Okay, let's call the town council
meeting of February 10th, 2026 to order.
Jen, will you take role?
>> Council member Aberish. Council member
Brown
>> here. Council
>> member Gold, Council Member Wall, Mayor
Donowski
>> here. Council member Aberish, will you
lead us in the pledge of allegiance?
Thank you, sir.
Moving on to communications. Uh, this is
public comment, so persons wishing to
address the council in any matter not on
the published agenda are invited to do
so. Please note, however, that the
council is not able to undertake any
extended discussions or act on
non-aggendaized items. Such issues can
be referred to staff for a future agenda
placement. This period is limited to
five persons, three minutes each. Is
there anyone in the audience that would
like to speak on any issue not on the
published agenda?
Seeing none and seeing none in the Zoom
room, we will move on. Uh we are
fortunate tonight to have a presentation
from the youth civics program. And I
believe Moira, am I handing this off to
you? Okay.
All right. Hi, council members. Um, we
have now concluded our youth, our first
Woodside youth civics program, and we
wanted to share a little bit about the
program with you, but it was very
successful. It was so much fun. Um, just
a reminder, it was grades 3rd through
6th. It was five days over five weeks
and we covered basic town governance. We
covered um safety and emergency
preparedness. We covered businesses and
local nonprofits um and kind of how
everything works together. And we did a
mock town council meeting um and the
topic was whether a um it was Oak Meadow
Ice Cream could um open up their
business in the meadow over here. And it
was um de uh the planning commission
said no. And so it was appealed to town
council and that was what these kids um
some of them played members of town
council, some of them were Oak Meadow
ice cream, some of them were um
environmental groups that were opposed
to cutting down the oak trees. So um it
was a really successful program. Um and
some of our uh students have prepared um
things to share about the program.
Hi Woodside. I'm Grant Simcover and I go
to Woodside School and I am in third
grade. I love doing the youth civics
program. If it felt good to get a say in
the debate and get to learn all about
Woodside. A special thank you to Mora
for putting on this program and making
it so fun. I learned so much.
Hi, my name is Callie Berman and I go to
Woodside school at third grade. I loved
the Woodside civics because it was so
fun. My favorite part was pretending to
be a real town council, meeting and
learning about how the decisions are
discussed and made.
Um, my name is Alex and and I'm in third
grade and and one thing I enjoyed about
the civics program was um you got the opportunity to like be on the town
council and you got to make decisions
like a real town council member.
» I am Andre Jing I mean fifth grade. I I
really thank you for giving us a chance
to learn how our town government works.
Thank you guys so much.
>> Well, and thank you all. Very special
thank you to our young residents for
your interest in participating in this
program and learning a little bit about
how local government serves the
community. Uh I'll be interested to
learn more about your favorite parts of
uh which role you thought was the
favorite. Um and a special thank you to
the volunteer committee for uh this
inaugural effort. This is a lot of work.
Thank you all. Uh and very creative and
wonderful to see. Uh, I also want to
acknowledge council member Wall and
former mayor Shaw and town men manager
Led Better for their participation. Uh,
really a wonderful thing and uh, really
a wonderful step forward. So, thank you
all for your leadership and involvement
and uh, you don't mind, I'd love to come
shake your hand. So,
» and we have certificates for completing
the program for you guys.
want to go there?
>> He's telling us to go over here.
>> Okay, we get the the committee.
>> Sure.
Okay, three, two, one. Smile everyone.
Lots of pictures.
» Perfect. Thank you very much.
» You left him hanging. You left him
hanging. Don't leave him hanging.
This is this is Stalia Luben. I just
want to add one thing uh that Chris Shaw
did a great job as mayor and in fact we
were talking he and I were talking at at
the end of the meeting and he said maybe
we should think about doing something
like this for adults. Um because a lot
of he said the same thing. I I get
people at the store saying, "Oh, you
know about the town. Tell me this." and uh he says maybe we should do an
adult class and actually Melissa told me
that Half Moon Bay actually has a
similar program. So we're going to put
our thinking caps on and maybe next year
we'll we'll do two programs.
>> Interesting. Well, thank you.
>> Nice.
>> Uh okay.
Well, moving right along. We've got
appointments for planning commission for
districts one and three and uh
Sure.
I think that's if everyone's all right
with that, we'll just jump over and do
town appointments first while we wait
for Commissioner Gar to arrive.
>> Sure.
>> Uh so who do which which of you lovely
subappoint committee folks are
>> happy to let Paul have the floor.
>> Okay. Okay.
Um Okay. So um we had an extensive uh
agenda here. Every year we go through
and um ask the committees for reports.
We got I think eight of the nine if I'm
not mistaken. Maybe it was seven of the
nine. I think I got that. Um and for the
most part they are reappoint requests
from I'm not going to go through them
because it's in the packet, but they're
reappoint requests for livestock and
equin recreation committee trails
committee etc. all the way through.
There were however two new applicants
and we should probably take those in. By
the way, the committee um uh recommends
that the reappoint requests be honored.
Um I would point out that there were
some attendance issues. There always
are. Um most of them were excusable or
excused. Uh there were some hardship
cases uh for for the few that actually
were issues. But in every single case,
the chair of the committees had
recommended uh were supporting the
reappoints on these. and they also gave
a uh um a little bit of summary of what
was going on in their committees and I
wanted to thank them for that. So the
two that we have um are uh and we should
probably take them in order. Uh the
first one is for uh the trails
committee. Uh there are 15 members.
There are four that are being uh
reappointed as I mentioned. Those are
not um
u controversial. Uh but uh there's a new
member, Veronica
Pichchafuko. I think I'm pronouncing
that correctly. Pichafuko. I don't know
if I'm doing that correctly. Um and she
did include and and comes with the um
recommendation of the committee chair
and uh based on that uh the
recommendation is to approve her
appointment to the trails committee. She
would be the fifth person and there's
two vacancies uh after after that. Do we
need to do anything special or you want
me to do these as a single motion?
Everything just take them at one. Okay,
great.
>> The uh second appointment uh she happens
to be here tonight. Leanne Gilbert uh
for the circulation committee. There are
nine members uh in total. There are four
that are expiring. Uh there's been a
suggestion of a reappoint or
recommendation that we reappoint um the
four that are up. One of them is here
tonight, Dan Duker. I see him in the
back of the room. Um, and uh, there's
one new applicant, and that, as I
mentioned, is Leanne Gilbert. Um, and,
uh, I'm not so sure that there's any
controversies about any of this, but,
um, I'll open it up to the, uh, floor if
there's any issues or discussions or I
don't want to cut off Leanne if she
wants to say anything, but I'll
>> she doesn't have to.
>> Any questions from councel?
None. Any members of the public or any
of the applicants? on either applicant.
Yes.
>> Then I think we are ready for a motion.
Subcommittee.
>> I would like to make a motion that we
appoint Leanne Gilbert to the
circulation committee and that we
appoint uh Veronica
to the trails committee.
>> Second.
>> Council member Alberish.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Brown.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Gold.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Wall. Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes. Thank you. And um thank you. Yes.
Congratulations and welcome aboard
>> and to
uh Veronica.
>> I see Matt Gar in the Zoom room. So I
think we're going to move into the uh
interview and appointment of planning
commissioners. And uh before we begin, I
just want to acknowledge that uh this
moment is usually one of these moments
that I actually dread every year. And I think I'm not alone, particularly when
we have three great candidates for two
spots. Uh but uh we received some notice
uh yesterday uh from Commissioner
Atville who's in the room right now that
he had withdrawn his application stating
that he has tremendous respect for
Commissioner Gar and Citizen Evans and
uh that with that sincere interest he
saw no reason to run against those
proposed candidates. So um I just want
to take a moment to thank Commissioner
Apple for his service to the community.
He was very gracious several years ago
uh willing to step in uh in an out ofd
district appointment and uh we're very
appreciative of that and it was been an
absolute honor to have you in that spot
and we certainly hope that in district
or out of district in the future that we
get that opportunity again. So thank you
again. Uh we will make sure to get a
proclamation and an honor coin in your
pocket in the next couple of weeks and
uh and uh once again thank you for your
service to the community on planning and trails over over the last eight
years. really really appreciate it. Uh
we're going to take the applicants now
for uh planning commission in the order
that they are listed on the agenda. So
uh each applicant has the opportunity to
speak. There'll be questions from
council. We'll open it up to any
questions or comments from public and
then we will uh deliberate and vote with
the two candidates that we have for
these two spots. So uh Mr. Evans, you
are up first. Welcome.
>> Okay. Um, just want to thank uh the
actually the previous planning
commissions for doing a lot of the hard
yards over the last couple years. The
housing element and subsequent fallout
from that was was not easy. Um, and so
watching that uh gave me a lot of lot
more respect for the planning commission
than I had before. Not that I didn't
have it, that was hard. Um, and late
nights for those guys. Um, so for for
this round, I really just feel like
every citizen should do something for
their town over time. Um, and this is
actually a really good time for me. My
18-year-old's going off to college, so I
have little less kids at home. Works
kind of slow right now, so I'm like,
"Hey, I can actually do something." Um,
so this is actually really good time.
And Matt and company got through the
hard stuff last year. So, um I just look
forward to uh doing what I can to help
the town and and really just like help
folks who have to go to the planning
commission just find a way to make it
work. Um I think that's really the the
town's codes and and uh
guidance is really not hard to follow.
Um but there's always as as we've sort
of found out, there's nothing in this
town that's straight or flat or easy to
get around. So there's always going to
be deviations. um there's always sort of
way to find neutral ground and I know
that the building department and
planning department have have usually
bring the planning commission very
thoughtful recommendations and views on
that. So let's look forward to do my
part.
>> Wonderful. Thank you very much. Uh
questions for Mr. Evans.
» Great. Mr. Evans, uh you're 100% right.
There was a lot of work done in 2024.
It was finalized in 24 but it started
long before that.
>> Yeah. So there's been a lot of done a
lot of work done so far on the housing
element.
>> However, there is still a lot of hard
work ahead of us
>> um to implement the programs and other
elements of our housing element. So just
curious to hear your perspective on on
the housing element and and how you
would approach um the implementing
portion of the hard work ahead of us.
>> Yeah. So, you know, look looking at the
overall uh goal of the element of
adding, you know, over 300 units to
Woodside, I just see it as really hard.
Um, no matter what happens uh or what
the state says or must be done you, it
boils down to every individual owner of
a lot has to decide what they want to do
with their lot. And if we don't have
hundreds of people who want to expand
their lots, I'm not sure how it's going
to change. Um so so a lot of the I know
there in the in the process of the
housing element there was a lot of sort
of fear that things would really change
radically. Um I I really I strug I
really struggled to see how how we're
going to achieve the 300 first of all.
Um and then what's going to happen if
the state says oh you have to do it and
like well you can't make private
citizens do what they don't want to do.
So I I think what's the the challenge I
see is actually at town council level um
dealing with if the state decides to get
draconian about you know thou shalt meet
our goals um because I do think that the you know the town through these
different processes have found a way to
you know allow this to expand if we
would but I just don't see anybody doing
it. Um so I really see the challenge
really on town council shoulders and
less on some of the planning
commissions.
» Any other questions?
you know, you you kind of hit on this
out of the gates uh with your timing uh
and why this is a good time for you to
be able to give back. Uh you know, we
had um as we do every time we do
appointments, we had the attendance
records sent to everybody on council and
it was elucidating in a couple ways. One
is that the planning commission is
probably meeting 12 to 14 times a year
now. So maybe every other meeting or so
is almost canled at this point.
>> Yeah. So there's a question there about
maybe ultimately as subjective design
review changes what can be absorbed from
ASRB and we'll we'll see how that
unfolds. That's not the question. Um but
people in general because they live busy
lives with work and family and town um
missing three or four meetings a year
out of those 12 to 14 and we only have
five people on the council uh
commission. So, um, your ability, you
think, to meet, uh, the obligation, if
you will, to be at these meetings
engaged and informed and in attendance,
I I'm just getting to know you a little
bit, so I just I don't know. But, uh,
how do you sort of think about how
you're going to approach this and
>> in terms of being engaged?
>> Really, it's a a a it's about
priorities, just sort of putting on the
calendar and sort of mapping out sort of
work constraints around it.
in person as much as possible. And if
you're not in person, then you can
always be on Zoom, which is, you know,
great since pandemic. Um, and secondly,
I I uh just sort of more about me is I I
tend to sleep four or five hours a
night, and that's my normal.
>> Um, and so there's a lot of time to do
things like, you know, review decks and
review uh people's proposals. That's,
you know, when the rest of the world is
sleeping, I do that. Um, and so I really
see there's if if there's a meeting
coming up, I kind of have two hours in
the morning to myself to sort of do what
I need to do. Um, and so that's what I
would envision covering the research
part because it is important for the
planning commission to actually read um,
everything and actually interact with
the building and planning uh,
departments of town to make sure you
have the right questions asked so you're
not coming in with one thought and then
you're completely missing the actual
point of the application. So I agree. I
think it's possible.
>> Thank you. Insomnia has
>> and one and one less kid is so much
time.
>> It's what?
>> So much time.
My uh my my 18-year-old just is uh he
takes he takes a lot of effort.
>> Yeah. So, I get it. I'm a new empty
neester myself. So, uh it's unbelievable
what you can get done when you don't
have children around. Um okay. Any other
questions for Mr. Evans?
Okay. Thank you. Well, Mr. Gar seeking
reappoint, sir. Commissioner Gar.
>> Hello.
>> Hi.
» So, why do you want to be reappointed,
Mr. Gar?
>> Why do I want to be reappointed? Um,
I've had a lot of fun the last four
years, plus or minus. Um, I mean, no, on
a on a serious note, I mean, it's it's
been, I think, a pleasure to to serve
the town on on planning commission. Um,
you know, a number of different issues.
