Good evening, everyone. If you can take your seats, we're going to get it started.
Thank you for joining our regular city council meeting of June 8th, 2020.
We hold meetings in a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation available.
Given the number of time-sensitive matters before us this evening, we appreciate your cooperation
in keeping comments as concise as we can so that all speakers have the opportunity to
be heard tonight. And the city welcomes public comments on topics within the city's subject
matter jurisdiction. And members of the public may provide comments as follows. In-person
speakers will be called first, speaker cards are located at the back table in the council
chambers and must be turned into the City Clerk here at the dais. Please be sure to indicate
the agenda item number you wish to speak on. Attendees who have joined us by Zoom will
be called to speak after in-person comments have been given. Detailed instructions for
public comment will be provided on the screen when the time for public comment begins.
And with that, we'll now turn it over to our City Clerk to call the roll.
Thank you and good evening everyone. Council member Chu is absent this evening.
Councilmember G.
Present.
Councilmember Howard.
Here.
Councilmember Padilla.
Present.
Councilmember Sturkin.
Here.
Vice Mayor Aiken.
Here.
Mayor Martinez-Ebios.
Here.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
We'll move to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Vice Mayor, could you do the honors?
Please join me in saluting our flag.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic
for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you Vice Mayor.
And item four on the agenda does not apply for this evening.
It's only a procedural item.
So we'll move on to our next item.
We have no presentation.
Public comment section of the agenda will take public comment on the consent calendar, matters
of council interest, as well as items that are not listed on tonight's agenda. We welcome
speakers providing public comment, but please be advised that this is a limited public forum.
As such, speakers must address matters within the subject manager's section of the city,
and if speakers do not they'll be warned and if they continue to disregard city
rules their opportunity to speak will be limited. If you're attending in person
please fill out a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk here at the
dais and if you're attending virtually feel free to raise your hand on zoom at
this time or press star 9 if you've joined by phone. Once we've gathered
all the speaker cards and raised hands and have begun public comment no
additional speakers will be allowed to queue up to speak and I'll turn it
to facilitate public comment.
Thank you, Mayor.
At this time, we have three speakers.
Potentially four. Oh, another item, okay.
Three speakers for public comment. I'll give one last call to the audience or our folks on Zoom to be recognized for public comment.
Once we begin public comment, as the mayor stated, we will close the list of speakers.
So I'll give you a few more seconds for any more public comment on general comment this evening.
Okay. We will begin closing the speakers list and we'll start with Tony Gapastone.
I'm
wearing a shirt that says stories save lives because I really believe when we tell
a powerful and brave story or see ourselves in film and TV or have someone lean over and
talk about the pain that they've endured and survived, we can save a life, literally.
Hi, I'm Tony Gappison.
I'm the founder and executive director of BraveMaker.
We're a film festival.
Here in Redwood City. That happens in July. This is our eighth year. And I want to tell you this year. We're opening up on July 8th with Kevin Hines who is a survivor of a suicide attempt off the Golden Gate Bridge.
He tried to take his own life in 2000 when he was 19 years old and survived with a broken back. He immediately regretted it when he jumped off. A sea lion pushed him to the top.
and he was rescued. And since 2000, he's been making movies and telling his story all around
the world. And he'll be here in Redwood City on July 8th at the Chan Zuckerberg Community
Space. I want to invite you to come to this film festival because I really believe the
107 films that we have are so life-changing. They talk about affordable housing. They talk
about gender equality, LGBT rights. They talk about racial justice. And I'm so passionate
about filmmaking, especially here in this city because I'm a 30-year resident
and I believe the arts make us better.
So thank you to everybody who's been a part of our film festival for the past eight years.
The redwood city cultural commission, arts commission just gave us a grant this week, but
we're down for grandfers from the past. We're down $20,000 from the past years we've had
and your support and ticket sales help us to be great. So thank you so much. You're all
invited.
Thank you, Tony. We'll now move to our Zoom speakers. We'll start with
Kelly Boyett, who will be followed by Tony Godbuske, and you may unmute yourself and
begin your comments.
Hi, my name is Kelly. I'll be commenting on agenda item 11a about the
tobacco ordinance. Sorry Kelly, I don't mean to interrupt you but we are only taking comments
for item 6 at this time when you can raise your hand again for item 11a. Gotcha, okay
I'm sorry about that. Sorry about that, thank you.
Okay, looks like the other raised
hand went down so it
Looks like that concludes public comment, Mayor.
Thank you, City Clerk. Thank you, everybody, for making public comment on consents.
Excuse me, on all of our items this evening, we'll move to consents.
Items on consent are routine in nature and approved by one motion.
And are there any items on consent from which council members are recused?
Councilor Ampedia.
Mayor, I'll be recusing myself from item 7D.
My house was on the street where we're prayers
for the replacement program was made
and so I won't be participating.
Thank you.
Great, thank you council member.
That's item 7D as in David.
And are there any other items on consent?
Not seeing any.
So we will take a motion on item 7D first.
Motion to approve item 7D. Second.
Thank you. That was a motion from Councilmember Howard, a second from Vice Mayor Akin. Could we get an electronic vote, please?
The motion passes with five votes. Councilmember Chu is absent, and Councilmember Padilla is recused.
Thank you. May I like to make a motion to approve consent without this item we just voted on separately?
motion from Council Member G, a second from Council Member Howard. Could we get
electronic vote please?
The motion passes with six votes. Council Member Chu is absent.
Thank you everyone. With that, we'll move right into staff reports and we'll go
into our first item, 8A, Spanish and
Interpretation is being provided for this item, and I'd like to turn it over to our interpreter
for instructions on how to participate in the meeting in Spanish.
Buenas tardes. Esta noche se está proveyendo interpretación español. Si usted necesita
escuchar la interpretación español, por favor, llame al 669-900-6833. Ingrese el AID de la
y la contraseña 1017.
Para hablar durante un comentario público, notifique a las personas de atrás de la sala
y para recibir también interpretación en la sala,
por favor reciba un receptor en la parte posterior de la sala.
Muchas gracias.
Gracias mucho.
Con eso, voy a ponerlo a la ciudad de Clark,
Jessica Castro,
nuestro líder de la casa,
Elin Lancaster
y nuestro consultor, Jason Moody,
con EPS, para dar la presentación.
Thank you, mayor. My name is Jessica Castro. I'm the city clerk and I will be kicking off
the presentation. I will be structured in three parts this evening.
I'll begin with an overview
of the initiative petition and election process, including a recap of events that led to tonight's
recommended actions. Next, our housing leadership manager, Lynn Lancaster, will then give an
overview of the proposed ordinance submitted by the proponents. And finally, Jason Moody
with EPS, the City's Consultant, will present a comprehensive analysis of potential impacts
referred to as the 9212 report.
So before you are the three questions that will be
asked for the Council to keep in mind, we will be pausing at every section of the presentation
for questions.
On this slide is sort of the overview of the timeline of the process. On October 29th, 2025, the City Clerk's Office received a notice of intent to circulate an initiative petition and a proposed ordinance, which will refer to tonight as the measure from three Redwood City residents known as the proponents.
Following receipt of these documents and in accordance with the California elections code, the city attorney prepared a ballot title and summary.
With this ballot title and summary, the proponents prepared a petition to circulate for signatures among redwood city voters.
On April 22 of this year, the proponents submitted their petition and the City Clerk's Office conducted a Prima-Facia or on its face review and determined that the raw count of signatures presented met the minimum number of petition signatures required to accept the petition for filing.
Following acceptance, the
City Clerk's office transferred the petition to the San Mateo County Elections Office to conduct
signature verification of each signature. On May 13th, I was notified by the elections
office that of the 6,045 signatures reviewed, the petition received 4,751 valid signatures,
achieving the minimum number of required signatures to qualify the proposed measures per elections
Code section 9210, Subdivision A. As a result, I have certified the
sufficiency of the petition. Tonight, the City Council will be asked to accept the
certification and receive the 9212 report, and the City Council must act on one of the
following options.
So the recommendation this evening, because the 9212 report will be
presented this evening, the elections code requires that the City Council take one
of two possible
Council actions. At this meeting, the city council must determine whether to, number one, adopt
the proposed ordinance without alteration within 10 days, or, number two, call for an election
to place the proposal on the ballot for voter consideration at the November 3, 2026 election.
Should the city council choose to call an election, staff prepared a resolution which
is Attachment E to the Council Agenda Packet,
allowing such action to occur tonight.
And before we move to the questions for this section,
I wanna call out a revision that was made to Attachment E,
which is the resolution calling the election
on November 3rd, 2026 for this initiative measure,
specifically a change to the ballot question,
which is detailed on this slide.
Copies of the updated resolution
were provided to each Council member
in the agenda packet for public viewing in the back of the
The revised ballot question reads, shall the measure that caps annual rent increases for
units built before February 1st, 1995 to 60% of the increase in the consumer price index
with maximum increase of 5% and for rental units regardless of when built, increases requirements
for just cause evictions, requires relocation payments of at least $12,000 for no fault
evictions, provides additional tenant protections, and creates a new city
administered renters rights protection program funded through annual landlord
assessments be adopted.
And with that I'll take any questions on the election
or the initiative petition process that the council may have.
Thank you city
clerk, colleagues, any clarifying questions on the elections process? Have
we got here.
Great. We'll keep moving. Thank you. And with that, I'll turn it over to housing leadership
manager Lynn Lancaster. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening mayor, vice mayor, and city council
members. I'm a Lynn Lancaster housing leadership manager. As our city clerk noted, I'll be
providing an overview of the proposed ordinance. And Jason Moody with economic planning systems
or EPS will be giving the presentation on the 9212 report. I also want to note that we are joined
this evening by Lalita Fernandez, Deputy City Attorney, Karen Tiedemann, Outside Legal Counsel,
and Victor Gaetan, Housing Management Analyst, to also help answer any questions.
Before going into the proposed ordinance, I do want to provide some state context.
there is the Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act which impacts how local cities
can implement rent control. The Costa Hawkins
Hawkins Act went into effect in 1995 and places limits on local rent stabilization ordinances
by exempting single-family homes, condominiums, and any new construction built after February
1st of 1995 from local rent control requirements.
Costa Hawk Hawkins also requires vacancy decontrol, which means that landlords must be allowed
to reset rental rates for their units at the start of a new tenancy.
And
so now I'll go over the key elements of the proposed ordinance.
It includes a rent stabilization requirement where annual rent increases would be limited
to 60% of the percent change in the consumer price index or CPI with a maximum of 5%.
This requirement also includes an initial rollback of rents to October 29th of 2025
and landlords would be not would not be allowed to bank or roll
Roll over rent increases from year to year. Landlords can also not charge tenants for utilities
in addition to rent unless the utility is separately or individually metered. Landlords are also
not allowed to use a ratio utility system commonly referred to as rubs to divide utility
costs among tenants. Landlords may file a fair return petition for higher rent increases.
The proposed ordinance also includes just cause for eviction protections.
These include expanded protections compared to the State Tenant Protection Act, also referred to as TPA,
or the city's Tenant Protection Ordinance referred to as TPO.
And it includes additional protections for students, educators, elderly, disabled, or terminally ill tenants.
These just cause eviction protections would go into effect immediately, as opposed to the state TPA or city TPO where protections go into effect after one year of tenancy.
Similar to the city TPO, the proposed ordinance includes right to return requirements, but these
requirements are expanded to cover all no fault just cause termination reasons, which include
owner move in, substantial renovation, demolition, and withdrawal from the rental market.
Generally, the right to return has to be offered at the same rent in lease terms,
and the right to return never expires.
Additionally, the ordinance
requires that
landlords pay relocation assistance for all no fault just cause terminations and
this is four months of fair market rent or $12,000 minimum and fair market
rents which will often refer to as FMR are annually published rents by the
US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
For elderly tenants disabled or terminally ill tenants, they would receive an additional
$6,000. And these rates are adjusted annually by the change in CPI.
For any construction, landlords are required to provide a tenant safety plan, and this must
be approved by the city. There's also requirements for optional short-term relocation assistance
for construction less than 30 days.
If the landlord is providing the short-term relocation assistance,
the tenant would still need to continue paying rent.
It also provides for anti-harassment protections
and calls for the establishment of a rent stabilization
and tenant protection program that the city would administer
that includes a rent registry,
whereas city would track rent increases,
changes to tenancy.
The city would also be responsible for processing petitions and appeals related to rent increases
or decreases, as noted approving tenant safety plans, and any appeals regarding relocation
assistance eligibility. The city would also contract with a third party to provide free
legal counsel for low-income tenants, and this would need to be a fee-funded system
costs and those fees would be paid by the landlord and costs could not be covered by the general fund.
And so I'm going to go over now the kind of applicability of the proposed ordinance.
So there are two tiers of applicability, which we refer to, the first is fully covered.
So this covers units that are subject to all requirements of the proposed ordinance,
including the rent stabilization.
Fully covered units include multifamily properties built prior to February 1st of 1995. This is
inclusive of deed restricted affordable units and ADUs also built prior to that February
1st, 1995 date. Fully covered units does include mobile homes.
Partially covered units are units that are not subject to the rent stabilization requirements
but are still subject to all the other requirements of the proposed ordinance. This includes single
family homes and housing built after 1995 also inclusive of deed restricted
affordable units built after 1995.
So this this chart that's quite large on
here is a comparison of the key elements of the proposed ordinance compared
to the city's tenant protection ordinance as well as state law. As noted on
the previous slide the proposed ordinance has broader applicability
compared to state law or the city's TPO.
For example, the state law and the city TPO generally exempt single family homes, condos, deed restricted affordable housing, and ADUs.
While state law includes rent stabilization, the proposed ordinance would place stricter limits on the amount that rents can be increased annually.
State law has a range of 5 to 10%, and the maximum of the proposed ordinance is 5%.
Like state law and the city's TPO, the proposed ordinance includes just cause for eviction
protections, but protections would apply immediately.
State law and the city TPO do require a 12-month waiting period, however the city's TPO does
include minimum lease term requirements where landlords must offer a one-year lease.
The proposed ordinance includes expanded right to return requirements by requiring,
and I will review this more in depth on the next slides.
It also includes expanded relocation assistance requirements,
and again, I'll go over that in more detail.
On the next slides. Lastly, state law includes anti-harassment protections, the proposed ordinance
specifically outlines the anti-harassment protections that would protect all tenants.
So going over
in more depth the right to return requirements. The proposed ordinance requires landlords to
offer a right to return for all no fault just causes. And as I've noted before, this
right to return does not expire. For owner move-ins, a landlord cannot evict
for an owner move-in if the tenant is elderly or disabled and has lived in the
unit for at least three years or if the tenant is certified as terminally ill. A
landlord can also not evict during the school year if the tenant has children
or educators in the household. For substantial renovation, as noted
earlier a tenant safety plan would be required and there are
There are optional short-term relocation assistance requirements if that renovation takes less than
30 days. Similar to owner movements, there are limitations, again, on evicting during the
school year. For demolition, the rent control provisions of this ordinance would apply to
the newly constructed rental units if they are constructed on the same property within
five years. There are also extended noticing timelines ranging from 120 days to one
year for elderly or disabled tenants.
And with withdrawal from the rental market,
there are the same expanded noticing requirements
as demolition.
And landlords can be held liable for punitive damages
if the unit is returned to the rental market
within certain time frames.
All right. So, this table, because there are quite a few scenarios outlines kind of all
of the right-to-return scenarios and compares the proposed ordinance to the city's tenant
protection ordinance. For owner move-in, both ordinances require that the owner move-in within
90 days and maintain the property as their primary residence for a set period of time.
If the owner fails to reoccupy the unit following these requirements, they have to
offered the tenant the right to return of the same rent and lease terms and I'll
note that this requirement is also consistent with state law. If the owner
moves in and follows all of the occupancy timely requirements then the
city's ordinance does not require the right to return if eventually the
owner returns the unit back to the rental market. However the proposed
ordinance does require a right to return and at the same rent and lease
terms. For substantial renovation both ordinances require a right to
return, whether the remodel was completed or not.
For un-
When completed remodels or renovations, the right to return requirements are the same for
both the city's ordinance and the proposed ordinance and state law. If the remodel is completed,
the city's ordinance requires same rent with allowable increases by state law and also provides
a fair rate of return appeals process. The proposed ordinance just requires the same
rent and lease terms.
For demolition, if it's not completed, the right to return requirements
again are the same for both ordinances as well as state law.
However, completed demolitions,
the city's TPO does not require a right to return whereas the ordinance again does require
that at the same rent and lease terms. I will note though that depending on the
situation, state laws such as SB 330 can also require the right to return following
a completed demolition.
Proposed ordinance requires to return for withdrawal from the city, whereas the city's
ordinance does not.
And then lastly, here's the comparison of the relocation
assistance requirements for both the city's ordinance and the proposed
ordinance. Under the proposed ordinance, all tenants would receive four months of
FMR or $12,000, whichever is greater. And as you can see here in the blue
table, these are the current FMR rates. For elderly, disabled, or
They would receive an additional 6,000.
Under the city's ordinance, all tenants would receive one month of their current rent.
Tenants that qualify as low income would receive three months of FMR rent.
And tenants that are special circumstance, which means they are low income
and also have a household member who's elderly, a child, disabled,
or if the tenant has lived there for at least five years,
would receive four months of FMR rent.
And so just to give a little bit of background on what a 92-12 report is, it's a comprehensive
analysis prepared by jurisdiction or consultant in response to a voter initiative. The report
is named after section 92-12 of the California elections code and is intended to provide
decision makers in the public with an understanding of the initiative's potential impacts.
And the listed on the screen are the elements that are evaluated in a 92-12 report. We
We have contracted with EPS to prepare this report, and I'm going to have Jason give
an overview of the report.
And just to clarify, we were intending to answer questions about the prohizontist and
the report after that.
Thank you. My name is Jason Moody. I'm a managing principal at Economic and Planning Systems.
We're a real estate economics firm located in Oakland. We've been around for about 42 years.
I've been with the firm for about over 30 years, so I've been doing this for a while.
As was mentioned, we were commissioned to do a 92-12 report, which is pretty broad latitude in terms of what you can cover.
but we focus on the economic and fiscal implications of this proposed ordinance or measure, as we're calling it, in the city, in Redwood City.
So our scope and our methodology. First, we took a good look at the law itself and how it compares with existing state law and local policies.
This is important because we're really trying to evaluate the impact of this measure,
and the impact is really dependent upon the change from existing baseline conditions.
So we didn't, we're not looking at the impact of all tenant protection because there's already
some tenant protection. So we're just looking at the net increase in tenant protection and
those factors as well as the rent control measures. The other area that we looked at is we looked
at previous studies on rent control and other jurisdictions, primarily in California, but
there's been a lot of studies on rent control and less studies on tenant protection but
mostly on rent control. So we took a look at those studies to see what they found.
The third element of our scope was to apply these two things to the existing city's housing stock and demographic situations to see how these laws like to apply locally.
And then another big part of our task was to estimate the implementation and administration costs of this proposed measure, which would fall primarily on the city.
And finally, we looked at the fact that this measure does require that there would be
We estimate fees on rental units and we estimated what those fees might be, although if this measure
is actually approved, those fees would have to be recalculated based on actual study. So
we just provided an estimate of those fees.
So next I'm going to go quickly over the key
findings and then go into detail on some of these elements. So if the measure is approved,
We found that, you know, existing tenants will likely benefit from both lower rent growth
and from stronger protection against evictions above and beyond what they currently have.
And in the city, about 48% of the housing stock is rental.
So the tenant protection elements would apply to all the rental stock.
About 19% would be subject to the rent control provisions,
given the number of units in the city that are
The impacts on new housing investment, new housing development are complicated, but will
be limited by the application of Costa Hawkins because Costa Hawkins does protect any unit
that is exempt from rent control in a unit that was built after 1995. So they wouldn't
be subject to the rent control provisions, but they would be subject to the other provisions
of the law. So its impact on new construction will be mixed, but clearly some of the landlords
and owners will be subject to all tenant protection requirements. And some of them may be concerned
about the fact that investing in their property or making a property available for rent,
And this law would bring restrictions and so they may think twice about doing that.
New development.
Probably less affected because new developments exempt from the rent control component, but
they would be, again, subject to the other elements. The other element is that there is a possibility
that Costa Hopkins is amended in the future. So there may be some investors who would be
concerned about that outcome and they may be, again, hesitant to invest in a city that
if that happened their units would be subject to rent control.
So new development could in an indirect way be affected from that perspective.
The program administration costs are substantial.
And we estimated between $4 and $10 million.
It's hard to read this.
So this was a way of being enlarged.
But $4 to $10 million in costs, which can't come from the general fund.
It has to come from another source.
Most likely that would come from fees that are charged to rental units.
And we made a preliminary estimate of what those fees would be, and those fees, which we'll
see later, are much higher than the fees that are actually specified in the ordinance. So most
likely the city would need to increase those fees, which would impose those fees on all units.
The final element of this is the impact on affordable housing, which we found to be kind
of unique because affordable housing developers can't raise their rent to the market when
a tenant decides to leave unlike market rates. So they can't really catch up on rent and
recover their costs. So they will face some challenges with regard to not only the fees
themselves that they have to pay, but also with regard to paying for their maintenance
costs, which clearly maintenance costs go up with inflation and this measure limits
their increase in rent to 60% of inflation. So technically rents in real terms will
will be declining, but their obligation
Okay, so this slide just kind of gives you an indication of how this proposed rent cap would
apply versus state law. So, again, it's 5%. The state law is 5% of the CPI plus the change
in CPI. So technically the state law allows you to increase rent up to 10% but 5% plus
inflation essentially. The proposed ordinance says you can only increase rent as 60% of the
change in CPI. So up to 5%. So that's a pretty big difference. This illustrates an example
of a particular unit that was renting for $2,500 in year one under the proposed
ordinance after five years of occupancy, the per month rent would be $900.
$37 less per month than the situation in which a property owner wasn't controlled by this measure
and increased the rent at the maximum level every year. So that's kind of an extreme case,
but it shows you the potential magnitude of the difference in rent that could occur over
a five-year period with this measure versus the existing state law.
A number of cities
cities do have similar ordinances as this one.
Roughly 30 plus California cities have some form of rent control.
That accounting for about 22% of the state's population, so about 22% of the state's population
has some rent control.
However, this rent control, these existing rent control ordinances throughout the state
vary significantly.
Most of them are based on CPI, but the proposed ordinance has 60% CPI.
On the more strict end of the spectrum, the average, as you can see there is, and I can't
see it, but I think it says 79%. I haven't committed all these numbers to memory, so my apologies.
The others are not based on CPI at all. They're based on a maximum level, which is about 5%.
So this one is on the more strict side of the equation. There's only one that we were
able to identify that it's stricter at 50%.
So it's certainly more stricter than what
you see elsewhere in the cities that have this.
Just quickly focus on renter demographics in Redwood City,
which we think is important.
I really should have bought my computer
because I have a hard time seeing these.
Oh, thank you.
This is so much better.
I'm going to look at this one.
Okay, in Redwood City about the Redwood City already facing
This is a fair amount of rent burden among its renters. About 46 percent of the renter
households are what they call rent burden. That means you have 30 percent or more of your income
is spent on rent. But in that comparison, compared to say California or San Mateo County
in general, a little bit higher than San Mateo, but a little bit lower than California in
general. But rents in Redwood City have been declining in the last, say, five or six years.
So while rents are high in Redwood City, they have been declining in real terms in the last
five years. Prior studies, actually a study that was done between 2016 and 2021, found
that about 25 percent of Redwood City's residents were displaced during that period.
So it has, again, renter pressure in Red City is real.
A quick.
Overview of the housing stock, and this is going to repeat some of the stuff in the key
finding in Redwood City. Forty-eight percent of the units are renter-occupied, so 52 percent
aren't renter-occupied, they're owner-occupied. Overall, about 19 percent of the units would
be subject to the rent control ordinances, the measures, the 60 percent of CPI component.
However, all units, all rental units would be subject to the just cause eviction, right
to return and the other provisions that are included in the ordinance.
So a quick summary of how this measure is likely to affect housing supply and investment.
So again, the key finding, the original key finding, I'm sorry, I'm not, thank you for
that.
I have a switch.
Hopefully.
One more because we saw this slide, and this is the slide we're on now.
So, how does this law affect housing supply and investment impacts? We talked about how it
obviously supports renters in the city. And there is concern that it may also affect new
development for development as well as investment in existing property. Again, the cost of Hawkins
currently limits the impact on new development because new development can continue to increase
increase rent based on state law.
So they won't be subject to this.
Anything built after 1995 can be that.
But as I mentioned before, there has been attempts to repeal cost of Hawkins over the
years.
I think three attempts through from 2018.
So again, if you're an investor in the city, you would be thinking in the background
about reinvest money and if cost of Hawkins is repealed, I will not be able to recover
for my investment on rent.
So, in that case, I do believe that it was most likely that you would have an incentive,
you might have a distance to invest as well as conversion from rental units out of rental
into ownership so people would no longer want to rent their properties. But that's, again,
dependent on a variety of factors and would also depend on whether cost of Hawkins is ever
amended or changed. In terms of investment in older properties
that were built prior to 1995, this again, a very complex issue, but it could potentially
affect an incentive for owners to invest in their property because they would have maybe
a difficult time recovering their rent in the form of increased, recovering their investment
in the form of increased rent because by definition you can't raise your rent.
Now, they may be allowed to petition for a rent increase through a process.
That has not been fully clarified in the ordinance, but the ordinance does suggest that you can
file a petition to increase your rent to recover your investment.
But those two things together
could potentially affect the decision of property owners or operators to invest in property built
prior to 1995 because of their concern
of recouping their investment.
Next slide.
The preliminary estimate of program costs to the city.
So in order to do this, first of all,
it's established that the city does not
have an excess capacity to, at this time, existing capacity
to administer a program of this scale
with the existing staff.
So they would most likely have to hire a staff
and office space and equipment, et cetera, so there would be a cost there.
And the costs will likely include registry, petitions, hearings, counseling, outreach, legal support, enforcement, a whole range of things would be required.
So in order to estimate this, we interviewed and did an analysis of probably about 10 to 12 cities that have rent control ordinances.
And we figured out what their costs were on a per unit, per rental unit basis.
in order to estimate, kind of, apply that kind of parallel basis to Redwood City.
And so we established a minimum, average, and maximum cost, which includes the staff costs,
as well as other costs in office space and whatnot.
I would note that this one-time cost of, sorry,
an annual cost of between $4 million, up to $10 million a year doesn't include
the start-up costs of the program, which would be around $300,000 to $700,000.
So that is our preliminary estimate.
And in order to recover.
To recover these costs, the city would most likely charge
a fee on rental units to recover
those costs. So we made a calculation of what that estimated fee would be, and we found that
to be in the range of $545 per unit per year to a lower of $300. Actually, this is a tiered
So units that are not covered by rent control would be less at $3.38 and the ones that are would be higher at $4.45.
So that's a quick estimate of the essential fee burden that would be on a per-unit basis.
Again, these numbers would need to be recalculated if the measure is approved to actually have a more official nexus analysis of those relationships.
Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the unique challenges
Facing affordable housing with this ordinance because affordable housing, again, is not exempted
from the rent control provisions of this ordinance.
So we estimate there's about 625 affordable
housing units in the city that would be subject to the rent control provisions of this ordinance.
Again, all affordable housing units would be subject to the tenant protection provisions,
but only 625 would be affected by the, and this does present some complexity and challenges
for affordable housing developers because they operate on very low margins.
Many of these older properties have deferred maintenance.
They depend very much on rental income to maintain and to operate their buildings,
but they would not be able to keep up with their costs, not just the management costs
but insurance, utilities, a whole host of deferred maintenance issues,
a whole host of things which do increase at the rate of inflation,
but their rents would not be.
In addition to that, they would be charged a fee to support the implementation of the program.
So their costs would go up just from that fee alone, and then they would also have additional costs
that they would not be able to recoup. So there is some challenges that existing
or deed restricted affordable housing operators would face if the ordinance or the measure was approved.
I think I'm going to end it there. There's a lot of information there and we have a lot
of back pocket slides that we can refer to during the Q&A section, but I think for now
we're going to leave it open for questions.
I'll just wrap up with one slide before going over the recommendations and the questions.
With regards to, you know, if the measure is approved, what that implementation would look
like. So if the city council adopted the ordinance without alteration, you know, this would go
into effect within 30 days after the second reading, like our standard ordinance process.
If it is placed on the ballot and approved by the voters, it would go into effect 10
days after the vote is declared by the city council. Either way, these are accelerated
And so initial implementation and administrative tasks would really fall on existing city staff.
This would require a deep prioritization of other work.
And we would make our best efforts to implement this to the minimum level needed of enforcement as prescribed in the ordinance.
But we anticipate as noted that at a minimum this would require seven new staff,
as well as likely reclassifying existence.
I would like to thank all of the existing staff to take on these additional responsibilities
and ensure adequate capacity to manage both this new program as well as all of our other housing
programs. Full implementation would not be possible until these new staff positions are
created and filled. Again, based on our experience with implementation of the city's tenant
protection ordinance, we estimate kind of the initial implementation taking four to
This would include establishing base rent, initial outreach and education to tenants and landlords,
setting the fee rate that's prescribed in the ordinance and mechanisms to collect that fee,
setting up an interim database and process to collect notices until we can actually put to forth
a more comprehensive rental registry software.
