have come out very suddenly, this this flood
of RVs that we want to bring into Palo Alto.
Um so my neighbor and I, you know, we measured the distance from our front
door to the street. It's 26 ft. It's about from this microphone to the city
emblem. Your time is up. Okay. Our next speaker
is Herb B followed by Andrew N.
The location of uh oversized vehicle parking depends upon uh the definitions
of where it is prohibited. Uh
uh you know residentially zoned areas uh public facility zoned areas and the
equivalent area on the other side of the street.
uh and they may also include your commercial uh zoning that allows
residential as well. But what it omits is the large number of plan community
zones. So, in in addition to any other direction you give to staff, I believe
you should uh have them uh bring back an amendment to the definition of
residential to include [snorts] planned community zones
uh where a majority of the development is residential
and the equivalent and they would and the equivalent area on the other side of
the street. >> Your time is up.
Our next speaker is Andrew N, followed by John M.
Good evening. Good evening. My name is Drew and I'm here on behalf of PHC where
we provide healthcare and outreach services to people experiencing
homelessness in Palo Alto. PHC supports the city manager's proposal because
while it isn't perfect, it recognizes that we cannot solve homelessness by
pushing people experiencing homelessness into another city. These RV dwellers are
not outsiders, they are Peloa residents. They are our patients, our neighbors,
and members of this community. And the increasingly hostile rhetoric toward
toward them concerns us. From a health dis uh perspective, displacement
matters. Constantly forcing people to move disrupts their connections to
medical care, behavioral health services, outreach, and case management.
RB dwellers did not create the homelessness crisis. They are a result
of it. So, thank you for considering an alternative to a full ban. Please go
further. Treat these individuals and residents to be served, not not problems
to be removed. We can address legitimate neighborhood concerns without abanding
dignity and compassion. our community is paying attention not just to the
decision you make tonight but to whether every Palo Alto resident is treated as
though they actually belong here. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is John M, followed by Melinda M.
» Hello Mayor, uh, Vice Mayor, Council, thank you so much for wrestling with
this very difficult problem and I want to give due respect to the ad hoc
committee and I could not disagree more with their recommendations. I'm sorry to
say instead of um creating a solution around
helping the homeless or helping disadvantaged persons in RVs.
You're going to change the character of different neighborhoods. One of the
tenants that you were charged with and that you've you've expressed before is
that there has to be a citywide impact and a citywide solution. When I watched
Mr. Rectal and Mr. Stone discuss changes to potential changes to compounds in
Crescent Park after one billionaire built a school there and so on. There
was selective enforcement. I have some sympathy for my friends in Ventura
as I do for my neighbors in East Meadow Circle who bears the burden here. Um
compassion has no limits. It's a tough problem and we respect this but it
should be a business that >> the city follows. Thank you. Our next
speaker is Melinda M, followed by Christian H.
Uh, >> thank you. Um, I'm concerned as I've
heard from some council members about the lack of data. Um, and I learned
about the San Francisco, they have a large vehicle database. I just wonder
with all of the vehicles that are here now, where did they come from?
Did they come from Redwood City, which I've seen, and other in other places? I
guess I have a couple of other points. Employers, as we heard one speaker,
should provide parking for their employees on their lots instead of this
being the responsibility of the city. I don't see Stamford here represented when
we know in the past that a lot of the RVs on El Camino were people who were
either contract workers, Stamford students or Stamford employees that were
parking there. Where is their part in this? And I don't I'm opposed to both of
these programs because I don't think they solve your time problem.
Our next speaker is Christian H followed by Francis W.
Good evening, council members. My name is Christian Hodm. I'm with Pacific
American Group. We've owned a commercial property on 844 East Charleston for 30
years. Uh we recently showed that building to a prospective tenant and
received the following feedback from their agent. They loved the property but
will not be submitting a proposal because of safety and health concerns
associated with a near permanent line of RVs boarding bordering the property.
Losing perspect uh prospective business along with the employment, economic
activity, and tax revenue that business could have brought to the community is a
major loss for the city of Palo Alto. We want to continue our long history of
bringing good businesses to Palo Alto, but the RVs on the streets surrounding
our property are making that increasingly difficult. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Francis W, followed by Danny W.
» Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm here to comment on item 10,
section E, which if adopted will restrict parking on East Meadow Circle.
I'm a hardworking and law-abiding member of the Palo Alto community whose home is
East Meadow Circle. I struggle with my mental health and I'm concerned that new
parking restrictions could disrupt my life and displace me from my home.
Furthermore, I know there are other hardworking community members who live
on East Meadow Circle who would also be displaced by new parking restrictions.
And I'm also concerned for their well-being. I humbly request that you
decline to adopt new parking restrictions on East Meadow Circle.
Thank you for your time and for the opportunity to speak tonight.
» Our next speaker is Danny W, followed by Alejandro VC.
» Good evening, council members. My name is Danny Whan. I work for the property
manager at 844 East Charleston, whose rear employee parking lot is accessed
from Fabian Way between San Antonio and East Charleston. Fabian Way was
identified in the city's October 2025 staff report as one of the streets
highly affected by oversized vehicles. Yet, it is excluded from the pilot
program before you tonight. This isn't a hypothetical concern for us. On June
14th, someone living in an RV near our building trespassed onto our property
and tampered with our fire suppression system to access water. We've since lost
leasing prospects who cite the conditions on the street as a reason to
look elsewhere. I've heard your comments tonight and I can respect the difficulty
of solving the problem that the city faces. I too believe that a managed off-
streetet parking solution is the best alternative and I encourage you to
continue trying to arrange that solution. I am concerned, however, that
the pilots would shuffle RVs around the city. I think any street emitted like
Fabian Way will likely make be made worse off as displaced RV dwellers from
the pilot areas will move to the streets left out of the program to find
available space. >> Your time is up.
» Thank you for your attention. >> Our next speaker is Alejandro VC,
followed by Henry E.
Alejandro BC.
» Moving to Henry E.
» Just as we failed to get the cameras out tonight, we're going to fail to get the
oversized vehicles out. But they must go. They do not comport with the
ambiencece of Palo Alto, nor do they provide adequate living spaces for their
residents. You're pushing them into socially isolated places. I'm a
sociologist. Social ties are important to mental and physical health. So
therefore, to find a temporary solution, we're smoothing the places where they
can have a community. So Stanford must play a role. As was mentioned by a
previous speaker, they've been pushed out by Stanford. So I said we invite the
VAVS to with seniors and families to Oak Creek apartments where there's parking
spaces available and we invite them to the uh Margarite parking lot where
Stanford can provide space and if necessary to the police new police area
stations where there's parking spaces that are underutilized. We must solve
the problem as a community. We can't
» Your time is up. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is Anil H
followed by David M.
Anil H.
Moving to our
» Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is Unil Hosker and
I've been a resident of Powalta for 12 years. I'm here tonight because I
strongly oppose allowing RVs to be used as long-term residents on our public
streets. Over the past years, I personally witnessed the problems that
can cause come with long-term RV parking. And I have seen trash and
personal belongings accumulate around vehicles, parking spaces occupied for
extended periods and situations that raise serious concerns about sanitation,
safety, and visibility and the overall quality of our neighborhoods. This is
not simple simply a parking issue. It is a question of what standards we want for
our city and how our public streets should be used. Our streets are shared
public spaces. They were not designed to function as a permanent residential
area. And I believe that there is an important question that every council
member should be considering. If other cities are unwilling to accept long-term
RV parking on their streets, why should Pala residents be accepted?
» Our next speaker is David M. followed by Garrison B.
I've already given each of you a letter. I've given it to the city attorney. I've
given it to the uh city manager. I only have a minute.