I think number one housing element has
been
it's been it's been interesting right um
just balancing the needs of of the town
to the state uh has been quite the uh
quite the experience so to speak but I I
think you know Woodside is is is is sort
of going through what I what I think is
an evolution in terms of how we respond
um it's gone from you know when I joined
it was in the wake of of some of the
national news stories that we had
and and I think we've found a little bit
more pragmatic spot uh in terms of of
where we sit. So, you know, in the time
on the council, we've looked at or
excuse me, commission. I've looked at
how we approach more housing through
things like ADUs. I've been through, you
know, all of the the passionate
discussions on multif family housing,
where does that live, etc. Uh no pun
intended. And and I think we're not done
with that work, right? So I I still
looking at things and as I've said in
some of the meetings I think you know
what is it six years from now we're
still in a really bad spot and where you
know if we look at the restrictions on
building a town center for example uh we
just don't have really a solution. We've
sort of maxed out what we can do with
the suboptimal sites that nobody was
happy about. Uh, and so I'm, you know,
quite passionate about both serving on
the the TECAP as well as on planning
commission to kind of work our ways
through that. Um, so those are the
things that I find kind of most most
interesting and want to, you know,
continue to represent um the talent on those aspects. And there's also, you
know, the more kind of day-to-day
projects as well.
Uh, for those, I feel like in general,
it's it's important to have a, you know,
relatively objective approach to those
and and be predictable. and that's what
I try to do on the council or excuse me
on the commission and and would like to
continue to do that.
>> Wonderful. Thank you.
>> Welcome.
>> Questions for Commissioner Gar?
» In the spirit of fairness, I'll ask you
the same question I asked uh Mr. Evans.
So uh as you are well aware, there's
been a ton of work done in the last few
years to get to the point of having of
having a housing element. what's your
perspective on the next few years um
where the attention is now turned to
housing element compliance and and
implementation?
>> Yeah, I mean I think there's I think
there's actually two main parts to that.
There's what we do with the the one that
we have now, you know, had uh had gone
through and also how we prep for the
next cycle. So, I think on the I I'll
take the next cycle first, which is I
mean I think they're making sure that we
get something out of the the TCAP. Uh
you know, there's going to I mean, my
personal view on this is there's going
to need to be some decisions made or
potentially voter initiatives to just
kind of change the the sort of overly
constrained problem set for for how we,
you know, set ourselves up for success
next time around. I think we heard from
a lot of um folks in the town how just I
mean no one likes the outcome or I don't
want to say no one but a lot of people
don't like the outcome. So I want to
make sure that we that we take those
steps and frankly don't have what
happened the last time we did a town
center plan and it didn't really yield
anything. So I think we need to kind of
do better. Um so that's that's kind of
one thing. Um, on the the other bit, I
mean, we obviously need to
make progress on the on the uh the sites
where the zoning has been has been
passed. Um, we all know that each of
those sites also isn't necessarily like
they they all have their challenges.
>> Uh, so I think
I don't know exactly how we do that. Uh,
but you know figuring out do we proceed
with them? Is that the right set of of
things? Do we look at other options and
try to make substitutions? I mean, I've recently moved to to Ray Mundo and,
you know, continued to look at the site
there and you just look at like the
economics of a a $2.5 million sewer
connection and a uh a seismic fault that
runs through the middle of the site and
it's like, is this going to work? So,
you know, we have these things, but I
think we need to to look at each of them
on its on its merits and figure out how
we go forward. and if it doesn't pencil
out, uh, we need to be willing to have
the conversations, figure out what else
to do.
>> So, on behalf of District 2, welcome to
District 2. Um, spanning from Wonderlick
to Hutter to Edgewood Parks, most
beautiful terrain in the country. Um,
you mentioned the, uh, suboptimal sites
and of course, Raundo is one of them.
Um,
>> you have moved within 500 ft of the
property line of the density site there.
So, you're going to presumably have to
recuse in in that discussion. I'll look
to Kai if that's correct. Yeah. So,
>> uh
it's a big issue for that neighborhood.
On one hand, they're already represented
by Commissioner Weaver.
>> Uh but your neighbors are going to be, I
guess, looking to you, too, and
wondering, you know, what kind of voice
you're going to be able to provide. And
I'm just I It struck me as interesting.
What
>> are you okay with that? you're you're if
you serve on planning, you'll have to
recuse on one of the major sites in the
housing element um in the coming forward
period. It's one of many issues, but it
is it's going to be a polarizing issue
for the neighborhood you moved into.
>> Yeah. I mean, am I okay with it? It kind
of it I kind of have to be because I
don't think there's any that that's the
you know, that's that's the that's the nature of the situation. I mean, I
certainly you know, forget with recusing
if I can I believe you can still
participate as a private citizen. So,
you know, I would would be looking to do
that. You know, of course, to the to the
extent that it's ethical and feasible.
Um, you know, it's interesting also, I
remember, you know, folks
uh during the original meetings talking
about, you know, the if you lived here,
it' be different. And I've been
reflecting on that a lot as well.
>> And it's interesting. I mean, my my
personal point of view on it is like we
still have an obligation to the state.
If it's it's, you know, adjacent to
where I live, you know, so so be it as
well. Um but I think you know what I
would try to bring to that is just I
mean finding the right the right
solution whether that's is it that site
is it other sites uh or if it is that
site that we find kind of the best you
know design and it it still is as close
to the um general plan as possible.
>> Great. Thank you.
>> Yeah. Any other questions for
Commissioner Gar?
>> All right. Seeing none, we will just
open public comment. We received a lot
of uh wonderful notes endorsing our
candidates, but are there any members of
the public here or in the Zoom room that
would like to make any additional
comments in the appointment process?
Okay. Well, seeing none, uh do we have a
motion? The council
>> like to move to approve the appointments
of uh Mr. Evans and Mr. Gar to the
planning commission.
>> Second.
>> Council member Alberish. Yes.
>> Council member Brown.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Gold. Yes. Council member
Wall. Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes. Thank you. Uh, Commissioners Gar
and Evan, welcome. Congratulations.
You've got a big job ahead of you. So,
we look forward to working with you and
thanks for your willingness to serve the
community of Woodside. So, welcome
aboard.
Okay,
moving right along. Um,
town manager report, Mr. Lead Better.
>> Yeah, thank you, Mr. for mayor and uh
the Woodside Town Council. So, town
staff has received word from
Representative Licardo's office that the
town will be receiving $250,000
for a bridge project that was submitted
for um a few months before my start
date. I think there's a little bit of
confusion and so I'll touch base with
public works um about which bridge
exactly is is to be funded. Uh the town
has been receiving a lot of
communication about poor driving
decisions and close calls in front of
the uh Woodside Elementary School during
drop off. And so the sheriff's office
has been making their presence felt at
this location based off of uh the
engagement and and uh videos that were
being provided by the school. Uh we are
working with good city to finalize a
date and it looks like March or April
based off of some other needs we have
for the council uh for an update by Good
City on the TCAP coming to town council.
Once again, that'll be either in March
or April.
On the evening of February 3rd, I did
attend the Woodside Hills HOA meeting
with fire with the fire marshall from
the fire protection district. I give an
update just on town operations as
pertaining to that district and kind of
the sphere of influence around that
district. And then the focal point was
on uh the instigation of the contract
that you guys had signed in the past to
do vegetation removal along the right of
way is going to start on Woodside Road
in the coming month.
The town uh continues to receive uh
inquiries and interest into a more
aggressive approach to code enforcement
with a couple abandoned properties in
Woodside as well. That's all I have this
evening.
>> Thank you. Questions for Mr. Led Better?
Hearing none, any public comment on any
of those items?
Seeing none, we will close the report.
Thank you.
Uh, next up, consent calendar. Moving
right along this evening. Uh, all items
on the consent are considered routine,
will be approved with one roll call
motion unless an item is pulled and and
transferred to the regular agenda or
just pulled for further discussion by
council. Are there any member any any
items on the consent agenda that any
member of council would like to pull for
further discussion? Two and three. Wow.
Okay. Uh, can we get a motion on item
one
to pass item one?
>> We'll move to pass item one.
>> Register of demand.
>> So, I will move to pass a register of
demands against the town Woodside from
January 16 through January 31, 2026.
» I'll second. Thank you.
>> Council member Aberish.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Brown.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Gold. Yes,
>> Council Member Wall.
>> Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes. Moving in order. Uh, item number
two, Council Member Wall.
>> Okay, I think this one should be pretty
quick. Um, so item two is approval of a
records and information management
policy and updated records retention
schedule. I thought the staff report
gave um an excellent summary of the
background, but I was just hoping uh the
town manager um could kind of give an
exact summary of the policy and the new
policy and the retention schedule.
Uh yeah, I don't know if I'll be able to
give you a summary. Ultimately, it was a
an an item that started or predates me.
And so, a consultant was hired uh to
come in and work with not just myself,
but the the attorney's office and then
every department had through the clerk's
office ultimately uh participated over
the last I'd say um predating me. So, uh
over the last year, I believe on this
policy. We do have the gentleman that
helped curate this policy, I believe,
available to answer any questions, but
ultimately uh I don't think that I would
be capable of summarizing the policy. We
will be rolling the policy out with uh
two major events, I guess you can say.
We have a records issue here ultimately.
Uh we need to really clean out the
office and make a determination as to
what is redundant and what needs to meet
within the policy on being stored. And
so you guys at the last meeting had
approved um staff augmentation and so
we're meeting with CSG tomorrow uh to go
over this policy and kind of explain our
needs to uh the possibility of that
part-time employee and then staff is
currently working on a basically a
spring clean where we will incorporate
rolling out this policy with the staff
in in August. But um I don't know if
there's any specific questions I can
answer for you. But ultimately I don't
think that the town didn't have a policy
in the past is my understanding. So this
is the first policy and then we just had
a spreadsheet where we had really
records retention probably longer than
required by the state of California
based off of different desires with uh
internally with staff. And so this
policy really incorporates everybody's
needs from each individual department uh
and then validates that based off of the
consultant that we're meet in the town
attorney's office that we are actually
complying by uh state law.
» Would you like to motion?
>> Yes. Um
>> so I wasn't planning on bringing this
up. Thanks for public records issues.
So, it comes up a lot that we get, well,
not a lot, there's lots of public um
records request um that come up. Almost
everything we do now is digital
electronic. It's hard to think of
anything that's that's not available
that way. Um and for us, it's mostly
emails and we're very sensitive about
that. I just have a question. If I
delete an email from my thing, is that
still retained by the town?
>> Email is not a part of this policy
actually. So ultimately that's still a
question I think that um we probably
need direction on primarily with uh the
town council and that very specific
issue. So
>> uh email to my understanding is is not a
part of this um policy.
>> We should get an answer to that question
though. I mean I don't
>> it's we do. So
>> yeah, there I believe that there is a
legality to uh the deletion of email and
I would refer to uh the town attorney on
what that is with the state.
>> All right, thank you.
>> Take a shot.
>> I can sure
>> uh operationally I can't speak to how
the town system works but uh emails are
public record and should be retained for
two years.
>> Got that. But my question is when I
delete something and I don't but when I
delete something
>> is it still retained by the town?
>> That's a you don't know.
>> I don't know the answer.
>> That we that's the question I've got is
>> um we'll work
>> about not deleting things.
>> I'll follow up with it on uh on what
that looks like and I'll get back to you
on a staff memo. Just anecdotally,
having had conversations about that
issue in the past, uh not with Jason,
but with the previous town manager, I
believe there is some level of
retention. Even if an email is deleted,
it goes into a deleted folder for a
period of time.
>> I would have to think that too, but I
just wanted to confirm it. Thank you.
>> Maybe just a follow-up question. So that
strikes me as a little strange that
email wouldn't be a part of our records
retention policy. And just glancing at
the the section five that talks about
the types of records, it says,
"According to California state law, a
record includes any writing containing
information relating to the conduct of
the public's business."
» Yeah, I'm not sure uh if the clerk
wanted to chime in on this. I know based
off our our engagement on this item uh
that ultimately there's kind of a
conflict with what the um the consensus
within the organization I think we have
some members that really want to retain
email really in perpetuity to be able to
pull from it. And so I don't think we
got clear definition on email is kind of
my understanding within the within the
policy. Is is that accurate? Jim
>> Bruce is here if he wants to talk about
it.
>> Oh okay. Okay. Well, we can go directly
to the consultant on this.
>> Okay. Mr. Meyer, going to recognize you
here. Welcome.
>> Thank you. I'm glad.
>> Yes.
>> You know, when uh you mentioned that
email um when you hit delete, it is not
truly gone yet. Especially if uh if the
city is uh is backing up the Exchange
server. Technically,
the email is not gone when you hit
delete. Reality says, as far as we're
concerned, it's gone. But the the the
flip side of that is we don't
necessarily have approval to delete that
email. Um, as uh the city attorney said,
uh
it should be kept for 2 years. Now, that
means something that really has more of
an official side to it. Uh, if you
determine that an email has value and
create a record out of it, I can see
that as being kept for two years. But in
all reality, mama's recipe for, you
know, chocolate chip cookies from 1988,
we don't really care about that.
Does that make sense?
» Yeah. So, you're maybe just going back
to the first question. Is is email a
subject to this policy?
I don't believe we have it as a subject
of the policy yet because we didn't make
a determination on it. It's it's a very
hot bed subject.
Uh you talk to most people and two years
can be a fine term. You talk to
engineers and they'll scream at you
because projects tend to go on a lot
longer than just 2 years. So the
reference back to that information is
essential. Now, that brings into play
determining again when an email can be
considered a record and creating a
record out of it. Whether that's
creating a a PDF, printing it to PDF,
printing it to paper, um uh dragging and
dropping it into laser fish as a record.
