[9:59] Good evening. Evening everyone. I'm going to call to order the uh August

[10:04] 24th, 2026 meeting of the PaloAlto City Council. Madame Clerk, would you please

[10:08] call the role? >> Of course. Council member Lowing

[10:12] » here. >> Council member Rectal

[10:13] » here. >> Council member Lou

[10:15] » here. >> Mayor Vinker

[10:16] » here. >> Council member Bert

[10:18] » here. >> Council member Liths

[10:19] » here. >> Vice Mayor Stone here for the record.

[10:22] All present. >> Thank you, Madam Clerk. So, we'll move

[10:25] first to item one, which is a special order of the day, which is to uh review

[10:31] applications and select candidates to interview for vacancy vacancies on the

[10:36] historic resources board. Madam clerk, did you have any introductory comments

[10:40] you'd like to make?

[10:44] » Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Nicole Bissell,

[10:47] deputy city clerk. I'm joined by Mahani Aun city clerk and tonight we will be

[10:52] presenting the applications for the historic resources board extended

[10:56] recruitment. Included in the extended recruitment for

[11:00] the historic resources board is three full-term vacancies expiring on March

[11:05] 31st, 2029. As for a quick summary of our recruitment timeline, scheduled

[11:10] recruitment opened on January 13th and closed on February 18th with three

[11:15] applications received for the HRB. City Council reviewed applications in March

[11:20] and provided the clerk's office with direction to extend the HRB recruitment.

[11:25] During the time period of extended recruitment, we continued additional

[11:28] outreach and advertising efforts. One application was withdrawn and one new

[11:33] application was received, bringing us to three total applications for the HRB. At

[11:39] today's meeting, we are al ask asking council to review the current HRB

[11:43] applications with interviews and appointments tenatively scheduled on

[11:47] September 9th and 14th, respectively.

[11:53] Go back.

[12:00] This slide just provides a quick general refresher on council's current interview

[12:04] selection process, noting that per the current process, all candidates would be

[12:08] interviewed if there are six or fewer applications.

[12:14] And moving on to our applicants, as mentioned, we currently have three

[12:17] applications received for the HRB. Per the process on the previous slide, all

[12:22] three candidates would typically be invited to interview. However, it is at

[12:26] council discretion to authorize a different process if desired. Council

[12:31] may also provide direction on continuing HRB recruitment efforts if desired.

[12:35] However, as outlined in the staff report, further extending recruitment

[12:39] may not be sustainable and could result in a lack of quorum for the HRB.

[12:44] And I'll turn it back over to you, mayor.

[12:47] » All right. Well, thank you to the city clerk's office and thank you to those

[12:52] who have applied for the historic resources board. We appreciate that. Um,

[12:56] colleagues, I'm told that we don't necessarily need a motion uh that there

[13:01] that all of these applicants can proceed forward unless there are any objections.

[13:06] [gasps] I've looked at them. They they seem solid uh for interview purposes.

[13:10] So, now would be the time to tell me if you have any reservations about whether

[13:14] at least one of them has the academic uh qualification or uh whether there are

[13:20] any that you believe we should not advance to interviews.

[13:27] Seeing no uh concerns, objections, or comments, um madame clerk, I think you

[13:33] have the uh go-ahhead from the green light from council to move forward with

[13:37] scheduling the HRB interviews. >> Okay. Thank you, mayor. Uh we will move

[13:42] forward with scheduling. That date is tenatively scheduled for September 9th.

[13:47] So, we'll work on that. >> Great. All right. Thank you. Well, we'll

[13:50] look forward to that on September 9th. Moving on to agenda changes, additions,

[13:55] and deletions. Mr. City Manager, are there any?

[13:58] » We uh Thank you, mayor. We just had one small change on your consent calendar,

[14:02] removal of item five, which will come back at a later date.

[14:07] » Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, now we're going to move on to in-person public

[14:12] comment for matters not on tonight's agenda. Madame Clerk, how many uh

[14:17] speakers uh do we have at this point? We have one group speaker um or speaking

[14:25] on behalf of a group of eight and then one individual speaker.

[14:30] » Okay, let's go ahead with the uh regular time

[14:35] amounts would that be three minutes and then for the group

[14:40] » um let's go with eight minutes.

[14:43] » Okay, our first speaker is Herb B.

[15:00] Uh good evening. Uh recently uh the school board had a agenda uh where it

[15:06] discussed uh its opposition to an ICE facility, immigration custom enforcement

[15:11] facility in Gilroy and also had significant budget issues. uh when the

[15:16] Palo Alto Weekly uh posted a news story about it, it was just about the ICE

[15:21] facility and the public comments though were

[15:24] about the budget. Uh and it occurred to me that maybe uh that wasn't the only uh

[15:32] difference going on. And I'm not a member, I wrote a letter to the Weekly

[15:37] uh with full knowledge that they could post it online, but they did not. uh and

[15:43] I tried to uh put it in the Daily Post but the Deli Post has a policy of uh not

[15:51] uh printing things from other newspapers.

[15:54] Essentially, it appeared that the school boy may have been trying to focus

[15:59] people's attention on the ice facility in Gilroy instead of paying attention to

[16:03] the significant budget issues uh at the school board. Uh

[16:09] although the public felt differently based on their comments,

[16:13] uh the the weekly subsequently posted two news stories, one by the original

[16:19] reporter which was only about the budget and one by the San Jose Post uh uh uh

[16:26] paper uh which is only about the ice facility. It seemed to me there was one

[16:31] other item that might be considered. That is if people are spending all their

[16:36] time uh opposing uh a facility of immigration and custom

[16:43] enforcement uh in Gilroy. That doesn't mean there's

[16:46] not going to be such a facility. And I tried to think of where else it might go

[16:51] and it occurred to me one possibility would be the Stanford Stadium. Thank

[16:54] you. >> Our next speaker is Raymond G.

[17:12] Oh no.

[17:19] Good afternoon. My name is Raymond Gones and I stand here representing eight

[17:26] community members that live here in Palato.

[17:30] We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union,

[17:34] establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common

[17:39] defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to

[17:44] ourselves and our prosperity do ordain and establish.

[17:49] Those words were drafted through the lens of profound inequality. When the US

[17:53] Constitution was drafted in in 1787, it was presented as a document for we the

[17:58] people. But it was also built through compromises that protected the power,

[18:04] property, and economic interests of those who already held influence through

[18:09] enslaving Africans. The constitution promises of democracy

[18:13] existed alongside a system that in excluded enslaved people, women, indigen

[18:19] indigenous people, and many poor men from full political participation in

[18:24] equal rights. Enslaved people were counted for representation while being

[18:28] denied the right to vote, control their own lives, or claim their full humanity.

[18:33] The original system con concentrated political power largely in the hands of

[18:37] people who own property and in many cases other human beings. But the fabric

[18:43] of American democracy did not evolve on its own. It changed because ordinary

[18:47] people organized, resisted, voted, marched, worked, and demanded that the

[18:52] nation live up to it stated ideals. Labor tilled the soil, built

[18:57] communities, and sustained the nation. People denied freedom and representation

[19:02] refused to remain invisible. They resisted, organized, and fought for

[19:07] their humanity. Nearly 250 years have passed since the Declaration of

[19:12] Independence proclaimed that all people are created equal. And more than 235

[19:16] years have passed since the Constitution was signed over that time.

[19:21] The citizens of enslaved people, people whose ancestors were forced to build a

[19:25] nation designed to exclude them, have entered and led some of the highest

[19:30] institutions in the United States. The White House was built in part through

[19:35] the labor of enslaved people whose hands helped raise its walls while they lived

[19:39] in servitude, denied freedom, and forced to endur despair. Yet they resisted and

[19:46] generations later their descendants walk through those same halls as citizens,

[19:50] leaders, and ultimately as a first family. When Barack Obama became

[19:55] president, a house built in part by enslaved hands became a house filled

[19:59] with hope. A reminder that even institutions created amid inequality can

[20:04] transform when peoples organize, resist, and demand to be included.

[20:09] History has taught us something important. A government can use the

[20:13] language of equality while it policies still preserve inequality. A system can

[20:18] appear open while remaining accessible mainly to people who already have

[20:23] wealth, property, connections, housing security and influence. The challenge

[20:28] does not exist only in Washington DC. It exists here in Palo Alto as well.

[20:34] We as I represent the people are running for Palatoto council because we see a

[20:39] city that is not being properly cared for. The lens of inequality from which

[20:44] our nation has evolved has found ways to evolve with us. We do not have the same

[20:48] laws or the same forms of exclusion that existed in 1787. But we can still see

[20:53] the consequences of systemic inequality in our neighborhoods in our in our local

[20:57] government. When I walk out my front door, I see people who are once my

[21:01] neighbors now live gun unhoused across the street from places they once called

[21:04] home, waiting for people to arrive for help. As members of my as members of

[21:10] this community and through conversation with workers who travel in and out of

[21:14] the city, we hear the same message again and again. People want to live here, but

[21:19] they cannot afford to. They earn a workingclass wage and many feel that

[21:23] living in Palo is simply impossible. We applaud we applaud Palato for

[21:28] building affordable housing and for recognizing that we must address our

[21:31] systemic homelessness crisises. But we must be honest about what affordable

[21:36] means in Palato. Affordable to whom? Will the bartender attending the bar,

[21:41] the workers serving our food, the caregiver looking after our elders, the

[21:45] person cleaning our yards, the teacher supporting our children, or the workers

[21:49] keeping our city running be able to afford to live here? Or will affordable

[21:53] housing be available only to people who are already economically comfortable in

[21:57] one of the most expensive places in this country?

[22:01] Affordable housing cannot be just a label. It must be a real path to to

[22:04] stability for people who serve this community every day. We want a Palato

[22:09] where affordable housing is a springboard where workers can live near

[22:12] their jobs, raise their families, build savings, participate in civic life, and

[22:17] have a genuine chance to thrive here. We also hear from community members who

[22:22] want to change a chance to join these political circles but feel their voices

[22:26] will not be heard because they will because they are not wealthy,

[22:29] well-connected or ivy educated. I have listened to local coffee shops as

[22:34] residents describe their fear of speaking out against a genocide in

[22:37] Garza. People are afraid to speak because they care about humanity and see

[22:41] the world through the lens of love, compassion, and empathy and not hate,

[22:45] division, and destruction. Local government is where democracy becomes

[22:48] real. It is where decisions are made about who can afford to live here, where

[22:52] the people have housing, whose children can remain in our schools, whose voices

[22:56] are welcomed at city hall, and who is represented at this table. Palatoto has

[23:01] a seven member city council. Council member Julie Lot is currently

[23:07] the council's lone black member, and her decision not to seek re-election leaves

[23:10] one of those seats open. At a time when black residents and working-class

[23:14] families are increasingly being priced out of Palo Alto, the possible loss of

[23:18] black representation would be more than symbolic. It would be

[23:22] it would reflect a deeper pattern of systemic displacement.

[23:26] If our neighborhoods become less diverse while our governing institution also

[23:29] loses the voices of people most affected by displacement, then gentrification is

[23:34] not only changing where people live, it is changing who gets to shape Paloto's

[23:38] future. We cannot say that we hope that we value inclusion while allowing

[23:42] communities to disappear from both our neighborhoods and our city council.

[23:47] Ordinary people need representation. We are not career politicians. We are

[23:51] community organizers. We do not seek political power. We seek people power. I

[23:57] may be the one running for office, but I represent ordinary people who want every

[24:01] person to thrive and to have a real opportunity to live here in Palo Alto.

[24:05] We the people must mean more than the people who can afford to stay. It must

[24:11] mean every worker, every family, every longtime resident, every unhoused

[24:15] neighbor, every immigrant, every young person, every elder, every person who

[24:19] believes Palatoto can become a city where everyone has a voice and a place

[24:22] to call home. Whether or not we join you on this council, our ask is the same.

[24:27] Let us build a Palo that works for all its residents. Thank you.

[24:32] And that concludes public comment on items not on the agenda for in-person

[24:36] public comment. >> All right. So, thank you to our public

[24:39] commenters. That closed public comment for general public comment.

[24:44] » No, it's closed, ma'am. It's too late. >> Oh, for general for items not on the

[24:49] agenda. >> Oh. Oh, okay. So, do do you have it,

[24:54] Madam Clerk? No, we closed

[24:57] » very first things that's on there and I put it in for the other speakers.

[25:02] » So, I did check the basket before we were go before we started and it is

[25:06] » I should have tapped you on the shoulder. I think I'm allowed to speak.

[25:09] » We close public comment after the first speaker speaks.

[25:12] » I'm allowed to speak. >> Yeah. Not not unless it was in early and

[25:15] apparently it was not. So, we will welcome comments by email. We'll be here

[25:19] every week and we're happy to meet with you. Yeah. All right. So, I'm sorry.

[25:23] Those are just the rules. We have to be fair to everyone. We want to hear from

[25:26] everyone on the two topics. So, >> okay.

[25:30] » No, I'd be happy to, but >> let me just double check. So, madame

[25:36] clerk, when did you receive the >> I couldn't

[25:40] be polite.

[25:44] » I checked the basket after the first speaker finishes finished speaking and

[25:48] your comment card was not in the basket. >> Okay. I just got finished saying I could

[25:53] have tapped him on the shoulder and >> but but if she checked it just wasn't

[25:56] there. So ma'am we thank you for coming and welcome you next time. All right so

[26:00] we need to move on to the next item. We have very busy agenda tonight and we

[26:04] look forward to hearing from you in the future. All right so um we are now

[26:08] moving on to council member questions, comments, announcements. Before I do, I

[26:14] do want to say thank you to all of you who went like this uh after the speech

[26:19] because we do encourage tonight um whatever uh you know you want to do that

[26:24] way, but we don't allow any audible comments in chambers whether it's a clap

[26:29] or a vocalization or or something. So just know that that's how we do because

[26:33] we want everyone's opinions to be expressed and no one to be intimidated.

[26:38] So, the silent thing that we can see is fine, but we won't have audible comments

[26:43] tonight. All right. So, with that, uh, colleagues, are there any council member

[26:48] comments this evening? Council member Bird, I go ahead.

[26:57] Take your time.

[27:07] Thank you. Um, so I I would just like to ask if we can

[27:14] have an update um perhaps at the uh next uh city manager comments at the upcoming

[27:21] meeting on um there were we received u a letter on concerns over

[27:29] um the operation at the home key project. Um and uh maybe we can uh have

[27:36] an update on whether those issues that were asserted are are um significant.

[27:43] And um and that's all I have at this time.

[27:48] Thank you. Thank you.

[27:53] Well, I would just like to thank all of those who pitched in to make the state

[27:57] of the city event a great one last week. um it really reflected our one community

[28:03] theme. So, we appreciate all the residents and guests who attended.

[28:06] Really want to give a shout out to city staff uh who made it an extra effort in

[28:12] a new venue that was unfamiliar to run it for the first time as a formal public

[28:16] meeting and so thank you for that extra effort. The tech team at the school

[28:20] district was phenomenal and so we really appreciated them and the district for

[28:24] hosting. Reverend Koma Smith, the Mwakma Aloney tribal leaders, Miss Araniano and

[28:29] Ms. Dominguez, the vice mayor. Uh, and of course, uh, Lily Zang, our four-time

[28:35] Olympian and, uh, first American to bring home a medal in that sport, and

[28:39] six-time national champion who was nurtured right here in PaloAlto, who

[28:44] adjusted her schedule, flew back and performed uh, free of charge for us. And

[28:49] so, that's somebody who can make us proud. And, uh, and it was fun. So just

[28:54] thank you to everyone for that. Colleagues, if there's nothing more,

[28:58] we'll get right to it with our study session for this evening. All right. So

[29:02] we will move on to our semiannual city council discussion with the independent

[29:06] police auditor uh Mr. Janako.

[29:12] » Thank you, Mayor. Let me uh invite our independent police auditor uh to join us

[29:18] here at the table. I'll just uh take a moment to introduce the topic. As the

[29:23] council is well aware and for community's awareness, uh the city

[29:29] council has uh two times a year opportunity to meet with our independent

[29:34] police office auditor, the uh office of independent review. and uh this is to

[29:42] discuss trends in criminal criminal justice and policing policy training and

[29:46] related matters as well as recommendations made by OIR uh over the

[29:51] past uh several months. In addition uh this evening we are anticipating the

[29:57] followup to prior council uh discussion and interest in uh having a scope review

[30:03] for an audit related to automated license plate readers. And so with that,

[30:08] Mr. Janak, turn it over to your your team.

[30:12] » Thank you, Mr.

[30:16] » I think Mr. Connelly will start off the discussion.

[30:20] » Good evening, mayor and and council members. Steven Connley of O Group. Uh

[30:24] we're very happy to be with you as as the city manager indicated. Uh we are

[30:28] here tonight with with Mike Janako who has been uh working with the city of

[30:33] PaloAlto for for a number of years now. And we're joined for the first time

[30:37] tonight by another one of our colleagues, Teresa Magula. Uh she has

[30:42] been with us for for seven or eight years now, but this is her first project

[30:47] working with the city of Palo Alto. And we're very happy to have her um with us

[30:51] this evening. And we're certainly happy to be to be back with you and and

[30:57] looking forward to the discussion. As the city manager indicated, we have a

[31:00] couple of different um agenda items for for discussion. And the first one is our

[31:06] our usual standard uh just report out to you regarding our semianual public

[31:14] reports on the various categories of of um

[31:20] particular concern with regard to the department's internal review mechanisms.

[31:25] Uh so if we could have the next slide please.

[31:30] So, uh, our relationship with the city of PaloAlto goes back to 2007.

[31:37] Uh, and we have had some different iterations of that and different

[31:41] adjustments to the scope of work and to our our responsibilities along the way.

[31:45] But the the kind of the meat and potatoes, the core of our contributions

[31:50] to the city are are semianual reports. And what it basically does is

[31:55] is uh it's a an audit of of completed investigations, internal investigations

[32:02] that the department has has compiled. Uh we do it twice a year and basically get

[32:08] um the all of the the completed cases from the audit period and we have the

[32:14] chance to review those and then to provide summaries of the the cases and

[32:20] their outcomes and also have the opportunity to kind of weigh in on our

[32:24] sense of how the department handled these matters uh and make

[32:28] recommendations if we think that there could be some productive adjustments to

[32:32] department policy or protocol with regard are to these different areas. So,

[32:38] uh we have been to to um meet with you folks directly on a number of occasions.

[32:43] Our last appearance was in April of 2025.

[32:47] Our um first the f first part of our council u uh audit scope for for last

[32:55] year. In other words, it covered the first several months of 2025. and that

[33:00] was presented as a as a public report and and it was kind of a receive and

[33:04] file item for the council back in November of 2025 and we're here today to

[33:09] talk about the second half of of 2025 and the cases that uh we worked on in

[33:16] conjunction with that. The report I think was published in in uh June of

[33:21] this year and as always the the public reports give a much more detailed

[33:27] description of the the specific events and our recommendations. Uh and as

[33:32] always the transparency of the process is a big part of the the feature of it.

[33:37] All the reports are available online and we encourage the public to to um read

[33:43] those and and to provide us and and the council and the department with any

[33:47] feedback that that they consider warranted. Next slide, please.

[33:52] So, as I said before that we we usually divide the year up into part A and part

[33:58] B. In other words, the first several months and the second several months. Uh

[34:01] we're going to be focusing tonight on the the second half of our uh of our

[34:06] reporting cycle and [snorts] the the total number of cases. As you can see in

[34:11] part B there, there were four different completed investigations into

[34:15] allegations of officer misconduct, five uses of force, four weapon pointing

[34:21] incidents. And so those are the the major categories that have been set out

[34:25] by your council as being the the um areas in which you have asked us to

[34:33] provide some additional scrutiny to the department's own processes. Next slide.

[34:39] So just in terms of uh an overview of the second report, again we don't

[34:46] conduct our own investigations. We actually get contacted a number of times

[34:49] a year by members of the public who have a concern about an issue. They've had a

[34:54] a a challenging encounter with the police or a concern has come to their

[34:58] attention. And one of the first things that we make try to make clear to them

[35:02] is that we don't do our own investigations into these matters.

[35:06] Instead, our role is to ensure that the department's process is as complete and

[35:11] thorough and legitimate as it can be. So we provide that outside scrutiny and

[35:16] that window of transparency. And if somebody does reach out to us directly,

[35:20] we are in contact with the department to help facilitate that investigative

[35:24] process and make sure that their complaint is heard and understood and

[35:28] addressed appropriately. In terms of the cases that were in the pool for this

[35:32] year's this um part of the year and in this cycle, two of the the cases were

[35:38] sustained. the department found that that the officers had in fact um

[35:43] violated one or more policies in conjunction with the allegations and

[35:47] then the other complaints within the the individual allegations were considered

[35:52] to be unfounded. As always, one of the things that we're looking at apart from

[35:56] the the particulars of each individual case and and I think there is value in

[36:01] in letting the public know here are the kinds of things that members of the

[36:05] public are bringing to the department's attention and also here are some of the

[36:09] things that the department is doing in terms of initiating its own

[36:13] investigations when it has reason to believe an officer has potentially

[36:17] violated policy. So, we look at at both of those categories.

[36:22] uh our our overall impression is is a favorable one in terms of the

[36:28] objectivity and the thoroughess with which the department handles each of

[36:33] these matters. We have access to all of the case file evidence that the

[36:39] department uses and we also have uh access to the memos that the department

[36:43] puts together in terms of of analyzing and compiling all the different evidence

[36:48] looking at the body wararm camera and reviewing the contents as as relevant in

[36:52] a in a given situation. And it is our sense that the

[36:56] department's process actually does have legitimacy that they do take these

[37:01] investigations, take these complaints and allegations of misconduct seriously

[37:05] and and handle them appropriately. The other piece of it and that's the bottom

[37:11] portion of of the the current slide here and this is I I would say one of the

[37:16] areas where we have seen the most progress in terms of our time with with

[37:20] PaloAlto is that the department has really begun to emphasize uh the

[37:26] holistic review of each one of these incidents and rather than just kind of

[37:31] focusing narrowly on the bottom line result of the specific policy violation

[37:36] or the specific complaint that is that issue. It's true with the use of force

[37:40] cases as well. We have encouraged the department to take each of these

[37:44] incidents as an opportunity to kind of look at it in a 360 degree way and see

[37:50] if even if there are aspects of the encounter that are not directly related

[37:54] to the complaint or directly related to policy, but that are potential room for

[37:59] officers to improve, adjust, try another option. We have for years been been

[38:06] encouraging the department to to treat the process as an opportunity to embrace

[38:10] those things and to look for ways to improve outside of the narrow parameters

[38:15] of the discipline process and we have seen a marketked improvement in that uh

[38:20] area over the last few years uh the department's willingness to do it and I

[38:24] think the fruits of that and we we are we're always careful to highlight it and

[38:28] discuss it when we see it because we really do think it is a positive thing.

[38:32] Next slide, please.

[38:37] There were five use of force incidents that we looked at. And just to provide a

[38:41] refresher for the the public, a few years ago, I think it was 19 uh excuse

[38:46] me, 2021, the department expanded our scope of work to add force cases for the

[38:51] first time. I mean, there are specific categories and the the the way that the

[38:56] scope of work specifically sets it out is that we are to look at each use of

[39:01] force incident that results in medical attention beyond mere clearance in the

[39:07] field. So, we looked at five cases that met that criteria. Three of the cases

[39:11] actually involved relatively minor injuries, but because the person went to

[39:16] the hospital to be looked at in conjunction with the incident that that

[39:20] became it fell under the umbrella of our scope and and we had a chance to look at

[39:24] it and see how the department handled it. Two of the injuries that we looked

[39:28] at in this cycle were more significant. There was a broken arm and that was

[39:33] actually the result of a a relatively standard and minor use of force. It was

[39:37] a resisted control hold that that in sort of an unfortunate accident ended up

[39:43] resulting in a broken arm of the subject. And the other case was a a

[39:47] fairly significant canine bite that resulted in significant injury to the

[39:52] subject and and that person was hospitalized in conjunction with that

[39:56] that arrest. As always, we break down each case and

[40:01] the the department's review of it. The department found each of these uses of

[40:04] force to be in policy. Uh we agreed with that, but as the report says, agreed

[40:10] with some but with some reservations and and so we kind of drill down into the

[40:15] concerns that we had and again those fuel the the recommendations that we

[40:20] have for the department and and we have found the department to be very willing

[40:24] to engage with those and and to be responsive to them. Next slide, please.

[40:32] Uh, one of the categories again that that was an expansion of our scope from

[40:37] the early days and that was a a request from your council had to do with our

[40:42] evaluation of all pointed firearm incidents involving the police. That's

[40:47] anytime that an officer points a gun at a subject in the course of a law

[40:52] enforcement encounter. The department, and this is a relatively new thing, the

[40:57] department is expected to document that. the officers have to take responsibility

[41:03] for it, write about that in their reports, explain the justification for

[41:07] it, and then that um force deployment and it is a type of force deployment is

[41:13] subject to a fairly comprehensive review by the department. This is the fourth or

[41:18] fifth year that we have been doing this. Uh and

[41:22] it was a little bit rocky at the beginning. I think it was a a big change

[41:26] for the department. And it took some getting used to, but they have really

[41:30] become um much more adept at the efficiency of making sure that they're

[41:35] capturing all of these incidents and that the review of them is is meaningful

[41:40] and productive in terms of the the u not only the justification of it and are the

[41:46] officers acting and and using that authority in a way that's consistent

[41:50] with their training, consistent with department expectations, but also

[41:53] looking at the totality of the vent of the event and looking for ways to to

[41:58] again potentially adjust or correct behavior. And sometimes they can be

[42:01] technical things, minor things, things that the subject would have no idea

[42:06] about, but that the department is flagging and and following up with as

[42:10] far as uh engaging with its own personnel.

[42:14] So that is certainly one of the positive things that we want to highlight. One of

[42:18] the things that we have uh that has been a little bit of a struggle uh is is the

[42:22] bodywn camera activation issue that has been for a few years now a a source of

[42:29] concern for us that there are times in which one or more officers do not have

[42:35] their body warn cameras activated in the context of a given event. We've talked

[42:39] to the department a lot about it. I know that it has been a point of emphasis for

[42:43] the department as well. They have some new equipment that they hope will uh

[42:48] help reduce some of the inadvertent uh issues that that officers were having,

[42:53] but it's something that we will continue to monitor going forward. Next slide,

[42:57] please.

[43:02] So in terms of our our recommendations for for this year's report, again, one

[43:06] of the hopefully added value aspects of our role here is not just to provide

[43:12] some transparency and some outside scrutiny into the department's handling

[43:16] of these events, but to take advantage of our familiarity with best practices

[43:20] and our experience to make recommendations about potential

[43:24] adjustments to department practice, policy, um, investigative protocols,

[43:30] etc. And I'll turn it back over to Mike to to talk about some of the

[43:33] recommendations in this most recent report.

[43:37] » Thank you, Steve. Um, so, uh, these are the the four probably major

[43:42] recommendations during this report cycle. Um, they're pretty

[43:46] straightforward. Um, interestingly enough, um, and I'm not sure it was this

[43:52] will be attributed just to the adjustments of the K9 protocol, but

[43:56] since, uh, this report, there has not been a deployment of a K9 bite, uh, over

[44:00] the past several months, which, uh, you know, ideally, you don't want a dog out

[44:05] there, uh, and unless absolutely necessary, um, using um, his his or her

[44:11] teeth to uh, to detain a subject because of the injuries that that could ensue.

[44:17] Um and so um we hope as Steve said that the bodywn camera equipment and upgrades

[44:25] uh will lead to more activation. Um and then we also would like to see um more

[44:32] robust in and fair objective intake interviews by supervisors which is how a

[44:37] complaint gets into the system. So those are our four recommendations from this

[44:42] past report. If we go to the next slide please.

[44:47] I'm now going to transition to the second piece that Mr. Shakott had talked

[44:50] about

[44:54] that that we are going to address um and that is a

[45:00] potential uh scope of the ALPR audit uh that you all have talked about. So, uh,

[45:09] in preparation for that, uh, we did develop, um, a list of ideas or topics

[45:16] or potential areas of inquiry that we could use to develop our audit. Uh, we

[45:22] have also uh, increased our resources. So the person on our team who is the

[45:27] most experienced in learning about ALPRs, identifying issues with regard to

[45:32] ALPRs and actually conducting already conducting audits of ALPR systems

[45:37] throughout the state of California is here with us this evening and that is

[45:42] Terresa Maggula. Teresa, if you could just introduce yourself and then talk

[45:45] about some of the audits you've already performed.

[45:49] » Thank you Mike and Steve and thank you for having me this evening. council. My

[45:53] name is Terresa Maggoula with OIR Group. Um, as Mike mentioned, our team has been

[45:58] actively engaged with issues related to automated license plate readers for

[46:04] several years, but obviously this has become a heightened topic of awareness

[46:08] um, both because of community trust and concerns um, as well as more information

[46:14] that's available about these systems um, that the public has become aware of. Um

[46:19] one of the factors that we've looked at um is and is the sort of the essential

[46:26] function of governance. Um obviously this council um as well as the police

[46:31] departments themselves um can choose to um internalize and and have strong

[46:37] governance within their own organizations and within their cities.

[46:41] And so we've looked at uh three very three different jurisdictions um in the

[46:46] past few months with relation to audits of ALPR systems and in particular around

[46:51] governance. Two of those are counties um Santa Cruz County and Santa Clara

[46:56] County. Both of those counties are what are defined as endusers. This means that

[47:01] those counties do not operate their own ALPR cameras, but they are users of the

[47:07] systems data. And so what we were looking for in those particular counties

[47:11] was the governance around the use of the data, the access to data and the best

[47:17] practices and policies surrounding that use and access. One of the features that

[47:22] we provided early on to our jurisdictions uh that we work with is

[47:27] some model best practice policies including language that aligns with the

[47:32] state law uh the two state laws that govern use of ALPR and data sharing

[47:37] within the state of California. Of a predominant importance in both of those

[47:42] is the concept of not sharing with federal agencies or agencies outside of

[47:48] the state of California. That of course has uh direct implications on some of

[47:53] the data sharing that was occurring uh with federal partners uh early on in the

[47:58] use of the flock system. And the other piece that we look at as well is whether

[48:04] individuals uh or agencies, excuse me, agencies are preventing data sharing for

[48:09] the purpose of any type of immigration enforcement, any type of gender

[48:14] affirming care, any type of individuals seeking medical care uh outside of the

[48:19] state or within the state borders. So those are the audits that we were

[48:22] conducting of those two end users. The one that is more relevant to the city of

[48:27] Palo Alto is the audit that we recently completed and presented to the city of

[48:31] Pasadena which is in Southern California. The city of Pasadena is a an

[48:36] owner and operator of their camera system. Um they have both cameras from

[48:42] uh Motorola as well as Flock. And so we took a look at the various issues

[48:48] surrounding the data and governance. Um, in particular, what we were looking at

[48:53] in the city of Pasadena was whether their own internal audits were effective

[48:59] and identifying the types of data information uh the sharing that was

[49:03] occurring um within the agency as well as with external partners uh in the

[49:08] state of California and to assess whether they were capturing any uh uses

[49:13] of data that may not align with state law. The other piece that we were

[49:18] assessing for the city of Pasadena was the placement of the cameras themselves.

[49:22] Um, and we were looking there for whether the cameras were placed in uh

[49:28] disproportionate uh with disproportionate rates in

[49:32] communities uh that may have been populated uh with higher persons of

[49:36] color. And so what we were looking at there was were they placed with the

[49:40] intent to overp police or over surveil those particular communities or were

[49:44] they placed there for uh operational law enforcement purposes. Uh and so those

[49:49] were the two main features. The city of Pasadena is also currently revising and

[49:54] revamping its ALPR policy and we are working with them on setting the

[49:59] appropriate guard rails as we did with both Santa Clara and Santa Cruz

[50:02] counties. I think it's important to note that the purpose of these audits um is

[50:08] really to provide an independent and unbiased perspective on the data that is

[50:14] available. And so what we're looking at is what the system actually does. What

[50:20] are the actual functions of this system? What data is it producing, storing, and

[50:25] retaining? And for how long? We're looking at who can access the data, what

[50:30] kinds of controls exist, and whether those exist internal to an agency or

[50:35] from the vendor, and whether those controls actually work. So, is the

[50:40] agency able to identify any misuse of data or any data sharing that is outside

[50:46] of compliance with state law? and whether and where additional

[50:51] safeguards might be necessary. Whether that looks like uh safeguards with

[50:56] respect to policy and procedures or training or it looks like any safeguards

[51:02] that might be put into place with memorandas of understanding or with

[51:06] contracts directly. And so essentially our our audit scope is developing as we

[51:12] are working with various agencies. And so we're very pleased to have your input

[51:17] and insight into the scope of this particular audit um as we're developing

[51:21] it sort of here in real time. >> Thank you Teresa. Um so this whole issue

[51:29] of automated license plate readers ALPR is the word that I will use as an

[51:34] acronym to try and shorten our presentation a bit. Um

[51:40] is something that has raised uh that has reached the national consciousness. I

[51:44] mean there is discussion about this issue and the competing concerns

[51:48] throughout the country. Uh in particular California because of the uh

[51:53] legislaturator's restrictions on sharing information with uh immigration uh

[51:59] customs enforcement and as well as concerns about sharing information for

[52:04] those who might want to use the information to restrict uh access to um

[52:10] reproductive care. uh the issue has has has become even more

[52:16] significant in this state. Um so you're seeing a lot of concerns, a lot of

[52:20] issues being raised up and down the cities uh in California and many of the

[52:25] cities that we work with as Teresa indicated. Um I think there's a lot of

[52:30] reasons for it. I think that there are some competing values here in which it's

[52:34] uncertain uh whether the potential efficacy in using this technology is

[52:40] outweighed by the concerns about increased surveillance of people uh who

[52:44] are driving around this area. Uh and those are competing in uh concerns that

[52:50] people would have potentially different views or opinions about. How important

[52:55] or how effic efficacious does this technology need to be to override the

[53:00] concerns potentially about uh increased surveillance of individuals who are

[53:05] driving to the grocery store? Um the there the issue has that that's kind of

[53:11] one of the basic issues, but it's become conflated uh and uh as a result of some

[53:17] other concerns that have come out as a result of that as a result of some

[53:21] potential missteps or actual missteps by the vendor. Uh and that is the concern

[53:26] about inappropriate data sharing with uh agencies that state law says you are not

[53:32] supposed to share this information with. uh as well as a as well as uh the

[53:38] concerns about are there enough internal controls. Does the vendor have enough

[53:43] external controls to ensure that the data that is collected will be collected

[53:48] for limited purposes that officers will not have access to information and use

[53:55] them in an appropriate ways uh and a whole other host of concerns. So this is

[53:59] a uh uh an area that is wide ranging and um the scope of work uh will hopefully

[54:07] try to identify this my vision uh but certainly we are here to hear from you

[54:12] all but one of our visions is one to make sure that we tell the story in

[54:17] PaloAlto which means how did we get here? What happened? How did this, you

[54:22] know, contract begin to exist? And how did it end up being a big surprise when

[54:28] um the city learned uh after months of the LPR cameras going that there were

[54:35] some concerns or issues with regard to inappropriate data sharing? How did that

[54:39] happen? And then most importantly, uh uh one of the things we want to talk about

[54:44] is now that it's happened, what level of trust do we have in the vendor? What

[54:50] level of trust could we have in internal controls, vendor controls to ensure that

[54:57] on a forwardgoing basis should the program continue whether or not uh there

[55:02] is enough confidence in those internal controls to ensure that the missteps of

[55:07] the past will not be repeated in the future. Um what we liked about the

[55:13] city's approach here is the fact that ordinarily in Pasadena, Santa Cruz,

[55:17] Santa Clara County, we were given a scope of work um and then we completed

[55:23] the task within the scope of work. But here the scope of work appears to be a

[55:28] living breathing document uh with input from elected officials. And what I what

[55:33] I particularly like and I think my teammates would agree with me about that

[55:37] is we're not going to write a report in an audit about what we think you want,

[55:41] but we will actually have the ability to hear from you what you want in this

[55:46] scope of work. So we're pleased to hear from you unless anyone on my team has

[55:51] any additional comments. I think we'll end at this point, but certainly

[55:54] available to uh talk with you about some of the issues and some of the potential

[55:58] tasks uh that would be, I think, important and helpful for you as you

[56:03] ultimately make your decision about what to do with ALPR programs in your city.

[56:07] So, thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. And we'll end at this point,

[56:11] but certainly available for discussion and questions.

[56:15] » All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Connelly, Mr. Janako, and Miss McGillo.

[56:20] particularly helpful to have you here tonight. Um, you know, as you've all

[56:25] heard, we have both our uh typical uh semiannual uh report um uh that the uh

[56:34] independent police auditor gave. Um we are proud here in PaloAlto to be one of

[56:39] only two cities in the county that have an independent police auditor twice a

[56:44] year reporting to council on the behavior of uh our police uh officers uh

[56:50] including as was mentioned um use of force and uh uh pointed uh firearms. So

[56:57] uh thank you for that. Uh but we also uh previously uh requested that this um

[57:04] that there be an audit of uh ALPR systems and uh so tonight uh it was

[57:10] agendaized as a study session because that's typically how we agendaize the

[57:15] IPA uh report and so we can give feedback on the uh scope of the audit

[57:21] and uh related questions. I mention that because this was not agendaized as a

[57:27] decision-making final uh decision tonight on what we do about this issue.