So, I'll be brief. I don't believe that the Brown Act
notice was sufficient for pilot B. I believe that it would be prudent for
council not to make any decision on pilot B at this hearing. You need to
renotice as I've explained in the letter to inform the affected businesses of
council's meeting on this subject. The amount of
outreach to the business community rounds to zero. Nobody I've spoken with
on the affected streets who are commercial businesses knew anything
about this meeting. I was the first person to tell them. And Mr. Buren, Mr.
Burrs, right there is who told me about it yesterday. The notice didn't say
anything about pilot B. Thank you very much. And uh you're in the notice the
cure and correct portion for 30 days. This was a demand letter on the Brown
Act. You need you have 30 days to cure and correct and then you can have a
decision. You can't make a decision today.
» Our next speaker is Kirsten B followed by Candy T.
» Good evening, council members. I know it's getting late. I'm going to try to
be gusty in my response. Um I want to thank the ad hoc committee and the
staff. You've worked very hard on this horribly difficult issue. Um I can see
the passion and all sides here. I make two requests. Uh I'm a homeowner and a
property owner in Peloto as well as a business owner. So I sort of have the
hat-tick of reasons to be here. My first request is that you take the transit,
commercial, and industrial piece out of this second pilot. Reason being is we've
been overwhelmed with RVs now for better than 10 years. We feel we've done our
part with the RVs being removed by your first phase. It has really allowed the
neighborhood to breathe. We ask you let it continue to breathe. Let the program
go in other parts of Palo Alto. Second qu request is we really did not get
sufficient outreach from >> your time is up.
» So please please please come to us. Thank you. Our next speaker is Candy T,
followed by Matt B.
Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. Uh, I am a
resident of V of the Ventura neighborhood and my comments tonight are
my own. I do they do not represent my employer. We should approach
homelessness with compassion but also with evidence and research including
work by my UCSF colleague Dr. Margot Kushelle supports one fundamental
principle and that is stable housing is the foundation for addressing
homelessness, not prolonged residents in vehicles on public streets. Housing
first programs demonstrate substantially greater long-term housing stability than
OSVs do. Housing alone alone cannot solve every problem, but it allows and
provides the foundation for which all other services can be rendered. We need
to leverage county, state, and federal funding and partnerships as well as
philanthropy to expand programs like HomeKey.
Instead of putting money $800,000 towards that, we should be funding the
home key program to get people off the streets and out of these OSVs.
» Your time is up. Our next speaker is Matt B, followed by Scott A.
» Good evening, council members. I've spoken here a few times on this matter.
I'm also a resident of um South Palo Alto. Um running out of time already,
but there's a few points that I would like to make. Um number one is in fact
affordable permanent housing is the only solution to the unhoused. The studies
again have shown that repeatedly. Um and again this particular uh proposal I
oppose it completely because it's primarily focused on the residents and
the streets of South Palo Alto. I really feel like we should consider other
streets such as Sand Hill Road, Oregon Avenue, the feeder along Oregon
Expressway as well as um Palo Alto Avenue, San Francisco Creek side is
perfectly open as a onem stretch from Alma all the way to uh Middlefield Road.
So I think that would be important to consider all these other areas that
could also take on the housing. And plus, in my conversations tonight, I
think we could just ask for volunteers who would like to have an RV in front of
their house. Please raise your hands. >> Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Scott A. [laughter]
» Hello, council. My name is Scott Anderson. I live on Olive Avenue.
There's 17 kids that live on Olive Avenue. Two of them are my own. They're
PhD or under. Uh they both bike to school. I work in 3D survey. So when I
saw it, read in the news, um I thought why Olive? And so on Saturday night, I
went to five streets, Shouter, two on Hale, Bryant, Cooleridge, and also Olive
Avenue. I measured the width, uh the distance from the front door to the side
of the street, and then how many cars were on the street. By every measure,
Olive Avenue was the worst uh place. Um today at 3:30 when my son came home, um
I counted how many cars were driving down the street. There's 90 per hour
that were driving down the street doing doing an average of 50% were going
faster than 25 and then 70% were not stopping at the uh stop sign. They're
just turning right on a Ash. Ash, by the way, is uh smaller than uh Olive Avenue
and the other streets are all 35. Um Ash is 20 uh 29. So I I suggest that uh uh
strike Olive um and then engage with residents. When I met the guy on Hail at
10:30 at night after I explained what I was doing, he said, uh, you know, I
asked, "Do you want to do you want RVs on your street?" He said, "No. Um, I
don't want to." So, I suggest you engage with the the residents here. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Eugen L followed by Jared L.
» Uh, also an Olive Avenue resident. Um I I definitely agree with many different
opinions in this room and I appreciate all the input um from all parties
involved but I I I think all of Avenue was a mistake to be on this list. You
guys all of know our North Ventura plight. Um, so hopefully you can at
least ad omit the residential is my point is anybody with residential or
non-adjacent residential I think should be admitted from any of these lists and
offsite RV parks with proper hookups seems most appropriate rather than
trying to keep these RVs in the city. Let's if you want to keep them, let's
let's find a good spot for them. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Jared L, followed by David A.
Good evening. My name is Jared Lockhart. I grew up in PaloAlto on Olive Avenue.
Um, it may not be zoned as residential. It's mixed, but it's a community. It's a
neighborhood. We know these people. Some of these people have lived there for
decades, like myself. So, please consider mixed use neighborhoods as
being residential for this purpose. um more specific to your program, I
strongly suggest you consider what your long what is your end point. We're
talking about a pilot program that might last at least 12 months. When is it
going to end? When is the program going to be finished? What is the end goal? Uh
that's an important consideration for all of you so that this does not become
PaloAlto's never- ending problem. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is David A followed by Bill R.
Uh good evening. Um so on the slide 15 minutes ago, Olive Avenue was part of
the 200 block, not 200400 block in the report. Is that correct? Is am I
hallucinating or what? Um, so you need to do your homework and out
make some outreach before you send out a report with such a halfass idea.
Um, if you can't find
somewhere to put these RVs other than Ventura, then you're not looking hard
enough. There are plenty of places, city owned lots all over
put them there. Take them off the residential areas and Ventura. Thank you
very much. >> Our next speaker is Bill R followed by
Kareem A. >> Uh good evening, Bill Ross. I'm
challenging the categorical and statutory exemptions. It's well
established that the personal views if quantified and based on sub substantial
evidence and experience of adjacent land owners are relevant to establishing a
physical impact on the environment. I would actually suggest that a limited
environmental review consistent with appendix G addressing public services
and public safety and population and housing under a constrained time limit
would actually help define those that are actually homeless versus those that
are not. So I think that the a structured environmental review on a
limited basis should be would be beneficial rather than the exemptions.
Now claimed
» our next speaker is Kareem A followed by Liba P.
» Good evening. Thank you all for your comments and your hard work in this
matter. I live in Palo Alto as well as own an office building on commercial
street and uh we've been suffering Mr. Burns spoke earlier. He's my business
partner. We've been suffering in in the commercial street, industrial street
area with RV parking for the last 10 years. I have pictures here. The it is
the most horrendous thing that we have experienced. Thank you for cleaning it
up recently. Please exclude this community. We have the right to be
there. We pay taxes. We we our office space ha has uh devalued.
We cannot have guests there. It is embarrassing.
This is not the kind of community we want to work in. I beg you to please
take that off the list. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Liba P followed by
Vanessa C. >> Thank you. So, my name's Leiba Pitman. I
believe I'm the longestterm resident on Olive Avenue resident and owner.
Um, I definitely have compassion for people living in their vehicles. Housing
insecurity is real and people deserve dignity, services, and pathways toward
stable housing. I'm asking you to exclude uh my street
that I grew up on. Uh a parent and now a grandparent.