We would have to put together rules and regulations,
as well as hire third-party consultants to provide the free legal.
Local services for low-income tenants as well as setting up hearing officers. Full implementation
and scaling would likely take up to one year or more. The big elements of this, again, are
the hiring and creating of positions. We think this could take up to from seven to nine months.
We would need to find new office space. And if there's any related tenant improvement
We don't have sufficient facilities, existing facilities to accommodate that level of staffing.
We would do, as Jason mentioned, a more in-depth fee study and establish a fee along with more proactive enforcement of that fee.
We would procure and implement a rent registry software as well as managing that database over time,
proactively enforcing any requirements and again continued outreach and education.
And so on the side again are the...
City recommendations before city council, which is to by motion accept the certification of the
signature verifications, and then elect to take one of the two options, which is again
is adopt within 10 days without alteration, or adopt a resolution calling for the election
for this to be placed before the voters. And without I do want to invite our city
I think Patrick Heisinger to just share final few remarks before we go into questions and public comment.
Great. Thank you, Lynn. Patrick Heisinger, City Manager.
I just wanted to add one piece of information regarding the 92-12 report as well.
Under the statute, the 92-12 report really is a report for the decision-makers for the City Council.
I directed staff to pursue the 92-12 report because we had a really short timeline.
And so we did, and we made our timelines.
I really appreciate staff's work and our consultants' work.
That does not mean that more...
Your questions can be asked tonight and information can be sought tonight that we can also bring
back to the city council. I'd also like to acknowledge that we've received several letters with really
good poignant questions that we just didn't have time to research. And so, as part of
the process tonight, there might be questions that we might recommend, say, we'd like
to come back with some more detail on those. So the 9212 report is your report, council.
And so please ask any and all questions and we'll do our best to try to answer
those questions in a tight turnaround. Thank you.
Great,
Patrick. Thank you, Alynn. Mr. Moody, thank you so much for all the work to get us to this point
and so that we could have a 9212 to discuss. With that, colleagues, if anyone has any questions,
we can relay some of those now. If not, we can move into public comment.
Okay. City Clerk, let's move into public comment.
Thank you, Mayor.
So at this point we have 29.
Signed speaker cards. And if we have any folks on Zoom who would like to speak on this
item, please raise your hand at this time. And again, we close the speakers list once
we begin public comment. So I'll give it a few more moments. If there's any last speaker
cards out there in the audience that need to be turned in, please bring them forward
now. And if you've joined us on Zoom, please raise your hand.
Okay, with that, I will
close the speakers list we have two raised hands on zoom in addition to 29
in-person speaker cards totaling 31 speakers on this item mayor how would
you like to allocate the public comment time let's decrease the speaking time for
each comment and see how productive that lets us
Let's get into the conversation.
Decrease to one minute per comment.
Right, for individual comment.
Okay. So as the mayor said, each of you will have one minute to provide public comment.
We'll run the timer that will begin as soon as you begin speaking.
I'll call speakers two at a time.
I also understand that we might have some folks giving public comment in Spanish this evening.
And as the mayor mentioned earlier, we have Spanish interpretation available for this item.
I do ask if you're giving comments in Spanish to please speak slowly to give the opportunity to the interpreter to
Interpret the comments and you will only be timed for your comments not for the interpretation the English interpretation
Okay, let's get started. We'll call John Mendez to the podium who will be followed by Amy Mendez
Thank
you
Thank you for the opportunity to speak. One minute is not much time, so I'll jump right
to the points. The reality is that the covered properties are owned by mom-and-pop landlords,
operating under very thin margins and struggling under the weight of inflation, driving up interest
rates, insurance, repairs, costs, utilities, et cetera, and that doesn't even get into
the increasing burdens of taxes. I urge the council to do two things. One, do not
adopt this ordinance tonight and refer it to the ballot so that voters can have a fair
opportunity to vote on it. Second, go back to EPS and require that they expand the report
to cover the numerous other provisions in the ordinance that directly impact operation
of the subject properties. Council should then inform the citizenry to reject the
advised ordinance, just like Cap Moon Bay has recently had to do, the 9212
Our next speaker is Amy Mendez, who will be followed by Jeffrey Shabowski.
Hello, good evening. I just want to say that all of us, I think here, agree that with the
goals of promoting neighborhood stability, healthy housing, and affordability for renters, but
this ordinance will not achieve those goals. The devil's in the details and the unintended consequences
will include shrinking of the housing stock that you're hoping to protect,
an increase in costs for the city, landlords and tenants,
and a degradation of the quality of the housing and the character of the community.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Jeffrey Shabowski, who will be followed by Denise.
Thank you, city leaders, for allowing me to speak.
On the 92-192-12 report, two of the objectives were to cut
Cover existing state laws and policies and, in particular, previous studies on impact of
similar tenant protection ordinances. And I would like to hear about that every city that
really attempted to do this has failed. They either adopted the ordinance and then it's
been rejected, conquered, being the most recent, Half Moon Bay, where they had to stop it
because there's no more housing stock.
Also, Salinas, San Pablo,
too quick.
So I would like to move to not adopt this ordinance.
You're going to need $4 to $10 million from the landlords.
We don't have that kind of money.
You're going to end up with a slum.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Denise, who will be followed by Lupe
Areola.
So I brought one of my clients here tonight. She's a 95-year-old landlord, and she has worked hard on her properties for over 50 years.
And she said tonight to me, what about us? So what about the voice of the landlords?
She has rented out places helping the Hispanic community with low rents, a three bedroom one bath for $2,400, a one bedroom house for $800.
And if you're asking the landlord to pay relocation in the amount of $12,000 plus another $6,000
for four months, that's $18,000.
And you're basically, you know, you're in the red because her $800 unit, that's only
$3,200 rent for four months, or the other unit, you know, is about $10,000, and you're
asking her to pay out $18,000 for these rents that
are below market.
So what about us?
What about the land?
Thank you. Our next speaker is Lupe Arreola, who will be followed by Eduardo Torres.
Hello, good afternoon. Good evening, council members. My name is Lupe Arreola. I'm the executive director for Tenants Together,
we're a statewide tenor and rights organization. And the reason I'm here is because I have been all around California
and hearing the same thing from tenants everywhere.
We are paying too much for our housing.
We cannot sustain.
This is unsustainable for us.
Our wages have not gone up.
Commiserate to how the rents have been rising.
This is unsustainable.
It's unhealthy.
And it actually creates crowded, unhealthy conditions.
It causes people to have to commute hours to go to work.
These are drastic times that require drastic action.
and by drastic action.
It means keeping rent stable and affordable to people long term, right? It should not be a
drastic action, but it's one that is needed right now. So we urge you to accept this proposal
to approve this proposition, save the taxpayers the money of an election, and please approve
this tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Eduardo Torres, who will be followed
by Emily Morris.
Good evening, council. My name is Eduardo Torres. I'm also from Tennessee
together. I'm the Northern California Regional Coordinator. I actually drove out here tonight
from Pittsburgh, which is in Contra Costa County, just to speak tonight to support the
tenants. It's such an important issue that's happening across the state, as our Executive
Director just mentioned. I just also want to point out that the city is out there
of Concord and Aeneok in recent years took the initiative to adopt a rent stabilization
ordinance.
And so.
So I know that the city of Redwood City has tried to do that in the past, and so you have
a perfect opportunity to adopt the ordinance tonight. And so I'm really encouraging the city
council to listen to your constituents, to the folks who are not only going to get a chance
to possibly vote for this in November, but also vote for future city council members who
don't support this, right? So it's really important to listen to the constituents,
to the voters, to democracy, because we know we're living in a time where democracy
is being demolished every single day. Thank you.
Thank
you. Our next speaker is Emily. Before we go on to the next, I just want
a friendly reminder to everybody that for us to be able to get through the
meeting, there is no cheering, no applause. Please keep that to yourself.
You're more than welcome to do jazz hands, something nonverbal, but just so
that we aren't interrupting our next speaker. If we could contain that, that
would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Emily Morris. Welcome.
And Martha
volunteer with faith in action.
Bay Area. And I'm among the many volunteers who collected signatures from the community
to qualify rent control for the ballot. I went all over the city and knocked on doors. People
I talked to, both homeowners and renters, were clamoring to sign. So many people I spoke
to told me about how the cost of rent was out of control. We collected well over the
required number of signatures to qualify for the ballot, and we know why. The cost
of rent is way, way too high. Wages are not keeping up. People are working two
to three jobs to pay the rent. Families are leaving. I love Redwood City for so
many reasons, among them the vibrancy and diversity of the city. Rent control and
tenant protections will help keep families together in Redwood City so it
can continue to be the diverse welcoming place that we love. The solution
is needed now and we can't afford to delay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next
speaker is Martha Beatley who will be followed by Clara Jekyll.
Good
rent control initiative because our neighbors need
We want to help to stay in our community and our neighborhoods benefit from the stability
of long-term residency. I want kids to grow up in a home where they know their neighbors
and where they have deep relationships with their school classmates. Rising rents cause
families to feel economic stress, to look for less expensive housing farther away, and
to double up in cramped living spaces. None of this is healthy for families. Rent control
will give all of us in Redwood City the chance to share our city with a variety of residents,
mechanics, nurses, teachers, firefighters, and others who want to thrive in the Bay Area,
but whose salaries do not keep up with the high cost of living here.
When we say climate best for government test, I hope that we mean economic climate and
housing climate and a welcoming climate, not just the temperature on the thermometer.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Clara Jekyll, who
We'll be followed by Al-Heli Kang.
Thank you. My name is Clara Jekyll. I've been a renter in Redwood City for 10 years.
Everyone deserves a safe and dignified place to live.
And the fair and affordable housing ordinance is a measure that stems out of years of Redwood City residents' experiences.
A dirtily response to the issues my neighbors and tenants across the city are facing.
Unsustainably high rents, harassment, and unsafe living conditions.
These problems have led to families either being displaced out of the city altogether
or forced into extreme measures like working two or three jobs
to attempt to keep up with rent increases.
The protections in this ordinance will help families stay in their homes,
keep our neighborhoods and schools more stable,
protect seniors and disabled people on low incomes,
and allow essential workers to live where they work.
It strikes a good balance for landlords to ensure a fair return on their investment
and will reduce tenant turnover.
This measure can be a real cornerstone for the diverse and thriving city we all want.
I urge you to implement tonight, otherwise under your ministerial
I'm really excited about the chance for us to do something really good for our city.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Aheli Kang, who will be followed by Andrea Gill.
I'm a community advocate and a youth development practitioner at Youth Leadership Institute.
Our youth leaders have spent three years learning about how they can make change in their community,
and when it came to an issue they cared about, it was housing affordability,
and more specifically, rent control.
We are here in solidarity with faith in action and in support of rent control.
Our youth leaders and their families have gone too long without common sense protections.
We urge you to adopt what the community members have before. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Andrea Gill, who will be followed by Elizabeth Prado.
Good evening, Mayor Martinez and City Council.
My name is Andrea Gill and I'm here today with Faith in Action Bay Area and Youth Leadership Institute.
I have the honor to work alongside youth leaders here in Redwood City.
Over the past years when asking them what issues or challenges do you face in your community?
It's always been housing. It's always about them envisioning, can I even say in a city that
I grew up in? And that is why we also partner with Faith in Action, because in those spaces
they felt heard and seen of the words they couldn't say out loud. And we said, many have
shared fears of being in this place, and many find it hard to envision long-term housing
because of the cost of living. We heard today that 46% are rent burden. I just asked
y'all, listen to the folks in the room and the signatures that were gathered
why we should pass tenant protection and rent control measures.
Families more now and ever need stronger protection to live a dignified life.
Thank you for listening to us tonight.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Elizabeth Prado, who will be followed by Teresa Barrowman.
Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I am speaking in support of strong rent control measures.
Many renters are working overtime taking extra shifts and sometimes working two or three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads, instead of being present with their families.
They're forced to spend more time working.
Speaking for the next generation, I'm concerned about what this means for us. Many of us might be unable to live in this city where we grew up.
A city cannot be successful if the people who work here study here and hope to build their futures here can't afford it.
Rent control is not just about housing costs. It's about community protecting families and ensuring that Redwood City remains a place where working future generations have a chance to live and succeed.
I urge the council to implement red control that provides stability and protection for
renters.
Speaking for many youth, as a teenager myself, I shouldn't have to be here worried about
whether my parents have enough for next month.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Teresa Berumen, who will be followed by Hyun-mi Kim.
Yes.
Good evening, council members.
My name is Teresa Berumen, and I lived in Redwood City for over 50 years.
And I'm a leader with faith in action.
I urge you to pass the stand-in protection and rent control measure today.
Protect families, seniors, and working residents from this placement.
I have watched family members in a long time neighborhood forced to leave the city because
they could no longer afford the rising rents, including my elderly parents, which they had
to move away because they couldn't afford it here anymore.
When seniors are pushed out, they lose vital support networks and their health and dignity
suffer.
When workers and family members are forced to move further away, our local businesses
and schools lose customers and students.
Commutes get longer and community life weekends.
This is not just for policy issues, it's for moral one.
Protecting tenants prevent unfair and excessive rent increases.
Please vote now.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Hyun-mi Kim, who will be followed by Taylor Brady.
Okay. Good evening. My name is
Ms. Hyun-mi Kim, I am a senior housing rights attorney, a community legal services in Palo Alto,
also known as CLASPA. CLASPA, along with the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, represent
almost all unrepresented vulnerable loan-income tenants from every corner of San Mateo County
who face losing their homes at the County of San Mateo's eviction court, also known
as unlawful detainment proceedings every Tuesday. We also regularly receive calls
from the tenants in Redwood City asking legal advice or representation after having received
on-law for eviction and rent increase notices. I personally represented several tenants from
Redwood City including a case involving a landlord who filed a meritless on-law for
detainer suit based on illegal rent increase notice. In that case, I was able to successfully
dismiss the suit. Every week I directly witness how local based tenants protection
ordinances, for example,
Ms. Kim, that's your time. Ms. Kim, that's your time.
Ms. Kim, that's your time. Ms. Kim, that's your minute.
Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Taylor Brady, who will be followed by Nicholas Kennan.
Good evening, City Council. My name is Taylor Brady, and I've been a resident of Redwood
City for six years. As a public employee myself in Mountain View, I appreciate the stress of
your job. So thank you for listening to us tonight. I urge you tonight to vote to adopt
the ordinance as proposed. Rent control is an absolutely vital piece of the slate of
policies that are needed to provide affordable housing, consistency, and dignity for the
people of this community. There's a great
Everyday symmetry between the information available to renters and that available to landlords who
are able to use algorithmic pricing and cartel-like behavior to exploit tenants.
The people who
make up our community and enliven it need safe and dignified housing. I hope that you show
the courage to pass this measure rather than demurring this evening. I understand it's
the politically safe option.
But there has been a great and resounding call
from the people of this community
to provide and safe housing.
Oh, yes, thank you.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Nicholas Kennan,
who will be followed by Sophia Gonzalez Rodriguez.
My name is Nick Kennan, district six resident.
I'm here to speak in favor of the rent control ordinance.
When I think about housing solutions
and what we have to do,
I picture this long timeline.
One end is the building of housing which we are all deeply engaged in, trying to flood
the system with housing to meet everyone's needs.
But this is not a quick endeavor when it takes years to get housing built. So we move to the
other end of the timeline with rent control, which we can implement more quickly. We need
to bring people along when the overarching vision is supplying housing for all and the
time that will take. People need that immediate relief in the meantime to prevent displacement.
And our political upsides to consider with rent control and increased tenant protections,
residents will feel secure, not left behind, and more willing to allow change with respect
to housing development.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Sophia Gonzalez Rodriguez, who will be followed by Amanda Chang.
Good evening.
My name is Sophia Gonzalez.
I work at the Council of San Mateo County, a local nonprofit organization that has
been providing direct services to the Redwood City community from our office down on Middle
Field for over 45 years.
Every day we see firsthand how the near 50%
And burden statistic plays out in our clients. A city rent control ordinance is a necessary
and urgent step to address the needs of our community.
High rents create economic strain
for residents leaving less income available to purchase healthy foods or cover medical expenses.
A lot of our clients come in for help with affordable housing applications, but even these
can now be outside of people's budgets requiring monthly incomes up to $3,000 to $5,000.
This reality is why we see our clients entering cramped living conditions, living as many
as 8 to 10 people in a two bedroom apartment or moving out east as their rents increase.
I myself live in Berkeley in a rent control unit.
These conditions are not conducive to economic flourishing, let alone holistic stability
or well-being.
I ask the City Council to stand with the tenants and implement the ordinance tonight.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Amanda Chang.
will be followed by Salvador Herrera.
Good evening, City Council. My name is Amanda Chang, and I'm here as a staff member of Urban Habitat.
We released a report on the impact of tenant protections in Redwood City back in April. I
encourage you to read this. Among some of our findings in this report, we found that the
average rent in Redwood City has increased 47% from 2010 to 2025. And that two out of
three low-income families are paying more than half their income on housing
up just from 44% just 10 years ago. And approximately 40,000 people could have
increased housing stability through just cause and anti harassment protections
which is about half the city. This includes nearly 5,000 children under
the age of 18 and over 6,000 seniors. And approximately 22,000 people in
with city, a quarter of the population could be protected by rent stable.
You can vote to approve this measure now or wait for November for the ballot for the people to pass it. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Salvador Herrera, who will be followed by Michael Pierce.
Good
afternoon, gentlemen of the Council. My name is Salvador Herrera and I am in the
Fey Action Organization, for which we have joined because we are seeing the increase
in rent and then the number of elderly people of the third age who do not have where to
stay, where to have a place, because the truth for them is very difficult to pay
un una renta de dos mil dólares y queremos para ellos un lugar digno y para
todas esas familias para todas esas mujeres solteras que tienen hasta tres
cuatro niños y sólo ellas trabajan yo creo que justo que nos ayude a
Thank you. And now we'll hear the English interpreter.
of the comments.
My name is Salvador Herrera,
and I am a resident of Robert City.
And we were here,
and I'm part of their faith in action,
and we're here because we're seeing the increase of rent,
and also a lot of elderly people
that they do not have a place to stay.
They don't have a place
because honestly, for them,
it's very difficult to pay a rent
Thank you.
For $2,000 and we want for them a good place for all of those families, for all of those single
moms that have like three, four kids and it's just them working. So I think it's fair for
you guys to help us for this ordinance to pass for you guys to be with us because there's
a lot of need. There's a lot of families that are doing bad. I think that you guys
have seen the places, not only drug addicts are sleeping in those places, healthy families
are sleeping in those places because they don't have work to sleep, they don't have
a good place.
So this is why we are here, all of the city that we're here, and we are all united.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
And we'll move on to our next speaker, Michael Pierce, who will be followed by Conor O'Brien.
I'm Michael Pierce, Chair of the Board of the St. Francis Center on Nonprofit in
Redwood City.
We operate 267 units of low-income housing in San Mateo County.
90 of which are in the city of Redwood City. I'm gravely concerned about the impact this will
have on nonprofits like us and others because of the impact. If we lose our property tax abatements,
it grossly affects our ability to continue to operate low-income housing, and that risk
is very great under this proposed ordinance. I urge you to go back and revisit the 9212
report and really study these impacts on other low-income housing providers. For the
in Francis Center alone that would be $468,000 a year
across our five parcels in Redwood City
if we lost those property tax abatements.
It also dictates the removal of rubs.
We have voluntarily lowered rents for tenants
in order for them to participate with utility costs.
They'd have no incentive to lower costs.
Under this ordinance, our rents would be capped,
absent those costs,
because there's no provision to add that back.
So it's a great concern for us
and other low-income housing providers.
I think this is ill-conceived
in the way it's formed.
Thank you.
Thank you, our next speaker is Connor O'Brien who will be followed by
Mayor Slackie.
Good evening. My name is Connor O'Brien. I am a member of Silicon Valley DSA and
have been as a volunteer signature gathering for this initiative have been hearing from residents
here about the urgency of adopting it. I'm also a resident and renter in Mountain View where this
year will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of winning our own renter protections and rent
control. And so I wanted to speak to the benefits that we've seen from that in terms
of residents gaining stability, gaining some peace of mind that unexpected rent increases
or unjust evictions won't displace them from their neighborhood.
One testament to that is that four years into our adoption of rent control in 2020, voters
had the opportunity to weaken the measure and overwhelmingly chose to maintain it by
a margin of a 70% majority.
So I think that looking to that experience, you have the opportunity now to allow renters
to benefit immediately from this.
The same protections that have been such a benefit to the tenants in our city. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Mayor Sleiki. We'll be followed by a Silly Morrison.
Hello. Mark Sleiki for the record, but Mark Sleiki, I'm a lifelong resident here in the peninsula.
Renter here in Redwood City, a member of Peninsula DSA and a local leader for this campaign as well.
From my point of view, this is the bare minimum we can do for hunters at this point.
We are well behind an insane affordability crisis.
We talk a lot about who can afford what.
I'll give you some simple numbers.
I work at the cafe across the street at the yard.
I've had the pleasure of serving some people in this chamber, many of my community members.
We make $19 an hour.
That is minimum wage.
If you have a studio apartment like mine, which is the cheapest one in Redwood City,
you're paying $19.29 for rent.
That means almost 90% of your income.
is going to rent. It's unreal. We cannot afford to not pass something like this.
Beyond that, last I checked, it's citizens who have voted you in, not investors,
not the investments that could be affected, not affordable housing providers, even.
I love what they do. However, it's 48% of the population will be affected immediately by this,
rather than the 1,000. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Sorry about that.
Next speaker is Vasili Morrison, who will be followed by Paul Boca Negra.
Hi, I'm Vasili Morrison. I'm a member of Silicon Valley DSA.
I have members of my community and family that have personally been affected by rent evictions
and had to have families who have not been able to afford housing.
They've had to stay in my house, my family's house.
I am fortunate enough to be able to have my family own a house.
Hundreds of thousands of people of this community do not have that affordability.
That affordability that many landlords here do, who have more than one housing, aren't able
to rent said housing out to other people. It is the thousands of workers in this community
who provide the teachers, who provide the construction labor, who could provide the value
that the thousands that the landlords here may benefit from with their land raises and
rents. This rent control measure would provide those laborers with the ability to stay
in this community and not have to worry about their rents increasing and have to worry about
getting a second or third job just to stay in their house. Thank you guys. Thank you. Our next
speaker is Paul Volconegra who will be followed by David Gonzalez. Good evening Mayor Ceballos,
council members. My name is Paul Volconegra. I am executive director of Unlocked Futures.
I am also a homeowner and a landlord. We need to pass rank control. As executive director
of Unlocked Futures, I work with system-impacted youth.
Many of these youth do not know if they're going to be living in the same location that
they did when they returned home. Many of these youth are also willing to work at 14-15 just
to be able to assist their parents to pay rent so they have extra money for food and clothing.
This is a problem. We have thousands of voters who have already signed onto this, and I believe
that we should adopt this tonight and be leaders in ranked control rather than continue to trail
in the Bay Area. Thank you so much. Have a good night.
Thank you. Our next speaker is David Gonzalez, who will be followed by Roe V. Antonio.
Good evening. Good evening, city representatives. My name is David Gonzalez,
and I moved here in 2022 to the beautiful Redwood Shores, and every year I experienced
a rental increase of 10% until I could no longer afford to stay.
Each time, I would see the V-
Taking neighboring units on their online website being priced hundreds of dollars below what
they were asking me to renew with. So I know for a fact that this was not due to increasing
costs. City representatives, I implore you to pass this ordinance now and protect your
constituents from algorithmic pricing and greed and supply and demand. I promise you we won't
forget this. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Roevee Antonio, who will be followed by Fernando Peña.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Roevee Antonio with the California Apartment Association,
a non-profit trade association representing rental property owners in Redwood City.
Tonight we are asking you to slow this process down. This is not a city-sponsored measure.
You did not write this.
I cannot write this. Unless you were in the room when these 46 pages were drafted, you cannot
note tonight whether the city has fully understood every consequence. In fact, tonight is the first
time that this has been presented to the city council to have a public discussion. The 9-1-2
report is useful, but incomplete. It analyzes rent control, which is fewer than two pages,
but more than 40 pages create rules affecting single-family rentals, condos, accessory
dwelling units, mobile homes, and affordable housing. The rules include relocation payments,
owner move and restrictions, and renovation restrictions. Due diligence require more than
a partial report. Before taking final ballot action, you need to study the full fiscal
housing and economic picture. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Fernando Peña, who will be followed by Steven Howard.
Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Fernando Peña here on behalf
of the San Mateo County Association of Realtors. The proposal caps ranked
Regulatory increases at just 60% of CPI, ignoring the reality that insurance, maintenance, utilities,
property taxes, labor, and regulatory costs continue to rise far faster than that formula
allows. It also calls for increased taxpayer expense and imposes significant new regulations
beyond rent control that could affect a broader range of housing in Redwood City. While section
Section 9212 analyzes the rent control provisions.
It does not fully evaluate the economic impacts of these additional regulations.
I respectfully request that the Council direct staff to prepare supplemental Section 92 analysis
so voters can fully understand the potential impacts on housing availability, production,
and on our local economy.
Redwood City residents deserve balanced objective information before casting their ballots.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Steven Howard, who will be followed by Nancy Moya.
Good evening, council. This ordinance will have significant unintended consequences, too
numerous to mention in one minute. The organizers have very good intentions but are naive about
basic economics and the laws of supply and demand. Rents are what they are due to supply
and demand. In order to increase, if we want to decrease the rents, we need to increase
the supply. So you want to do as much as you can to encourage developers to come into
community, not discourage them. If you have less development, you will have less supply,
and therefore you will have increased prices of rents, exactly the opposite of what the
organizers had intended. We need to look no further than the price of eggs and the
price of gasoline as to far as what happens when supply is reduced. California is already
the most tenant-friendly state in the country, and there are plenty of protections
I would urge you not to support this measure and let it go to the ballot.
Hopefully to educate the public of the damage that will do, including the people who have put
this forward. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Nancy Moya and I can give you a handheld microphone as
well.
Buenas tardes, mi nombre es Nancy Moya y estoy aquí en representación de mi hija. Nosotros
vivimos en un departamento que cuesta $3,500, es compartido, dos recámaras, un solo baño
en el segundo piso, sin patio, ni a ni balcón.
Mi esposo trabaja jornadas laborales de 12 horas por la noche,
seis días a la semana, para cubrir los básicos para nosotros.
Yo no puedo trabajar debido a que mi hija necesita supervisión,
24 horas al día, siete días a la semana.
Nosotros estamos aquí porque nos ponen
Thank you. And now for English interpretation.
Good evening. My name is Nancy Moyan. I'm here
representing my daughter. We are here because we live in an apartment that the rent is $3,000
and it's a shared unit, two rooms, one bathroom in the second floor, without a patio nor a balcony.
So my husband works 12 hours a day, six days a week, just to cover basics for us.
So I cannot work because my daughter needs supervision 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So we are here because we are concerned, we are very concerned that we don't have enough
to have a savings account for emergencies or for whatever comes up and we need to, we need,
we need affordable housing for people with disabilities. Thank you very much.
Thank you. And that concludes our in-person speakers. We'll move now to our two speakers
We'll start with Becca Keeler, and following Becca will be Mae Lamb.
And Becca, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments,
and the timer will begin when you start speaking.
Thank you. My name's Rebecca Keeler, and I've grew up here in the peninsula.
I've been a homeowner here in Redwood City for the last 20 years.
I also serve in our community working with underserved youth and working with unlock futures.
and I'm in solidarity with faith and action. I want to tell you that I have
seen so many of the families I work with.
Displaced. I have seen so many of the children be upended from their schools and their places
of living, and I've seen them with multiple families in the same home. This is not something
that can continue. One way or the other, we have to find a solution to this. I ask you
please pay serious attention to this tenant rent control, and please take action on it
immediately. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is May Lam.
Hi there, we can hear you.
Oh, hi.
So, thank you for this time to speak. So, I just wanted to say, you know,
please do not adopt the current proposed measure. Let me echo what other small business owners have pointed out.
This is a very restrictive initiative as it would greatly hurt small mom-and-pop landlords.
The burden on small businesses will be unsustainable. This is not the solution. We do need better
help for our tenants, but this is not it. You certainly will reduce the amount of affordable
housing available in the city. Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much, and that concludes public comment. Mayor, back to you.
Thank you, City Clerk. And again, thank you to everybody who made public comment this
evening, shared your time with us, whether you're in person or joining us online.
And we'll bring it back to the dais for council discussion.
Who has any questions? They'd like to start us off with.
Council Member Sturgeon. Thank you, Mayor. Firstly, thank you to everyone who spoke
this evening. I really do appreciate your input. And I also saw a lot of the
email.
Thank you to those folks who wrote in. Initial question I have with regards to the fee is what
flexibility is there, if any, to reduce the fee for affordable housing providers, nonprofit
affordable housing providers? I'm actually going to ask our city attorney
to answer that question. Thank you, Ms. Lane-Caster, and thank you,
is if adopted by the council or sent to the voters
and adopted by the voters is an ordinance
adopted by initiative petition.
And the city council is limited in its ability
to change substantively the ordinance.