[57:32] That's obviously of great community concern, but we are concerned as well

[57:36] and want to hear from you. And so that's why we uh are grateful you're here and

[57:40] look forward to the conversation. Um

[57:44] so with that um you know this this audit hopefully will answer questions uh that

[57:51] we aren't in a position to decide tonight but obviously things like do we

[57:56] use ALPRs at all and if so do we use flock and etc etc. So um let me first

[58:03] open it to my colleagues to see if there are any clarifying questions that you

[58:06] have for uh our uh independent police auditor team. Um and then if not we will

[58:13] hear from the good folks here in our chambers through public comment. Council

[58:17] member Bert.

[58:20] » Thank you. [clears throat] So first I want to say that um I having reviewed

[58:26] your uh scope of work um I found it to be very comprehensive. Uh I was pleased

[58:32] at just how many aspects you intend to uh dive in on. And then uh I I was not

[58:39] aware when we uh asked you to take this on uh that you already have had um

[58:46] similar not identical um uh task for three other government agencies. So

[58:52] that's gives you a lot of foundation there. Um I I I found under the section

[58:58] six the the um vendor governance and platform evolution to be really

[59:04] important because this is an evolving area where we certainly have been

[59:11] concerned with um actions that have happened up until now. And a big

[59:17] question we have is how well um uh has the vendor uh addressed many of the

[59:25] concerns that we in the public have and and how well haven't they? Um but then

[59:31] um under section 8, one of your questions uh that you identified is

[59:35] whether uh this effectiveness and value, whether the um uh program contributes

[59:42] meaningfully to investigative outcomes. And I wanted to

[59:49] ask if that's going to be answered in a quantitative way. I know that you had

[59:54] wanted to uh distinguish between um uh uh uh where it was central versus

[1:00:03] it was supplemental. Uh but is are you in your discussions with our department

[1:00:09] will you be getting uh some form of quantitative data?

[1:00:14] » Thank you for that question, Council Member Bert. And it's my understanding

[1:00:17] that the Palo Alto Police Department is currently quantifying that type of data

[1:00:21] and we will be receiving that data from the department itself. Yes.

[1:00:25] » Great. And then under best practices and benchmarking,

[1:00:30] I didn't see anything referencing um alternative providers. I mean, we've had

[1:00:37] uh the city of Campbell who's taken uh one approach, Stanford University

[1:00:42] another. Um, is that something that would be in your scope of work or is

[1:00:46] that within what the department would be looking at

[1:00:51] » with alternative providers? Are you speaking of just different vendors that

[1:00:54] have the same solution or different types of solutions?

[1:00:57] » Different types of solutions as well as different vendors with might have uh

[1:01:03] better security that we're looking for. Yeah, I would say that we have the

[1:01:08] capacity to look at different vendors and the types of programs that other

[1:01:12] agencies are using. Um, as far as other types of solutions for the same exact

[1:01:17] sort of use case, I'd be more limited in in providing that kind of information.

[1:01:22] » Okay. Um,

[1:01:28] so for example, we we have we know locally that um the two I'm aware of are

[1:01:34] Stanford and and Campbell. Would you be looking at the the

[1:01:39] approaches that they're taking? Is that >> We certainly could. Yes.

[1:01:42] » Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Council member Lowing.

[1:01:49] » Yeah. To start, I just had uh one question. The item

[1:01:54] Too much paper here tonight. Oh yeah. Item three, bullet point two,

[1:02:01] whether currentus adequately define and limit access and use.

[1:02:06] » And my broad question there is whether this issue [clears throat]

[1:02:11] has any merit since someone can break the law. Maybe that's the way I would

[1:02:15] put it. So we have anou, you're supposed to act this way, but then the officer

[1:02:19] doesn't act that way. They actually break the law. Um, doesn't that mean

[1:02:23] there's automatically a a a data leakage there that gets in the way of thisou?

[1:02:31] » I mean, maybe I'm not phrasing it exactly.

[1:02:33] » No, I I think I understand what you're looking at.

[1:02:35] » I mean, there's like human factors that go into this that that can release the

[1:02:39] data as has happened by some officers around the country that not not here. I

[1:02:45] think with respect to theus what we're looking at is data sharing between

[1:02:49] different partner agencies and so we're really looking sort of a level up from

[1:02:52] the individual actor. Okay. When we're talking about the kinds of audits and

[1:02:57] internal policies that a department might have that's where we're looking at

[1:03:00] those act sort of the individual human factor the individual actors. And so

[1:03:05] what we're looking at in these systems as well is does the department

[1:03:08] internally have the sufficient safeguards and the the uh frequency of

[1:03:13] audits to be able to capture the individual actors and the access and and

[1:03:19] sort of the the searches that those individual actors are using.

[1:03:22] » Good. That directly uh addresses my question. Thank you.

[1:03:25] » And council member Long, if I could just be a little more specific, we're going

[1:03:28] to I think we would look at it two ways. One, as Theresa indicated, uh whether

[1:03:34] there are sufficient uh safeguards to identify officers or other personnel who

[1:03:39] inappropriately access the database for the wrong reasons, for personal reasons,

[1:03:44] but also to prevent that upstream from happening through training, guidance,

[1:03:52] and the kind of information to future officers about these are going to be our

[1:03:56] expectations, and you should be assured that if you violate

[1:04:00] uh the need to know and use it for personal interests that uh we're going

[1:04:05] to take appropriate action. So there's going to be need to be a training

[1:04:08] component as well.

[1:04:13] » Council member Leth. >> Thank you, Mayor.

[1:04:17] Um Mr. Janako, Mr. Connelly, Miss Maggula,

[1:04:22] thank you very much for your presentation. I'm wondering if the

[1:04:24] benchmarking item could be augmented to include reference to how many

[1:04:29] municipalities in California have terminated flock contracts, covered

[1:04:33] cameras, and maybe a subset, how many in the Bay Area. Um, it'd be helpful for us

[1:04:39] to understand what is happening in our peer jurisdictions as we undergo this

[1:04:44] conversation here.

[1:04:49] » That is an excellent ad and we will certainly add that in. I think the other

[1:04:52] component would also if if I may be to take a look at the various jurisdictions

[1:04:59] that might just be end users of the system um that are not operating their

[1:05:03] cameras but that are still accessing the data. I think that's an important

[1:05:05] distinction to know whether an agency has access to the data even if they

[1:05:10] don't operate their own cameras.

[1:05:14] » Council member Rectal. >> Okay. Thank you.

[1:05:17] [clears throat] Your scope has both internal access within PAPD using the

[1:05:21] data and also external the people that we share with the other departments. Are

[1:05:26] you going to be looking at all vendor access and our data is shared with the

[1:05:31] vendor and can we investigate how they use it and what kind of safeguards they

[1:05:36] have that they aren't misus using it. >> And that's kind of in a black box which

[1:05:42] makes it hard for us because we have to trust what's going on in that black box.

[1:05:46] and should we be trusting what's going on in the back that that black box? So,

[1:05:50] is that something that you'll be doing in your scope?

[1:05:55] » Item six contemplates some of those vendor governance and and sort of the

[1:06:00] platform evolutions, but certainly it I agree with you. It is a black box. It's

[1:06:04] one that's difficult to get into. Um, and so it would really highly depend on

[1:06:07] the type of access that we're able to get uh at that level. So I don't want to

[1:06:12] overpromise and underdel but certainly it's an intention that we would take a

[1:06:16] look at some of the ways that uh the vendor is both protecting and

[1:06:20] potentially using the data that is going into the system.

[1:06:23] » And in your past audits have you looked into the vendor being able to look at

[1:06:27] their internal use um policies? >> No, those were not part of the scope of

[1:06:33] work uh for the prior three audits that we've conducted. That would be a net new

[1:06:37] component here. >> Okay. I think it would be useful. Thank

[1:06:39] you. >> I agree. Thank you.

[1:06:43] So just following up on that point, um when we discussed this last time, um uh

[1:06:48] we talked about uh your bullet point three and or the third bullet point

[1:06:53] under item four, whether data deletion practices are automatic, verified, and

[1:06:58] consistently applied. And the question was also um could we check whether they

[1:07:05] audit that? So not just whether that's part of their practices but in you know

[1:07:09] are we auditing that the vendor is actually deleting. So have you seen that

[1:07:14] or is that something that is could be added to this uh scope of work?

[1:07:19] » Just for a point of clarification the particular item here is around uh the

[1:07:24] the police department's own data itself. And so when we're looking at whether the

[1:07:30] vendor is um deleting or retaining in a different way in a different system, I

[1:07:36] wouldn't be able to answer that. But the police department's own instance of its

[1:07:41] flock database is what we would be looking at here.

[1:07:44] I don't know if that quite >> No, I understand your answer. I'm just

[1:07:49] want to I guess I would be curious if there's anybody out there who not only

[1:07:54] has the policies on their own servers of data deletion and all that, but there's

[1:07:59] some kind of auditing that there's actually compliance with those policies.

[1:08:02] That's a whole another level. and if there were any way to assess what you

[1:08:07] know what current practices are or could be or what success rate they've had on

[1:08:11] that because um you know it's one I have I have greater confidence in in in the

[1:08:17] folks that we see every day than than the vendors on that.

[1:08:22] Um okay and then my other question is um go back to my other question

[1:08:30] uh

[1:08:36] got so into that I may not remember. Just give me a moment here. Um

[1:08:42] well, let me just ask you generally, have you seen for however long you've

[1:08:46] been doing these audits um you know improvements in uh practices by vendors

[1:08:53] with respect to um you know trends improving uh controls usage and

[1:08:59] compliance and all of that like what have you observed? Yeah, that that has

[1:09:03] absolutely been the trend over time and and perhaps rightly so because they

[1:09:08] started on rather shaky grounds. Um but most recently, I believe it was last

[1:09:13] week um on the 13th um in particular, one vendor released a host of new

[1:09:19] functionality within the systems platforms. Um I could go through those

[1:09:23] but it's certainly something that the audit will be looking to ensure that uh

[1:09:27] both this department as well as the vendor is adhering to those new

[1:09:31] standards that they've applied um and that they've given to themselves. So we

[1:09:35] will be looking at those as well. But certainly over the course of the last

[1:09:41] almost a year um there has been a lot of transition in the particular platform

[1:09:46] and and the effectiveness of kind of that tool itself. Um, one of the most

[1:09:51] important things that came to light, of course, was that the feature called

[1:09:55] national lookup, which was allowing agencies outside of the state of

[1:09:59] California to view data from the state of California. Um, that was turned off

[1:10:03] for the state of California. So, thankfully that was captured. Um,

[1:10:07] unfortunately, it was something that was in violation of uh various contracts as

[1:10:13] well as state law. Um, but that has been turned off. Another feature that has uh

[1:10:18] recently come to light was terminating the access by national um what what are

[1:10:24] sometimes called fusion centers. There's one here in Northern California referred

[1:10:28] to as Nickrich and one in Southern California referred to as JRIK. These

[1:10:32] were agents agencies that were essentially looking at kind of the

[1:10:36] regional partnerships in collaboration with various federal task forces. those

[1:10:41] agencies had access to the database directly and were able to be users of

[1:10:47] that data. Those contracts were terminated and the access was turned

[1:10:51] off. In other words, the any any partner potentially at the federal level that

[1:10:56] was happened to be sitting in one of these regional centers can no longer

[1:11:00] access this department data um that's within the state of California. So

[1:11:05] that's a feature that was turned off recently. Um and then of course

[1:11:08] individual agencies are determining sort of how they want to adjust their

[1:11:13] governance and their data sharing. And so some agencies are saying we're only

[1:11:18] going to share with regional partners because that's what makes sense. We're

[1:11:22] only going to share with um you know agencies that have a ne a direct nexus

[1:11:27] to our agency. There are others that have determined we're only going to

[1:11:30] share with agencies that are committed to doing their own types of internal

[1:11:34] audits in the same way that we are. And this is sort of going back to theus um

[1:11:39] that we highlighted earlier that agencies are now taking more control and

[1:11:43] ownership of where their data goes and the data that they themselves access. So

[1:11:48] that's something that we're seeing agencies sort of realize we can control

[1:11:53] this for ourselves to be responsive both to the needs of our public as well as

[1:11:58] the direction and the concerns that our public is is having related to the

[1:12:02] surveillance technology. >> Thank you. And finally, uh, would it be

[1:12:07] within the scope of something you could do to look at, um,

[1:12:14] vendors provisions or agreement to remedies for non-compliance because we

[1:12:21] had a non-compliance and as far as I can tell, there was no recompense for it.

[1:12:26] And so, the point isn't to get paid for a

[1:12:29] violation. The point is to deter the violation in the first place. And it's

[1:12:33] one thing to have high expectation of our own police department, but these

[1:12:38] entities are businesses. >> Businesses operate on profits. Money is

[1:12:42] a deterrent. And if you have the appropriated liquid appropriate

[1:12:46] liquidated damages or other um things written into a contract, they're more

[1:12:51] likely to comply and self self enforce. So have is it within your scope to look

[1:12:56] at provisions like that and come back and tell us what has worked or not?

[1:13:00] » Yeah. So this is another one of the kinds of controls that's happening sort

[1:13:03] of in real time. So what we're seeing is agencies, especially large agencies like

[1:13:08] the LAPD in Southern California are really taking ownership of the contract

[1:13:12] language itself. And it is something that I think both both the city and

[1:13:17] counties as well as the vendor are cluing into. It is important that we

[1:13:22] have the right language and the appropriate language within our

[1:13:25] contract. And so it's a space that is evolving sort of as we're talking here

[1:13:29] tonight. Um and it is one that we're certainly willing to to report back.

[1:13:34] Whether or not it's effective or not, the window might be a little too short

[1:13:37] for us to be able to assess that. But we can certainly provide that kind of

[1:13:40] language and modifications um as other agencies have taken it on.

[1:13:44] » Thank you, Vice Mayor Stone. >> Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you

[1:13:48] for this scope. I think it's an excellent starting point. I agree with

[1:13:52] the feedback already provided. One question, not quite sure if the scope

[1:13:57] gets to it, and I would kind of call it examining like pattern of life

[1:14:02] capabilities. Basically, like can this system either

[1:14:06] by itself or in combination with other databases tell us where a particular

[1:14:11] vehicle has traveled over time, how frequently it visits particular

[1:14:15] locations, or identifying recurring travel patterns or associations between

[1:14:20] vehicles? And if so, do our policies then

[1:14:23] distinguish between LPR uh to investigate a particular incident, for

[1:14:27] example, recovering a stolen vehicle um or using historical data to be able to

[1:14:33] reconstruct someone's movement over a longer period

[1:14:37] of of time. I mean, because for me, those are very different uses of

[1:14:42] technology. One is for a legitimate law enforcement purpose and the other is big

[1:14:48] brother. And does this so does the scope kind of cover that?

[1:14:53] » Yes. So it does in in a bit of a an roundabout way. And let me let me

[1:14:58] address that. What we're looking at is severalfold. One is are the uses for

[1:15:04] legitimate law enforcement purposes. So we'll be looking line item at the

[1:15:09] searches that are being done to determine whether those have a direct

[1:15:12] nexus to a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

[1:15:15] The other piece is retention. Uh and so retention windows would come into play

[1:15:21] when we're speaking about this kind of pattern of life. Is that the term

[1:15:25] pattern of life? Yeah. >> Yeah. Um that you know we're trying to

[1:15:29] sort of reconstruct a person's history. If the retention window is limited to 30

[1:15:34] days or even the vendor is now suggesting a 7-day limit on the window

[1:15:38] of retention of data. uh we'd be looking at how that retention policy impacts the

[1:15:44] ability to look at data sort of historically over time to be able to

[1:15:48] reconstruct someone's patterns. Um what we're seeing in the audits that we have

[1:15:53] conducted and in some national studies that have come out is that the

[1:15:57] predominant use of the system is for one-time cases, investigative purposes

[1:16:02] with a legitimate law enforcement basis. So there are very few uses that um we

[1:16:09] have been able to document and record where they're looking at a pattern of

[1:16:13] someone over time or doing what we might call a broad sweep. And so we'll be

[1:16:18] looking at that as well. So are the cases and the uses of the data for

[1:16:23] particular one-time investigative use or are they looking more for a broader

[1:16:27] sweep or a pattern um over time and we'll be be able to identify that as

[1:16:32] well in the course of the audit. So hopefully that answers it's sort of

[1:16:36] three parts to answer one question. >> Yeah, that that's helpful. And I think a

[1:16:42] common theme here is it seems like both from the audit but also the limitations

[1:16:46] of the audit is we can to some degree control our own policies and what our

[1:16:52] own law enforcement can can access. harder to control downstream

[1:16:59] bad actors. And maybe that is we're giving that information to an agency

[1:17:04] that is authorized to use it, but then we can't control who is authorized or

[1:17:09] who has access to their in to their data when their data is gathered from our

[1:17:14] data. And we don't have any control over their their firewall, their internal

[1:17:19] systems. And so I guess even if we had a 7day

[1:17:24] window there, could that information be kind of seized within that limited

[1:17:31] window from others to then construct this pattern of life of of individuals

[1:17:39] um and then retained essentially forever. Is is that something that we

[1:17:45] can I mean do you know that answer now or is that something that could be

[1:17:48] understood? It's something that we could take a look at certainly, but it would

[1:17:51] be within the realm of kind of those retention periods and understanding um

[1:17:56] what this department is willing to do as well as what thoseus are requesting of

[1:17:59] other departments and agencies using the data downstream.

[1:18:02] » Okay. Yeah. Because there's all Yeah. There's all these unintended

[1:18:04] consequences that it's so challenging to be able to um to make a a decision

[1:18:10] ultimately like Mr. Janako said, balancing those is a a real challenge.

[1:18:15] Yes. Okay. Thank you, >> Council Member Lou.

[1:18:19] Thank you. Uh I appreciate all my colleagues uh detailed questions. They

[1:18:23] really echo a lot of my concerns. But just for this round of questions, I want

[1:18:27] to clarify whether you will actually look at the raw logs of searches or

[1:18:31] whether you'll be more focused on the policies of the city.

[1:18:36] » So my colleagues didn't say this, but I love data. I will be looking at the raw

[1:18:41] logs. [laughter] Um I will be doing an assessment of the logs. um Palo Alto is

[1:18:46] already uh far and beyond some of its uh regional partners as well as state

[1:18:51] partners and that they provide that data in a redacted manner on their public

[1:18:54] transparency site. Uh we through the nature of our agreement will be able to

[1:18:58] look at the raw logs >> and so we'll look at the raw logs of

[1:19:02] both internal searches and searches from other cities. That is correct. And will

[1:19:05] we have any uh ability to judge whether maybe some of that data was used

[1:19:10] inappropriately for stalking or sort of individual purposes or is that kind of

[1:19:14] level of detail >> uh not possible to reconstruct from the

[1:19:19] kind of analysis that you're planning on doing?

[1:19:21] » So to be completely transparent about it what we do is we will be looking at the

[1:19:25] raw data. So every search that's conducted both internally and of

[1:19:29] PaloAlto's data. What we're looking at when we do that is if there is what uh

[1:19:35] within the the search itself, each search has to have a legitimate a

[1:19:39] legitimate law enforcement nexus. That means that when an officer, whether it

[1:19:44] be within Peloto or elsewhere, accesses the data, they have to provide a case

[1:19:49] number and they have to provide a code for the type of crime that they are

[1:19:53] investigating. Now, could there be a bad apple somewhere that is making up case

[1:19:59] numbers and inputting them into the system because he or she is a bad actor?

[1:20:04] That is a use case that could possibly happen in the world. Um, we wouldn't be

[1:20:09] able to tell about that. Um, what we can do and what the audits can do is take a

[1:20:14] look at whether the case numbers are actual legitimate case numbers. That's

[1:20:19] something that the department will do internally uh through its own audits and

[1:20:23] we can check and verify that as well. >> Okay. It seems like you do have some

[1:20:27] ability to actually sanity check though that you aren't using a case number from

[1:20:30] years ago or using case number that >> doesn't need to have a vehicle involved.

[1:20:34] Do you actually uh so I heard sort of a no answer that you

[1:20:39] wouldn't necessarily be able to judge the appropriateness of searches but at

[1:20:44] least you'll be able to detect and spot check some sample in

[1:20:48] » correct >> okay I think that correct because keep

[1:20:51] in mind we're talking and I'm not trying to to limit the scope at all but we're

[1:20:54] talking about millions and millions of of searches and it would almost be um

[1:21:00] » we would have to use some kind of tool that that we don't have at our disposal.

[1:21:04] as this group um to be able to assess that on that global scale.

[1:21:08] » Yes, certainly. I think just uh spot checking could be uh and sort of random

[1:21:13] spot checking can be useful in building trust uh among the broader community. So

[1:21:18] I appreciate that. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. And so with that,

[1:21:24] let's go to our public comment. And so Madame Clerk, how many uh speakers do we

[1:21:29] have as of now?

[1:21:51] We have a total of 35 requests to speak and three of which are um there are

[1:21:58] three groups of seven. Okay, great. Uh, well, we're glad you're

[1:22:03] all here. We look forward to hearing you. What we will do is give uh one

[1:22:07] minute to each individual speaker and five minutes to each group. And uh the

[1:22:12] clerk generally announces who's next and who's right after that. So, you can be

[1:22:16] ready to approach the microphone when it's your turn. All right. So, please go

[1:22:22] ahead. Our first speaker is Carara S. speaking

[1:22:28] on behalf of a group of seven.

[1:22:36] Thank you, Madame Mayor and City Council. My name is Cara Silver. I'm a

[1:22:40] 20-year PaloAlto resident, a municipal attorney, and a member of safety over

[1:22:46] surveillance, a coalition of 14 groups opposing mass surveillance in the Bay

[1:22:51] Area. First, we want to thank PaloAlto for taking this important step of

[1:22:56] conducting a third-party audit. I remember when a small group of us showed

[1:23:02] up to the policy and services committee in March 2026 and requested the

[1:23:08] committee to cancel the flock contract. At that time, most people didn't even

[1:23:13] know what an ALPR was. Very few community members showed up to the

[1:23:18] meeting and most people had never even heard of flock. Now, can everyone who

[1:23:24] opposes ALPRs please stand up?

[1:23:31] Thank you all. You can sit down. [snorts]

[1:23:37] Obviously, um, ALPR concerns are widespread.

[1:23:42] John Oliver ran an entire HBO episode on mass surveillance very recently, calling

[1:23:48] out flocks abuses in particular. The New York Times recently ran an article

[1:23:53] titled, "Flock cameras are dividing US cities." Here's what to know about them.

[1:24:00] Police officers in at least 12 states, including California, have been accused

[1:24:05] of misusing flock systems to stalk former partners and the like. The San

[1:24:09] Francisco Chronicle reported that the Northern California Regional

[1:24:14] Intelligence Center, Nick, of which PaloAlto is a member, allowed federal

[1:24:19] agencies to conduct 299 searches of San Francisco's flocked data in violation of

[1:24:26] California's data sharing laws. And this was just a couple of months ago. Closer

[1:24:32] to home, the San Monteo County Grand Jury just issued an audit calling for

[1:24:37] stricter ALPR oversight practices. And PaloAlto Weekly broke a news story and

[1:24:42] how the city's own data was shared with federal law enforcement agencies for

[1:24:47] over a year without the police department even knowing. Approximately

[1:24:53] 132 local agencies across the country have canceled flock contracts, including

[1:24:58] our neighbors Stanford University, Mountain View, City of Santa Cruz, and

[1:25:02] now most recently, Redwood City. 40 of those cons cancellations were in August

[1:25:08] of this year. Even the Los Angeles Police Department recently canceled

[1:25:13] their flock contract, citing privacy concerns.

[1:25:17] While concerns about flock cameras are increasing, so are concerns about

[1:25:21] overreaching authoritarian federal government. Recent reporting shows the

[1:25:26] federal government launched an expansive surveillance program in Minnesota

[1:25:30] against activists, labor unions, and community groups called Operation Puppet

[1:25:35] Master in response to statewide ICE protests.

[1:25:39] Mass surveillance is in mass surveillance in the wrong hands is no

[1:25:44] longer an abstract concern. With this context in mind, SOS PaloAlto is

[1:25:51] requesting a more robust audit scope as detailed in the letter sent to the

[1:25:56] council earlier today. In particular, we would like the audit to include some

[1:26:02] updates to the data sharing in section three. to include is PAPD approving in

[1:26:10] advance all search inquiries in compliance with the internal policy that

[1:26:14] it has. How does PAPD verify whether the reason for inquiry and case number is

[1:26:20] accurate before permitting search? How does PAPD determine which outside

[1:26:26] searches should be withheld under the CP and how much time is dedicated to this

[1:26:32] decision of um redaction? Warrants and subpoenas involving PaloAlto customer

[1:26:39] data. What are Flock's procedures for addressing them? When is Flock allowed

[1:26:43] to share data for legal purposes and with whom? How is PaloAlto notified when

[1:26:48] the sharing happens? Also some enhancements to section 8

[1:26:54] effectiveness and value. Um we were surprised not to find a discussion of

[1:27:00] the number of false positives both internal and external uses.

[1:27:05] We would like to know the percentage of time an officer is is takes to verify

[1:27:11] ALPR information with cleats before taking enforcement action. Again, as

[1:27:17] required by local policy, information, including crime statistics

[1:27:22] and closure rates that helps the community assess whether the

[1:27:25] surveillance technology has been effective at achieving its identified

[1:27:29] purposes. Comparison of cases closed before and after implementation and

[1:27:35] specific amounts and types of closed cases attributed to FLO.

[1:27:40] » Your time is up. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is Tim M,

[1:27:44] followed by Brian E. Greetings, council. My name is Tim

[1:27:49] McKenzie and I'm with the Silicon Valley chapter of Democratic Socialist of

[1:27:53] America and the Safety Over Surve Surveillance Coalition. I'll start with

[1:27:57] two asks. Uh immediately cover the cameras while the audit is ongoing. It's

[1:28:02] a good natural experiment to be able to get some real data and add research into

[1:28:07] the false positives as part of the scope of the audit. A truly independent audit

[1:28:13] would consider the totality of evidence, including downsides, rather than trying

[1:28:17] to find ways to justify mass surveillance. We already got off to a

[1:28:22] rocky start when the initial plan was derailed by a clear conflict of interest

[1:28:26] with the first auditor. It does not bode well that Mr. Janako representing the

[1:28:31] new auditor was reported to say, "We want to make sure that value isn't

[1:28:35] overridden by lack of trust in the misuse of the data." That sounds an

[1:28:39] awful lot like conclusions have been drawn before any factf finding begins.

[1:28:44] We know Roseville Police Department reported a false positive rate greater

[1:28:48] than 70% and LAPD had a 1 in3 error rate. Studiously avoiding anything that

[1:28:55] might challenge the perceived value of these invasive cameras is negligent. But

[1:29:00] focusing on false positives makes it seem like there could be a safe way to

[1:29:04] use this tool, which is elucery. If your criteria for decision-making is whether

[1:29:10] something makes the job of the police easier, you are by definition building a

[1:29:16] police state or at the very least the infrastructure for one. While our

[1:29:22] democracy is under attack as we descend into fascism, is that really the pol

[1:29:28] policy decision you want to make? Do you want to pay a private for-profit company

[1:29:34] so they can harvest our data and train their AI model to sell to the federal

[1:29:39] government? Will Powo Alto keep giving up resident and visitor data so Peter

[1:29:43] Theo can get a return on investment in his attempts to destroy our democracy?

[1:29:48] I ask you to consider how you'd like to be viewed when history looks back on

[1:29:53] this moment. Will you be part of the decaying institutions that enabled the

[1:29:57] rise of fascism? Or will you be able to look with pride on making a decision in

[1:30:02] support of the community? If you are wondering how you would have acted in

[1:30:06] 1930s Germany, look to what you are doing now. Your decisions here are the

[1:30:12] answer to that question. The police chief has said automated license plate

[1:30:17] readers are an invaluable tool, but no tool is more valuable than the public

[1:30:23] trust. Everything in policing is downstream of

[1:30:28] that bedrock foundation. Startups move fast and break things and flock and

[1:30:33] ALPRs in general have broken the public trust. Our data was illegally searched

[1:30:39] tens of thousands of times by outofstate agencies.

[1:30:43] [snorts] What we've seen is that at best we will capture abuses after the fact.

[1:30:48] We cannot prevent harms from occurring. that was just admitted by the auditors

[1:30:53] right here. The only safe data is no data. If you cannot protect it, do not

[1:31:01] collect it. At the very least, drop to 3 minutes of data retention like the state

[1:31:07] of New Hampshire. The problem isn't just one vendor. It is the technology itself.

[1:31:15] The very nature of automated license plate readers means that we are all

[1:31:22] constantly surveiled, constantly under suspicion.

[1:31:29] How can we be expected to reciprocate trust that is not extended to us? Trust

[1:31:35] is a two-way street, a mutual relationship.

[1:31:40] How many times do we have to fill these chambers to tell you that the trust is

[1:31:45] broken? How often do you do you speak to an empty gallery versus the full gallery

[1:31:51] that is right here? Please

[1:31:54] stop digging the hole deeper. Start building bridges to repair

[1:32:01] [clears throat] trust.

[1:32:05] Automated license plate readers violate our fourth amendment rights and do not

[1:32:09] make us safe. A Texas sheriff said the tool is not compatible with a free

[1:32:13] society when he took down the cameras. Paloalto sister city of Bloomington,

[1:32:18] Indiana canceled their contract. How can all these red cities and states see the

[1:32:23] light when supposedly progressive PaloAlto continues down the destructive

[1:32:28] path of issuing public trust? Make the right decision.

[1:32:33] Cancel the contract, cover the cameras, and never pursue any other vendors of

[1:32:41] this dangerous technology. Repair public trust, safety over surveillance. Thank

[1:32:48] you. >> Our next speaker is Brian E, followed

[1:32:51] Bri by Brian J.

[1:32:57] » Hello, my name is Brian Eaton. Thank you for holding this study session. Uh, I

[1:33:01] also wanted to ask is it if it's possible to have Penn go next because

[1:33:05] they are from Bloomington and they wanted to speak but it's getting late

[1:33:07] there. Um, [sighs and gasps] so I've worked as an engineer in the tech

[1:33:11] industry for 25 years. Most of that time in security, privacy and user safety.

[1:33:16] I'm a member of the safety over surveillance coalition because of that

[1:33:19] experience. Uh, Flock and the federal government are wildly out of control.

[1:33:23] These cameras are dangerous to residents. I'm here to request that the

[1:33:27] city cover the Flock cameras. Uh, Flock and their CEO have a long history of

[1:33:31] lying to the public and their customers. They claim they've never been hacked,

[1:33:34] but they've left the cameras wide open to abuse for years. They claim they

[1:33:38] anonymize data, but they don't really. They claim they maintain audit logs, but

[1:33:43] they won't tell the city who really accessed the data. Flock lies

[1:33:47] constantly. It's obvious. In Los Altos, residents found evidence in the Flock

[1:33:52] transparency portal that their cameras had been searched by the federal

[1:33:56] government. And then when the city manager confronted Flock, Flock denied

[1:34:00] everything. Instead of admitting the mistake, Flock told the city that that

[1:34:03] was just a bug in the transparency portal. So Flock's willing to lie to

[1:34:07] city managers. In Leland, Colorado, they found that their cameras were being

[1:34:12] abused by ATF and ICE. And the chief of police confronted Flock. Chief Doran

[1:34:17] wrote later, and I quote, "In July of 2025, after the previous issue with ATF

[1:34:23] accessing Lovelin's Flock data, the LPD was assured by Flock that federal

[1:34:27] agencies no longer had access to our license plates readers, which we took at

[1:34:31] face value." This statement was also reiterated by the Flock CEO in a live

[1:34:36] interview with Nine News on July 30th, 2025, where he confirmed Flock had no

[1:34:41] federal contracts. Guess what? Flock did have federal

[1:34:45] contracts and they were providing data to ICE. So Flock is willing to lie to

[1:34:50] police chiefs. In Wisconsin, a Flock representative got

[1:34:54] up in front of the city council and said that Flock didn't create heat maps to

[1:34:58] track individual vehicles. The city council trusted Flock and they approved

[1:35:02] the contract. The very next day, the chief of police got proof that what

[1:35:06] Flock's reps had said during the council meeting wasn't true. So Flock is willing

[1:35:11] to lie to city councils. They're willing to lie to cops. Their CEO is willing to

[1:35:16] go on the evening news and lie directly to the camera. We would be naive to

[1:35:21] believe anything that Flock tells us during this audit.

[1:35:25] However, Flock is very honest about one thing. Their contract states clearly

[1:35:30] that they own the cameras, they own the raw footage, and that they will share it

[1:35:34] with whoever they want, whenever they want. Flock is run by Trumpup supporting

[1:35:39] fascists. They do not care about the contracts they've signed. They've built

[1:35:43] a nationwide surveillance network. And now it is being used to hunt down

[1:35:47] immigrants, hunt down protesters, and hunt down anyone that opposes the Trump

[1:35:51] administration. Just last week, news broke that DHS had infiltrated

[1:35:55] anti-Trump church groups to spy on them. The Trump administration has access to

[1:36:00] the entire flock network, including the Palo Alto cameras. The audit isn't going

[1:36:05] to slow them down one bit. I wish the city had more options here,

[1:36:11] but you don't. You can leave the cameras up and let Trump and his goons use them

[1:36:15] to destroy democracy. Or you can choose to fight back. You can

[1:36:20] cover the cameras.

[1:36:24] Mountain View saw this. They removed the cameras. Santa Clara County saw this

[1:36:29] choice. They banned city staff from operating the cameras.

[1:36:33] Stanford saw this choice. They covered the cameras. They had the sheriff

[1:36:37] deputies come and do it. That was nice. And Palo Alto's sister city,

[1:36:41] Bloomington, Indiana, they had this choice. They canceled their contract.

[1:36:44] They got rid of the cameras. So, I am here pleading with you as your neighbor.

[1:36:50] These cameras are dangerous to me. They are dangerous to my family. They are

[1:36:54] dangerous to everyone in this room. Please cover the cameras now. Thank you.

[1:37:01] » Our next speaker is Brian J, followed by Winter D.

[1:37:06] Good evening. My name is Brian Jones. I worked in Palo Alto for many years and

[1:37:10] I'm a systems engineer uh for about the last 25 years specializing in hardware

[1:37:14] systems with a strong data component. Uh the technical reality of data systems is

[1:37:18] that if you do not control the server, you do not control the data. We cannot

[1:37:23] be assured that the audit logs report all of the access to the data. Backdoor

[1:37:27] access does not necessarily come out in the logs that were provided by the

[1:37:31] company. Um, so the logs are only as good as our trust in that provider. No

[1:37:36] city policy can ensure vendor compliance. Whatever policy rules we

[1:37:40] make here don't apply to people in other states running their company.

[1:37:45] Furthermore, data breaches are inevitable as I'm sure you have

[1:37:49] personally experienced many times probably in the last month when you get

[1:37:52] those letters in the mail, right? If it does not happen, um if if that data

[1:37:58] breach, even if it doesn't happen, there's no guarantee that we will even

[1:38:01] know that it happened. The only way you know from those is is that your data has

[1:38:06] been breached is that you get those letters if it's in Flock's best

[1:38:09] interest. >> What time is that?

[1:38:10] » Sorry. >> Our next speaker is Winter D followed by

[1:38:13] Will O.

[1:38:22] El Certo made big news last week when 70 days after its contract ended

[1:38:28] with Flock, it still hadn't removed its cameras or even shut them down. Flock

[1:38:33] hadn't.

[1:38:36] Flock knows more about how to manipulate its tech than we ever will. Flock's

[1:38:42] behavior and its black box um certainly will never engender trust

[1:38:48] in this community. Any speculation that flock lowers

[1:38:53] PaloAlto's crime rate is conjecture. Our crime statistics have been cyclical

[1:38:59] for decades, up and down, up and down in all crime categories, verifying our very

[1:39:04] low crime rate.

[1:39:09] Not only did flock endanger, it damaged our city. As a prior at a prior city

[1:39:15] council meeting, our mayor asked the city attorney if the city can recover

[1:39:19] damages for Flock's 2-year long breach of contract. I hope this audit is useful

[1:39:24] for that purpose. >> Our next speaker is Will O followed by

[1:39:28] Annie G. >> Good evening. My name is Will Oler. I

[1:39:33] serve on the Menlo Park housing commission, but tonight I'm here as a

[1:39:35] private citizen. I'm in Palo Alto tonight because my therapist works here.

[1:39:39] On my way here tonight, my location was recorded by multiple block cameras

[1:39:42] across several municipalities. Um, and that information will be

[1:39:46] available to most police officers in the state for the next 30 days. Um, it's

[1:39:51] invasive, it's creepy, it's unnecessary, and it didn't used to be this way. It

[1:39:56] shouldn't be this way. Um, if other municipalities are any indication, the

[1:40:01] deeper you look, the more problems you will find. And so I encourage you to

[1:40:05] look deep and then to do the right thing and to remove the cameras uh remove APRs

[1:40:11] from your policing approach entirely. Thank you.

[1:40:14] » Our next speaker is Annie G followed by KBT.

[1:40:24] » Good evening everybody. Was a constitution written for flock?

[1:40:30] I want to ask that question to you because you're responsible [sighs] for

[1:40:35] making sure our constitution stays a constitution.

[1:40:40] And if you vote for flock, you are voting for fascism. Thank you.

[1:40:47] Our next speaker is KBT followed by Raymond G.