You're creating that record out of it
and storing in a repository or outside
of the email system which has never been
a uh a document management software
setup. Um laserfish is the core setup
for the city. So anything that's dragged
and dropped into that would be created a
record.
Uh the remaining emails can for the most
part be transitory. That's that's what I
see as a majority of emails maintained
by an individual are transitory in
nature. They have some value. There may
not be a final decision made on that
email and when it is, it's up to the
individual. So, it is very subjective uh
to create the record out of that uh out
of that email.
>> Okay. Sounds like we have some work
ahead of us. Um are we are we uh are we
okay with the motion this this point?
I am personally still confused and maybe
it's just me. I just I really just want
to understand is email considered a
record under this policy or are we are
we not clear on that?
>> I I'd like to go ahead and chime in. I
mean I think it's considered a record on
some level but we don't have a current
retention policy or we don't have a
retention lined up. Now the policy
references email but we don't have a
schedule on retention for email is my
understanding.
» Okay. So we probably will we'll be
coming back to the council to amend this
policy once we have a point of view on
email retention.
>> Yes.
>> Amend that too. That's um again it's a
hot subject. People will be angry about
it but it's also forcing the individual
to determine whether an email is a
record or not. and creating a record out
of it. the system in itself based upon
you know uh for instance the city of San
Jose and their uh their case against
texts and other social media aspects
technically email can be considered a
record but I think again it's so
subjective because I is a transitory is an ad considered uh a record when it
comes to email not necessarily it's
really more business related material
materials, but we all get ads of some
sort or notifications from whomever.
» Um, I was just looking at the looking
through the policy and it looks like
under 5.5 there is a section for email
communication. So, um, I think that that
would apply to everyone
in town.
>> That's Thank you for pointing that out.
Sounds like email is in scope for this
policy.
>> It is in scope, but I don't think we
have applied a a retention to it.
It's more a notification and it is
something we need to discuss and develop
a you know a little bit more of a policy
to it. Whether that's a separate policy
from this one or um integrated into it,
but we need to make a decision on that.
Can I just Can I just say one thing?
>> Um, of course
>> the town the town absolutely has a
retention schedule that includes email.
>> Um, we've had that for as long as I've
been with the town. I think this policy
is geared towards building an
operational system
to help implement that schedule, which
is what the town has not had. And so
it's been kind of just left to staff to
figure out how to retain the records in
the SK according to the schedule without
any sort of operational guidance. So
however long ago it was this process
started try and build this operational
document uh and that's what we have
here. But I want to be clear that the
town does have a retention schedule that
includes email along with all other
public documents.
>> Thank you.
Well, we need a motion.
You
>> want me to make a motion?
>> Somebody can make a motion.
>> I'll move to approve uh a record uh move
to approve a records and information
management policy and updated records
retention schedule.
» Second you.
>> Council member Alberish.
>> Yes. Council member Brown.
>> Yes. Council member Gold.
>> Abstain.
>> Council member Wall.
>> Yes.
>> Mayor Donowski.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Um, slowly working our way
through, but important stuff. Uh, item
three.
>> Yes. Council member
>> Brown.
>> This is a project that to me is an
example of fiscal insanity going wild.
Um, we started this how many years ago?
Four or five years ago, is that right?
with $800,000 gift from the federal
government to build bike paths. Calr
actually built bike paths at no cost to
us. Um and now we're not only saying the
800,000 is not enough. We need another
$200,000
to build bike paths on the same street.
Uh somehow this is not making fiscal
sense to me at all. And um I don't don't
I understand there's some some reasons
that bicyclists think that it's not
quite good enough yet, but when is it
will be good enough?
» Yeah. So I'll chime in and then we'll
kick it over to the public works
director. Uh so yeah, we had an interest
uh with the the town council directing
staff to work with uh at that time we
had Shawn Rose, our consultant, and a
gentleman in the public, I don't think
he's here this evening, uh Mr. Steve
Luben, on some concerns that he had
about this project. We articulated at
that time that we felt any alteration
was going to lead to the possibility of
losing the funding with Calrans and and
that more than likely it would it would
result in increased uh cost for
engineering. Um but ultimately there was
a request to see if we can get a
compromise um because there were some
poor design choices I think or some
design choices that never were really uh
investigated that could have worked out
better. And so uh with the consultant
Shawn Rose and at the time Cindy Mala
before Lewis joined us here uh they went
back to the drawing board with NV5. We
held the line on the cost and forced uh
their hand to make alterations on work
that they had already done that we felt
um uh that ultimately we felt that they
didn't really explore all of the opt
options that were available with CALR on
the CALR right of way and they did that
and I believe now we've reached a point
with Mr. lube in that we have a
compromise that he's satisfied with that
would cost us to finish that design just
under $50,000 so that we could move
forward. That's the ask. It's $48,700
to an already existing contract to make
it a not to exceed of the 210 value. So,
uh, Lewis, if you can chime in and maybe
broaden the scope of the conversation.
>> Thank you, town manager. Lewis, public
works director and town engineer. Um as
we review the current plan, the 95% plan
by MV5, um it is apparent that the
current design has put the pedestrian uh
multiath on the street on the pavement
itself. And it is our expert opinion
that we need to move this path um to uh
on the other side of the curb out of the
pavement um for safety. And this will be
safety for not only the pedestrian but
also the bicyclist and the motorists. Um
and this design we believe it is my
professional opinion that it it really
uh would instill the spirit and the
character of Woodside is putting u
pedestrian and bicyclist and motorist
safety at first. So, so this uh redesign
uh is what we're asking. The $48,700 is
an amendment to NV5 to redesign the
current plan to put the multi- path in a safe uh area behind the curb out of
the pavement.
Is that going to cost us more than just
the design cost? in other words is
construction cost to make those changes
going to be an additional cost. Um to
answer council member Brown um yes the
estimated uh in addition to construction
costs right now is um is very
conservative is about $300,000 in
addition but we don't know that. Um it's
just a estimate by the designer. Um but
when it comes to the actual construction
um it really depends on the climate in
the bidding climate and see um but the
current the redesign would also changes
the drainage as well and that's we
believe that's the bulk of that increase
is redesigning um the storm drainage um
and this reconfigure and also um you
know moving some of the drainage um in a
new location.
So, are you saying it's going to be
under 800,000 plus 300,000 construction
cost plus the design costs? Is that what
you're telling me?
That's correct. Yeah. Um, as right now
there's a 300,000 um estimate of
increase in construction costs and and
today's ask we're asking for an
amendment to the design 48,700. That's
also in addition to that's correct.
Am I the only one troubled by that?
>> Well, I think we asked for this. Um, and
the improvements do end us in a better
place for the long term. So,
>> I'm not sure we were talking about
another 300,000 construction.
>> I I I'm not here.
>> I don't remember that.
>> I I hear you. Um, but kind of feel like
we got to do it right, I guess, is where
I'm coming from.
» But when do we start drawing where
you're coming from? This is insane.
Are you in deliberations right now? Is
this still a question?
>> Uh, yeah. We We're just Yeah.
And then you have Do you have questions?
>> No. I was gonna
>> Sure. Any member of the public want to
talk on this?
>> Yes. Son, welcome.
Uh, hi Council Assan Farande, uh,
circulation committee chair. Um, couple
thoughts on this one. First, I strongly
support the project. I think the fact
that again, we can't walk from here to
the high school that serves our town is an oversight. And I think it was nice
that during COVID, you know, we we got
the $100,000 grant and we remembered it
and now we're hopefully not going to
lose it. Um, the thing that's annoying
to me is the consultants who designed it
came to circulation and we specifically
asked them the question, can you put it
outside? Because to Dan Duker's credit,
he found that 20 years ago or something,
there was a a gravel pathway outside the
curb and every time I drive by there
now, I can't help but stare at it and be
like, man, if you gave me a week and my gardening tools, I could have most of
it cleared. We asked them that question.
They specifically said, "No, it will not
work out there." And then there was
something about SQA environmental stuff,
blah blah blah. And it turns out they
were wrong. So to Steve Lubman's credit,
and Steve, if you're here listening to
me, you were correct. I appreciate it. I
appreciate your tenacity on it. Um, I
appreciate Sean helping and helping
figure out. Lewis, thank you for getting
involved as well. But it's a little
frustrating that now we're being asked
for another almost $50,000 to correct
the mistake they made with their own
expert opinion in mistake basically,
right? I don't think you have a choice,
so I'm not saying you shouldn't do it.
Um, I do think the project is very
worthwhile. Hopefully, it's not a
$300,000 adder on top of the 800. Um,
but when you drive by there, it's like
that is the most elegant solution. They
claimed they walked every inch of it and
somehow I don't know what assumptions
they were working under that led them to
where they are. So hopefully at least
maybe we've negotiated a discount rate
compared to the work they have to do or
something along those lines. So despite
my rambling thing, I fully support the
project. I think that is the elegant
solution. It is just frustrating that
they designed it wrong and then people
had to get involved to fix it even
though they were the experts and I gave
them the benefit of the doubt. So shame
on me. I'll be more diligent on that
next time. But they st said, "Nope, we
can't put it where you're telling us to
put it."
clear that was wrong. So again, thank
you.
>> Thank you for that context,
Miss Gilbert.
>> Uh
hello is on. Okay.
I'm I what I'm hearing is that we're
going to pave
all around for bicyclists. Is that what
you said? You you said a lot, so I
really am a little confused. So right
now the um the pedestrian path is on the
road sharing that road with the bicycle
lane. So it's all on the same road. Um
what we want to do is redesign it to put
the pedestrian path out of the road and
put it on behind the curb.
>> Where where are you talking about? What land along Woodside Road here?
>> On Woodside Road east of 280 to the high
school. To the high school
>> to the high school. Okay.
All right. We're not putting this
through the town, though. We're not
contemplating that. I hope.
>> No, it's just it's just from 280 down to
the Alamita.
>> All right.
I'm going to keep this now. I can tell
Bill, go get me something.
>> I think you're going to have to hand it
off to Mr. Duker.
» Thanks.
>> So, uh, just representing the, um, three
HOAs east of 280. Um the residents are
big time in favor of this project that we're getting a little confused
about the bicycle topic. The discussion
today is about a pedestrian path. So
it's allowing people to walk on the
south side of Woodside Road from
effectively 280 to the high school with
a vision that in the next couple of
years you'll connect that to town
center. So you'll be able to walk from
the high school all the way to town
center. Um Ean's correct. We were told
in circulation that the pedestrian
pathway had to be effectively attached
to the road and pushed into the bike
lane even a little bit. We learned in
the last month that that's not true,
that that was incorrect. So the original
routing we had all hoped for is what
we're going to end up with. It looks
like um Lewis and I went and walked it
this morning. So we spent an hour
together walking the road down there
today. And what he has planned is going
to be a very attractive and very useful
addition to the town. So, it'll be a
nice decomposed grait gravel or asphalt
pathway that is just inside
um on the side of on the side of
Woodside Road on the south side. I think
it's going to look great and certainly
lots of residents will use it. Um my
guess is I it's hard for me to imagine
it'll cost more than what they're
planning. So, I'm really interested in
the the estimate if it cost more money
because now you don't have to go
reconfigure all the curbs that were just
put in by CALR. So, it's just literally
restoring a pathway that's already there
and just opening it back up again. So,
I'm hoping there will be a solution that
actually saves us money, not adds on
additional funding.
>> Thank you.
>> Any other comments from public? All very
useful tonight. Thank you very much.
Okay, back to deliberations. Council
member Aberish. Um, yeah, I I feel like
this is I mean, I appreciate uh Council
Member Brown's comments and thoughts and
I totally agree. Uh, I think we always
have to be uh very aware and careful
with expanding costs. Um, here I feel
like we're getting, you know, $800,000
of essentially free money. So, we're
going to be able to do this project for,
my math is correct, about it'll be, you
know, total of a million and a half
dollar project. And we're going to be
paying
a little over close to 500,000 from the
town actually. Is that my numbers
correct? Something along those lines.
>> I think there's me there's different
measures and road money that will be
funding this project. But yeah,
essentially that's $800,000 of uh
federal funding. Um and then ultimately
any of the overages we would be timing
out to fit into our our budget and CIP.
>> Yeah. So I, you know, I think we're
getting a big benefit. We're not paying
for the whole thing. Um, but we'll get
the full benefit of it. And I think it's
a huge value to everyone who lives um,
you know, in that area. I think I
remember when we talked about this last
time, it came up and there were a lot of
people that were really looking forward
to this project and so yeah, so I I'd
support it.
>> Great. Thank you. Other comments from
council?
make a motion.
>> I would love to have a motion. Dick, do
you want to make a motion or do you want
someone else to make it?
>> I think somebody else should make I'll
make a a motion to approve the
resolution authorizing the town manager
to execute a contract amendment with NV5
in an amount of $48,700
and not to exceed a total of $210,38
for the design of Woodside Road Bicycle
and Pedestrian Improvements Project.
>> Second.
>> Council member Alberish. Yes.
>> Council member Brown.
>> No.
>> Council member Gold.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Wall.
>> Yes.
>> Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes.
>> And with that, we'll close the consent
agenda. And moving on to old business,
quarterly and annual review of license
plate readers. I I just thought maybe I
would say one thing real quick just for
expectational reasons. Um just to
clarify things. Um this is agendaized.
It's agendaized as reviewing the reports
and deciding whether to accept the
reports. Per our contract, there is no
vote tonight on deployment of license
plate readers. Although in
deliberations, any member of the council
can make a motion to uh for direction,
future direction. So that might be
something that comes out of that. But
this is the extent of what we can uh do
tonight on this topic uh and what we'll
effectively be voting on um at the end
of it. So Jason, with that I know we've
got a lot going on and you have brought
some significant resources to bear
tonight. So I'll hand it off to you to
talk about the report and introduce our
leadership from the sheriff's office and
uh representation from Flock.