And I'm also concerned with how you chose Olive. Why Olive? Um why weren't
the residents consulted before you chose Olive? I know that um when Huelet
Packard was going to build across the street, I was actually working for
Huelet Packard at the time and they were very open to considering uh the
neighborhood. They spoke to those of us that lived across the street before they
uh built their building on the far side in consideration of residents. And when
the owner of former Fries was going to build, they talked to me about building
a garage in my backyard. So, I'm disappointed that no one contacted the
residents on Olive and request that you not approve that. We I'm
» Your so just Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Vanessa C followed
by Jen B.
Vanessa C. Moving to our next speaker, Jen B,
followed by Larry G.
» Good evening. Um, I'd first like to better understand how this outreach
program worked. How did they speak out to ownership stakeholders? All of that
communication. How was that distributed? We are a long-term owner and we had not
had any direct communications for properties located on transport,
commercial, or industrial. There was no communication.
Um, with that being said, my main concern is security and safety of
children. We had a daycare within that area with on commercial street. The
tenant ended up moving out when the property was sold due to the safety
concerns for these children. You have these high densities. You have large
RVs. Children cannot see or running around. There's no control. Um, we have
since had difficulties filling the space with another program of a preschool due
to that concern. If we continue to have the high density, we will not be able to
fulfill the community's need for a school and that needs to change. Thank
you. Our next speaker is Larry G, followed by Jonathan B.
» City Council mayor, thank you for your time. The issue of the unhoused is a
very serious issue and I appreciate everyone's time working on this, but I
implore you to vote no on this proposal tonight. If you look across the
proposal, it's putting a disproportionate burden on a very few
neighborhoods such as Ventura. And you look at the number in the streets and
what you're hearing from people tonight and the questions you're getting.
Clearly, people weren't consulted and there's huge impact on these small
streets in this small neighborhood. And if you look at some of the segments
right and the number of people impacted it's enormous. I think Gerstone you
asked some of the questions about how was the heat map drawn up? How was this
data driven? So I ask you to vote no on this because it really is a question of
fiduciary duty. Your duty first and foremost are to the citizens of Palo
Alto to provide the living that they um that they have created in this
community.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Jonathan B, followed by an K.
» Jonathan Brown, 23-year Ventura resident. The OSV parking permit pilot
is a promising step, but the second proposed pilot would do nothing to
mitigate negative impacts and would likely undermine the permit program
while incurring substantial costs. Council member Rectal already noted the
unfairness it shows towards Ventura, as does the large turnout tonight from our
residential neighborhood. Parks, homes, preschools are all on
streets who designated, and that's just wrong. Please heed Mayor Vinker's plea
to re-examine the impact on our residences, parks, and families. Council
should reject the second pilot. In line with council member Lowing's suggestion,
we should move towards prohibiting all vehicle dwelling except in permitted
areas. As Mr. Jensen noted, the court case that his predecessor mistakenly
concluded would invalidate our 2013 vehicular habitation ban has been
overturned by the US Supreme Court. I'm also an attorney. To answer council
member Stone's question, there is nothing in state nor federal law
preventing the city from enacting a ban on vehicle dwelling except for those
provided under the permit program. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is an K, followed by Bob M.
» Thank you, council members. My name is an and I live in Southgate and own and
operate our business in the Ventura neighborhood. and we've been doing this
over 20 years now and I care deeply about the community I live in. I'm
asking you to pause this program. I understand that there's state laws that
are governing how PaloAlto addresses people living in vehicles before we
approve the program. We need clear answers on these fundamental questions.
What does the state law require? And what is PaloAlto choosing to do?
Designating public streets for long RV habitation is a policy choice.
Then the community deserves a meaningful voice before that choice is made, not
afterwards. You don't approve the experiment and then ask the neighborhood
what it thinks. We know from experience that relocating RVs doesn't solve the
problem. Moving the problem is not solving the problem. Thank you. Our next
speaker is Bob M filed followed by Ryan J.
Good evening, mayor, council, city manager. My name is Bob Marinero and I'm
a 34 year resident of the Adobe Meadow neighborhood in South Palo Alto. From
the barrage of emails that you have reached in recent months, you are well
aware of the sentiment of of PaloAlto residents and businesses. Based on the
vast majority of the content I have seen in email submissions and other comments
heard in the community, the common thread is that the OSV phase 2 plan was
illconceived. In due respect, the notion of legitimizing parking on 13 different
streets in South Palo Alto is preposterous. Yet, I believe that a
certain amount of safe parking can be expanded from the current 22 spaces at
Gang Road and that a registration system would be beneficial for numerous reasons
such as not attracting additional OSVs. However, OSVs should not and cannot be
[clears throat] allowed on any residential streets or business
corridors. I have seen a handful of very excellent alternative proposals and I
believe that you should consider all part of them.
» Thank you. Our next speaker is Ryan J.
» Good evening. Uh, thank you for your time, mayor and city council. Um, I'm
speaking on behalf of we're a third generation family business. We started
our business in PaloAlto back in the 60s. Um, I'm currently running this
business and I can tell you that over the last 10 years, we have had the least
friendly business climate in PaloAlto. The vacancies have gone through the roof
to an all-time high. It's not just related. It's there's numerous reasons,
but the RV problem is a major problem. I'm on the south side of California. I
share the same concern. I hear a lot of residents speaking up. I'm speaking up
on the business community. There's been zero outreach to us whatsoever. Phase 2
pilot has is if you draw it on a map, which I think would be great for all of
us to see, we can see how everything is centered down on the southern end of of
uh Palo Alto. I've heard the comment out of sight, out of mind. Does that seem
applicable? Is that fair to the residents and the businesses of southern
cal of southern Palo Alto? Why why don't we have phase two program here right on
University? >> So why are we choosing the south area?
It's it's actually seeming like like we all feel that you guys are kicking down
the can. >> We strongly encourage you reconsider.
» Our next speaker is Shazad D followed by Charlie W.
Shazad D. Moving to our next speaker, Charlie W.
Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Charlie Widance, Palo Alto
Chamber of Commerce. We are deeply concerned about the compounding efforts
of long-term OSV parking along Palo Alto's business corridors. We fully
recognize that individuals living in these vehicles are members of our local
workforce and community members for whom an RV represents essential shelter. At
the same time, the current status quo has become unsustainable for local
employers. Unmonitored, oversized vehicle parking creates serious
operational and safety hazards. These vehicles consistently block sightelines,
creating severe blind spots for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. They
constrict narrow streets, making routine freight deliveries dangerous, and
stripping away essential parking for customers and employees. combined with
accumulating waste, unauthorized utility connections, affected businesses are
reporting significant losses. PaloAlto small businesses cannot continue to
operate under these conditions. We urge council to establish a structured
oversized vehicle parking program that eliminates long-term parking for RVs in
commercial districts. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is David M, followed by
Eric J.
Thank you for the time. Terrible time slot. I would I'm speaking on on behalf
of a medical device business with a few hundred employees that's on LLC Court.
We love Palo Alto. We love to be here, but I don't think that we can stay,
especially if we bring back RVs parking on half of our street. We've had a lot
of issues with them. The biggest issue is that we cannot access our facility.
We can't bring visitors in. There's not enough parking for our our own
employees. And the more RVs that we have, especially bringing back a half
street full, the harder it will be for us. We've asked our neighbors if they
have spare parking, they don't. So, this will be an impediment for us to grow,
it'll mean that we'll have to leave Palo Alto, and we don't want to do that. I
would also ask council to um really consider how when you say that you're
going to enforce the turnover of 72-hour parking, how you'll do that. you've not
been able to do that in the past because there was no funding to remove those
RVs. I believe that will be the same case in this situation. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Eric J followed by Eddie K.
Eric J.
Moving to our next speaker, Eddie K.