So what we need to do is we need to look
at the ordinance itself to determine
If you go to section 42.14d, it identifies how the rental housing fee may be adopted. And
it makes very clear that the city council shall finance the reasonable and necessary expenses
of the program by charging landlords an annual rental housing fee. That the council shall
ensure that the rental housing fee is set at a level sufficient to fund the duties and
responsibilities under the program. And then it says that the program and staff
to enforce this chapter shall be funded only by the rental housing fee and not
from the city's general fund. So understanding those limitations is
critical in understanding what we can do. If the ordinance is adopted the
city will need to conduct a fee analysis in order to determine what the
ultimate rental housing fee will be for those landlords and whether this
City could exempt, waive, reduce fees for affordable units will depend on this fee analysis and the
ordinance's limitations, as we will need to ensure that any exemption reduction waiver would
not disproportionately impact other landlords.
Thank
you very much. That's very helpful.
Since the mayor is momentarily gone, do any of my other colleagues have additional questions,
clarifications, or if they want to start with comments.
Council Member G, please.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Thank you, Vice Mayor.
And thank you, everyone, that emailed, came here,
and offered comments online.
I want to preface my inquiries first by saying this is the first time, or when the packet was
posted on Thursday, is the first time council got, or at least a lot of information about
the proposed initiative. Up until then, we haven't seen this. This is the first time.
So we've had only since Thursday afternoon, I think, when this was posted into tonight,
to kind of absorb the details, the emails, the letters, and the substance of the proposed
ordinance. So we have had not a lot of time to dive into it. So I want to thank everyone
for helping us try to understand both sides, all sides of the issues, but I have a lot
of questions given the short amount of time we've had to really dive into this.
So I'm not going to try to guess who's going to answer the questions that I have.
But I suspect it's going to include staff, our city attorney, our city manager, and our consultant.
So, the presentation will sort of help answer this, but I want to make sure I understood the 40-something pages of the proposed ordinance
and all the other associated documents that we even were getting this afternoon, which is kind of hard to absorb if we got it at 2 o'clock
in our meetings at six and I think most of us still have a regular job to take
care of. So my first question is to our staff, does Council have all the
information or are there any missing documents that we don't have?
Because
that's what my questions are going to be based on what we have if so there's
something that we don't have my apologies ahead of time.
I'm not aware of
any missing documents. Thank you. So I'm just going to start to dive in and
All right, my apologies to my colleagues.
I've got a whole long list of questions. You can feel free, Mayor, to cut me off any time
you want.
It appears, and I think you had this in the slide between yourself, Alen, and Jason,
that if passed, while the rent control portion may not apply to a lot of post-1995 properties,
the TPO, as proposed, does apply to more properties than the city's ordinance, including ADUs,
single-family homes, mobile homes, and non-occupied single-family homes. Am I
reading that correctly?
Can you rephrase the question? Are you referring to the
city's tenant protection ordinance or the proposed ordinance would apply the
tenant protections to these other properties I just listed? Yes, like, sorry,
We're getting confused with TPO in our city.
Yes, so this is the slide. So fully covered, and this is just related to the proposed ordinance.
Correct.
Means rent stabilization plus all of the other requirements. So that's inclusive of just cause,
relocation, right to return. Partially covered under the proposed ordinance means those rental
units are only subject to the just cause provisions, the right to return provisions, the relocation
and provisions, all the other ones besides rent stabilization.
All the other ones other than the rent stabilization.
So I did read that fairly correctly.
So then now I'm gonna pivot into the EPS report.
So between you and Jason maybe you can tag team things here.
Alin just mentioned a whole bunch of stuff.
And I couldn't find in your report, Jason,
about the effect or impact of those operating costs on property ownership.
There are a lot of regulations there that Ellen just mentioned. Was there a clear assessment
about the cumulative impact on operating costs for property owners?
Some of those are very difficult to quantify and our analysis was done primarily on secondary
research and available data. Estimating the cost of some of the other than what's clearly
in the ordinance, like how much you have to pay for a relocation, we did not do a detailed
estimate of how much some of the other tenant protection components would affect a landlord.
That was not, we did not have the schedule and scope and resources to do that during
the analysis. So we didn't do that detailed analysis of those items.
Would it be safe to assume that there are going to be financial impacts to property owners?
Beyond the rent stabilization component.
There will be financial impacts for sure.
But they were not quantified.
Yeah, estimating those would require more analysis than we were able to do during the first round of this analysis.
And you can say it wasn't in my scope of work. That's fine.
I mean, I know this was done in a very short amount of time on a very limited fee basis.
So that's okay to say that.
two and a half months we did this and so it was there were you know that would
require a fair to do that analysis require interviewing property owners doing
a lot of case studies of examples of where this is great it's doable it's
doable yes okay but wasn't in your scope it was fine similarly and this is
consistent with the way I look at even our impact fees on developments I have
been a strong advocate for assessing the cumulative impact of policy ordinance
fees, assessments, and utility costs on businesses.
I wasn't able to see the cumulative impact of all these other things on the property owners.
Was there, did I miss it, or was it out of scope and not able to do in the compressed amount of time?
When you say cumulative impact, do you mean other policies that already exist?
policies that the council adopts, increased utility costs, business license tax increases,
the cumulative impact of all the things we do here at the dais on businesses.
Was there an assessment on the cumulative impact on property owners if this were to
move forward by either council or the voters?
Our analysis focused on the incremental impacts of this particular ordinance, not
So the answer is no, we did not look at the cumulative impacts.
We tried to focus on the incremental impacts.
Is it possible to do that, given more time and more fee?
I'm going to say tentatively yes, depending on the scope and the time frame. I know we have
an election in November, so. Beyond that, I'm not asking about, you know, is it doable? It
is doable, yes. We have to define the scope, but yes. And again, at this day, as we have
approved a series of utility cost increases, sewer, solid waste, water, but by the way
I read the ordinance proposed, those are not able to be passed on to the tenants
unless they're separately metered.
Am I reading that correctly?
That is correct.
So, again, I go back to when you look at the operating impact on property owners,
the cumulative impact, and the utility cost increases.
There's got to be a financial impact on the property owner,
at least administration, that I couldn't find the analysis in the report
because it probably was out of scope or you didn't have enough time.
and am I reading?
Is that correct?
Yes, we did not do analysis of the cumulative
impact from all those other regulations that you mentioned or policies.
Okay. And Jason, your presentation, you started to kind of convey the potential impact of this
ordinance on our non-profit affordable housing providers.
I didn't see anything about section
I didn't see. I think you had a slide about the growing gap over five years. I think you said $937.
The rents would be falling behind, at least capital replacement. I think that was your slide number three.
What happens with that continued falling behind? What does that do to the property condition?
Yes.
Are you talking about the market rate or deed restrictive affordable?
It was your slide three.
Yes.
The bottom one.
Yeah, this was referring to all units, not just affordable.
Okay, well, what happens with the continuing falling behind?
Pretend it's 10 years or 15 years that continue falling behind.
What's the impact on the property?
And this would apply for units built prior to 1995.
So yes, it would make it difficult in some cases for the property owner operator to cover
those increased costs without a doubt until the unit is vacated in which time the property
owner can then go back to the market rate, kind of do it.
If you're a market rate unit, you can charge the rent that the market will bear once
to existing tenant leaves, if you are an affordable housing operator, you don't have the liberty
to rate charge market rate.
You have to go with the-
Area median income restrictions of the affordable unit.
We did hear from at least one not-profit provider, the St. Francis Center, about falling behind and the impact potentially on, was that kind of analysis covered in the report?
I think it was hinted at, but I didn't see depth in the report.
That particular analysis is going to be unique to every single property, right?
So it's generally true that if you are not
able to raise your rents with the market,
you are likely to continue to fall behind.
The way in which it will impact the financials
of any given property may differ depending
upon their own operating budget to what
degree they have deferred maintenance issues, what
their existing rents are, the turnover.
There's many factors, variables
that would go into the calculation
for an individual property owner.
But I think it's fair to say that in general,
you would fall behind and you would not be able to keep up with your operating
expenses over a longer period of time, particularly
Really if you do not have tenant turnover.
So I guess keeping up is a formula of tenant turnover. If I heard you at the converse of what
you just said, the only way to keep up is tenant turnover, which isn't the intent of this initiative.
It's to provide housing stability, not tenant turnover.
I'm just trying to make sure I, using
Jeff's language, I understand what's in the initiative and the analysis.
Also, the administration
fee, I believe, cannot be passed on to the tenant. Is that correct?
That is correct.
So in your analysis, the 12084 is substantially less than what it would cost to actually
And even if the higher number cannot be passed on to the tenants, it's got to be absorbed.
By the property owner, and its administrative burden or whatever you want to call it, and
again, going back to my earlier question, that cumulative impact, it's got to have an impact
somewhere. Whether it's $500 per unit per year or $1,000 per unit per year, there's
got to be an impact somewhere. And it wasn't, it was just lightly touched on, I guess,
about the cumulative impact. There is one, but it wasn't too deep.
Well, the cumulative impact is essentially the fee times the number of units you have.
So every project has a different number of units.
So the cumulative impact would be the number of units you have times the fee.
We haven't finalized what the fee would be if this is approved.
There would be a study doing that.
And so every property owner would say, well, if I have 100 units and it's $500 a unit,
the math is $50,000 in that case.
So there's going to be impact, but it will vary for each particular unit.
But based on your previous report on TPO
Can properties owners absorb that kind of fee burden on an annual basis?
Well, it will be more difficult for affordable housing owners to do so because they can't pass it on rent even when the unit is vacated.
For post-1995 units, they may be able to pass those costs on, and they can't do it directly
because that would be illegal, but they can do it once the lease that they have with the
current tenant expires.
They said, well, now you have a new lease, and here's our new rent.
That adds a dimension of complexity to their operating perform, though, doesn't it?
And on the pre-1995 affordable housing with that constitutive force measure that the funders
could argue that they're out of compliance with the
Other pro forma because competing for low interest housing tax credits is a competitive basis.
It's based on areas of economic desire and need. It's based on rental pro forma. It's based
on a lot of different things to be competitive and to be awarded those tax credits and other
funding grants. So if we change the community changes or the council changes of the rules,
would that put some of the projects potentially in jeopardy
because the funding requirements and the performance were changed?
I
can't speak definitively, but we would need to evaluate
our own affordability restrictions on those properties along with their funders.
I can't speak to what actions those funders would take,
but there could be potential conflicts between what is in the proposed ordinance
and what's in.
Existing affordability covenants.
Thanks, Lynn, for stepping into that.
Then who has
responsibility and liability for that conflict?
And it's okay to say I don't know right now.
It's a really good question. I think, yeah.
That's okay to say I don't know.
I mean, this is a very short timeframe that, again, we just got this stuff.
I just got the pack of Thursday and spent my weekend reading it.
I had all these questions that, you know,
And we've got letters that ask some pretty significant questions too.
It's okay to say I don't know and we need more time or whatever, but this is kind of important stuff.
Because this is a big, I think this is a big issue for the community as the community has told us.
It's a big issue.
Thank you, Council Member Jay, and you're right.
I don't have an answer.
It is something that we would
It might be that we won't have an answer, right? It will be dependent on what each of
the funder's requirements are. We do have Ms. Tiedemann on, and I know she does quite a bit
with housing, and so I do want to provide an opportunity if she knows how this tends
to work from other agencies' experiences before we let you know that we don't have
an answer for you.
Hi, good evening, Karen Tiedemann with Goulter and Litman. I think the issues that affordable
housing developers are going to have is essentially what Jason said. Eventually, this is going
to impact their operating income because they're very limited and they can't raise
sprints when units turn over the way that non-regulated landlords can do.
So my guess is that there are going to be a reduction in the number of people who are
Potentially be request for additional subsidy for operating expenses long term. But once again
it depends on each project and property and their operating expenses and the multiple sources
of funding that they currently are accessing.
Thank you. Is it safe to say then that there's potential unintended consequences of this proposed
ordinance or initiative or the potential for unintended consequences?
Yes, I mean I
think that the impact on affordable housing is something that will have to
be looked at if this were adopted in the long term not a lot of rent control
jurisdictions cover affordable housing housing that's restricted and how it
raise its rent.
This initiative here in front of us?
I don't want to say definitively it is unique.
Not typical.
Some rent control jurisdictions cover some subsets of affordable housing.
This one doesn't have any exemptions for any type of affordable housing unless it's owned
by a governmental unit.
That's the only exemption.
So that is a little more restrictive than
anyone I can think of at this moment.
Thank you for that.
And Mayor, I have a whole bunch more questions,
but I want to check in with my colleagues.
I don't want to monopolize the time.
May I continue? Please continue.
Thank you, Mayor.
You know, we heard from a speaker tonight where,
you know, we have had a long-standing community benefits program and that has
filled the pipeline of affordable housing in this.
This has been a council strategic priority, particularly at the lower income and ELI extremely
low income levels. One of the properties, as part of the community benefits, was to purchase
an exempt rental property and donate it to a non-profit, and it was deed restricted.
Under this proposed ordinance initiative, is that a viable option anymore, given the
dynamics you just shared about not being able to keep up, falling behind, not be
able to capitalize, things like that.
And it's okay to say I don't know, it's not
in scope, but it requires for analysis. It's okay.
I can't speak to all the
viability, but I think for future projects, if there is a, you know, if
there, this is approved and there is a fee, that will have to get
factored into project performance, which in turn would likely show that
projects need additional public subsidy, whether that's from the city or other.
Other funding agencies.
Yeah, so it would factor in, but they would be able to factor that in, I think, before making any bias.
So maybe not remove it as a viable option, but make it a little harder because of financial performance.
Potentially, yeah.
On a pivot to TEFRA, I mean, we've had as a council been brought items for TEFRA financing on affordable housing,
Not only on new construction, but also on major repairs like the Woodside Fire and the taxes on financing mechanism.
Would this proposed initiative affect Tafra or Tafra consideration of financing projects in Redwood City?
I will say we have not researched that question, so I don't have an answer for you for that.
Because if I recall correctly, one of the properties on Woodside Road, the major, I think it was Hallmark House.
That was a pre-1995 building. And would that count as pre-1995 in its renovated state or post-1995?
That is a good question. I don't know if any of our legal counsel knows how costa-huggins it's based on when you got a certificate of occupancy.
So I don't know if the new certificate of occupancy post-renovation completion, if that
would be considered the first, or if the original certificate of occupancy.
Okay, I guess further start.
Sorry, excuse me.
Go ahead.
There's a series of cases on this.
The courts actually looked to when it was first used for residential purposes as opposed
to if a new certificate of occupancy is issued after renovation.
Thank you very much for your time, and I'll see you in the next presentation.
So in your example, yes, the units would be covered if they were occupied residential units before 95.
Which they were in the case of the Hallmark House.
As well as the other unit across the street that burned down or was severely damaged by fire.
So in both cases, they would be covered as pre-1995. Karen, thank you.
Jason, I'm trying to reconcile a couple things here with the initiative saying no city funds
are to be used, but in the report it says there's start-up fees, there's an administration
rate of $120 or 84 two tiers, I think your report says substantially below the level
needed to cover the estimated midpoint program cost and it further goes that the city would
We'd likely further incur additional administrative expenses not captured in this analysis, including
staff recruitment, onboarding, and long-term obligations such as pension liabilities.
So how do I reconcile no-city funds with what you found in the report, as well as the additional
costs for office space and all the other things?
How do I say no city fees, or no city general funds, but yet these expenses and real costs
are included and captured?
The ordinance does say the city may front fees, and so my look to our finance director
to explain how this works, but my understanding is we would be able to essentially loan the
program money from a different fund that would eventually
need to be repaid back through an inner fund transfer.
And I'm not probably explaining this quite.
Accurately, but there is a mechanism where we can front fees up front to implement the program
and then they would need to be, I believe, repaid by the fees.
And I know our finance director here is that loan, interest free? Or would you apply internal
interest to the internal borrowing?
That is a very good question. So in trying to digest the terms of this, there's a question
of the start-up fees and whether the start-up fees could be fronted by the city and whether
that would need to be paid back or not. The language is a little bit unclear. But whether
it would need to be paid back or not, the challenge is that we, the ordinance contemplates
it's not using the general
Fund. But we can't use our other funds either because our other funds are restricted. So if
we are in a situation where the fees aren't enough to cover the program costs either from
a startup perspective or on an ongoing basis, we would be in a little bit of a pickle,
if
of how you would fund that because of the one source that has the flexibility to do that.
And I'm not saying we have the financial flexibility, but the legal, the fungibility to do that is the general fund.
But yet, we're not allowed to use the general fund, so it becomes a little bit of a chicken and egg thing.
And so that's something that we would have to grapple with.
And do you scale the program back or not?
And a lot of the time, you know,
This starts to happen in real time, so it does potentially present an administrative and
financial challenge.
Beth, thank you for answering that, because I couldn't reconcile no general funds, but
not all costs are included. We've worked really hard, not just this council, but prior councils,
to manage our unfunded pension liabilities, and that's not even included in this analysis
or in the fee.
Did I read that correctly?
I can't speak to that personally based on my review,
but it would certainly be something we would want to consider.
I think the EPS report says it explicitly that it does not include
potential long-term pension liabilities.
Did I read that correctly, Jason?
Yeah, that's correct.
We did a very quick calculation of the potential cost and to the extent that the wardens is
Approved or the measure is approved. There would need to be a more detailed analysis to
get a fully loaded cost and not a midpoint but an actual estimate.
I mean, I know tonight's budget night, I mean, to just maybe what if is really hard when we
get to the budget conversation next and the agenda, we see declining revenues and long-term
deficits pending any proactive action by this council. And so that's why I'm just struggling
and reconciling it. And to say there's no claim on general fund, yet long-term pension
liabilities aren't there. It's not fully loaded. And another big question is if there's
any litigation on this, who pays for the litigation? Is it the proponents?
The city would pay for it.
and where's this
City money from that. It will be from the general fund. So is it inaccurate to say there's no general
fund commitment? I think this ordinance really presents a math problem for the city in that
we cannot use, we cannot use general fund for the enforcement of the program or the regulation
of the program but we also if this were to be adopted and the ordinance were to
be challenged the city would need to defend that and of course we wouldn't
have any fees yet that we have collected so it will have to be the
city's general fund that will pay for the defense of this it's one of those
awkward things that when we've talked about it we can talk about how we how
the city and it by the way the ordinance provides that the program and staff to enforce
This ordinance shall be funded only by the rental housing fee and not from the city's
general fund, which I read to you earlier. It does follow with, however, the city shall
fund any necessary funds until the city has collected such fees. And so I really do believe
that the general fund is going to fund all of the start-up costs at any litigation
that may ensue until fees start getting collected.
Thank you Veronica. That kind of segues into a follow-up question to Council
member Sturkin's question earlier. This is a, this is potentially a voter
approved ordinance. And I've heard stories that the proponents of this
ordinance may be negotiating a proposed implementation plan to either reduce or
exempt affordable housing providers from some of the requirements of the ordinance.
Can that happen? Or can staff change it? Or can council change it? Because this potentially is going to be approved by the voters.
And even if the council were to decide to adopt this ordinance in lieu of sending it to the electors or to the voters,
we would still be under the same limitations on the fact that the city council cannot amend this ordinance without sending it back to the voters.
So it doesn't matter whether it's adopted by the council or it's sent to the
voters and I understand that maybe there's been statements made but based on
this language's limitations we really do need to ensure that should there be any
waivers or reductions in fees by the affordable house for the affordable
We need to find a way and we're really limited based on what the ordinance says, so I don't
see how that can be done, but like I mentioned to Mr. Sturkin, to Councilmember Sturkin, it's
something that we would assess along when we do the fee analysis.
I just have a question about that question.
We cannot change this ordinance in any way.
Is that correct?
The 4,000 people that signed the petition signed the specific ordinance.
So we can't just will and nilly choose what we decide to keep or they can't willy nilly
decide to change it in any way, correct?
That is correct.
The ordinance is either the way it is right now forever and becomes law or it doesn't.
But we can't pick and choose.
Is that right?
That is correct. The ordinance gets adopted as is and remains unless and until it is amended
by the voters again.
Okay, so Mr. Gee, maybe I didn't understand the question. You were saying there's some
rumor that affordable housing people are going to be exempted, but I'm hearing from the
city attorney that's impossible.
So that doesn't mean that they're not trying.
I'm just trying to understand the boundaries of what is going on.
I mean, we were given, you know, an implementation plan,
and I've been hearing stories that the proponents and the affordable housing
or the proponents are trying to negotiate exemptions
or reduce fees for affordable housing providers
that are not allowed in the initiative for council.
And so that's the part I'm trying to...
We can't change it. Any changes to the initiative require voter approval. You can't do it in the
back room. You can't do it in the implementation plan. If we wanted to exempt affordable, nonprofit
affordable housing providers, it would have to go back before the voters. We can't do
that. Staff can't do it and the proponents can't do it. As you indicated, it's what's
in front of us. We can't change it. Did I say that fairly correctly?
That is correct. There are places where, and this ordinance is an example of it too, there are places where the ordinance doesn't speak to something.
And so the city could fill in where there's, you know, where something is not covered.
But we definitely anything we do in an implementation or in the program would need to be consistent with the ordinance and its limitations.
And again, the ordinance's limitation provides that this program will be funded only by the
By the rental housing fee and not general fund.
Senator, thank you for that. I want to follow up one more thing that you shared is that when we talk about differential fees, I mean to me this is sort of like our utility fees.
And I believe the voters passed the state law that certain users are not allowed to subsidize other users.
So are we walking into that state law also that a two-unit provider can't be subsidized
by an eight-unit provider and there are fees?
That's exactly what the fee analysis would need to determine for us and why I said that
we can't definitively answer this.
But any study we do on determining what the fee is will need to ensure that we don't
disproportionately impact one type of housing provider as a result.
Great, thank you.
And then as we heard and received, we had a lot of questions from different organizations.
Are we able to answer those questions tonight? HLC, Housing Leadership Council, SAMSEDA, Chamber,
California Department Association, SAMCAR. There's a whole bunch of questions. Do we have answers
for all those questions tonight?
No, we're not able to answer those tonight. In depth. I think we've answered a couple
of them.
You answered a couple.
Yeah, but not. We get into HUD vouchers and how those would be, which is a vital
resource for funding new for housing so no I think those would be in my opening
remarks that I talked about a potential information coming back we'd like to
delve into that we've been focused on just trying to get agendized some of the
way where you it's not excuses but some of those questions are really nuanced
into weeds on how pro forma would work in operating budget that deserve to be
answered well and the HUD vouchers section a I mean we don't we don't
control those, the requirements.
Those are...
Mandated from Yon High. And we can't change those requirements.
Correct. To keep in mind any development that has HUD vouchers already has a previously recorded restriction.
And I don't know how that would play, you know, a restriction that obligates certain repayment obligations and whatnot.
And it gets into some of the questions you talked about earlier on how an underwriter could underwrite a deal like that.
I'm not sure there's somebody in D.C. that says, oh, we're fine, you know, with this.
because keep in mind any local payment that doesn't go to the project goes away from current
debt service.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
And then, Elin, there's one additional question that you talked about on your Slide 17 about
implementation.
And you talked about if this were to be approved by council or the voters,
I think
to use the term deprioritize other city.
We have two things there. One is, what do we have to not do if this were to be approved?
And two, are there any penalties if we don't implement fully the ordinance as written within the 10 days?
I will say we've not done a deep dive into this, but I think anything that is not mandated for the ordinance
like the housing division at the state or federal level,
we would basically need to drop to start working on this.
I imagine staff from other departments,
such as city attorney's office,
revenue services would also need to deprioritize work
to get the proposed fees in place
and do anything like that.
In terms of what are the consequences
if we don't have a fully implemented ordinance
I don't know if I have a great answer to that, and I don't know if any of our attorney's
staff have any answers, but that would be incredibly difficult to do, to have something fully up
and running in ten days.
If I may add, really a huge burden beyond human resources. We don't have any job classifications.
We would have to start from scratch.
We would have to, you know, rent controls are completely different.
You can't just say analysts.
It's a completely different skill sets.
Keep in mind every single job description must come before the city council, you know,
per the charter.
So as Alynn mentioned, it wouldn't just be the housing department.
That housing division, we could shift those responsibilities.
I do think it would be a big initial burden on human resources who's currently actively recruiting
for, you know, police and fire and all other positions.
But we have never started that work.
So we'd have to embark on that process.
I see that really as the longest, you know, really
leaping forward.
And then recruiting positions, and there's not a lot of folks out there with said experience.
So I think it would really be the human resources component of it and then legal, any aspects on that.
Patrick, thank you. So Jason, is that considered the HR recruitment job descriptions coming to council for approval part of the start-up costs?
Or is that in addition to the start-up costs that you identified in your report?
That would probably be in addition to the startup costs that we included in our report.
Thank you. I do have some comments, but I'll reserve my comments till later.
But I thank Mayor, you and my colleagues for indulging me in these questions.
These are important questions, I think, that we're in four days of trying to figure this out,
trying to figure it out still.
And so thank you, colleagues, for the time.
And Mayor, thank you.
Thank you councilmember G for the questions and we'll open it up to my
colleagues.
Colleagues again, who would like to go next?
Council Member Howard.
Thank you. I'd like to thank, first of all, I want to thank the community here. I really appreciate you showing up and speaking up.
This is such an important topic and we have many different opinions in the room, but I want to thank you all for having the courage to speak up and let us know how you feel.
As Council Member G said, we did not have a great deal of time to analyze this and there
are so many questions, just the Housing Leadership Council sent us a list of questions just today
and I can't answer one of them to be honest with you and I'm sure most of us can't because
we haven't had a chance to do that analysis.
But I did want to ask, I think Council Member G has asked very thorough, he's had a
very thorough questioning and questions I hadn't thought about.
So I can't think of an additional question, but what I did want to know is I believe in
the report we received from Faith in Action, it did have forms suggested if you wanted to
give someone a waiver or an exemption, a non-profit, for instance. There were a number of forms
there. They were suggesting that we could utilize if, in fact, this passed and a non-profit
it was impacted. But what I'm hearing is that may not be legally possible. Now, I think
that's important to know because if faith in action believes it is possible, I think
we need to find out if it's not possible, that needs to be told to the public that
if this passes, that means non-profits, and we have many of them in our community
or doing an admirable job supplying affordable housing and have plans to do much more, they
need to know and have some certainty on where they stand.
So would I ask you, the city attorney, would I ask you that question? Are those forms meaningful?
Are they legal?
So I understand, I think you're talking about the packet that Faith in Action might have given
staff a few weeks ago. Is that accurate, Elaine?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
And so I can't definitively answer that. I understand that those forms were provided
to the city to city staff a bit ago and if the city's fee analysis were to
conclude that the waiver or exemption of some of these fees for affordable
housing units would not disproportionately impact the other
providers, then maybe we could.
We have to rely on a conclusion like that, and I can't give you that conclusion without the analysis
because typically you've heard us say, oh, well, if you want to provide some type of subsidy,
you'll use your general fund. And so then I could tell you there are ways that you could do it.
Here we'd have to do this analysis in order to determine whether this can be done without
impacting negatively the other landlords and without utilizing the city's general
fund. So it really does depend on what that analysis shows.
I would find it so
hard to believe that it wouldn't impact. Well, but I don't have the the
information to prove that, but I would find it real difficult to believe. That
is my concern, but I just can't definitively tell you that. Exactly.
Exactly. And I also have a concern that, I mean, we are talking budget tonight.
Our general fund is not an unlimited fund.
We're still facing a looming deficit. So I have great concerns about how we're going to do this.
So I think these questions are excellent questions because you don't want to go in blindly as we go forward.
But thank you. I appreciate everybody's good intentions in trying to answer these questions.
Thank you, Council Member.
colleagues, any other questions?
We do have a lot more meeting to get through, so if anyone
feels brave, it'd be appreciated.
We're just doing questions or comments.
We can do questions and then comments later.
Oh, okay. All right. I do have a question. Let me just, sorry, my notes are a little
bit scrambled here.
I had a question, just how many, when I was reading this, how many opportunities for appeals
and hearings are there for landlords and tenants in this and who absorbs those costs?
So, processing any petitions or appeals would be administered by the city and so those costs,
as we've been discussing, would be paid through the fees imposed on landlords.
I believe I have.
We would process appeals for, and I'm trying to find my list here.
Tenant safety plans, so we are required to approve them.
And then if there's an appeal of that, we would process petitions for either rent increases
or decreases. We would process appeals for any relocation assistance eligibility requirements.
I think those are the three petitions and appeals.
So there's maybe three buckets for appeals. And then is there a limit to how many times
one can appeal. I didn't see that in the proposal. Can a landlord or tenant run out of appeals?
Can you exhaust them or can I keep challenging it? How does that process look?
I believe in rent increases you could petition annually to increase the rent above what the
the ordinance prescribes. In terms of, is there an appeal after an appeal? After an appeal,
I would need to double check that. But I think there is an end date. Typically, as it's described,
there is a here.
Hearing officer component, and so I do believe that hearing officer's decision would be final.
But I know everyone's double checking this.
Okay, it would be interesting to know, just with cost, I know that all of those have a number assigned to them.
So if you guys could get back, that would be information I would like to have.
Thanks. That's it for now.
Thank you, Council Member. We'll go to Council Member Strickland.
Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick follow-up on that. On page, I think 39 of the proposed ordinance.
So who appoints the hearing examiner?
And how does it compare to the examiner, if you will, for the TPO that we already adopted?
So this hearing examiner, I think this is one of those where the ordinance is silent.
We can develop our own rules and regulations.
The city would need to go through a program.
You know, requests for qualifications or requests for proposals from potential hearing examiners
and they would be selected. While we do have under contract a hearing officer right now,
they're under contract specifically for implementing our tenant protection ordinance. So we would
still need to go through some kind of procurement process to find hearing officers specifically
to implement this.
But
hearing that we have that kind of flexibility because the ordinance is somewhat silent.
I think you said on the specifics of the hearing examiner, who they are, who hires, I mean,
so we can ensure that that person is unbiased, objective, can be an objective third party
and kind of believing maybe any concerns or might be on the part of any
landlord or tenant about the...
Conclusion of their hearing. Right.
That's correct. That's usually, that's what we ask of a hearing examiner or a hearing officer.
And I'm still trying to answer Councilmember Badia's question because there are three opportunities for challenging a decision.
And there is, as Councilmember Sturkin referred to Section 39 for the petitions,
There is an opportunity for the hearing examiner to look at the record and make a determination and even that decision can be appealed and it's the City Council that is the final appeal body at least in that case.
So then there's even more.
So then there's another, then it comes to the next.
would probably be legal challenge if they weren't satisfied with the council determination.
But at least in that instance, and I haven't been able to come through that,
I know there's a couple of other options. I don't know if Deputy City Attorney Lolita Fernandez...
You are correct about that. The page 42 has the appeal section in there that applies to
all hearing procedures for hearings and appeals altogether, so it would go to the city council
for appeal, and if there are no appeals in that, the hearing examiner's decision would
be final, and then there's a judicial review if they're not, if they're agreed by the
action.
I want to thank everyone that came out today, both people that live in Redwood City and people
that live adjacent to Redwood City and people that live far away from Redwood City, across
the bay and so forth.
Thank you all for coming, and I also want to thank my colleagues for asking such probing
questions and for this.
So, city attorney, I've already asked this, but let me just ask it again. 4,000 Redwood City residents said they wanted this initiative put on the ballot.
Can we decide tonight based on all these concerns that have been expressed and all this uncertainty,
do we have the option to say to vote no, we won't put it on the ballot?
So under the elections code, the city council is required to consider the petition at the next regular meeting
after the petition has been certified as sufficient.
The petition has now been certified as sufficient
and so that's why it's here before the City Council.
Typically you have three options at
This council meeting. One is to adopt the ordinance without any changes. A second is to call an election
and submit this initiative measure to the voters. And then a third is to order a 9212 report is what
we call it, which is a report that Ms. Lane-Caster had kind of laid out what those elements were
and that staff has already provided preliminarily to the council.
So those are typically the only three actions that can be taken for a council.
If you find the 9212 report that the staff has brought forward, then you're left with
the determination, do you adopt the ordinance outright?
And you heard some public commenters asking
that the council do that.
Or submit the measure to the voters. So that's what's before you tonight.
Thank you so much. And one of the reasons that I ask that is, as the mayor referenced, we have
a full agenda tonight. We have four other pressing matters. And so I think we've identified a
of ambiguities and a lot of questions that are unanswered or but it kind of
doesn't matter I mean we either we either put it on the ballot for November we
either vote to put it on the ballot for November or we vote to adopt it
tonight those are our two options is that correct and the third one is to
order that the 9212 report which we did and that's what we've been
and discussing for the last two hours.
The rules and regulations that would implement the ordinance.
So the 9212 report is an analysis that provides information on the impacts of the ordinance.
So that's what the 9212 report is. It's not the rules and regulations.
It really is information to help both the City Council and members of the public understand what the impacts of this proposed ordinance is.
And thank you to staff for putting that up.
Well, thank you, and I'm very concerned.
The thing, I appreciate all the questions, and I'll hand it over to the Mayor to decide what to do next.
but I think the thing that bothers me the most.
Is that what I heard the attorney say that we would be forced to legally defend an ordinance
that we did not craft and that we don't fully understand. And we would have to do it with
general fund dollars. And that's concerning to me in this economy with the uncertainties.
But the devil is in the details as they say, but this is for the voters to decide.
This is not for us to decide.
I guess I'll leave it there and throw it to you, Mayor.
Thank you, Vice Mayor.
A quick clarifying question on what the Vice Mayor just mentioned.
and if we requested supplemental 92.12.
Are we then making that ultimate decision whether to adopt the ordinance outright or put it on
the ballot at that meeting or is that happening still tonight?
I think the city council can proceed one of two ways. If right now, if the city council
is interested in obtaining additional information and feels comfortable also
making the decision whether to adopt the ordinance or place the item on the
ballot then the council can move forward with both to dine. The City
Council if it doesn't feel comfortable acting until it's received the
additional information that's being that would be requested then we would need to
make sure that we meet the elections code requirements and bring
Meeting the supplemental report that meets the city council's interests and, you know, direction
within 30 days in order for it to act because the council must act. So those are, I think,
the options on the table. If the city council feels like the report in its current state
is deficient and they need additional information to act, then that's the option you have as
the second option. Thank you Veronica. Thank you city attorney. I appreciate that. You
know I'll jump into my comments. I think thank you my colleagues for the great
questions. They're really helpful. Thank you to everyone who made public
comments. I think when you have the community engaged in the process like
this it just it makes the end result better and it has us thinking about
things that we didn't even consider so I appreciate the level of engagement
when we've seen and we had housing night a few weeks ago.
I'm going to go where we were celebrating our TPO, which is one of the stronger tenant
protections on the peninsula, right? And that's been years of work. And I know that's not perfect,
right? But it was so labor intensive. And I've also heard it from the community. And I've
seen the community outs and collecting these signatures. And I know that, you know, they've
done the work and that has been deemed by our county elections officer. And so many
my colleagues have touched on this, the really sort of funny position that the city is in
where we are working in such fast timelines to digest the 9212, to look at the ordinance,
to look at the proposal, and we are also in an awkward position because we don't have
the ability to pick and choose and adopt certain parts of the policy that we like,
right? It's all or nothing. So I think just with the level of questions we've
heard today. I, before we initiate the process, I
Would want another 92-12 report 30 days. I know it isn't a lot of time, but I think the
answers we would get in that time period would be really valuable, not just to the people
who worked on this proposal, but for the voters who are going to make the ultimate decision
on this. I think they deserve the most information that we can before it's out of our hands.
I'll open it up to my colleagues if anyone feels differently, but to the Vice Mayor's
point that's where I'm thinking we should go next. Council Member Sturkin. Thank
you Mayor. I really appreciate that proposal. I just have one question. If I
remember correctly, our agendas are packed through the fall, right? So where
are we going to fit it? It is the question. That's just something I'm
cognizant of. We already punted, you know, consideration of affordable housing
on our library parking lot to the fall.
And that's just the one concern that I have.
Thank you, Council Member.
I'll just quickly say that I would work absolutely with our staff
to find a day where that could work or make another accommodation,
which I know we've done with the public hearing we had last week, right,
or a couple of weeks, but it just flies by.
So I'll say that, you know, I think we can figure something out,
but any other vice mayor? Sorry about that.
No, don't apologize.
I just have a question for staff.
Assuming that we did request a supplemental 9212 report to address some of the questions,
or all of the questions, or as many questions that were raised tonight.
I guess my question is, do you have clarity on what those questions are?
or are you sort of feeling like our questions are nebulous or...
You're not really quite sure what the supplemental 9212 would address and worried that then it's
in an addition would be inadequate or are we asking unanswerable questions that you think
in a supplemental 9212 wouldn't be able to address either. Do you kind of get my question?
No, I appreciate the question, Vice Mayor, because I was going to turn my light on as
soon as you all heard a lot of really good feedback tonight.
I took lots of notes, but I would like clear direction.
And I definitely got a lot of feedback from Council Member Gee because, but here's the
thing, if we're going to do this, you know, and again, we only have a couple of weeks,
so it's not like, I just want to make sure everybody feels, you know, heard.
So I do think that we should take a little bit of time to scope it right now on what
exactly the council has heard. Now, I do have a lot of notes on the, I think, look
at the cumulative impact, this is very important. Look in.
A lot on the affordable housing question. I think many of the letters that we got from
plenty of the stakeholders, probably 75% of where we could be. I do think we'll probably
come back with some questions. We probably will not be able to answer or we're not uncomfortable
or sorry, we feel a little uncomfortable maybe guessing on how it would work in implementation.
But I do think it would be great just to kind of maybe for a few minutes, you know,
make sure my list is good and then go from there and just to make sure that we don't
come back and say nope, we missed the mark?
Exactly because to Mr. Sturkin's
point, we have other business and so I don't want the tail wagging that I
myself don't want the tail wagging the dog. We have no discretion. It has to go
on the ballot or just be implemented without citywide vote. So I think it
I mean, to the extent, I guess, from my point of view.
To the extent that a supplemental 92-12 further educate the voters that would be looking at this
in November, then it's a good, perhaps a good use of staff time and energy.
I guess I'll leave
it there.
Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'll go to Council Member Padilla.
I just want to thank everyone for attending. I really appreciate the Fort.
I love things like this, and I wish we had them for everything.
I know that they are costly and they take time, but they're very important.
And I hear everyone talking, and I think to myself, I was looking at page 45, I guess, of 151,
and it says, the program shall publicize this chapter so that all residents of Redwood City
will have the opportunity to become informed about their legal rights and duties under this
chapter.
The thing that stays with me when I'm here is I want everyone to be informed. I don't ever
want to feel, I know I never want to feel like I'm not given all the information, and I also
don't want to interpret information for the voters. That's not something I feel comfortable
with. We've been presented with statistics. It's true. Our community is a mix of renters
and homeowners. And I think it is important that we have all the information to see how
our entire community is affected. I read some of the reports and it did, I did find it disheartening
that I don't want us to demonize some of our mom and pop. You know, just because
a person may be listed under an LLC, that doesn't mean that they're a faceless corporation.
Some people have found ways to protect them.
So I just want us to think that these aren't all giant corporations. These are also our
family members, our friends. We've had people speak about the communities within communities.
So I just want, I think we've mentioned unintended consequences. Are we going to hurt the community
members who have been supporting some of the marginalized members in our community?
So I just want us to always think, and I would really appreciate additional information
because I think it also we have to think is this something I saw that it was like
not seven to nineteen potentially in employees and with the four million to
ten million dollars that was not even including collection or enforcement so
these are very conservative numbers and many questions have been asked and so
many of the answers are we just don't know we don't know and to the vice
mayor's point, we didn't create this.
We are just now getting all this information and the details of years and first rights of
refusal that are never ending. And I just want to make sure we know the financial implications,
how lasting they are. So I would really welcome additional information in the report because
at the end of the day, I think we all should be informed. Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member, Vice Mayor.
I'm sorry. I have another fundamental question that it's sort of a follow-up to what Mr. G said.
What is it about the ADUs? So these are buildings on residents' property.
How does this apply?
And if you can just,
so do ADU owners also have to pay this $500?
$300 fee or $300 fee? Yes, ADUs, depending on when they're constructed, would be either
fully covered if they are pre-1995 or partially covered and if they're being rented. Now, if
the unit's not being rented, then there is no fee, but the expectation would be that
they would pay a fee for those units if they're rented.
Thank you Vice Mayor.
Thank you Mayor. Thank you colleagues. Again, thank you everybody for sharing your thoughts and being here.
This will most likely wind up before the voters for consideration.
But Patrick, I'm happy to give you all the questions that you didn't have to write down.
I'm happy to share with you and staff all the questions I wrote.
But I would be very interested in a supplemental 9212 that really addressed three buckets of issues.
At the broadest level. The three buckets I think would be the cumulative impact on property
owners given the breadth of not only the rent stabilization but the tenant protection parts
of this as well as the administrative burden. The $12,000, the four months of rent or the
greater number of 12,000. It's going to have an impact, as we heard from one of the speakers.
Some of these family-owned property owners aren't cash-rich. And so I would want to
see an analysis to the extent possible of the cumulative impact on property owners
of the proposed initiative. The second thing is I want to see what the impact is on
our non-profit affordable housing providers.
That's a big deal.
I mean, we have sent the message out.
Come to Redwood City through community benefits, create your housing here, low income, extremely
low income. And if this is going to dissuade potential affordable housing development,
we need to provide that transparency to the public. And we can't change it. But as council
member Padilla said, we owe the public transparency. And probably the most important part, at least
for counsel is reconciliation of what the general fund impact of this initiative is.
I know I'm tired of saying this, but because of other work I'm doing, we are working under
a compressed timeline.
So I would be in favor of continuing this item to a date certain for supplemental 9212
that addresses those three buckets within the timing constraints that we have within
the election code and to be brought back to council at date certain.
to be established by the mayor and vice-mayor and staff. Because I think that transparency
to the public is critical when this goes out, because once this is on the ballot, we can't
take any action here at council. We can as individual council members, but once it's
out there, we cannot do electioneering from the dais, good or bad. So this is our opportunity
to generate information that I think all of us only got four days ago, and to be able to see
what those impacts are to property owners, to our non-profit affordable housing developers,
and the impact to our budget. Because I am not, and I said this before,
willing to sign a blank check on our general fund. That would be irresponsible
as a council member and elected official for anybody I sit on.
I cannot give a blank check on a general fund.
So Patrick, hopefully that's enough clarity.
And to our secretary, did I say anything wrong there? Is that doable if the council would entertain a motion?
I think that would be clear if the council was interested in making that a motion. As far as doable, you did add to the extent possible.
And so I do appreciate that because there is some of that that may not be feasible.
I understand completely. I mean, on the Financial Efficiency Committee, SB 63 Local Investment,
talk about compressed timeframe, you know, six weeks. That's not a lot of time. And so
there are going to be answers we can't answer within 30 days. I get that. But I think the
buckets of comments, my questioning, the letters from HLC, SAMHSA, all the other
can fairly fit into those three buckets.
I will second that motion. And I'd like
I'd like to say I appreciate the
That you're trying, really, because the more information we can get, it's the more we can
share with the public, and we'll all be enlightened. So thank you. Appreciate it.
I guess I will say I just made a motion since it was seconded. Thank you, Council Member
Howard.
Sure sounded like it.
Thank you both. That was a motion from Council Member Gee, and a second from Council Member
Howard. Not seeing anyone else's lights up.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Please.
I just want to make sure.
Do we also need a motion to certify their certification?
I don't know if that procedurally needs to happen first.
Yes, please.
If we could get, I mean, I don't know if Council Member G
with Council Member Howard's acceptance
can amend his motion to do both A and what he said
where he asked to continue this item to a date
certain to be determined by the mayor and vice mayor within the elections.
Code provisions to receive a supplemental report. With those three buckets, I'm happy to list
them out if you would like to provide information regarding the cumulative impacts, including
rent control, tenant protections, as well as burdens on the landlords of all of the regulations
that are with the city, impacts on the non-profit affordable housing partners, and reconciling
the general fund impacts to the extent possible.
So thank you for clarifying my motion. Yes.
I also get yes. Perfect. Great.
Friendly amendment accepted by motion maker and the second.
Just question of clarification. That's very good.
Are you adding that we're certifying this then too?
Is that?
I'm sorry. I just referred to section A of the recommendation that's right before you.
By motion, you're accepting certification of signature verification. Would you like me to read?
I think you've got it. Thank you.
Great. And I think we're ready for a vote. So, City Clerk, could we get an electronic vote, please?
One more vote, please. Thank you. The motion passes with six votes. Council Member Chu is absent.
Thank you, City Clerk. Thank you, colleagues.
and thank you to the members of the public for joining us today.
We will continue this conversation very soon
and move on to item 9A, our public hearing items for the evening.
We have our Human Resources Director, Michelle Katsuyoshi, who will give a presentation.
Good evening, Mayor Martinez Sabayos, Vice Mayor Aiken, council members, members of the community, Michelle Katsuyoshi, Human Resources Director.
Also here with me today is Vanessa Lopez, Human Resources Manager.
Listed here is the presentation overview for tonight's report.
Listed on this slide is the question for the city council to consider, and we will return to this slide at the end of the report.
This
is staff's recommendation for consideration to receive the informational report on City of Redwood City Employment Vacancies and Employee Recruitment and Retention Efforts.
We're
22nd, 2020 for the government.
The governor signed AB 2561, which imposed new obligations on public agencies related to tracking and presenting information on job vacancies.
The legislature declared there is a statewide interest in ensuring that public agency operations are appropriately staffed.
High vacancy rates can lead to heavier workloads, turnout, increased turnover, and negative impacts
to service delivery.
Effected January 1, 2025, Government Code requires public agencies to present information
on their vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts at a public hearing before the City
Council at least once per fiscal year and prior to the adoption of the final budget.
The item tonight meets this requirement.
Keep visions of AB 2561.
There are three based on AB 2561.
There are other obligations and reporting requirements that apply if the vacancy rate in a single bargaining
group exceeds 20%. It is not a requirement this year as no single bargaining unit has
a vacancy rate of 20% or higher. Listed here are the vacancy rates by employee group.
For fiscal year 2526, there are a total of 621.68 budgeted full-time equivalent positions,
FTEs. As of March 17, 2026, there are
Our 57 vacancies, which correlate to a 9.2 percent vacancy rate.
Redwood City is not alone. We've surveyed 11 agencies of our labor comparator market, and
we are at the bottom three vacancy rate at the 9.2.
Recent successes, our human resources team in collaboration with hiring managers, we completed
98 requirements or I'm sorry, recruitment in 2025. We've also added capacity to our human
resources team to add an additional recruiter to assist with our recruitment efforts. And
we also have a variety of recruitment and retention incentives that are in place for
eligible teammates and that includes education, incentive, pay, and tuition reimbursement.
And this benefit supports continuous learning and development.
It can support educational, such as advancement towards college degree or college courses, professional training, as well as specialized licenses or certificates.
We also have a police lateral recruitment incentive trying to attract current police officers to join our agency.
And if a current police officer recruits a lateral candidate and is successful, that individual receives a $500 recruitment incentive.
We also have a vacation benefit accrual for any lateral police officer.
You know, typically if somebody were to leave an agency and join another,
they may lose their vacation and or sick balance and so an incentive to attract officers.
To our agency, we will front load them a vacation balance to use.
Areas of improvement, we are in the process of issuing a request for proposal for a cloud-based
software program to help our human resources team streamline recruitment processes as well
as to better track vacancy data.
We are also working with labor groups to establish hiring eligible list protocols, and what
that means right now is if a department has a vacancy, they are typically referred the
top three names of a candidate hiring list, and that really limits flexibility for strong
candidates who may not score in the top three.
And so we are working with labor groups to look at ways to be more flexible and
possibly have a hiring rule of the list where if you successfully competed in a recruitment
Your name has been placed on an eligibility list. You may be eligible for a position, even
if you didn't score in the top three. Another area of improvement is a time to establish
a new classification. A classification is just a fancy word of job position. And so when
the city is interested in creating a new position, it requires us to write a job description,
determine where the salary range would lie, work with the labor groups to
identify appropriate bargaining group unit designation, and a lot of this work
takes time, so we are working with hiring departments to streamline the process
to create new job descriptions.
Here again is the slide for the
recommendation to receive the informational report on City of
with City Employment Vacancies, Employee Recruitment and Retention Efforts.
Pursuant to government code.
Listed here is the question for council and happy to answer
any questions. Thank you.
Michelle, thank you for the great presentation and colleagues. Any questions for staff? Council
Member Howard.
Well, it's not a question. I just wanted to commend Michelle, you and your HR staff for
this proactive program that you've put into place as far as recruiting and retaining
who we currently have. When we have vacancies in our city, our service suffers. And we want to provide great quality service for the people in our community.
And that you've kept it under 20% of vacancy rate. I know that's an improvement from what we've seen in the past.
So I do want to thank you because this has shown a real benefit. I'm glad we get to see it once a year to see that we are making improvements.
improvements, although we'd like to see
I'd like to see better. It's a problem every city has, but I am glad you're making such a dent. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member. Any other comments? Council Member Sirken.
Similarly, I just applaud you for your recruitment and retention efforts. It's critical to city services and just thank you.
Thank you.
Yes, it was the number 98 for 2025, super impressive.
Just for everyone, I mean onboarding employees, that's a really big amount.
That's a huge number.
Thank you.
Not seeing any other lights on.
Michelle, I'll add my thanks.
I know there are lots of new labor laws coming from Sacramento that we're staying
on top of, so I appreciate you maneuvering through that.
but I think I saw it in the budget that was it at 80% satisfaction rate from our employees.
I might, I saw a lot of numbers, but I'm pretty sure it was 80% in terms of how happy our employees
are, right, which is a testament to the culture that's being grown here, but also it's just
a part of the work now. People don't stay around for 40 years, right? You don't have
too many examples like Miss Meeks. And yeah, so that's why this work is so important.
And so I appreciate that.
And I'll sing any of my other colleagues' slides on.
I will move the recommendation.
Actually, Mayor, I'm so sorry.
Excuse me, I'm moving way too fast.
Let's open public hearing.
Thank you.
I actually don't have any speaker cards,
but wanted to give the opportunity
to anyone in the audience or anyone on Zoom
to comment on this item tonight.
Going twice.
Seeing none, Mayor, please move forward.
Thank you.
Now I'll make the motion for staff's recommendation.
Council Member Howard.
I'll second the motion. Thank you. Could we get a electronic vote, please?
Thank you. The motion passes with six votes. Councilmember Chu is absent. Thank you.
Thank you again, Michelle. And with that, we will move to our staff reports beginning with 10a.
Our fiscal year 26 to 27 recommended budget, and our city manager Patrick Heisinger will give an overview,
and finance director, Beth Goldberg, will lead the presentation.
Great. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everybody. Patrick Heisinger, City Manager.
I'm pleased to produce or I should say introduce my first budget as your City Manager.
Before doing so, I did want to express a lot of gratitude to our entire staff.
So all the staff that are here, please raise your hand and really appreciate,
called for a little more enthusiasm than that, you know, but I really appreciate it.
I mean, for folks, no.
So literally every member of every department is involved to some extent into the budget process.
And so I really, really appreciate that. And Beth and Molly here as well from Finance, thank
you for crowling us all to get together. It truly does take a village. And I also want
to thank the council. You know, a lot of this work starts at the mid-year, then the
off-site, then the CIP. You know, I'm still in on your thunder, Beth, some of your slides.
but it really is a comprehensive approach that we embark on and, you know, I take feedback
from you, you take feedback from me and we, you know, come together in this big huge document.
The document you have before you, it's a balanced budget, but make no mistake, there
are asks about using one-time reserves, and that makes me nervous.
The reason why I say it makes me nervous is it's something that I will not recommend
doing a second year. You know, we really, I've seen other cities that get
comfortable continuing to dip into reserves and whatnot. This next year, as
we've talked about...
At the mid-year, and as we talk about, it's really a year for planning and to really figure
out how can we increase revenues but also keep our costs in check. So in this presentation,
you'll see some doom and gloom, you'll see some real exciting stuff, but you'll also see
a lot of reality checks. And look forward to the discussion as a reminder. This would
come back on June 22 for final approval. So we look forward to the feedback tonight.
And with that, I will turn it over to Beth Goldberg. Thank you.
Thank you city manager greetings mayor vice mayor and council members happy
budget night as the city manager pointed out we are on our budget journey and we
are on the penultimate stop on our budget journey where we are going to
present the recommended budget to the city council tonight and then we'll be
back in two weeks for the budget public hearing and for final adoption.
And as you're listening to the presentation tonight,
I would like you to think about a couple of questions.
Do you have feedback for us on the tenure forecast
and the financial trends, as well as city department
operations as proposed in the recommended budget?
And the feedback we hear from you tonight,
we will incorporate and get ready to come back in two weeks.
Okay,
so from a presentation overview, first I'm going to provide an overview of the budget economic outlook tenure forecast.
And then we'll hand it back over to City Manager Heisinger to talk about advancing City Council priorities and community priorities.
And then we'll have time for questions and answers.
And then at the end, we will be asking the council to pass a resolution to set
June 22nd as the public hearing.
Okay, so overview of the 26-27 operating budget. The budget totals
more than $410 million across the funds displayed on this chart. In addition, we and we'll talk
As is the case typically, we will spend most of our time talking about the general fund,
the mother fund.
So we'll go into that in more details.
But before I do that, I want to quote our fearless leader, City Manager Patrick Keisinger.
He included in the budget transmittal letter
A statement echoing his comments earlier today about, you know, times are changing fiscally and
we're at a bit of a crossroads and this does require increased fiscal discipline, prioritization,
and long-term planning. And this is a different situation than what the city has seen previously
and I'll go into some of that as we go through the 10-year forecast portion.
So,
what has changed this year? Why is this year different than past years?
First of all, what is unique about this year is we actually are seeing a slight contraction in revenues.
Not huge on a dollar basis, but we know we're in inflationary times.
Costs are increasing, and the fact that revenues are tempered is a changing dynamic.
Another thing that has changed, and this is where the city manager was speaking to use
of one-time funds, for a variety of reasons, we don't have the one-time fund balances, unassigned
and fund balances that we've had in the past.
And this is stemming from the deliberate drawdown
of one-time balances in the 2526 budget
to meet some long-standing needs
or also taking a more proactive and precise approach
to revenue forecasting,
which is meaning we're not ending with unfound money,
so to speak, at the end of the year,
which is what was contributing to those fund balances.
So for this year's budget, we are recommending that we...
Draw down the remaining fund balance to help balance the budget, and I'll talk about that
in a moment, but that does start to really limit our flexibility moving forward. I do
want to note, however, that our 15 percent council-established general fund reserve, emergency
reserve, is fully funded at about $31 million. So we've got that as a question.
So
what's contributing to this weaker revenue outlook?
There's a myriad of issues going on here.
And the first of which is something that the council is keenly aware of,
and that is the state appears,
unless something has changed in the last couple of days,
to not be providing us our vehicle license fee backfill monies
that are owed to us, that are obligated to us.
And that is creating $5.3 million loss of revenues that we cannot count on for the 26-27 budget.
In addition, we're seeing sales tax declining since its peak in 2022-2023.
I'll talk about that more in a few minutes.
Business license tax, Measure BB was approved by our voters last November, implemented, or
maybe it was anyway, it was implemented, this budget, with 50% or a 50% rate change happening
in 2526 and the remaining increase happening in 2627.
This was a new tax and it's difficult because of the way we were taxing before
and the information that we had to really get a precise forecast.
So we are seeing this perform slightly below forecast.
But we've also this year stepped up our efforts through one of our consultants, HDL, to step up
the administration of this tax and follow up with taxpayers to ensure payment.
So you may recall earlier this year, coming to you with concerns that this was really
falling short. HDL's efforts since they expanded their role in October has really yielded results
and doing some analysis of our latest results, I would suggest that about a million dollars
additional has been brought in by HDL than what we would have had had they not had
this expanded role. And of that million dollars, that includes about $377,000 from prior year
delinquent payments.
So really kind of helping us get caught up with those taxpayers that hadn't been paying.
Council is very familiar with loss of certain grant revenues, particularly at the federal
level that is having impacts on general fund revenues.
We in our work on ensuring best practices, financial management best practices, we've
determined that some longstanding general revenues should actually be allocated to
other funds so that represents a reduction to the general fund.
And then looking ahead, we have seen some recent commercial property sales that have
sold at a lower valuation, and so that may temper our property tax revenues in the
future.
And so that's going to be something we're going to have to watch.
which property tax has been a bright spot for us over these years.
So, next I want to just expand a little bit on the VLF backfill. And as the council is aware,
this has been a fairly volatile revenue source. But we have always, the state has always provided
what they have owed us until last year, fiscal year 24-25. We were owed about $5.3 million
dollars and we're only awarded about two-thirds of that. So we're shorted 1.8 million. This
year the state budget includes no money for us. Again, we were owed another 5.3 million
dollars and that appears as of now to not be materializing. So that creates a significant
financial hit for our general fund.
Sales tax is another revenue that has not been performing as well as we would like. So this
chart, what you'll see here is that sales tax has been down every year since fiscal year
2223 and is expected to drop a little bit further in 2627. This is down about 8.6 percent
from 2022-23. And a variety of factors are in play here. First, for fiscal year 2022-23,
that was when we were coming out of the COVID pandemic. And that's also when a lot of the
stimulus checks were out among the people being spent. And so I've heard several presentations
from HDL that, you know, as they look in hindsight.
Right. Suggest that 23, 2223, that performance was probably not sustainable because it was driven
so much by pent-up demand from COVID and those stimulus checks. But then every year since,
it's been dropping. And what we're seeing, there's variation locally, but where we're
challenging challenges locally is particularly in auto sales is contributing to our decline
in sales tax. And, you know, there's a number of economic variables in play, but, you know,
the fact of the matter is we have over the last three or four years seen sales tax drop.
So this is...
Sorry, Beth. Sorry to interrupt, just have a quick question.
Go ahead. Beth, could you go back to that slide?