>> Yeah, thank you. I'll start with that
actually. We have Assistant Sheriff
Meyers here this evening. We have our
administrative sergeant Nick Moragno
here as well. and we have Lily uh with
Flock as well to help answer any
questions uh or any technical items that
may come up. First, I just want to go
over the attachments because there are
quite a few. And so, attachment one on
this report is the ALPR annual report
that comes directly from the sheriff the
sheriff's office. And this showcases
roughly uh 5,027 hot list alerts that
transpired over the year. um 4,031
uh stolen license plates that went
through the system, uh 38 stolen
vehicles, 13 felony vehicles, and 945
alerts for investigation.
Two stolen vehicles were recovered in
the Woodside ALPR system led to the
arrest of four suspects involved in
various crimes in the town of Woodside.
More information about specific cases in
Woodside are available in that specific
attachment.
In attachment two, uh this is the town
of Woodside ALPR policy which dictates
how myself or the the town manager audit
uh how that audit is performed.
Attachment three, this is the Sanonteo
County Sheriff's Office quarterly
report. This is where they choose the 10
randomly searched uh searches to audit.
And this is the document that I use to
basically audit those 10 random searches
on the quarterly report. So attachment 4
is that quarterly audit report from me,
the town manager. Uh and so we'll come
back to that attachment uh after I'm
done discussing the rest of these
attachments.
Attachment
five is the Sanonteo County Sheriff's
Office ALPR policy. This is when we have
to look at our policy in relation to
whoever did the search. If it's Sanonteo
County Sheriff's Office, then we'll go
to their policy to validate that they
have a policy that matches ours. Uh,
attachment six is the Sonteo Police
Department's policy. Attachment seven is
the Redwood City Police Department's
policy. Um, and then attachment eight, I
had two different council members
contacting contact me asking me about
the contract. So, for good measure, we
added that as an attachment. And then
attachment nine is the law enforcement
contract that we have with the Sanonteo
County Sheriff's Office. And so, back to
attachment four, which is my quarterly
audit report. So, we took into
consideration some of the concerns that
had been brought to the attention of the
staff and the town itself prior to my
existence uh here at in Woodside. And
then over the last eight eight months,
my engagement with the council uh we
determined that there was kind of a
deeper investigation or more of a
narrative that people would like to see
rather than just checking of the boxes.
And so ultimately we sat down with at
that time we we still had Captain Frank
Delporto who is now um an assistant
sheriff himself. We sat down with
administrative sergeant uh Baragno and
we went over each of the 10 audited uh inquiries that that the sheriff's
office had looked at. We got on the same
page to just better understand uh any
missing pieces that we could not
decipher from the information that was
provided to us. And so I just want to
slowly go over my attachment for the the
ALPR quarterly report, the town manager
audit, and just uh explain those
differences. So
we start within the policy comparing the
audit with the policy section three and
we go through section 10. And so section
three is authorized purposes and
prohibited uses. And so on inquiry one,
we're claiming compliance with the
information we have and we're stating
that the reason is that is a that the uh
Woodside ALPR system was utilized was
because there was a stolen car and this
reason complies with the town policy
section 3 A C D and G and they're stated
clearly as to what they are. We then go
to section four of the policy where we
discuss data storage and protection. And
then uh in this section specifically is
for flock and there's a requirement that
the town received back from flock very
specific data on encryption firewalls
authentication and so the town has
received that information and so
confirming that uh to our understanding
that's compliant as well. Then section
five, we go into the ALPR data access.
And so since this first inquiry was made
by the San Mateo Police Department, we
then compare our policy to their policy
to see if the ALP our data access is
compliant, if the two policies um jive
with each other, and they in fact do.
And so we go through each of those
different those different sections of
the policy 3 through 10 on each of the
10 inquiries that were randomly selected
by the sheriff's office. And based on
that, we have determined that within
this quarter, we have compliance to our
understanding. Now, we're making an
inference here that ultimately the San
Mo Police Department, the Redwood City
Police Department, and the San Monteo
County Sheriff's Office is complying
with their own policies. So that's an
inference that we have to make in good
faith. And uh basically that really
summarizes the quarterly report. The
annual report is created by the
sheriff's department and they're here to
discuss any questions you may have on
that. But the town staff, myself
included, we've deemed that compliant as
well. Now there has been talk obviously
uh with what's transpiring with the
company itself nationally and also
locally and we're obviously very aware
of that. Uh we're also aware or we
believe that we may be the only agency
locally that has such a robust policy
and is meeting on a quarterly basis to
discuss and kind of go over to make sure
and continue to question the use of this
technology in our community. I'm not
aware of any other local agency that
happens to be doing that. And so I think
that that has served us very well
because at the moment, you know, knock
on wood, with all of the different
agencies that are um being questioned
for maybe uh data breaches, I am not
familiar with any of the three agencies
that we're currently working with being
at the center of any of that
controversy.
Also, because this has been such a an
important topic to the town of Woodside, has gone above and
beyond to make sure that we're not on
the canned contract with Flock. It was
negotiated to make sure that we felt
comfortable and that there were
alterations made and that also we
created a policy. And so, I think that
we've created checks and balances here
on some level that has led to maybe even
better service. And so, uh, sitting down
with the sheriff's office here in
January, uh, Sergeant Baragno, I think
based off of engagement, based off of
understanding this council, went through
every single inquiry that has ever hit
the Town of Woodside ALPR system from
inception up until the end of this these
two reports and is stating to us that he
sees absolutely no breach, that all of
those were made by three different
agencies. the Sanonteo County Sheriff's
Office, Redwood City Police Department,
and the San Monteo Police Department.
And so for those reasons, we are stating
um that we believe we are currently
compliant.
Thank you.
Uh questions for staff or members of the
sheriff's department or flock?
Um I
>> go for it.
>> I do I I don't know if they wanted to
say anything that I want just want to
give that opportunity before I do have
some questions for them too.
» Good evening council.
>> Good evening.
>> Sergeant Bronn with the sheriff's office
and ready to I got assistant sheriff
Myers and Lily here with Flock to answer
any questions you may have.
Um okay so um this has been obviously a
big Lily I sort of feel for you the uh
taken a lot of heat u the past um
certainly few weeks um so before I came
here tonight on the on the news the
local news there was a lot of stories
about what's going on in um Oakland and
Contracasta County and those sorts of
you know other places that are having
problems they mentioned Mountain View as
well but one of the things that I heard
was that flock was uh had just changed
their policy statewide
that they were not allowing any federal
access throughout the entire state of
California on any of their systems. So
maybe you can comment on that. I don't
know if that's correct. I just I heard
it on Dan Noise on the on the news.
>> Correct. Hi council members. My name is
Lily Ho. I'm the public affairs manager
for flock safety. It's a pleasure to be
here with you this evening. Um, council
member, uh, correct. We created that
policy, uh, in March of last year, and
that was to help agencies comply with
state laws and we instituted that for
the state of Virginia as well as the
state of California.
>> So that means that no federal agencies
can access any flock databases in
California. that in addition to removing
nationalwide lookup, nationwide lookup
from California agencies so that there
could be no accidents.
>> Okay. So, are any of the incidents we've
heard about Mountain View probably being
the most notable did did any of those
occur after this policy went into place?
>> No, it would not be possible.
>> Okay. I didn't know that. That's that
was sort of the issue that I that I had
there. Um, and also, um, uh, I've got
one for the sheriff's office as well.
Thank you, Lily. Um,
the town manager mentioned that you went
through all of the inquiries since
inception till roughly now.
>> Yes, that is correct.
>> So, what was could you just describe the
process of doing that? I mean, you can't
you certainly not to the audit level,
but maybe you looked at who actually the
agency that made the inquiry. Yeah. So,
what happened is the system became live
in May of 2023. Um, so from there, I ran
a month-by-month report every month from
May of 2023, and I looked into all the
search inquiries of what agencies made
them. Um, for the first three months, it
was strictly just the sheriff's office.
Um, then at that point, it went to
Redwood City and then Sonteo PD. And it
remained those three agencies throughout
the the life of the system. Those are
the only agencies database.
>> The only three agencies that have access
to database.
>> By the way, is that true not only for
the Woodside database, but for the
sheriff's office database as well?
>> I cannot say that for the sheriff's
office database, but based off of my
knowledge of the sharing, um that would
not be accurate. The sheriff's office
database is shares with other agencies.
>> Perfect. Thank you.
>> Yeah, questions. I think I've got
questions for the town manager, for um
our sheriff representatives, and for
Miss Hoe. So, I'm going to start with
the town manager.
Um so, as our town manager, you oversee
our contract, our contracts with Flock
and the sheriff, right?
>> Yes.
>> Um I wanted to start off by asking about
the the verification of the request and
confirm sharing model. Um, so the staff
report indicates that sharing is a is
approved on a request and confirm basis
and that to date no requests have been
approved this year other than to the
three authorized agencies which are Sano
County Sheriff, San Monteo Police
Department and Redwood City Police
Department.
However, Athetherton's policy failed
because the volume of requests made
manual approval no longer feasible
leading to unauthorized access.
So,
uh just to state it again, the staff
report states we operate on a strict
request and confirm basis. So given that
Athetherton admitted they stopped
following this protocol because the
volume of requests made it no longer
feasible, can you confirm that a human
being is physically reviewing every
single request from outside agencies?
» You know to to answer that question, I
would say that ultimately we're not
engaging the request is my
understanding. And so requests are
coming in consistently from all over the
state of California. and based off of um
I think a conservative approach to maybe
uh what is perceived direction from the
council even though it states in our
policy that we can share with anyone in
the state of California that it has been
kind of the um inferred policy that
pretty much any request that comes in
that's not from Redwood City Police
Department, Sanonteo Police Department
or the Sheriff's Office themselves is
just dismissed. it's not even reviewed.
It's not even it it's not um considered.
And so ultimately there may be an
excessive amount of them, but it's not
weighing us down as as you're stating
it's weighing Athetherton down because
we're we're not even engaging the
request.
Um, and so Mountain View recently
discovered that their cameras were
inadvertently set to nationwide um, and
statewide sharing modes, which allowed
hundreds of agencies to access data
without the chief's knowledge. Have you
personally logged into the flock system
or the transparency portal to verify
that our sharing permissions are
strictly limited to the three agencies
listed in the report, the Sanonteo
County Sheriff's Office, Sanonteo PD,
and the Redwood City PD, and that no
batch or default settings have autopop
populated other agencies.
>> I haven't personally logged into the
ALPR system to review that. What I've
done is I've reached out because right
now preparing this document while um the
story was breaking ultimately I reached
out to our representative at Flock and
asked that specific question last week
is that uh having read information I was
finding that there were two boxes that
um hypothetically could be checked that
I was never made aware of uh which was
national and state and I wanted
confirmation from Flock talk that that had never happened in in Woodside.
And so ultimately um that hasn't been
rectified yet. I think that there has to
be maybe a deeper dive or maybe we can
get an answer from Flock this evening.
So that's why we went with uh Sergeant
Baragno's uh personal look at at and
review of each individual request that
has been made from 20 or that has been
granted from 2023 until this moment. And
so the way that I went about seeking to
better understand the compliance, not
being a user of the ALPR system because
I'm not a law enforcement officer, was
to reach out to Flock to better
understand if they could answer that
question for us. And at the moment, I I
don't have an answer.
Okay, moving on to the town manager
audit. wanted to talk about its reliance
on boilerplate language um versus actual
practice and also um our acceptance of
blocks written confirmation around their
security practices. So in several audit
inquiries and I'd point out inquiry
number two and three as examples. Um,
the report marks the search as compliant
by simply quoting the sheriff's written
policy against immigration enforcement
rather than verifying what the officer
actually did. The audit report relies on
vendor promises rather than independent
verification, which proved disastrous
for Mountain View.
So the question is why does the town
manager audit report use the exact same
boilerplate language regarding federal
immigration enforcement in every search
conducted by the sheriff's office which
would be inquiries 2 3 6 7 8 and 10
regardless of the crime being
investigated.
the uh really my perspective is is that
the Brady bill makes it a crime for a
law enforcement officer to lie. And so
ultimately I'm utilizing the policies
that they have um that they have signed
up for uh at their uh selected places of
business whether it be the sheriff's
office or uh the Sanonteo Police
Department, Redwood City Police
Department, because that's the only way
that I have to compare is to validate
that the policy matches our policy and
it's a good faith level of trust at the
moment. I'm definitely more than willing
to look at different ways to enforce
this policy, but unfortunately at this
moment, this is the only understanding
that I have. But I would definitely take
any um
uh opportunities for a different way of validating this that
you may think would be more um
efficient.
Um, under the data storage and
protection section, the town manager
audit states that compliance is met via
an annual written confirmation from
Flock. Mountain View relied on similar
assurances only to discover their
cameras were sharing data nationwide for
months without their knowledge. Given
that flock admitted to system failures
in Mountain View, is a written note from
the vendor sufficient proof for Woodside
or in your estimation, should we demand
an independent technical inspection of
our system settings?
It's compliant to the policy, I guess,
is uh ultimately my job at the moment is
to work with the policy that the town
council has uh dictated and voted on as
the policy that they would like me to
utilize in order to create the quarterly
report. And so I just uh I really take
direction from whether or not the
council is interested in altering that
policy. And until they are interested in
altering that policy, my job is to
comply with the policy. And ultimately
that is how the policy uh that's how I
infer the policy claims compliance is to it it literally states in the
policy that once a year the town manager
is to request that that information that
information from flock and that that is
a compliance.