Hello, Edie Keading, former PaloAlto resident, current Mountain View
resident. Mountain View has learned that safe parking is much superior to street
parking for everyone. And if you can't find uh properties that are
willing to lease to you uh for safe parking, then I hope you consider buying
for safe parking. I think if it's something you had to do a parcel tax
for, it would be a very popular uh supported raise to raise money for safe
parking. And uh for
[gasps] employers, I hope there there are carrots you could offer too. You
could offer if they allow um uh safe parking on their properties that um you
could provide pump service and trash service
[sighs and gasps] and um I appreciate that you look at uh
vehicle residents as members of PaloAlto. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Gordon J followed by Star T.
» Hello. Uh, good evening. Um, I think these are both good ideas worth
experimenting with and uh managing or creating space for for uh oversized
vehicles uh for the first one and then managing places where oversized vehicles
are currently parked. I'm not sure why Olive A ended up on the on the list
here. Uh current restrictions on olive prevent uh overnight parking for
oversized vehicles on both sides of the street. Uh the residential side uh no
oversize overnight and the commercial side no overnight at all. Uh so it is
not true that uh that uh regularsized cars are allowed to park there overnight
right now. Um [sighs]
uh so so like I said, I think I I support both of these uh proposals, but
av seems like a a confusing street to add to this
project.
» Our next speaker is Star T followed by S. Rose.
» Thank you for uh all your hard work and for including case management in your
program. I think that's extremely thoughtful. I want to entirely agree
that Olive should never have been on this list. It's a strong community. It
has a lot of cutth through traffic as Scott Anderson, oops, Scott A, um,
denoted. Um, but most of all, I just want to say there have been so many
excellent comments tonight by the community and I just want to encourage
you to listen to them. Just fabulous.
Our next speaker is S. Rose, followed by Bianca P.
» Good evening. My name is uh Shawn Rose, and I'm going to talk out of both sides
of my mouth briefly. Um I'm a 22 uh year resident of Lambert Avenue. On one hand,
the second pilot in front of you tonight creates more stringent rules to be
followed. May not read that way, but it does. We're hopeful there. The support
we've received from the police uh over the last year has really made a
difference and we need that to continue. Uh it's a success story. If you want to
check it out, please do. The police are there all the time. If you haven't made
your way over there, you got to go and check it out. I hear a lot of Olive
Avenue justified. It's a residential street. So, there's a certain amount of
questioning about how we're picking the streets. Lambert's a residential street.
That's why we're allowed to be there. Um, our neighborhoods spend a lot of
time self-reporting and self-governing. Uh, it's a burden on Ventura and a
permanent remedy is long overd long overdue. Um, Lambert, as I said, it's
residential. It's a residential street. Um,
» your time is up. >> We'd appreciate if you came and talked
to us. >> I think all of us just start tomorrow.
» Your time is up. Our next speaker is >> Thanks to Melissa and uh, Chief Ree
Schneider. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Bianca P.
Bianca P. Moving to our next speaker, Joe W.
Hey. Hello. I'd um just like to say that uh there's probably inevitably going to
be inconveniences to people living in homes in PaloAlto and that's not
something that we can shy away from. Um, I'd prefer if you burden us people
living in homes rather than the homeless folks. Um, I say this as a resident of
Ventura, we can deal with it. Um, as can the rest of Palo Alto. Thank you.
» Our next speaker is Becky S. followed by Ron E. Yeah, thank you for taking this
up. I just want to align myself with just uh Olive Avenue should just not be
on the list. Uh anyway, I just um I've been dealing with uh Sergeant Eric since
July 1st, dealing with a couple of RVs outside my fence and also on Matadero.
And there are several ways to look for signs of movement, including comparative
comparing valve stem locations, um chalking the tires, and using other
methodes methods such as placing a paper clip on the tire.
If we find evidence of movement after the 72-hour period, we will not tow the
vehicle. So anyway, these vehicles have not moved. They've
gone like one block and then they come back and then the the Lexington on
Matadero isn't moving at all. And I just I guess code enforcement is understaffed
and there's no real will willpower. Like it's hard. I get it. But we have code
enforcement. These laws are on the books and I mean I've just been playing this
dance. >> Your time is up
» and I you know I just got this one five hours ago about how to check to see if
the vehicle has >> Your time is up. Thank you. Our next
speaker is Ron E followed by Aram F. >> Hello. On the sheet I'm number 47. So
take a breath. It's almost over. Um, I'm not looking forward to having a
portaotti outside outside of my business on the street. Um, I hope you understand
the irony here. Uh, the city is taking my business taxes and then spending
taxes to put a portaotti right in front of my front door. I'm not going to thank
you for that. Okay. Um, I welcome the city to share
the experience. I welcome you to put a portaotti right outside the front door
for a while and share the aroma, I guess. Um,
if you move the RVs back and forth, um, you're not going to be able to move
the portaotty, so it's it's going to sit there. Um,
you know, you really ought to think this one through.
» Our next speaker is Aram F.
» Okay. So, Robert Marinaro, um I I'll give you 200
bucks towards you rent for a week and then you come back and tell me how how
you like having your window knocked on all and maybe then you wouldn't want a
ban of all RVs in this city. Shame on you, man. Okay, so Justice Stanley Moss
said the following in Toby versus the city of San Santa Ana. The city cannot
solve its homeless problem simply by exiling a large number of its homeless
citizens to neighboring loces. If you look as you go south down to Gilroy, the
problem gets worse and worse and worse there. This is an intractable problem.
You can't simply push these people down to the next town. That's not a
neighborly thing. Okay? We're going to need a shuttle bus for the folks out
there on Coyote and on Embaradero. I support the plan. It's not the best
solution, but we got to live with it for now. Thank you very much, folks.
» Our next speaker is Penny B, followed by City Council S.
» Hello, Altos. Hello. Can I have my
Palo Alto City Council should base its OSV policies on OSV use and need facts
rather than stereotypes and gut feelings labeled as humanitarianism
and moral obligation. Surveys and focus groups are not the
best ways to obtain facts regarding the use characteristics of OSV users.
observational studies can be designed to help obtain obtain these facts.
Both of these OSB pilot programs are built on false premises, illconceived,
uninforceable, and destined to further harm PaloAlto residents and business
people. I urge you to vote no on both of them.
Our
next speaker is city council S.
They are no longer on Zoom. Moving to our next speaker, Kevin C.
» Thank you, Mayor V. Pinker and health. My name is Kevin Troy and I represent
the new ownership of 3825 to 3875 Fabian Way. First and foremost, I'd like to
acknowledge that this is a difficult situation and no solution will make
everyone happy. As a property owner in Palo Alto, we have strong concerns
regarding the proposal you have in front of you today. Primarily, I noted within
our letter to you is the concern that OSB proposal is the first step towards a
permanent solution that places OSB parking in commercial areas. Our group
has significant concerns with this as we have had several conversations with
tenants that OC parking trends towards safety and health concerns. Just like
everyone has a right to a place they could proudly call home, everyone should
also have a right to proudly call a place work. I'd like to note that
Council Rectal's solution to provide commercial parking permit restricting
parking to two hours is an idea that is moving towards a solution. Our ownership
respectfully requests that the city council take the opportunity to continue
to review this item and look for a solution. However, temporary that solves
for all of our commercial tenants concerns.
» Your time is up. >> Our next speaker is Zohar G.
Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, I can hear myself. So, I have been
in Pal 20 years. I live in the Ashland community across from east the east meta
circle. I used to be able to walk around this meta circle. I I have not been able
to walk around east meta circle for a long long time. But what I really want
to tell you is this action and your plan is discriminatory
against South Pal. Yes, our houses don't but they've still
lost a lot of value just because of the RV situation. We've also lost
walkability. We've lost uh clean air because of the
RVs running their motors. And yet the rest of Palato especially on the north
side is not affected. So this is discriminatory
for the Ashon community. I'm sure there's other few communities
but those are the ones that are most impacted and I just don't understand how
you can just sleep at night doing it. Your time is up.
Our next speaker is John M, followed by OKG.