I can thank you but use the trend is moving up
27, 28, 29. Can you explain? You're hopeful. I can see this. You're hopeful. You are projecting
something. So can you share? Yes. So the first two years, 26, 27, 27, 28 and 28, 29 are based
on HDL's forecasts. When they provide us our quarterly sales tax reports, they look out
two years into the future. So we're using those forecasts then and then beyond
that 29 through 30 and then beyond that we use you know a standard like 3%
inflation rate. So this does project that that there is going to be a
recovery but we also know that we live in really weird times and you know who
knows what the next shoe could be to drop. So we just have to watch this
this really, really closely.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Okay, this is kind of the whiney slide where I've entitled it Can't
Win for Losing. So we made, you know, the council made a significant move a couple years ago in
putting Measure BB on the ballot and the voters of Redwood City approved it. And this was supposed
to be kind of our pathway to nirvana or whatever, budget bliss, whatever you want to call it.
But simultaneously, the world is striking out against us and the VLF backfill is a loss
and then we're seeing weakness in sales tax and cumulatively those hits from sales tax
Thanks.
Okay, so now this is, so we went from the complaining slide to now we're going to go to the gloom-and-doom
So we're kind of a little bit of right back where we started from, which it's not great,
but it helps explain this kind of, this stasis that we're finding ourselves in.
Okay, so now this is, so we went from the complaining slide to now we're going to go
of the gloom and doom slide. So this is a visual of our 10-year forecast and what you'll see on
this chart is our actual results from 2223 and 2324. And what you'll see there is that we ended
those years with a surplus, better than we anticipated.
And then what you're seeing in 24, 25, 25, 26, and 26, 27 is that we're actually projecting
– thank you for making that bigger – what we're seeing is that we're projecting shortfalls
that we would be using what remains of the unassigned fund balance to help balance the
budget for these years. And Matt gets us through partway through 26, 27, but
there's still a bit of a gap. And to close that remaining gap, what you're
seeing that blue represents in there is use of a partial use of our section 115
trust that the council proactively set aside starting in 2017 to meet future
pension costs, so we are as part of
We have this budget recommending that we draw that fund down by about $4 million to help balance
the budget. There's still a healthy balance in the Section 115 trust, about $36 million,
and we are not recommending at this point continuing to use that for the reasons that
City Manager Heisinger outlined in his opening comments is, you know, once it's gone, it's
So we need to be judicious about how we use that.
So the remaining, and this is where the gloom and doom comes in,
the remaining years on this chart shown in red are the projected deficits.
So our work, you know, once we get this budget adopted is to start figuring out
how are we through a combination of revenues,
potentially budget reductions, strategic use of reserves, how do we start closing those gaps?
We'll start closing those gaps on an ongoing basis that helps the subsequent years. So it's
the one-time measures that would start to kick the can. So this is the work that is ahead of
us is to turn those red bars into above the line.
Okay. And then this is the last gloom
and doom slide before I hand it over for the happy news from our city manager. And
And as you are all aware, economic uncertainty seems to be the new normal.
It's the new reality of the century we find ourselves in, and not to bring everyone down,
but have listed a couple of the variables that we're watching closely on this slide.
and some of these are potentially game-changer.
So, for example, the state of California is considering changes to the pension program that would, if enacted,
would lead to significantly more costs to us. So, if those come into play, that would make
those red bars on the previous slide worse and really be a game changer for us. Some of
So these are more external factors such as, you know, tech sector layoffs, it's affecting
the local economy, but not as much of a direct hit.
Certainly what's going on in the Middle East is something to watch with oil prices.
But the things like the pension changes, rent control, as we talked about previously,
really could, we could start seeing some immediate impacts on our budget that would
further exacerbate things.
And so with that, enough bad news, I'm going to turn it over for a little bit of the news.
Great.
So before you, I just have a couple slides. I know everybody read every page in the 600 page document before you, but there'll probably be some departments I don't hit on.
I do just want to let folks know that every single department is pushing forward some really interesting, you know, whether it's policies, programs, things that the community is really excited about.
For the purposes of my slides, I really just kind of want to hit a couple high level things.
Really bread and butter, you know, back to basics as much as possible.
And I feel like we've been like that for a couple of years.
But a lot of this came from listening to residents and, you know,
every single email that comes in and really trying to, you know, figure out,
okay, what can we do to help?
And so you'll see there'll be some elements around quality of life,
definitely public safety infrastructure.
I think folks are probably tired of hearing about infrastructure with me from me, I should say.
I know my staff is very tired of hearing about modernization, so we'll talk a little bit more.
And then we'll talk about some of the key policies that are already on our work plan and
then some other ones that we're proposing. And then we'll talk about, you know, new regulations
moving forward. Next slide, please. So looking at quality of life, you'll see an item being
proposed that we refer to as the neighborhood response team. One thing that we've noticed
is we get a lot of inquiries around, you know, illegal dumping. It might be,
you
And every time we deploy staff from there, whether it's public works or PD,
we have to pull them off of other jobs that they're working on.
And so what we're recommending this neighborhood response team would be a team of three to four individuals
that would report directly to Assistant City Manager, Derek Wolfgram,
that would be out in the field and be able to be deployed immediately to address a mattress that's on the side of the sheet
or a cart that was left so it doesn't have to be there for a couple of days.
And I know folks are saying, wait a minute.
Budget's tight. You know, what do you recommend? Not recommending full-time equivalents here.
You know, trying to look at a way to kind of use some contract staff for it.
Also want to see if there's a way to connect My Redwood City to this team, My Redwood City, the app,
where folks can do it and it can just be picked up without having to call.
I almost said TK, but I meant Adrian.
But you know, the director of Public Works said, hey, can you get to this?
Because when we do that, we do pull them off of, you know, a sewer improvement or whatnot.
So I can answer more questions about that.
You'll definitely see some language around the pedestrian mall and beautification.
And then other things around quality of life, improving the restrooms of the downtown library
and then lots of traffic calming and other traffic related, I would say, infrastructure projects.
Next slide, please.
With regard to public safety and operational readiness, there are two previously frozen police officer positions
that I am recommending that we put back into the budget.
For those who may recall, there was a side letter with the POA.
In the past about those positions, where we got them to agree for us to hire CSA officers,
and so this year I do think we could phase it in mid-year and absorb those costs. With
the fire department, they have training and other professional development in their budget.
We added a nice goat in there for Council Member Padilla, who I know likes the goats on the
fire mitigation. We're not saying goats, but there's other fire mitigation, but we
go would be cute to kind of lighten the mood here in the light in the late
evening and then another big one is cyber security so you'll see in the budget we
are looking and last year the council you know authorized other investments in
cyber security we're very grateful but we are you'll see that is another huge
need as well next slide please with regards to infrastructure I won't go
over the the specific projects we did this at the the CIP and it's in the
packet.
Beth, right, 40.1 million total in capital improvements?
Yeah, something happened to this slide.
Yes, 40.5 million.
Plenty of worthwhile projects. I'll just name a few. We have the Redwood Shores Levy, continue to plan on that.
We have the stormwater master plan, the recycled water master plan that we have several other actual real capital projects moving forward as well.
Next slide, please.
I'm getting into modernization and service delivery.
The one thing I just wanted to highlight is, every time we talk about modernization, everybody
always thinks about technology, technology, and that's true.
I mean, you'll see some key elements here, and you actually heard our HR director talking
about a technology that they're looking to get as well to help with recruitment.
But sometimes modernizing is removing some regulations or doing away with past ways we used to do things
to try to streamline.
So some of the work you see here is really technology focused, but in the packet we have a whole attachment in there of what departments are looking at.
We'll have several items that will be coming to council in July, especially around the zoning
code that we're hoping will be of excitement to the council. I'm trying to make things a
little bit easier on the permitting side so folks can redo their roof and other things
around there. But one of the key things I do want to talk about because it really
affects everybody in the organization is the ERP system. We are committed to the
fall to release the RFP to start reevaluating our options on the ERP and we have a whole
team together now and really making some strides there.
Next slide, please.
So as far as some existing really large policy work we're already working on, this is just
to frame our current workload as, and this might be some of the stuff that Council Member
Sturgeon was kind of referring to, is in the next couple months, there's some meaty
topics coming to Council.
So the mobile vending ordinance, that says SR79, that should be SB79, apologies.
Historic preservation, the Milzak work.
We have the recycled water map.
Master plan coming forward, objective design standards. I know that sounds like an innocuous
thing, but I think everybody's going to have a lot of input. And I know Jeff's ready to
offload that. I think he's been working on it for about two and a half years. Then some
really big study sessions that I think we've been waiting for on parking, the GDAP, and
then the children and youth initiatives. And then, as you all know, we're always tracking
large development projects. So I listed a few there, but there's far more. So already
a pretty full plate of I would say policy work that the staff is working on. Next slide please.
But within your budget, you know, we do have other work that we are proposing. We do feel like we
can, you know, fit into the work plan. A lot of this came from the offsite that we had with
the council on that Saturday in February. So you may recall that the council gave me the
nod to explore project labor agreements. I know our economic development manager, I mean,
and Anthony is really excited about the five-year economic
fatality strategy.
As we talk about our financial picks,
Sure, you know, I know a lot of time folks think about, you know, maybe taxes are cutting
or what not. Our economic development ability here in Redwood City is probably our biggest
driver that we can do. So, really investing the time and money into that project is going
to be essential to how we continue to, you know, attract, you know, businesses here as
well as great residents. Investigate new revenue options. You'll see in the staff
report that we added language in there about investigating a fire recovery fee or if our
fire department goes out and there's a fee, can we bill insurance companies? Not individuals
but insurance companies. A lot of other cities are starting to do it but most of our calls
are EMS related and we're trying to see can we recapture some of that. We'd like to study
that. Also looking at the new things around adding fees around the YouTube TVs as opposed
to the cable. I don't know if you want to explain a little bit more about that. There's
an opportunity there as well, correct?
There was a case recently out of Santa Barbara where they were testing their communications
user tax about applying that tax to streaming services. And there have been some favorable
court rulings that have allowed them to proceed with that tax. So we're going to be doing
some work to see if we believe our current language allows for that and we'll be exploring
whether that's something that we can start doing here. Obviously, you know, we will be
coming back to the council with more information about that. And that could be a really important
source because that goes in with the UUT to supporting our capital program.
Thank you. Sorry to put you on the spot, Beth. And this wrapping up here, we have put money in the budget.
Budget around the comprehensive facility, infrastructure, planning, a lot of Zodin Code
amendment work I had mentioned, really around customer service and trying to lower costs
for those that are utilizing our services. And those will be coming forward as early
as July. Already hit on ERP. And then the final thing is really intergovernmental relations.
There's a lot going on right now with the county, with Caltrain, with Silicon Valley
clean water with the port. And I listed a bunch of cities that we partner with on all the stormwater
work, whether it's San Carlos Menlo Park in Belmont. And we do this work, but really being
intentional and really trying to make strides in some of these areas as they're trying to
accomplish their goals. We want to make sure we have the seat at the table. So there's
a lot of time just trying to show on the list of work that takes time and resources.
And many of you are also involved in those on the various boards and whatnot. So we
appreciate your your commitments as well. Next slide please. And the final thing is
It's just a slide around. And I am the worst. I know my staff is looking at me probably right
now saying that Patrick really put this slide together. But as we think about regulation,
as we think about the tough financial position that we're in, is I'm going to try to exercise
discipline and restraint from, you know, I read a lot and I read, oh, city's doing
this and that's great, is chasing down that next policy. So what I would say in a very
respectful way is this next year maybe two is if we could really not refrain but
just have a little bit of a measured approach as it come to new policy and
regulation that could affect whether or not a business relocates here or whether
or not somebody decides to repaint their house or redo a new roof you
know is really think about you know sometimes we'll see that a city that
are really cool new policy you don't think about the unintended costs of
said policy and so just trying to have a little restraint again I know my
staff is probably laughing at me because I am always trying to say yeah we can
absolutely take that on but I'm just asking as we weather
Next slide, please. So, with that, I will turn it over to Beth just to wrap it up. But thank you.
Okay, thank you. So, a reminder for the council is you're contemplating what we've presented to you.
We're looking for feedback on the 10-year forecast and financial trends.
and city department operations and budget recommendations that are included in the recommended budget.
And we have a crowd of city staff here who I also want to echo my thanks to for partnering with the finance department
as we built this budget who are here to answer any questions that you might have.
and then just previewing previewing
And what we'll be asking after the questions is, oops, is, okay, we've got dual things going
on here, is, after providing the feedback, we'll be asking the council to adopt a resolution
setting June 22nd as the date for the public hearing and adoption of the budget.
So with that, open it up to all of you. Thank you.
Thank you, Beth. Thank you, Patrick and the whole team for getting us to this point.
I know it's a lot of work and we will open the public hearing.
So I'll turn things over to our city clerk.
Thank you, Mayor. We don't have any speaker cards at this time.
Looks like we might have one.
And if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand for public comment on this item.
Thank you.
You can stay close, Michael, because you'll be called up.
All right. We'll close the speaker's list.
Just no comments on Zoom, but we will call up Michael.
Hello,
my name is Michael Arusa. Just wanted to note a couple of things in the budget. Really
excited to see zoning, streamlining, and objective design standards on the 26-27 policy. I did
want to tie some of those back to the budget since I know that there's a deficit, a protected
deficit. And I do want to note, because of Prop 13, there is an inability to assess properties
properties, or increased property taxes on properties more than 2% every year, but that
does reassess every time a property changes hand or if there's sufficient redevelopment.
So I think it is important to stress that a lot of the work that will make it easier
to build missing middle housing or develop on certain plots of land throughout the
city can measurably improve.
The city's financial situation by allowing for reassessments of the property taxes on those
lots, which could go a long way towards helping with the long-term financial situation. So I
know I'm the housing guy, I always tie back to housing, but I think especially with zoning
reform and streamlining in the 26-27 budget, just wanted to stress that that could be
very important for revenue. Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes public comment, Mayor.
Thank you to our public commenter and bring it back to the dais for any council questions or comments.
Does anyone want to get us started?
Yeah, let's remember start and thank you.
We're sending time here.
So thank you. Thank you to all the staff who prepared this fantastic job.
I wanted to highlight some things I liked if I could find my notes.
Just adding that, admin clerk number three, to save the costs associated with consultants,
I really appreciate you adding a project coordinator, number one on page 224. It's kind of all over
the place here, sorry. And I really appreciate the investment in youth and teens on the
youth and teens division on page 309. So there's just a couple of quick highlights
that I have there. And then I wanted to delve into some of the other hiring recommendations.
very much appreciate it all.
But I want to start with a data point that I saw on page 326 first and foremost.
So yeah, colleagues, page 326 if you want to follow along.
The number of contacts with individuals who are experiencing a mental health crisis
who were referred to a mental health facility for evaluation was over 300.
That's a lot.
But when I read that I thought to myself, wow, that's like about almost one a day.
And, you know, we have one crisis response clinician in the city, Dr. Baker, who's fabulous,
but she hasn't worked 365 days a year, and we don't want her to work 365 days a year, right?
So I thought to myself, you know, what can we do to address that? You know, we know
from the community dashboard that follows Dr. Baker's responses to calls for service
that there's really a great need, right?
Especially during the week, Tuesdays, Wednesdays,
Thursdays, but it doesn't tell us
what those calls for service look like.
What calls would have required a clinician
to respond outside Dr. Baker's availability,
which is only nine to five Monday through Friday,
I believe, generally speaking.
So, that's something I'm kind of interested in going forward, kind of getting
And that type of data on how we can determine whether and when an additional clinician is
needed. Because, you know, based on the limited data I have here in the community dashboard and
then also in the budget, it seems like we're not quite meeting that need. And with a licensed
It's great to know that our officers, 90-70% of them have conducted, have completed mental
health crisis response training,
but that's not their primary job, right?
We've heard time and time again in our community survey from public comment, me personally
at the doors when, you know, meeting voters that our neighbors want our
officers to enforce our law.
Traffic laws, specifically our traffic laws. You know, a lot of, you know, we know that the
top three reasons why we have traffic-related incidents in the city is running red lights,
DUIs, and speeding. And so we need our officers doing that proactive enforcement to ultimately,
you know, bring down those number of accidents in the city and save people's lives ultimately.
So when I saw that we are recommending adding unfreezing, rather, to police officer positions,
I understand.
Because of the burden on our officers, the overtime that is costing taxpayers money as
well.
But with that said, it seems like a little bit of a mismatch, and maybe we need another
clinician to help take some of those mental health crisis response calls so that our officers
are freed up to respond to what residents are asking for and clamoring for.
Which is traffic-related incidents and proactive enforcement, among many other things, right?
So that's just a piece of kind of feedback I wanted to provide. Now I'm open to alternatives,
such as maybe I'm freezing one position and then hiring another Dr. Baker, or maybe at
the mid-year budget hearing, mid-year budget check-in,
if you will, re-evaluating what funds are available,
if any, to hire another clinician at that time instead.
But I just want to kind of proctor that question
to my colleagues, what is the best way
to meet the need of a mental health crisis response
in Redwood City, thank you.
Thank
you, Council Member. Any colleagues have any immediate reactions to
Thank you. I was looking at the number of staff with crisis intervention and training, and I
see that our numbers are pretty high with the sworn personnel, but it looks like as of now
80% of our dispatch personnel have that training. So I think at least at a minimum, I think it
It would be great if we could have a focus on getting dispatch personnel the crisis training
because they're the ones who are first receiving that call.
All the information that they obtain is so valuable for whoever they're bringing next
on the scene.
I would like to have two police officers and another mental health clinician.
I think we need enforcement.
I hear that.
that I see the way we do it.
City kids dodging cars, and I know how much our residents appreciate that, but I do also think
that we do have this need. But then I might want to ask the city manager, how does this
play in with, I know we have a coordinated effort with another agency that's potentially
working with some of their unhoused population. Could you speak to how that partnership works
with us?
Yeah, it's a great question.
I haven't seen Chief.
Where's Chief Bell?
Where's she?
If she could come in, yeah.
I want to real quick address Council Member Sir.
I had the exact same thought when I saw the data.
I was like, wow, this is really impressive.
And we're beyond the pilot stage now, right?
We've been doing this.
So I think your instincts are dead on,
on utilizing data to make informed decisions.
I'd love to hear Chief Bell kind of speak to it on,
because she and I had a really brief conversation
on what potential expansion could look like.
But I can't remember to your question.
As we start working and we firm up our agreements with life moves and other folks out in the field,
we will have to ask ourselves how do these folks work together? Right now they do work really,
really well together on our homeless response side of things, but there's more to it than
just the homeless side. So I think it's a good point, something that I'll work closely
with Derek Wolfgram, our city manager, to make sure that we get aligned on that. But no,
I appreciate that. And Chief Bell, if you want to talk about the clinician aspect
things would be great. Thank you. Hello everyone, Christina Bell, Chief of Police.
So I believe the question is the can we add to the question or do we need more?
Is that all right? So we are still kind of in the early stages of having
Patricia a part of our staff full-time and so we've grown a lot in her
ability to the different types of responses whereas before she was
limited in scope because of the contract. So as we get to look at the data more and understanding
Where the need is. And when Patricia comes on scene, that doesn't automatically alleviate
the officers that are on scene with her. So it wouldn't, if we had another clinician, it
wouldn't free up more officers to do other things. Sometimes her response doesn't necessitate
us, but that is very much a case by case basis. For future expansion, you know, there has
been like very low level talks about partnering with a county, potentially to have another,
but again like very very minimal for the future but something to look forward to.
Thank you Chief. Council Member any other questions?
Okay great colleagues who would like to go next?
Council Member Gee. Thank you Mayor. Patrick the entire team thank you. This is not a budget.
That is just put on the Excel spreadsheet, typed up, and here it is. It's a lot hard work.
And I think it would be safe to say this is a constrained budget, Beth. I mean, we don't
have enough money, so we have to figure out how to fit the services within the money we
have. So, thank you for that. A couple questions to dive into before I share my, what I'd
like to see coming back on the 22nd is, you know,
I think you alluded to this, Beth,
but this will be the third budget,
and I'll look at another one on Thursday.
It happens to be that time of year
where sales tax projections are all over the place.
CalTrain is up 1.8%,
Sam Chance is at zero.
A director from Palo Alto says they're looking at 2% up
and here we're looking at,
we haven't hit the bottom yet.
And we all hire the same consultants.
So maybe you can offer a comment on that?
Yeah, it really depends on what each jurisdiction's sales tax base is based on.
And we are heavily reliant on sales tax from auto sales because of our auto dealerships.
and that has been a drag on our sales tax performance.
Interestingly, luxury cars performance has been holding up,
but it's a smear mortals that are buying cars
where there's softening in that market.
So that's the biggest driver.
I am monitoring closely our sales tax results and comparing that with what HDL is projecting.
And for 2526, my projections based on what's coming in this data through March, I'm within
$200,000 of what their projection is. They're projecting that we'll bring in 34 million, 34.4
million and I'm sorry, there's too many sixes and fours. Let me start over again. They're
projecting 34.6 million based on data through March and our trajectory of the last months
of the fiscal year last year. I've got us at 36.6 million. So our sales tax is performing
pretty closely in alignment with their current year forecast.
Obviously, next year remains to be seen, but right now we're trying to
Well, very good. And that just reminded me of a request I made last year, and maybe it's
part of why we need to consider a new ERP system is to have more regular updates on where we
are from a revenue standpoint. I mean, my other boards, we see it monthly. And I'm not asking
for monthly yet, but at least quarterly to see where we're headed rather than every
June, oh, by the way, we came up short $10 million. At that point it's too late, but if
we can be more proactive about looking at whatever the right cadence is, monthly or quarterly,
I think that would be very helpful for the Council and the public.
Yes. And I do have a quarterly report ready to go that we can distribute to everyone,
but we can provide this, you know, monthly.
I'm looking at it monthly.
Look to the city manager or other places I've worked. It's something that we've provided.
So it is something, it's a manual process, but we finances got it down to a pretty good
cadence where by the 15th middle of each month, like June 15th, we'll have data for April.
And we can get on that pretty quickly.
I mean, I'll kind of look to my colleagues about what cadence they want, but I'll look
to the city manager to lead that, but I think more than once a year is important and no less
than quarterly, and if the council would like it monthly, and you're able to do that, I
think that'd be great.
Thank you.
To your transmittal letter to city manager, I mean, you know, and we're seeing the
business license tax, kind of do what we thought it might do, but not everything we thought
it might do.
And so my question, consistent with my previous comments earlier this evening, is to what extent
do our policies here, an accumulative standpoint, make Redwood City less attractive for employers?
And I think we need to take a very hard look at that. Employers these days have choices.
You know, there's plenty of empty buildings in St. Carlos. We're competing against Mountain View.
when the business license tax was put on the ballot.
There was a large tech company that was ready to sign a lease
and they said no thanks.
We've seen at least Amanda share with us
six or seven potential employers pass on Redwood City.
So I think we need to take a very, very hard look
at what policies cumulatively that council has put in place
that make us less attractive, less competitive
and really begin to decide is that where we want to be.
I mean, we'd love the community benefits that commercial developers have brought to
Reverend City, but if they're struggling to fill those buildings,
and, you know, that has an impact on our fiscal health, empty office buildings don't help us.
And so, to your slide number, whatever it was, City Manager, about looking at policies that we've
put in place, we need to be very disciplined and very thoughtful and look at the strong,
look at the long-term impacts of that, that make us pass.
Council Member Strickland, I appreciate your comment, but I'm going to go in a different direction in the sense that I did not see reserves in both the capital CIP or in the budget.
Beth, you put that slide with all those bubbles on it about the unknowns.
You know, I know some of my colleagues here might say we weren't elected to save money,
but when we know that there's potential,
We need to strategically plan for that and not dip into that 15% from my standpoint. We know for example that there is the likelihood of a litigation or claim or at least financial stress on the veteran's senior center.
We know that what we heard earlier, there may be a potential impact on an initiative before the voters.
We know AB 1383, I would say, has a likelihood of being adopted, which changes the pension liabilities for public safety,
which was going to have a ripple effect to other labor groups.
We know that 101.84 has financial stress on it.
And to not plan for that from my standpoint, speaking as one council member, is irresponsible
because we don't have any other fund source to go and fund these things and others that I haven't mentioned.
And we need to have some sort of reserve or set aside for the likelihood, and some of these
are beyond likelihood. They're very real about happening. We do not have a litigation reserve.
There's no line item in the budget for litigation. It just comes out of the general fund. And
we need to, from my standpoint, plan for these likelihoods and things that are actually
on our table, like this issue with the senior center.
That is not pretend.
That is very real, and zero is not going to be the right answer on that.
There will be legal fees, and there will be some sort of mediated or court resolution,
but it's not going to be zero.
So we should plan for that.
My last request for coming back on the 22nd
is there's great detail in the department by department.
Budget. Every department, thank you all for doing that. But I couldn't reconcile that against
the details. And then I think the problem or the challenges when there's initiatives with
multiple fund sources. So like the tenant protection ordinance says it's only $24,000 on the spreadsheet.
But when you dive into the department budget, it's a lot more than that. So what I'd
What I'd like to see is a schedule that shows the total
expand for that initiative on a spreadsheet.
And I think every council member and every previous council
says the budget reflects council priorities.
On that spreadsheet that ties, I'd like to see at top to bottom
those initiatives, whether it's 0 to 10 million or whatever,
to reinforce that we are spending consistent with the council priorities.
Right now, not everything ties to that detailed spreadsheet.
And so when you look at some of the initiatives like the homeless or TPO and things like that,
the number on the detailed spreadsheet compared to the department spreadsheet, they're not the
same number. And I think the issue is the multiple fund source.
So I'd like to see that number tie back. And then I'd like to see top to bottom from a
a miracle standpoint to reinforce that we are spending
on the initiatives consistent with the priorities
of the council.
So with that, I think hopefully that's helpful.
Hopefully that made sense first, Beth.
Was I hopefully clear?
We'll put our heads together.
Okay, I mean, I think Patrick understands
what I'm looking for and I talked to him about it,
but I was just trying to connect the dots
and they weren't connecting Apple for Apple, so.
So thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, Council Member Chi, and we'll go to Council Member Sturgeon.
Apologies, just two quick responses.
So I think as part of that spreadsheet, I think you put it, one thing that we didn't talk
about earlier is that that petition would replace the current TPO, right? It replaces a number
of tenant protections that we have already enacted. So there's a, I'm not going to say
it's a net savings because it's not, but there is a net difference there. So that's
something that should be factored into that spreadsheet.
Cost savings, anyway.
And then the biggest thing I forgot to mention
with regards to the two unfrozen police officer positions
is that on page three, 29 or so,
it states that the cost is $350,000.
That's only for six months.
So the true cost per year is $700,000
for those two officers.
And I thought to myself, with an anticipated deficit
instead of $22 million starting next fiscal year.
It's really hard to justify adding new staff when we may have to cut them in the future.
So that is just one of the other reasons I brought that up.
Concern over adding new staff who are very expensive when there are alternatives that are available.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member G.
I just want to be very clear, the reserve is for the future unknowns that we don't know,
and so the spreadsheet, for example, like I said, TPO, tenant protection, and the detailed
operating fund, it says it's only $24,000.
We know it's not, but because in the department detail, it's a lot more because of multiple
fund sources.
That number needs to be tied to that spreadsheet and then be sorted by whatever, so we can
see that investment.
Alliance with council priorities. The reserve I'm talking about is to deal with the net difference
if that initiative passes, because we don't know what it's going to be. We don't know how
much of it is going to replace our current ordinances, what the increase cost is, but
that's why we need to plan for some sort of reserve. Since we heard clearly earlier
this evening, the city is probably going to have to front that startup of some magnitude
and wind down what we have, too.
I mean, you can't just turn the switch overnight and say,
here's what we have and here's what's different.
So that's what the reserve is for,
because we know there's going to be a cost.
We just don't know how much and what the net number is going to be.
So that's why I argue there needs to be a reserve,
because we know if it does pass, there's going to be something.
We know there's a claim on the senior center.
We know AB 1383 is likely to pass.
We know it's likely we're not going to get VLF.
So knowing those things...
We should plan for them financially.
Thank you both.
Councilmember Padilla.
I would like to say, I would like to focus on something that I think is important.
And it's only going to become increasingly more important.
And it's something we've talked about a lot, and it's our PCI index.
I think I saw in the budget that we've allocated $5 million annually.
annually, but everything that I read said it, the road, the quality of our pavement.
And I know Ms. Warner has educated us a lot on it.
But with everything we're talking about and with Beth's, I know that you use green to
make it a little happier, but inflation, tariffs, oil gas, all of these prices, our roadwork
is only going to become increasingly more expensive those costs.
and it is needed.
And when we talk about when...
Councilmember G talks about welcoming new developers or companies or even quite
frankly people who want residents who want to move into our neighborhood. The quality
of a city's roads is an indicator of a lot. I think it speaks volumes without
having to say it. You know that feeling you have when you're driving somewhere in
the road is smooth. It sends a message and I think that it is an investment
worth making, so I actually think that we should be finding the money to put in,
I think they should have asked for closer, because of what we're doing now,
we're not ever going to catch up, look at us, we were at 70, the last time she
talked to us we were at 69, now we're dropping back to 68. If we kick this
can, it's only going to get more expensive and the road work is only
going to get more needed and more complex, so I actually would like to
see more money in the budget allocated to fixing our roads.