» All right. Um I want to talk a little
bit about shadow sharing with federal
agencies. Um I'm sure it's something you
read about in the in the news reports.
So, uh, state law and woodside policy
prohibit sharing data with federal
agencies, including but not limited to
for, uh, immigration enforcement.
However, investigations in Oakland and
San Francisco revealed that local
officers were searching ALPR data on
behalf of federal agencies by entering
terms like FBI wanted suspect or ICE
case into the search reason field. Here
in Woodside, we authorize data sharing
only with three agencies. What technical
or policy controls prevent officers in
those departments from searching
Woodid's data on behalf of federal
agencies?
>> Yeah, that's uh I'd say the Brady Bill
or or whatever type of progressive
discipline is is utilized in those
offices uh over over breaking their own
policies. And so there's really my
understanding there's no there's no way
for me to uh even within my office,
let's just remove the ALPR policy, but
if someone in my office is performing a
function uh and they're they're claiming
they're doing it in good faith,
ultimately the assumption is is that
it's being done in good faith based off
of them abiding by the town's policies.
And then if it's found out that they're
not abiding by those policies, I think
that's when progressive discipline has
to be made at each individual
department. So that's another instance
that I'm certainly open to different
ways to validate that we're gaining
compliance. But under the current policy
and under the current structure of
management of law enforcement for the
town of Woodside is a contract law
enforcement organization rather than
where I came from, where I manage the
police chief. It's just a different
dynamic. So, if the town of Woodside had
a police chief that reported to the town
manager, it would be completely
acceptable for me to treat that person's
workspace as my own. They were reporting
to me and that ultimately I had a lot of
uh a lot of rights to dig into that
department. here. It would be a little
bit um I'm not exactly sure how I would
go about reaching out to the police
chief in San Mateo and and to gain
validation. It would be kind of
accusatory to to to believe that um that
ultimately somebody is violating that.
But I also live in reality and I
understand that that it's been proven
that that's being violated. So, it's a matter of faith that there's a
policy that's being that's being
followed by each organization and and
but I still defer to the council if
they'd like another mechanism to try to
prove that.
>> So, if a Redwood City officer runs a
search on our on our data for an FBI
task force, would our audit catch it?
>> No. If somebody lied, if if um one of
the things I saw from a desk item from
Mr. middleman that came in was just a
really great summary of just uh
nationally. And so you'll see these
instances where somebody will be looking
up their ex-wife or their
ex-girlfriend's vehicle in other states.
And so ultimately if somebody is lying
in the computer system, I don't I don't
believe that we're going to have um it's
possible if we're kind of if if there's
more cues, but it would be very
difficult if there's a claim here on
let's say you pointed out uh number two.
is stated as mail theft and
so I'm taking that at its face value
that I believe it's mail theft. But you
rais a very good point is that
ultimately is there a law enforcement
officer making that claim and then doing
a a a shadow uh drop of information to
another agency? That could be happening.
But that very accusatory of me to to to
make that statement to a law enforcement
officer. And so it's a it's good faith.
That's a level of trust.
>> Council member Wall. Yeah, I believe
like the Oakland scenario, I'm not
really familiar with it, but probably
there was some sort of internal affairs
investigation where they uncovered that
their local officer was sharing with the
federal government or immigration or
whatnot. Uh that would probably result
in an internal affairs investigation.
That's the same thing we would do if we
found out someone had lied on a search
or something like that. And that could,
you know, result in, you know, time off,
disciplinary action, progressive
discipline. So that would be a violation
of our internal policy as well as state
law. So it'd be you'd be in trouble.
>> Um, so just continuing on Jason, so the
staff report notes that there were
117,723
total search queries, uh, since we only
audited 10 of them. Uh, could we run a
keyword search across all of those
queries? uh justifications for red tag
terms such as ICE, DHS, federal
deportation, deportation, HSI to ensure
that our data isn't being used to
violate California law.
>> I believe we can run that search. I
don't know if it will garner uh you've
pointed out that there's kind of the
shadow idea and stuff, but I believe
that it would be totally capable for us
to run a search about cases. I would
>> Yes, council member. We uh for our
sheriff's office database we routinely
do that with county council.
>> So just I I I have a whole host of
questions for you all that will kind of
delve into I'm more asking can the town
manager run the search? What like I'm
wondering in your capacity as the
custodian of the contract would you run
that search? And maybe you don't know.
>> Yeah. My belief is that I can't. And I
think we've had this conversation on on multiple occasions is that um my
interpretation of our policy, my
interpretation of the policy at the
Sanonteo County Sheriff's Office is that
you have to be a sworn officer or
literally work within uh the department
itself to have the access of in order to
make a search query of of that
magnitude. Now we have a different level
of access that um our assistant town
manager has um that was provided to us
as kind of the staff liaison but it is
completely different than the actual APR
system to do an audit of that magnitude
or just an audit in general. We would be
leaning on requesting that audit being
made by the administrative sergeant.
>> Um I want to turn to the statistical
significance of the audit itself. So the
ALPR quarterly report relies on an audit
of only 10 random searches out of nearly
118,000 total queries. In Athetherton,
unauthorized searches numbered in the
thousands and many lacked proper uh
justification.
So because our audit reviewed only 10
random searches to determine compliance.
Um and given that there were over
117,000 queries, this sample size
represents less than 0.01% of the total
activity. Can you confidently certify to
this council that the system is
compliant with our privacy policy when
only when 99.99%
of the search queries were never
examined?
>> Yeah, I can say it's compliant with our
policy because our policy clearly states
we're to only audit 10.
Uh
>> would you commit to a more robust audit
that flags incomplete or suspicious
search justifications?
I would submit to the will of the
council.
>> Uh, in Menlo Park, officers were
conducting searches with insufficient
justifications, such as simply typing in
crime. In Tibberon, an investigation
revealed that 23 agencies potentially
violated privacy protections. Yet, their
audit of five searches per month missed
these violations completely. Since rogue
officers often hide searches by entering
vague terms like investigation or crime,
could st could town staff run an
automated keyword audit of all 117,723
justification fields rather than relying
on a manual review of just 10.
>> Yeah. In order to do that, I believe we
would have to be given access to the
system as though we were a law
enforcement officer to run a query like
that. And so ultimately I would just
defer to a flock. Is is that a service
that um the town itself could actually
uh purchase from you? My understanding
is currently within our contract the
default administrator falls to uh the administrative sergeant. And so this
would be another instance where we would
be reliant to make the request to run
that query through Sergeant Vagno.
Um, all right. I want to turn our focus
to data retention and deletion. So,
Woodside's policy dictates that data
must not be stored beyond 60 days.
However, the San Mo County Sheriff's
Office policy defaults to a one-year
retention period unless the local
jurisdiction requests otherwise. Um, so
you know, since our policy strictly
limits retention to 60 days, but the
sheriff's office policy defaults to one
year, can you provide technical
verification from Flock that the
deletion setting for Woodid's specific
cameras is set to 60 days and that
overrides the sheriff's default one-year
retention policy.
>> Yeah, that's my understanding from our
contract with Flock is that we're on a
system that automatically deletes after
60 days. uh the retention policies for
each individual agency. I uh my
understanding is ultimately they're
following along the lines of uh like a
hot a a a hot list item, right? That
they're following up on a case. And then
the our policy also allows um the
retention to last longer than 60 days.
uh it to follow the normal legality of of retaining information based off of
it being in a case itself. And so
ultimately there are some instances
where hypothetically in perpetuity data
would be stored uh because it was
involved in a case. But my understanding
is based off of our contract with Flock
is yeah is that it is deleted after 60
days.
>> Do you have any documentation that shows
that? just the contract itself.
» The staff report states that Flock
automatically manages the deletion
cycle. Have you performed an independent
test to verify that data captured 61
days ago is definitively gone from the
server or we are or are we relying
solely on vendor asurances?
>> Yeah, we're relying on vendor asurances.
» Um, two more topics to cover. Thank you
so much for uh bearing with me with
these questions. Um so on the topic of
managing hot lists, the staff report
notes that hot lists, which are lists of
wanted plates, are downloaded daily and
resulted in over 5,000 alerts. Our
system downloads hot lists from state
and national databases. Do we filter
these lists to ensure they do not
include civil immigration warrants or
administrative warrants from ICE?
>> That's a great question. you know, I'd
have to really defer to uh the
administrative sergeant on that.
>> And then the final topic is system e
efficacy. Um so there is a disparity
between the volume of uh between the
volume of surveillance and the actual
local public safety outcomes. The annual
report states that in 2025, our cameras
performed over 3.1 million scans and
generated 5,27
hot list alerts. However, this massive
intake of data is credited with
assisting in the recovery of only two
stolen vehicles and four arrests for
crimes specifically occurring within
Woodside. Given that one of the
significant investigations cited in the
report actually occurred in Porta Valley
and considering that cities like Santa
Cruz and Los Altos Hills recently
terminated their contracts because they
determined the privacy risks outweighed
the benefits. How does the town justify
the mass surveillance of millions of
drivers when the system yields such a
statistically negligible return for for
resolving crimes inside our own borders?
>> Yeah. Uh that's a that's a great
question. And I think ultimately, you
know, we have 26 cameras. There was a
request from the council for a 27th near
Running Me. And so we're awaiting
installation. And so one car could
travel through town uh and and be on all
26 of those cameras. And so they would
account for part of that million that's
going through. Uh I think that this is a
question in in the 21st century that
you're asking. Ultimately, I commute
consistently over the bridge and and
there I am. You know, I get I get
something in the mail constantly
tracking essentially where I'm headed.
Uh and and that's kind of the the where the United States or where the
world currently stands at the moment. I have something in my in my pocket that
knows exactly where I am, knows a lot of
my habits, is listening to what I'm
saying. in a lot of instances. I would
say that for me uh as the town manager,
I don't reside in the town of Woodside,
but one of my biggest fears for the town
of Woodside is for the safety and
security of the folks that do live here
and that ultimately that that tradeoff
is beneficial to to the community and I stand by that and I I understand
the consequences of what's currently
transpiring, but ultimately I really
believe uh rather than being as
transparent as we are that ultimately
we're showcasing where these cameras are
located to people um that may want to
cause harm in our community. And so I I
would I would be on the opposite side of
that of removing the the front the
public facing documentation that shows
everybody where these cameras are
located because I believe that in the
context of security for the town of
Woodside that ultimately uh we're going
to lean on this type of technology
rather than the escalated costs that it
means to bring extra officers uh on foot
patrol within the community. We're going
to see less of that because the cost of
that is escalating and we're going to
have to really rely on the technology
and I think we have an opportunity here
tonight. Flock is here. We have the
assistant sheriff is here. I think that
there's an interest in the use of the
technology. There's an interest in in
finding a balance for the sec for the
security of the data and that we can
make incremental positive change with
the current system that we have. and I
believe that the town is justified to
maintain this system.
>> Thank you very much. Um so turning to
the sheriff, thank you so much for being
here tonight. So not sure which of you
uh plan to answer, but I'll just direct
my questions at both of you. Um because
I'm interested in asking some questions
about how you operationalize Woodside's
p privacy policy because while the town
manager oversees the contract, the
sheriff's office is actually the enduser
of the system.
Um, and based on the discrepancies in
the sheriff's own policy documents
versus Woodid's policy and the specific
failures seen in nearby agencies, I just
wanted to ask a few questions. Um, so
the first uh topic goes to the shadow
sharing issue that um I asked our town
manager a couple questions on it and
we've, you know, it's been widely
reported in the news. Um, so news
reports from Oakland and San Francisco
revealed that local officers were not
officially sharing data with FBI or ICE,
but were instead running searches on
their behalf by typing in terms like FBI
wanted or ICE case into the search
reason field. Um, investigations in
Oakland found that while data sharing
was technically disabled, officers were
running uh were simply running searches
on behalf of federal agents they worked
with. Do San Monteo County deputies that
are assigned to federal task forces like
the FBI or DEA have access to Woodside's
ALPR data?
» Yes.
Okay.
>> Um, and so what technical barrier steps
what technical barrier stops them from
manually running a plate for a federal
partner?
>> The fact that it would be a violation of
our policy and if they were cooperating
with immigration be a violation of state
law.
>> Okay. But there's no technical barrier.
>> No, you're relying on the deputy's
integrity.
and your report shows over 117,000
queries were run. Since we can't
manually review all of them, would it be
possible to run an automated keyword
search on the justification or the
reason field for all 117,000 past
queries looking for terms like ICE or
immigration, homeland security
investigation, things like that?
>> Yes, the export file is basically in a
Excel format. So, we can search for any
kind of words you want in there. We were
actually doing a audit of our sheriff's
office one and we found uh DHS was in
it. Uh a little more investigations. We
found out it was actually Desert Hot
Springs PD. So, we do do routine audits.
Um in addition to that, we are also
working with the civil grand jury. Uh
we've pro provided them an audit for our
last 60 days as well as our policy.
Flock's going to be working with them to
ensure that we're operating within the
best policies and procedures. But yes,
we can we can do a key search word for u
uh all the searches we've had.
>> Okay, that's really fantastic to hear.
Um I wanted to turn to the conflicting
retention policies. So there's a direct
conflict between the sheriff's office
policy and the town of Woodid's policy
regarding how long data is kept. As a
contract city, Woodside's situation is
different from peer communities like
Menlo Park, uh, Mountain View, and
Athetherton because Woodside maintains
legislative ownership of the cameras
while delegating operational control to
an external agency that the sheriff. So,
this creates a pretty unique uh policy
versus practice gap doesn't exist in
cities with their own police chiefs. Um,
specifically, there are conflicting
retention per policies. one year for the
sheriff's policy, 60 days for the
Woodside policy. Unlike pure cities
where the city council and and police
chief can align on one policy, Woodside
has a direct conflict between its local
ordinance and the agency operating the
system. Woodside's policy mandates the
data must be deleted after 60 days, but
the sheriff's policy states that the data is retained for a minimum
of one year. This creates risk, right?