[snorts] Your report identifies sanitation, debris, and improper
disposal of human waste as existing problems associated with OSBs. But the
report does not tell us how black water and gray water from those OS RVs or OSVs
will actually be collected and disposed of. This is an obvious environmental
issue. One site adjacent to the city's wastewater treatment plant and the other
at Coyote Hill where Sanford has already raised wildfire and habitat concerns.
The city proposes to rely on SQL categoral exemptions under sections
13015301 and 15304. However, I believe you need
to address the unusual circumstances exception under section 15300.2C two
feet and explain why concentrating residential RV, adding sanitation
infrastructure, restriping the loads and modifying the sites creates no
possibility of significant environmental effect. I ask you to defer approval of
this uh until the city has completed publicly disclosed of waste water, storm
water, solid waste water. >> Your time is up and environmental
analysis. Thank you.
Our next speaker is OKG.
» Hello. Am I on? >> Yes.
» Okay. So I I'm kind of really disappointed after listening and stay up
and see this whole thing and I found out about staff which is reporting to city
council having all this outreach and yet no data very little data or actual data
collected on the number of vehicles duration of stays location complaints
citation and impact surrounding on the neighborhood. I lived here for over 24
years. and I have to put up with a lot of
inconsistency of how the law has been regulated around here especially with
OSB. So it's really unfair to resident especially people living in south of
Palo Alto and I urge that listening to all the businesses they're
saying that there's no outreach to them. Please, we are losing tax dollars and
the C revenue is kicking it these people out.
» And that concludes public comment on action item 10.
» All right. Well, thanks to all of our public commenters. Um,
it's 11:12. Um, I would like to continue this
conversation, but I want to ask my colleagues about their brothers, whether
we can just power forward, whether you need a short break to go forward. Um,
since we've been meeting since 5:30, I mean, like 5 minutes, or can we just go?
» If we say go, it doesn't mean 2 a.m., right?
» Just go for now, but see how we're doing.
» All right. >> I mean, I would go with that, but
» Okay. Just want to make sure everyone's okay. Good. All right. Well, with that,
I know I have additional questions and comments, but uh let me uh yield to my
colleagues if anybody'd like to pick up the baton at this point.
Council member Bart.
So, first I want to re-emphasize that um making decisions like this without good
data is really problematic and we've had a lot of time to um be able to um get
that data. Uh I just don't think it's had the prioritization that it it uh
needs. Um, I will say that I hearing from the
public, I'm really wondering whether what we can address tonight or should
address tonight is the phase one pilot and uh defer action on the phase 2 with
maybe certain guidance on uh anything else that we want to u explore related
to it. I will say that if we were to go forward with the phase two, um I I don't
understand why Olive and Ash and for that matter Park Boulevard as a critical
um a safe route to school and bikeway uh would have been included at all. Um, I
also uh think that one of the we've got several issues, but safety is one and um
RVs um parking right up to within 5 ft of a driveway is not adequate
daylighting. That's what's in the proposal there. And I would support uh
if we did go forward with uh phase 2 uh additional daylighting uh probably at
least 10 ft. Um you know state law on on corners is now either 15 or 20 ft and
that's not for RVs. That's anticipating a regular vehicle. I don't know how you
could see coming out of a driveway with a a car or I mean excuse me an RV within
5 ft. I also think if we went forward with phase two, uh we should adopt a
program like we did uh along El Camino with the uh businesses on the
perpendicular streets allowing them to request um short-term parking whether
it's 15 minutes or 2 hours or whatever for their uh business for essential
needs for customers and the like coming and going. Um,
one of the things that uh we really haven't discussed is um on the potential
other sites and I don't is the question of whether uh Stanford should be
providing any land. What is their proportionate share of this problem? To
my knowledge, they have no RVs that are on their uh massive amount of land and a
quasi municipality. um because we don't have data, we don't
know exactly whose um what their share of responsibility might be. I don't
assume it's a majority or anywhere near that, but I think they should be uh part
of the solution on on um uh sites for parking. I uh on the phase one, I do
support the two sides of Coyote. Um uh but I am very concerned about fire
hazard in that area and um we had talked about tilling the land but uh we have
this burnbot um technology now. But in any event a an approach that would uh
really address the the fire hazard there would be a critical part of even that
phase one. And um we we also in addition to not allowing
the um uh if we went forward with phase 2, not allowing it on streets that are
uh predominantly predominantly residential. Uh but um we we need to uh
up update our residential definition so that uh plan uh PC zoning that is um
includes residential would be uh categorized as residential.
And then we really have a question too on whether we should extend the uh
protections to uh immediately adjacent to residential area. should it be within
100 yards of residential that there's uh there are no um uh permitted RVs. So I
think if we did a a combination of some of these measures, we would um further
um prescribe the limited areas where RVs are um would be on an at least for the
time being allowed, but expand this permit area because we have 22 slots at
Ging, but we've seen in the last recent months when we got data, we're not
getting the turnover at Ging that was anticipated. that was supposed to be
transitional fullervice RV lots so that uh we're providing very expensive
services along with a county and uh and it was to be able to transition those RV
dwellers into permanent housing. It's not working like intended and we have to
um re get that resolved and and uh really not have that be permanent RB
dwelling uh but transitional. Um, so those are my thoughts uh at this point
in time.
» Council member Lowi. >> Thank you. Um, I want to make a couple
comments substantially directed at a lot of the public comments. Um, the overall
direction as I said at the outtake of up uh outset of this meeting uh is from
from council was to radically reduce the total number of OSPs in our town. And
the other direction was we need to find some places for legitimately
folks that legitimately need help. Pilot one does that exactly with a lot of
controls. Pilot two doesn't do that as it's
proposed and it doesn't do that for a number of reasons. But what we've heard
from the public tonight is that the um suggestions that came in that staff
report are not acceptable. that you not only don't want it on
either side of the street, you don't want it on both sides of the street. You
don't want it at all, which at this point in time I think is perfectly
understandable. So what that presents to us on [snorts] the second part of it is,
as I said earlier, you know, the you folks have put up with this long enough,
we just need to shut it down. Now, that creates that creates we don't want to
get into too much detail on this, but that creates an incremental legal risk
uh if we don't have other places where some folks could park. So, to me,
getting getting on with item number one, pilot number one, in terms of approving
that tonight, to me makes very good sense because we have to start on that
and we want it to be on a faster schedule than it's on. And once we do
that, the sooner we're going the sooner we do that, the sooner we're going to
have actual places that people can get in there legitimately with their parking
permit and those folks will be moving out of some of the areas that they're
now in because we are creating new spaces of 35 to 50 new spaces. That's
the important point there. But very quickly, I think we have to shut down
the rest of it uh as we ramp up the the earlier part. And the only way to do
that, as I've thought about it, is is with this permit program. So, um, I just
want the public to understand that we are all together on the fact that we
want OSVs to be basically not be gone because we want the ones here that are
sort of quote deserving. And with respect to sort of data, I'm always a
data guy, but we know that there are at least 35 people of the remaining 130,
they're going to probably qualify for these units if they want them. So, I'm
very comfortable saying that is the the pilot is just the pilot one is justified
going forward. [clears throat] So, I just sort of wanted to cover that
point. And if we get those to move there, then
that that's a big chunk. If we extend gang, that's a big chunk. And if we get
some of the 88 that are in Homekey, that's another chunk. So, we start to
chip chip away at this thing with the existing resources. Thanks.
» All right. Um, I just want to make a couple of uh points.
Um, first,
yeah, I just I residential should be residential.