[1:40:54] [sighs] want you to know that I haven't been

[1:40:57] visiting Powo Alto for any reason in the last year other than to get you guys on

[1:41:01] board this cancellation boat. Just like in Mountain View, we're at the loading

[1:41:05] dock. It's time to sail away from mass surveillance, cover the cameras, cancel

[1:41:08] the contract. ALPRs like Flock serve up a massive catch of data for invisible

[1:41:14] DHS ice searches and to line rich billionaires pockets. City government

[1:41:18] trying to control the surveillance industry is like Ahab trying to catch

[1:41:21] his white whale Moby Dick. It will never work. It is untameable and is at great

[1:41:27] peril to us all. Prevent most crime by taking care of people, not spying on

[1:41:31] them. We need freedom over fascism, community over capitalism, safety over

[1:41:35] surveillance. All aboard the cancellation boat. Cover the cameras.

[1:41:42] » Our next speaker is Raymond G, followed by Renee R.

[1:41:49] Good evening. My name is Raymond Goens. I am the founder for the liberation and

[1:41:53] justice working group for Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America. I

[1:41:58] agree with all the prior speakers and I would like to yield my rest of my time

[1:42:01] in a moment of silence for the rights that will be violated by our citizens by

[1:42:06] these cameras.

[1:42:40] I ask that Palo Alto does not I ask that the council members that does not turn

[1:42:46] Palatoto into demolition man. For those that are old enough to watch that movie,

[1:42:50] you know what I'm talking about. >> Our next speaker is Renee R, followed by

[1:42:55] Young.

[1:43:02] Hi, my name is Renee Rasheed. I'm here supporting safety over surveillance. I'm

[1:43:07] here urging city council to cover the flock cameras while the flock audit is

[1:43:11] conducted and to cancel the flock contract. I commend OIR and council's

[1:43:16] audit investigations into policies and comp compliance. I think you can improve

[1:43:22] policies and do research, add infinitum, but if you don't enforce any

[1:43:27] repercussions for violations, they are of no use.

[1:43:32] Flock business model does not generate enough profit by camera systems alone.

[1:43:36] The value is in the data, our data. It is time to take action against mass

[1:43:42] surveillance systems and I urge you to cancel Flock.

[1:43:46] Our next speaker is Young, followed by Henry E.

[1:43:56] Um, Flock claims that it only tracks license plates, not people, but it was

[1:44:00] reported that Flock was planning to incorporate people's data that is being

[1:44:05] bought and sold on the dark web. This is hacked data. They only backed off of

[1:44:10] this plan when the the news was leaked and that created a public uproar. Flock

[1:44:15] is currently the biggest villain in the ARP ALPR market because they have the

[1:44:21] most cameras out. But don't believe that other vendors would be better behaved.

[1:44:25] They all run on the same predatory business model of tracking people's

[1:44:30] movements and eventually all our activities. Um I urge that uh the

[1:44:35] council look at ig.org. That's the um website by the Institute of uh justice

[1:44:43] uh Institute for Justice. They have a database of um known

[1:44:48] abuses and um errors in um ALR systems. Um it's uh being updated all the time

[1:44:57] and for your due diligence you should know

[1:45:00] » your time is up. >> Our next speaker is Henry E followed by

[1:45:03] Hamilton H.

[1:45:08] » What's covered can be uncovered. The cameras must be not only removed, we

[1:45:15] must have a contest in the public square to see who can do the best job with a

[1:45:20] sledgehammer of smashing them to smitherines.

[1:45:25] We don't need this expensive contract. We know the answer. We don't need this

[1:45:30] audit. The council has to vote tonight to remove the cameras and hold the

[1:45:35] contest and give a prize to the person who does the best job in disintegrating

[1:45:40] the cameras. We need improved public safety. That'll come from neighbors

[1:45:46] keeping an eye on neighbors. This was the premise of sociologist my colleague

[1:45:51] Jane Jacobs. Neighbors keeping an eye. Real window the movie showed that. And

[1:45:56] then from top down, the city of Helsinki in Finland has no pedestrian fatalities

[1:46:02] in the past year. 1.4 million. We've had several. We must change our way of

[1:46:08] organizing public safety. >> Your time is up.

[1:46:11] » Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Hamilton H followed

[1:46:14] by Gabrielle P. >> I've sent you a letter requesting six

[1:46:20] additions to the audit scope. My biggest concern is that up to 200,000 searches

[1:46:25] every month of Palo Alto data, 99% of it from other jurisdictions, and most of

[1:46:31] those searches are not related to the specific crime. For example, CHP does

[1:46:36] about 40,000 searches. Why does a police officer have a right to see everywhere

[1:46:41] you've been in the last 30 days when pulling you over for a speeding ticket?

[1:46:45] Therefore, one of my requests is you review limiting outside agency searches

[1:46:50] as narrowly as practical to felony sex crimes and to find crimes of regional

[1:46:55] theft. With the flock architecture, it's on a

[1:47:00] shared server, which the government can and clearly wants illegal access to. As

[1:47:06] long as that architecture is in place, the chance of federal access covertly

[1:47:11] acting is high. That's why I'm also requesting you evaluate Janentech, which

[1:47:17] Stanford's using, which does not retain the data server, but on their local

[1:47:22] sheriff servers. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Gabrielle P,

[1:47:25] followed by Penn B. >> Hi, mayor and city council. Um, just to

[1:47:31] share a personal an anecdote. Uh I was raised in PaloAlto and um went to

[1:47:36] college in the Bay Area and I spent my childhood

[1:47:40] sleeping in the back of the chambers when my mom came to the city council to

[1:47:45] advocate for our community. Um so I have very strong memories of this location.

[1:47:50] Um so I don't have any facts or figures to

[1:47:54] add to all of the fantastic information that the other speakers have presented.

[1:47:59] Um, I am strongly opposed to ALPRs in our community and instead of voicing an

[1:48:08] yet another um opinion that you know I already have, I would like to share um

[1:48:14] how the book 1984 ends as a an example of what mass surveillance can do. Um, at

[1:48:24] the end of the story, the protagonist has been jailed uh due to his efforts to

[1:48:29] resist >> the author.

[1:48:33] » Go ahead and finish your sentence. >> Thank you.

[1:48:34] » Sentence >> to to uh resist the authoritarian

[1:48:37] government and he did not um confess. He did not give up the names of his

[1:48:44] co-conspirators until they presented him with a cage full of hungry grats, if you

[1:48:51] remember the story. And the way he escaped his please finish your sentence.

[1:48:56] The way he escaped his fate was to ask them to do it to her, his most beloved

[1:49:03] person, and to have them kill her. So, not only did they control his actions,

[1:49:09] but they controlled his mind and his heart. So, we must stop that. Thank you.

[1:49:14] Our next speaker is Pen B.

[1:49:21] » Hello. Hello, I hope you can hear me. Hello from Bloomington. Uh, we are a

[1:49:26] small city with deeply Midwestern small town vibes. Uh, and our mayor stance on

[1:49:30] surveillance tech and her disrespect to our concerns has just sundered her

[1:49:34] reputation amongst friends and voters alike. It's a very sad tale and I do not

[1:49:38] believe this has to be the story of Palto. Your community has come here

[1:49:42] tonight telling you to mans that they fear for their rights, their safety, and

[1:49:45] their representation in these matters. Our council has repeatedly admonished

[1:49:51] our trust in them. Our mayor has immediately repeatedly admonished our

[1:49:55] trust in her has disrespected our concerns in our time. And this does not

[1:49:58] have to be the story for Palto. It is crucial that the council goes above and

[1:50:02] beyond to show that they are listening, that they respect the concerns of their

[1:50:05] people, and that they will be going above and beyond to protect the public

[1:50:09] safety and their interests. It is time to cover the cameras and take them down.

[1:50:13] Thank you. Our next speaker is Aram F.

[1:50:23] » Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary

[1:50:27] safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin. Now let's take a

[1:50:33] look at the fourth amendment. Once we start to diminish the obligation to do

[1:50:38] to create or establish probable cause before we violate the Fourth Amendment,

[1:50:43] the the right to be free against illegal searches and seizures, the it becomes

[1:50:49] that much easier to diminish other constitutional rights, particularly when

[1:50:54] we have a fascist in the White House that doesn't follow the rule of law at

[1:50:59] any time. We have an obligation to do this. And let me tell you, with no

[1:51:03] disrespect to OIR, when you look at all the contracts, it's a cottage industry

[1:51:08] for them to do audits. They're going to come back and say, "We can do this just

[1:51:12] fine with appropriate guidelines." That's what they're going to tell you.

[1:51:16] No audit. Don't waste your money. No cameras. Smash them like Henry E said.

[1:51:20] Let's have a parade in the park smashing those bad boys now.

[1:51:26] » And that concludes public comment on study session item two.

[1:51:30] » All right. Well, thank you, Madam Clerk, for managing all of that and thanks to

[1:51:33] all of you for your comments. Uh we certainly do appreciate your your time

[1:51:37] and and thought sharing. Um I'll bring it back to the deas uh for additional

[1:51:42] comments, questions, any direction to uh staff and the auditors on the scope.

[1:51:52] » Council member Bert, >> thank you. Uh first, um when do you

[1:51:57] anticipate your uh review to be complete and reported to the council?

[1:52:05] » Uh the goal, uh Council Member Bert, is to finish it within 90 days of the

[1:52:10] assignment, assuming all goes well. >> Thank you. And

[1:52:15] we received written comments uh from both a whole bunch of public speakers.

[1:52:21] Uh several were uh very concrete um and

[1:52:27] some overlapping a series from SOS. I don't know if you were able to review

[1:52:31] those. Um others from uh Mr. Hitchings um and uh we don't have the opportunity

[1:52:41] tonight to go through each of those and really square them with the scope of

[1:52:47] work. Uh but I am interested in really the need to do that. I'm not I'm

[1:52:54] not clear in my own mind how those two things uh line up between your detailed

[1:53:00] scope that you already have and some of these other points including the false

[1:53:05] positive rates. Is that part of your current scope?

[1:53:09] Uh certainly it can and will be incorporated. Um, Council Member Bert,

[1:53:14] we have been advantaged by receiving information directly from advocates. Um,

[1:53:20] and uh, the initial questions that we uh, put put to you all were informed by

[1:53:26] that feedback. But we have additional feedback this evening which will also

[1:53:30] digest and potentially reform our scope. And this issue of being able to um

[1:53:36] narrow outside agency searches to higher level crimes or conversely um uh

[1:53:44] prohibit um searches after traffic stops and low-level uh crimes or infractions.

[1:53:52] Is that something that um one do you already know whether that is uh an

[1:53:59] option for us to uh adopt? uh council member Bird I believe that is uh an

[1:54:05] approach that uh other jurisdictions are currently considering.

[1:54:09] So that goes to a question that is not so much of the audit but of the council.

[1:54:14] Um are there interim measures that we would

[1:54:20] like to take before we have received the uh the independent audit and if so which

[1:54:27] ones? Council

[1:54:38] member Lou, thank you and uh thank you both to OIR and to the public for the

[1:54:43] comments. Um I found the written public comment from SOS and also Hamilton

[1:54:50] Hitchings uh like Council Member Bert um uh particularly relevant and I think

[1:54:57] worth including most of that scope. I think uh from reading those comments, it

[1:55:02] seemed like those questions were likely going to be answered anyways, but I

[1:55:06] think having uh more explicit scope covering those questions is useful for

[1:55:11] building community trust. Um, a couple of extensions that I would want to look

[1:55:16] into are uh based on the data we get about actual safety incidents, whether

[1:55:23] uh what the data would look like if we had shortened the retention window to 1

[1:55:28] minute or 1 day. Um, uh to see

[1:55:35] yeah whether we can get 90% of the safety benefit with one minute retention

[1:55:39] for example. uh to the extent that we find a measurable safety benefit. Um I

[1:55:46] similarly would be interested in understanding if we uh did something

[1:55:51] like a Stanford approach and had our own data uh hosted on premises

[1:55:57] and therefore had much more limited or more deliberate sharing and maybe lost

[1:56:03] access to data from other agencies and other

[1:56:06] agencies lost data lost access to data from us. uh whether that would affect

[1:56:12] any of the safety outcomes or case studies that the uh department puts

[1:56:17] forward. Um uh

[1:56:22] yes um uh because I am very interested in Stanford's approach. Uh I think in

[1:56:28] the short term I'd be uh open to waiting the 90 days to get

[1:56:34] some actual data, but I think shortening the retention period uh is and

[1:56:40] restricting the crime list is a what I imagine baseline action that I would

[1:56:46] feel like is basically no regret moving forward. um while we figure out the

[1:56:51] larger picture about Flock versus other LPR providers,

[1:57:03] » Vice Mayor Stone, >> thank you. Um agree, including

[1:57:09] recommendations from SOS, Mr. Hitchings are all great recommendations in this.

[1:57:16] Um, I would like to review specifically I want to make sure I review

[1:57:19] specifically addressing immigration in enforcement. And I know it talks about

[1:57:24] compliance with California law and essentially California law precludes

[1:57:28] that, but just to make sure that we're really doing a deeper dive um to make

[1:57:32] sure that searches performed on behalf of federal immigration authorities um to

[1:57:38] make sure that we're catching potential sorry potential searches that might be

[1:57:43] done on behalf not just directly because I know that again is more of the the

[1:57:48] challenge um to make sure that we're assessing

[1:57:53] whether our safeguards are beyond just mere merely kind of policy based but

[1:58:00] making sure that the system is actually configured to be able to prohibit that

[1:58:04] type of access and and sharing because again I think that's just another theme

[1:58:09] here is there's the policy and then there's the actual technological

[1:58:14] limitations on what we can um ensure another area I'd like to see strength ED

[1:58:22] is kind of the the accuracy and the false positives. Again, I don't I don't

[1:58:27] want to see just technical accuracy rates of the cameras. I really want to

[1:58:31] understand the consequences of when the system is is wrong. So, how many of

[1:58:36] these alerts have resulted in in traffic stops or other police encounters? How

[1:58:42] often was the underlying alert subsequently determined to be incorrect

[1:58:45] or or stale? And what is the real life consequences of that? I feel like every

[1:58:50] single day that I turn on the news or see social media or anything else, there

[1:58:55] are more and more stories of these type of interactions. And you can you can

[1:59:02] read a report and see data on all these false positives and and stops, but the

[1:59:07] impact on an individual experiencing that interaction with law enforcement

[1:59:11] when they've done nothing wrong is in can be incredibly terrifying and and

[1:59:16] lifealtering in in serious moments. And so want to really understand that. Um I

[1:59:23] also want to see the audit examine the surveillance implications of of camera

[1:59:28] placement. I think it kind of goes into that, but I'd really like to be able to

[1:59:32] see a map of where all these are are located and an analysis of what those

[1:59:38] cameras allow us to learn about people's movements. as I talked about, but before

[1:59:43] I I really do think there's a meaningful difference between cameras positioned

[1:59:46] primarily to identify vehicles entering or leaving to be able to capture kind of

[1:59:51] the original intent of of all this and and then those really tracking people's

[1:59:57] movements and being able to kind of reconstruct that. Um especially when

[2:00:01] we're talking about movement to sensitive locations such as schools,

[2:00:05] house of warships, medical facilities, reprotective health providers, political

[2:00:09] demonstrations, etc.

[2:00:14] I do think we need to strengthen the effectiveness section to to just better

[2:00:19] understand outcomes and

[2:00:24] and and again how many how much crime is this actually solving? never know

[2:00:29] preventing but to be able to really understand that that

[2:00:35] and

[2:00:41] yeah, I think those are the kind of the areas that I that I'd like to see this

[2:00:46] having a a deeper dive. I guess a a question. I don't know if this would

[2:00:50] then be for city manager or the or the chief of police as far as just the the

[2:00:55] ease of being able to turn off the cameras. Um is that a simple switch? Is

[2:01:04] that literally covering the the cameras? Um since you don't since it's not an

[2:01:09] action item, council cannot formally direct it this evening, but kind of

[2:01:13] curious what that what that process would look like.

[2:01:17] Thank you, uh, Vice Mayor. Perhaps this is a good time to ask our chief of

[2:01:21] police to comment maybe specifically on that question, but, uh, more broadly on,

[2:01:27] uh, what he's heard at this point. >> Thank you, Chief Rice Schneider.

[2:01:32] » Thank you. Uh, James Rice, center, police chief. Uh, good evening, madame

[2:01:36] mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, and council. U, I don't know truthfully the answer to

[2:01:41] that, uh, as we've never had to do it previously. Um, I think that if we made

[2:01:47] that decision, I would assume that we would want to do it in a proactive way,

[2:01:51] in which case we would probably just take them down ourselves through public

[2:01:55] works, um, rather than wait for the vendor, uh, if for no other reason than

[2:01:59] if the vendor said it would take us a period of time to do it. If the council

[2:02:03] made that decision, I would assume you would want that to take effect

[2:02:06] immediately. So, we could affect that. Uh, they're all installed on existing

[2:02:10] city infrastructure, so I think we could accomplish that if that were the

[2:02:12] mission. Um, if I may, to the city manager's point, I did want to point out

[2:02:18] that uh, as this audit goes forward over the next 90 days, and frankly going back

[2:02:24] 90 days, uh, the department has been taking efforts to sort of attack

[2:02:28] lowhanging fruit where we could make improvements that we already had control

[2:02:32] over. So for example uh theus that we have with the individual agencies with

[2:02:38] whom we share uh we have actually revised thoseus to be more clear in

[2:02:44] terms of the expectations we have over our partners. Uh we have incorporated

[2:02:49] specifically a clause that also has them attesting at the uh executive level that

[2:02:55] their departments have a robust audit process of their own officer search

[2:03:00] behavior. So, uh, in addition to complying with California law, that they

[2:03:04] also have an audit process in place that's comparable to ours. And that was

[2:03:09] directly in response to some feedback we got from council here. Uh, the other

[2:03:13] thing that we are going to take advantage of is a feature that the

[2:03:16] auditor mentioned uh that did not exist until literally 10 days ago, which is

[2:03:21] the ability to limit the types of crimes for which outside agencies can search

[2:03:26] our data. So, uh, we have a meeting set this week to go over the full list of

[2:03:31] crimes that presently exist because, as you may know or may not, when an officer

[2:03:36] conducts a search, there's a drop- down menu with a finite list of crimes that

[2:03:40] they from which they must choose one as the basis for the search as well as a

[2:03:45] specific case number. Uh, up to now, we had no ability to restrict by type of

[2:03:51] case they were searching for. Now, we're going to take advantage of going in and

[2:03:55] identifying what I would imagine as low-level crimes and limiting the types

[2:03:59] of cases that would justify a search of our data. Uh, one last point, while we

[2:04:04] have been thoughtful in identifying regional partners which with whom we

[2:04:08] felt we had a nexus and crimes in PaloAlto may have a nexus and so we only

[2:04:13] partner with Northern California law enforcement, local law enforcement

[2:04:17] agencies. uh we are going to take a fresh look at that list and see if it's

[2:04:21] it if it's at all expansive or too expansive for our needs. One last point

[2:04:26] I wanted to make was on the reference to the Northern California Regional

[2:04:30] Intelligence Center or Nick Rick. It's a fair observation to say that the city of

[2:04:34] PaloAlto is a member in the sense that we receive data from Nick Rick, that is

[2:04:39] intelligence bulletins from from Nick Rick, but we've never had an officer as

[2:04:44] a task force agent at Nick Rick and we've never had Nick Rick as anou

[2:04:49] agency. Other local law enforcement agencies in California had had

[2:04:55] partnerships with Nick Rick, but we did not.

[2:04:59] Can >> I ask one followup question? I know I'm

[2:05:01] over o over over time. Uh glad to hear changes in in policy to require more

[2:05:07] more serious crimes for the for the search. But is that again more a policy

[2:05:12] safeguard or is there is there um actual kind of technical controls that would

[2:05:20] prohibit an officer in another in another agency being able to access if

[2:05:25] it is not a serious crime. So, as would as would be the case really

[2:05:31] with any police database, to be quite honest with you, if if you have a

[2:05:35] dishonest officer who's going to falsify a report number and deliberately

[2:05:41] indicate a different call, a different type of crime, um, then yes, uh, if

[2:05:46] someone could in theory do that, um, we would have, as was pointed out, a much

[2:05:51] easier way to identify those instances internally because we have access to the

[2:05:56] the detail. Um but uh the the reality of it is with externals uh to a certain

[2:06:02] extent there is there is a professional you know assumption that they're both

[2:06:06] complying with policy but also complying with California law that would pro

[2:06:10] prohibit the behavior. Well then sorry one more followup to to that. Are there

[2:06:14] any repercussions that you're aware of at a state law level that would prohibit

[2:06:20] an officer from making a a false request in another agency to be able to access

[2:06:25] that data? So at the very least it would be grounds for descertification under

[2:06:30] SB2 that was enacted a couple of years ago that allows for uh California peace

[2:06:36] officer standards and training which is a state regulatory agency over that

[2:06:40] provides licensing or certification that's required to be a police officer.

[2:06:44] Um that would be a basis for descertification which would mean they

[2:06:48] would no longer be able to be a police officer in the state of California.

[2:06:51] Okay. Thank you.

[2:06:57] Can't remember which of you rang in first. Uh, Council Member Lowing, I

[2:07:01] believe.

[2:07:06] Okay. Thanks. Um, I'm always interested in getting more data to make a decision

[2:07:10] uh particularly on a on a data issue, but um I I do have concerns that it

[2:07:16] sound like you weren't going to really be able to go too far on looking at

[2:07:18] alternative vendors. Is that correct? Or you are going to be able to

[2:07:24] we can certainly bring forward some of the alternative vendors that are

[2:07:27] available. >> Okay. I didn't understand that before.

[2:07:29] That's why I wanted to throw that up. Um because my my concern is we, you know,

[2:07:34] get into this for 90 days, we learn a lot of stuff. But that same CEO is

[2:07:38] sitting there at that company. Uh and there's all kinds of uh handprints,

[2:07:43] footprints, fingerprints all over the place that the guy is just not

[2:07:46] trustworthy. So, I mean, that's fact. There was some of this discussion

[2:07:49] tonight. I read articles about that. So, um, that's part of the process here is

[2:07:54] under under what circumstances, if any, could we ever actually trust this guy

[2:07:58] while he's still there. So, um, that's a big barrier for me. Um, a big barrier.

[2:08:05] Uh, I just want to also just kind of point out that as you're doing your

[2:08:09] comparisons, I mean, you you know this stuff better than we do, but I know that

[2:08:12] all cities are not created equal. Um, Pasadena is not exactly the same as Palo

[2:08:18] Alto. Um and Pasadena and Palo Alto are way different than Stanford. So the

[2:08:22] decision for Stanford to drop it for XYZ reasons, it's just not relevant to the

[2:08:26] way that our department's going to use it. We want a broader, you know, across

[2:08:30] the bridge access. Uh I read that they just wanted like 60 seconds after

[2:08:35] somebody left the jurisdiction of Stanford campus, they wanted the the

[2:08:39] data to go away. So that's just not the use case that we're we're using. We're

[2:08:43] we're actually catching people that stole cars three days ago uh now

[2:08:47] stealing one in Walnut Creek and then we get reported on that. So that's the kind

[2:08:51] of I mean I'm paraphrasing here chief so you can improve that statement but

[2:08:55] that's just a different kind of use case. So we just have to be careful of

[2:08:59] which jurisdictions we're comparing to is is sort of my only point on that. Um

[2:09:05] so the question becomes do we invest in this literally money and 90 days uh and

[2:09:11] get back to saying that well we might want something else but it's not flock

[2:09:15] meaning should we in the interim whoever brought that up was it council member

[2:09:19] Burke should in the interim we be doing something else like jumping on new

[2:09:22] vendors right away or do we need this uh anyway to know what kind of vendors to

[2:09:26] go Go.

[2:09:36] » That's all. >> Council member Li cuts.

[2:09:45] » Thank you, Mayor.

[2:09:48] I'm going to begin by reiterating that I'm not concerned with Paloto Police

[2:09:52] Department and I appreciate our independent auditors. I am concerned

[2:09:55] that Flock, whose leaders are aligned with the policies of the Trump

[2:09:58] administration, which now has a true 21st century weapon in their

[2:10:03] authoritarian authoritarianism arsenal, are on the rise, and I feel like the

[2:10:09] dictators of the 20th century would have given anything for this kind of

[2:10:13] surveillance technology. According to a KQED piece that ran just

[2:10:18] last week, here are a few examples of what is happening. Police in Texas

[2:10:21] hunted a woman who traveled out of state for an abortion. ICE agents asked local

[2:10:25] police in Illinois to track undocumented families. A police officer in Wisconsin

[2:10:30] used Flock to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her partner. And right here in

[2:10:34] Oakland, a 62-year-old woman who was driving to her job at a nursing home was

[2:10:38] pulled over by police, guns drawn. Flock had connected her plates to a serious

[2:10:42] crime. She didn't know that her plates had been stolen and replaced with the

[2:10:46] ones associated with the crime. These scenarios have already happened. And we

[2:10:51] know that black or brown drivers are disproportionately likely to have an

[2:10:54] adverse outcome when pulled over by law enforcement. Our very own Riley Cook,

[2:10:59] reporter for the PaloAlto Weekly, who is in the back of the room, did a records

[2:11:03] request for these search audits that Flock and the Police Department maintain

[2:11:06] on our data. The records revealed that police departments from all over the

[2:11:10] country were searching Palo Alto's flock data without the permission of the city

[2:11:15] or the Palo Alto Police Department. To quote Miss Cook, they went above and

[2:11:19] beyond existing California law about not sharing with any outofstate or federal

[2:11:23] agencies. And what my reporting shows is that Flock was still able to bypass

[2:11:27] those without telling anybody. They didn't tell the police department. They

[2:11:31] didn't tell city officials. They just quietly rolled out this nationwide data

[2:11:34] sharing effort which completely went past Cal local and California

[2:11:38] regulations. I think city officials, she said, were really confident at first

[2:11:43] that they had enacted these protections, that they were protecting residents and

[2:11:47] heeding those surveillance concerns, and yet at the end of the day, the company

[2:11:51] still did what they wanted to do." End quote. So, for me, this is primarily not

[2:11:55] an audit question, even though audit is the subject of our study session. For

[2:11:59] me, it is a trust and governance question. Flock changed the capabilities

[2:12:04] of a surveillance system that PaloAlto entrusted to it and the city did not

[2:12:09] know it was happening.Uus are being violated. Misuses of data have

[2:12:14] happened elsewhere. As they say, if you can't protect it, don't collect it. I do

[2:12:19] not think it's smart to continue operating that system while we

[2:12:23] simultaneously investigate whether we can even trust it. The wolf is in the

[2:12:28] hen house and we're wondering if we need to build a better gate. Therefore, it is

[2:12:34] my hope that we seven will have the courage to join the growing list of

[2:12:38] municipalities around the nation and state that are refusing to let this

[2:12:42] authoritarian intrusion into our streets and into our private lives. A list that,

[2:12:47] as we've heard, includes Mountain View, Santa Cruz, Elserto, Stanford, Santa

[2:12:51] Clara County, and our sibling city, Bloomington, Indiana, among so many

[2:12:55] others. My fear is that a three-month audit is

[2:12:59] three more months of surveillance with consequences we can guess at but can't

[2:13:05] fully appreciate the effect of. I would rather direct staff to agendaize the

[2:13:10] termination of the flock contract and in the interim to council member Bert's

[2:13:14] point about things that might be done in the interim to take them down or cover

[2:13:19] the flock cameras as we await the longer term decision.

[2:13:27] Council member Rectal. >> Yeah,

[2:13:31] as you can guess, we don't have a lot of faith in flock. They've had a lot of

[2:13:35] missteps and we don't know what they're doing behind the closed doors and that

[2:13:39] that really bothers us. And so comparing vendors, I think, is a high priority for

[2:13:44] us. But just not the vendors, but also the architecture. If you have uh if

[2:13:49] you're just switching to another vendor that controls the data, then you're just

[2:13:52] maybe in the same boat as opposed to if you control the server and you control

[2:13:56] the data, that seems to be a much more robust, but that also adds wrinkles to

[2:14:01] it because now you have to have it. And so I think we want want you to work with

[2:14:06] it and understand is this architecture look good on paper

[2:14:10] but it's not implementable at the city of Palo Alto.

[2:14:13] And the second thing is that we share our data with our neighboring cities and

[2:14:17] that's very valuable because they catch crimes that were committed pal ultimate

[2:14:20] they help each other right now they all do that through flock through that

[2:14:24] interface if we go our own route and go with Campbell go with Stanford uh we

[2:14:30] won't have that same data sharing and can we recreate that or are we just now

[2:14:34] on an island by ourselves and that's a really fundamental trade-off so I would

[2:14:38] want you to work with the police department understand what are their

[2:14:42] uses for their sharing how do we catch criminals for other cities and how do

[2:14:46] other cities catch criminals for us and how can we manage it and uh build it on

[2:14:52] the our IT system. So thank you

[2:15:00] » council member Leing thanks. So I'm wondering if we can

[2:15:04] somehow redirect this [clears throat] audit. It's not an action item for

[2:15:08] tonight. It's only a study session, but if there's some process that's

[2:15:11] appropriate to redirect the audit to emphasize uh new vendors uh as the first

[2:15:16] step and give a report out on that before you press on unless there's

[2:15:20] necessary stuff you need to do. I'm not going to tell you how to do your job.

[2:15:24] I'm just saying if we can get an early read on the alternatives.

[2:15:29] » Yeah. And maybe I'll just pick up here because I haven't chimed in because I

[2:15:32] was going kind of the same direction. Um, from what I'm hearing, it seems to

[2:15:38] be the sense of the council that we are unlikely to retain flock. We have not

[2:15:42] made that decision. It's not agendaized for that decision, but that's clearly

[2:15:46] where it seems to be leaning. Um, so the question is likely to be whether

[2:15:53] we want to retain any other ALPR and that, you know, aspects of that will

[2:16:00] factor into whether or not we do that. So I guess I mentioned that because I

[2:16:05] think the way this audit could be the most useful for us is to focus on an

[2:16:10] helping us answer that question. Um the reason um and so be before I go on

[2:16:19] and say more about my thought process, I do want to ask a question. I think it's

[2:16:23] to the chief. um if we were to agendaize um uh an a an

[2:16:31] action item on whether or not to cancel the flock contract within the next 90

[2:16:36] days and if there were if that happened and if we were then to decide we were

[2:16:41] comfortable enough with another ALPR reader I don't know whether we will be

[2:16:46] [snorts] is there a problem with having a break there that makes it harder to

[2:16:50] start up again or is that just irrelevant we just would start over in

[2:16:54] any that if I understand your your question

[2:16:58] correctly, Merittz, if we were to take down the flock cameras today and have

[2:17:02] another vendor up a month from now, is there a problem with that? I think the

[2:17:07] answer is that there wouldn't necessarily be a problem other than if

[2:17:13] we if we see the technology is a valuable crime fighting tool as well as

[2:17:18] a deterrent then the very public uh proclamation that the cameras are down

[2:17:25] effective immediately without with being coupled with uh new cameras are being

[2:17:30] placed immediately uh then there's a gap in that regard.

[2:17:34] » Okay. But that's something we could discuss uh if it were agendaized. But um

[2:17:39] yeah, in more detail. So, okay. Thank you. Yeah, I I guess the reason I'm uh

[2:17:45] still remain curious about other vendors despite grave concerns about the the the

[2:17:51] cameras generally um is just personal experience. We all can't help bring to

[2:17:57] these decisions and thoughts uh you know, our own uh lived experience. And

[2:18:02] on my block there were two homes where children live uh that were broken into.

[2:18:08] And it was a a ser a group that serily did this in neighborhoods around Palo

[2:18:12] Alto but in other cities. And in one of those homes the child was there home

[2:18:18] alone facing intruders. um they were ultimately uh apprehended through use of

[2:18:26] ALPR and so who knows how many other children were spared that traumatic

[2:18:32] experience and potentially you know worse than just uh trauma. So but maybe

[2:18:39] we could do it other ways. Maybe we could be just as safe or maybe we could

[2:18:43] curtail uh misuse possibilities enough we're comfortable with this. I I don't

[2:18:47] know. I would like to learn more but um that I think is is is so it's not about

[2:18:53] the tool so much as um instances like that. Um

[2:18:59] so I I guess um it would be interesting. We could do

[2:19:05] almost a a straw poll to see if there are interest in agendaizing but I think

[2:19:10] the city manager has something to say. >> Yes, mayor. Thank you. Uh I would be

[2:19:14] remiss if not pointing out to the council that the scenario that chief uh

[2:19:19] suggested was that we take down the cameras now and we have a new vendor in

[2:19:24] a month. I think that latter is unlikely uh and uh to

[2:19:30] perhaps even an order of magnitude in terms of uh I would expect based on your

[2:19:35] discussion tonight that the conclusions of OIR's work will be very important for

[2:19:41] defining the product we seek. Uh and then there is the procurement process

[2:19:47] that would need to follow. So, you know, we routinely quote 6 months as the time

[2:19:52] frame with which it takes to complete a public procurement process and uh so we

[2:19:58] would certainly want to prioritize this. Uh but that should at least be the the

[2:20:03] starting point for setting expectations on the time it would take to identify a

[2:20:09] successor provider.

[2:20:13] Well, perhaps though uh if there's interest in agendaizing this item, we

[2:20:18] could at that point decide if uh we wanted to have it be effective upon

[2:20:22] procurement of a a later one or immediately or or whatever. Um

[2:20:28] but thank you for spelling out that timeline. Um,

[2:20:33] I would actually just be interested uh for colleagues to say how many would be

[2:20:37] interested in agendaizing just the the consideration of the the the FL contract

[2:20:42] itself. >> So I guess um I'll let

[2:20:46] » you kind of figured out at the end >> oh uh just agendaizing uh whether or not

[2:20:50] we would uh agenda the cancellation of the flock contract itself. I think

[2:20:56] that's where you were going. So I think I heard from you. Yes.

[2:21:01] Okay, I'm hearing it from that NDS. Then some other contemplations.

[2:21:09] » I'm sorry. >> No, I'm saying agendaizing in the

[2:21:13] future. >> Are you you

[2:21:15] » sorry? At the at the conclusion of the audit?

[2:21:20] » No, between now and then if there were time. I mean, our agendas are packed.

[2:21:25] » Yeah. And if we're able to agendaize it between then.

[2:21:29] » Okay. All right. All right. So, Council Member Bird.

[2:21:32] » Yeah. Um, so I am in favor of agendaizing an action item. Uh, I I uh

[2:21:40] really would caution the mayor on characterizing what the seven of us had

[2:21:46] indicated. I I did not hear the same consensus that you did. Um and under the

[2:21:53] action item, I would be interested in um other potential measures we may take

[2:22:02] while we await uh the audit and a final decision. Those might include uh further

[2:22:09] restrictions on on the um uh offense uh specific filters and other restrictions.

[2:22:17] It might include a disabling until we um uh take action on the autumn audit. Um

[2:22:26] or it might be a a full decision. Um, when we get that action item, I would

[2:22:34] like to at that time have um at least some preliminary information on

[2:22:41] alternatives so that we aren't starting that clock 90 days from now, but we

[2:22:48] would uh potentially start it much sooner. So, I would support an action

[2:22:53] item uh uh but I I would not support uh a narrow uh pre determination of what

[2:23:02] that might be. Yeah. No, that's fair. I did overstate it in terms of the

[2:23:07] labeling of it. Um but I think we have the same in intent in terms of what we

[2:23:12] would want to discuss. Um okay. Um I think we've given a fair amount of

[2:23:19] direction. City manager, do you need more?

[2:23:22] » Well, I think the question is really our ability to meet the

[2:23:29] information expectations that were set there and in particular both with OIR as

[2:23:35] well as uh the parallel staff work. Uh I think if if you're prepared to speak to

[2:23:42] that tonight, that would be fine. Otherwise, I think we have some work to

[2:23:45] do with OAR to identify when we would be able to bring that information back.

[2:23:54] » I'm just looking at OR to see if they're able to speak to that tonight. And if

[2:23:58] not we can uh

[2:24:02] yeah tenatively I think there's a way in which we could construct the audit where

[2:24:07] some of the issues that you want addressed sooner rather than later could

[2:24:12] be addressed. So if the question is for example,

[2:24:17] are there other other vendors there and what are the pros and cons of trying to

[2:24:21] engage with other vendors? That's a fairly discreet question that could be

[2:24:26] answered in less than 90 days. Um if it was, what other steps might the

[2:24:33] department consider to restrict access use um before an ultimate decision about

[2:24:41] whether or not to eliminate ALPRs entirely was made one that also could be

[2:24:48] done probably in more like 45 days instead of 90 days. So, yes, if uh

[2:24:54] council's interest is in carving out some discrete questions that you think

[2:24:59] are priorities um and important uh to evaluate

[2:25:06] how you respond sooner rather than later, we can do that.

[2:25:11] » Okay. Thank you. I think perhaps we can take this offline after staff

[2:25:15] contemplates it and in the agenda setting process, but with I believe what

[2:25:19] we're hearing is an interest in having something before 90 days that would talk

[2:25:23] about um the continuation you about the status of the flock contract and

[2:25:31] alternatives for action before 90 days and uh any information that you can pull

[2:25:38] together by then about alternate vendors.