While the sheriff's policy contains a
clause allowing for different retention
periods, if a local government requests
it, this requires technical segregation.
If Woodid's cameras are not strictly
siloed from the sheriff's general
network, Woodid's data could default to
the county's one-year retention period,
violating Woodside's privacy ordinance.
Um, can you explain how you segregate
Woodid's data from the rest of the
county's data to ensure that our 60-day
limit is technically enforced and not
overridden by the county's one-year
default?
» Yes, they're two different two
completely different systems. So,
Woodside is it's on its own network and
I've personally verified that the data I
think there's some confusion in terms
data retention here. Um the data
retention for the 60 days is part of the
searchable database that as an
investigator I would go in and conduct a
search. I personally know that cuz it
affected one of your residents when I
was not able to do a search at the 61day
mark and look for a suspect vehicle um
when I was asked to do that. So I know
that policy. I know the retention
firsthand is 60 days and there's no
longer any information left to it. Um
where the confliction is I think or the
confusion is once that information
becomes part of a case then it's part of
a criminal investigation and then it
falls under the standards of the
evidence code legal proceedings um and
the case um and the progression through
the court system.
There's no there's not going to be any
kind of confusion as far as the 60 days
versus the um the sheriff's office
retention policy because they operate on
two completely different systems.
Thanks.
Um, in Mountain View, I want to talk
about Mountain View for a minute. So,
Mountain View recently suspended their
program because their cameras were
inadvertently set to nationwide sharing
mode without the chief's knowledge,
which allowed federal agencies,
including the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms, among a number of
other agencies, to access their data. So
essentially, Mountain View discovered
their cameras were sharing data with
federal agencies because of a default
setting they didn't know was on. When
was the last time, if ever, someone in
your office physically looked at the
sharing configuration screen for
Woodsides specific cameras to verify
they are not set to nationwide or
statewide sharing?
>> I personally did about a month ago.
>> And what did you learn?
>> I'm sorry.
>> And what did you discover? they're off.
And then when I went and manually did a
network search of every network inquiry,
I verified that no outside agencies
other than the sheriff's office, Redwood
City, and Santo PD utilize the database.
>> Similar to Mountain View Police
Department, could the San Monteo County
Sheriff's Office undertake a deeper
review to determine whether nationwide
or statewide sharing has ever been
enabled in Woodside?
There's no way to tell if the switch was
on or if we were going to call it a
switch um which allowed that. But I know
personally that since I've gone through
every single one that if it was on at
some point it was never utilized because
of the search.
>> Turning to hot list integrity. Uh your
system automatically downloads hot lists
which are lists of wanted license plates
from state and national databases.
However, these lists can sometimes
include civil civil immigration warrants
or administrative warrants that that do
not represent criminal threats.
The sheriff's policy states that hot
lists are downloaded daily from state
and national databases. Do you apply a
filter to these lists to ensure they do
not contain civil immigration warrants?
>> Yes, for uh the information that's
downloaded, we call it through klet,
which is the California law enforcement
telecommunications. I might get the
acronym wrong, but that's where all the
warrants come through. We would have
there would be no immigration warrants
going through that state database.
Likewise, too, if we did have any
external
uh hot list, uh if it popped up on our
screen and it showed that it was an
immigration violation or immigration
warrant, we would simply ignore it.
>> So, if a plate hits on a noncriminal
invest immigration detainer, would your
deputies be alerted?
No, not that I've ever seen.
>> Um, all right. Turning to the audit
sample size. The quarterly audit
reviewed only 10 searches out of tens of
thousands. In Athetherton, unauthorized
searches number numbered in the
thousands. Do you believe that a sample
size of 10 is statistically significant
enough to catch a rogue officer misusing
the system? I was following the Woodside
policy.
» Would you be able to increase the audit
sample size to at least 1% of all
queries for the next report?
>> That would be determined on the board.
But also that would number would
fluctuate because 1% one month or one
quarter could be completely different
than 1% another month. So
>> there'd be no like technical impediment
to you increasing the audit size to 1%.
>> Just manual labor.
These searches are are done
by me personally um
through a randomized number generator
and I manually pick those out. So it's
very labor intensive.
>> Got it. Um, Athetherton, which has its
own police department, failed to follow
its privacy policy because the commander
admitted that manually reviewing every
sharing request was no longer feasible
due to the volume of requests.
Uh so Woodside's challenge is, you know,
we're asking the sheriff to enforce a
strict request and confirm sharing model
for Woodside that is more restrictive
than that what you likely practice in
other parts of
>> uh because Sonteo County Sheriff's
Office deputies manage vast amounts of
data across the county, there is a risk
they may apply batch approvals, the
specific error that caused Menllo Parks
breach rather than the individual manual
review required by Woodsides policy.
Can you say whether that's happening in
Woodside?
» Yeah. So, I I think we're talking about
when you say request, you're you're
we're using it interchangeably between
two different items here. One is a
request request to actually conduct a
search within the database. And that was
Roadwood City, Samato, and the sheriff's
office. The request to utilize or have
access to that system comes directly to
the administrative sergeant, which is
me. Um, and I have not approved any
other requests that come through and
that is set for a one-on-one review with
the town of Woodside's pol or town of
Woodside system. There is an option in
the system to if someone requests access
automatically gets it. Um, I don't
necessarily know the case with other
cities, but that may have been that may
option may have been turned on. It's not
on with the town of Woodside. Got it.
>> All right. Thank you. Uh, Miss Ho from
Flock, I have some questions for you.
So, as you probably guessed, most of my
questions are based on to the documented
failures in neighboring towns. Um, so I
wanted to touch on Mountain View first.
Um, the Mountain View Police suspended
their program because their cameras were
inadvertently set to nationwide sharing
mode, which Flock admitted was a system
failure on their part.
Can Flock provide a written confirmation
that Woodside's default installation
setting is local only and that a
software update cannot silently revert
our sharing permissions to nationwide?
>> We can provide that written.
» Thank you. Um,
so your company assured Mountain View
that protections were in place. Yet the
chief later stated that the flock system
circumvented the protections we
purposefully built. Why should Woodside
trust your current assurances if your
system previously overrode local
configurations?
I don't believe that that's true.
When the dates at question for Mountain
View were done during August to November
of 2024, this is when they were on a
pilot program with Flock. They were not
yes yet customers. They were testing out
the pro testing out the product. They
became customers in January and I assume
that's when their policies fell into
place.
So given what happened in Mountain View
involving the national lookup tool where
federal agencies access data despite
local prohibitions.
Um have a few more questions on that
topic. So there was a a senator's
oversight inquiry revealed that 75% of
flocks law enforcement customers are
enrolled in the national lookup tool
which permits searches across
jurisdictions. Would you be able to
provide a technical report confirming
that Woodside is not one of those
agencies and that the national lookup
feature is hard disabled in our
configuration? Similar to your first
question, yes, we can do that.
» So, in Menlo Park, police share data
with agencies in Texas and Illinois um
attributing the breach to a glitch or a
batch of requests that were approved
inadvertently because of human error.
Menlo Park officials suggested that a
batch of access requests might have been
approved largely by accident due to this
system glitch or UI design failure. Does
your system currently allow a select all
or batch approval function for incoming
data requests?
That was probably when they were by
accident on national lookup. National
Lookup is not possible to enroll in for
any agencies within California and
Virginia.
» Okay. So, you're saying that that would
have only happened if they were on
National Lookup,
>> correct?
>> So, moving on to the shadow sharing
topic. Um, Athetherton police claimed
that Flock system prevents searches
containing keywords like like ICE.
However, records from Oakland and other
jurisdictions show successful search
searches for terms like ICE case and
FBI.
Our understanding is that Flock prevents
searches containing keywords like that,
but press reports show logs with search
reasons like ICE case being successfully
processed. So, can you clarify does your
system hard block specific keywords in
the search justification field?
>> Yes, we allow it or does it merely
discourage them? we allowed for that
those search term blockings. Uh it's a
feature in our product that was
implemented last summer.
Additionally, since December of last
year, we have a drop-down tool for
prefilled search terms. And the search
terms come from Nebris. And this is to
avoid vague terms like you mentioned
earlier like crime, but also to help
with jurisdictions. uh data analysis.
>> Would you be able to provide a list of
prohibited terms?
>> Well, at this point, I think we can
provide a list of neighbors of the terms
of our drop down.
>> Um, on the topic of uh data deletion, so
Woodid's contract stipulates a 60-day
retention period, but residents have
raised concerns about whether data is
truly wiped or just hidden. When data is
deleted from your cloud, is it
immediately overwritten or does it exist
in a backup server or soft delete state
for a period of time? Data sanitation is
a key part of our data security
protocols. It allows us to maintain
certifications like the FBI just
certifications and allow us to be on the
AWS GovCloud.
Would you would Flock be able to provide
an automated certificate of destruction
log that proves Woodside's data is
physically gone after 60 days?
>> I think we can provide you the
certifications.
» Is there a distinction between a
certificate of destruction log or the
certifications that you referenced in
terms of like security certifications
that a company gets to indicate their
level of security practices?
You know, I've never been asked for a
log of data deletion, but it does happen
on a 24-hour every rolling basis.
>> Okay. Would you be able to look into
that and what to determine whether or
not a certificate of destruction log is
feasible and could be provided?
>> Yes.
» Last question. Uh, Flock offers features
beyond license plate reading, such as
Flock Free Form, which allows searching
for vehicles based on visual
characteristics
um, rather than just plates. And does
the software package Woodside is
currently paying for include flock free
form or any object, people or sound
detection anal analytics
for our ALPRs? It is free form only for
vehicle characteristics. It does not
look at people or animals or anything
else.
» I have no further questions. Thank you.
» Other questions from council?
>> I do.
>> Yes. Mayor Prom,
>> they could if they want to go first. Uh
>> yeah, you
>> if you want me to go first. Sure. Um
yes. Uh a question for the sheriff's
department. Um, have you seen any
evidence of any violations of the
program, the flock since you started
with the Woodside? Any Woodside?
>> No impact whatsoever.
>> Sorry. No, not at all.
>> Thank you,
Mayor P.
>> Thank you. Um, I've got a few questions.
Um,
one, uh, first I appreciate, um, going
through what happened in Mountain View.
um that level of detail that it that it
happened at a certain time interval.
That's I I noticed that uh the Mountain
View representatives were pretty vague
about the timing of when it happened. It
almost sounded kind of urgent like it
happened just now. Um but that um does
not seem to be the case. Um,
I also wanted to ask uh in I appreciate
our new assistant sheriff, um, Mark
Meyers being here. By the way, um, I
think I've worked with members of the
sheriff's department for something like
30 years, dating back to Don Horesley.
And um I think I think uh our new
assistant sheriff I would put him rank
him as the highest uh my my respect for
him and the work that he's done uh
surpasses anybody I've ever known at the
sheriff's office. So thank you for being
here tonight shows us how important this
is that you were here. I appreciate it.
>> Um for those who don't know Mark headed
up SWAT bomb squad uh the K-9 unit. uh
now he heads up all operations for the
sheriff's office and uh very welld
deserved. Um
but um I just wanted to ask you because
we because one of the comments that was
made in the questions and I thought they
were really good questions by the way um
were that the number of people that we
may have caught in Woodside for Woodside
crimes. But I understand that you know
this is a network where somebody may
commit a crime here, you may catch them
in Foster City. I remember the cop I
actually the uh chief at Hill at um
Hillsboro
um I forgot his name now actually he's
with the sheriff's office now I think
maybe or he's with emergency services
>> Nelson Cordway
>> Nelson exactly I had breakfast with him
once a few years ago but he mentioned
that somebody from Porto Valley had
committed a crime and they caught them
at the Hillsdale Mall uh the same day um
so you never know where you're going to
catch anybody and I assume we catch
people in in Woodside who committed
crimes in Redwood City or other places
as well but could you comment on that
the just the sheer numbers of uh you
know the millions of of uh cars that may
go through a lot of them are us but I
mean it's just uh you know we pass a lot
of cameras but the efficacy of what you
actually hit on and and whether that's
woodside or not woodside
>> I I think you get a good mixture like I
was formerly in San Carlos we would get
a lot of uh uh a lot of times we'd have
cars that would commit a burglary in
West Menllo Park and then we get them up
in San Carlos off of Crest View. So
having and that was using Menllo Park or
Athetherton's the license plate readers.
So having that network is really what
makes the system great and kind of
spreads that umbrella protection, you
know, over the county. Um, as far as the
report, we can give you more detail and
maybe give you some more examples. Um,
it's just a deep dive we have to do.
>> Okay. Um, and the last thing I wanted to
mention, I have some comments. I'll save
them because I know this is sort of a
question period here. Um, but I did want
to, you know, one of the things that I
noticed is that, um, there was a lot of
mention of failures of other agencies,
Athetherton, Mountain View, um, uh,
Oakland, etc.,
but not the sheriff's office. That's,
uh, the one that I haven't heard any
breaches from, you know, that that
really come out of your location in
Redwood City. Um, and and I think I
heard correctly that my question is is
that that does seem to be the case. Uh,
as far as we could, you know, as far as
we can tell, we are in the process of
looking at doing a a full audit of all
of our information, all of the the reads
we've have since we had the system. This
is very labor intensive, but I think we
have a great relationship with with
Flock. Uh, any changes to make our
system more robust, whether it's search
terms or whatever, uh, they implement it
right away. So, I think we really have a
good relationship with Flock, and that's
kind of why I think we have avoided a
lot of these things that other agencies,
unfortunately, have had to deal with.