So I wanted to put that out there for discussion
because I
I believe it was said that we needed to have seven million a year to actually have a better
quality of roads. So I'd like to put that out there to the group.
Thank you, Council Member Padilla. We'll go to Vice Mayor Aiken.
Well, I'm just going to, on the road thing, we allocated more $2 million of our surplus
last year to the roads. And we, I believe we hired a consultant with that money who
prioritized, who did a whole new assessment of the roads and priority areas, and that's
kind of work that's ongoing.
So my feeling about that is let's let that play out.
Let's get, we're going to get reported back on that.
And again, because of all the unknowns, I feel like we're working on that right
now from the 2 million, the extra 2 million that we allocated last year.
That's all.
I appreciate that. And I remember I was one who was asking for that extra two months. And I do appreciate the gentleman. He gave us a nice talk about the different slurries.
But my point was we're just constantly playing catch up. So even then we're just going to go farther and farther and it's going to be more costly.
So I just want us to think we're going to need our roads. We're going to use them. I'm just, if we kick this can, it's a very expensive can. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
And I'll just make a quick comment that, absolutely.
And that's why we have, I mean, so many capital needs, right?
And the budget went into detail about just the revenue sources
that we used to be able to fund all of our needs,
like street services, right?
Is just not meeting the cut anymore.
So just want to appreciate that comment
and also the work that staff is doing to start
that conversation and get a sense of what that total sum
is going to be.
Just wanted to add that comment, but colleagues, any other?
Council Member Howard.
Well, I really appreciate all the comments and from all my colleagues.
But I also want to thank our staff for the budget that you have presented to us because I feel so totally informed.
I'm not happy with some of the unexpected outcomes and things that are very disappointing like DLF.
But being transparent and letting us know, letting the public know this is where we're at will make us a better city.
Because we'll pull together and we'll try to solve these problems.
I do believe we're going to have to exercise a great deal of discipline these next several years.
There's just no doubt about it as much as I want to have many things done.
Our needs exceed the amount of money that we have and that's just being totally realistic and honest.
And I think the public needs to know that if they
We haven't already seen that, but I did want to ask if we could ask Amanda, because I have
concerns we've spent so much money on our downtown, spent so much money on beautifying
our city and making an attractive destination. I do have concerns that businesses are not
locating here, especially larger ones, and I was wondering if she could give us a report
on that, not necessarily tonight, because we have a lot more business to take care
But I really would like to know what could we be doing better?
What can we be doing differently?
Are there needs we're not meeting that these companies decide not to come here?
I think we're a very desirable place for a company.
We have attorneys moving from certain cities because the vibrancy here is what is bringing them.
So I think it's important that we understand what's the disconnect here
because maybe we can resolve that and that might help because certainly we
We need more companies locating here to help pay the bills.
So I think if Amanda could do that for us and maybe with her, Patrick, come up with, well,
it seems like maybe we didn't streamline this enough or this is what didn't meet their needs.
Maybe we figure out, well, maybe we needed to look at it more closely and meet their needs.
So that would be something I'd really like to see.
I don't want to stop lobbying Sacramento for the vehicle license fees.
I think if we do that, that would be a major mistake on our part.
If we stop going, they'll think we don't care anymore, and they'll just write us off.
So I think it's important that either by email, by phone call, contact your legislators in Sacramento.
I'm asking everyone in Redwood City.
San Mateo County is one of three, three counties in the state of California that has been chosen
Not to get vehicle license feeds based on an outdated formula, and so that's truly upsetting
to me because last year they said they were going to fix the formula and solve the problem,
and they pushed it off. So if you don't become the thorn in their side, we're going to be
treated like they can do without five and a half million dollars. Well, we can't. So
So if anyone here in the audience has an interest in contacting your legislators, they're easy
enough to get those numbers, write an email, write a letter, make a phone call because
we can't back down, we have to keep talking.
The county is being very aggressive and we're working with the county.
So I strongly advise you, these are monies that are owed to our city that are owed
to our county and they're depriving us of that money and that's wrong.
So we're asking for your help on that.
But other than that, I think this...
The staff has done a marvelous job of really highlighting what we need to do, that we do
need to be disciplined. You're putting emphasis on the right areas, in my opinion, and I think
we just have to be careful that we don't jump into new projects or a lot of new things when
we really haven't cleaned up what we already have. So that's where I'd like to focus.
because one thing I would say is modernizing our service delivery I'm very excited about.
So thank you Patrick for not losing that vision that you presented to us when you interviewed
with us.
Really appreciate that.
But other than that I just think the staff has done a wonderful job and appreciate their
honesty in coming to us with the real facts so that we can make good solid decisions.
Thank you.
Thank you Council Member Howard.
We'll go to the Vice Mayor.
So, first of all, it's fun to see so many of the
The staff here tonight, thank you for staying up with us.
And you know, our, this budget, or last year's budget, won an award.
I wrote it down somewhere, the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award by the Government
Finance Officers Association.
And it's no coincidence, you guys are just amazing pros.
And I'm so glad you're here with us tonight.
On both my colleagues, so I don't like to, you know, when it's sparse like this budget
where we're really tightening the belt, I don't like to second...
I personally don't like to second guess staff's choices.
We do policy, they do implementation.
I do love the clinician.
I'm thrilled and I'm thrilled that she's on staff instead of a consultant and thank you.
Councilmember Sturkin for asking about it, and thank you for your answer, Cable, that you're still assessing it and improving it, and that's good.
I'm fine with hiring the new police officers. We do need more traffic safety. We do need all of that.
So I just, this one, I'm just going to go through, well, actually, let me do my question, though, to Beth.
So is it accurate, Beth, that Stanford is our fourth largest employer and is exempt from paying the business license tax?
Is that accurate?
Yes, that's accurate.
Okay, thank you.
So now with the Greater Downtown Area Plan, so Amanda, I just think it's amazing that the engagement
Thank you.
I read it on page 96 of the budget. That's you, Jeff. So, is that because people are just
so excited and they want to be involved? I mean, that's just awesome. Please tell me more.
Jeff Wabb, Community Development Director. Yes, I think in part it's the excitement about the possibilities of what the future holds.
And in part, I do think it was staffs reaching out in multiple formats to the community, going
out door to door, going in various meetings, having the speakers come speak about some of
the topics.
I think it was a combination of things.
Well, I mean, it's the best kind of building of your built environment is what the community,
you know, getting community feedback.
We're the ones who live here.
We're the ones who use everything, and so I'm just so thrilled that we're not facing apathy and it's kudos to
our community and to our staff. So thank you. Keep up the good work.
This one floored me. 69% of the acreage in Redwood City is open space. That fascinated me.
I can't remember the page, but in Patrick you're going to get me a map of all that open space.
And then this one is kind of fun.
255 days a year are sunny in Redwood City, according
to page 49 of our award-winning budget report.
Um, I-I tell-
I've been telling my neighbors that since I read it.
The police statistics, K-Bell, what
is it? Human to human crime is down 17 percent. What's that statistic?
I took a picture of it. So it's the crimes against persons is down from 2024 to 2025.
Yes.
And it sounds 17 percent.
Yes.
And I asked you about this in writing and it's just, you said the reason it's hard to know
but it's a combination of factors.
Is that accurate?
Yes.
And crime in all three categories is down year over year from 24 to 25.
Yes.
And the greatest is human to human, or whatever you call that.
Crimes against persons.
So I want to thank you and all your staff.
And it's important because, as people may know,
65% of our general fund budget is police and fire.
It's the bulk of our taxpayer money.
And so I thank you for really producing some good results in improving public safety.
And thank you.
And then can you just, you wrote about this, but if you could just talk a little bit about the success
that the community service officer at the high schools.
Yeah, our school liaison officer.
Your school liaison officer.
Yes.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, so since Officer Aaron Sussman has been on campus
at Sequoia about October, he's built.
We've really done a lot of work building relationships with the youth and meeting them
where they're at and building such a relationship to where they have been comfortable to report
crimes or things that may happen in the future to the officer as opposed to letting them happen
and someone getting hurt. So just our mere presence on campus has really helped develop
that trust with our youth. And then there was something in your written
answer about like that kids understand he's not enforcing school rules like
he's not going to send them to the principal because they didn't do their
homework kind of thing. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yes, so he is not
responsible for anything school related as it pertains to their school work or
any discipline that the school would handle and the school would call us in
if they requested us but or if there was an officer or a safety issue at
school or even a possibility of a crime then we would be involved but it's
completely separate. Okay so so thank you that
That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you for all you do.
I was surprised to learn on page 67 that our transit center, and Mr. G, I'm sure you already
know this, but I was surprised that our transit center is the largest in the county other than
daily city and I'm sort of surprised that it's, I'm sort of surprised that we're
bigger than Milbray with Bart.
So I think that's a huge selling point for us to
bring those big employers because we're such a transit hub.
I'm almost done. I'm
excited about Mr.
Baraka, I'm really excited about the training facility, the fire training
facility. Would you care to give us an update on how
So, that long-awaited fire training facility that we've been waiting for, if you wanted to
say a few words about that.
Yeah, good evening. Thank you, Baraka Carter, Fire Chief. So, this is actually a great opportunity
to highlight some of the areas where we're currently doing our training, right? So,
with absence of having a dedicated training facility, which would be a staple facility
for the community and the fire department.
We're currently doing our training at the three-story parking garage right across from the fire station,
which impacts the community, impacts traffic,
and then we also would utilize the open parking lot behind the sports basement and coals,
which has its challenges as well because the time that we're actually doing our training,
delivery trucks. So we're really having to coordinate with the local businesses to ensure we're
not impacting them and residents.
So we're really hopeful that we're able to identify and move this project forward. It is
in a long time making, and it will be a dedicated training facility for our staff, which really
emphasizes our ability to be more resilient with responses, tactics, our ability to ensure
that we have a safe community, and then it also being an environment where with our youth,
our cadet programs, they'll have a dedicated training facility as well to
enhance those skill sets to hopefully get them into the fire service as well.
Thank you so much and I know I speak for myself and probably all my
colleagues that we will help you in any way we can in making sure
you get that fire training facility as soon as possible.
Appreciate the support.
The sales tax, Beth,
I guess, and Jeff, you don't need to get up there, but or maybe
I would really love with our greater downtown area plan, and I know part of it is just magic
like you can't just wave a wand, but this really speaks to the need of more retail downtown.
And I don't know, we've needed it for a long time, and we've tried all sorts of things
over the years, but maybe this greater downtown area plan, maybe there's some
exciting way to reignite retail downtown. I go to some other towns nearby and
they'll have like unique shops, maybe not chain stores or I'm not a retail
expert. But Amanda, if you have any thoughts, or if there's any way we can turbocharge our
Bye.
Budget to, oh, did you want to say anything, Amanda, please?
Yes, please. Because, you know,
sales tax, if we had some really exciting retail stores that could help our sales tax.
Amanda Anthony, Economic Development Manager. A lot of our sales tax comes from our auto dealers,
As Beth mentioned, a great deal of it comes from our discount retailers like Costco and Target,
and then we have a lot from appliance stores.
So the small retailers that I think that you dream of are not huge sales tax producers,
like in the aggregate, I think that they could be.
The other thing that's really been hitting us is Amazon, but not in the way that you think.
part of it is how the state allocates Amazon revenues so although we have quite
a few I'm sure
We have a ton of people here who order on Amazon. One of the things that has changed in
the last five years and has impacted our sales tax revenues is that the state allocates the
pool, and so most Amazon sales go to the pool, and it's allocated by what your percentage
of sales tax is. So like if you're already doing better in sales tax, then you get more
sales tax from the pool.
And so that's great, but also kind of self-fulfilling.
But Brisbane opened two Amazon fulfillment centers in the last year, and what it means
is that all of those Amazon sales are allocated now to Brisbane, and there are 4,000 people
instead of the pool and maybe our 82,000 people.
So that's been a really big hit that we kind of don't have a control over.
I think one of the things that we would like to do is continue to figure out how to
How to make retail work. But we do get quite a bit from restaurants, from auto dealers, from
appliance stores, and our discount retailers. Well, thank you. That's really informative.
Very supportive of the NRT. Do feel that people are frustrated with illegal dumping, carts,
you know, grocery carts just willy-nilly all over the place.
I hear a lot about it in my district, and I'm really hopeful that we can activate that.
So thank you for thinking of it.
And as I put in my email, I'm excited about opportunities to partner with the county,
who I'll just say when I did the math,
We would need to spend our $200 million
general fund every year for 20 years.
25 years to make up what the county spends in its general fund in one year. So some of these,
you know, we have the county courthouse, we have the county seat, we have the county jails,
and I'm looking for opportunities for, you know, some of our issues are health issues,
And we don't have a health department, but the county does.
And so I really feel that they have tools that we don't have.
They have money that we don't have.
And I'm looking in the next 12 months and beyond that we show the county how much
were helping them and how much, if they gave us money, they would be better off and that
it would be a more fair thing and that the N.R.T.
It is an example of it because some of it is mental health issues that people steal grocery
carts and dump stuff and I just see some opportunities there. I think I'm done. Let me just, I guess
I'll just say one final comment and that is the budget was award-winning and it was amazing,
particularly the redwood city history page was outstanding. I was chagrined a little bit disappointed
that our veteran's center was not had a two or three cursory sentences without an amazing picture.
So I hope next year that we tout our amazing veteran's center a little bit more. I'll leave
it there.
Thank you Vice Mayor. Any? Councillor Serkin, we'll go to you. Two quick responses.
So I support the idea of like allocating $2 million more to our payment program to get
us up to 75. I'm just like asking myself, where do we pull it from? Because we have to make
a tradeoff. And I don't know what the answer to that question is, but if we can figure
that out today or June 22nd or somewhere in between, I'm open to that. So I just wanted
to express my support and openness to that. I just don't have the answer to the question.
And finally, on the topic of being cognizant of unintended consequences of policies or taxes
or what have you, now they may affect our desirability to attract new business.
I think, aside from that, it's also our job to be ambassadors to the business community, right?
And, like, I go to RCIA, the Robert City Improvement Association, meetings on a monthly basis,
and it'd be nice to see some of my colleagues there as well.
I know we all can't make it, but you know kind of showing up to these spaces the chamber hosts
You know, that RCIA has, and developing those relationships, that's something I learned from
Councilmember G very early on, that we have to build those relationships with the business
community to attract them to Rapid City. So putting it out there. Thank you.
All right, not seeing any other lights on. I guess it's my turn. Staff, again, thank
you for all the work. I know there are so many more names than what are included
in the first couple of pages of the budget of people who played some role in developing
this.
So to everyone who's listed and everyone who's tuned in or have helped, thank you.
And I start with my talking points first.
I feel like this budget really speaks to all of the unknowns that we've been dealing
with over the course of the year.
the things that we're tracking to see what the outcome is, right, like our...
Our funding streams at the state and federal levels, BLF, right? Councilmember Howard and
I went up to Sacramento to let them know what we thought of that change, pension laws at
the state level, the ordinance we heard earlier tonight. And then there are things that we
aren't even on our radar yet that we haven't planned for. So it's not an easy thing to
do, but I think this budget really speaks to our staff trying to answer those questions
the best that they can. So thank you. And I think there are a lot of strengths that were
included in this budget that were highlighted. Our restaurants, our hotels, the discount
retailers, our car dealerships had a little bit less than projected, but still a very
strong year. There are highlights in parts of our economy that are doing well, and
I don't want that to be lost in 451 pages of our budget.
And there are really interesting ideas. The neighborhood response team, I think, rises to the top.
That is definitely the concerns that are always going to rise at the top of the inbox for people who are worried about illegal dumping or are noticing shopping carts in their community, right, abandoned.
And, you know, I think being able to change the way that people see government, our government in action, I think just builds confidence.
and I could see this being something
that will generate more costs
because people will want to see
a neighborhood response team, right?
We're going to start seeing
that many more complaints come in
and because people will expect
that we're going to be on top of it that much more.
So really excited to see how that rolls out.
I mentioned, you know, to Council Member Padilla's
point around the pavement quality,
our work around capital needs is really important, right?
From everything from street pavement
into replacing buildings, and I'm really proud of that.
You know, we are going to be having a conversation around PLAs as to how we build and who is constructing
these projects. So, I'm excited for that work to continue. The economic vitality plan, right,
that Amanda and her team are going to be working on, that is really exciting. I've heard it at the
dais before that so many of us want to nurture our local businesses and also
So we need to be self-resilient.
So the more that we can nurture who we have here and attract more businesses to Revit City,
it's only going to make us stronger.
So the last thing that I just want to mention on the strengths here is going to use a line
from our city manager modernizing our city operations, including not just the ERP which
is so important for our staff internally every day, but cybersecurity is something
that so many local jurisdictions are playing catch up on, so to make it
And investments now before we need to react to something is really important. So thank you
for including that staff.
And with all that said, lots to love, but also I felt like there
were still some things that were missing. My colleagues mentioned a few things. I wanted
to throw my support behind quarterly updates on city revenues. I think especially if we're
coming up with an economic plan, it makes sense for us to start familiarizing ourselves
with what the picture is on the ground.
I think we had a conversation maybe last year,
the year before around reserve funds.
I think it's time for us to talk about that
so that we can be ready for the things
that aren't even on our radar.
And then the last couple of ideas are just,
it feels like these are responding
to the level of homelessness
that we're still seeing in our city
and the work that our staff are doing
to address that for our residents.
I really liked the idea of a new clinician for our police department. I think we're already
heading in that direction with community service officers who are taking on more work that has
traditionally taken up police time. So I think building that into our work plan makes a lot
of sense. And there is a different purpose than the outreach workers that we've hired.
I think the outreach workers are really trying to just build trust, build a relationship,
whereas our clinicians, I'm thinking of Patricia,
is de-escalating those situations
where I think in how each worker typically
just wouldn't engage out of their own safety, right?
So I see the value in the clinicians
and I also am cognizant that our labor groups
are expecting some extra support and some backup there.
So I don't wanna lose the conversation piece
around our clinicians and we'd like to see ourselves
And I've sort of explored what that pathway to hiring a new clinician in the next budget
cycle would look like. Chief Bell, you mentioned that there are some questions you are still
developing what, you know, our current clinician's role is. And I'm curious to see what questions
we can help answer and, you know, what policy questions the council can weigh in on. But
I think there's a lot of value in hiring another clinician. And in the same way, I
I feel like I've heard from our city staff,
our first responders who are addressing
issues around homelessness every day,
talk about the housing pipeline being backed up,
that we have the beautiful navigation center
on the other side of 101,
and not enough people are moving out for us
to be able to start transitioning people
into the spaces that we have at the NAV center.
And last year, we had talked about how this council unanimously
I honestly wanted to explore Prop 1 as a potential funding source for this kind of housing, and
I think, again, baking this into the work plan so that we can be ready so that if a grant
became available, we're not being reactive, but we already have an idea of where we want
to place the housing, where it makes sense, and this won't happen overnight and it's
going to need intergovernmental support, so I think having that conversation now, building
it in as a policy discussion so that we're prepared when the opportunity arises. We're
ready to go into it 50-50 with the county and hopefully tap into some of the revenues
that the county has because this is social safety network. So I think all of those circulate
around just homelessness and how we best support our unhoused neighbors. And I know
that won't happen this year so
So how do we just start those conversations? How do we start answering questions for ourselves
so that we can start taking advantage if, let's say, we see veal of money, right? That would
be amazing. Or another bucket of funds that a grant that we've secured. So I know it's
late. I'd be open to just hearing some of my council colleagues' reactions to that about
out baking this into the work plan for the next budget year,
but I'll leave it there.
I think this has been a lot of work to answer
a lot of the unknowns that the city's facing.
So I appreciate that work from staff,
but we'll open it up to my colleagues
if anybody has any reactions to that.
Council Member Sarkin.
Yes, I wanna bake that into the work plan.
Referring to Prop 1, you mentioned yes.
Okay, and then we already have a couple little.
Properties kind of in the pipeline, but continuing to just explicitly place on the work plan would
be really helpful in advancing our shared priorities and goals as a city. And I also want to throw
my support behind the quarterly reporting on sales tax revenue. Thank you for reminding
me about that. Thank you, Council Member Sturkin. Council
Member Howard. Yes, I'm certainly in favor of looking
into that, but I'd like to let our city manager and our police chief determine when and how
it's implemented.
I don't want to push something if it's not ready because it sounds like Chief Bell has
some more research to do and a number of other things.
So I'm going to keep putting your capable hands.
You've heard the desire, the need is certainly out there.
So I think it's something good to plan for when it comes.
That's something you can bring back to us.
And was there something else?
I'm sorry.
What you said I agreed with, let's be shovel ready to work with.
I'd like to do that very much, and maybe we can do some projects together in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Howard.
Colleagues, anybody else?
I would just like to throw out that I was thinking about something that Vice Mayor mentioned about how we do.
We hold, we are the county seat.
We have the navigation centers. We have the jails.
So I would like to just put it out there
that I think we are a fantastic neighbor
and I would welcome the county working with us
in any way they can.
I think you did mention, Vice Mayor,
that they have a much larger budget than we do.
And I would, I don't know, I would think
that wasn't the clinician originally funded by the county?
Could someone correct me if I'm wrong?
Was that originally funded as a pilot?
Okay, well I do think there is a connection there.
I don't know if we can always distinguish
between a Redwood City resident or a county resident but I do think there's
an opportunity for
The county to help.
Definitely. Thank you, Council Member Padilla. Any other thoughts?
Okay. Council.
Council.
Staff. Patrick, is that enough feedback for you all?
Yeah, that was great. And what we'll do from here in the 22nd is fine tune and we'll definitely see the clinician put in.
It might be on the work plan with some recommended approaches, you know.
But there's a myriad of other items on here.
I took feverish notes and I saw some of my staff take notes,
but not everybody appreciate that.
But anyway, we'll put our comprehensive packets together
on the 22nd, but I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Great.
Patrick, just to make sure we're not also losing the actual housing,
the permanent supportive piece to that, right?
Sorry, say that again?
The permanent supportive housing, just exploring that idea.
Correct.
Making sure.
Yeah, thank you.
Obviously, there's already false support.
We'll come back with recommended approaches on how it would lay out with the funding strategy
on our housing fund. So, cool. Thank you.
Thank you, City Manager.
Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we adopt the resolution setting June 22nd, 2026 is the
date for the public hearing and adoption of our fiscal year budget.
Raise.
Is there a second?
Second.
How's the motion from Council Member Howard, a second from Vice Mayor Aiken. Could we
get an electronic vote, please?
Motion passes.
With six votes.
Councilmember Chu is absent. Thank you. Thank you again colleagues for doing the
homework and a great discussion tonight. We'll move on to item 11 which is our
public hearings on the smoking regulations related to tobacco retail
permits and our economic development manager Amanda Anthony will give a
presentation and I'll now
And I'll now pass things over to Amanda.
Thank you so much. Amanda Anthony, economic development manager.
We have a short presentation just going over some of the pieces from last time.
Crystal, next slide.
I'm going to give you just a brief recap of the April 27th presentation.
A reminder of the staff recommendation, the action taken, and then tonight's recommendation.
On May 11th, on April 27th, City Council received information regarding the tobacco retailer regulation in Redwood City, including the city's ordinance, the county's ordinance and potential approaches.
You go to the next slide.
Just a reminder that one of the things we talked about on April 27th is how state laws have evolved to ban flavored tobacco in most forms.
This was done as part of a ballot measure in November of 2022.
There's also been a lot of evolution in.
In local law, Redwood City adopted an ordinance banning flavored tobacco in all cases except
for three businesses who were offering on-site adoption. It was any business that had their
permit at that time. We also, in San Mateo County in Redwood City, also banned e-cigarettes
and vapes. The effect of these bans has been positive. I don't know if you guys remember
of the slide, but lots of down direction arrows on youth access and use.
Not only youth access and use, we are also seeing decreases in adult access and adult
use as well.
And so these are really positive outcomes.
In 2023, San Mateo County updated its law to add restrictions on locations, discounts
and types of products sold.
The impact of that is that they also started enforcing for any city that adopted their ordinance by reference or verbatim.
So these are the background. We talked about a lot of these things at length, and I'm happy
to go through any, answer any questions if you've got some. Next slide, please. So on April
27th, we recommended that the city council adopt the county's ordinance for regulating
tobacco retailers. And these are the reasons why. The county would manage all the administration
and no cost to the city's general fund, the retailers would pay significantly less for
their permits.
The county would be able to implement effectively immediately after the ordinance effective
date.
So if it were adopted tonight, they would be able to start enforcing as of July 7th.
The county would be managing enforcement in all cases where retailers are unpermitted
or selling illegal products.
and the county permits hookah lounges to continue to offer non-tobacco hookah to
keep operating, but they would not be able to sell tobacco.
So those are the reasons. On April 27th, we read the first, we raved the first reading and
introduced the ordinance and city council voted to approve that staff recommendation five to
two. And we also set the hearing date. So today is the public hearing. We are required to
do a public hearing because we are adopting this or we are recommending that this be adopted
by reference. And in order to adopt a ordinance by reference, you have to have a public
curing on the second date. So that is what is before you tonight and we can move
to the next slide. The recommended action is to waive the second reading and
adopt an ordinance. I'm ending Redwood City Municipal Code to repeal what is
currently there, adopt by reference the county ordinance and then amend some
definitions. Thank you.
Thank you Amanda. Appreciate the great presentation and
and with
With that, we will now open the public hearing, and I'll pass things over to our city clerk
to help facilitate public comment.
Thank you, Mayor. I do have 11 speaker cards at the moment, and I've got a few hands on
Zoom. So last call for any remaining public comment on this item tonight. I'll let the
Zoom folks queue up. We've got a few more coming in.
So we have a total of 18 speakers.
We've got 11 in person and seven on Zoom.
How would you like to proceed with the public comment, Mayor?
Two minutes, one minute.
We had 11 speakers.
We have a total of 18, actually.
18? Yeah.
Let's go with one minute.
Okay.
So everyone will be allotted one minute.
The timer will begin when you start speaking.
We will call the in-person speakers first, beginning with David Kasuf.
who will be followed by Neil.
Lundy. And then we'll move to our Zoom folks. Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is David Kasouf, and I'm the owner of
the Sandwich Spot. For more than 15 years, I have employed local residents, paid taxes,
invested in our community, and built a business that serves Redwood City.
I'm here tonight because of the issue is not just about the hookah.
It's about jobs, small businesses, and the families who depend on them.
I respectfully ask you to consider the real-world consequences of eliminating the grandfathered
exception that existing businesses such as the sandwich pasha and rock n' wrap replied
slide.
Relyed on four years. Many of our customers come for Huca, but they also buy food, drinks,
and support our business throughout the evening. If that reason for visiting is removed, customer
traffic will decline, sales will decrease, employee hours will be cut, and job will
be lost.
I wish you gave us two minutes like many others.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Neil Lundy, who will be followed by Ayub Gochi.
Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. My name is Neil. I'm a local business owner.
The retail enforcement you're adopting is overdue. Protecting our young people with you on that, I definitely agree with.
Concerns most about the message that a business can follow our city's own law to the letter and still have the ground pulled out from under it.
When businesses face more regulations reduced operating flexibility
An uncertainty about their future. Customers spend less, businesses invest less, and sales
tax revenue suffers. If the city continues, adding restrictions on long-standing businesses,
investors will turn a right. Don't think these three businesses are fully considered when
this was drafted. Even California statewide flavored tobacco ban exempts on site Shisha
at 21 and over venues. We're not asking the council to invent anything. We're asking
them to stay aligned with the state law. That's it.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Ayub Gokshi, who will be
followed by Jameson Fong.
My name is Ayub. I am Pasha owner. I would like to speak about our
investment debt business.
Over the years we have invested
a significant amount of money into our business, our facilities,
equipment, outdoor space permits, furniture, and improvements.
All with understanding that could continue operating under grandfather's expectation. This
investment was not made overnight. It was made over many years based on the city's provost's
decision and the expectation that existing business would be allowed to continue operating
responsibly. Many people don't realize that Huca sports much more than just Huca sales.
It's bring customers who also purchase food, drinks, and other services.
Many business depend on that customer traffic to survive, employees depend on those job,
vendors depend on those orders, and local business depend on those customers continue
to visit the Resort City.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Jamison Fong, who will be followed by Ali Ahmad.
Good evening, Vice Mayor, Mayor, Council members.
My name is James Sinfong and I represent the owners of
I think it's very clear, and I don't want this to be missed, that the restaurant members
are all in favor of protecting the youth and supporting as much regulation as that is necessary.
I think the issue was misframed as it was an either or situation. The situation was we
We must and can go with just the county ordinance or self-regulate the same way that Berlin
game has done and Foster City has done.
I think it's very, very poignant that today was the budget and you're talking about looking
at losing significant revenue from three standing businesses that have been here for
over a decade.
I think there is still an opportunity to, instead of going with the county's way,
self-regulate, continue to use your own your own resources. Thank you. Thank you.
Next speaker is Ali Ahmad.
We'll be followed by Gabrielle M.
Hi. Good evening everybody.
My name is Aliya, owner of Rock and Raps. I've been here like 13, 14s.
It's, when I came here, it was very slow business in Ridwis City, downtown empty.
We, we helped, how we're going to make it busy. We opened the restaurant, the hookah spot, and,
and invite people to come Ridwis City. It become a culture.