[2:25:42] Does that capture that's a lot that's a lot and and we have a very busy agenda

[2:25:46] but I think that's >> we have a very busy police department as

[2:25:49] well. So I think that uh we will take that feedback and see what we can come

[2:25:54] up with. >> Okay. I appreciate that. Chief, did you

[2:25:58] anything you need to comment on that? >> No, I think I understand. And I I I

[2:26:02] would just add that uh along with the other work we've been doing in parallel

[2:26:06] as the audit's been sort of in design uh I have been regularly meeting with my

[2:26:10] colleagues in the region to discuss what they're doing and I have obviously been

[2:26:15] tracking what's going on elsewhere in the state. Um I can offer at present

[2:26:20] that uh with the exception of Stanford who uh and the uh the historical from a

[2:26:25] few months ago example of Mountain View um in the county there's no one else

[2:26:30] that's in the process of moving away from flock or actively pursuing another

[2:26:36] uh another option. Um so we don't have any obvious partners other than perhaps

[2:26:43] Mountain View. uh if we were interested in collaborating with someone in the

[2:26:48] county. >> Okay. All right. Thank you, Council

[2:26:51] Member Lithcot. HS. >> Thank you. Just wanted to clarify one

[2:26:53] additional thing as we were putting together the list of requests for what

[2:26:57] we'd like to see brought back with regard to this question of a

[2:27:02] discontinuation. Um as we analyze whether that is

[2:27:06] attractive to us, it would be helpful to know there's turning it off. As we've

[2:27:10] heard, there's also covering it. These are things we hear out in the news that

[2:27:14] other cities have done and it would be helpful to understand what does that

[2:27:18] cost, how quick is it, you know, do we have the materials to cover them or is

[2:27:23] that a procurement process and that's going to take months. Um so the details

[2:27:27] on that which will help us understand how quickly that could be uh affected

[2:27:32] would be helpful. Thank [snorts] you.

[2:27:37] » Thank you. Uh I see no further lights. So I think we've talked this over uh

[2:27:43] sufficiently tonight. Uh want to thank uh the uh OIR. Thanks the chief and

[2:27:49] staff and thanks to the public for uh helping us uh noodle through this one.

[2:27:54] Okay. So with that we will move on to our consent calendar.

[2:28:02] So Madame Clerk, do we have any public comment on the consent calendar?

[2:28:07] And I'll ask you if you would kindly keep your voices down as you so we can

[2:28:11] move on. [laughter]

[2:28:15] » I know that's all right. I think she's still she's still sorting. So

[2:28:24] um

[2:28:31] » yes, it looks like we have uh two requests to speak on consent calendar

[2:28:35] items. Okay, give it just a minute. All right. Thank you. You have been a lovely

[2:28:40] and orderly uh audience, but we're going to need you to uh

[2:28:46] what are you trying to get? >> Yeah, that's true.

[2:28:54] I can use the G.

[2:29:04] Turn up my Are you turning up my volume? [laughter]

[2:29:13] How are we doing? Okay. All right. Thank you all for coming tonight. We

[2:29:20] need to move on. So, I'm just going to ask for a little silence in the

[2:29:23] chambers. Thank you. We want to hear our our next public commenters. All right,

[2:29:27] madame clerk. Do we have any public com you have we have two? I think you said

[2:29:32] » yes, we have two requests to speak. Our first speaker is city council s.

[2:29:39] » Thank you.

[2:29:47] City Council S, you should be able to unmute yourself and speak.

[2:29:58] Moving to our new next speaker, Aram F.

[2:30:07] Okay. I want to speak on item number I want to

[2:30:10] speak on item number eight again. I'm not comfortable with Ed Shicata.

[2:30:17] Um, and I'm not going to call him the drunken sailor tonight like I did last

[2:30:20] time on this item. That was disrespectful. Um, but listen, why how

[2:30:27] can we why can't the finance committee audit Chicago? Why does are we raising

[2:30:33] the limit on contracts that he can approve when we've had all of these

[2:30:39] consulting fees and he acted like the b the buck doesn't stop with him. Like, I

[2:30:43] don't know how that happened. Well, you damn well should have. You should have

[2:30:46] been paying attention to those millions of dollars worth of of consulting fees.

[2:30:50] Now you all want to charge uh the RV folks $15 a month to re reup each month

[2:30:58] when Chicago's throwing away tons and tons of money on useless consulting

[2:31:03] fees. You are the elected people in the city

[2:31:07] of PaloAlto that are responsible for keeping an eye on our budget. Not

[2:31:11] Educata. He's not an elected official. Okay. The man has way too much power. He

[2:31:16] wasn't listening tonight up to the flock folks. He was like saying, "Oh, you

[2:31:20] know, we're gonna we're gonna have to check. He wants flock." Okay? He wasn't

[2:31:24] paying attention to you or the the people of PaloAlto.

[2:31:29] How can you unilaterally give this man the trust to continue to approve

[2:31:35] millions and millions and millions of dollars and up the cap on that? It's

[2:31:39] irresponsible. Let your at least let your finance

[2:31:43] committee let you know those folks audit Educata. We got to reign that man in. I

[2:31:50] mean, come on. Please think about it at this point. We don't have an endless

[2:31:56] amount of money. We're more than a half a billion dollars in the hold of PERS.

[2:32:00] Okay? We don't have a balanced budget. That's a joke. You just put aside the,

[2:32:05] you know, the the PERS debt. That's all I've got to say tonight. But reign

[2:32:09] Chicago in, okay? Don't Don't let him just make the decisions for you. You're

[2:32:14] the elected officials. We elected you to oversee our budget. It's critical,

[2:32:19] folks. Thank you.

[2:32:24] » Our next speaker is Lynn C.

[2:32:37] Lind C, you should be able to unmute yourself and speak.

[2:32:45] » That concludes public comment on consent calendar items 3 through 4 and 6 through

[2:32:50] 8 as agenda item five was removed off of the agenda.

[2:32:55] » All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um colleagues, do you have any no votes or

[2:32:59] requests to pull or recusals? And if not, may I have a motion to approve?

[2:33:05] » So moved. >> Second.

[2:33:07] » Right. Thanks very much. I don't see any other lights on. So madam clerk, please

[2:33:11] call the role.

[2:33:15] » Just confirming that was council member Lou and council member Rectal.

[2:33:18] » Yes. Thank you. >> Council member Liths.

[2:33:24] » Yes. >> Council member Rectal.

[2:33:25] » Yes. Council member Lowing, >> yes.

[2:33:27] » Council member Bert, >> yes.

[2:33:29] » Mayor Vinker, >> yes. Council member Lou,

[2:33:31] » yes. >> Vice Stone,

[2:33:32] » yes. >> Motion carries unanimously.

[2:33:34] » All right. Thank you very much. And with that, we will move on to city manager

[2:33:38] comments. >> Thank you, mayor, members of the

[2:33:40] council. Uh, let me ask city clerk for some assistance with a few slides.

[2:33:51] Thank you. Next slide, please.

[2:33:59] Just a few items we wanted to highlight for community awareness. Uh first off

[2:34:04] that our police uh public safety building is uh operational. In

[2:34:09] particular at this uh date that uh should members of the public need public

[2:34:14] counter support including obtaining uh police records uh or reports uh that uh

[2:34:20] they can now visit the public safety building at Forest uh Avenue location.

[2:34:26] In addition, uh as of uh this week, uh the police patrol division where our uh

[2:34:34] patrol officers will be rolling out of on a daily basis uh will also be from

[2:34:39] that building and uh so community members will see additional police

[2:34:43] activity in the Cal area. So nothing to be alarmed about. Uh this is their new

[2:34:47] home and I'm sure they will be welcomed. Uh do want to note that on September 2nd

[2:34:53] uh we will have uh the department's of police and fire honor guards uh raising

[2:34:59] a ceremonial flag just to mark uh the fully operational uh date of uh the uh

[2:35:05] building uh and community members are invited. Also note that our dispatch uh

[2:35:10] center uh transition and cut over uh is ongoing and will occur uh late

[2:35:17] September. Next slide please. Also

[2:35:23] want to flag for community awareness. Uh we've spoken a lot here of the city's

[2:35:28] partnership with the Jed Foundation uh a nationally recognized uh organization on

[2:35:33] suicide prevention in particular related to the youth and uh that the Jed have uh

[2:35:39] put out a uh initial findings uh report that is now posted on the city's website

[2:35:44] at pelala.gov/jed.

[2:35:48] Uh in addition the uh uh report itself and next steps will be discussed with

[2:35:53] the city's school liaison committee on September 1st. That is a new date. We

[2:35:57] had previously been carrying uh a date the week before uh for that meeting. Uh

[2:36:03] so do want to note for anyone tracking that uh topic that September 1st is the

[2:36:07] date for the city school leaison committee meeting. Next slide please.

[2:36:13] Also uh coming up uh really in advance of your next uh uh council meeting is

[2:36:20] the uh C training that's occurring starting on September 1st. This is our

[2:36:26] annual plug for community members to get involved with uh uh looking out for

[2:36:33] neighbors and being involved with our city emergency preparedness activities

[2:36:38] through community emergency response team training. Uh you are able to sign

[2:36:43] up uh for this training at our website pelaltto.gov.

[2:36:49] Uh it's noted here a three-week training and a variety of uh skills and uh uh

[2:36:57] connections uh to participate in uh really safeguarding and responding in

[2:37:03] the event of a major emergency. And also note that certain members who have pre

[2:37:08] previously been trained uh are invited to participate in this as well. Next

[2:37:13] slide, please. Then also a plug for other ways to get

[2:37:18] involved with the city. In this case, it's to serve on one of our boards,

[2:37:22] commissions, and committees that uh we have a recruitment ongoing with

[2:37:27] application deadline of September 2nd open on our human relations commission,

[2:37:32] parks and recreation commission, planning and transportation commission,

[2:37:35] public art commission, and the storm water oversight management committee.

[2:37:40] Again, uh information on this available at the city's website,

[2:37:44] palto.gov/bccrecruits.

[2:37:48] I'm sure our city clerk also would love to uh respond to any questions about

[2:37:53] this recruitment. Next slide, please.

[2:37:57] Then also upcoming uh we do have a city council meeting on September 9th, but

[2:38:03] given that this is just the following day on Thursday, September 10th, there

[2:38:08] will be a ribbon cutting along with uh tours of the horizontal levy project. Uh

[2:38:14] the uh uh community is more than welcome to participate in this. This is

[2:38:20] Thursday, September 10th at 11:00 a.m. location at the end of Embaradero Road,

[2:38:25] 2470 Embaradero Road, uh including both the ribbon cutting and community uh

[2:38:31] walk. And next slide, please. [clears throat]

[2:38:37] Then finally, want to review uh your upcoming agendas. Your next meeting is

[2:38:41] on September 9th. uh recognizing uh the Labor Day uh holiday on September 7th.

[2:38:48] Again, this is Wednesday, September 9th. It is an early start because you have

[2:38:52] scheduled a two-hour performance evaluations close session. Uh then we

[2:38:57] have uh a number of action items on that agenda. 470 Olive League of California

[2:39:02] Cities delegate de designation and an anticipated colleagues memo would note

[2:39:08] that we had previously been showing the study session on consultant management

[2:39:12] on that date but recognizing that's a heavy agenda we've moved that to October

[2:39:17] 5th. Uh also note that the following agendas on September 14th, you've got

[2:39:23] the uh proposed parking structure at 375 Hamilton Avenue, water revenue bonds, uh

[2:39:30] which will be your light reading for that agenda as it is the official

[2:39:34] statement for the issuance of uh financing and then a stream corridor uh

[2:39:40] protection ordinance uh changes. September 28th, a pre-screening for

[2:39:45] proposed development at 706 Kalper uh Street and then uh the grade separation

[2:39:52] direction related to alternatives that will advance to the next phase of design

[2:39:57] work. And then noted here upcoming uh agenda items on October 5th and beyond.

[2:40:03] I would flag that you have uh the work plans for the architectural review

[2:40:08] board, historic resources board, planning transportation commission, and

[2:40:12] utility advisory commission also scheduled in this October window. With

[2:40:17] that, mayor, back to you. >> All right. And with that, uh we will

[2:40:22] » Can I add one thing? Uh, one thing that wasn't mentioned was the grade

[2:40:27] separation outreach meetings tomorrow night and Wednesday night uh at Mitchell

[2:40:33] Park Community Center 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. both nights.

[2:40:37] » Thank you. Previously covered uh so appreciate the reminder.

[2:40:43] » All right. Well, thank you. And with that, we will uh recess uh into our

[2:40:47] break and be back in 15 minutes.

[3:05:35] the meeting back to order. So, we need some order.

[3:05:41] Okay. All right. So, we're going to move on to

[3:05:44] action item nine, which relates to the Bueno Vista Mobile Home Park

[3:05:49] redevelopment. Uh, so I'll turn it to staff. And is

[3:05:53] that you, Deputy City Manager Cotton Gains?

[3:05:56] » Yes. Thank you, madame mayor and members of

[3:05:59] the city council. Chantel Cotton Gains, deputy city manager. I have a very brief

[3:06:03] presentation this evening about the item before you, as well as having Mr. uh

[3:06:08] Albert Yang on the line working on this item with me and members of the housing

[3:06:13] authority present this evening as well as someone from Santa Clair County

[3:06:17] Office of Supportive Housing to help with questions. So, very briefly going

[3:06:21] over this. Uh, nine years ago, the city and the county, oh, next slide. Thanks.

[3:06:28] Uh, the city and the county um joined with the housing authority to preserve

[3:06:32] affordable housing at Buenav Vista Mobile Home Park and the parties put

[3:06:37] together a triparty regulatory agreement which established the baseline of what

[3:06:41] the expectations are for the redevelopment that was happening there

[3:06:45] at that time. So on the slide that's in front of you, we summarized just the

[3:06:49] existing regulatory agreement, which is the one that was entered into in 2017,

[3:06:54] as well as the two new regulatory agreements that are before you this

[3:06:58] evening for adoption. So for the three key terms, as this um item has been

[3:07:04] discussed before, the affordability requirements have remained the same

[3:07:08] between this proposed regulatory agreement for parcels A and B compared

[3:07:13] to the existing regulatory agreement. The expiration date, the original amount

[3:07:18] was that it would expire in 75 years. And because the redevelopment has taken

[3:07:22] some time, as you recall, in 2024, there was a proposal before this council for a

[3:07:28] project and that was put on pause. And so, right now, the housing authority is

[3:07:32] moving forward with the utilities upgrade project. And that is the reason

[3:07:35] we're bringing the regulatory agreements to you this evening. We wanted to

[3:07:40] maintain that same 75- year time period from the time the work was done. And so

[3:07:44] the all parties have agreed that uh the 75 years would be the end of 2020 21101

[3:07:51] which is really far away. And lastly, the total number of units. The original

[3:07:55] regulatory agreement required that we maintain a minimum of 100 residential

[3:07:59] units or mobile home spaces at the park. We brought an item to council in June of

[3:08:04] this year to do an official parcel split to approve that map. And so that is what

[3:08:09] created parcels A and parcel B. and the regulatory agreements that are before

[3:08:14] you today in total equal that 100 unit minimum. So for parcel B which is where

[3:08:20] the mobile homes are the minimum is 46 mobile home spaces and the housing

[3:08:26] authority believes they can probably go a little above that but they're at

[3:08:29] minimum doing 46. And then for the parcel A which would be the future

[3:08:34] depart apartment development it is uh maintaining a minimum of 54 residential

[3:08:40] units and that'll be delayed until implementation until 2033.

[3:08:45] All of the other terms of the agreements are pretty much the same from the

[3:08:50] existing triparty agreement and the two new regulatory agreements. Next slide.

[3:08:56] And so the recommendation to the city council this evening is authorizing the

[3:09:01] city manager to execute and make non-s substantive changes such as editing the

[3:09:05] recital or the APN's and legal descriptions to the new and amended

[3:09:10] regulatory agreements and related documents to facilitate the improvements

[3:09:14] of the Buav Vista mobile home park at 3980 El Camino. And just of note, if you

[3:09:19] looked at the attachments with the two new regulatory agreements, you will

[3:09:23] notice exhibit A with the description of the legal bounds of the two sites that

[3:09:27] it was similar in both regulatory agreements. And that's because we don't

[3:09:31] have the final language yet uh for those official legal descriptions of the

[3:09:35] parcels. And so that's one of the things that you'd be authorizing the city

[3:09:39] manager to update once we get that official legal language. But most

[3:09:43] importantly, we're really excited that the three parties work together to bring

[3:09:46] these recommended agreements to you this evening. And we are ready to answer

[3:09:50] questions and hopeful that this will be approved so we can continue to move

[3:09:53] forward with the housing authorities work and utilizing a large state grant

[3:09:58] that they have for the utilities upgrade work at the park. Thank you.

[3:10:03] » Thank you, Deputy City Manager. Um, actually, I think I'll just go to public

[3:10:10] comment on this matter. Madame clerk, do we have uh people requesting to speak?

[3:10:22] We have three requests to speak on action item nine. Okay,

[3:10:28] our first speaker is Winter D.

[3:10:41] Hi. Um, so I read over very carefully both of the uh

[3:10:47] uh regulatory agreements. Um,

[3:10:53] I didn't see a lot of problem with them, but there was one thing that wasn't in

[3:10:57] there. Now, I sent it to council. I don't know if all of you saw my short,

[3:11:02] blessedly short email. Um the it had been previously by I believe uh Vice

[3:11:10] Mayor uh Stone uh suggested that there be an internal waiting list for

[3:11:16] residents at Buenov Vista Mobile Home Park to be able to move into uh for

[3:11:23] instance a larger unit if it were to be made available rather than going

[3:11:27] immediately outside of the park looking for a completely new applicant from

[3:11:33] somewhere else in the county or wherever. And I think it would since

[3:11:37] this is going to be kind of set in stone once you approve this, it'll be the

[3:11:42] entire agreement. I want you to really think about that because uh and of

[3:11:47] course we're talking about if they would be qualified the

[3:11:51] within uh Buenov Vista, but I want you to seriously consider it. I think that

[3:11:57] kind of internal preference is really important. I don't know what happened to

[3:12:02] the larger PaloAlto preference that was also talked about in some length but I

[3:12:08] leave that to maybe you get more information and thank you so much.

[3:12:12] » Our next speaker is Herb B.

[3:12:24] Uh my recollection was that the housing authority said that uh they did not have

[3:12:30] a viable project because uh of being unable to finance uh the apartment part

[3:12:36] of the the project. uh since this apparently is extending the the time for

[3:12:45] them to be able to do that. And I believe a ballot measure

[3:12:51] » [snorts] >> u statewide uh that state senator uh

[3:12:55] Scott Weiner has placed on for affordable housing. Uh he indicated that

[3:13:02] uh that funding could be used uh to

[3:13:07] uh change a mobile home park to a multiple family, you know, apartment

[3:13:15] uh dwelling and I believe also could be used to uh provide funding for uh the

[3:13:23] housing affordable housing on religious institutions you know where 25% of the

[3:13:29] uh land can be used for affordable housing. So, I was wondering uh how how

[3:13:34] this connects or changes uh the previous statements from the housing corporation

[3:13:41] that they didn't have a viable project because they couldn't have the funding

[3:13:45] for the the I guess it's parcel B for the apartments. Thank you.

[3:13:51] » Our next speaker is Henry E.

[3:14:01] This all represents a small effort of palative to allow people of working

[3:14:07] class to continue to live in Palo Alto. My first concern is in moving people

[3:14:12] around that nobody loses their trailer, their residence, that their right to

[3:14:16] stay either in that where they are now or move to a better location where their

[3:14:22] trailer can be protected. So secondly, the amount of housing to be built

[3:14:28] apparently will not even start until 2033.

[3:14:32] Why so long? What's going on? It looks like another attempt to stall to stall.

[3:14:38] And also the scale of this. We must think on a much larger scale to build

[3:14:43] housing so that people of all class levels, working, middle, and upper class

[3:14:49] can live safely in Palo Alto. Everyone should have the right to live near where

[3:14:54] they work. That's how we solve all this car problem. We won't need cars if

[3:14:58] people could walk to work. So, it's all interrelated and the housing issue can

[3:15:03] be solved in the city by bringing together Stanford University that has

[3:15:08] the land, the business community that has the resources and Palo Alto city

[3:15:12] that has the zoning and other authorities. So at the same time that we

[3:15:16] must build housing to scale, we must also disassemble the billionaire's

[3:15:22] compounds and return them to single family housing units. We need equitable

[3:15:27] policy at all levels for this city. This project to save Vista is a small but

[3:15:32] necessary part of it. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Aram F.

[3:15:43] » Okay. So, I lived on Los Robos for I don't know 30 40 years and um you know

[3:15:49] um Guav Vista is a is a gem. I'm a little confused though because it it it

[3:15:55] seemed as though a few years back we were about to start the building process

[3:16:00] to build the apartments and then all of a sudden there was some disputes. Some

[3:16:04] tenants uh were unhappy about the size of the units they were being offered and

[3:16:09] so the county backed out. now and maybe somebody on the dis council member can

[3:16:16] explain to me. It looks like we're having the the the present tenants move

[3:16:21] out so that we can do the underlying utilities and they're going to move back

[3:16:26] and then correct me if I'm wrong going to have to move out a second time when

[3:16:30] they actually get to the building of the units.

[3:16:34] problem that I raised a few years back when I sent my oldest son over there to

[3:16:40] apply to be uh in a unit there. Uh they were it very uh adverse it appeared to

[3:16:49] him to having African-Americans be part of that uh

[3:16:54] project at Buenav Vista. As you all know, we've pushed out a lot of the the

[3:16:59] black community gentrification going on in Park Boulevard area. I've asked

[3:17:04] repeatedly as part of the reparations that PaloAlto owes to the black

[3:17:09] community to make sure that we preserve housing for underresourced black members

[3:17:16] of the of our our county. Uh we're down to 2%. Um, you folks have never even

[3:17:23] been willing to say the word reparations even though it's now in the vernacular

[3:17:29] in the state. There's some cities in the country that have moved on that. They

[3:17:33] all been lame, lame, lame on that. I don't understand that. So when we look

[3:17:38] at the project, I also want to make sure that yes, we keep the Hispanic

[3:17:44] population, the wonderful populations that's there, but open it up to some

[3:17:49] other people of color as well. That just seems to me to be an obvious. So, thank

[3:17:54] you much.

[3:17:58] » And that concludes public comment on action item nine.

[3:18:01] » All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um,

[3:18:07] I just want to just start um by asking staff um

[3:18:13] uh M. Delen Bach's uh comments about um the

[3:18:19] families who are there that have grown through natural ways various ways and

[3:18:23] are uh may need uh an additional spot over time or something. I do remember

[3:18:29] there was a discussion um at least among some of us of an intent that existing

[3:18:35] expanding families could have first choice in any sort of new or vacated

[3:18:39] spots. Um while our goal was not to displace any residents, we we thought

[3:18:46] about giving [clears throat] them the opportunity to have a more appropriate

[3:18:49] amount of living space like current uh tenants before new tenants might come

[3:18:53] in. this may not well I what I'm asking is where if if we were to memorialize

[3:19:00] that where would be the right place to document that because I'm I don't know

[3:19:04] if the regulatory agreement is but could we somewhere somehow record that idea if

[3:19:11] in fact it's a consensus of our council. >> So I [snorts] I can take that answer. Um

[3:19:16] so I mean there there will be other documents that establish tenant

[3:19:20] selection policies um not necessarily ones that have to be recorded against

[3:19:25] you know against the world uh you know to give notice to the world. Um so those

[3:19:30] kind of policies could be embedded in those documents. I would say with that

[3:19:35] specific policy um we would need to look uh closely at fair housing implications

[3:19:41] um for for any policy like that before we implemented it.

[3:19:45] » Okay. Yeah, I just ask that we do that at the appropriate time. I think that's

[3:19:50] um an important part of of us uh maintaining this community uh in our

[3:19:54] midst. Um and then just uh while I have the mic,

[3:19:59] » madam mayor, we also have uh Flareity from the housing authority who can speak

[3:20:03] to how they work on some of the um related to that issue as well.

[3:20:08] » That'd be great. Would you be willing? Thank you.

[3:20:11] » Hi, council mayor, vice mayor. It's nice to be here tonight. um Flity Ward with

[3:20:15] the Still with the Santa Clair County Housing Authority. Um happy to be in

[3:20:19] front of you all tonight. And to speak to this specific issue, um and this is

[3:20:23] the same throughout the housing authorities portfolio. It doesn't just

[3:20:26] apply to Buista. When a family is in need of a larger unit, they are placed

[3:20:30] on what we call an internal eligibility list. So we have our our natural weight

[3:20:34] list that we manage, but then there's an internal eligibility list for people

[3:20:38] that need a larger home. And then when one becomes available, it is we refer to

[3:20:44] that list. Um, so you know, we're not displacing people from the park who

[3:20:49] can't uh, you know, be there anymore due to their family size. So that's the

[3:20:52] general policy throughout the agency. >> Got it. And so that's that's what you do

[3:20:56] now as a matter of course. And >> that's what we do now as a matter of

[3:20:59] course um throughout our entire portfolio.

[3:21:02] » Okay. Great. Good to know. Um, >> because families do change.

[3:21:05] » Exactly. Exactly. And uh, so all right. Thank you. And then um could I ask her a

[3:21:11] followup while she's there? >> Sure. Is that okay? Um just to follow

[3:21:14] up. Thank you, Mayor. Uh on Miss Dylan's other prong of her question about Palo

[3:21:19] Alto eligibility. Um we're of course very interested in low-income residents

[3:21:24] of our city being able to have priority, but we understand this is something that

[3:21:28] is being organized by the county and the housing authority. And so we know there

[3:21:32] are probably limitations on that as there are with our home key. Can you

[3:21:35] give us a sense of what whether any preference is given to a PaloAlto

[3:21:42] person, a person with Palo Alto ties when it comes to where they are on the

[3:21:45] wait list? >> Yeah. Well, currently there is no, you

[3:21:48] know, we're not accepting new applicants to Buista only because we're getting

[3:21:52] ready for this um improvement. Um, if the city council is interested in

[3:21:57] exploring a local preference, I think that's something that, um, we can take

[3:22:00] into consideration and look at, you know, all applicable fair housing rules

[3:22:05] and regulations and funding programs. There's a lot of different things at

[3:22:08] Touch Point of Vista that we would need to ensure we're not running a foul of

[3:22:12] and get the necessary approvals. Um, but if that's something the city council

[3:22:16] would like us to look at with staff, we can.

[3:22:19] » I think I would. Thank you. Good to see you again.

[3:22:22] » Yeah, you too. >> All right. Thank you. And then uh my

[3:22:25] other question for staff is whether they had any response uh to Mr. Borak's

[3:22:30] question.

[3:22:34] » His question specifically on the financing of the project.

[3:22:39] Okay. I will take part of this and then I will let Miss Ward provide the rest of

[3:22:43] it. So, the project that came before the council in 2024, uh, which was for the

[3:22:49] changes at the mobile home park in addition to the apartment building, that

[3:22:53] project, given all of the multiple aspects of it, the housing authority

[3:22:56] determined was not feasible to go forward with at that time. They did have

[3:23:00] a large grant that came from the state for about 25 million as an estimate. And

[3:23:05] that is the funding that they're using for this utilities upgrade project,

[3:23:08] which is what we're moving forward with right now. So, some of this work was

[3:23:12] included in that 2024 project, but they couldn't do the entire project given all

[3:23:16] the elements, but I'll let Miss Ward add on from there.

[3:23:20] » That was a great summary. Um, the total cost of the improvement project is about

[3:23:25] $30 million. So, the balance that is not paid through uh the more funds will be

[3:23:31] paid by the housing authority as well as we received a small grant through um

[3:23:35] ESU's office to electrify the park. So, we plan on using that in those efforts.

[3:23:39] and then the housing authority um providing the gap financing to get this

[3:23:44] project started and finished. >> Great. Thank you.

[3:23:48] All right. Um colleagues, any further discussion or a motion?

[3:23:54] » Council member Bart. >> Yes. Um I wanted to understand um better

[3:24:01] on in the [snorts] 9-month interimm period

[3:24:05] where uh current residents are relocated. Not all are um being

[3:24:10] relocated within PaloAlto but they're all being accommodated. Um we had had

[3:24:14] previous discussion about students in PAUSD

[3:24:19] and um and my understanding is that there there's collaboration with PAUSD.

[3:24:26] I just want to understand better about the transportation of those students if

[3:24:30] they're um um residing outside of PaloAlto. What is that that uh

[3:24:37] transportation program? >> Absolutely. So, Miss Ward can share the

[3:24:41] specifics, but I will share on her behalf before she gets up here. The

[3:24:45] housing authority did a pretty extensive search to find apartment units within

[3:24:49] PaloAlto. She can share the statistics, but they asked a lot of people and got a

[3:24:53] response from one. And so with that in mind, they went to as close as possible

[3:24:59] to PaloAlto, which is why you hear of some in Mountain View. And so Miss Flity

[3:25:03] can speak to how they plan to keep the Peloto students uh whole. Um let me give

[3:25:08] some background to to explain. We have been in kind of constant communication

[3:25:13] with the school district for the past almost year at this point, having

[3:25:16] regular check-ins with them. So letting them know about the timeline impacted

[3:25:21] families um so that we can on either side uh make sure we're gathering the

[3:25:26] appropriate data to prepare for impacts. Um so that has been open communication

[3:25:30] and has been really great. Um we are utilizing actually the same um

[3:25:35] transportation service the city of PaloAlto does to hire private transport.

[3:25:40] Um so similar to the number that folks can call in the city of PaloAlto if they

[3:25:44] want a a private ride somewhere um that service is also being made available to

[3:25:50] um Buen a Vista families while they are relocated to assist in getting their

[3:25:54] children to school. Um our relocation um our folks that are managing that on our

[3:26:00] behalf are regularly meeting with the residents to figure out what their um

[3:26:03] impacts might be uh and if they need to take advantage of that transportation

[3:26:08] option. Um, and then we're also reimbursing families can also get a

[3:26:12] reimbursement for mileage if they are traveling farther to get their children

[3:26:16] to school as well. Um, and then we plan on being in touch with the school

[3:26:22] district on whether there's any um issues with kids getting to school late

[3:26:26] or any impacts to their attendance as a result of this so we can help coordinate

[3:26:30] from our end with services and support the families to make sure their children

[3:26:33] can get to school. >> So, are you referring to the Palo Alto

[3:26:36] link program? >> Yes. Oh, but can staff comment on

[3:26:42] our windown of that program and how it aligns with this ninemonth period?

[3:26:49] » I will uh check with staff and loop right back. I don't I don't know that

[3:26:52] it's officially the link itself. >> Oh, it's Sevilla. Is that the name of

[3:26:56] the >> Yeah, same company but not our contract.

[3:26:59] » Yeah, it's a different contract. We're not using the city's contract. We're

[3:27:02] using a similar Yeah. >> Okay. Uh, and I I do want to support um

[3:27:08] uh to the extent we can that PaloAlto local preference for additional spots

[3:27:15] um should they open up. And the um the staff report said a minimum of um 46

[3:27:23] spots I think it was on um parcel B, right?

[3:27:28] » Yep. >> And what do you anticipate is the likely

[3:27:32] full capacity? Uh we think it's around 56.

[3:27:35] » Oh, good. >> Yeah. If we're able to create some

[3:27:38] efficiencies within the park. Um uh but it remains to be determined once

[3:27:43] we finish the infrastructure project. We have $5 million through the state of

[3:27:47] Calhoun to start a launch a voluntary home replacement program. So some of it

[3:27:52] will depend on who the final kind of spacing will depend on who participates

[3:27:57] in that program >> because our our next item is our

[3:28:00] oversized vehicles which we're looking at a variety of measures to try to help

[3:28:05] um uh some of those uh families especially when they're they're um local

[3:28:12] families and uh very low income. Would would those additional 10 spots up to 10

[3:28:18] spots um would they be uh need-based on on um uh being unhoused uh or uh income

[3:28:30] based? How would how would that work? >> Yeah. Um it will be income based. So the

[3:28:35] regulatory agreement outlines the uh we call them like affordability buckets of

[3:28:40] each of the levels. So what happens is we analyze the current rent role against

[3:28:45] the required affordability set aides and then the spaces that become available

[3:28:49] are subject to where we need to fill buckets right if we need more certain

[3:28:53] income levels and then we would we would um you know take people off the weight

[3:28:58] list. So conceivably within the the local preference, we could include uh

[3:29:04] people in uh uh in RVs on uh currently on the street uh within a local

[3:29:12] preference depending on whether they qualify within those income buckets.

[3:29:17] » I would probably need to talk to our attorney about how like specific you can

[3:29:21] drill down on a local preference. I don't know the answer to that.

[3:29:25] » Okay. All right. Thank you. All

[3:29:30] right. Thank you, colleagues. Any other questions [clears throat]

[3:29:34] or comments or motions?

[3:29:39] » Council member Lou, >> I'll echo the point about a uh local

[3:29:43] preference and um uh also echo the broader theme and point of uh potential

[3:29:50] space for RV residents. Uh and with that, I will move the staff

[3:29:54] recommendation as well. Thank you.

[3:29:58] » Second. >> Thank you. Any further discussion?

[3:30:04] » Yeah, I just want to make sure that the um that local preference request is

[3:30:09] included in the motion.

[3:30:13] » I think that's a referral for staff to work with the housing authority on next

[3:30:17] steps there. Yeah, we just want to codify it as a referral

[3:30:23] » and we could just add an extra bullet point under the motion with uh just the

[3:30:27] word uh with a referral for uh local preferences.

[3:30:39] » Secondary

[3:30:48] referral to staff. >> Yes.

[3:30:56] Do >> you want to speak further to your motion

[3:30:57] or second? >> To work with staff to to work with

[3:31:00] housing authority. >> Referral to staff.

[3:31:04] » Staff to work with. Okay. >> Referral to staff to work with housing

[3:31:10] authority for local preference. Yeah.

[3:31:20] Yeah, I I know there's more words smmithing we can do, but I think the

[3:31:24] point is >> that covers it

[3:31:25] » clear enough. Um, so uh no other comments. Um, uh, glad that we can have

[3:31:31] utility improvements, electrification, a bunch of facility improvements. I think

[3:31:35] it's the right step and I think we really look forward to working

[3:31:38] productively with the housing authority and um uh getting the ball moving as

[3:31:43] quickly and clearly as possible.

[3:31:50] All right, great. Well, this has been a long time coming. I'm eager to see the

[3:31:54] next steps. And so with that, I will ask the clerk to call a role.

[3:32:00] » Council member Rectal. >> Yes.

[3:32:02] » Council member Lads. >> Yes. Vice Mayor Stone,

[3:32:05] » yes. >> Mayor Vinker,

[3:32:07] » yes. >> Council member Lou,

[3:32:08] » yes. >> Council member Lowing,

[3:32:09] » yes. >> Council member Bert,

[3:32:11] » yes. >> Motion carries unanimously.

[3:32:13] » All right. Thank you. This item will go to the county tomorrow for approval and

[3:32:17] then uh within a week, it'll go to the housing authorities board for approval

[3:32:21] as well. >> Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you,

[3:32:23] Deputy City Manager. Thank you, Miss Ward. I also see some other colleagues

[3:32:27] up there. Um, so anyway, we appreciate this and look forward to seeing the next

[3:32:30] step happen. All right. And with that, we will move

[3:32:34] on to our next and last action item of the evening. Item 10, recommendation uh

[3:32:41] to launch two pilot OSB parking programs, etc. Um

[3:32:46] we'll give staff a second to shuffle.

[3:33:27] Okay. Um, all right. Well, this is one where uh we have had an ad hoc committee

[3:33:34] diligently working with staff and so to kick us off tonight, I'm going to turn

[3:33:39] to the chair of that ad hoc, Council Member Lowing.

[3:33:44] » Okay. Thank you. Yes. And I just want to begin by

[3:33:49] giving you giving you an overview of where we've been. Uh that includes the

[3:33:52] original direction from council. Uh brief view on our outreach and comment

[3:33:57] on what we learned. Uh then comment on the staff proposal both the content and

[3:34:02] the timing. Uh and then later after staff gives a presentation uh all three

[3:34:07] ad hoc committee members uh are going to speak individually from their own sort

[3:34:11] of personal point of view of uh where we are and what we each think uh we should

[3:34:16] do. Um so we all know that the large

[3:34:21] population of OSVs is a [snorts] issue in cities around the country uh

[3:34:27] national, state, um and local. Uh that said, our jobs here, so we have to focus

[3:34:34] on what we can get done here. Uh we we know that the RV population,

[3:34:40] OSV RV, is made up [clears throat] of people in varied circumstances. We know

[3:34:45] that by talking with a lot of them. Um, some just simply can't afford to live

[3:34:49] here. Uh, but they have a job here. Uh, some have med medical or substance abuse

[3:34:55] problems. Um, some simply want to have free rent. Uh, some have a home

[3:35:00] elsewhere and, uh, stay here during the work week and sort of go home. Uh, some

[3:35:05] like the mobile lifestyle and and a lot of other different categories. Uh, it's

[3:35:09] not just one thing. So, the council asked us to address this

[3:35:14] issue with a sort of a two-pronged approach. And the first is toward leg

[3:35:20] what I call legitimate lowincome folks that just need a helping hand uh to get

[3:35:25] to permanent housing. And the second prong is the waves of OSVs that are

[3:35:32] really interfering with uh commercial businesses and in some cases residential

[3:35:36] areas. And this has been going on for a long time. Uh both of these problems are

[3:35:42] real, they're chronic, and they're high priority.