That's what I had thought wasa the case. That's why I was surprised as well to
see uh any residential streets on this, especially the ones in Ventura that
we've heard tonight are really problematic. Um I understand now that
there's PC zones and PHC and various things, but I think we need to really
make it uniform for all residents um uh in PaloAlto. So that's that to me should
just be a uniform thing. Um the um
the thing I mentioned about businesses before, I want to sort of clarify it and
then uh key off of something Council Member Bert said. Um, you know, I'm
using the word business, but there's a whole lot of different kinds. And so I
it it's not quite right to lump them all to business uh into one term. What I'm
thinking of is employees of large businesses like Google and Stanford
Healthcare and Shoreline. When their employees are dwelling in front of
smaller businesses on commerce and transport and industrial and park, it's
almost like some businesses are subsidizing other businesses. And I
don't that just doesn't make sense to me. So, you know, there are limits on
what the city can ask and require of businesses. Um, but what I mentioned
before, it would be great if they would step up and provide a portion of their
own parking lot for their own employees. And I think, you know, Stanford could be
a part of that, but there are others um that we could ask as well. I just don't
know that we can demand it. But what we might be able to do if we could discern
which RVs they were, which gets to my point earlier,
that there could be some sort of um you know, if you were in that situation,
uh if we we discerned that you were there, then your employer would have to
pay into some sort of housing fund that could get you a voucher to get you uh
off the street. um or they could provide a parking spot themselves, but we could
try to work on that. But I think starting with Stanford may make sense.
Um then um I'm curious because uh as uh to pick up on what council member Lowing
was said saying if we're looking at um transitional like
people transitioning in and out of these various categories. Um you mentioned
earlier that you know we discovered Home Key was full because of the people who'd
been in hotels but do we what I guess this is for staff. At what pace are we
hoping we might have some openings? Cuz that's a transitional thing as well. So
when and where and how might we expect there could be some openings over the
course of the next six to 12 months.
» Uh thank you Mayor Vinker. Um so the throughput for both Homekeing
upon sort of the housing pipeline. And this evening we do have a representative
from the Office of Supportive Housing. Um I I'm not certain if this is
something she could speak to, but uh we can check.
» Well, she's very welcome to. She she looks like looks like Yes.
» Good evening, Mayor and Council Hillary Armstrong. Excuse me. Uh deputy director
with the Office of Supportive Housing. Um first just to clarify the folks who
were housed at the home key PaloAlto started in a hotel program but were all
unhoused PaloAltons. So the hotel program was like the launch of the home
key program. I just wanted to be super clear on that. Um in terms of the
throughput um we do see an average stay in shelter programs so such as the home
paloto program of about 4.8 in eight months. When we look um at our data
across the system, we are seeing um you know some need to encourage more
movement through the system. And so our quality assurance standards for the
continuum of care that apply across our entire countywide system um have 120day
suggested length of stay. you know, when folks are working on a housing plan. Um,
and it's contingent on the pipeline, they can get extensions to that, but in
general looking at, you know, a stay of anywhere from 3 to 6 months where we're
really trying to make sure that folks are getting through.
» Okay. So, we can anticipate that over the course of the next 6, 9, 12 months,
some number, we're not sure, of spaces will open up. So that would um hopefully
be at least some outlet for people that we're trying to transition out of say
the permit program were we to enact it. Is that am I thinking about it right?
» Uh thank you Mayor Vinker. I I I would caution that it's become my
understanding that folks in RVs are more likely to transition directly to uh an
apartment rather than or to housing rather than to a transitional space.
That that's not typically as attractive to them and and sometimes they they're
able to transition more quickly in that fashion.
» I see. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Well, with that, I'll turn to Vice Mayor
Stone.
» Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, yeah, given the hour, I will be very concise. I I
agree. I think the I think the first pilot is ready to move forward. That's
kind of the original my original kind of vision of where this was all heading was
really a permit program. love the I love the suggestion that we're going to
incorporate services there. It is a very reasonable cost. I I think that is a
win-win all around. I know ultimately it comes down to space and identifying
additional locations, but it's a pilot program. So, I think let's get that
started as quickly as possible. I agree with comments already. I think the
second pilot is not ready to to go. I think that needs a lot of work. I think
the uh the heat map I described earlier is is going to be really beneficial for
me to ensure that we are equitably spreading these um these impacted
streets around the community. I think more work can be done there. I I think
absolutely the the ad hoc committee needs to be kind of brought into this
discussion and be able to do that that deeper dive. Uh I also thought that
there was general alignment on the council the last time that we didn't
want to see this on residential and residential adjacent streets. So Ventura
neighborhoods has greatly s surprised me. Uh I think one one thought I know
it's just going to give us a couple of spaces but in the idea of equity and
making sure that we are all taking on this burden. police department is is
moving out right now. And I know on Brian Street is where we've
traditionally parked several uh police vehicles, including our command uh
including the command vehicle, which is definitely the size of a large OSV. I
think that should be included in that future program. If it's good enough for
other businesses to have OSVs in front of their businesses, it should be good
enough for us at city hall to have uh to have our share as as well. Also, I think
there are opportunities for us to be able to find additional locations um
around the comm around the community, but I don't think we're there yet to
authorize the um the second pilot program.
And yeah, with that, I'll leave it there. Thank you,
» Council Member Lou. >> Thank you. Uh firstly, I'll just note
that I appreciate the public comment. I live basically on Page Mill, though on
the Mayfield side, so I'm a block away uh about from several of these suggested
pilot sites. Um my wife and I uh were looking at child care in the Ventura
area when uh directly adjacent to uh some of these sites. I get the concerns.
I do get it. I think we do need to keep bike lanes clear and find balance uh
throughout the city. I certainly don't think we should ban all RVs, though. And
I think the uh uh
uh first phase of the pilot is including on both sides of Coyote Hill um seems
like a clear uh win and a clear benefit to both people who live in RVs and the
broader community. Um the only thing I'll note about that first phase is that
uh I'm not even sure if we really need to collect a $15 permit fee per month. I
think the cost to collect that might be higher than the actual value of that.
And uh to the extent that we sort of just want people to buy in and sort of
have a stake that it's more of a symbolic cost, we already have uh a
number of agreements, insurance requirements, things uh that are real
hoops that they would need to jump through. So I don't think we really need
a $15 fee um on that pilot for the first part. For the second part, uh
I really do appreciate the work from staff and the ad hoc. It is really
clearly well intention that by moving RVs that are already on these streets to
one side that there might actually be less RV capacity. Uh
however, I think if we actually do announce and publicize this program as
such that uh the 116 to 125 spaces we've allocated
uh for any given site could get quite dense. Um,
uh, you know, no one knows in expectation exactly where it could land,
but maybe, uh, if we end up with a 100 RVs sort of densely configured on one
side of several streets, that that is maybe actually not preferable to the
current state of about 130 RVs, but sort of slightly more spread. like uh I
find it interesting that in this conversation we heard from some
nonprofit community groups and some RV residents and uh certainly a lot of
neighbors that actually weren't in favor of this second part of the pilot. And I
don't think those groups necessarily agree on any of the other next steps,
but at least um uh that sort of strange consensus does make me have second
thoughts about this uh second part of the pilot. Uh uh
um I'll echo the point that we can probably find spaces in North Pole Alto.
Um there are uh areas in Sofa or uh
right right by city hall like corners of that um maybe in Cena maybe parts maybe
like a small parts in your fire station one where
uh we can make that heat map less striking
than it is right now which is uh quite concentrated in North Ventura in a
couple parts uh and uh couple other parts of South Paul Alto. Um so yeah, uh
hopefully that's useful context and I'm happy to support uh whatever motion um
and consensus this we seem to be pointed to.
» Council member Rectal.
» Yeah. Yeah. Uh, council member Lead Hayes was
making a point that the reason these streets are on the list at all is
because they were the most impacted by RVs. It's not like we chose them. The
RVs chose them and we're trying to give them a relief valve and it's not
appreciated apparently. So, I'm not going to push it, but uh the purpose was
is to reduce the amount of RVs in those neighborhoods. Uh, I do really feel
strongly though that we should um limit RV parking near residences even if those
residences aren't in a traditional residential zone and also say within 100
yards of a residence. So, we don't want the right on the the poor people that
are right on the transition zone get an RV right next to their house. I I think
that that would be a reasonable approach.