So a lot of people they like to get together night time, day time, with this hookah and
drinking tea, come to downtown Ridwiss city and we invest a lot of money in our businesses.
In just a bucket cost me over, it's going to cost me over a hundred thousand dollars
because I was dependent in that I keep the hookah in my business.
All of us, three of us, the hookah, rock and raps, passion and self spot, we build
a lot of taxes for Ridwiss city.
I mean we want to keep it the way it is.
Please, if you don't mind and keep the city alive. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker is Gabrielle Mihajlovic, who will be followed by Omar Salim.
Good evening. My name is Gabrielle Mihajlovic, and I am here to speak against this motion.
Redwood City is a community that supports the American values of business entrepreneurship, culture, and celebrating diversity.
community. Our community leads the peninsula in highlighting multiple cultures through channels
such as restaurants, festivals and other community gatherings. The establishments listed are prime
examples of honoring the roughly 20,000 plus Arab Americans living in San Mateo County and
Northern Santa Clara. Year after year the establishments have followed and supported
American federal regulations respectfully moderating the sale of any tobacco products to adults
ages 20 and over and they stand with the community on supporting minors not
participating. If any of you were to go to these establishments you would see a
lot of
Thank you, our next speaker is Omar Salem, who will be followed by Jeffrey Vasalo.
Respectful Mayor and Council Members, I want to start with this.
In April's hearing, many people spoke but none was truly heard.
Today I want to speak to you differently.
Not as policy makers, not as politicians, but as leaders.
You have the power to create a redwood city ordinance.
One that targets the actual problem.
Do the work differentiate between irresponsible, unregulated smoke shops and regulated 21-plus establishments?
Not because it's easy, we know it's not. But because it's right, because leadership is measured by whether you stood up when it matters.
Years from now, people will not remember how efficiently this moved through committee.
But they will remember whether you listened, they will remember whether you stood up for inclusivity,
and they will remember whether you had the courage to say, we're not just going to follow, we're going to lead.
As Vice Mayor Aikin said earlier, we haven't created this about AA.
Please listen to the 700 petition signatures you've received.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is...
And City Clerk, sorry to interrupt you.
It's almost 11 o'clock.
I think we've got a vote to extend the meeting.
Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to extend the meeting to 1130.
Thank you.
Is there a second?
Second.
That was a motion from G and a second from Council Member Howard. Could we get a vote please?
Hello, my name is Jeffrey Vassallo.
Sorry, Jeffrey, one second. Sorry, we're taking a quick vote.
And we'll give you your full time.
Motion passes with six votes. Councilmember Chiu is absent. Thank you.
Thank you. Over to you.
My name is Jeffrey Vassallo, and I noticed a few speakers ago, you're looking for ways to investigate ways to add revenue to the county.
In the meantime, you're taking away hundreds of jobs of people of Redwood City that have
families and these establishments entertain thousands of people a week and bring in millions
of dollars of business a year.
So it kind of contradicts what you guys are trying to do here, close businesses down and
increase revenues.
So, I've noticed recently in the 45 years in this county, we've taken away entertainment.
We've taken away the Redwood City Drive-ins, the GO Cards, the miniature...
What's your golf? What's next? We take away the parks? So I'm just saying to help your city
by leaving these establishments going and having these employees keep their jobs and more entertainment
in Redwood City, not less.
Thank you. Next speaker is Trisha Barr, who will be followed
by Astrid Ryber.
Thank you. Mayor, council members, thank you for the opportunity to
speak tonight. My name is Trisha Barr and I'm a mom of three kids and the chair of the
San Mateo County Tobacco Education Coalition. I'm asking you tonight to please adopt the
county's tobacco retailer ordinance. This past weekend I visited two local retailers
Thank you for watching.
One downtown, I'd asked for a flavored tobacco product, which is illegal to sell here in Redwood
City and in the state. The clerk pulled hidden flavored product from behind the counter and
sold it to me at the vape shop on El Camino. There were walls of flavored vapes and other
illegal flavored tobacco openly on display, which they also sold to me. So that tells
me this is not an exception. This tends to be the norm. So right now, last time we heard
about the $100 fine that is really not taken seriously by retailers. It's just sort of
a cost of doing business. You have the opportunity today to close that, to strengthen the existing
ordinance with some teeth and I'm happy to pass this around. I have receipts in here.
Thank you. Next speaker is Astrid Reiber, who will be followed by David Reiber.
Good evening. My name is Estridied Reiber, and I'm a proud
About Redwood City resident and parent, I raised my three children here who all attended
Redwood City schools. I'm here to ask for your vote in support of adopting the county's
tobacco retailer permit ordinance. I worried for years when my children were teenagers
about how easily they and their friends could so easily access vaping and tobacco products.
So I completely understand what parents in this situation today are going through.
I want our local businesses to thrive and I believe they can continue to do so while
adhering to the guidelines that help ensure the health and safety of our children. The
The adoption of the ordinance will also help with the resources needed for regulation and
enforcement in order to protect our youth since this would be handled by San Mateo County
staff versus our already spread thin city resources.
Although parents in schools can educate students in support prevention efforts, education alone
is not enough if there's no consistent enforcement in the community.
Until Redwood City adopts the stronger ordinance, there's very little the city can actually
enforce as heard by Ms. Barr.
Our students deserve to grow up happy and healthy in a community
That takes our safety seriously. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is David Reaver.
I live in Redwood City for 25 years now and raised three children in the public schools
right here. This is about the health of our community, of our children, and our adults.
Tobacco use is starting to increase again in our schools. Redwood City is currently by
far the city with easiest access to vaping and tobacco products. If nothing is done,
tobacco use will continue to go up in our city. We do not want to be an island of
tobacco and vaping consumption in the Bay Area. Some vaping products are
equivalent to 18 packs of cigarettes, others are equivalent to 30 packs of
cigarettes. Things change. Sixty years ago cars didn't have seatbelts, a hundred
years ago there were no semi-forces street corners, maybe not everyone
want to agree to those changes at first.
But they were implemented for the benefit of the community to save lives.
Please adopt the county's ordinance. Let's catch up to the rest of the county and the rest of the state. Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes our in-person speakers, but, Mayor, I just wanted to apologize because for public hearings,
we can have up to an hour of public comment. And I had asked for your feedback on public comment timing because it was the late hour.
But I wanted to say that maybe we can offer the opportunity for the in-person speakers to speak for an additional minute before we move on to our Zoom speakers, if you're okay with that.
And again, I apologize for the confusion.
No worries city clerk. I think that makes a lot of sense to offer that up.
Okay. Thank you.
So if you have given public comment in person this evening, and if you would like to speak for one additional minute, feel free to approach the podium at this time.
Thank you.
David Kasoof, welcome.
Thank
you for this opportunity. I'm not going to talk from the paper. As the lady respectfully
has the cigarettes with her, it's not a hookah. So she brought here to show all of you guys
what the kid's doing and you know exactly who is violating every single law in Redwood
City. So the job of the city council and everybody else in Redwood City to be responsible
to save us as residents of Redwood City, which we respected every single rule that you did.
And another thing, you were talking about South San Francisco restaurant.
It's open and they sell food. They are not selling no nicotine free hookah at all yet.
The restaurant is under construction and all what you showed on board here for statistics
They were really wrong. And somebody needs to read and get educated about the hookah. I
have never seen a kid walking on the street with a hookah and two charcoals on top.
Thank you, David. None.
Thank you. Are there any other speakers that spoke in person this evening that would like
an additional minute?
Thank you. Thank you again, council. I did just want to reiterate because one aspect
that was brought up at last here at the last council meeting was that there have
been other instances of successful businesses running with non non nicotine
or non tobacco hookup and I think that that was misstated just because that
hasn't happened yet there is one there was one establishment in South
San Francisco that previously without a permit was selling hookup
Hukka. Since the implementation by the county, they have been told that they have mentioned
that they would try to sell tobacco-free hukka. That still has not happened yet. And that business,
as I've spoken to the owner quite a few times, is not sure if they are going to be able
to survive. I think that does need to be considered because it is not just a, oh, they can just
pivot to something else because there's evidence of this success in other cities and it just
is not there.
Thank you Mr. Fong.
Any other speakers for one additional minute?
Hi, my name is Ayup Pashaonar.
I checked the police record last 20 years.
We didn't find any record young kids smoking hookah.
Hookah is different, web is different, web size is like that, they can put it in
They can smoke everywhere. Hookah sizes is like that, and then you have to get an electrical
heater for the charcoal. They can put it in the pocket or back. They can smoke in the street
or anywhere. We need to understand, hookah is different. Wave is different. We are not
selling the tree location here, sandwich spot, rock n' wrap, and pasha. We are not selling
tobacco. We are selling hookah. Any kids or any adults come they want the
tobacco. We are not selling to them. You have to understand we are selling
hookah. Like Redwood, Burlingame and Foster City, two hookah place and they
give the permission to them to sell hookah. They sell hookah no problem. Do
it the same thing in Redwood City. Thank you. Any other speakers?
Trisha Barr, welcome back.
Regarding hookah, no one is talking about taking away jobs. Hookah businesses are also restaurants
and bars. They also have other options other than flavored tobacco, including switching to
non-tobacco products like steam stones and herbal products, so that you can keep that
social experience without tobacco. Council members, you have the opportunity tonight
to align your policies and your values and truly protect Redwood City kids. We just
Just heard about the budget challenges and city staff spoke last time about the cost of
implementing your own program.
We know that there is a gap here in enforcement.
Please adopt the county ordinance and put real enforcement and compliance behind your
tobacco law.
Thank you.
And Mr. Salem, welcome back.
Three very quick points.
Cultures do change, but they change from within.
They don't change by telling people what to do.
Number two, I want to talk about if Vice Mayor allows me again to quote her, we have not done
this. This place exists, local government exists, so we can adhere to local needs. We can keep
Redwood City a special place. We can stay as a magnet for people from all over the Bay
area. Third point is you were talking about budgetary constraints, and I absolutely understand
we have an issue with finding the budget or finding the money to have our own regulation.
But if convenience becomes the go-to, then this place should not exist. We should just
have government in SAC. Thank you.
Thank you. Mr. Ahmad.
One more time. I just want to tell you about the hookah, the beaver company. You see beaver
smoking hookah, but didn't see how many beaver smoking cigarettes in the streets and smoking
marijuana. Did you go force him to stop cigarette? Did you get the count? Did you get somebody
to force him to smoke the cigarette? Your employees listening in the corner over there,
city employees, everybody have a cigarette in his hand. Why don't you go stop them?
Why are you going to stop our business doing these things?
I see a lot of your employees sitting down in the beach by the boss office.
And I see a lot of people in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and marijuana.
How are you going to oppose the law of nobody smoking cigarettes?
Does anybody could answer my question?
How are you going to stop these people?
Somebody smokes cigarettes.
You can tell them, don't stop smoking or you're going to send the police.
Tell them, don't stop the cigarette and you give them a ticket.
Thank you.
Amila welcome back.
Hi again. I just want to say that I agree with you
parents that the sale of those products should not be allowed to our children.
I've worked in child care for 12 years. I've worked with the city in our schools for six
years and I still volunteer with child care organizations here. Within the last three
to four years you guys have approved three different marijuana businesses to
to sell their products here, that is the growing evil within our child care system.
These businesses, they do not allow minors in there.
I would push this committee to enforce if they need electronic scanning of identification
within their businesses before you get rid of the services altogether.
But all of these businesses support letting those services not be available to minors.
Additionally, our community promotes drinking. We have an Oktoberfest. That's a high cause for drunk driving, impaired sexual engagement.
That does not happen with smoking hookah. It is a leisure activity done by consenting adults that understand the cognitive effects that it's going to have on their bodies.
Thank you for listening and we agree with your point.
Thank you. Anyone else who hasn't spoken yet for an additional minute?
Thank you. To answer the ladies' question here, these employees could find jobs at bars and dance places amongst Broadway.
Sure, these are bars where people leave and they get DUIs and they're drinking.
If you go to these hookah lounges, most people are smoking the hookah and drinking tea.
Did everybody find a couple of people that have a drink or so?
But most 90% of the people are having tea. So you're making actually Redwood City safer by
not letting in alcohol and have these employees go to the bars. And I also notice people come
from San Jose, they come from Fremont, they come from San Francisco to go to these places.
So you're bringing revenue from other cities into Redwood City, which benefits everybody
here in Redwood City. That's all I have to say.
Thank
you. With that, I will move to our Zoom speakers, and we will give everyone two minutes.
Sorry again, Mayor. We'll start with Zubin Modi, who will be followed by Blythe Young.
You may begin speaking. You may unmute yourself and begin speaking.
Perfect. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Excellent.
So, I find...
Given this proposal to be one of the most self-defeating racist ideas I've seen from this council, these
establishments are one of the few businesses in Redwood City that consistently attracts
customers from all over the Bay Area. If you don't believe me, we'll visit Tasha on a
Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. The wait times and the lines speak from themselves.
People here are coming from San Francisco, San Jose, SREMA, and the East Bay to spend
their money here in Redwood City. These are all 21 and over establishments serving consulting
adults. They are licensed, regulated, tax-paying businesses that create jobs and bring economic
activity into Redwood City. Yet, instead of supporting local businesses, the city is trying
to shut them down and let's be honest, who's being affected? Hoka has deep cultural roots
in many Middle Eastern and South Asian communities. For a city that prides itself in diversity
to be an inclusion, this proposal sends the wrong message.
Most important,
Currently, this ban won't accomplish its stated goals. People won't stop. They'll drive across
the 84 to Fremont and spend their money there instead. The customers leave, the jobs leave,
the tax revenue leaves. Fremont and Alameda County wins. Redwood City and San Mateo County
loses. So I urge you to reject this proposal. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Blythe Young who will be followed by AROC.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Blythe Young. I'm the Regents Senior
Lead of Community Government Relations for the American Heart Association. I'm here tonight
to express support for the proposal to adopt the San Mateo County model ordinance. This
proposed policy will reduce access to products that are the tobacco industry's key strategy
for targeting and addicting new smokers, Redwood City's youth. The American Heart
Association spent three years helping develop
The policy at San Mateo County and turned into a model for incorporated studies. We've
since seen this policy be adopted by South San Francisco, by San Bruno, and others that spent
a bit more time considering the ordinance. The ordinance does not prevent hookah businesses
from staying in business. San Francisco, not South San Francisco, but San Francisco proper
has had a comprehensive flavored tobacco ban for many, many years at this point. Their
where hookah businesses are still in business.
The fact that hookah is exempted at the state in terms of the flavor ban was a policy compromise
and we know that there's a best practice in the Bay Area that has been here long before
that policy was passed and we expect to continue.
Hookah businesses have many routes to stay in business.
We're not closing doors.
Businesses have not closed doors since we've had comprehensive flavor tobacco
bans in Bay Area cities.
So adopting the county's policy I think makes a lot of sense for the reasons
that staff recommended in terms of the enforcement.
Actual enforcement protocol offered by the county and cost savings. At the end of the day, if you do decide to adopt your own TRL and enforce it yourselves, I really hope that you'll match the same best practice standards.
But I think that the county's model was developed in with a lot of thought given to impact both economic and health and is a really sound model to go with.
So looking forward to your decision outcome. And thank you all for hanging in there past 11pm.
Thank you. Our next comment is from AROC, who will be followed by Kelly Boyet.
Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council members. My name is Mohamed Shek. I'm the
Organizing and Advocacy Director at the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, or AROC. We're
a non-profit serving the Arab and Muslim community here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I'm calling in tonight to urge you not to adopt...
The county tobacco enforcement ordinance, but instead to fully explore the city-run alternative.
All of you should have received an email with a preliminary breakdown of how a city-run enforcement
program could be self-funded without tapping into the general fund, and we believe it makes
a compelling case for a fuller analysis to be done before taking this vote that would
harm cherished Redwood City small businesses serving Hookah. Many of our constituents
live in Redwood City and as you know a significant number of our Arab and
Muslim and Swana community do not drink so do not go to bars and many choose the
option of enjoying hookah together instead. It's a long-standing social and
cultural practice unique to Middle Eastern communities and having these
spaces for our community together have become ever more important especially
in these times. Unfortunately non-tobacco hookah is not really a
viable alternative. I mean, imagine what would happen to the revenue for our local bars if
we told them they
They can only serve non-alcoholic beer and wine. It wouldn't be good.
To be clear, we all agree that we need a policy to address flavor tobacco products, vapes, e-cigarettes
and the like, particularly those targeted and marketed toward our youth. We can do this
without jeopardizing hookah-serving businesses, but the issue is that the city-run enforcement
option was not fully analyzed, particularly with regards to cost recovery options. I've
sitting through this entire meeting and suffice it to say that you all really know how to ask
rigorous questions and request more information to make informed decisions. So we're asking at the
very least that we do our due diligence and fully explore that alternative option before moving
on to the county ordinance tonight. Thank you. Our next comment is from Kelly Boyet who will
will be followed by Tony Godluschi.
Hello, thank you so much for listening.
Kelly, sorry about that. Can you please unmute yourself?
Oh, I'm sorry about that. Thank you for taking public comment tonight.
I understand that Redwood City is facing budgetary constraints that limit their capacity to properly fulfill tobacco complaints and permitting issues,
and I'm also very passionate about limiting access for youth to sales and use of tobacco products.
But how can we advocate for one demographic while undermining another?
Huka is an important cultural practice for many communities here in Medwood City as many
folks have said tonight and for many other consenting adults, it's a medium for connection
and leisure.
There are many businesses here, most of which are in attendance that have been compliant.
They do not sell to underage kids.
They pay their annual fees and they offer tax profit and offer popular third space
for friends and family to get together, eat, talk and smoke huka.
It's not unfortunate that these businesses have been lumped in with other non-compliant businesses.
It is lazy oversight by our city council. We elected you to support and represent our community, which this ordinance does not do.
So I urge you to find another way to protect our youth from tobacco access without disregarding the many establishments that make Redwood City so great and unique. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Tony Godluschi, who will be followed by Daniel Moltke.
Tony, we can't hear you if you're speaking. I do see you're unmuted.
Hello. Can everyone hear me okay?
Yes, we can. Thank you.
Okay. All right. Perfect. Well, yes. As you've heard, my name is Tony. I live here in District 4.
And I work from home, and whenever I get the opportunity, I like to...
You work from various coffee shops, cafes, lounges, and hookah lounges around the city.
It's not really news to anybody, especially here in Silicon Valley, that there's a loneliness
epidemic across our country, including in our own neighborhood.
The American Journal of Epidemiology, the American Psychology Association, and other
organizations have linked chronic isolation to increases in cognitive
decline, depression, cardiovascular disease, and Cassandra Alcarez with the
American Journal of Epidemiology shared that the magnitude of risk presented
by social isolation is very similar in magnitude to that even of smoking. I'm
I'm not a doctor like I said I work from home I'm not sure how accurate
any of that really is, but I do find it weird that in this age of social isolation that we would
Take this step against third spaces in our community. As we heard tonight from all these business
owners, nobody is against selling tobacco to younger kids. And while this ordinance is
well-meaning, then it will surely exacerbate the epidemic of loneliness by closing the city's
lounges. Honest to God, small business proprietors who, as the city notes in its own equity impact
statement, are disproportionately South Asian or Middle Eastern descent. They're going to be forced
to shudder friendly third spaces while consenting adults go to eat, work, gossip, and even smoke.
I encourage you to put your heads together and think of something more creative than a blanket
Thank you, Ben.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Daniel Moltke.
What was it?
Hey, can you hear me? Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Daniel Shane Mulkey.
I'm with the National Hookah Community Association with, which along with AROC submitted a joint
proposal today, really just asking for one thing. Don't close the door tonight. Give us the time
to build a solution that protects youth, doesn't cost the city anything, and keeps
it away from cultural spaces alive in your city. Your staff report shows that a city-run program
can be nearly self-funded through permit fees alone, and that's before accounting for two
key revenue sources that the report didn't consider. That's first, that the three hookah
establishments have volunteered to pay enhanced permit fees through three times what standard
retailers would pay because they want this program to work they're willing to pay for it.
The second big one was that the report doesn't account for the impact of financial penalties
for non-compliance, which the city could easily increase to $1,000 each.
Each, potentially more. I think it's also worth noting the county program only checks permit
holders roughly twice a year, so that would mean 110 visits across the 55 retailers in Redwood
City. Meanwhile, Redwood City's current complaint-based code enforcement generally would be 558 actions
in 2020. So we think a locally run program is more responsive, more accountable, and really
better positioned to actually protect kids. So with regard to the county ordinance, there
There are parts that we could get behind and we'd love to talk about them, but really adopting
that that ordinance tonight forecloses the only option that would preserve our Redwood
City's three existing hookah-serving restaurants, which are cultural gathering places for the
Middle Eastern community.
For many people in our community, they don't drink, and so these places don't have a substitute.
It's like having a sports bar without alcohol or bringing alcohol-free wine to your dinner
party doesn't have the same impact, right?
So, we're just asking you please reject the ordinance and direct your staff to fully
analyze the options for the city.
Thank you. And with that, Mayor, I turn it back to you. It includes public comment.
Great. Thank you, City Clerk. And again, thank you to everyone who joined us in person or online
and make some public comment on this, especially with the lateness of the hour. We appreciate
just getting engagement on this. So with that, I will pass it over to our colleagues with
Council Member Strickland.
May I make a motion to extend the meeting to midnight, please?
Is there a second?
Sadly, second.
Thank you both.
Motion from Sturkin and a second from Gee.
Could we get a vote, please?
Motion passes with six votes. Councilmember Chu absent.
Great. Thank you for the fast vote, everybody.
And who would like to get us started with any questions or comments?
We're so close, y'all. Councilmember Gee, thank you.
Thank you, Mayor. Just some clarifying questions.
Excuse me. Amanda, you've been working on this for a while.
So can you just remind all of us just because it's getting late
and we still have more agenda after this?
your work and the team's work on trying to bring something to council.
And not only the timeline, but how many meetings and the journey to get to tonight.
Yes, I'd be happy to talk about that.
We had a study session in September of 2024 on two topics.
One was smoking in the public right away.
And one was the regulation of tobacco retailers. We were able to bring back an ordinance on smoking
in the public right-of-way in January of 2025. Following that, we proceeded with work on addressing
the concerns of council throughout the spring of 2025 into the summer of 2025. We met with
business, all of our tobacco retailers in April of 2025 working to get a solution
throughout the summer. City Attorney Ramirez was meeting with or seeking
seeking to meet with representation from the hookah attorneys throughout the
last summer throughout the fall. Starting in the spring we started to
And I think we've been trying to get on an agenda since November of last year.
and so
We finally brought it in April of this year. Prior to that, we did additional outreach to
the hooker retailers and also all of the tobacco retailers.
Thank you, Maniki. Spent a little bit more time about the outreach over the last year
to the three establishments and what kind of engagement the people show up and as well
as the other tobacco retailers in the city.
Yeah, the hookah retailers, understandably, were very invested in helping us understand
their perspective and their needs.
So when we would meet with them, they would come and bring their perspective and ask for
what we would want.
A number of times we sought compromise, for example, with the non-tobacco hookah and
heard that they were not interested in on tobacco hookah and I can understand that if your demand is for tobacco hookah.
I can understand that there's probably not a lot of demand for non-tobacco hookah, but we
were looking for a way of figuring out how to regulate the tobacco retailers, and we're
looking for a compromise on what that looked like. As far as the other tobacco retailer
outreach meetings, we had probably about 10, so we have 55 retailers. We had about 10
folks attend, so about 20% of the retailers. Those were mixed across smoke shops, gas
stations and convenience stores and so they they brought up a lot of thoughts as
well they you know I think would like to have less regulation themselves but
also recognize that you know it is normal to have regulation and that they
would prefer to pay less for regulation than more.
Thank you for that
history.
It's, you know, thank you all for being here at 11.30 and getting later at night.
You know, we have two speakers offer, I guess, a self-funded solution, but it feels like they
just showed up. Is my perception inaccurate? I mean, given the history and the timeline
you just shared, the conversation could have and should have probably began in the beginning,
not when this matter comes before council tonight.
The businesses did propose earlier
that they would be willing to pay more
for a tobacco retailer permit for themselves.
My understanding is that there wouldn't be
a significant difference in that our proposition 26,
which is about fair fees and paying for the cost
of service, the cost of service
wouldn't be significantly different
for issuing a permit and doing inspections and that for these businesses.
And so, we wouldn't be able to charge them more. That's one thing. The other thing is, is that it did feel like there was a lot of organization here at this moment.
And that did surprise me, but I'm glad that people are using their voice.
You're going to demand a thank you, so I'm going to pivot to our city attorney.
And this is a question similar to earlier this evening, which seems like forever ago.
But because of Prop 218 or whatever that number is, are we allowed to disproportionately
charge fees for permits that may subsidize others?
No, as we spoke about this earlier, Prop 26 does not allow for one subgroup, two subsidized
and other subgroups responsibilities and so the city does have
We have to determine what the proper fee is based on the services that are being provided
and charge that fee across the board.
Thank you, City Attorney Amanda, thank you for answering some clarifying questions.
Thank you.
Thank
you, Council Member Gee.
Will's has questions.
Council Member Strickland, we'll go to you.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you to everyone who made public comments.
I very much appreciate both online and in person.
And thank you, Amanda, as well for all your hard work on this over the course of
couple years at this point.
So looking at the staff report, at the very bottom there is an alternative.
And I would just like to ask, I think I already know the answer to this question because we were presented with an alternative back in the
April. But if we were to entertain the idea of doing our own program, what would that look
like? What's the timeline? What resources can we leverage from the county or otherwise
to meet the needs of the entire community, you know, to enforce our regulations, protect
youth while also supporting our local businesses and local cultures.
Sure. If we did not adopt the ordinance tonight and we came back and you directed staff to come back with our own ordinance,
we wouldn't be able to rely on the county for much. Their policy is that either you adopt it by reference or verbatim,
or they don't really get involved.
So we wouldn't be able to rely on them for anything.
They might be so kind as to give their time
to train us on all of this.
Unflavored tobacco and how to regulate tobacco, but I don't know that that's a given.
You know, I say this very carefully because I love what I do, but you guys have a lot of my plate,
and if you direct me to also bring back other stuff that either pushes street vending and mobile vending
and entertainment zones and small business supports, there's just a lot of things that will get pushed.
So either it will take me several months to develop this ordinance and we'll bring it back in 2027.
Or we'll prioritize that and we can maybe do that in three or four months if Veronica has some time to really dig into this.
We would probably need to come back and have a study session with you to understand what your priorities are.
Do you want to follow something that's very similar to the county or do you want to have other parameters before we go back?
So there's a lot of steps that what it would do.
What do we take to develop that ordinance? And it's also figuring out what is the priority.
We are priorities, right? What do we want to include in that ordinance?
And so, you know, I think minimally, most likely, it would be six to nine months just to develop the ordinance.
We have to train staff on the work, on who is doing the work, how to regulate what is this.
I attend a quarterly meeting right now from the Alameda County Tobacco Regulation Enforcement
Network and there are new flavored tobacco products coming out literally every month
and we sit on that call and we learn all about these new regulated products, but I'm not
the regulator, right?
I'm the policymaker.
We would have to get code enforcement to understand that.
We'd have to figure out where code enforcement is going to have time to go and do a proactive
program.
So, I mean, minimum six to nine months, quite a bit of staff effort.
Not important.
It's possible, right? I mean, it's anything's possible. I do want to be honest about that, but there are trade-offs.
Thank you very much. It's very helpful just to wrap up my comments.
Councilmember, sorry, I didn't want to rush you to wrap up. It's just our city attorney.
And thank you to Ms. Anthony for answering that question. I just wanted to point out, and she made a reference to it,
but just wanted the council to be aware that the city doesn't currently have a permit process
for this. We don't have any program to regulate. Ms. Anthony spoke a lot about the enforcement
part after the ordinance gets adopted, but the very first thing is creating a permit
its system for this and understanding how to process that.
So, and once that's
If the system is put together, then it's implementing it and getting the applications out and helping
all of the tobacco businesses, and we have 55 currently, to understand what that means.
So there's a big process after adoption and before enforcement as well that will take
some ramp up. And I want the council to understand that so that we don't get surprised a year
later when we're still trying to figure it out.
Thank you, City Attorney. We'll bring it back to,
okay, thank you. Any other questions? Member Howard? I don't have questions, but I'm ready to make
my comments if that's okay. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to say that I received,
I think
just at Stanford.
University and she does research on tobacco prevention and the damages that it causes nicotine
and tobacco. And it was a very moving and very impressive letter talking about the dangers
of flavored tobacco products because continued use, it makes it easier and it masks the harshness
of the tobacco in the nicotine. It makes smoke and aerosol easier to inhale. It's easier
on the throat. And it creates the misperception that these products are less harmful than
traditional cigarettes. And she states, that is just not true, that tobacco and the
toxic chemicals that are in flavored tobacco as well as cigarettes are very harmful.
and people exposed to it can develop lung disease as well as the person smoking it.
And she said a one-hour hookah session, which is the typical timeframe use that she says is
equivalent, if I'm exposed to it, not smoking, if I'm exposed to it, it's the equivalent of
smoking 100 cigarettes a day. Now, I'm a nurse. People know that I'm a nurse and I cannot
take any other stand on this other than my desire to do what's best for our whole community.