[3:35:46] So, as the ad hoc got going, [clears throat] we came up with a list

[3:35:51] of initiatives starting with how do we find new places

[3:35:56] for some of these vehicles to to park. At the time, the count was about 200

[3:36:01] OSVs. Um sometimes that and that did not count sometimes the commute vehicles cuz

[3:36:07] some folks have a car to actually literally do their commute to a job. So

[3:36:11] but the OSV count was uh was about 200. So we did extensive I mean very

[3:36:17] extensive outreach to commercial uh developers, property owners and

[3:36:23] businesses in our city and beyond. um especially those that were empty, not

[3:36:30] least, and had empty parking lots looked like a great opportunity. Um

[3:36:38] secondly, we talked to faith communities. Uh a number of them had

[3:36:41] already allowed day use for um homeless in uh vehicles.

[3:36:51] We appealed to the county of Santa Clara for land uh including uh the very large

[3:36:57] uh fairgrounds that are only used sporadically throughout the year.

[3:37:02] Overall, this problem really needs a regional solution led by the county

[3:37:06] because the county's whole sort of reason for being is a safety net for

[3:37:11] those in need. And they understand that. They embrace that. but they'd just been

[3:37:16] slammed with budget cuts caused by uh federal cuts.

[3:37:22] And we were also very eager to have the 88 bed transitional housing at Homekey

[3:37:27] open uh so that we could use some of those units there for some of the OSV

[3:37:33] dwellers um particularly since it's in Palo Alto and we invested in it. And

[3:37:38] then we found out that when it opened, it was backlogged

[3:37:42] with units for residents that had previously been housed in hotels because

[3:37:46] of the late construction. So we ended up getting none of those beds of the 88

[3:37:52] beds that are in Palo Alto. So the bottom line is that everything we

[3:37:57] reached out to try to do and all these initiatives did not work. None of them

[3:38:02] after all this time. And I mean we worked on it. Um there's one help hope

[3:38:08] help hope help hope help hope help hope

[3:38:08] help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope

[3:38:08] help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope help hope helpful

[3:38:09] footnote and that is that we now do have a a nibble from the county that they

[3:38:14] would like to work with us uh to get some safe parking but no details so

[3:38:19] that's still a stone that's not overturned the estimated count is now

[3:38:23] about 130 to 140 depending on the day you count uh and that is down from 200

[3:38:29] due to the citations and towing um of course now we need to take further

[3:38:33] action to address the OSV population. Um, but I do want to salute the folks

[3:38:38] that worked on this in the uh in the city, the police department and public

[3:38:43] works around the firing line there, but a lot of folks in the city manager's

[3:38:47] office and and elsewhere and and legal. [cough]

[3:38:53] So, I've come on staff proposal. Uh, it's it's just time to come back to

[3:38:56] council now uh given what I just reported on and come up with an

[3:39:01] alternative proposal than than what we have. Um, so this particular proposal uh

[3:39:07] came from staff to be debated. The objective being direction, turn around,

[3:39:12] send it back to staff with direction on what council wants them to do.

[3:39:17] So the council ad hoc committee uh is three people and it's really part of a

[3:39:24] bigger ad hoc committee which is all the staff which is 10 to 12 folks that meet

[3:39:28] with us every time we meet including the city attorney, the city manager, um the

[3:39:34] director of uh of um public works and all of their staff. Uh you'll hear from

[3:39:39] the city attorney a little bit later tonight. Um, but I also want to point

[3:39:42] out that this actual proposal was not um created by the council of three people

[3:39:49] um uh nor was it reviewed by the council three people uh before it went out. So

[3:39:53] the staff report includes you know a lot of elements that were discussed by the

[3:39:57] full ad hoc um and also introduces some some new material uh such as the

[3:40:03] proposed rollout schedules that uh that we hadn't seen. Um, I think there are

[3:40:08] also some some items in the report that need clarification and I just want to

[3:40:11] take this moment now to give a couple of examples before we go to public comment.

[3:40:15] Uh, many folks have written us saying that the staff report in uh, pilot 2 of

[3:40:21] putting half the vehicles uh, on one side of the street actually makes them

[3:40:26] permanent. And that's not correct. There's no indication here uh, that

[3:40:30] those are going to be permanent. uh it was intended as a an option as a stop

[3:40:34] gap measure to remove half to remove not keep half of the OSVs to relieve half of

[3:40:41] the problem uh as soon as we can. Uh so there's no current recommendation to

[3:40:46] make that other half permanent and we can do whatever we want with that but

[3:40:49] that was the concept and the other side of the concept was to be equity uh uh

[3:40:53] amongst all the businesses there. There's also some concern on the street

[3:40:57] as expressed in the many emails that we got um that the streets targeted in the

[3:41:01] report are not comprehensive enough and we sort of quote left some out. Uh but

[3:41:06] that list is not fixed and is easily amendable you know one way or the other.

[3:41:11] So I just want to mention those before public comment. So the desired outcome

[3:41:14] tonight is simply uh direction to staff on what direction our seven folks want

[3:41:20] to go. Uh we can vote on proposal that's here. we can vote on new items. We can

[3:41:25] send stuff back to the ad hoc. Uh so that's the overview and uh we'll chat

[3:41:30] again back to the mayor. >> All right. Thank you. And with that, I'm

[3:41:34] going to turn to staff and uh to the city manager.

[3:41:37] » Sure. Thank you uh mayor and members of council in particular the ad hoc uh

[3:41:43] committee. Uh as noted, ad hoc committee has spent extraordinary time uh working

[3:41:48] with staff as well as doing direct outreach uh as was noted with uh uh

[3:41:53] community members as well as our regional uh partners and those that we

[3:41:57] hope to become regional partners with. uh in particular just want to note uh

[3:42:02] that uh in wrestling with this topic the ad hoc committee has has clearly uh uh

[3:42:09] expressed uh the uh recognition of the difficulty of the issue and uh also

[3:42:17] wrestling with the lack of a permanent solution or even necessarily

[3:42:20] straightforward solutions given the complexity of the issue. Uh so as such

[3:42:24] uh what you'll hear from staff tonight uh is uh very specifically not intended

[3:42:29] to be a permanent solution um but is reflective of the incremental next steps

[3:42:35] uh to as uh chair Lowing pointed out restrict uh OSV parking while also

[3:42:41] providing capacity to meet identified needs. Uh we also expect that we'll be

[3:42:45] able to speak to uh some of the perhaps misunderstandings uh that we've heard in

[3:42:51] uh some of the uh comments received including uh experiences of other

[3:42:55] communities. So with that, let me ask our assistant city manager Melissa

[3:43:00] Mcdana uh to walk through our uh overview of the item tonight and look

[3:43:05] forward to your discussion.

[3:43:10] » Thank you. U Melissa Mcdana, assistant to the city manager. Uh as as you've

[3:43:15] heard already this evening, homelessness and vehicle habitation continue to

[3:43:19] present complex policy operational and community impacts in Palo Alto. Uh

[3:43:26] tonight's item presents recommendations to launch two coordinated pilots. We

[3:43:31] recognize these are not ideal solutions to this complex issue, but have found a

[3:43:35] way to address and reduce uh the impacts in our city. Next slide.

[3:43:42] since policy and services direction on a phased approach in August of last year

[3:43:47] through council creation of the ad hoc and the approval and launch of phase one

[3:43:52] in October of last year. We've continued to move this work forward. Um this

[3:43:58] January the ad hoc and staff engaged with the community at an openhouse

[3:44:03] followed by a council study session in February and an update report in June.

[3:44:09] Through phase one, we learned that focused cleaning, signage, enforcement,

[3:44:14] and service connections can improve conditions in specific locations.

[3:44:20] The proposed pilots developed and refined by the ad hoc apply those

[3:44:23] lessons through a more structured and measurable approach. Next slide.

[3:44:31] The city has created new ordinances to prohibit vanlording and to prohibit the

[3:44:36] parking of detached trailers and inoperable vehicles and public streets.

[3:44:40] Uh as part of phase one, there also have been increased enforcement efforts,

[3:44:45] added street sweeping and cleanings to 18 identified impacted streets, and

[3:44:51] explored approaches such as safe parking expansion and OSV buyback and storage

[3:44:57] programs. At the same time, the city continues to

[3:45:00] prioritize expansion of off- streetet safe parking. We know that a stable

[3:45:06] service connected setting can support participant well-being by reducing the

[3:45:11] uncertainty of frequent relocation and by improving access to housing

[3:45:15] navigation, case management, and health and mental health supports. The city has

[3:45:21] also engaged county officials to support a more unified regional response as

[3:45:25] Chair Lowing mentioned. And uh the city continues to invite commercial property

[3:45:30] owners to the table to discuss utilizing vacant lots as potential safe parking

[3:45:35] sites. Safe parking remains an important

[3:45:39] long-term strategy, but expansion is constrained by available land funding,

[3:45:45] site operations, and service needs. The pilots proposed this evening are

[3:45:50] intended to complement, not replace those efforts by providing near-term

[3:45:55] targeted options while the city continues pursuing additional off-

[3:45:58] streetet capacity. And finally, we we also in phase one

[3:46:03] have met and continue to meet regularly with other cities and jurisdictions to

[3:46:07] share information, problem solve, and look for ways to work together to

[3:46:11] address this complex issue. Next slide.

[3:46:17] The recommendations before you this evening are to launch two 12-month pilot

[3:46:21] programs and approve related ordinances, resolutions, and budget amendments.

[3:46:26] Together, these are intended to address a more structured to address ongoing

[3:46:31] neighborhood business, public health, and safety impacts while providing a

[3:46:35] more structured and humane response for people living in oversized vehicles. The

[3:46:40] pilots are a cost-effective way to test targeted parking management and service

[3:46:45] delivery before considering a broader citywide approach. The total pilot cost

[3:46:51] is estimated at approximately $823,000800.

[3:46:57] Staff would return to council in March and September 27 with status reports and

[3:47:02] recommendations regarding continuation, modification, expansion, or termination.

[3:47:08] Next slide.

[3:47:12] The first of the two pilots, the oversized vehicle parking permit pilot

[3:47:17] would create designated permit areas on the city managed side of Coyote Hill

[3:47:21] Road and on Embaradero Road near the wastewater treatment plant with capacity

[3:47:27] for approximately 37 oversized vehicles. Through negotiations with the county, we

[3:47:33] may be able to switch the Coyote Hill area to the county side. For Embaradero

[3:47:39] Road, we would deploy restriping to create space for permitted vehicles to

[3:47:43] park while retaining the bike lane. This pilot is not intended to serve every

[3:47:49] person living in an oversized vehicle. It is designed for individuals and

[3:47:54] families who are ready to work towards stable permanent housing and can benefit

[3:47:59] from a structured service connected setting during that transition.

[3:48:04] The path to permanent housing is often not linear and can take time. By

[3:48:09] providing a designated safer place to park, the pilot can help participants

[3:48:13] focus on working with staff, accessing needed services, and building the

[3:48:17] foundation for a successful transition to stable housing.

[3:48:22] Staff will also uh as part of this pilot communicate with adjacent businesses and

[3:48:27] property owners as well as current oversized vehicle dwellers as the sites

[3:48:31] are prepared and the program is implemented. An estimated firstear cost

[3:48:36] of $400,800. This pilot allows the city to test a

[3:48:41] targeted alternative to more costly off- streetet safe parking expansion which is

[3:48:46] as I mentioned constrained by availability and cost. Next slide.

[3:48:52] To be eligible to participate in the permit pilot, uh, oversized vehicle

[3:48:57] dwellers will need to meet a set of requirements to participate. These

[3:49:01] requirements establish clear expectations for safe and responsible

[3:49:05] participation while keeping participants housing focused.

[3:49:10] Participants will need to have a valid registration, active insurance, agree to

[3:49:14] sign a good neighbor agreement, agree to engage with outreach workers to receive

[3:49:19] support in transitioning into permanent housing, have connections to PaloAlto,

[3:49:24] be income eligible, and be able to pay a $15 per month permit fee. This modest

[3:49:32] permit fee is intended to support an administraable program while maintaining

[3:49:36] affordability for eligible households. Next slide.

[3:49:43] » While the permit pilot is directed at supporting those who are wanting to

[3:49:47] transition into permanent housing, the parking prohibition pilot is designed to

[3:49:54] help reduce the count of oversized vehicles on heavily impacted streets.

[3:50:00] This pilot would prohibit oversized vehicle parking on one side of

[3:50:04] identified streets for 6 months, then alternate to the other side for the next

[3:50:08] 6 months. All existing regulations, including 72-hour limits, phase one

[3:50:16] street sweeping restrictions, the van lording ban, and the ban on detached

[3:50:21] trailers would remain in effect. Passenger vehicles may continue parking

[3:50:28] on both sides year round. Staff will provide advanced notice and

[3:50:33] communicate directly with affected businesses, adjacent property owners,

[3:50:37] neighborhoods, and oversized vehicle dwellers. Feedback from residents and

[3:50:42] businesses along with calls for service, complaints, warnings, and citations will

[3:50:47] help us evaluate this pilot. An estimated firstear cost of $423,000.

[3:50:53] This this pilot provides a lowerc cost opportunity to test operational

[3:50:57] effectiveness and refine the approach before considering something broader.

[3:51:02] Next slide.

[3:51:05] On this slide, you can see all of the streets that will receive red tips as

[3:51:10] part of the second pilot. In blue are the street segments included in the

[3:51:14] alternating sides parking prohibition. We know this is not a perfect list. It

[3:51:21] is a preliminary list intended to address impacted non-residential street

[3:51:25] segments first identified in phase one and we will be rep uh refining it

[3:51:30] through confirming locations and uses as well as outreach to neighbors and

[3:51:34] property owners. Next slide.

[3:51:40] Um here you see a cost overview for the pilots. This is an updated cost table in

[3:51:46] the staff report. This table inadvertently omits that top row where

[3:51:51] it starts with the word site amenities. However, all of the totals in the table

[3:51:56] were correct in the staff report. We can refer back to this slide if there are

[3:52:00] questions relating to costs. Next slide. And I'd like to thank you. I

[3:52:07] know that was a lot of information uh spoken very quickly. And I would now

[3:52:13] like to seed the floor over to the city attorney for some legal context.

[3:52:19] » Yes. Uh thank you uh mayor, council members. So I'll just I just want to

[3:52:22] briefly address uh the current legal environment in which this discussion is

[3:52:28] taking place. So, I I think you're all aware that the Supreme Court's US

[3:52:33] Supreme Court's decision in Grants Pass um did change the landscape in this area

[3:52:38] and did limit the city's obligation to provide shelter really, you know, almost

[3:52:44] whenever it displaces an unsheltered resident. Um you know, that said, um

[3:52:49] there are still legal obligations uh that the city has when it is managing

[3:52:54] its unsheltered population. Um and and some of those obligations are the you

[3:52:59] know subject of current litigation in this district uh in the in the ninth

[3:53:04] circuit. Uh and so that litigation does create some uncertainty as to how uh the

[3:53:11] city manages the situation. And you know, while

[3:53:16] I don't and I don't necessarily agree with uh the theories that plaintiffs are

[3:53:21] advancing in these cases, I think it's my council should keep that uncertainty

[3:53:26] in in mind. And you know, one real risk is that the city winds up in a situation

[3:53:32] where it's the court and not necessarily this council or this community that

[3:53:36] decides how we uh regulate people living in vehicles in public spaces. And so

[3:53:43] that's I think something that you know you know our advice as staff is is we're

[3:53:48] mindful of that risk and mindful of avoiding it. Uh you know another thing I

[3:53:53] think to think about is that the results from the the steps that you took last

[3:53:58] year I think do show meaningful reduction in in impact of OSVs in the

[3:54:05] streets. And so I mean one thing to consider is whether you know additional

[3:54:09] incremental steps will continue to show that impact. Um that's not to foreclose

[3:54:14] you know any option that council could consider. I think it's just one of the

[3:54:19] many factors that you need to consider in addressing what I I think we all

[3:54:23] acknowledge is a really difficult problem.

[3:54:30] » All right. Thank you staff. Um, and with that, I'm going to bring it

[3:54:34] back to the deis. Um, but first to the ad hoc to see if you have any further

[3:54:39] comments and and the other members of the ad hoc have anything they'd like to

[3:54:42] say preliminarily and then the rest of us can

[3:54:44] » Well, [clears throat] yes. I think at this point we want to talk about the

[3:54:47] specific two pilots and give uh three different opinions on that. Not

[3:54:52] necessarily different, but three people speaking on it.

[3:54:55] [clears throat and cough] Excuse me. So speaking first to what's

[3:54:59] called pilot one. Uh that's where we're creating um a structure um a game plan

[3:55:07] uh regulations and targeting that specifically to incomequalified folks so

[3:55:12] that we know that these are what I'll call legitimate uh folks that are not

[3:55:17] just hanging around town but are here for reasons that they can't afford it

[3:55:22] and so on. So I think the structure of that is good and I think the direction

[3:55:26] that that is there is is also good. Um because we have a lot of latitude

[3:55:32] including if they don't follow the rules, they're very quickly gone and

[3:55:36] that's totally in our control. So they have to be good neighbors. They have to

[3:55:40] not have stuff in the front, they have to take care of themselves in terms of

[3:55:43] the uh um um waste, getting rid of waste and all that stuff. And and we're in

[3:55:49] control of that. So there's a good control and most importantly they have

[3:55:52] to say yes I want to get into permanent housing. So these are transitional

[3:55:56] therefore these the original idea is the 37 units. Uh they're not going to be

[3:56:02] living in those 37 units for 5 years. They're going to be transitioning to

[3:56:06] housing. So that's the that's the goal. That's the intent and everybody signed

[3:56:08] up for the same thing. So I think that one is is is on point. By the way, none

[3:56:14] of these uh new units are in uh South Palo Alto. Uh so that was another

[3:56:19] concern that we got from some some residents in terms of where OSVS are

[3:56:23] right now. Um I think the schedule is uh for implementation is is sorry to say

[3:56:29] way off. We just have to do that a lot faster because we have this problem

[3:56:33] that's been festering for years and we have made good progress but it's not

[3:56:37] enough relative to where we need to be. So that has to be trimmed up. Um I think

[3:56:42] there's some details that have to be looked at. Is it a $15 fee or a $50 fee?

[3:56:48] You know, that could be chatted about. Um, I think we should be very specific

[3:56:52] about which kind of income folks that we're looking for. I mean, do we want to

[3:56:55] try to get to, you know, 80% AMI and under? Do we want to get that specific

[3:57:00] or not? But whatever it is, it may not have to be in the ordinance, but it

[3:57:03] should definitely be in the program so everybody knows that what we're what

[3:57:06] we're signing up for. Um, I think that's on point. And then, you know, this also

[3:57:11] is not fixed in stone that it's only going to be 37. uh if it works and we're

[3:57:16] getting good transition and andor we need more spaces um I think that could

[3:57:20] be easily ruled out. Now speaking about pilot number two

[3:57:25] [clears throat]

[3:57:28] once again uh that schedule is um too slow for initial roll out um and I don't

[3:57:35] think we actually need any more outreach to businesses. Um, if you want outreach,

[3:57:41] here it is, including the approximately 200 emails we got uh [snorts] in the

[3:57:45] last uh week and a half. Um, I always stay up to speed on my on my city email.

[3:57:49] When I walked in here today, I had 75 more emails. So, we understand that this

[3:57:54] is touching nerves and we need to take action on that. Um,

[3:57:59] I think one of the things that it says in the success criteria for the pilot is

[3:58:03] that um we want to get fewer business complaints. Well, of course, but that's

[3:58:07] not really the criteria. Uh the criteria is is there a radical reduction in the

[3:58:13] number of OSVs that are not in uh the permitted parking area? [clears throat]

[3:58:18] But here's a really critical point. Right now, there aren't any ordinances

[3:58:25] that we have that can control incoming vehicles to our town or if we, for

[3:58:32] example, remove these whatever it's going to be 60 or 65 people in the

[3:58:37] impacted areas, uh there's no way we control spillover of those folks going

[3:58:44] to another neighborhood. Now, you could say that's okay because

[3:58:47] at least it's relieving the folks in the uh affected neighborhoods that have been

[3:58:51] suffering for years. Um, but if we're just moving it to another part of town,

[3:58:56] we haven't really fundamentally addressed the issue. Just moves moves

[3:59:01] the problem down the street. So, I think ultimately the only way to address this

[3:59:05] is to have all OSVs in permitted parking. So, we now have we're creating

[3:59:12] this permanent parking district one or whatever it's going to be what we just

[3:59:17] talked about in pilot one and that can that can roll out gradually

[3:59:22] as needed and as available but we could also do other we should do other uh

[3:59:28] parking programs to have OSVs otherwise they just can't park

[3:59:35] here. So, it's OSVs in a parking permit or else there's no

[3:59:41] [snorts] parking. That puts a cap at the top and it keeps uh the spillage from

[3:59:47] happening. Signage for the law I think should be

[3:59:52] placed like a number of uh resident businesses have written in at the

[3:59:56] primary entrances to the city which is currently allowed by uh state law

[4:00:01] followed up by first time warning notices placed on the vehicle if they're

[4:00:04] in a parked illegally. Um we're not going to spend $4 million on sign signs

[4:00:09] around the the city. That really makes no sense to me. Um, and I think that's

[4:00:15] sufficient legal coverage through the entrance signs, the word of

[4:00:19] mouth, and warning notices on parking violators. I think this will be a

[4:00:23] well-known law in our city. Now, the issue is, can we find enough parking

[4:00:30] spots for the displaced folks even in this half side of the street that we're

[4:00:35] talking about in the impacted areas? And and there it comes down to sequencing

[4:00:39] and timing. But I think we need to move very fast to eliminate all that um

[4:00:45] illegal parking in the impacted areas. And the way to do that is to get to a

[4:00:50] broader concept of permitted parking. There are there are other options and I

[4:00:55] think other council members on the ad hoc will talk about that. Um one of them

[4:00:59] that's been discussed before is we could also um reduce the 72-hour rule and go

[4:01:04] down to 24 hours. um that's not going to be magical and

[4:01:09] wonderful for the police staff to be able to instantly cover that, but as a

[4:01:13] deterrent, it could tell people that if you come to town, you're going to be

[4:01:16] changing your position every day, not just every 3 days. Um so I would hope

[4:01:23] that that would be a a a deterrent. Um you know, we don't catch every speeder,

[4:01:28] but we have up speed limits uh as a deterrent. So that's another option. And

[4:01:33] uh at this point I'll pass it over to my next colleague.

[4:01:44] Yeah, we realize the city is frustrated. We're frustrated with OSVs. I mean, this

[4:01:49] is a really hard problem and our legal constraints make it even harder. And so

[4:01:54] we've been struggling to find uh what action should we be taking. Now phase

[4:01:59] one I thought was very successful. public works and PAPD really went

[4:02:03] through and we cleaned up there were streets that hadn't been swept there for

[4:02:07] 20 years. It was a long time and so uh that cleaned up the streets. It uh it

[4:02:15] ended up reducing the number the population but now what we're worried

[4:02:19] about is that we've reduced the number of RVs on our streets. Will someone come

[4:02:24] in and fill that vacuum? Will RVs from Redwood City if Belmont come down and

[4:02:28] start parking? and there's nothing that's capping the the population

[4:02:32] preventing from going back up to 220. That made us very nervous. And that's

[4:02:36] why we're looking at this second uh pilot where you do one side of the

[4:02:41] street. And by we we roughly will take half the RV parking spots in the city

[4:02:47] and get rid of them. And that's trying to keep that upper level from growing.

[4:02:51] We we don't want the RV population to grow. And I thought we think that's

[4:02:56] really critical. And we're not increasing parking at all. We're

[4:02:59] decreasing it. Half the parking spaces go away. And this is, as the council

[4:03:04] member Law said, this is not permanent. This is meant to be a stop gap just to

[4:03:08] protect us right now because right now there's a vacuum. We've reduced the RV

[4:03:12] population and that could change and we don't want we don't want it to change.

[4:03:18] Uh so uh so then what what's our next steps?

[4:03:24] what how can you know now that if we do implement this one side of the street

[4:03:29] we've temporarily protected the community but what's our

[4:03:33] long-term goal how can we get out of this well one thing we can do is right

[4:03:39] now um residential areas do not allow RV parking but there's some areas around

[4:03:45] town that technically aren't residential for example uh if you have a PC zone

[4:03:51] that's not considered residential so along Fabian there along like JCC, those

[4:03:55] are homes and they don't get the same protection that we get in other areas.

[4:03:59] Uh in North Ventura, there's mixed use. They don't get the same protection. Uh

[4:04:04] East Meadow, same story. There's a lot of areas where there's a lot of RVs and

[4:04:09] they really are residential and we don't give them the same protection that we

[4:04:12] give the rest of the community and that's just unfair and we need to

[4:04:16] address that and make a more uniform policy towards the residential areas.

[4:04:21] The second thing is in the commercial areas. There's some areas where the

[4:04:25] people who come have to park three, four blocks away just because there's so many

[4:04:28] RVs clogging up or customers coming to the to the businesses and they can't

[4:04:33] park. And so one possibility is that we do in the residential areas, we have

[4:04:38] residential parking permits. If you go around and get half the signatures, half

[4:04:42] the people sign the signature, then we institute a residential parking permit.

[4:04:48] So we could do the same thing in the businesses. half the businesses in an

[4:04:51] area sign the petition. We could have a business parking permit. And that means

[4:04:58] that anyone, say a customer comes, they can park two hours in front of your

[4:05:04] business. But anyone who's doing longerterm parking, they need a permit.

[4:05:08] And those permits are only issued through businesses in those areas. And

[4:05:12] so now that parking in that area would be there to serve the businesses, not to

[4:05:17] serve the RVs. And that would be one way to relatively quickly mitigate those

[4:05:22] parking impacts that the RVs are having in those neighborhoods.

[4:05:26] But in the long run, we still have these RVs and if we're just shuffling them

[4:05:31] around, as council member Lowing said, they're not solving the problem. and

[4:05:35] safe parking, whether it's down at Moffett we're looking at, or uh if we

[4:05:39] can expand other areas in the city and have more safe parking, and so we can

[4:05:44] transition these RVs off the street and into a place where they're not bothering

[4:05:49] us and we're not bothering them. We're not chasing them around the city, that

[4:05:52] they can they can uh have a more secure life on the street. That's good for

[4:05:58] everybody. And that's a challenge because we don't have a lot of spare uh

[4:06:03] space in the in the city. But that's something that we can strive for. That

[4:06:06] is as long as we can cap the RVs. We're not trying to recruit more people. We're

[4:06:11] trying to get rid of the RVs that are on on the street right now. That that's a

[4:06:16] very good option. And every time you get someone off the street and into sedable

[4:06:21] parking or safe parking, that takes pressure off those neighborhoods. And it

[4:06:26] also allows us from a legal constraint is we can have more constrained parking

[4:06:31] limitations. And so it helps everybody if we can find more safe parking. So

[4:06:38] I'll move it on. Julie, do you want to council member Ladines?

[4:06:46] » I think we're trying to share some overview thoughts here. We're not uh I

[4:06:51] have some specific questions for staff. I wonder are we going to we're going to

[4:06:55] get to our council or our council questions once I'm done then you'll open

[4:06:58] up to everybody else. >> Yeah. And if you want to start and ask

[4:07:00] questions I would say go ahead because I was going to then let us all talk and

[4:07:04] then hear from Thank you. >> Um

[4:07:07] well to add to what my colleagues on the ad hoc had said and it has been uh

[4:07:13] [snorts] in my four years I have not ever been on a committee that has had

[4:07:17] this much work about it. Um, and I've been on a lot of committees that have

[4:07:22] had a lot of work. So, this has been intense. And as the city manager has

[4:07:26] said at the outset and has reminded us, this is we're we're attempting to do our

[4:07:32] part to address one of the most seemingly intractable issues of our

[4:07:35] time, which is the fact of homelessness and which in Peloto made 73% of our

[4:07:41] unhoused live in vehicles. So, um, there's no easy fix.

[4:07:48] Everybody's frustrated. This has been very hard. U we've heard

[4:07:53] about impacts from my colleagues and I want to say that this committee has also

[4:07:57] been deeply concerned about the quality of life lived by people who have no

[4:08:02] better choice than to live in their vehicles. Asterisk, some people have

[4:08:04] better choices. As council member Lowi said, some people have homes elsewhere.

[4:08:09] They're choosing to live in a vehicle here for reasons that make sense to

[4:08:12] them. But we know there is a percentage of the population who have no other

[4:08:17] shelter than that metal over their head, which is their car or their RV. And we

[4:08:23] are desperately concerned about the fact that our society has gotten to this

[4:08:27] point. And we know it's not our fault. We know that leaders across this region

[4:08:32] and residents and voters across this region and the nation have made choices

[4:08:37] for some time that have led to these macroeconomic conditions that are

[4:08:41] causing these impacts for businesses and residents and for the

[4:08:45] RV dwellers. Um I want to say that um

[4:08:54] I do have some questions um for staff. Um, so I I am excited that we have

[4:09:01] gotten to two pilots. Uh, we got a lot of feedback telling us why we should not

[4:09:05] be excited, that they are not correct. Um, we worked hard at this, but we are

[4:09:11] ready to hear your feedback and to make it better. Um,

[4:09:16] I want to be sure people understand because it was not in the in the packet

[4:09:20] and uh the presentation tonight for understandable reasons was quick that

[4:09:24] pilot number one, which is the Coyote Hill and the Embaradero pilot program,

[4:09:29] approximately 37 OSVS,

[4:09:34] offers folks the opportunity to come into the regulatory environment, come

[4:09:39] come in from the cold, come in from hiding and running, get a permit,

[4:09:44] give be given permission to park here or here and pay us a little bit of money

[4:09:49] and in exchange for that based on what the city's interests are, hygiene,

[4:09:53] trash, sewage, and what those humans needs are, hygiene, trash, sewage, we're

[4:10:00] going to have a portaotty, we're going to have a dumpster for the cost of

[4:10:05] $33,000 a year, which is a pretty good deal. Some may see these as amenities.

[4:10:11] We see it as a win-win. We need those things. They need those things.

[4:10:16] So, that's an example of what we're trying to offer both to meet our needs

[4:10:22] and also to make the permit pilot attractive to people who are currently

[4:10:29] parked elsewhere. Um, there is also a Margarit stop and a VTA stop near the

[4:10:34] Coyote Hill. I'm less familiar with the transportation nodes available uh near

[4:10:39] the Embaradero portion. But my point is in some ways Coyote Hill, out of sight,

[4:10:45] out of mind. We [clears throat] don't want to push

[4:10:50] people to the edge of society. People who are working multiple jobs, typically

[4:10:54] workingass or poor, if they can't get to a bus, if they

[4:10:58] can't get to a train, if they don't have a vehicle, if they can't get to their

[4:11:02] job. And so we've been trying to pay attention to that as well. Um my

[4:11:08] question for staff, the number of spots on Coyote we've said was 20 on our side

[4:11:14] on the part of Coyote that we own, but you said Miss Mcdana that it may be that

[4:11:19] we're going to swap with the county and use their portion of Coyote Hill. And if

[4:11:23] we are that far along in our conversations with them, my question is

[4:11:27] why are we not looking at both? because that could instantly perhaps double the

[4:11:32] number that we have there. >> Yeah. Let me uh take the first uh shot

[4:11:36] at response and Miss Madonna and others may elaborate. Uh as was described, our

[4:11:43] original uh concept for this location has been to use the county segment

[4:11:50] primarily because that area has existing sidewalks and existing parking. And so

[4:11:57] for uh the uh purpose of uh providing an environment that is conducive to placing

[4:12:05] the vehicles for longer periods of time and placement of the services that

[4:12:09] you've described uh is preferable. The location under the city's jurisdiction

[4:12:15] uh does not have sidewalks and uh current would require a restriping from

[4:12:20] four lanes to two lanes in order to accommodate the proposed on street

[4:12:25] parking. uh that's the reason that the initial and proposed uh focus or

[4:12:31] priority would be on the county segment and we have had uh very recent uh uh

[4:12:37] communications with the county that have uh indicated a path forward for that.

[4:12:42] The other uh consideration has been the overall capacity to manage uh the case

[4:12:49] management and the services uh that would be required for the two sites or

[4:12:55] the total of 40 that has been uh described. If we were to expand it

[4:13:00] conceptually to the order of 60 as uh I think you're suggesting council member

[4:13:05] we would need to look at our ability to manage that uh as well as the associated

[4:13:10] resources required to do so. Um but again if that's an interest of the

[4:13:14] council uh then that would be a next step for us.

[4:13:16] » So you're saying 60 would be if we add the county portion plus the city portion

[4:13:20] plus embaradero that's 60 >> correct. Okay. That was my assumption as

[4:13:25] to what you were suggesting. if that's incorrect. And

[4:13:28] » yeah, no, so you're saying the county is approximately another 20.

[4:13:32] » I think it's 13 to >> Okay. Okay. There.

[4:13:36] » It's okay. >> It's in the ballpark. Thank you for

[4:13:39] that. Um, as we look for additional spots for permit parking, um, I have had

[4:13:46] the audacity to suggest that maybe the curb alongside the practice range of the

[4:13:52] golf course might work because there are no businesses abudding it. there's no

[4:13:58] customers who walk up and have to walk past and this and that and I have been

[4:14:01] told that that's a sacred cow in this city and it's a good thing I'm not

[4:14:04] running for re-election because I just said it. Um and sometimes it takes that

[4:14:08] kind of freedom to say those things and so I just said it maybe we ought to be

[4:14:12] considering embarcadero alongside the golf course. Um, I was also surprised by

[4:14:18] the six-month timeline for implementation, and it may be that we've

[4:14:21] said so many things at the most recent meeting, and I missed it, but um, I I

[4:14:26] echo Council Member Lowing's concern about that timeline for implementation,

[4:14:31] hoping it does not take until March to start this. Um, and with regard to pilot

[4:14:36] 2 and our concerns about um about that, we are deliberately trying to reduce the

[4:14:42] density of OSVs on those impacted streets by half by saying you may only

[4:14:47] be on one side, whereas right now you might be on both sides. We are reducing

[4:14:52] that density by half. And it's density that's the issue. It's not the lone RSV,

[4:14:57] the one OSV one, two, three, right? Unless you're objectly prejudiced

[4:15:01] against these people, you don't mind if there's one or two on your street, it's

[4:15:05] the it's the density. And so what we're trying to do is reduce the density on

[4:15:09] these impacted streets. And we will be paying attention to spillover and

[4:15:13] figuring out what to do about it once we see where that's happening. Um so that's

[4:15:19] it for me in terms of clarification and questions that I wanted to ask at the

[4:15:22] front end. Thank you. >> All right. Well, I think uh I'm going to

[4:15:27] give the rest of us a chance to ask some questions, make a a few comments like

[4:15:31] like has gone before here. Um but then I want to get to all of you who are good

[4:15:37] enough to spend your time with us this evening and and hear public comment and

[4:15:40] then we'll come back and people can talk for however long it takes. Um, so I I

[4:15:46] did just want to ask um I did want to just uh follow up myself

[4:15:51] and first of all um I want to thank uh the ad hoc because I know you've spent a

[4:15:56] tremendous amount of time. I want to thank staff that spend a tremendous

[4:16:00] amount of time on this. Um, I agree this is probably the most intractable problem

[4:16:05] I've seen since I've been on uh council and uh it's something that we need to

[4:16:09] spend a lot of time and attention because obviously there is a lot of

[4:16:13] frustration um out there and uh but I I appreciate

[4:16:17] that the time you've spent and just wanted to let you know that. Um

[4:16:26] so I was intrigued. I I learned something tonight from council member

[4:16:30] Rectal. Um because we had understood that RVs were not allowed in residential

[4:16:37] areas, but there are these areas that are not technically residential because

[4:16:40] I was wondering why I kept hearing about them in front of residences. So, I do

[4:16:44] agree that finding a way to make that uniform is something um that we should

[4:16:50] work on. Um, we've talked the proposal also talks about not having them across

[4:16:55] from parks, not near corners or driveways. So, if we were to accomplish

[4:17:00] all of that, we really are talking about those uh primaril or primarily we're

[4:17:04] talking about those in front of businesses and around there. And my my

[4:17:09] question, so as as council member Lowing

[4:17:14] mentioned, there are variety of different reasons that people live in

[4:17:17] RVs. um if some RV dwellers are Palton who've fallen into homelessness for a

[4:17:25] variety of reasons and they're what I would consider the otherwise unhoused.

[4:17:29] In other words, other than the RVs, they would be unhoused. Um other RV dwellers

[4:17:34] are people who have a primary residence elsewhere and come here to work so that

[4:17:38] their RV is like a second home. And my question is, do we have a sense of sort

[4:17:45] of that split? what I would call the otherwise unhoused and those for whom

[4:17:49] this is a second home.

[4:17:57] » Uh thank you, mayor. I I don't believe we have that level of detail. Um we we

[4:18:03] just don't. I'm sorry. Because that to me is they're they're two slightly

[4:18:08] different problems we're trying to solve for. And so I'm wondering how much

[4:18:13] impact there would be by the respective solutions to those um because

[4:18:20] the um

[4:18:24] if you're an employer and you're employing people who drive in here to

[4:18:28] work and you don't pay them enough to live in a and live near here, then it

[4:18:34] would be interesting to have a conversation with them about providing

[4:18:37] parking spots on their property or paying into to a housing fund where

[4:18:41] there were housing vouchers or just other creative things to address that if

[4:18:45] we could figure out which RVs they were. So I guess my second question to staff

[4:18:50] would be if we don't know now, can you imagine a way that we could go and

[4:18:56] figure out figure that out shy of the permit parking program?