Um, and just for for your knowledge,
like I'm one of the system
administrators, Nick is, and then our
technical services director, so really
only three people have access to make
any of those changes.
>> Okay. Thank you. And the the um I did
have something I I I was just reminded
of what our mayor said just before he
opened this thing up and that is that
the purpose here tonight is to see if
we're this isn't a quarterly review and
an annual review that we have on whether
or not we're in compliance with the
policy that we set up. And I think
that's what's before us tonight. If we
want to make changes to those policies
and require deeper audits or deeper
certifications or other things, we would
have to decide that. But I think until
we do, you know, we're sort of at the uh
this is what we've demanded of you to do
and uh we're here to see whether or not
that's been certified uh at least to our
satisfaction. So, thank you for being
patient with those.
>> And then also just last week, we just
updated our LPR policy. So, I will get
that to the uh the town manager. We
actually included per uh Supervisor
Spirit's request, we actually put a a
language in there where the the cameras
won't be used for any kind of first
amendment protest or anything like that.
>> Excellent. Thank you. Great son. Joseph,
>> um I just have a few questions. Um guys,
how how long did it take to complete
that search of all you know uh from the
start of the system till now?
took me approximately two hours.
>> And how long do you usually does it
usually take you to prepare for this
quarterly meeting? Um, in total,
including anyone who helps you with with
preparing for us.
>> It's just me. I'm the only one who has
access to it for the policy. Um, it's
probably about an hour to to run the
reports and and complete it all.
>> Okay. In total, including drive time,
everything. How long would you say you
spend quarterly um for this whole
process?
Um, this quarter is a little bit more
intense um than other ones, but probably
close to five hours if you factor
everything in.
>> Okay. Jason, can I ask you how long does
it take our Woodside I mean our
resources to to go through this process
quarterly?
>> Yeah, we internally staff feel that this
item has been contentious at least since
its inception. And so we're constantly
trying to figure out ways to really show
compliance and and dig deeper. And so in
this instance, I mean, we definitely
spent substantially more time than that.
We met with the sheriff's office for
over two hours. Uh and then we changed
our reporting structure completely. And
so preparing for this, I mean, I would
say it was like 12 hours of uh just
really deeper discussion, really trying
to figure out how we can um bring about
a better level of compliance or showing
a narrative rather than just the the
check boxes that we were showing before.
>> Thank you.
» I've got a related question here. One of
the things that's just been on my mind
with all this is the issue of oversight
governance and um the reporting
relationship we have with our sheriff
and the department here has been
outsourced to an advisory volunteer
committee and uh the question I have
really um and of course that's been
something that's bothered me like should
we be outsourcing an outsourced policing
department uh when it's the single
largest budget item that we have and
with everything that's going on with
safety and security that's on this. I
mean, our entire agenda to come is still
about safety issues in town and of
course the scrutiny that's going up on
these cameras. So, my question for you
is um can you give us a little bit of
color? What is the normal reporting
relationship that you have with the
councils that you serve? Do you talk to
the councils? Do you talk to some
advisory body or I mean
>> direct relationship or
>> prior San Carlos experience once a year
I would provide a annual report to the
council that would uh have all sorts of
stat statistics community engagement
events we do um in San Carlos we meet
once a month just uh my admin sergeant
uh Nick's counterpart will meet with the
traffic and planning commission just to
go over any traffic complaints you know
parking issues stuff like that. That's
usually
the schedule for San Carlos. And it's
pretty much the same thing for Milbury.
A yearly annual report to the city
council. Same for Half Moon Bay. What
we're trying to do is align them all
kind of in the same time frame. So that
way we can actually do an overall
sheriff's office annual report to
encompass everything. But at San Carlos,
I would report to the council once a
year on our annual report. And then we
did uh monthly traffic meetings with the DPW. Okay. And Jason, in your
experience, what is the proper reporting
relationship versus maybe what we have?
>> Yeah, for me in my last uh position in
Hy Rica, we would oscillate uh once a
you know two meetings a month. Uh the
first meeting the fire chief would give
an update to the council and then on the
second meeting the police chief would
address the council.
>> Okay. Uh thank you. Thank you both. I'm
just so council knows, I'm going to ask
in deliberation for a straw pull on
direction to uh change the relationship
that we have with the sheriff's
department to be a direct reporting
relationship with council going forward.
So, in addition to any comments you
might have, and this sounds like there's
going to be plenty, if you could just
addendum this issue of what your
thoughts are, I would very much
appreciate it on the issue of reporting.
Any other questions from council before
we open up public comment?
Okay,
public comment. We are going to open
public comment for old business item A,
quarterly and annual review of license
plate readers.
Got three in the Zoom room and Kimberly
Woo has been up for about an hour. So,
why don't we start with her?
» Hi, can you hear me?
>> Yes, we can. Welcome.
>> Thank you. Uh, good evening. I'm
Kimberly Woo and I'm a community
organizer for services immigrant rights
and education network which serves our
immigrant and refugee communities in
Sanonteo County. And on behalf of Siren,
I strongly urge Woodside to pause the
AOPR program. It puts our communities in
danger. AOPR data from neighboring
communities has been hacked and misused,
and this data has been shared with
federal agencies that are violently
attacking communities across the
country. The Flock Company cannot be
trusted as they impose dangerous
surveillance tools with documented
instances of ICE accessing this a AOPR
data to terrorize our communities and
separate our families. Simply auditing
flock data regarding ICE cooperation
could actually produce a false negative
because according to DHS's own data
policies, ICE does not leave any trail
and audit logs on any ALPR except their
own. In other words, we may not see if
ICE access the town's data because ICE
purposely and systematically refuses to
leave trail. Additionally, even in the
potential case that Woodside police data
is not directly shared with ICE, our
local police data is shared with other
police departments who may collude and
expose expose our personal data to ICE,
granting this notorious notorious agency
access to our private information. The
power of flocks AOPR is to collect,
retain, and analyze location data for
every driver on the road violates our
fourth amendment right to a reasonable
expectation of privacy by essentially
enabling mass warrantless tracking that
stalks in an individual's movements to
the second in a twist form of persistent
draget surveillance. In fact, this
technology creates such massive data
privacy constitutional violations that
Siren along with KO California as
Foundation of Northern California and
Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the
city of San Jose for Flock and AOPR data
extreme invasiveness. This town must end
their flock contract because flocks
unblinking cameras automatically retain
the locations of drivers, enabling
police tends instantly reconstruct
everyone's movements. With Santa Cruz
City Council ending their contract and
Mountain View City Council pausing their
contract, our Bay Area neighbors boldly
send the message that community trust is
necessary for public safety. We are
calling on Woodside leadership to stop
using flock cameras and ensure no town
data is shared directly or indirectly
with ICE or border patrol. Standing by
our values means choosing community
trust, privacy and and immigrant safety
over unconstitutional
hyper surveillance. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
Anyone in the room that would like to
speak before we go back to Zoom? Yes,
sir.
Oh, thank you.
>> Hey everyone. Um
uh my name is Matt. I have a few uh just
concerns about the the annual report.
Probably the first of which was my notes
got soaked on the way here, but I'll uh
I'll do my best here. I really just want
to ask the council uh just to pump the
brakes on accepting uh this annual
report. Right. Everyone in the room here
has heard about what happened in
Mountain View and I I personally I think
that's kind of deeply disturbing. Um
it's a good point that what was
happening there was never uncovered by
the reporting that was happening there.
So, I think our our report kinds
uh rethink. I think the report relies
too heavily on self-certification by the
vendor. Uh the report explicitly states
that compliance means receiving an
annual written confirmation from Flock.
Uh we are accepting that the system is
secure simply because the vendor wrote
us a note saying it's secure in Mountain
View. that same vendor enabled
nationwide sharing without permission
from the city. So, letter of asurances
from a vendor that overrides security
settings. To me, that does not sound
like an audit. That sounds like a Trojan
horse.
There's a nationwide scandal in the last
year that has been unfolding over
Flock's I think lack of security. So the
this model of self-certification is
unacceptable in my view. Mountain View
did not discover their own illegal
vulnerabilities because Flock told them
about it.
They discovered it because they demanded
their own investigation.
And I I think it's wild that until
tonight
I didn't hear about any
uh verification of the settings that are
even in our dashboard. That should have
been in the annual report and it was
not.
So the Woodside staff, town staff is
accepting, recommending that we accept
the report tonight. Um, but I I think
continuing business as usual there
ignores the reality of what's happening
right now. We cannot continue just
blindingly trusting a vendor that I
think has lost the confidence of our
community. So, I want to urge the
council to reject the report tonight.
um tell the sheriff's office that we
need an independent audit, a technical
audit, not just a policy alignment
review, which is is what we have right
now.
I think our community uh just deserves a
better approach. So, thank you.
>> Thank you.
We'll move back to the Zoom room.
Michelle Leitus.
>> Hi. Thank you.
>> Hi. Um, my name is Michelle Leitis and I
am a li lifelong Sanonteo County
resident. I'm also a volunteer with the
ACLU Sanontto County chapter, but I'm
speaking today in my personal capacity.
Um, I'm also here to request that you
pause Woodid's ALPR program. Um, we're
all members here in Sanonteo County. You
know, we drive through Woodside, we dine
in Woodside, we shop in Woodside. Even
if we don't live there, we study there.
We do um you know we we are subject to
the cameras just as much as anyone um
who lives there. And um we know that um
this program puts the Woodside community
in danger. The um the fact that um there
hasn't been any problems with the
Woodside data yet does not predict that
there won't be future issues. It's great
that there h, you know, that that
nothing has been um discovered at this
point that that um we've been able to
get some assurances from the sheriff's
department in terms of their review. Um
we don't necessarily know what's going
on with the um the work at at um
Sanonteo PD and and Redwood City PD. I
think there's a bit too much concern
with um looking like you're accusing
rather than just doing your job of
auditing. Um and so that we want to make
sure that our data continues to be safe
and we know that it's not safe in
Flock's hands. They have been caught in
national reporting making one false
statement after another about their
technological controls and safety. uh
their CEO claimed that Flock was
limiting cross-state border access after
data breaches across state lines were
revealed by journalists. So I think it's
really important the fact that you know
Flock is also involved in providing
support for audits or other um um policy
compliance is a big red flag. Um, and I
think that we need to pause and make
sure that you're um you're you have full
understanding uh and take the time to
understand the high-risisk consequences
of ALPR abuse. I think there's a little
too much um acceptance of the status quo
and the fact that oh well we give up
privacy every time we drive um across a
bridge so we should be able to give up
privacy here as well. I think that's a
little just too much um of a of uh just
giving up and and not looking at the
writing on the wall. And uh thank you
for your consideration.
» Thank you. Anyone here in the room that
would like to go next as we alternate
back and forth? Mr. Middleman.
Good evening, David Middleman, Woodside
Resident. Um, I had to throw out my
original speech because you guys covered
it all, but I wanted to touch on
something that hasn't come up, which is
uh
blocks technical infrastructure. So for
some those of you that don't know, I
have 14 years experience in the
technical industry. I lead software
teams. I deal with PII and HIPPA data at
a pharmaceutical company. I've dealt
with IoT devices at other companies and for DARPA. And in past lives, I've
held a security clearance.
There were a lot of technical
deficiencies that were found along with
the operational trust deficiencies that
occurred. The flock cameras that are out
in town run an old discontinued
non-patched up-to-date version of
Android Things. Any new OS vulnerability
discovered today will never receive an
official fix, which means the only way
to patch is to replace or fundamentally
rearchitect that device. For a longived
public safety program that locks
Woodside in a permanent technical debt
and known vulnerable software at the
edge of our network,
independent researchers have
demonstrated that pressing a specific
button sequence on the back of those
cameras causes it to broadcast a Wi-Fi
hotspot. Once connected, an attacker can
enable the debugging bridge and obtain
boot access to that device in 30
seconds.
Because there is no secure boot or
strong firmware in integrity checking,
an attacker can load their own firmware,
falsely or suppress plate reads, or
quietly exfiltrate data without the
vendor or agency noticing.
Cameras are configured with hardcode
Wi-Fi SSIDs. It will automatically join
a network with that name when that name
is present which enables evil twin or
rogue AP attacks from any nearby laptop
or hotspot. Basically, you could drive
up to a camera, get access to it.
Traffic captures and public research
have shown credentials and other
sensitive information being sent without
modern protections such as TLS
encryption or controlled channels open
the door for man-in-the-middle attacks.
These cameras talk to our cell towers in
town.
The images and configuration data are
stored unequipped on the device. And
researchers have found legacy factory
test images still present indicating
poor data wiping practices and making
physical theft of a camera a data
breach. There's no mandatory two-factor
authentication for officers like in town
when we access our emails.
And it is to note that Flock does have a
SOCK 2 and ISO 2701
certifications. Those certifications
were issued in 2023 and 2024.
However,
those certifications are internal
security and operational practices over
time. They don't specify that devices
are free of vulnerabilities. In other
words, a system can be sock to compliant
and so edge devices that can that are
easy to compromise
with single factor login and highly
sensitive tools. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Back to the Zoom room. Fixen
San Mateo County.
» Hi, I'm actually a person. I'm Nancy
Goodban. I live in Redwood City. My
brother-in-law does own a home in
Woodside. I'm speaking on my own, not as
a representative of any organization.
Thank you for the time that you're
taking to discuss this, and I agree with
the others. Please look into pausing
your flock safety contract. I know it
would be at a later date, but Flock has
announced plans to connect with data
brokers. Their data has been used to
surveil protesters, even to track down
women who have had an illegal abortion.
These kind of threats to the privacy of
anyone who drives through Woodside are
dangerous to community safety, and these
dangers outweigh the benefits. I'm glad
there's no breach yet, but it's happened
elsewhere, and so it can happen here. It
also makes it hard to trust the company.