That's all. >> Council member Liths.
» Thank you, Mayor. And thank you everybody for being here late. I'm
yawning like a lion over here and some of you may be tired as well. Um glad to
hear the support for pilot number one. I think um that's exciting. Um and have I
took a lot of notes on all the comments that were made. I was really listening
and I know my colleagues were as well in terms of your concerns. Um, I wanted to
plus one the um notion or plus two or three by this point that we've got to
engage business owners. The public speaker who yanked on his employee tag
and said, "If you could get my employer to let me park in his lot, then I
wouldn't have to park on the street in my RV." There you are. Um, Raleigh or
something. >> Okay. Um, I thought that was really
compelling and it's hard for us to make that happen from here. We're going to
have to figure out how to make that happen. But that's clearly an important
sector here. The [snorts] notion that we need to spend more time engaging with
Stanford about what role they want to play in this, particularly as they're
going out for their next general use permit in the community. This is a very
ripe time to be talking with the largest land owner um about this seemingly
intractable problem. Um, I do, Council Member Rectal already clarified what I
was whispering to him, which was, um, we didn't go after Olive and Ash and Park
or commercial, industrial, etc. These were the streets that had been
identified as the most impacted that needed street sweeping and cleaning and
whatnot. So we had that in mind as needing help and we were trying to
reduce the amount of density of OSVs on those streets, not burden them any
further. Um so I feel like that's a perception problem. It's very valid that
you perceived it that way. Um but in terms of where we were coming from, that
was certainly not our intent. I certainly share the concern about equity
being a you know a lens through which we have to view all things and uh we
definitely think that burdens ought to be shared in this city. So very much
appreciate the push back there. The last thing that I want to say is I'm slightly
concerned about the vigilanteism. I think that some RV dwellers are being
followed and their activities are being recorded and somebody went around and
put stickers on their vehicles saying this is illegal. You will be towed. And
I asked our police chief, "Did you put these stickers on?" And he said, "No."
And sometimes that kind of behavior can border on harassment. And uh it may also
be vandalism. And so I just want to ask all of us like, let's not
let this become an even bigger problem. Let's try to
work together toward a solution that is going to work for everybody. And you
know there have been comments about we're better than this and this is not
who we are and all of this and you know we're many people on opposite sides of
this issue and um I think we need more listening and we need to have the
frustrations be heard and tempers cooled um because it's it's getting a little
it's it's it's been ugly out there for some while as some of you have said and
it's getting uglier in some ways and none of us want that. So we're going to
work on this pilot. I think it sounds like there's support for pilot one that
may be fulmenting over here and you know like let's root for it to be um useful
and and yield data um and let's root for it to be successful at moving people to
a place that is better for the you know those they're leaving behind and is
better for them um as more housing gets built and more parking lots get
identified um I I look forward to us being uh proud of solutions we were able
to come up with together. I know we're not yet there, but I think that day will
come.
» Council member Bert, >> I'm ready to make a motion if everybody
» Yeah, I think I think that's a good idea. Yeah, I was scribbling one, but
» I would move that uh we adopt
uh staff recommendation one, which is the
um the permit phase one pilot and that we give additional direction to
staff in the following ways. Uh
first that we um begin to uh provide uh red curb
daylighting uh in the commercial areas that were uh
identified for the phase 2 pilot. and uh that we evaluate a a 10- ft uh
daylighting.
Uh second that we uh staff come back with u uh appropriate um I guess
ordinance changes to uh recognize that residential including uh PCs be treated
in the same as residential uh uh zoning.
» Some are also zoned mixed use too. So >> okay PCs and mixed use. Yep. um
that um any future consideration of a phase 2 pilot
exclude streets that are um
uh have significant residential components or a uh a bike boulevard or
excuse me bike lane that would be Park, Olive, Lambert and I think Ash.
Um
and
oh uh lastly that uh staff pursue uh data collection to have a better
understanding of the demographics of our current RV population.
I'll second that. >> Okay.
Uh I think I've spoken enough. >> One question [clears throat] for the uh
residential parking restrictions. Was that going forward or do you want to
change that today? [clears throat] >> Well, we we can't do it today. I think
we have to ask staff to return with with uh revisions to our ordinance.
» Correct. I I and uh depending on the complexity of those changes, we may want
the ad hoc to weigh in on it, but I think it's relatively straightforward.
» Yeah, I shouldn't say today. But were you did you How did you word that?
Where's the wording? >> Um
I don't know. We'll see how M May Maha did. But I thought that I had um
requested that staff return with um >> I thought you said for future
planning. Well, let's see what
» we'll see. I think on the residential was it my intention was that that would
be addressed either way. >> Okay.
» Question. Would you be interested in adding um
a direction to staff to investigate with Stanford and other large employers? Um
» yes >> something
» I'll [laughter] make a so that would be fine is to um explore with major
employers um uh their willingness to accommodate workers who reside in RVs
their workers who reside in RVs on their sites. I will make a side note that uh
in my 30 plus years of having a business uh two different times I had an employee
who uh asked to be able to if they could reside uh on during the week on our
parking lot and we were more than willing to because it added to security.
We knew who that person was. They were eyes and ears on our property. So, I
don't know if we can convince other employers to do that, but um we viewed
it as beneficial.
» Council member Low, I guess. >> Yes. Um we need to add to I believe we
need to add to that shortening of the current schedule of seven months to get
to a pilot. Um well, the the first pilot was January 1st, right? So, that's
that's basically four months. Is that correct?
» Uh please please repeat the question, council member. when uh the the timing
on the permitted pilot, when was that to take effect?
» March. >> March.
» So, can we if we're not proceeding with a second pilot, can we move the We'd
like, I think, to move the first pilot to January 1st.
» Yeah, >> I think staff will need to take a look
at what we can do to accelerate that. And at the same time, we hear you
» include in the motion to pursue a target date of January 1st.
» Yeah, that's the direction. >> Yeah.
» And Council Member Bert, we'll need to add up the uh we'll have to change the
budget appropriation um as part of this motion to ensure that the budget for the
the phase the option one is in there and not for the option two.
» Okay. Um so then in the language maybe this we could either put that the budget
allocation in or uh simply say an accompanying uh uh uh uh uh budget
allocations
or if staff has better language I'm certainly welcome.
Would you accept a friendly amendment related to pursuing future locations?
Something like directing staff to continue to work with county, state, and
federal partners on identifying additional land for safe parking.
» Yes. And I your point makes me realize I did not include
uh requesting staff to pursue both sides of Coyote.
So, two things going to be a long motion, but it's late night, so we might
as well make a long motion. Um, so Maha under um
uh I guess we'll make another section that
is um request staff to explore um or continue to pursue
um the uh permitted pilot program on both sides of Coyote Hill Road.
And second, uh, Council Member Lithcott Hayes, you
have your preferred, >> uh, direct staff to continue to
seek safe parking
solutions in collaboration with the county, the state, and federal partners.
» Sure. We'll throw in the UN >> and the UN.
» Yeah. >> We'd like the United Nations to come
here and solve this for us, please. >> Okay. public and private partners.
» Maker secondary, are you good? Okay. Uh just if I could for clarification, I
think I assume council member Leth is referring to other locations as well in
addition to the >> Yes.
» Coyote Hill and Embark. >> I am most definitely. I'm thinking about
Moffett Field. I'm thinking about Yellows. The final thing is the golf
course. The It's the um portion of Embarcadero,
the north edge of Embarcadero, sort of between the waste treatment plant. Uh
well on the airport and golf course side um
» can we ask look at that? >> I'm hesitant to do that. Um you know
that's uh uh I I think that it it could be
detrimental to the um to the the revenue of the uh of the city golf course there.