[4:19:02] I do suspect mayor that as has been described there is really a spectrum and

[4:19:08] even that maybe oversimplifying the the range of circumstances that we have uh

[4:19:15] and as such you know I think that the the best way to do what you're

[4:19:20] requesting would be to do some sort of survey of that and I don't know that we

[4:19:25] have the ability to do that in a way that's reliable other than you know

[4:19:29] again anecdotally that I think we we have all seen that

[4:19:34] there are apparently uh vehicles uh and and

[4:19:40] people that appear to fall into that category. So I suspect it would be more

[4:19:45] anecdotal than than being able to quantify it with any reliability.

[4:19:50] » Yeah. No, I appreciate that. It's just if we could discern um I think different

[4:19:55] legal standards apply to them too because they wouldn't um otherwise be

[4:19:59] unhoused or unsheltered. Um there it's just a way to uh deal separately with

[4:20:08] the the problem. So it's something that I would uh suggest we look a little more

[4:20:13] into. So those were a couple of questions. Um

[4:20:21] and uh I think I will stop with that those questions. I I just want to

[4:20:26] observe that if we it's different because we're when we

[4:20:30] deal with those who are otherwise unhoused, if they're separated from

[4:20:33] their vehicles, they could end up in parks, downtown areas, and parking

[4:20:37] garages. That is not a good solution. So, it's just different ramifications of

[4:20:41] our actions depending on the reasons that they're in the RVs in the first

[4:20:44] place. Yes. >> Excuse me, mayor. I just I I do have a

[4:20:48] little bit of context I can provide for you. Um our out our outreach team has

[4:20:53] tried to get that level of detail, you know, knocking on uh the doors of RVs

[4:20:57] and developing relationships with folks, but they've not been able to get get

[4:21:01] that. So we we have tried. All right. Um

[4:21:09] » he already spoke. >> Okay. Council member Lou,

[4:21:15] » thank you. just uh a few preliminary questions and I'll try to keep my time

[4:21:19] brief uh at this stage. Um so initially we were really uh looking at San

[4:21:25] Francisco and some of what they were doing with their permit uh program. I

[4:21:30] understand our permit program is quite different, but I'm wondering if you have

[4:21:32] any color uh or any anecdotes uh or data that we might not be able to easily get

[4:21:39] on just reading the local news about how the San Francisco permit program uh may

[4:21:44] be different or may be going. >> Yeah. Um I I can try to answer that at

[4:21:51] least at a high level. Um I I mean I guess

[4:21:55] I will start by um you know not trying to avoid the question but just

[4:21:58] cautioning that sort of different different

[4:22:01] uh factors influence how programs are influenced implemented in different

[4:22:05] jurisdictions. Um the San Francisco program it is um a citywide permit

[4:22:12] program for OSVs. Um it suspends issuance of new permits. um you know if

[4:22:19] you cannot prove that you resided in a vehicle in San Francisco after a certain

[4:22:24] date um you know so that but that you know that suspension is coupled with uh

[4:22:29] you know significant connections to services uh you know buyback program you

[4:22:34] know other benefits that are intended to help people who are living on the

[4:22:38] streets um in vehicles get out of vehicles um you know so um

[4:22:45] you know I think it's quite an impressive program I One thing to keep

[4:22:49] in mind is San Francisco has a unique advantage and that that it's both a city

[4:22:54] and a county. So that makes it um you know there's less coordination with

[4:23:00] other agencies as far as directing resources to do like do do that. So you

[4:23:04] know it the city obviously has to work with Santa Clara County and anything

[4:23:09] that we're doing in the provision of social services.

[4:23:12] » Okay. Thank you. I think a sort of related question in trying to get to the

[4:23:16] mayor's point about um sort of serving the most need and uh trying to like

[4:23:23] clarify where the different problem uh or like sources of need are. Um, in the

[4:23:31] second pilot, did we consider having some elements of the first pilot, such

[4:23:36] as some uh permit or uh optin to accept housing? Um, that we have in the first

[4:23:45] pilot, but not the second pilot, because that seems like that could address some

[4:23:48] of those points that the mayor was making.

[4:23:51] » Not at this point. Uh at this point the second pilot's really simply a parking

[4:23:57] regulation and to uh add elements of a permit does then also require a level of

[4:24:06] uh screening and then management of how that screening would work. Uh so again

[4:24:13] depending on the direction council would like to provide uh we could certainly

[4:24:19] build that out. um but would want to uh then come back to council in terms of

[4:24:25] the resources required and and our ability to manage it. I um I would like

[4:24:30] to go back to uh council member Lith's question related to the management of

[4:24:34] the permit pilot to also point out that in that uh in that program we are

[4:24:42] expecting to need to bring on uh nonprofit partners similar to what we've

[4:24:46] done with our other uh uh homeless outreach and uh safe parking programs.

[4:24:52] And so we need to uh learn their capacity as well to be able to assist us

[4:24:59] uh with any of these programs. Okay. I think I uh uh with a little bit

[4:25:06] of time left have a last question about just uh the level of demand um and the

[4:25:13] sort of finality of the pilot streets. Uh it seems like the pilot streets have

[4:25:17] capacity for 116 or 125 uh spaces from the staff report. It seems like there

[4:25:24] are around 37 maybe 60 uh permit spaces available. Um, so it seems like there's

[4:25:33] still some extra capacity even if we only have one side and if we have 37 or

[4:25:39] 60 uh uh permitted spots compared to say a baseline of 130 odd RVs. Uh if we

[4:25:48] think that is the right baseline. Um, does that suggest that there's room to

[4:25:54] trim down or uh reduce the parking in front of

[4:25:59] residences from this list of second pilot streets or do we just have to have

[4:26:05] some buffer for the parking to work out math-wise? Like how does how do we think

[4:26:09] about those numbers? Well, first um in terms of just how to think about those

[4:26:14] numbers, it's really as estimates and and to a large extent ballpark estimates

[4:26:20] and and so from a staff perspective, we've been working within that ballpark

[4:26:26] and and I think it would be fair to uh also just acknowledge one of the big

[4:26:31] variables is uh that on the alternating side prohibitions that there are there's

[4:26:37] demand for other vehicles to park there as well. And so we would expect that

[4:26:42] there will be others in addition to OSV uh dwellers that will be using that

[4:26:48] parking. So again that that introduced just another variable uh for

[4:26:52] consideration and in how this ultimately will play out.

[4:26:57] » Okay. >> And you you made a reference to

[4:26:59] residential areas and I'm not sure I I followed uh how that connected. Oh. Uh

[4:27:04] just responding to public comments about which uh uh streets in the second pilot

[4:27:10] maybe should be prioritized or should not be prioritized. Um

[4:27:13] » as being residential or close enough to uh yeah, I I would just

[4:27:20] uh acknowledge and agree that the current

[4:27:25] um prohibition for overnight uh OSV parking in residential areas is complex

[4:27:31] in its definition. So through this work, it has brought to light the value in

[4:27:35] simplifying that and making it uh uh more easily understood both by the

[4:27:40] public and to administer. Thank you, >> Vice Mayor Stone.

[4:27:46] » Thank you, Madame Mayor, and big thanks to the OSV ad hoc for all the work that

[4:27:50] you've been that you've been doing. I know that's a that's a a big lift on a

[4:27:54] really challenging issue. Few few questions for for staff. Has have you

[4:28:00] prepared a a map with the proposed impacted streets in the in the in the

[4:28:07] pilot? How we how we labeling this [snorts] in

[4:28:12] the second? Yeah, in the in the second pilot because

[4:28:16] I mean we have a we have a list of the streets. I would find it really

[4:28:20] beneficial to actually be able to see a map of the city of those portions

[4:28:25] highlighted because my big concern and we've been hearing um a a frustration

[4:28:31] from the community is that these these streets are being concentrated mostly in

[4:28:37] South PaloAlto and a general frustration amongst many

[4:28:42] in in South PaloAlto. I'm a South Palton my myself u that so oftent times the the

[4:28:50] the burden of so many of these kind of city programs has has shifted over

[4:28:55] towards South PaloAlto and I I understand some some kind of maybe

[4:29:00] limitations given for staff given prior council direction regarding trying to um

[4:29:07] avoid residential streets and I know there is more of that in in North Palto

[4:29:12] themselves so I can understand some of that But do we have kind of a visual

[4:29:15] representation of of that? And the staff also, do you agree or disagree about

[4:29:21] kind of the concentration of where these streets are?

[4:29:24] » Well, at this point, I believe that hasn't been prepared, but it really

[4:29:28] relatively easily can be prepared at a citywide level. I to be frank, the work

[4:29:33] has been done at a much more granular level. So, um, it's just really

[4:29:40] putting that together with a broader uh view. Uh as to the concern, I think once

[4:29:47] again it does relate to some ways the the application of this residential non

[4:29:55] or not uh definition in the current code and the limited uh way that that's

[4:30:01] defined by zoning uh as was pointed out areas that do not have the uh more

[4:30:08] straightforward residential zoning which I think does tend to

[4:30:13] uh exist in southern parts of town makes it uh less likely that that has been

[4:30:20] implemented over time. So that's another uh cleanup that could be done as part of

[4:30:24] our next steps. Yeah. And I think it would be helpful to be able to have

[4:30:28] asurances to know that it hasn't just been well it's it's more less

[4:30:32] challenging maybe in South Palto to find these streets. Um, but we've still done

[4:30:37] our due diligence to identify kind of in a more equitable approach across the

[4:30:42] city on where we are where we're identifying these streets.

[4:30:47] » If if I may, Vice Mayor, um, one of the ways that we ended up with these streets

[4:30:52] was through the policy and services back in August of last year and then the

[4:30:57] October meeting. And these were the impacted streets that we started to uh

[4:31:03] do the phase one portion of the phased approach on. So I think we just

[4:31:08] naturally moved to phase two on the streets we'd already started um

[4:31:14] making interventions on. >> Okay. So still I guess not getting the

[4:31:21] types of insuranceances of kind of where the these are. I I again I understand

[4:31:25] the limitations here. Um, another qu So, another question because this has come

[4:31:31] up several times. I know this has been a common theme in prior council

[4:31:35] discussions is trying to cap these permits at a a particular point in time

[4:31:42] count or whatever legal way that we are able to to do that under current state

[4:31:48] law. I mean, what do we need in order to in order to be able to restrict OSV

[4:31:53] parking to only being permitted based on again kind of some type of of count?

[4:32:03] » Yeah. So, I I mean I do think that so there there is is the San Francisco

[4:32:08] example which has so far been successful. I I wouldn't say that

[4:32:11] there's, you know, sort of definitive law on that one way or the other. Uh but

[4:32:17] but you could definitely point to that example. I I'd say the one thing um that

[4:32:23] I you know I would point to that in cities that have been you know

[4:32:26] successful in implementing these programs is they do have um you know

[4:32:31] support um and resources made available to transition uh people out of OSVs. So

[4:32:38] it doesn't uh you know you're it looks like you're trying to solve the problem

[4:32:43] rather than than target people.

[4:32:49] Okay. I mean,

[4:32:55] okay. I guess helpful moving moving forward to really kind of better

[4:32:59] understand. I I mean, I know there's no direct

[4:33:03] road map to be able to get there because every community is different. But I I

[4:33:07] guess at this point I would have hoped for some more kind of developed um maybe

[4:33:14] theory and how we kind of how we achieve that. I I think a pilot is a good place

[4:33:19] to start. Um I'm sorry I'm going now off of off of questions so I will hold up

[4:33:24] until later. Thank you may >> Yeah. And and I would just, you know,

[4:33:27] point out that that's something that that if if we got direction either from

[4:33:31] the ad hoc committee or council to move in that direction, we would look at much

[4:33:35] more more carefully. Um but that's those are just general observations that I

[4:33:39] have now. >> Council member Bert.

[4:33:45] Um, so maybe I missed it, but I couldn't find the staff report. If um, so we have

[4:33:52] uh, currently 22 spots at Gang, 37 in the pilot, and maybe up to 50. Um, how

[4:34:00] many uh, approximately how many RV spots would be enabled by the um, the second

[4:34:10] half of the of the pilot? Um that's the alternating streets, sides of the

[4:34:15] street. >> Uh Council Member Bert, uh this the

[4:34:20] second part of the pilot would actually disallow

[4:34:25] uh approximately half of the current spaces. So depending on the time of

[4:34:29] year, I I believe one half of the year it would be

[4:34:33] there'd be room if no one else was parking and only RVs were parking, there

[4:34:37] would be room for 116, I believe, is the the low number.

[4:34:43] » Okay. Um that's an important number. So, we've

[4:34:48] got 116 plus uh somewhere between

[4:34:54] uh 59 and 70 because I count the king as as accommodating RVs. Um and then

[4:35:03] um so that that takes us up, you know, to a pretty high number uh higher than

[4:35:10] what we have in RVs in our community today.

[4:35:14] And um so I I think that's an important reference point. Um

[4:35:19] the outreach that we had I I I read that we there was a focus group and um and I

[4:35:26] think that was Mountain View and Palo Alto um folks in a maybe was a countyled

[4:35:33] focus group.

[4:35:36] » Uh thank you Council Member Bert. Um I believe you're referring to there there

[4:35:40] was a regional convening led by uh Supervisor Abbe Koga and that involved

[4:35:47] uh any any city that wanted to participate. There were also some

[4:35:51] members of the business community there. >> No, that's not what I'm referring to.

[4:35:54] I'm referring to I'm trying to cite where I I read it. Uh but I thought I

[4:35:59] read that there was a focus group that um looked at uh a group of uh very low

[4:36:06] income RV dwellers and uh their circumstances. Um it was it wasn't a

[4:36:12] statistical sampling but a focus group. Uh I'll have to try to figure out where

[4:36:17] I read that. Well, there was a if I may, I I don't recall this being in the staff

[4:36:21] report, but I I do recall as part of the county community plan to

[4:36:27] end homelessness, there was a focus group in North County with RV dwellers.

[4:36:32] It was held at King Road. Um yeah, maybe

[4:36:37] » that's what I'm referring to. Yeah, it was in a previous report. Um but uh we

[4:36:42] don't have this long into this process we don't have any other data. Is that

[4:36:47] right? Because the focus group didn't seem representative. They were very

[4:36:51] important uh group I think because they were u uh really representative these

[4:36:57] that we want to focus on helping the most um uh families with children in in

[4:37:04] our schools and who worked here and and very low income. Um, so I think it was

[4:37:08] an important focus group, but I'm I'm really uh mystified that we don't have

[4:37:14] better data after all this time and um we have this outreach that's going on

[4:37:20] and and somehow it's not resulting in data collection. Um, and has there been

[4:37:27] a an outreach meeting with the affected

[4:37:31] business community?

[4:37:36] not since the uh release of the specifics of the pilot. Uh there was uh

[4:37:42] outreach more in general on the topic uh really over the course of the last few

[4:37:47] months. >> There was outreach in what way?

[4:37:51] » We held a workshop that uh was a primary community workshop along with uh the

[4:37:58] ongoing uh individual stakeholder uh discussions that have happened. And then

[4:38:05] out of the anticipated participation in the uh the permitted pilot and the

[4:38:11] alternating streets pilot, do we have any sense of what portion of the RV

[4:38:17] dwellers will participate in either of those because it's can't force them to.

[4:38:24] » Thank you, Council Member Bert. It's been um as I'm sure you appreciate

[4:38:28] really difficult to speak about an item with members of the public before the

[4:38:33] item had come before council. So we we have asked our outreach team and our

[4:38:38] service providers um in a more broad way how how their clients would feel about

[4:38:44] something like this and whether they would participate. And we used that

[4:38:47] feedback and brought that feedback back to the ad hoc to help develop what is

[4:38:51] before you today. And that feedback was what?

[4:39:01] » Uh, thank you, council member. I I don't have all of that in front of me right

[4:39:05] now, but questions like what what fee amount would people be okay with? What

[4:39:10] minimum amenities would people be willing to accept a good neighbor

[4:39:15] agreement? Um, >> things like that.

[4:39:18] » Okay, so that's different threshold levels. I'm kind of looking for did we

[4:39:22] get a a strong interest in participating

[4:39:28] » as uh Miss Mcdana pointed out this is with the service providers not with the

[4:39:33] potential uh permites as would be in the case here. Uh so we at this point really

[4:39:40] we're looking to the pilot as a way for us to assess that. uh this this

[4:39:45] represents the best combination of elements that uh uh based on the

[4:39:52] feedback we received felt that could be viable and really needs to be tested in

[4:39:57] real life. Okay. Um and the real life test is important. I I I'm nervous about

[4:40:04] spending so much money without having um a stronger sense of whether we're going

[4:40:09] to have an uptake. Uh I'm hopeful we will. Um, okay. Uh,

[4:40:16] I I'll leave it at that. Uh, I have some other questions and certainly many

[4:40:20] comments. Council member Lowing,

[4:40:26] your light was back on. Are you Are you good? Okay. Are you good? Well, for now,

[4:40:31] yes. Okay. Council member Lith, >> could I just speak to Council Member

[4:40:36] Bert's question because I did take extensive notes in these meetings and um

[4:40:40] just searching my notes quickly. What I'm seeing is what made the pilot um

[4:40:46] more or less attractive was the extent to which there would be some kind of

[4:40:50] service for sewage uh pumpout that would be much more attractive uh to RV

[4:40:56] dwellers. And um that said um people did desire to participate in the pilot

[4:41:02] because the alternative is certainly not better. Um so it you know we we felt we

[4:41:08] had enough green light to you know that we would have uptake. Um but it is not

[4:41:14] to say that it's seen as you know a panacea.

[4:41:21] Okay. All right. So, with that, um, let's turn to public comment. Um, we

[4:41:30] have gotten, as Council Member Lowing said, a lot of emails. Uh, we appreciate

[4:41:35] those. It does help us think it through, as will your oral comments tonight. Uh,

[4:41:40] we have a lot of them, and we will sit here and listen to all of them. Um,

[4:41:46] one of the things that I would ask is just so that we can hear all the

[4:41:51] perspectives is that there just aren't any audible responses to them. No

[4:41:55] clapping, you know, cheering, any of that kind of thing. We'll just uh listen

[4:41:59] to everybody. Um, and um, with respect to um, well, actually, so, madam clerk,

[4:42:07] how are we doing on the numbers? >> We have 49 individual speakers and three

[4:42:13] group speakers. Okay. All right. I think that necessitates uh for each of the

[4:42:18] three groups, we will have five minutes each and for each of the individuals

[4:42:22] that will be one minute each. And um the clerk will put up a list of your names.

[4:42:28] Many of you have been through this many times and many of you have not. Um and

[4:42:32] she'll call out your name and then the name of the following speaker so you can

[4:42:36] be ready to approach the uh lectern. All right. Thank you. Our

[4:43:05] first speaker is Barry K.

[4:43:24] Good evening. I'm Barry Kates. I'm representing a large and growing number

[4:43:30] of the roughly 400 households that comprise the Ventura Neighborhood

[4:43:35] Association. It's true that we are not one of the

[4:43:39] postcard neighborhoods of PaloAlto. Our streets are more likely to be named

[4:43:43] after Mexican saints Margarita Fernando than English poets Cridge Tennyson.

[4:43:52] But we are proud of the racially, ethnically, and economically diverse

[4:43:57] community that we have built and we want to see it grow and flourish. Can I just

[4:44:01] ask, do any of you live in the Ventura neighborhood?

[4:44:06] I thought so because if you did, this stupid proposal would never have gotten

[4:44:10] out the front door.

[4:44:14] » Regarding the OSV issue, I believe that there has been a misunderstanding.

[4:44:20] For the better part of a decade, Venturans have been pleading with the

[4:44:23] city council to address the health, sanitation, safety, traffic, and

[4:44:28] livability issues associated with long-term OSV parking in our

[4:44:33] neighborhood. To be clear, we were asking you to

[4:44:37] remedy the situation, not to reinforce it.

[4:44:42] I'm not sure how this m miscommunication occurred since you have over the years

[4:44:47] received hundreds, probably thousands of letters, emails, text messages,

[4:44:53] telephone calls asking for your intervention.

[4:44:57] Like our friends in the equally underserved and overlooked East Meadow

[4:45:01] neighborhood, we are shocked, offended, and outraged by the proposed phase

[4:45:07] three. It's as if you have not heard one word of what we've been saying. Worse,

[4:45:12] you seem deliberately to have ignored and overruled it.

[4:45:18] For years, we have been providing you with documentation of the damage to our

[4:45:22] creeks, our pedestrian pathways, our bicycle routes, our drinking water, our

[4:45:27] homes, and our businesses, and have listed the specific streets

[4:45:32] where the blight is most acute. You have responded by taking that list and making

[4:45:38] those very streets the centerpiece of your proposal.

[4:45:42] Park Boulevard, the sole pedestrian corridor between Ventura and the

[4:45:46] California uh Avenue Commercial District.

[4:45:50] Olive and Ash, where residents have been threatened by OSV landlords and women

[4:45:55] are unwilling to leave their homes at night. Your solution? Move them to the

[4:46:00] other side of the street every 6 months. Are you kidding? Are you serious? Are

[4:46:06] you out of your minds? Joe Simidian, who I liked and respected,

[4:46:12] like to used to say, "Don't come to us with problems, come to us with

[4:46:17] solutions." With all due respect, I think Joe had it

[4:46:21] backwards. It is our responsibility as citizens to petition government for the

[4:46:26] redress of grievances. It is your responsibility to resolve them.

[4:46:32] Nevertheless, since you are apparently committed to long-term OSV parking on

[4:46:36] our residential streets, I would like to offer a constructive counter proposal.

[4:46:42] Invite them into your own damn neighborhoods.

[4:46:48] » I'm sorry, we can't do that. We can't get up. We can't have applause. We'll

[4:46:53] have to suspend. So, okay. I need no more applause. Thank you. All right.

[4:46:57] Move to the next speaker. Our next speaker is Rand T.

[4:47:04] Oh man, I've got some data for you. >> Okay, so I'm primarily here um

[4:47:11] representing five of 15 um second homers. Um I'm a 1.5 homer myself. Um my

[4:47:18] RV is my starter home. Um which I purchased because there were extensive

[4:47:23] layoffs at my company and I didn't know if I was going to want to put a down

[4:47:27] payment on an apartment. And so, uh, because I've saved so much on money on

[4:47:32] rent, I've purchased a property in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and I'm about

[4:47:36] three to five years away from building a house of my own. Um,

[4:47:41] basically, all right. Well, amendment E is going to

[4:47:46] backfire spectacularly because

[4:47:51] basically we're just going to all condense onto one side of the street,

[4:47:55] bumperto-bumper. The street swinging programs have been

[4:48:00] very good at eliminating the methheads with their piles of trash and and the

[4:48:05] people who don't actually work in the area. And that has reduced the East

[4:48:10] Meadow population to about 45 RVs. Um I counted while I was passing out flyers

[4:48:17] about this meeting. Um which is about half of the 95 RVs there were last year.

[4:48:24] And by implementing E, you're going to have a solid wall of RVs all around the

[4:48:30] circle again. Not just as it was in a year ago, but also in front of the

[4:48:37] housing, uh, which we don't like to park in front

[4:48:40] of housing because it's it's weird. But yeah, but we will have to take that

[4:48:46] space because we can't park on the other side of the street. And we're going to

[4:48:50] move all of our cars to the side that we can't park on. So, we're going to be

[4:48:54] constantly crossing the street with our groceries and everything that we're

[4:48:57] going to bring back and our laundry from the laundry mats causing more traffic.

[4:49:02] But, okay. So, about two homers or 1.5 homers like myself, I am here to work

[4:49:12] and I cannot if I did rent an apartment, I'd be living paycheck to paycheck. I'd

[4:49:18] have no retirement savings or a way to get on the property ladder.

[4:49:23] But if you were to require my employer who has a lot of parking lot acorage um

[4:49:32] to give me a spot, I would be parking behind my workplace because I also just

[4:49:38] want to bike to work and that that's an ideal commute. Don't even make it

[4:49:42] constant requirement. Just for the working weekdays or any days I'm

[4:49:47] required to be there, I can park on company property. It makes sense.

[4:49:52] Um yeah, it's there's no point in forcing everybody to one side of the

[4:49:57] street because um well density is the issue here and that is exactly what

[4:50:03] you'll be increasing is density. Now, there there are actual parking

[4:50:08] spaces on East Meadow Circle, which I haven't seen for a long time. And I'd

[4:50:12] like to keep it that way, honestly. And I'm sure the people who live on East

[4:50:17] Meadow Circle don't want a giant wall of RVs in front of their houses where

[4:50:22] usually there is just cars, except for one RV currently. But um yeah, basically

[4:50:29] amendment E is going to backfire spectacularly and put us right back

[4:50:33] where we were before street sweeping, which um I mean not right back because

[4:50:37] we'll still not have the methheads. So that's nice, but no, it's it's not going

[4:50:43] to work is the problem. And the increase of of traffic concerns with people

[4:50:50] crossing the street con constantly will be just an absolute nightmare.

[4:50:56] Now, there was a recent incident with um one of the concerned business members on

[4:51:03] East Meadow Circle um who has a personal hobby of writing down all of our license

[4:51:10] plates and then submitting it to the Palo Alto Police Department so we can

[4:51:14] move around in a circle and park where we were before. And he was followed by

[4:51:19] one of our residents to a local park and where he said somebody would eventually

[4:51:24] punch him in the face if he kept doing that sort of thing, which we as the AR

[4:51:29] RV community took very seriously and disciplined internally

[4:51:34] this person and made it very clear to him that that kind of threatening

[4:51:38] behavior is not welcome as RVers and especially not in the housing community.

[4:51:45] But he does need time. The the man walking around

[4:51:50] writing down people's license plates is threatening every single one of us on

[4:51:55] the circle. Every time he does this, he's wasting Palo Alto resources,

[4:52:01] sending the cops out to put all these pieces of paper out, and then nothing

[4:52:06] happens. It's his hobby. He's told me it's his hobby and that he doesn't want

[4:52:11] the children of there to attend PaloAlto Public Schools. So, what is the

[4:52:17] consequence for his threats against us? >> Your time is up. Our next speaker is

[4:52:24] Jason R.

[4:52:35] All right. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Uh, I'm a

[4:52:39] Ventura resident. Uh, as is my wife. Uh, so I sent a much more detailed version

[4:52:46] of what I'm going to say in email yesterday, so you'll have that data. Um,

[4:52:51] I'm going to focus on four points. So, one is a deeper dive on the evidence

[4:52:56] that we already have. Uh, the second is the proposed pilots's experimental

[4:53:01] design. Uh the third is the cost and finally the city system these system

[4:53:07] that these decisions are going to inhabit.

[4:53:11] So first the evidence. So there's there's a really interesting study by

[4:53:16] Bob Marinaro um and if you if you take a look at that

[4:53:20] data it goes from October 2025 to mid July shows OSV counts going from 220 to

[4:53:27] 131 which is 40% reduction. I know the staff has another number. it's 191 down

[4:53:34] to 133 if I recall correctly. Um but then it's flat. So your intervention and

[4:53:40] now a ste a steady state baseline. Um so basically it looks like phase one's

[4:53:46] reduction has done what it's going to do. So that's one key piece. But the

[4:53:51] deeper piece is that what's really changing now is vehicle location, not

[4:53:56] how many. So uh the speculative spillage is very much in that data. So concretely

[4:54:02] the redistribution uh in Ventura is seen declining from 20

[4:54:08] to 14 overall. So an overall decline but if you aggregate by geography so you

[4:54:15] take Park Sheridan and Lambert that's going from 13 to two uh whereas Ash

[4:54:22] portage olive and acacia rose from 6 to 10 peaking at 15. So that's going from

[4:54:29] 30% of the area total to 71% of the area total. So it's pretty cool uh to see

[4:54:36] that. So yeah, very clear that there is going to be spillage when when something

[4:54:41] happens vehicles go elsewhere. So number two is the experimental design

[4:54:47] and basically there are three key problems I'll focus on. First is uh what

[4:54:53] is exactly the benchmark. So we talked about the success criterion criterion

[4:54:59] being the uh lower number of OSVs but are we taking 220 as a benchmark 191

[4:55:07] there was also a 181 in there. So what exactly are we starting with and what is

[4:55:12] success? Do we get to the 102 the 2023 point in time or where exactly are we?

[4:55:21] Problem two. Oh. Uh, we also that's important because we don't want to book

[4:55:26] phase one success as a success for the pilot. So, we have to keep those

[4:55:32] separate. Causal attribution is also really going

[4:55:37] to be a challenge for you when you're running two experiments at the same

[4:55:40] time. So, you've got two treatments, staggered

[4:55:45] starts, no comparison streets. Permit holders are essentially the well-

[4:55:50] behaved subset. So, it's the RV dwellers who will actually do a permit and go

[4:55:56] through that process. Um, a six-month flip. So, there's no

[4:56:03] replication and it's inseparable from season, construction, school, and

[4:56:07] traffic patterns and so on. And then problem three is that there's no

[4:56:11] published protocol. So there's no hypothesis, no comparison

[4:56:16] segments, no thresholds. Success is currently defined as business feedback,

[4:56:21] although uh I I know that it was stated as uh the number of OSVs.

[4:56:28] So I I really think that before committing 824,000 plus annual

[4:56:33] maintenance fees on which are going to likely rise, uh that the experiment

[4:56:38] experimental design should be really considered deeply.

[4:56:43] Third is the cost. I think we've already heard that spending buy is relocation

[4:56:47] not reduction. Uh and essentially I was going to reference Berkeley's buyback

[4:56:53] rate but I am about to run out of time. So fourth is the system. PaloAlto really

[4:56:58] needs a systems approach rather than peace meal approval. So projects along

[4:57:02] projects along El Camino have been approved with parking reductions

[4:57:06] waiverss and builder remedy density that assumed on street parking. So, I pulled

[4:57:10] up 3001 El Camino. Uh, and basically it says the proposed parking supply of 103

[4:57:16] spaces is lower than both the city requirement of 198 uh spaces and

[4:57:21] estimated parking of 128. That's the first one I pulled up so I didn't have

[4:57:25] to look any further. And then we have the bike lanes which further remove

[4:57:29] parking. On top of that, this proposal is going to impact parking. So, you've

[4:57:33] got three things to account for. Uh, so I'm going to request

[4:57:37] » Your time is up. >> Thank you. So just a request addressing

[4:57:40] those. Thank you so much. >> Our next speaker is Winter Deep.

[4:57:52] » Well, this is very hard. It's not surprising that it's hard. It's hard all

[4:57:58] over the country. Zillions of cities are dealing with something that approximates

[4:58:03] this. This is as you know systemic income equality in a very pure form and

[4:58:11] I do not envy you. I want to thank the ad hoc for their time and their work on

[4:58:18] this. It's a work in progress. I appreciate that.

[4:58:24] I couldn't help but think and it's so ironic that Buen a Vista was in here

[4:58:29] tonight. subject of Buen a Vista and how we saved Buen a Vista. It took a a lot

[4:58:36] of thinking, a lot of time. It took investment. The investment was okay. I

[4:58:41] want to remind you everyone that a a below market rate unit today costs

[4:58:48] around $1 million per unit. So when I hear the costs here,

[4:58:55] » your time is >> I don't know exactly if they're right or

[4:58:58] wrong, but I do know they're not it's not astronomical. And one last thing,

[4:59:04] Palo Alto, our a basic value is we take care of

[4:59:09] each other and the most vulnerable included. Thank you.

[4:59:14] » Our next speaker is Leanne L.

[4:59:24] Leanne. Oh.

[4:59:28] Oh. Was it Jean L.

[4:59:37] Moving to our next speaker, Anapu Anopi. Sorry, Anu Pab.

[4:59:47] » Hello. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. My name is Anupa.

[4:59:52] I'm living here in Palo Alto for the last 27 years. But it seems like

[4:59:56] yesterday that council member Rectal and Council Member Lavi were I working

[5:00:01] together on the housing element working group. Remember that we came up with,

[5:00:07] you know, lots of meetings, lots of discussions and came up with suitable

[5:00:11] sites for over 8,000 additional units of housing in PaloAlto.

[5:00:17] And throughout those meetings, I don't remember talking about RVs in this kind

[5:00:22] of scale. We talked about a couple of church parking lots with, you know, RV

[5:00:26] uh parking, but this this seems to have come out very suddenly, this this flood

[5:00:32] of RVs that we want to bring into Palo Alto.

[5:00:36] Um so my neighbor and I, you know, we measured the distance from our front

[5:00:40] door to the street. It's 26 ft. It's about from this microphone to the city

[5:00:46] emblem. Your time is up. Okay. Our next speaker

[5:00:51] is Herb B followed by Andrew N.

[5:01:04] The location of uh oversized vehicle parking depends upon uh the definitions

[5:01:11] of where it is prohibited. Uh

[5:01:16] uh you know residentially zoned areas uh public facility zoned areas and the

[5:01:22] equivalent area on the other side of the street.

[5:01:25] uh and they may also include your commercial uh zoning that allows

[5:01:33] residential as well. But what it omits is the large number of plan community

[5:01:38] zones. So, in in addition to any other direction you give to staff, I believe

[5:01:45] you should uh have them uh bring back an amendment to the definition of

[5:01:49] residential to include [snorts] planned community zones

[5:01:54] uh where a majority of the development is residential

[5:01:59] and the equivalent and they would and the equivalent area on the other side of

[5:02:05] the street. >> Your time is up.

[5:02:09] Our next speaker is Andrew N, followed by John M.

[5:02:22] Good evening. Good evening. My name is Drew and I'm here on behalf of PHC where

[5:02:26] we provide healthcare and outreach services to people experiencing

[5:02:29] homelessness in Palo Alto. PHC supports the city manager's proposal because

[5:02:34] while it isn't perfect, it recognizes that we cannot solve homelessness by

[5:02:39] pushing people experiencing homelessness into another city. These RV dwellers are

[5:02:44] not outsiders, they are Peloa residents. They are our patients, our neighbors,

[5:02:48] and members of this community. And the increasingly hostile rhetoric toward

[5:02:53] toward them concerns us. From a health dis uh perspective, displacement

[5:02:58] matters. Constantly forcing people to move disrupts their connections to

[5:03:02] medical care, behavioral health services, outreach, and case management.

[5:03:07] RB dwellers did not create the homelessness crisis. They are a result

[5:03:11] of it. So, thank you for considering an alternative to a full ban. Please go

[5:03:16] further. Treat these individuals and residents to be served, not not problems

[5:03:20] to be removed. We can address legitimate neighborhood concerns without abanding

[5:03:24] dignity and compassion. our community is paying attention not just to the

[5:03:28] decision you make tonight but to whether every Palo Alto resident is treated as

[5:03:33] though they actually belong here. Thank you.

[5:03:35] » Our next speaker is John M, followed by Melinda M.

[5:03:40] » Hello Mayor, uh, Vice Mayor, Council, thank you so much for wrestling with

[5:03:44] this very difficult problem and I want to give due respect to the ad hoc

[5:03:48] committee and I could not disagree more with their recommendations. I'm sorry to

[5:03:52] say instead of um creating a solution around

[5:03:59] helping the homeless or helping disadvantaged persons in RVs.

[5:04:05] You're going to change the character of different neighborhoods. One of the

[5:04:08] tenants that you were charged with and that you've you've expressed before is

[5:04:12] that there has to be a citywide impact and a citywide solution. When I watched

[5:04:17] Mr. Rectal and Mr. Stone discuss changes to potential changes to compounds in

[5:04:22] Crescent Park after one billionaire built a school there and so on. There

[5:04:26] was selective enforcement. I have some sympathy for my friends in Ventura

[5:04:31] as I do for my neighbors in East Meadow Circle who bears the burden here. Um

[5:04:37] compassion has no limits. It's a tough problem and we respect this but it

[5:04:42] should be a business that >> the city follows. Thank you. Our next

[5:04:47] speaker is Melinda M, followed by Christian H.

[5:04:52] Uh, >> thank you. Um, I'm concerned as I've

[5:04:56] heard from some council members about the lack of data. Um, and I learned

[5:05:00] about the San Francisco, they have a large vehicle database. I just wonder

[5:05:06] with all of the vehicles that are here now, where did they come from?

[5:05:12] Did they come from Redwood City, which I've seen, and other in other places? I

[5:05:17] guess I have a couple of other points. Employers, as we heard one speaker,

[5:05:23] should provide parking for their employees on their lots instead of this

[5:05:29] being the responsibility of the city. I don't see Stamford here represented when

[5:05:35] we know in the past that a lot of the RVs on El Camino were people who were

[5:05:41] either contract workers, Stamford students or Stamford employees that were

[5:05:46] parking there. Where is their part in this? And I don't I'm opposed to both of

[5:05:52] these programs because I don't think they solve your time problem.

[5:05:58] Our next speaker is Christian H followed by Francis W.

[5:06:05] Good evening, council members. My name is Christian Hodm. I'm with Pacific

[5:06:08] American Group. We've owned a commercial property on 844 East Charleston for 30

[5:06:14] years. Uh we recently showed that building to a prospective tenant and

[5:06:18] received the following feedback from their agent. They loved the property but

[5:06:22] will not be submitting a proposal because of safety and health concerns

[5:06:26] associated with a near permanent line of RVs boarding bordering the property.

[5:06:31] Losing perspect uh prospective business along with the employment, economic

[5:06:35] activity, and tax revenue that business could have brought to the community is a

[5:06:39] major loss for the city of Palo Alto. We want to continue our long history of

[5:06:44] bringing good businesses to Palo Alto, but the RVs on the streets surrounding

[5:06:47] our property are making that increasingly difficult. Thank you.

[5:06:52] » Our next speaker is Francis W, followed by Danny W.