And I find tobacco and its products, when I was teaching nursing, I always spoke to young
people because I thought if we get to them young, then maybe you prevent them from smoking
into their old age.
It's a tough one.
Once they become addicted, it's very hard to quit.
Now I know we're talking about young people and it's really important, but I'm also very, very worried about the adult population who smoke nicotine products.
And being exposed to it. So back when COVID was, when we had COVID, we made an agreement that we would try to help our three businesses in Redwood City who did serve hookah.
And we made it possible for them to do it. And then we even gave an extension of a year while we studied the information that we were giving about the state and the county.
During that time, I made it clear that I could not guarantee this was a permanent solution.
I made it clear.
I don't know about anyone else, but I always felt sooner or later the state's going to
step in and then the county, and we were going to have to make some tough decisions.
And that's where we are right now.
So I can only say, as a nurse, my responsibility is the health and well-being of our community.
And our community needs to eliminate as much as possible exposure to nicotine and smoking
products. I know that's going to hurt our friends in business. I know this is going to have an
impact on your business as well as the social and cultural practices that you do. But my
responsibility has to be the public health and safety of the community of
Redwood City and that's why I will support this. I'm sorry but I don't feel I
have a choice in this matter if I'm going to be true to my profession so I'll
just leave it at that. Thank
you, Council Member Howard. Who else has
comments?
Council Member Shurken.
I feel like I've been presented that I am
consider.
We're considering just a false choice. And there, I think we can address each of the issues
and needs presented tonight, enforcing our smoking regulations, allowing communities to continue
expressing their culture while also supporting our local economy. So both ordinances that we were
presented with back in April accomplish those things. The largest difference that I recall
us discussing was the cost. And I
understand that based on our previous conversation we don't
have very much wiggle room to accommodate said cost.
But.
As we did with the business license tax, when we received feedback from the business community,
we pivoted and made accommodations. And I think it's important for us to,
when we realize
maybe there were folks that we didn't get the chance to talk to, or maybe that we should
that have engaged the first go-around,
that we accommodate them and continue the conversation
until we can find the right solution
that meets all of our needs.
So I will leave it there.
I would like to make a motion,
but I will wait until I've heard from my other colleagues
should anyone else like to contribute.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, Council Member.
We'll go to Council Member Pideo.
Thank you.
So, um, I've given...
And this is a lot of thought. I've talked to many people and I've read, if I haven't
responded, I've read every e-mail, I've listened to voicemails,
and I come from many perspectives.
I also value community health. I'm a parent, I'm a resident. I care about all the same
things. I care about our businesses. I care about the diversity in valuing everything
thing that makes us such a special place.
And I just want to share something.
From our last meeting, I had mentioned with a neighbor,
and I was just mentioning some things.
And she said to me, oh, I go to the sandwich spot.
And she said, they have hookah?
And I thought, wow, what a compliment
to that business and that establishment
that I had a neighbor who has been buying sandwiches there
and did not even know that the establishment sold hookah.
And then I thought to myself, in a world
That's where I thought our city manager mentioned just how we should be cautious of regulation
and unintended consequences. I don't smoke cigarettes and I don't do hookah, so I don't go to those
establishments. That's a personal choice that I make. And so often, more increasingly I find
in society and in our times, we're being told how to live our lives and what to do.
And I want to still believe that we raise our families, we teach them, no, I don't want
children smoking.
I remember being little and ice cream man coming and there were bubblegum cigarettes.
And that was a really popular thing to get.
And we didn't even know, but you wanted to blow them and see the powdered sugar come
out.
And it added some sort of glamour as a little kid, and you didn't.
And so I think about that, that impact you have on children.
But then I also think, you know, what is the role of the family?
Family unit. You know, when it comes down to us legislating when, how old someone can be
when they have a cell phone, who can go on Facebook, what decisions should be made in our own home.
If I don't like the way that hookah smells or I don't want my child exposed to it, then
I won't go to Pasha or Rock and Raps or if that's my concern. So that's where I'm struggling
right now. I want to balance our public health, but I also want to value the budget
situation we're in, we have businesses that are contributing to the vibrancy of our community.
And also, it is connection. We had a person call and there is an epidemic of loneliness.
Smoking, you know, passing a pipe, it's connection. It's connecting with people. It's dialogue
in a world where we increasingly don't know how to talk to each other. There are fewer
in fewer spaces for people. We don't, you know, not everyone fits. This isn't
Sweden. We don't all look the same. So cultural
Safe spaces for certain communities are more than just a place to work, so you're not lonely.
It's somewhere where you feel seen, somewhere where you don't have to wear a mask, somewhere
where you don't have to explain. It's hard to put a value on that, but it is valuable.
I just want us to make sure that we're considering these things because I don't always feel
good about regulating people's freedom of choice and free will. I know that there is
a state law but it seems like what we're doing is superseding the state law and it's hard
for me to reconcile this when we're talking about a budget where all I see are red going
into the red and the red and I see businesses that are employing workers that are adding
to things.
So I just, I'm struggling at the moment because I will say that I have always been
a proponent.
And I don't think it's fair, as Council Member Sirken says, that we're given that it's this
or that.
I don't know if it has to be that way.
I heard that caller. I don't want to, you know, it's hard to hear to think that we're lazy when we're here at, you know, 11.59.
I don't think anyone on our staff or council is lazy, but I think we are working with limited resources financially and from a staff perspective.
But I don't want that to be the excuse not to do what's right.
So I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Padeo. We'll go to the Vice Mayor.
So I want to thank everyone who came out here tonight, and especially at this late hour.
When we studied this two years ago, and Council Member Gee, thanks for asking, and Amanda,
thank you for reminding us of that. We, and you as well, you know, a hookah had
been grandfathered in. And at that time, two years ago, we
We directed staff to go back to the county and see if they would do that grandfathering
for us. Because we do, I just speak for myself, I do value the culture and I do like this culture
in Redwood City. I like the diversity. I do see it as a fun recreational cultural thing.
And so we did, we asked, we directed the then city manager, Melissa, Steven,
and Diaz to go back to the county and say,
look, please grandfather us in, please grandfather this in.
And I really was hoping they would, but the county will not.
And we have no control over that.
And meanwhile we have 55 tobacco retailers
This woman here who just three days ago or one day ago was able to buy all sorts of illegal
tobacco products. Subsequent again to two years ago, I also discovered that there is flavorless
tobacco. There is hookah that's, you know, tobacco-free, and that other jurisdictions,
the reference was to San Francisco, are doing that. So the fact that San Mateo will not compromise,
the fact that there is an alternative, the fact that our staff has been bending over
backward for a year to try to craft some kind of a compromise. I am really sorry, but we
have to have the enforcement of the county. The county has a health department. We do
And so it's just untenable. It's not the tobacco-less product, the flavorless product.
These tobacco purveyors, these 55 purveyors, what really struck me was the mom from Menlo
Park a month ago who said, all the kids know, oh yeah, just come to Redwood City and you're
14 years old, you can get whatever you want.
These businesses are very profitable.
Sometimes doing a legal activity is extraordinarily profitable and we're behind.
We're behind.
We've been spending two years to try to accommodate, to try to recognize the cultural aspect.
But now we don't have an option.
The option is flavorless tobacco. Who can still exist? We have to have the county in force.
We don't have the time and we do not have the money. And we don't. So I am going to be supporting,
as I did in April, I am going to be supporting this ordinance.
Thank you, Vice Mayor. We'll go to Council Member G.
Thank you, Mayor. You know, this is sort of a Sophie's choice. The way we have it right here.
And I want to pick up, Vice Mayor, a comment you just made and that we heard in April.
I went home and I try not to talk about politics at home, but I was talking to my daughter about this specific subject.
And she said the same thing you just shared that the woman that spoke in April.
All the youth know they want to buy tobacco or flavored tobacco or paraphernalia.
They just come to River City. The young people know that.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.
And that's because we don't have enforcement.
And so let's not forget the amount of time that we've been trying to do something here and work a compromise.
And if we do say, let's take the time to study, we're looking at two to three years of no enforcement.
The year and a half behind us and maybe a year in front of us, whatever, two to three years.
When I look at resources, it's not just money. Time is resource.
But more importantly, that's two years where youth have had an opportunity to come and buy product here in Redwood City.
And whether they get addicted, whether they tell their friends, that is a cost too.
We can't quantify it from a dollar standpoint. We can't quantify it from a general fund standpoint.
point.
But we know that they can buy it here.
They told us. It's easy. They all know.
The young people in the region know they just come to Redwood City.
So, you know, it's not easy being here at the desk at this late hour,
but it's not easy trying to figure out what's more important.
The community at large, as councilmember Howard stated,
or some of our businesses here.
And that is the kind of Sophie's choice we have.
At the end of the day, as I said in April, we've been very clear at Council and previous Councils
what our importance are.
And one of our strategic principles is youth and children.
That has been consistent.
Council Member Howard, I think that's gone back at least 10 years.
And that's been a guiding principle along with housing and transportation.
And that's not a mystery.
That's reported in every year budget at this time, what our strategic guiding principles
are. And so, unfortunately, if I have to make a Sophie's choice, I have to pick our young
people and our community's health.
I wish there were more choices, but when we look at a year
and a half gone or whatever that number is and another nine months forward, that's two
years of our young people being able to come to Redwood City and buy whatever they want,
whatever they want, irregardless of law at the state level and at the county level.
And that's a terrible choice to have to be made here at the council.
But that's what we have to do this evening.
Thank you, council members.
Not seeing any other lights.
I'll jump into my remarks.
Thank you again to the members of the public.
In person and online, it's almost Tuesday, and we're still here.
I want to just first say, I know that there has been an incredible amount of community time, staff time to get us to this point.
And I know this isn't an easy decision, and, you know, I said this in April that I would be,
And I said this in the previous fall that I would be open to coming up with the city
ordinance, right?
And as we got more information, it made it harder and harder to see that as a viable
path.
But I'm curious, if we went down this path and I heard some comments around enforcement,
what level of enforcement could we offer in the meantime if we gave this another
two years and knowing the cost recovery issues or complexities there what would be a, I guess
It's a potential solution for cost recovery, knowing that Prop 26 won't let us get full recovery
through the fees.
I'll take a shot at this. I think, keep in mind, when we first looked at this about a
year and a half ago, we looked at PD having a heavy role. If we were going to do something
to enter them, I would probably lean on the police chief to implement. I don't know
how folks feel about that. The reason why I say that is because they do work closely
with the county now, they are involved in many task force that are in this space, that
would come at a considerable cost in the interim while we would put a program together.
So I'd say, because I agree with the sentiment, a lot of folks here is, my concern isn't the
three hookah business.
I think they're standout businesses.
I've gotten to know David well and I've really tried to learn the business.
I'm not saying all 52 of the other businesses are bad actors.
I think we know 15.
That's a lot. And so if we were to consider something in the short term, I think we would
have to make some decision to have some level enforcement that would probably be led by our
police department. Now the chief isn't here, but I think they're the only one. Our co-enforcement
has no idea how to implement this. Our co-enforcement right now has 300 cases per person. I wouldn't
feel comfortable giving them this right now in the interim why we figured it out. So
So I think we could put a plan together, but it'd probably be led by the police department.
Thank you, Patrick.
And the second question was just around cost recovery.
Are you talking near term or long term?
Both.
Yeah, I'm just curious.
In the interim, I guess, before we came up with.
In the interim, I think, yeah.
I mean, it was not in the budget, but I think the general fund would have to bear
it right now until we went through a process and we, you know, just because we have
a handful of businesses that said, we're willing to pay this, there's 52 businesses
is to have no pie.
We just got the proposal on Friday. That's the first I saw it. So it's almost like starting
over, right? You know, I mean, those fees that were being proposed are a lot higher than what
the county's program would be. So I think, and who's leading the effort, is that, you
know, so I think there's a lot to think through on that process.
Thank you. And did you have something to add?
I just had a clarifying question, because the assumption of your question, we can't just
start enforcing we first have to write a regulation.
So it's not like just tomorrow, like in 15 minutes we could go bust the 15 bad actors
even if the police could, right?
We would still need a year.
There is no short term.
We would still need a year or more to craft an ordinance.
Is that not correct?
So that's correct. We don't currently have anything regulating our tobacco retailers.
And so we cannot enforce the tobacco retailers and their selling of, you know, kind of tobacco product.
What we can do in the interim is we do have prohibitions in our code, and to the extent
And any of our retailers, whether they're tobacco retailers or not, because there is
no such thing right now, Redwood City doesn't have a program, and the county stopped issuing
any tobacco permits to anyone.
But anyone who is selling products that are not allowed, we can enforce.
So, any illicit activity, any flavored tobacco that's prohibited under our code, any paraphernalia
that's prohibited under our code, we can...
I don't understand your answer. You're saying we can, but we can't. I don't understand the difference. You're saying we can't do it without an ordinance, but if there's a prohibition, we can. I don't understand.
Okay, let me try again.
So right now, the city has code, has ordinances that prohibit certain products and prohibit
the sale of certain products.
And so we can enforce those, any violations of those.
What we don't have is any, well, we have an ordinance that regulates tobacco retailers
but it points to the county and so there's no effect to that. That's what we can't enforce.
We cannot go against any tobacco retailers for not having a
And then I have a question. So if I'm understanding correctly, then if there are stores, I won't
even call them tobacco retailers because they don't have permits at this time. So if there
are stores that are selling flavored vapes, e-cigs, which are currently illegal in the
of California and we have so that is a prohibition then by what you're saying
could we not now, could we not now, then could we not now be allowing our PD to go
in and enforce that now?
Would someone speak to that? I'm happy to speak to that.
So vapes and e-cigarettes are not banned at the state only flavored tobacco
was banned at the state so that's one thing. But yeah,
Yes, we could. We have not traditionally done a proactive code enforcement or proactive seeking
out of this. So that would be a change in practice. If we did do it, we could do it. Our current
administrative citation for having a prohibited product is $100 for the first violation, $200
for the second violation and $500 for the third violation. So I don't think we can issue
do that on every single one.
I think it's just you have it or you don't.
So it's not a great stick.
What do you mean?
Do you mean per violation, per visit?
It's not like you get to give $100 violation
for every single flavored tobacco product that
is in the store.
OK, it's for the store.
Yeah, one flavored tobacco citation.
But then are they then confiscated?
Can someone just explain?
The California Department of Public Health
doesn't force.
And they can confiscate. You would have to report that. We wouldn't be involved in that.
And so that would be within their own enforcement actions, and we wouldn't have anything to do with that.
But you could report it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Amanda. Councilmember Gee.
Unfortunately, having to make a motion to extend the meeting to 1230.
Is there a second?
Thank you. That was Gee and Sturkin. Could we get a quick vote, please?
Motion
passes with six votes. Councilmember Chiu is absent.
Thank you for the motion.
Councilmember Serkin, your light's still on. That's one final comment from myself.
That's really helpful clarification because I think I
That was under the impression that we could not enforce, period, currently. And that's not
the case with specifically flavored tobacco products. And so to Councilmember Gee's concern and our
shared concern about prioritizing youth and families and protecting them from the danger
of tobacco, we could do something about that right now in answer him while we explore
or our alternative option.
So I just wanted to clarify that that is an option
that we are choosing either to pursue or not.
And that's all I wanted to say.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Serkin.
And I just wanted to clarify,
wasn't it our understanding
that some of these problem actors
were getting targeted enforcement
and were just able to address these fines
with their income that they're already receiving.
Yes, and so, you know, Ms. Anthony kind of identified what those fines are, and some of the businesses just see that as the cost of doing business.
And so it's why it hasn't been very effective.
And I know, Amanda, you had mentioned $500 was the top fine.
then is there within the current framework an ability to,
there is no permit, so it's not like you could strip them of their license,
but would it just go back to $100 or how does that work?
No, the third and subsequent violations would be $500,
so it would be continuing to go out, and if they
continued to sell it, then it would be another $500 and another $500.
The discussion is how often do you visit? I mean, if you had the capacity,
you could visit every day. But I don't know that we have the capacity to do that.
Right, okay.
One last question, Mayor.
Then, that just gave me an idea. So I'm thinking, if you said, if it's a 500, who sets this fine,
who determines this fine and is there ability for the fine to be, I mean clearly if it's
being considered as a cost to play to play, then it's too low, then it's not high enough.
So who sets this fine?
I believe right now it is set by resolution. And so we could bring
a resolution to update that, we would have to do some research on what other cities are
using as fines, and we could use the county's framework as a possibility.
Thank you.
Just to finish then, that actually, that seems like, I don't know why we wouldn't be doing
that in parallel, because it seems like that there is this fallacy that we've had
this like either do your own or the county or you can't afford to do it, but it appears
that we actually have resources to address the need which is of
I'm concerned to all of us, which is people under 21, youth getting flavored tobacco. So it seems like we have enforcement mechanisms, and then we also have the ability as a council to maybe make a new resolution that has a higher fee where these businesses wouldn't think it's just a slap in the wrist.
And it could also be revenue generating and address some of the problems we're having in our future. So I would like to put that out there. Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Weissmeyer.
Again, I just want to add that that's that runway of two years.
It's not like we click our fingers, we have to draft, we have to study, we have to do all that.
And I don't think we're looking enough at the fact that there is tobacco-less, flavorless hookah.
And, you know, you're going like, on the one side,
14-year-olds easily accessing super illegal stuff that's highly profitable, even if we made
the fine, $2,000. This is highly, highly profitable to do because it's the entire Bay Area that
comes to Redwood City. None of these tobacco places exist in Atherton, Menlo Park, San Carlos.
They run out of town on a rail, 50, you know, we have 15 of them in Redwood City and everyone knows that.
So they're highly profitable. They've got customers from all over the county, 800,000 people.
So I just don't want us to think that, oh, we have a snap of the finger solution.
Again, this is like two years away at the soonest, and I don't think we've put
There's enough on flavorless hookah, tobacco-less hookah, which San Francisco already does.
Thank you, Vice Mayor, Councilor Schurkin.
Final, final comment, I swear. So I support Councilor Morrardia's suggestion or line of
questioning. I think that it sounds like that is a resolution that could be done much
more quickly in parallel with a city-run program as an interim solution to discourage these
businesses from continuing to sell flavored tobacco. So I just wanted to throw my support
behind that.
Thank you both.
Council Member Howard.
I also don't want, I don't want us to forget that we're talking about using our police department.
That really concerns me. We have so many issues going on in our community.
I'm sorry. I can't support this because, I mean, from a public health aspect, I've made that clear.
But to have our police department be doing this job when the county is already offering to do it.
I can't support that. That doesn't make economic sense.
I think that would just, well, if we're going to have trouble, we're going to have even more
trouble because that money is just going to add up and add up.
I don't think you're going to make it back just by raising the fines.
I think that's just very naive to think that.
So I can't support doing this, I just can't.
Here we are talking about being disciplined and trying to save our money and make sure
that we run a very sustainable community and we're not doing that if we go down this path.
I'm sorry, I respect every one of you and you're all entitled to the opinion, but that's how I personally feel.
Thank you, Council Member Howard. State Manager.
Yeah, I'd like to clarify my comment earlier on, so about 20 minutes ago when I mentioned the police department, I was just trying to think on the five who in this organization would even have the ability to scratch the surface on this and it would be the police department.
I didn't want anybody to take that, we absolutely don't have the capacity to do that.
You know, Chief Bell isn't here to ask, I mean, what I was talking about in so far as we get a lot of complaints from smoke shops,
not in Hookah Lounge, but from smoke shops.
And I think we have the right to investigate those complaints outside of a regulatory framework of an ordinance.
And so that's what I was getting at by saying we could in the event, you know, if there was like an emergency, the police department could step in.
I too don't think it's the best use of the police department to do it.
I think it would be, you know.
Overly expensive. Also, it's very similar to the rent control discussion in that what happens
if there's five litigations? Wrong hook for that. You know, if there's 55 shops and we're
going to go proactively code and force, you know, and there's the counties heading towards
litigation on several fronts right now in some of these shops. Again, not the hook
or establishments. I'm not mentioning that. It could turn into an open end of check.
Very similar. One thing that's nice about the county ordinance is they're on the
hook for the litigation, you know,
or maybe there's some reason why we have to get involved,
but for the most part, that's my biggest fear.
I know a cause is the litigation of enforcement
on this program.
Yes, I just wanted to proffer that and clarify.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
And I'm seeing anyone else's lights on.
Again, I'll take the mic and I said this
at our last meeting that there are a few things
things going on here.
There aren't words, but how unfortunate it is that hookah lounges who have been good actors, who are great businesses in Robert City,
are being pulled into this. And that being said, I appreciate my colleagues helping us get creative and think about this, right?
I was right there with you all when we had this conversation last fall because I see the value of these businesses.
And I'm stuck on these businesses, these 15 businesses who are knowingly and openly breaking
the law and selling to a vulnerable population of people who don't know what they're doing.
I have a hard time imagining that if we raise the fines, that they're not going to keep
paying those fines, right?
We need the ability to shut these businesses down and having the permit right is our ability to pull
Roll that and make sure it doesn't happen again, right? But although, you know, charging these
folks some fines in the interim could be a revenue driver, we would just, we would be allowing
a problem to continue going on. So that just, that gives me such heartburn.
And we've put
in so much time to get to this point. And so I,
it's a tough call, but I'm sticking
with staff's recommendation. And to our hookah lounges, I'll make this commitment
that with the economic vitality plan,
I mean, absolutely, I think as council members,
as policy makers, we could think about
more creative ways to help support your businesses, right?
And I'll leave it there.
I think there are more opportunities.
I know the non-tobacco hookah
isn't the hot idea that I think we all would love it to be
as a replacement.
But I think we have put in so much time and staff time and council conversations that we've got to make that worth it.
So I'll stick with staff's recommendation and I'll make that motion.
Second.
Thank you. That was a motion for myself, a second from the vice mayor. Could we get an electronic vote please?
The
motion passes with four votes. Council Member Sturkin and Council Member Padilla
Opposed and Council Member Chu with absent. Thank you.
And thank you to my
colleagues. Thank you to our public commenters again for being here.
Thank
you all the time for public
Common ended. So we're going to continue with our meeting here.
Thank you. We're going to get
back to our item here at the dais. And we're moving right into 11B, our sewer service charges.
And we will give folks a few minutes to walk out.
Good evening, Mayor Martinez. Savio's members of city council and members of the public.
I'm Linda Chang and I'm filling in as the acting superintendent for Wastewater at
public works.
Thank you for the opportunity to present a proposal to you
this evening for continuing to work with us.
Continuing the collection of sewer service charges on the tax roll for residential customers
in the upcoming fiscal year.
As we approach the fifth consecutive year for this initiative,
this item may be quite familiar. Prior to the public hearing and council discussion, I will
provide a brief background about the reasons for this initiative and share an update on
the progress of this five-year pilot program.
The main question staff is bringing for council
consideration is if there is support to continue billing sewer service charges on the county tax
roll for residential customers with one dwelling unit per parcel in the upcoming 2026-27 fiscal year.
The initiative to collect sewer charges on the property tax roll stemmed from an effort to
improve efficiencies and reduce costs for the city. The city
City council first approved the collection of sewer charges on the tax roll for certain
residential customers beginning with fiscal year 2022-23. The program began as a five-year
pilot program and next year marks our fifth year. The notable anticipated benefits of this
initiative first and foremost was revenue reliability. The county guarantees payment
of the total amount submitted for collection and so in addition to greatly
aiding and forecasting and budgeting this revenue reliability also aids in
improving the city's financial position which is particularly beneficial when
the city is considering pursuing outside financing such as bonds. A dependable
revenue source has the potential to improve the city's bond rating which
could lead to lower interest rates and a subsequent benefit of cost
savings during
this five-year pilot period.
Staff is monitoring trends in two areas to ensure this initiative is not having an unintended
consequence for our customers. One trend we are monitoring is the enrollment rate in our
utility rate assistance program, which provides utility credits for eligible customers on their
utility bill and operates on a calendar year basis. The chart graphs the enrollment of
our sewer utility rate credits over the last six years,
with 2021 being the year
before this billing initiative went into effect.
We have not observed a marked change
in the rate of enrollment over the course
of this pilot program period
to raise concerns about this transition
and the billing method.
The number of customers receiving sewer utility credits
through our utility rate assistance program
across the last five years
suggests that many parcel owners
have adjusted to the new billing method and that there are no significant impacts to vulnerable communities.
Staff can attribute to the change in sewer billing method.
Staff will continue to assess the program annually, track trends and fluctuations in default rates,
and you wrap enrollment numbers and share any learnings and recommendations as appropriate.
In addition to the enrollment rate, another metric we track is the county's property tax default rate,
which is made available following the end of each fiscal year from the county.
A parcel is considered in default if one or both of the property tax installments payments
is outstanding.
Staff receive a list of parcels in default from the county, and this list is refined to
reflect only our sewer customers, which we compare year to year.
Even before the introduction of the pilot program to the most current data for fiscal
year 24-25, the property tax default rate has remained consistently below half a percentage.
For the current fiscal year 2025-26 is not yet available as the county only considers a
parcel in default if the entire property tax bill remains unpaid as of June 30th of the
billing year. So I'm pleased to report for neither of these two metrics that we are currently
tracking that the utility rate assistance program enrollment nor the rate of default
out from the county seem to indicate concerns
with transition of the billing method.
So in closing staff's recommendation
is that following the public hearing
if there is no majority protest for the city council
to consider adopting a resolution
to continue the collection of sewer charges
for one dwelling unit parcels on the tax roll
for next fiscal year 2026, 27.
This concludes my presentation
and I would like to thank you very much.
Thank you for the opportunity to share the information to you. I'll now turn this back to Mayor Martinez-Savaios.
Thank you, Linda, for the great presentation and for sticking with us. Let's open the public hearing for any public comment.
Thank you, Mayor. No comment cards. So last call in person or on Zoom for public comment on this item.
Seeing none, Mayor, I'll turn it back to you.
Great.
Thank you, City Clerk. And I'll bring it back to the City Council. Council Member Howard.
Great report. Great results. I'd like to make the motion that we, I guess that we support to continue the billing sewer service charges on the county tax roll for residential customers with one dwelling unit per parcel in fiscal year 26-27.
Second.
Great, that was a motion.
Council Member Howard.
Second from councilmember G. Could we get a vote, please?
And while we're waiting for the vote, I will confirm that a majority protest was not received for this. Thank you.
Thank you, City Clerk.
Motion passes with six votes. Councilmember Chu is absent. Thank you.
Thank you, colleagues. Thank you again, Linda. Appreciate the presentation.
And we'll move right into item 12, matters of council interest.
12A, city council member report of meetings and conferences attended.
Not seeing anyone, we'll keep going to 12B, and we have an update from our Climate Action Subcommittee,
and I'll pass things over to Council Member Sturkin.
Thank you, Mayor. The Climate Action Subcommittee met on Wednesday, May 20th.
San Mateo County Sustainability Staff presented on compost for climate solutions,
a program to meet the city's recovered organic product procurement requirements under SB 1383.
3.
An economic development staff presented on the Innovate Rebit City Speaker Series inaugural event featuring a
Rebit City-based heat pump company. And public works staff presented an update on the Bay Area
Air Districts Regulation 9, Rule 6, which regulates emissions from boilers and water heaters. The
committee received and discussed these presentations and provided their comments to the presenters.
Thank you, Council Member. We'll go to Council Member Gee for transportation.
Thank you, Mayor.
The Transportation and Mobility Subcommittee
comprised of Mayor Martina Cevillos,
Council Member Chu and myself, met on June 2nd.
Staff and the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, TA,
provided an update on the development
of the Peninsula Shuttle Program Optimization
and Funding Strategy for the years 2028 to 2033 funding cycle.
The subcommittee suggested modifications to two routes,
encouraged early discussions with private funding partners
regarding future local match requirements
are recommended that the TAU
Is a data-driven approach when selecting final routes and reconsider the proposed seven-year
local match commitment. The subcommittee inquired about the Caltrans El Camino Real Shop Bike
Safety Project and Broadway Pedestrian Mall. Thank you, Council Member, and quickly an
update on the ad hoc committee on special events. The ad hoc, which is comprised of
myself, Council Members Chu and Council Member Padilla, met on May 21st to discuss plans
for the upcoming summer schedule of community events.
The committee will reconvene in the fall
to assess the summer events.
The soccer on the square series is scheduled
to begin Tuesday, June 23rd and multiple watch parties
are scheduled throughout the World Cup tournament
through the final on Sunday, July 19th.
Fan zone match day events will include big screen viewing,
beer and wine sales by the Robert City Parks
and Art Foundation, Cornhole
and an inflatable play area.
And a select number of events will include a youth interactive zone with soccer club activations,
climbing walls, lawn games, and slack lines for kids. In addition, on Saturday, July 18,
Redwood City will activate its new entertainment zone as a part of the final weekend of playoffs.
The entertainment zone will allow adults to purchase alcoholic beverages from participating
businesses and consume them on Broadway between Jefferson and Main Streets from 11.30 a.m.
to 1 p.m. that day in coordination with the July 18th soccer on the square watch party.
And I'll turn things over to our city manager for 12 C.
No report tonight. Thank you. Thank you. And that leads us to adjournment.
Thank you everybody for joining us this evening and now morning and we'll see you June 22nd.