So I'm hesitant to do that. But it's easy to roll out if the first part of it
works. >> Yeah. the down by the airport works.
It's an easy ad. >> I just hate for it to be lost as an
idea. I know I'm not long for this world.
» Well, um I would >> I got the idea right.
» Got it. But I it it strikes me that I I I would be uh willing to include u Vice
Mayor Stone's suggestion that um that the um um
west side of Bryant uh be pursued as um uh uh
basically I don't know how we do it. I'm sorry. I am going to speak out loud
before uh offering the uh amended language. Uh in the downtown we have our
our u color zone parking and in order to allow RVs there, we'd have to not have
color zone parking there. But I don't know how you'd restrict the parking to
just RVs versus other vehicles that would park overnight there. So, uh, I
let me just add to the motion for staff to explore any other sites that would be
eligible for RV parking in um the greater downtown area. Just explore and
that's all it is. Get on the radar. And would you be willing at the end of
eight to say um federal and private partners because I want to make sure
we're still you know keep our feelers out even though we've been turned down
repeatedly. >> Yeah.
» Yeah. If we didn't I guess we didn't have that elsewhere and that would be
» I don't think so. >> Okay. And that would be fine.
» Thank you. >> Oh six.
» Oh yeah that's the employers. Yeah.
» Does six cover it in more detail? You know what? That's different because 60
is contemplating employers with going businesses with
» Okay. >> And to the clerk, there's a just a
clerical thing on eight direct staff to continue to seek instead of see. You
need a K on the end of that word.
» Okay. Council member Lou, >> uh, quick point about the $15 fee. I am
a little bit concerned that a $15 fee per month would actually be a somewhat
meaningful disincentive to participation in the first part of the pilot. I'm
curious if staff has any perspective of uh
how they feel if they feel strongly about that $15 fee and if there's no
particularly strong feeling. did hear from staff earlier that they in the
outreach that that was uh that formula was viewed as acceptable, but
» we definitely heard feedback on this from um Sophie Piggman who is uh on
staff and working in the outreach context and the feedback she got was
that $15 was reasonable. We thought about going higher and we got some push
back that higher was a deterrent, but $15 felt reasonable and also valuable
for people to have a little bit of skin in the game.
» Okay. I feel like they could still have skin
in the game at zero, but uh don't feel extremely strongly about this
point. uh council members. So there there was some back and forth for sure
about uh what would be reasonable, what wouldn't. And there were some
suggestions of much higher $50, others suggesting we just wave it entirely. And
I think the the happy not so happy answer we came to was 15. Um with the
understanding that perhaps uh you know, local nonprofits might be able to help
folks if they needed need a little boost with that dollar amount.
I think that's pretty nominal and it it it actually kind of in a nominal way
requires some commitment from those uh dwellers. So,
» and it'll be tested in the pilot. So, we can change it if it doesn't work.
» Okay. >> All right. I don't see any lights.
» I I wanted to point out that part of the Sorry, almost there. Um the motion uh
takes into account the work for the first pilot, but it doesn't bring in the
subsequent budget amendments which were uh a combination of items three and four
in the staff report. >> Well, yes, that's what I had asked for
staff to provide what wording would be. >> Yes. So, I just want to make sure um the
easiest way at 11452 might be to uh approve those budget
amendments and subtract out whatever is related to the second pilot program if
you're approving the first. But only if that's accurate.
» Well, >> and I think uh wording to that effect
would be fine. I think we would also want to recognize that I believe as
scoped it's a larger pilot one because we're now talking about both sides of
Coyote Hall Road. So for the if allow us that general direction, you'll
figure out the math. >> I think that's that's it. So the general
direction would be to the effect of uh and um the appropriate
uh proportionate >> appropriations
» appropriation.
Did the clerk get that? Sorry, it's getting so long. I can't
I think madam clerk just let us know when you're
» You can make it number 10 if you want to.
» Probably doesn't fit on the page on the screen.
[laughter]
We may have a new record on motion length.
» I think so. Yeah, it won't fit on the screen even if the smaller font.
» Okay.
Keith, your lights's on your microphone but not here. Are you good? Okay.
[laughter] Just checking. All right. Staff, any any anything more? Deputy
city manager. >> No.
Okay. All right. Well, Madam Clerk,
» one word smithing thing. I'm sorry. Uh in number two, if we could just change
the word from phase two pilot to pilot two or something because this whole part
is phase two. >> Thank you.
» Okay. Pilot two.
» No. Uh
so new wording will simply be pilot two. Would
that also be in the same case for number four?
» Yes. >> Okay.
» But it's okay. >> Yeah, she's got it. Okay.
Okay. Any any more typos? Going once. Going
twice. All right. Madam clerk, would you please call the role? Council member
Liths, >> yes. Mayor Vinker,
» yes. >> Council member Rectal,
» yes. >> Council member Bert,
» yes. >> Council member Lowing,
» yes. >> Vice Mayor Stone,
» yes. >> Council member Lou,
» yes. >> Motion carries unanimously.
» All right. Well, thank you all very much. But you can't leave because we
have our new public comment for matters not on the agenda on Zoom. [laughter]
But this does end this agenda item. And thank you to all who got us here. Okay,
madame clerk, is there any um public general public comment via Zoom?
» No hands are raised on Zoom. >> All right, we did it. All right, thank
you all. Stand. Nope. Oh, >> there is one hand raised in
» one hand raised. All right, let let's let's do it.
» All right. Um our one speaker is Aram F.
Okay, thank you very much. It's been a long night. Okay, so you know, the bulk
of the folks here on council identify as being Democrats except for Julie um and
George. Now, uh I see everybody else really uh right-wing Republicans in
their their perspective. And one of the things that's that's
concerning me is that even though there are folks on council who um claim to be
transparent, it's not so. And we're seeing a movement among progressive
Democrats that they are are prevailing in these elections across the country
and they're beating Zionist candidates even when Apac is loading up tons of
money to support these right-wing uh uh Zionist candidates.
The the left is coming back and they're coming back in a strong way. But when I
try to get information from a person who I know to be a Zionist, I don't have
your support in trying to push that individual, okay, to be transparent, a
weapons maker to boot, okay, he standing up and I guess not paying any attention,
uh, as I might anticipate, but I've repeatedly made the offer to him to
Yeah, he's going to walk out of the out of the meeting and and not listen. That
that's good. Go ahead. you know, you you you take off if that's the way you want
to treat the public. But I'm serious about wanting to know whether he got
support from Apac, whether he's a dual citizen of Israel, and whether he's ever
apologized for the weapons that the company that he works for
makes that kill indisputably Palestinians on a regular basis. He's
been there for 25 years plus. So that's that that's not just trying to be uh uh
u you know provoking people or being provocative. It's something that the
voters are entitled to know and we're going to be pushing more and more for
this. Okay. Uh Ed's not a weapons maker. He may be a Zionist and and uh has
walked off the dis. Well, good for him, too. You know, don't listen to the
people uh that don't comport with your point of view. That's a real democratic
perspective. Okay. Okay. A real First Amendment uh breath of fresh air. I'm
being uh satirical here. Uh but you know, it's
okay for you to speak out, Mr. Redhead, uh Mr. Transparent, and let me know. I'm
willing to sit down with you. You know, you're a bigger and younger guy than me.
You probably knock my ass out. I'll sit across from the table despite that. But
we need to have this conversation because I'm not gonna quit on you, okay?
I'm going to continue to expect that you speak on these issues. So, you can you
can go home now. Thank you all. It's been a long meeting. Uh and we'll go
from there. >> That concludes public comment on re
remote uh participants on the agenda. >> Thank you, Madam Clerk. That concludes
public comment. After meeting like this, we are ajourned.