[5:06:57] » Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm here to comment on item 10,

[5:07:01] section E, which if adopted will restrict parking on East Meadow Circle.

[5:07:04] I'm a hardworking and law-abiding member of the Palo Alto community whose home is

[5:07:08] East Meadow Circle. I struggle with my mental health and I'm concerned that new

[5:07:11] parking restrictions could disrupt my life and displace me from my home.

[5:07:14] Furthermore, I know there are other hardworking community members who live

[5:07:17] on East Meadow Circle who would also be displaced by new parking restrictions.

[5:07:21] And I'm also concerned for their well-being. I humbly request that you

[5:07:24] decline to adopt new parking restrictions on East Meadow Circle.

[5:07:27] Thank you for your time and for the opportunity to speak tonight.

[5:07:30] » Our next speaker is Danny W, followed by Alejandro VC.

[5:07:36] » Good evening, council members. My name is Danny Whan. I work for the property

[5:07:40] manager at 844 East Charleston, whose rear employee parking lot is accessed

[5:07:43] from Fabian Way between San Antonio and East Charleston. Fabian Way was

[5:07:48] identified in the city's October 2025 staff report as one of the streets

[5:07:52] highly affected by oversized vehicles. Yet, it is excluded from the pilot

[5:07:55] program before you tonight. This isn't a hypothetical concern for us. On June

[5:07:59] 14th, someone living in an RV near our building trespassed onto our property

[5:08:04] and tampered with our fire suppression system to access water. We've since lost

[5:08:08] leasing prospects who cite the conditions on the street as a reason to

[5:08:11] look elsewhere. I've heard your comments tonight and I can respect the difficulty

[5:08:14] of solving the problem that the city faces. I too believe that a managed off-

[5:08:18] streetet parking solution is the best alternative and I encourage you to

[5:08:20] continue trying to arrange that solution. I am concerned, however, that

[5:08:24] the pilots would shuffle RVs around the city. I think any street emitted like

[5:08:28] Fabian Way will likely make be made worse off as displaced RV dwellers from

[5:08:33] the pilot areas will move to the streets left out of the program to find

[5:08:37] available space. >> Your time is up.

[5:08:39] » Thank you for your attention. >> Our next speaker is Alejandro VC,

[5:08:42] followed by Henry E.

[5:08:55] Alejandro BC.

[5:09:00] » Moving to Henry E.

[5:09:08] » Just as we failed to get the cameras out tonight, we're going to fail to get the

[5:09:13] oversized vehicles out. But they must go. They do not comport with the

[5:09:18] ambiencece of Palo Alto, nor do they provide adequate living spaces for their

[5:09:24] residents. You're pushing them into socially isolated places. I'm a

[5:09:28] sociologist. Social ties are important to mental and physical health. So

[5:09:33] therefore, to find a temporary solution, we're smoothing the places where they

[5:09:37] can have a community. So Stanford must play a role. As was mentioned by a

[5:09:41] previous speaker, they've been pushed out by Stanford. So I said we invite the

[5:09:46] VAVS to with seniors and families to Oak Creek apartments where there's parking

[5:09:52] spaces available and we invite them to the uh Margarite parking lot where

[5:09:58] Stanford can provide space and if necessary to the police new police area

[5:10:03] stations where there's parking spaces that are underutilized. We must solve

[5:10:07] the problem as a community. We can't

[5:10:11] » Your time is up. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is Anil H

[5:10:14] followed by David M.

[5:10:22] Anil H.

[5:10:26] Moving to our

[5:10:35] » Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is Unil Hosker and

[5:10:39] I've been a resident of Powalta for 12 years. I'm here tonight because I

[5:10:43] strongly oppose allowing RVs to be used as long-term residents on our public

[5:10:48] streets. Over the past years, I personally witnessed the problems that

[5:10:51] can cause come with long-term RV parking. And I have seen trash and

[5:10:56] personal belongings accumulate around vehicles, parking spaces occupied for

[5:11:02] extended periods and situations that raise serious concerns about sanitation,

[5:11:07] safety, and visibility and the overall quality of our neighborhoods. This is

[5:11:12] not simple simply a parking issue. It is a question of what standards we want for

[5:11:18] our city and how our public streets should be used. Our streets are shared

[5:11:22] public spaces. They were not designed to function as a permanent residential

[5:11:27] area. And I believe that there is an important question that every council

[5:11:31] member should be considering. If other cities are unwilling to accept long-term

[5:11:36] RV parking on their streets, why should Pala residents be accepted?

[5:11:41] » Our next speaker is David M. followed by Garrison B.

[5:11:58] I've already given each of you a letter. I've given it to the city attorney. I've

[5:12:03] given it to the uh city manager. I only have a minute.

[5:12:09] So, I'll be brief. I don't believe that the Brown Act

[5:12:14] notice was sufficient for pilot B. I believe that it would be prudent for

[5:12:22] council not to make any decision on pilot B at this hearing. You need to

[5:12:28] renotice as I've explained in the letter to inform the affected businesses of

[5:12:36] council's meeting on this subject. The amount of

[5:12:42] outreach to the business community rounds to zero. Nobody I've spoken with

[5:12:48] on the affected streets who are commercial businesses knew anything

[5:12:51] about this meeting. I was the first person to tell them. And Mr. Buren, Mr.

[5:12:57] Burrs, right there is who told me about it yesterday. The notice didn't say

[5:13:02] anything about pilot B. Thank you very much. And uh you're in the notice the

[5:13:08] cure and correct portion for 30 days. This was a demand letter on the Brown

[5:13:14] Act. You need you have 30 days to cure and correct and then you can have a

[5:13:18] decision. You can't make a decision today.

[5:13:20] » Our next speaker is Kirsten B followed by Candy T.

[5:13:26] » Good evening, council members. I know it's getting late. I'm going to try to

[5:13:29] be gusty in my response. Um I want to thank the ad hoc committee and the

[5:13:34] staff. You've worked very hard on this horribly difficult issue. Um I can see

[5:13:40] the passion and all sides here. I make two requests. Uh I'm a homeowner and a

[5:13:47] property owner in Peloto as well as a business owner. So I sort of have the

[5:13:51] hat-tick of reasons to be here. My first request is that you take the transit,

[5:13:57] commercial, and industrial piece out of this second pilot. Reason being is we've

[5:14:03] been overwhelmed with RVs now for better than 10 years. We feel we've done our

[5:14:09] part with the RVs being removed by your first phase. It has really allowed the

[5:14:16] neighborhood to breathe. We ask you let it continue to breathe. Let the program

[5:14:21] go in other parts of Palo Alto. Second qu request is we really did not get

[5:14:28] sufficient outreach from >> your time is up.

[5:14:31] » So please please please come to us. Thank you. Our next speaker is Candy T,

[5:14:36] followed by Matt B.

[5:14:42] Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. Uh, I am a

[5:14:46] resident of V of the Ventura neighborhood and my comments tonight are

[5:14:50] my own. I do they do not represent my employer. We should approach

[5:14:55] homelessness with compassion but also with evidence and research including

[5:15:01] work by my UCSF colleague Dr. Margot Kushelle supports one fundamental

[5:15:06] principle and that is stable housing is the foundation for addressing

[5:15:11] homelessness, not prolonged residents in vehicles on public streets. Housing

[5:15:18] first programs demonstrate substantially greater long-term housing stability than

[5:15:24] OSVs do. Housing alone alone cannot solve every problem, but it allows and

[5:15:30] provides the foundation for which all other services can be rendered. We need

[5:15:36] to leverage county, state, and federal funding and partnerships as well as

[5:15:40] philanthropy to expand programs like HomeKey.

[5:15:45] Instead of putting money $800,000 towards that, we should be funding the

[5:15:50] home key program to get people off the streets and out of these OSVs.

[5:15:55] » Your time is up. Our next speaker is Matt B, followed by Scott A.

[5:16:05] » Good evening, council members. I've spoken here a few times on this matter.

[5:16:09] I'm also a resident of um South Palo Alto. Um running out of time already,

[5:16:14] but there's a few points that I would like to make. Um number one is in fact

[5:16:19] affordable permanent housing is the only solution to the unhoused. The studies

[5:16:24] again have shown that repeatedly. Um and again this particular uh proposal I

[5:16:31] oppose it completely because it's primarily focused on the residents and

[5:16:36] the streets of South Palo Alto. I really feel like we should consider other

[5:16:40] streets such as Sand Hill Road, Oregon Avenue, the feeder along Oregon

[5:16:44] Expressway as well as um Palo Alto Avenue, San Francisco Creek side is

[5:16:52] perfectly open as a onem stretch from Alma all the way to uh Middlefield Road.

[5:16:58] So I think that would be important to consider all these other areas that

[5:17:01] could also take on the housing. And plus, in my conversations tonight, I

[5:17:05] think we could just ask for volunteers who would like to have an RV in front of

[5:17:10] their house. Please raise your hands. >> Thank you.

[5:17:13] » Our next speaker is Scott A. [laughter]

[5:17:19] » Hello, council. My name is Scott Anderson. I live on Olive Avenue.

[5:17:22] There's 17 kids that live on Olive Avenue. Two of them are my own. They're

[5:17:25] PhD or under. Uh they both bike to school. I work in 3D survey. So when I

[5:17:31] saw it, read in the news, um I thought why Olive? And so on Saturday night, I

[5:17:34] went to five streets, Shouter, two on Hale, Bryant, Cooleridge, and also Olive

[5:17:39] Avenue. I measured the width, uh the distance from the front door to the side

[5:17:42] of the street, and then how many cars were on the street. By every measure,

[5:17:45] Olive Avenue was the worst uh place. Um today at 3:30 when my son came home, um

[5:17:50] I counted how many cars were driving down the street. There's 90 per hour

[5:17:53] that were driving down the street doing doing an average of 50% were going

[5:17:57] faster than 25 and then 70% were not stopping at the uh stop sign. They're

[5:18:02] just turning right on a Ash. Ash, by the way, is uh smaller than uh Olive Avenue

[5:18:07] and the other streets are all 35. Um Ash is 20 uh 29. So I I suggest that uh uh

[5:18:13] strike Olive um and then engage with residents. When I met the guy on Hail at

[5:18:18] 10:30 at night after I explained what I was doing, he said, uh, you know, I

[5:18:22] asked, "Do you want to do you want RVs on your street?" He said, "No. Um, I

[5:18:25] don't want to." So, I suggest you engage with the the residents here. Thank you.

[5:18:30] » Our next speaker is Eugen L followed by Jared L.

[5:18:34] » Uh, also an Olive Avenue resident. Um I I definitely agree with many different

[5:18:42] opinions in this room and I appreciate all the input um from all parties

[5:18:46] involved but I I I think all of Avenue was a mistake to be on this list. You

[5:18:51] guys all of know our North Ventura plight. Um, so hopefully you can at

[5:18:56] least ad omit the residential is my point is anybody with residential or

[5:19:02] non-adjacent residential I think should be admitted from any of these lists and

[5:19:06] offsite RV parks with proper hookups seems most appropriate rather than

[5:19:11] trying to keep these RVs in the city. Let's if you want to keep them, let's

[5:19:15] let's find a good spot for them. Thank you.

[5:19:19] » Our next speaker is Jared L, followed by David A.

[5:19:24] Good evening. My name is Jared Lockhart. I grew up in PaloAlto on Olive Avenue.

[5:19:29] Um, it may not be zoned as residential. It's mixed, but it's a community. It's a

[5:19:35] neighborhood. We know these people. Some of these people have lived there for

[5:19:38] decades, like myself. So, please consider mixed use neighborhoods as

[5:19:45] being residential for this purpose. um more specific to your program, I

[5:19:50] strongly suggest you consider what your long what is your end point. We're

[5:19:54] talking about a pilot program that might last at least 12 months. When is it

[5:20:00] going to end? When is the program going to be finished? What is the end goal? Uh

[5:20:04] that's an important consideration for all of you so that this does not become

[5:20:08] PaloAlto's never- ending problem. Thank you.

[5:20:12] » Our next speaker is David A followed by Bill R.

[5:20:17] Uh good evening. Um so on the slide 15 minutes ago, Olive Avenue was part of

[5:20:25] the 200 block, not 200400 block in the report. Is that correct? Is am I

[5:20:33] hallucinating or what? Um, so you need to do your homework and out

[5:20:43] make some outreach before you send out a report with such a halfass idea.

[5:20:48] Um, if you can't find

[5:20:53] somewhere to put these RVs other than Ventura, then you're not looking hard

[5:20:58] enough. There are plenty of places, city owned lots all over

[5:21:04] put them there. Take them off the residential areas and Ventura. Thank you

[5:21:10] very much. >> Our next speaker is Bill R followed by

[5:21:15] Kareem A. >> Uh good evening, Bill Ross. I'm

[5:21:20] challenging the categorical and statutory exemptions. It's well

[5:21:24] established that the personal views if quantified and based on sub substantial

[5:21:30] evidence and experience of adjacent land owners are relevant to establishing a

[5:21:36] physical impact on the environment. I would actually suggest that a limited

[5:21:41] environmental review consistent with appendix G addressing public services

[5:21:47] and public safety and population and housing under a constrained time limit

[5:21:53] would actually help define those that are actually homeless versus those that

[5:21:58] are not. So I think that the a structured environmental review on a

[5:22:03] limited basis should be would be beneficial rather than the exemptions.

[5:22:08] Now claimed

[5:22:13] » our next speaker is Kareem A followed by Liba P.

[5:22:18] » Good evening. Thank you all for your comments and your hard work in this

[5:22:21] matter. I live in Palo Alto as well as own an office building on commercial

[5:22:27] street and uh we've been suffering Mr. Burns spoke earlier. He's my business

[5:22:33] partner. We've been suffering in in the commercial street, industrial street

[5:22:37] area with RV parking for the last 10 years. I have pictures here. The it is

[5:22:44] the most horrendous thing that we have experienced. Thank you for cleaning it

[5:22:49] up recently. Please exclude this community. We have the right to be

[5:22:54] there. We pay taxes. We we our office space ha has uh devalued.

[5:23:03] We cannot have guests there. It is embarrassing.

[5:23:07] This is not the kind of community we want to work in. I beg you to please

[5:23:11] take that off the list. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Liba P followed by

[5:23:19] Vanessa C. >> Thank you. So, my name's Leiba Pitman. I

[5:23:27] believe I'm the longestterm resident on Olive Avenue resident and owner.

[5:23:34] Um, I definitely have compassion for people living in their vehicles. Housing

[5:23:41] insecurity is real and people deserve dignity, services, and pathways toward

[5:23:49] stable housing. I'm asking you to exclude uh my street

[5:23:56] that I grew up on. Uh a parent and now a grandparent.

[5:24:02] And I'm also concerned with how you chose Olive. Why Olive? Um why weren't

[5:24:10] the residents consulted before you chose Olive? I know that um when Huelet

[5:24:18] Packard was going to build across the street, I was actually working for

[5:24:23] Huelet Packard at the time and they were very open to considering uh the

[5:24:30] neighborhood. They spoke to those of us that lived across the street before they

[5:24:37] uh built their building on the far side in consideration of residents. And when

[5:24:45] the owner of former Fries was going to build, they talked to me about building

[5:24:52] a garage in my backyard. So, I'm disappointed that no one contacted the

[5:25:00] residents on Olive and request that you not approve that. We I'm

[5:25:07] » Your so just Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Vanessa C followed

[5:25:12] by Jen B.

[5:25:19] Vanessa C. Moving to our next speaker, Jen B,

[5:25:24] followed by Larry G.

[5:25:28] » Good evening. Um, I'd first like to better understand how this outreach

[5:25:33] program worked. How did they speak out to ownership stakeholders? All of that

[5:25:37] communication. How was that distributed? We are a long-term owner and we had not

[5:25:42] had any direct communications for properties located on transport,

[5:25:46] commercial, or industrial. There was no communication.

[5:25:50] Um, with that being said, my main concern is security and safety of

[5:25:53] children. We had a daycare within that area with on commercial street. The

[5:25:58] tenant ended up moving out when the property was sold due to the safety

[5:26:02] concerns for these children. You have these high densities. You have large

[5:26:06] RVs. Children cannot see or running around. There's no control. Um, we have

[5:26:11] since had difficulties filling the space with another program of a preschool due

[5:26:17] to that concern. If we continue to have the high density, we will not be able to

[5:26:21] fulfill the community's need for a school and that needs to change. Thank

[5:26:25] you. Our next speaker is Larry G, followed by Jonathan B.

[5:26:36] » City Council mayor, thank you for your time. The issue of the unhoused is a

[5:26:41] very serious issue and I appreciate everyone's time working on this, but I

[5:26:45] implore you to vote no on this proposal tonight. If you look across the

[5:26:50] proposal, it's putting a disproportionate burden on a very few

[5:26:54] neighborhoods such as Ventura. And you look at the number in the streets and

[5:26:58] what you're hearing from people tonight and the questions you're getting.

[5:27:01] Clearly, people weren't consulted and there's huge impact on these small

[5:27:05] streets in this small neighborhood. And if you look at some of the segments

[5:27:10] right and the number of people impacted it's enormous. I think Gerstone you

[5:27:14] asked some of the questions about how was the heat map drawn up? How was this

[5:27:18] data driven? So I ask you to vote no on this because it really is a question of

[5:27:23] fiduciary duty. Your duty first and foremost are to the citizens of Palo

[5:27:28] Alto to provide the living that they um that they have created in this

[5:27:32] community.

[5:27:35] Thank you. Our next speaker is Jonathan B, followed by an K.

[5:27:44] » Jonathan Brown, 23-year Ventura resident. The OSV parking permit pilot

[5:27:49] is a promising step, but the second proposed pilot would do nothing to

[5:27:53] mitigate negative impacts and would likely undermine the permit program

[5:27:57] while incurring substantial costs. Council member Rectal already noted the

[5:28:01] unfairness it shows towards Ventura, as does the large turnout tonight from our

[5:28:06] residential neighborhood. Parks, homes, preschools are all on

[5:28:10] streets who designated, and that's just wrong. Please heed Mayor Vinker's plea

[5:28:16] to re-examine the impact on our residences, parks, and families. Council

[5:28:19] should reject the second pilot. In line with council member Lowing's suggestion,

[5:28:24] we should move towards prohibiting all vehicle dwelling except in permitted

[5:28:28] areas. As Mr. Jensen noted, the court case that his predecessor mistakenly

[5:28:33] concluded would invalidate our 2013 vehicular habitation ban has been

[5:28:37] overturned by the US Supreme Court. I'm also an attorney. To answer council

[5:28:42] member Stone's question, there is nothing in state nor federal law

[5:28:45] preventing the city from enacting a ban on vehicle dwelling except for those

[5:28:49] provided under the permit program. Thank you.

[5:28:52] » Our next speaker is an K, followed by Bob M.

[5:29:00] » Thank you, council members. My name is an and I live in Southgate and own and

[5:29:06] operate our business in the Ventura neighborhood. and we've been doing this

[5:29:11] over 20 years now and I care deeply about the community I live in. I'm

[5:29:16] asking you to pause this program. I understand that there's state laws that

[5:29:22] are governing how PaloAlto addresses people living in vehicles before we

[5:29:26] approve the program. We need clear answers on these fundamental questions.

[5:29:32] What does the state law require? And what is PaloAlto choosing to do?

[5:29:39] Designating public streets for long RV habitation is a policy choice.

[5:29:46] Then the community deserves a meaningful voice before that choice is made, not

[5:29:50] afterwards. You don't approve the experiment and then ask the neighborhood

[5:29:55] what it thinks. We know from experience that relocating RVs doesn't solve the

[5:30:01] problem. Moving the problem is not solving the problem. Thank you. Our next

[5:30:07] speaker is Bob M filed followed by Ryan J.

[5:30:20] Good evening, mayor, council, city manager. My name is Bob Marinero and I'm

[5:30:24] a 34 year resident of the Adobe Meadow neighborhood in South Palo Alto. From

[5:30:29] the barrage of emails that you have reached in recent months, you are well

[5:30:32] aware of the sentiment of of PaloAlto residents and businesses. Based on the

[5:30:38] vast majority of the content I have seen in email submissions and other comments

[5:30:42] heard in the community, the common thread is that the OSV phase 2 plan was

[5:30:47] illconceived. In due respect, the notion of legitimizing parking on 13 different

[5:30:52] streets in South Palo Alto is preposterous. Yet, I believe that a

[5:30:57] certain amount of safe parking can be expanded from the current 22 spaces at

[5:31:02] Gang Road and that a registration system would be beneficial for numerous reasons

[5:31:06] such as not attracting additional OSVs. However, OSVs should not and cannot be

[5:31:12] [clears throat] allowed on any residential streets or business

[5:31:16] corridors. I have seen a handful of very excellent alternative proposals and I

[5:31:20] believe that you should consider all part of them.

[5:31:24] » Thank you. Our next speaker is Ryan J.

[5:31:35] » Good evening. Uh, thank you for your time, mayor and city council. Um, I'm

[5:31:40] speaking on behalf of we're a third generation family business. We started

[5:31:44] our business in PaloAlto back in the 60s. Um, I'm currently running this

[5:31:48] business and I can tell you that over the last 10 years, we have had the least

[5:31:53] friendly business climate in PaloAlto. The vacancies have gone through the roof

[5:31:58] to an all-time high. It's not just related. It's there's numerous reasons,

[5:32:02] but the RV problem is a major problem. I'm on the south side of California. I

[5:32:07] share the same concern. I hear a lot of residents speaking up. I'm speaking up

[5:32:11] on the business community. There's been zero outreach to us whatsoever. Phase 2

[5:32:16] pilot has is if you draw it on a map, which I think would be great for all of

[5:32:20] us to see, we can see how everything is centered down on the southern end of of

[5:32:25] uh Palo Alto. I've heard the comment out of sight, out of mind. Does that seem

[5:32:29] applicable? Is that fair to the residents and the businesses of southern

[5:32:32] cal of southern Palo Alto? Why why don't we have phase two program here right on

[5:32:37] University? >> So why are we choosing the south area?

[5:32:41] It's it's actually seeming like like we all feel that you guys are kicking down

[5:32:45] the can. >> We strongly encourage you reconsider.

[5:32:49] » Our next speaker is Shazad D followed by Charlie W.

[5:33:04] Shazad D. Moving to our next speaker, Charlie W.

[5:33:14] Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Charlie Widance, Palo Alto

[5:33:17] Chamber of Commerce. We are deeply concerned about the compounding efforts

[5:33:21] of long-term OSV parking along Palo Alto's business corridors. We fully

[5:33:26] recognize that individuals living in these vehicles are members of our local

[5:33:30] workforce and community members for whom an RV represents essential shelter. At

[5:33:34] the same time, the current status quo has become unsustainable for local

[5:33:38] employers. Unmonitored, oversized vehicle parking creates serious

[5:33:42] operational and safety hazards. These vehicles consistently block sightelines,

[5:33:47] creating severe blind spots for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. They

[5:33:51] constrict narrow streets, making routine freight deliveries dangerous, and

[5:33:55] stripping away essential parking for customers and employees. combined with

[5:33:59] accumulating waste, unauthorized utility connections, affected businesses are

[5:34:04] reporting significant losses. PaloAlto small businesses cannot continue to

[5:34:08] operate under these conditions. We urge council to establish a structured

[5:34:12] oversized vehicle parking program that eliminates long-term parking for RVs in

[5:34:18] commercial districts. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is David M, followed by

[5:34:24] Eric J.

[5:34:30] Thank you for the time. Terrible time slot. I would I'm speaking on on behalf

[5:34:36] of a medical device business with a few hundred employees that's on LLC Court.

[5:34:40] We love Palo Alto. We love to be here, but I don't think that we can stay,

[5:34:44] especially if we bring back RVs parking on half of our street. We've had a lot

[5:34:48] of issues with them. The biggest issue is that we cannot access our facility.

[5:34:52] We can't bring visitors in. There's not enough parking for our our own

[5:34:56] employees. And the more RVs that we have, especially bringing back a half

[5:35:00] street full, the harder it will be for us. We've asked our neighbors if they

[5:35:04] have spare parking, they don't. So, this will be an impediment for us to grow,

[5:35:08] it'll mean that we'll have to leave Palo Alto, and we don't want to do that. I

[5:35:11] would also ask council to um really consider how when you say that you're

[5:35:16] going to enforce the turnover of 72-hour parking, how you'll do that. you've not

[5:35:21] been able to do that in the past because there was no funding to remove those

[5:35:24] RVs. I believe that will be the same case in this situation. Thank you.

[5:35:31] Our next speaker is Eric J followed by Eddie K.

[5:35:42] Eric J.

[5:35:46] Moving to our next speaker, Eddie K.

[5:36:02] Hello, Edie Keading, former PaloAlto resident, current Mountain View

[5:36:06] resident. Mountain View has learned that safe parking is much superior to street

[5:36:12] parking for everyone. And if you can't find uh properties that are

[5:36:19] willing to lease to you uh for safe parking, then I hope you consider buying

[5:36:24] for safe parking. I think if it's something you had to do a parcel tax

[5:36:28] for, it would be a very popular uh supported raise to raise money for safe

[5:36:33] parking. And uh for

[5:36:39] [gasps] employers, I hope there there are carrots you could offer too. You

[5:36:43] could offer if they allow um uh safe parking on their properties that um you

[5:36:51] could provide pump service and trash service

[5:36:54] [sighs and gasps] and um I appreciate that you look at uh

[5:37:00] vehicle residents as members of PaloAlto. Thank you.

[5:37:05] Our next speaker is Gordon J followed by Star T.

[5:37:13] » Hello. Uh, good evening. Um, I think these are both good ideas worth

[5:37:18] experimenting with and uh managing or creating space for for uh oversized

[5:37:24] vehicles uh for the first one and then managing places where oversized vehicles

[5:37:29] are currently parked. I'm not sure why Olive A ended up on the on the list

[5:37:33] here. Uh current restrictions on olive prevent uh overnight parking for

[5:37:38] oversized vehicles on both sides of the street. Uh the residential side uh no

[5:37:43] oversize overnight and the commercial side no overnight at all. Uh so it is

[5:37:47] not true that uh that uh regularsized cars are allowed to park there overnight

[5:37:53] right now. Um [sighs]

[5:37:56] uh so so like I said, I think I I support both of these uh proposals, but

[5:38:02] av seems like a a confusing street to add to this

[5:38:08] project.

[5:38:12] » Our next speaker is Star T followed by S. Rose.

[5:38:17] » Thank you for uh all your hard work and for including case management in your

[5:38:22] program. I think that's extremely thoughtful. I want to entirely agree

[5:38:27] that Olive should never have been on this list. It's a strong community. It

[5:38:31] has a lot of cutth through traffic as Scott Anderson, oops, Scott A, um,

[5:38:37] denoted. Um, but most of all, I just want to say there have been so many

[5:38:41] excellent comments tonight by the community and I just want to encourage

[5:38:45] you to listen to them. Just fabulous.

[5:38:51] Our next speaker is S. Rose, followed by Bianca P.

[5:38:56] » Good evening. My name is uh Shawn Rose, and I'm going to talk out of both sides

[5:39:00] of my mouth briefly. Um I'm a 22 uh year resident of Lambert Avenue. On one hand,

[5:39:06] the second pilot in front of you tonight creates more stringent rules to be

[5:39:10] followed. May not read that way, but it does. We're hopeful there. The support

[5:39:14] we've received from the police uh over the last year has really made a

[5:39:18] difference and we need that to continue. Uh it's a success story. If you want to

[5:39:23] check it out, please do. The police are there all the time. If you haven't made

[5:39:27] your way over there, you got to go and check it out. I hear a lot of Olive

[5:39:30] Avenue justified. It's a residential street. So, there's a certain amount of

[5:39:34] questioning about how we're picking the streets. Lambert's a residential street.

[5:39:38] That's why we're allowed to be there. Um, our neighborhoods spend a lot of

[5:39:44] time self-reporting and self-governing. Uh, it's a burden on Ventura and a

[5:39:49] permanent remedy is long overd long overdue. Um, Lambert, as I said, it's

[5:39:54] residential. It's a residential street. Um,

[5:39:58] » your time is up. >> We'd appreciate if you came and talked

[5:39:59] to us. >> I think all of us just start tomorrow.

[5:40:04] » Your time is up. Our next speaker is >> Thanks to Melissa and uh, Chief Ree

[5:40:07] Schneider. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Bianca P.

[5:40:18] Bianca P. Moving to our next speaker, Joe W.

[5:40:26] Hey. Hello. I'd um just like to say that uh there's probably inevitably going to

[5:40:31] be inconveniences to people living in homes in PaloAlto and that's not

[5:40:35] something that we can shy away from. Um, I'd prefer if you burden us people

[5:40:39] living in homes rather than the homeless folks. Um, I say this as a resident of

[5:40:43] Ventura, we can deal with it. Um, as can the rest of Palo Alto. Thank you.

[5:40:47] » Our next speaker is Becky S. followed by Ron E. Yeah, thank you for taking this

[5:40:53] up. I just want to align myself with just uh Olive Avenue should just not be

[5:40:57] on the list. Uh anyway, I just um I've been dealing with uh Sergeant Eric since

[5:41:03] July 1st, dealing with a couple of RVs outside my fence and also on Matadero.

[5:41:10] And there are several ways to look for signs of movement, including comparative

[5:41:14] comparing valve stem locations, um chalking the tires, and using other

[5:41:20] methodes methods such as placing a paper clip on the tire.

[5:41:25] If we find evidence of movement after the 72-hour period, we will not tow the

[5:41:28] vehicle. So anyway, these vehicles have not moved. They've

[5:41:33] gone like one block and then they come back and then the the Lexington on

[5:41:37] Matadero isn't moving at all. And I just I guess code enforcement is understaffed

[5:41:43] and there's no real will willpower. Like it's hard. I get it. But we have code

[5:41:50] enforcement. These laws are on the books and I mean I've just been playing this

[5:41:54] dance. >> Your time is up

[5:41:56] » and I you know I just got this one five hours ago about how to check to see if

[5:41:59] the vehicle has >> Your time is up. Thank you. Our next

[5:42:02] speaker is Ron E followed by Aram F. >> Hello. On the sheet I'm number 47. So

[5:42:10] take a breath. It's almost over. Um, I'm not looking forward to having a

[5:42:17] portaotti outside outside of my business on the street. Um, I hope you understand

[5:42:24] the irony here. Uh, the city is taking my business taxes and then spending

[5:42:30] taxes to put a portaotti right in front of my front door. I'm not going to thank

[5:42:35] you for that. Okay. Um, I welcome the city to share

[5:42:42] the experience. I welcome you to put a portaotti right outside the front door

[5:42:48] for a while and share the aroma, I guess. Um,

[5:42:54] if you move the RVs back and forth, um, you're not going to be able to move

[5:43:00] the portaotty, so it's it's going to sit there. Um,

[5:43:06] you know, you really ought to think this one through.

[5:43:09] » Our next speaker is Aram F.

[5:43:19] » Okay. So, Robert Marinaro, um I I'll give you 200

[5:43:25] bucks towards you rent for a week and then you come back and tell me how how

[5:43:30] you like having your window knocked on all and maybe then you wouldn't want a

[5:43:35] ban of all RVs in this city. Shame on you, man. Okay, so Justice Stanley Moss

[5:43:41] said the following in Toby versus the city of San Santa Ana. The city cannot

[5:43:47] solve its homeless problem simply by exiling a large number of its homeless

[5:43:51] citizens to neighboring loces. If you look as you go south down to Gilroy, the

[5:43:56] problem gets worse and worse and worse there. This is an intractable problem.

[5:44:01] You can't simply push these people down to the next town. That's not a

[5:44:06] neighborly thing. Okay? We're going to need a shuttle bus for the folks out

[5:44:10] there on Coyote and on Embaradero. I support the plan. It's not the best

[5:44:15] solution, but we got to live with it for now. Thank you very much, folks.

[5:44:22] » Our next speaker is Penny B, followed by City Council S.

[5:44:35] » Hello, Altos. Hello. Can I have my

[5:44:41] Palo Alto City Council should base its OSV policies on OSV use and need facts

[5:44:49] rather than stereotypes and gut feelings labeled as humanitarianism

[5:44:53] and moral obligation. Surveys and focus groups are not the

[5:44:58] best ways to obtain facts regarding the use characteristics of OSV users.

[5:45:04] observational studies can be designed to help obtain obtain these facts.

[5:45:09] Both of these OSB pilot programs are built on false premises, illconceived,

[5:45:14] uninforceable, and destined to further harm PaloAlto residents and business

[5:45:19] people. I urge you to vote no on both of them.

[5:45:27] Our

[5:45:33] next speaker is city council S.

[5:45:41] They are no longer on Zoom. Moving to our next speaker, Kevin C.

[5:45:51] » Thank you, Mayor V. Pinker and health. My name is Kevin Troy and I represent

[5:45:54] the new ownership of 3825 to 3875 Fabian Way. First and foremost, I'd like to

[5:46:00] acknowledge that this is a difficult situation and no solution will make

[5:46:03] everyone happy. As a property owner in Palo Alto, we have strong concerns

[5:46:07] regarding the proposal you have in front of you today. Primarily, I noted within

[5:46:11] our letter to you is the concern that OSB proposal is the first step towards a

[5:46:16] permanent solution that places OSB parking in commercial areas. Our group

[5:46:20] has significant concerns with this as we have had several conversations with

[5:46:23] tenants that OC parking trends towards safety and health concerns. Just like

[5:46:28] everyone has a right to a place they could proudly call home, everyone should

[5:46:31] also have a right to proudly call a place work. I'd like to note that

[5:46:35] Council Rectal's solution to provide commercial parking permit restricting

[5:46:39] parking to two hours is an idea that is moving towards a solution. Our ownership

[5:46:43] respectfully requests that the city council take the opportunity to continue

[5:46:47] to review this item and look for a solution. However, temporary that solves

[5:46:50] for all of our commercial tenants concerns.

[5:46:53] » Your time is up. >> Our next speaker is Zohar G.

[5:47:07] Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, I can hear myself. So, I have been

[5:47:13] in Pal 20 years. I live in the Ashland community across from east the east meta

[5:47:18] circle. I used to be able to walk around this meta circle. I I have not been able

[5:47:23] to walk around east meta circle for a long long time. But what I really want

[5:47:28] to tell you is this action and your plan is discriminatory

[5:47:33] against South Pal. Yes, our houses don't but they've still

[5:47:39] lost a lot of value just because of the RV situation. We've also lost

[5:47:45] walkability. We've lost uh clean air because of the

[5:47:50] RVs running their motors. And yet the rest of Palato especially on the north

[5:47:56] side is not affected. So this is discriminatory

[5:48:01] for the Ashon community. I'm sure there's other few communities

[5:48:07] but those are the ones that are most impacted and I just don't understand how

[5:48:11] you can just sleep at night doing it. Your time is up.

[5:48:16] Our next speaker is John M, followed by OKG.

[5:48:26] [snorts] Your report identifies sanitation, debris, and improper

[5:48:30] disposal of human waste as existing problems associated with OSBs. But the

[5:48:34] report does not tell us how black water and gray water from those OS RVs or OSVs

[5:48:40] will actually be collected and disposed of. This is an obvious environmental

[5:48:44] issue. One site adjacent to the city's wastewater treatment plant and the other

[5:48:48] at Coyote Hill where Sanford has already raised wildfire and habitat concerns.

[5:48:53] The city proposes to rely on SQL categoral exemptions under sections

[5:48:58] 13015301 and 15304. However, I believe you need

[5:49:03] to address the unusual circumstances exception under section 15300.2C two

[5:49:09] feet and explain why concentrating residential RV, adding sanitation

[5:49:15] infrastructure, restriping the loads and modifying the sites creates no

[5:49:19] possibility of significant environmental effect. I ask you to defer approval of

[5:49:24] this uh until the city has completed publicly disclosed of waste water, storm

[5:49:29] water, solid waste water. >> Your time is up and environmental

[5:49:32] analysis. Thank you.

[5:49:37] Our next speaker is OKG.

[5:49:48] » Hello. Am I on? >> Yes.

[5:49:52] » Okay. So I I'm kind of really disappointed after listening and stay up

[5:49:57] and see this whole thing and I found out about staff which is reporting to city

[5:50:03] council having all this outreach and yet no data very little data or actual data

[5:50:10] collected on the number of vehicles duration of stays location complaints

[5:50:15] citation and impact surrounding on the neighborhood. I lived here for over 24

[5:50:21] years. and I have to put up with a lot of

[5:50:25] inconsistency of how the law has been regulated around here especially with

[5:50:31] OSB. So it's really unfair to resident especially people living in south of

[5:50:37] Palo Alto and I urge that listening to all the businesses they're

[5:50:44] saying that there's no outreach to them. Please, we are losing tax dollars and

[5:50:51] the C revenue is kicking it these people out.

[5:50:58] » And that concludes public comment on action item 10.

[5:51:03] » All right. Well, thanks to all of our public commenters. Um,

[5:51:08] it's 11:12. Um, I would like to continue this

[5:51:12] conversation, but I want to ask my colleagues about their brothers, whether

[5:51:15] we can just power forward, whether you need a short break to go forward. Um,

[5:51:19] since we've been meeting since 5:30, I mean, like 5 minutes, or can we just go?

[5:51:26] » If we say go, it doesn't mean 2 a.m., right?

[5:51:29] » Just go for now, but see how we're doing.

[5:51:33] » All right. >> I mean, I would go with that, but

[5:51:35] » Okay. Just want to make sure everyone's okay. Good. All right. Well, with that,

[5:51:41] I know I have additional questions and comments, but uh let me uh yield to my

[5:51:47] colleagues if anybody'd like to pick up the baton at this point.

[5:51:52] Council member Bart.

[5:51:59] So, first I want to re-emphasize that um making decisions like this without good

[5:52:05] data is really problematic and we've had a lot of time to um be able to um get

[5:52:14] that data. Uh I just don't think it's had the prioritization that it it uh

[5:52:19] needs. Um, I will say that I hearing from the

[5:52:25] public, I'm really wondering whether what we can address tonight or should

[5:52:29] address tonight is the phase one pilot and uh defer action on the phase 2 with

[5:52:36] maybe certain guidance on uh anything else that we want to u explore related

[5:52:42] to it. I will say that if we were to go forward with the phase two, um I I don't

[5:52:50] understand why Olive and Ash and for that matter Park Boulevard as a critical

[5:52:56] um a safe route to school and bikeway uh would have been included at all. Um, I

[5:53:03] also uh think that one of the we've got several issues, but safety is one and um

[5:53:11] RVs um parking right up to within 5 ft of a driveway is not adequate

[5:53:18] daylighting. That's what's in the proposal there. And I would support uh

[5:53:23] if we did go forward with uh phase 2 uh additional daylighting uh probably at

[5:53:29] least 10 ft. Um you know state law on on corners is now either 15 or 20 ft and

[5:53:36] that's not for RVs. That's anticipating a regular vehicle. I don't know how you

[5:53:40] could see coming out of a driveway with a a car or I mean excuse me an RV within

[5:53:45] 5 ft. I also think if we went forward with phase two, uh we should adopt a

[5:53:50] program like we did uh along El Camino with the uh businesses on the

[5:53:55] perpendicular streets allowing them to request um short-term parking whether

[5:54:00] it's 15 minutes or 2 hours or whatever for their uh business for essential

[5:54:05] needs for customers and the like coming and going. Um,

[5:54:11] one of the things that uh we really haven't discussed is um on the potential

[5:54:16] other sites and I don't is the question of whether uh Stanford should be

[5:54:20] providing any land. What is their proportionate share of this problem? To

[5:54:25] my knowledge, they have no RVs that are on their uh massive amount of land and a

[5:54:32] quasi municipality. um because we don't have data, we don't

[5:54:37] know exactly whose um what their share of responsibility might be. I don't

[5:54:42] assume it's a majority or anywhere near that, but I think they should be uh part

[5:54:47] of the solution on on um uh sites for parking. I uh on the phase one, I do

[5:54:55] support the two sides of Coyote. Um uh but I am very concerned about fire

[5:55:02] hazard in that area and um we had talked about tilling the land but uh we have

[5:55:08] this burnbot um technology now. But in any event a an approach that would uh

[5:55:15] really address the the fire hazard there would be a critical part of even that

[5:55:21] phase one. And um we we also in addition to not allowing

[5:55:29] the um uh if we went forward with phase 2, not allowing it on streets that are

[5:55:35] uh predominantly predominantly residential. Uh but um we we need to uh

[5:55:43] up update our residential definition so that uh plan uh PC zoning that is um

[5:55:50] includes residential would be uh categorized as residential.

[5:55:56] And then we really have a question too on whether we should extend the uh

[5:56:01] protections to uh immediately adjacent to residential area. should it be within

[5:56:07] 100 yards of residential that there's uh there are no um uh permitted RVs. So I

[5:56:14] think if we did a a combination of some of these measures, we would um further

[5:56:20] um prescribe the limited areas where RVs are um would be on an at least for the

[5:56:28] time being allowed, but expand this permit area because we have 22 slots at

[5:56:34] Ging, but we've seen in the last recent months when we got data, we're not

[5:56:38] getting the turnover at Ging that was anticipated. that was supposed to be

[5:56:42] transitional fullervice RV lots so that uh we're providing very expensive

[5:56:48] services along with a county and uh and it was to be able to transition those RV

[5:56:54] dwellers into permanent housing. It's not working like intended and we have to

[5:57:00] um re get that resolved and and uh really not have that be permanent RB

[5:57:06] dwelling uh but transitional. Um, so those are my thoughts uh at this point

[5:57:12] in time.

[5:57:15] » Council member Lowi. >> Thank you. Um, I want to make a couple

[5:57:19] comments substantially directed at a lot of the public comments. Um, the overall

[5:57:25] direction as I said at the outtake of up uh outset of this meeting uh is from

[5:57:30] from council was to radically reduce the total number of OSPs in our town. And

[5:57:36] the other direction was we need to find some places for legitimately

[5:57:42] folks that legitimately need help. Pilot one does that exactly with a lot of

[5:57:48] controls. Pilot two doesn't do that as it's

[5:57:51] proposed and it doesn't do that for a number of reasons. But what we've heard

[5:57:56] from the public tonight is that the um suggestions that came in that staff

[5:58:01] report are not acceptable. that you not only don't want it on

[5:58:06] either side of the street, you don't want it on both sides of the street. You

[5:58:10] don't want it at all, which at this point in time I think is perfectly

[5:58:13] understandable. So what that presents to us on [snorts] the second part of it is,

[5:58:20] as I said earlier, you know, the you folks have put up with this long enough,

[5:58:24] we just need to shut it down. Now, that creates that creates we don't want to

[5:58:28] get into too much detail on this, but that creates an incremental legal risk

[5:58:32] uh if we don't have other places where some folks could park. So, to me,

[5:58:36] getting getting on with item number one, pilot number one, in terms of approving

[5:58:42] that tonight, to me makes very good sense because we have to start on that

[5:58:46] and we want it to be on a faster schedule than it's on. And once we do

[5:58:50] that, the sooner we're going the sooner we do that, the sooner we're going to

[5:58:53] have actual places that people can get in there legitimately with their parking

[5:58:57] permit and those folks will be moving out of some of the areas that they're

[5:59:01] now in because we are creating new spaces of 35 to 50 new spaces. That's

[5:59:05] the important point there. But very quickly, I think we have to shut down

[5:59:10] the rest of it uh as we ramp up the the earlier part. And the only way to do

[5:59:15] that, as I've thought about it, is is with this permit program. So, um, I just

[5:59:20] want the public to understand that we are all together on the fact that we

[5:59:24] want OSVs to be basically not be gone because we want the ones here that are

[5:59:28] sort of quote deserving. And with respect to sort of data, I'm always a

[5:59:32] data guy, but we know that there are at least 35 people of the remaining 130,

[5:59:38] they're going to probably qualify for these units if they want them. So, I'm

[5:59:42] very comfortable saying that is the the pilot is just the pilot one is justified

[5:59:46] going forward. [clears throat] So, I just sort of wanted to cover that

[5:59:49] point. And if we get those to move there, then

[5:59:54] that that's a big chunk. If we extend gang, that's a big chunk. And if we get

[5:59:58] some of the 88 that are in Homekey, that's another chunk. So, we start to

[6:00:03] chip chip away at this thing with the existing resources. Thanks.

[6:00:10] » All right. Um, I just want to make a couple of uh points.

[6:00:15] Um, first,

[6:00:19] yeah, I just I residential should be residential.

[6:00:23] That's what I had thought wasa the case. That's why I was surprised as well to

[6:00:28] see uh any residential streets on this, especially the ones in Ventura that

[6:00:33] we've heard tonight are really problematic. Um I understand now that

[6:00:38] there's PC zones and PHC and various things, but I think we need to really

[6:00:42] make it uniform for all residents um uh in PaloAlto. So that's that to me should

[6:00:49] just be a uniform thing. Um the um

[6:00:56] the thing I mentioned about businesses before, I want to sort of clarify it and

[6:01:00] then uh key off of something Council Member Bert said. Um, you know, I'm

[6:01:05] using the word business, but there's a whole lot of different kinds. And so I

[6:01:09] it it's not quite right to lump them all to business uh into one term. What I'm

[6:01:14] thinking of is employees of large businesses like Google and Stanford

[6:01:18] Healthcare and Shoreline. When their employees are dwelling in front of

[6:01:23] smaller businesses on commerce and transport and industrial and park, it's

[6:01:27] almost like some businesses are subsidizing other businesses. And I

[6:01:30] don't that just doesn't make sense to me. So, you know, there are limits on

[6:01:36] what the city can ask and require of businesses. Um, but what I mentioned

[6:01:41] before, it would be great if they would step up and provide a portion of their

[6:01:45] own parking lot for their own employees. And I think, you know, Stanford could be

[6:01:49] a part of that, but there are others um that we could ask as well. I just don't

[6:01:54] know that we can demand it. But what we might be able to do if we could discern

[6:01:58] which RVs they were, which gets to my point earlier,

[6:02:02] that there could be some sort of um you know, if you were in that situation,

[6:02:10] uh if we we discerned that you were there, then your employer would have to

[6:02:15] pay into some sort of housing fund that could get you a voucher to get you uh

[6:02:19] off the street. um or they could provide a parking spot themselves, but we could

[6:02:25] try to work on that. But I think starting with Stanford may make sense.

[6:02:29] Um then um I'm curious because uh as uh to pick up on what council member Lowing

[6:02:35] was said saying if we're looking at um transitional like

[6:02:41] people transitioning in and out of these various categories. Um you mentioned

[6:02:47] earlier that you know we discovered Home Key was full because of the people who'd

[6:02:50] been in hotels but do we what I guess this is for staff. At what pace are we

[6:02:56] hoping we might have some openings? Cuz that's a transitional thing as well. So

[6:03:02] when and where and how might we expect there could be some openings over the

[6:03:06] course of the next six to 12 months.

[6:03:12] » Uh thank you Mayor Vinker. Um so the throughput for both Homekeing

[6:03:20] upon sort of the housing pipeline. And this evening we do have a representative

[6:03:24] from the Office of Supportive Housing. Um I I'm not certain if this is

[6:03:28] something she could speak to, but uh we can check.

[6:03:31] » Well, she's very welcome to. She she looks like looks like Yes.

[6:03:36] » Good evening, Mayor and Council Hillary Armstrong. Excuse me. Uh deputy director

[6:03:42] with the Office of Supportive Housing. Um first just to clarify the folks who

[6:03:48] were housed at the home key PaloAlto started in a hotel program but were all

[6:03:53] unhoused PaloAltons. So the hotel program was like the launch of the home

[6:03:58] key program. I just wanted to be super clear on that. Um in terms of the

[6:04:02] throughput um we do see an average stay in shelter programs so such as the home

[6:04:08] paloto program of about 4.8 in eight months. When we look um at our data

[6:04:13] across the system, we are seeing um you know some need to encourage more

[6:04:20] movement through the system. And so our quality assurance standards for the

[6:04:24] continuum of care that apply across our entire countywide system um have 120day

[6:04:32] suggested length of stay. you know, when folks are working on a housing plan. Um,

[6:04:37] and it's contingent on the pipeline, they can get extensions to that, but in

[6:04:42] general looking at, you know, a stay of anywhere from 3 to 6 months where we're

[6:04:46] really trying to make sure that folks are getting through.

[6:04:49] » Okay. So, we can anticipate that over the course of the next 6, 9, 12 months,

[6:04:55] some number, we're not sure, of spaces will open up. So that would um hopefully

[6:05:02] be at least some outlet for people that we're trying to transition out of say

[6:05:07] the permit program were we to enact it. Is that am I thinking about it right?

[6:05:14] » Uh thank you Mayor Vinker. I I I would caution that it's become my

[6:05:21] understanding that folks in RVs are more likely to transition directly to uh an

[6:05:26] apartment rather than or to housing rather than to a transitional space.

[6:05:31] That that's not typically as attractive to them and and sometimes they they're

[6:05:36] able to transition more quickly in that fashion.

[6:05:40] » I see. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Well, with that, I'll turn to Vice Mayor

[6:05:46] Stone.

[6:05:52] » Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, yeah, given the hour, I will be very concise. I I

[6:05:57] agree. I think the I think the first pilot is ready to move forward. That's

[6:06:03] kind of the original my original kind of vision of where this was all heading was

[6:06:08] really a permit program. love the I love the suggestion that we're going to

[6:06:14] incorporate services there. It is a very reasonable cost. I I think that is a

[6:06:21] win-win all around. I know ultimately it comes down to space and identifying

[6:06:26] additional locations, but it's a pilot program. So, I think let's get that

[6:06:30] started as quickly as possible. I agree with comments already. I think the

[6:06:35] second pilot is not ready to to go. I think that needs a lot of work. I think

[6:06:41] the uh the heat map I described earlier is is going to be really beneficial for

[6:06:46] me to ensure that we are equitably spreading these um these impacted

[6:06:52] streets around the community. I think more work can be done there. I I think

[6:06:56] absolutely the the ad hoc committee needs to be kind of brought into this

[6:07:00] discussion and be able to do that that deeper dive. Uh I also thought that

[6:07:07] there was general alignment on the council the last time that we didn't

[6:07:11] want to see this on residential and residential adjacent streets. So Ventura

[6:07:16] neighborhoods has greatly s surprised me. Uh I think one one thought I know

[6:07:23] it's just going to give us a couple of spaces but in the idea of equity and

[6:07:27] making sure that we are all taking on this burden. police department is is

[6:07:33] moving out right now. And I know on Brian Street is where we've

[6:07:37] traditionally parked several uh police vehicles, including our command uh

[6:07:42] including the command vehicle, which is definitely the size of a large OSV. I

[6:07:47] think that should be included in that future program. If it's good enough for

[6:07:50] other businesses to have OSVs in front of their businesses, it should be good

[6:07:55] enough for us at city hall to have uh to have our share as as well. Also, I think

[6:08:01] there are opportunities for us to be able to find additional locations um

[6:08:05] around the comm around the community, but I don't think we're there yet to

[6:08:10] authorize the um the second pilot program.

[6:08:15] And yeah, with that, I'll leave it there. Thank you,

[6:08:20] » Council Member Lou. >> Thank you. Uh firstly, I'll just note

[6:08:24] that I appreciate the public comment. I live basically on Page Mill, though on

[6:08:28] the Mayfield side, so I'm a block away uh about from several of these suggested

[6:08:33] pilot sites. Um my wife and I uh were looking at child care in the Ventura

[6:08:38] area when uh directly adjacent to uh some of these sites. I get the concerns.

[6:08:44] I do get it. I think we do need to keep bike lanes clear and find balance uh

[6:08:48] throughout the city. I certainly don't think we should ban all RVs, though. And

[6:08:52] I think the uh uh

[6:08:57] uh first phase of the pilot is including on both sides of Coyote Hill um seems

[6:09:03] like a clear uh win and a clear benefit to both people who live in RVs and the

[6:09:10] broader community. Um the only thing I'll note about that first phase is that

[6:09:15] uh I'm not even sure if we really need to collect a $15 permit fee per month. I

[6:09:19] think the cost to collect that might be higher than the actual value of that.

[6:09:24] And uh to the extent that we sort of just want people to buy in and sort of

[6:09:30] have a stake that it's more of a symbolic cost, we already have uh a

[6:09:34] number of agreements, insurance requirements, things uh that are real

[6:09:38] hoops that they would need to jump through. So I don't think we really need

[6:09:41] a $15 fee um on that pilot for the first part. For the second part, uh

[6:09:50] I really do appreciate the work from staff and the ad hoc. It is really

[6:09:54] clearly well intention that by moving RVs that are already on these streets to

[6:09:59] one side that there might actually be less RV capacity. Uh

[6:10:04] however, I think if we actually do announce and publicize this program as

[6:10:08] such that uh the 116 to 125 spaces we've allocated

[6:10:16] uh for any given site could get quite dense. Um,

[6:10:21] uh, you know, no one knows in expectation exactly where it could land,

[6:10:25] but maybe, uh, if we end up with a 100 RVs sort of densely configured on one

[6:10:31] side of several streets, that that is maybe actually not preferable to the

[6:10:36] current state of about 130 RVs, but sort of slightly more spread. like uh I

[6:10:45] find it interesting that in this conversation we heard from some

[6:10:49] nonprofit community groups and some RV residents and uh certainly a lot of

[6:10:54] neighbors that actually weren't in favor of this second part of the pilot. And I

[6:11:00] don't think those groups necessarily agree on any of the other next steps,

[6:11:04] but at least um uh that sort of strange consensus does make me have second

[6:11:12] thoughts about this uh second part of the pilot. Uh uh

[6:11:19] um I'll echo the point that we can probably find spaces in North Pole Alto.

[6:11:25] Um there are uh areas in Sofa or uh

[6:11:33] right right by city hall like corners of that um maybe in Cena maybe parts maybe

[6:11:38] like a small parts in your fire station one where

[6:11:43] uh we can make that heat map less striking

[6:11:48] than it is right now which is uh quite concentrated in North Ventura in a

[6:11:53] couple parts uh and uh couple other parts of South Paul Alto. Um so yeah, uh

[6:12:00] hopefully that's useful context and I'm happy to support uh whatever motion um

[6:12:06] and consensus this we seem to be pointed to.

[6:12:11] » Council member Rectal.

[6:12:17] » Yeah. Yeah. Uh, council member Lead Hayes was

[6:12:23] making a point that the reason these streets are on the list at all is

[6:12:27] because they were the most impacted by RVs. It's not like we chose them. The

[6:12:30] RVs chose them and we're trying to give them a relief valve and it's not

[6:12:35] appreciated apparently. So, I'm not going to push it, but uh the purpose was

[6:12:39] is to reduce the amount of RVs in those neighborhoods. Uh, I do really feel

[6:12:44] strongly though that we should um limit RV parking near residences even if those

[6:12:50] residences aren't in a traditional residential zone and also say within 100

[6:12:57] yards of a residence. So, we don't want the right on the the poor people that

[6:13:02] are right on the transition zone get an RV right next to their house. I I think

[6:13:07] that that would be a reasonable approach.

[6:13:12] That's all. >> Council member Liths.

[6:13:17] » Thank you, Mayor. And thank you everybody for being here late. I'm

[6:13:20] yawning like a lion over here and some of you may be tired as well. Um glad to

[6:13:25] hear the support for pilot number one. I think um that's exciting. Um and have I

[6:13:32] took a lot of notes on all the comments that were made. I was really listening

[6:13:36] and I know my colleagues were as well in terms of your concerns. Um, I wanted to

[6:13:42] plus one the um notion or plus two or three by this point that we've got to

[6:13:48] engage business owners. The public speaker who yanked on his employee tag

[6:13:53] and said, "If you could get my employer to let me park in his lot, then I

[6:13:58] wouldn't have to park on the street in my RV." There you are. Um, Raleigh or

[6:14:02] something. >> Okay. Um, I thought that was really

[6:14:07] compelling and it's hard for us to make that happen from here. We're going to

[6:14:10] have to figure out how to make that happen. But that's clearly an important

[6:14:14] sector here. The [snorts] notion that we need to spend more time engaging with

[6:14:18] Stanford about what role they want to play in this, particularly as they're

[6:14:21] going out for their next general use permit in the community. This is a very

[6:14:25] ripe time to be talking with the largest land owner um about this seemingly

[6:14:30] intractable problem. Um, I do, Council Member Rectal already clarified what I

[6:14:36] was whispering to him, which was, um, we didn't go after Olive and Ash and Park

[6:14:44] or commercial, industrial, etc. These were the streets that had been

[6:14:48] identified as the most impacted that needed street sweeping and cleaning and

[6:14:52] whatnot. So we had that in mind as needing help and we were trying to

[6:14:56] reduce the amount of density of OSVs on those streets, not burden them any

[6:15:02] further. Um so I feel like that's a perception problem. It's very valid that

[6:15:06] you perceived it that way. Um but in terms of where we were coming from, that

[6:15:10] was certainly not our intent. I certainly share the concern about equity

[6:15:15] being a you know a lens through which we have to view all things and uh we

[6:15:20] definitely think that burdens ought to be shared in this city. So very much

[6:15:24] appreciate the push back there. The last thing that I want to say is I'm slightly

[6:15:28] concerned about the vigilanteism. I think that some RV dwellers are being

[6:15:33] followed and their activities are being recorded and somebody went around and

[6:15:37] put stickers on their vehicles saying this is illegal. You will be towed. And

[6:15:41] I asked our police chief, "Did you put these stickers on?" And he said, "No."

[6:15:45] And sometimes that kind of behavior can border on harassment. And uh it may also

[6:15:51] be vandalism. And so I just want to ask all of us like, let's not

[6:15:58] let this become an even bigger problem. Let's try to

[6:16:03] work together toward a solution that is going to work for everybody. And you

[6:16:08] know there have been comments about we're better than this and this is not

[6:16:10] who we are and all of this and you know we're many people on opposite sides of

[6:16:13] this issue and um I think we need more listening and we need to have the

[6:16:19] frustrations be heard and tempers cooled um because it's it's getting a little

[6:16:25] it's it's it's been ugly out there for some while as some of you have said and

[6:16:30] it's getting uglier in some ways and none of us want that. So we're going to

[6:16:34] work on this pilot. I think it sounds like there's support for pilot one that

[6:16:37] may be fulmenting over here and you know like let's root for it to be um useful

[6:16:43] and and yield data um and let's root for it to be successful at moving people to

[6:16:50] a place that is better for the you know those they're leaving behind and is

[6:16:54] better for them um as more housing gets built and more parking lots get

[6:16:59] identified um I I look forward to us being uh proud of solutions we were able

[6:17:05] to come up with together. I know we're not yet there, but I think that day will

[6:17:09] come.

[6:17:16] » Council member Bert, >> I'm ready to make a motion if everybody

[6:17:21] » Yeah, I think I think that's a good idea. Yeah, I was scribbling one, but

[6:17:27] » I would move that uh we adopt

[6:17:33] uh staff recommendation one, which is the

[6:17:40] um the permit phase one pilot and that we give additional direction to

[6:17:49] staff in the following ways. Uh

[6:17:55] first that we um begin to uh provide uh red curb

[6:18:04] daylighting uh in the commercial areas that were uh

[6:18:11] identified for the phase 2 pilot. and uh that we evaluate a a 10- ft uh

[6:18:20] daylighting.

[6:18:23] Uh second that we uh staff come back with u uh appropriate um I guess

[6:18:30] ordinance changes to uh recognize that residential including uh PCs be treated

[6:18:40] in the same as residential uh uh zoning.

[6:18:46] » Some are also zoned mixed use too. So >> okay PCs and mixed use. Yep. um

[6:18:55] that um any future consideration of a phase 2 pilot

[6:19:03] exclude streets that are um

[6:19:09] uh have significant residential components or a uh a bike boulevard or

[6:19:17] excuse me bike lane that would be Park, Olive, Lambert and I think Ash.

[6:19:24] Um

[6:19:28] and

[6:19:32] oh uh lastly that uh staff pursue uh data collection to have a better

[6:19:40] understanding of the demographics of our current RV population.

[6:19:52] I'll second that. >> Okay.

[6:19:57] Uh I think I've spoken enough. >> One question [clears throat] for the uh

[6:20:03] residential parking restrictions. Was that going forward or do you want to

[6:20:06] change that today? [clears throat] >> Well, we we can't do it today. I think

[6:20:11] we have to ask staff to return with with uh revisions to our ordinance.

[6:20:17] » Correct. I I and uh depending on the complexity of those changes, we may want

[6:20:23] the ad hoc to weigh in on it, but I think it's relatively straightforward.

[6:20:27] » Yeah, I shouldn't say today. But were you did you How did you word that?

[6:20:31] Where's the wording? >> Um

[6:20:35] I don't know. We'll see how M May Maha did. But I thought that I had um

[6:20:39] requested that staff return with um >> I thought you said for future

[6:20:46] planning. Well, let's see what

[6:20:49] » we'll see. I think on the residential was it my intention was that that would

[6:20:53] be addressed either way. >> Okay.

[6:21:00] » Question. Would you be interested in adding um

[6:21:05] a direction to staff to investigate with Stanford and other large employers? Um

[6:21:12] » yes >> something

[6:21:14] » I'll [laughter] make a so that would be fine is to um explore with major

[6:21:20] employers um uh their willingness to accommodate workers who reside in RVs

[6:21:28] their workers who reside in RVs on their sites. I will make a side note that uh

[6:21:33] in my 30 plus years of having a business uh two different times I had an employee

[6:21:39] who uh asked to be able to if they could reside uh on during the week on our

[6:21:46] parking lot and we were more than willing to because it added to security.

[6:21:50] We knew who that person was. They were eyes and ears on our property. So, I

[6:21:56] don't know if we can convince other employers to do that, but um we viewed

[6:22:00] it as beneficial.

[6:22:03] » Council member Low, I guess. >> Yes. Um we need to add to I believe we

[6:22:07] need to add to that shortening of the current schedule of seven months to get

[6:22:11] to a pilot. Um well, the the first pilot was January 1st, right? So, that's

[6:22:18] that's basically four months. Is that correct?

[6:22:22] » Uh please please repeat the question, council member. when uh the the timing

[6:22:27] on the permitted pilot, when was that to take effect?

[6:22:31] » March. >> March.

[6:22:33] » So, can we if we're not proceeding with a second pilot, can we move the We'd

[6:22:40] like, I think, to move the first pilot to January 1st.

[6:22:43] » Yeah, >> I think staff will need to take a look

[6:22:46] at what we can do to accelerate that. And at the same time, we hear you

[6:22:52] » include in the motion to pursue a target date of January 1st.

[6:22:57] » Yeah, that's the direction. >> Yeah.

[6:22:59] » And Council Member Bert, we'll need to add up the uh we'll have to change the

[6:23:04] budget appropriation um as part of this motion to ensure that the budget for the

[6:23:10] the phase the option one is in there and not for the option two.

[6:23:14] » Okay. Um so then in the language maybe this we could either put that the budget

[6:23:20] allocation in or uh simply say an accompanying uh uh uh uh uh budget

[6:23:28] allocations

[6:23:32] or if staff has better language I'm certainly welcome.

[6:23:40] Would you accept a friendly amendment related to pursuing future locations?

[6:23:46] Something like directing staff to continue to work with county, state, and

[6:23:51] federal partners on identifying additional land for safe parking.

[6:23:56] » Yes. And I your point makes me realize I did not include

[6:24:01] uh requesting staff to pursue both sides of Coyote.

[6:24:07] So, two things going to be a long motion, but it's late night, so we might

[6:24:11] as well make a long motion. Um, so Maha under um

[6:24:17] uh I guess we'll make another section that

[6:24:20] is um request staff to explore um or continue to pursue

[6:24:30] um the uh permitted pilot program on both sides of Coyote Hill Road.

[6:24:37] And second, uh, Council Member Lithcott Hayes, you

[6:24:42] have your preferred, >> uh, direct staff to continue to

[6:24:47] seek safe parking

[6:24:51] solutions in collaboration with the county, the state, and federal partners.

[6:24:57] » Sure. We'll throw in the UN >> and the UN.

[6:25:01] » Yeah. >> We'd like the United Nations to come

[6:25:03] here and solve this for us, please. >> Okay. public and private partners.

[6:25:07] » Maker secondary, are you good? Okay. Uh just if I could for clarification, I

[6:25:11] think I assume council member Leth is referring to other locations as well in

[6:25:16] addition to the >> Yes.

[6:25:18] » Coyote Hill and Embark. >> I am most definitely. I'm thinking about

[6:25:22] Moffett Field. I'm thinking about Yellows. The final thing is the golf

[6:25:26] course. The It's the um portion of Embarcadero,

[6:25:30] the north edge of Embarcadero, sort of between the waste treatment plant. Uh

[6:25:34] well on the airport and golf course side um

[6:25:39] » can we ask look at that? >> I'm hesitant to do that. Um you know

[6:25:45] that's uh uh I I think that it it could be

[6:25:51] detrimental to the um to the the revenue of the uh of the city golf course there.

[6:25:58] So I'm hesitant to do that. But it's easy to roll out if the first part of it

[6:26:02] works. >> Yeah. the down by the airport works.

[6:26:06] It's an easy ad. >> I just hate for it to be lost as an

[6:26:09] idea. I know I'm not long for this world.

[6:26:12] » Well, um I would >> I got the idea right.

[6:26:15] » Got it. But I it it strikes me that I I I would be uh willing to include u Vice

[6:26:22] Mayor Stone's suggestion that um that the um um

[6:26:29] west side of Bryant uh be pursued as um uh uh

[6:26:37] basically I don't know how we do it. I'm sorry. I am going to speak out loud

[6:26:42] before uh offering the uh amended language. Uh in the downtown we have our

[6:26:48] our u color zone parking and in order to allow RVs there, we'd have to not have

[6:26:54] color zone parking there. But I don't know how you'd restrict the parking to

[6:26:59] just RVs versus other vehicles that would park overnight there. So, uh, I

[6:27:04] let me just add to the motion for staff to explore any other sites that would be

[6:27:12] eligible for RV parking in um the greater downtown area. Just explore and

[6:27:19] that's all it is. Get on the radar. And would you be willing at the end of

[6:27:25] eight to say um federal and private partners because I want to make sure

[6:27:30] we're still you know keep our feelers out even though we've been turned down

[6:27:33] repeatedly. >> Yeah.

[6:27:36] » Yeah. If we didn't I guess we didn't have that elsewhere and that would be

[6:27:39] » I don't think so. >> Okay. And that would be fine.

[6:27:42] » Thank you. >> Oh six.

[6:27:45] » Oh yeah that's the employers. Yeah.

[6:27:48] » Does six cover it in more detail? You know what? That's different because 60

[6:27:52] is contemplating employers with going businesses with

[6:27:55] » Okay. >> And to the clerk, there's a just a

[6:27:58] clerical thing on eight direct staff to continue to seek instead of see. You

[6:28:03] need a K on the end of that word.

[6:28:08] » Okay. Council member Lou, >> uh, quick point about the $15 fee. I am

[6:28:15] a little bit concerned that a $15 fee per month would actually be a somewhat

[6:28:20] meaningful disincentive to participation in the first part of the pilot. I'm

[6:28:24] curious if staff has any perspective of uh

[6:28:30] how they feel if they feel strongly about that $15 fee and if there's no

[6:28:34] particularly strong feeling. did hear from staff earlier that they in the

[6:28:38] outreach that that was uh that formula was viewed as acceptable, but

[6:28:46] » we definitely heard feedback on this from um Sophie Piggman who is uh on

[6:28:52] staff and working in the outreach context and the feedback she got was

[6:28:56] that $15 was reasonable. We thought about going higher and we got some push

[6:29:02] back that higher was a deterrent, but $15 felt reasonable and also valuable

[6:29:07] for people to have a little bit of skin in the game.

[6:29:09] » Okay. I feel like they could still have skin

[6:29:14] in the game at zero, but uh don't feel extremely strongly about this

[6:29:21] point. uh council members. So there there was some back and forth for sure

[6:29:26] about uh what would be reasonable, what wouldn't. And there were some

[6:29:30] suggestions of much higher $50, others suggesting we just wave it entirely. And

[6:29:36] I think the the happy not so happy answer we came to was 15. Um with the

[6:29:41] understanding that perhaps uh you know, local nonprofits might be able to help

[6:29:46] folks if they needed need a little boost with that dollar amount.

[6:29:52] I think that's pretty nominal and it it it actually kind of in a nominal way

[6:29:58] requires some commitment from those uh dwellers. So,

[6:30:02] » and it'll be tested in the pilot. So, we can change it if it doesn't work.

[6:30:05] » Okay. >> All right. I don't see any lights.

[6:30:09] » I I wanted to point out that part of the Sorry, almost there. Um the motion uh

[6:30:16] takes into account the work for the first pilot, but it doesn't bring in the

[6:30:21] subsequent budget amendments which were uh a combination of items three and four

[6:30:25] in the staff report. >> Well, yes, that's what I had asked for

[6:30:28] staff to provide what wording would be. >> Yes. So, I just want to make sure um the

[6:30:34] easiest way at 11452 might be to uh approve those budget

[6:30:39] amendments and subtract out whatever is related to the second pilot program if

[6:30:42] you're approving the first. But only if that's accurate.

[6:30:46] » Well, >> and I think uh wording to that effect

[6:30:50] would be fine. I think we would also want to recognize that I believe as

[6:30:55] scoped it's a larger pilot one because we're now talking about both sides of

[6:31:01] Coyote Hall Road. So for the if allow us that general direction, you'll

[6:31:06] figure out the math. >> I think that's that's it. So the general

[6:31:08] direction would be to the effect of uh and um the appropriate

[6:31:16] uh proportionate >> appropriations

[6:31:19] » appropriation.

[6:31:27] Did the clerk get that? Sorry, it's getting so long. I can't

[6:31:35] I think madam clerk just let us know when you're

[6:31:41] » You can make it number 10 if you want to.

[6:31:43] » Probably doesn't fit on the page on the screen.

[6:31:51] [laughter]

[6:32:10] We may have a new record on motion length.

[6:32:12] » I think so. Yeah, it won't fit on the screen even if the smaller font.

[6:32:26] » Okay.

[6:32:30] Keith, your lights's on your microphone but not here. Are you good? Okay.

[6:32:34] [laughter] Just checking. All right. Staff, any any anything more? Deputy

[6:32:38] city manager. >> No.

[6:32:41] Okay. All right. Well, Madam Clerk,

[6:32:46] » one word smithing thing. I'm sorry. Uh in number two, if we could just change

[6:32:51] the word from phase two pilot to pilot two or something because this whole part

[6:32:56] is phase two. >> Thank you.

[6:33:00] » Okay. Pilot two.

[6:33:08] » No. Uh

[6:33:15] so new wording will simply be pilot two. Would

[6:33:23] that also be in the same case for number four?

[6:33:29] » Yes. >> Okay.

[6:33:30] » But it's okay. >> Yeah, she's got it. Okay.

[6:33:37] Okay. Any any more typos? Going once. Going

[6:33:42] twice. All right. Madam clerk, would you please call the role? Council member

[6:33:46] Liths, >> yes. Mayor Vinker,

[6:33:50] » yes. >> Council member Rectal,

[6:33:52] » yes. >> Council member Bert,

[6:33:53] » yes. >> Council member Lowing,

[6:33:55] » yes. >> Vice Mayor Stone,

[6:33:56] » yes. >> Council member Lou,

[6:33:58] » yes. >> Motion carries unanimously.

[6:34:01] » All right. Well, thank you all very much. But you can't leave because we

[6:34:04] have our new public comment for matters not on the agenda on Zoom. [laughter]

[6:34:08] But this does end this agenda item. And thank you to all who got us here. Okay,

[6:34:14] madame clerk, is there any um public general public comment via Zoom?

[6:34:22] » No hands are raised on Zoom. >> All right, we did it. All right, thank

[6:34:26] you all. Stand. Nope. Oh, >> there is one hand raised in

[6:34:30] » one hand raised. All right, let let's let's do it.

[6:34:32] » All right. Um our one speaker is Aram F.

[6:34:48] Okay, thank you very much. It's been a long night. Okay, so you know, the bulk

[6:34:53] of the folks here on council identify as being Democrats except for Julie um and

[6:35:00] George. Now, uh I see everybody else really uh right-wing Republicans in

[6:35:06] their their perspective. And one of the things that's that's

[6:35:10] concerning me is that even though there are folks on council who um claim to be

[6:35:18] transparent, it's not so. And we're seeing a movement among progressive

[6:35:22] Democrats that they are are prevailing in these elections across the country

[6:35:27] and they're beating Zionist candidates even when Apac is loading up tons of

[6:35:33] money to support these right-wing uh uh Zionist candidates.

[6:35:39] The the left is coming back and they're coming back in a strong way. But when I

[6:35:44] try to get information from a person who I know to be a Zionist, I don't have

[6:35:50] your support in trying to push that individual, okay, to be transparent, a

[6:35:55] weapons maker to boot, okay, he standing up and I guess not paying any attention,

[6:36:01] uh, as I might anticipate, but I've repeatedly made the offer to him to

[6:36:06] Yeah, he's going to walk out of the out of the meeting and and not listen. That

[6:36:09] that's good. Go ahead. you know, you you you take off if that's the way you want

[6:36:13] to treat the public. But I'm serious about wanting to know whether he got

[6:36:17] support from Apac, whether he's a dual citizen of Israel, and whether he's ever

[6:36:22] apologized for the weapons that the company that he works for

[6:36:27] makes that kill indisputably Palestinians on a regular basis. He's

[6:36:33] been there for 25 years plus. So that's that that's not just trying to be uh uh

[6:36:39] u you know provoking people or being provocative. It's something that the

[6:36:44] voters are entitled to know and we're going to be pushing more and more for

[6:36:47] this. Okay. Uh Ed's not a weapons maker. He may be a Zionist and and uh has

[6:36:53] walked off the dis. Well, good for him, too. You know, don't listen to the

[6:36:58] people uh that don't comport with your point of view. That's a real democratic

[6:37:04] perspective. Okay. Okay. A real First Amendment uh breath of fresh air. I'm

[6:37:10] being uh satirical here. Uh but you know, it's

[6:37:16] okay for you to speak out, Mr. Redhead, uh Mr. Transparent, and let me know. I'm

[6:37:21] willing to sit down with you. You know, you're a bigger and younger guy than me.

[6:37:24] You probably knock my ass out. I'll sit across from the table despite that. But

[6:37:28] we need to have this conversation because I'm not gonna quit on you, okay?

[6:37:33] I'm going to continue to expect that you speak on these issues. So, you can you

[6:37:38] can go home now. Thank you all. It's been a long meeting. Uh and we'll go

[6:37:43] from there. >> That concludes public comment on re

[6:37:48] remote uh participants on the agenda. >> Thank you, Madam Clerk. That concludes

[6:37:53] public comment. After meeting like this, we are ajourned.

City Council Meeting - August 24, 2026

Transcript