They are the ones that control the data.
They control the software, and I, for
one, am not confident in their promises.
Flock has screwed up in other cities and
made mistakes. It can't just be a matter
of faith if it involves my personal
privacy.
Mountain View and Santa Cruz canled
their contracts with Flock because the
company misused the data and made it
available for purposes that are against
the county's policy, the city's
policies. In Mountain View, they found
it through an internal audit. Flock had
turned on a data setting allowing the
feds to access data. They say they won't
do that again. I want to take it on
something more than faith. Both cities
concluded that even though the license
plate data do help the police, the risk
community privacy and safety is too
high. Santa Cruz found that out of state
agencies had access the data. They
concluded the risk of generating fear in
the community made the flock system too
high a risk for the community. Half Moon
Bay is looking at it the use of flock
later this month or March in a balance
between our personal privacy rights and
the right of the government or a private
company to use our data for its own
purposes. Please come down on the side
of our privacy rights. We have seen way
too much overreach by the government in
the last few months. We don't need more.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
I think we're gonna do we have anybody
else? Yes. Come right back. Welcome.
>> Thank you. Uh and thank you, Jason.
There's actually three topics tonight
we're going to talk on. This the second
one. So, I appreciate the efficiency. Um
you guys know I'm going to be here.
We're here every single time. And I'll
admit it was quite lonely for parts of
the last three years. Uh I am heartened
to see the number of people who have
taken up the mantle on this one. Um
unfortunately, I think it is because of
a number of missteps that Flock has had.
So, it's a sad reason to do it, but I'm
glad to see the end result either way.
Um, I want to start this by saying I
support the sheriffs unilaterally. I
think our sheriffs are fantastic. I want
every criminal in this town or around us
to go to jail for as long as possible,
probably longer than the judges. I think
sometimes that just gets conflated with,
oh, you don't want this. No, I want them
to go to jail and I want them to suffer
and I want them to pay for the crimes
they committed. This is not the way to
do it at the cost we pay to do it. Um,
I'm not going to go through all you.
I've been here so many times. I strongly
recommend you read David Middleman's
letter. I just read through the whole
thing. It covers almost everything I'm
aware of about Flock and all of their
terrible ways. The one that really got
me was when I think it was in Virginia,
a town like much like ours, maybe
bigger, was debating the same thing. And
the CEO of Flock wrote a mean, scary
letter to the police chief accusing his
residents of being anti- police
agitators and some other nonsense. And
the police chief very eloquently wrote
back, "Actually, sir, this is democracy
in action, and we respect our residents.
It is the dirtiness of this company that
is just gling, but you know what? The
guy's a billionaire, so what do I what
can I say? I'm not." Um, something else
that I think was not yet public or was
not ruled on before your last meeting
about this, and by the way, I know
you're not voting on the contract now.
I'm well aware. You guys know that in
Washington in November, a judge ruled
that these photos are public records.
That's obviously Washington, not
California. But if that turns out to be
true, that entire database that is
supposed to only be accessible by our
sheriffs, I could get all of your
plates, go out, take them, and be like,
"Hey, mayor, you were here, here, here, everywhere for everybody in
this town." We are creating that
database. And what I've said before is
we do not want to be generating this
data. That is the fundamental problem.
It's not the Fourth Amendment. It's not
the camera. It's the generation and
networking of the data that is a
problem. I will leave this with with
this statement. Two things can be true
at the same time. It is a useful tool
for the sheriffs to conduct law
enforcement. No doubt. It can also be an
awful invasion of our privacy and run by
a terrible company. Sorry, ma'am. Your
company is awful. Um that we do not want
to trust our stuff with. It's a company.
I can I have a first amendment right to
berate a company. It is not a person. I
have no problems with her company.
>> You got to direct. You got to direct.
>> Flock is an awful company. We should not
pay the money.
>> Thank you for directing it to me.
» If if you guys decide to change it, all
I will say to you is thank you because
there's no gloating anywhere. There's no
anything. We should just do what's right
based on the information we have. If you
do decide to do it, I will come and
thank you. And the last thing I'll leave
is in I have an ALPR of my own at my
house. I'd be happy to register it with
the town and the sheriffs and if the
other residents did it, we could have
our own internal network where if
something did happen, they could ping
the residents who were willing to share
their data and we I'd gladly give it to
them. So that's something we could do on
our own. Doesn't involve flock. Thank
you.
>> Thank you. And we'll be back in the Zoom
room with Sarah Matlin.
» Good evening. My name is Sarah Matlin
and I live in nearby Redwood City. I'm a
volunteer with the ACLU cemeter chapter,
but I'm speaking today in my personal
capacity. In my personal capacity, I
often meet with friends and clients at
the village hub and I stop the village
bakery in the cafe uh bakery cafe after
hiking in Woodside. Uh this annual
review, yes, is to see if Woodside's
ALPR system is in compliance with its
policy. And the answer from manager led
better is it's a matter of faith. That's
not enough. Please pause with Woodside's
ALPR program. When the title of town of
Woodside first installed its ALPR
system, town leaders may not have fully
known how ALPRs could put Woodside
community members at risk. But now we
know that 71 police departments in
California unintentionally or
intentionally have violated the state
law that prohibits them from sharing
ALPR data with federal and out ofstate
law enforcement agencies, including the
federal agencies that are violently
attacking communities across the
country. Even if we can trust individual
officers to do the right thing, we can't
trust FLOP. Flock previously instituted
that side door customs and border patrol
pilot project that police departments
did not know about. It's my
understanding that this project is only
paused right now. It's not been formally
ended. And uh uh in addition, the
Mountain Police Chief explained very
clearly that Flock turned on the
national bookup setting for
approximately three months from August
14th, 2024 until sometime in November of
that year. He gave those those specific
dates. It doesn't matter that they
weren't paying for the program. Slot
violated their free contract with
Mountain View and we can't trust ICE. As
mentioned previously, when they hack the
AL ALPR databases or when they do it
through a daisy chain, they have been
instructed to leave no trace. Your ALPR
program risks the safety of any
individuals traveling in Woodside.
Whether they're a Woodside residents
just drive driving through, hiking
through, eating their way through, or
whether they are immigrants or people
seeking reproductive care, or people who
are under attack in other communities.
To protect everyone who lives and visits
Woodside, the town council should pause
its license plate cameras. With
knowledge of these widespread violations
of local policies and state laws, the
town of Woodside has a now has a greater
responsibility to make sure its ALPR
system does not endanger community
safety. You have the responsibility to
protect the community from the
high-risisk consequences of ALPR abuse.
And that's why you should pause
Woodsight's ALPR program this evening.
do not accept the audit given the number
of of open questions that uh there was
no clear answer to other than it's a
matter of faith. Please do not accept
this report as sufficient in answering
the open questions that have been posed
this evening and please pause your ALPR
program. Please put this up for a vote.
Thank you.
>> Thank you. Any other comments from the
all?
Seeing none, any comments from Zoom.
Last call.
Okay, we'll close public comment um and
open up deliberations.
And uh I know we have some ground to
cover uh but if I could ask at least as
a starting point as an addendum to your
shared perspectives to just also if you
could comment on how you'd like to see
the reporting relationship evolve or not
with our sheriffs. And of course if any
member of the council wants to also add
uh a motion in there that see if there
could be majority behind that motion as
well for future direction on anything.
please mention that and then you know
again try to build uh we'll try to build
with whatever we hear from everybody as
we go up and down the line. Um
I think you earned the right to go first
council member Wall.
>> All right. Um, so fellow council members
and uh members of the public and our
Woodside residents that are here
tonight, I'd like to begin by thanking
the town manager and the San Mo County
Sheriff's Office for the quarterly and
annual reports provided this evening.
We all share a fundamental commitment to
the safety of Woodside residents. The
recovery of stolen vehicles and the
apprehension of suspects, such as the
March 2025 arrest following a hit near
Sand Hill Road, demonstrate that ALPR
technology, can be a functional tool for
local law enforcement. However, our duty
as a council is not only to provide
tools to the sheriff's office, but to
ensure these tools are used in a manner
that is legal, fiscally responsible, and
respectful of the community we
represent.
Public safety is built on a foundation
of public trust. When a vendor fails to
meet its contractual obligations or
undermines our local policies, that
trust is compromised.
As we review the data tonight, we must
look beyond the compliant labels in our
internal audits and address the
significant negative press coverage
surrounding flock safety.
We are seeing a documented pattern of
behavior from this vendor that suggests
they are no longer
a reliable partner for our town. and I
have several concerns that I believe we
must address before moving forward with
any further expansion or renewal of this
contract.
Our town policy was carefully drafted to
ensure that Woodid's data remains on a
short lease. Short leash. We explicitly
authorized only three specific agencies.
the San Monteo County Sheriff's Office,
the San Monteo PD, and the Redwood City
PD to access our system. Yet, the recent
reporting from our neighbors in Mountain
View, Menllo Park, and other peer
communities should really give us all
pause.
In Mountain View, an internal audit
revealed that a nationwide lookup
setting was enabled without the city's
permission. For months, federal agencies
from as far away as Kentucky and
Virginia were searching Mountain View's
license plate data. Perhaps even worse,
a statewide lookup tool was active for
17 months, allowing more than 250
unauthorized agencies to conduct over
600,000
searches of their data.
We have heard from Flock that sharing
settings are always under the control of
the agency, but the evidence from
Mountain View contradicts that claim.
Their chief of police stated bluntly
that he no longer has confidence in this
particular vendor. After discovering
these circumventions of local policies
in Menllo Park, tens of thousands of
searches were conducted by departments
in Texas and Illinois despite state laws
and local policies that strictly forbid
sharing data with outofstate agencies.
If these nearby municipalities, which
have rigorous oversight, could not
prevent their data from being accessed
by hundreds of unauthorized outside
entities, we must ask ourselves, how can
we be certain that Woodside's 3.1
million annual plate reads are not being
harvested by the same agencies?
My second concern is the practical risk
this technology poses to the privacy of
our residents.
We are currently seeing ALPR data being
leveraged for purposes that far exceed
the bonafide law enforcement
investigations that we authorized.
A disturbing case in Johnson in Johnson
County, Texas serves as a warning.
A deputy there used a nationwide Block
search to track a woman for quote
unquote self-administered abortion. For
months, Block and the local sheriff
characterized this as a missing person
welfare check. It was only after public
records were released that the truth
came out. It was in fact a criminal
investigation into reproductive
healthcare.
While this specific search may have
originated in Texas, it queried over
83,000
cameras across the country. This is not
just a social issue. It's a governance
issue. When we contract with a vendor
whose system architecture allows a
single officer in another state to
search our residents movements for
investigations that would be illegal
under California law, we are exposing
our town to significant liability and
violating California's shield laws that
our state legislature has passed to
prevent this exact scenario.
Furthermore, investigations by the EFF
have shown that the reason fields for
searches are often filled with vague
terms like test, investigation.
They've even seen slurs. In some
instances, the technology has even been
used for personal vendettas, such as a
Kansas police chief who tracked his
girlfriend's vehicle 228 times. Our own
audit tonight reviewed only 40 random
searches out of nearly 118,000
queries.
This is an audit of less than 0.04%
of activity. This is not an adequate
safeguard for a system of this scale.
We also must consider the technical and
professional stability of the vendor
itself. In November 2025, security
researchers published findings showing
that Flock cameras are running on
outdated Android 8 software that has not
received security updates since 2021.
These cameras are physically and
digitally v vulnerable with unencrypted
data storage that has been found to
retain images far longer than the
advertised period.
As a council, we are responsible for the
security of the infrastructure we
approve. The trust center Flock provides
is not a substitute for a secure
technical architecture.
When we when we see reports of
hard-coded Wi-Fi network names that
allow hackers to gain complete control
of a camera, we are looking at a
technical house of cards.
The response from Flock's leadership to
these legitimate concerns has been
equally troubling. In December 2025, CEO
Garrett Langley sent an email to law
enforcement clients attacking the very
concept of public oversight,
characterizing critics of surveillance
as nihilists who want to normalize
lawlessness.
This is not the language of a
professional services provider. It is
the language of a company that views
democratic accountability as a
coordinated attack.
As we deliberate tonight, we must ask
each of ourselves, what is the risk of
doing nothing?
What is the risk of simply accepting
this report and moving on without
demanding a more robust audit?
Well, from a legal standpoint, the town
of Woodside faces significant exposure.
California's SB34 and SB 107, our
state's reproductive healthc care shield
laws, are not mere suggestions. They are
mandates. If it is discovered that
Woodside's data was shared with out of
state agencies for abortion related or
immigration investigations because we as
a council failed to exercise due
diligence, the town could face costly
litigation and civil penalties. We have
already seen the California Attorney
General sue the city of Elcohone for
these exact types of data sharing
violations. As council members, we have
a fiduciary duty to mitigate these
risks. Ignoring documented evidence of
vendor non-compliance is not playing it
safe. It's inviting a lawsuit.
Furthermore, there is profound
reputational risk to this body and to us
individually as elected officials. And I
believe we're at a turning point. Our
neighbors in Mountain View, Menllo Park,
Santa Clara County, and several others
have already faced the fallout of these
unauthorized data leaks. If Woodside
becomes the next headline because we
chose to ignore the red flags raised by
investigative journalists and
neighboring police chiefs, we will have
failed in our role as stewards of the
public trust. Residents will rightly ask
why we continue to to trust a system
that was demonstrably compromised
elsewhere. In action today will be seen
as an endorsement of the vendor's
practices tomorrow.
And Woodside is not alone in these
concerns. In the past year, nearly 30
jurisdictions, including our neighbors
in Los Altos Hills and Santa Cruz, have
canled or declined to renew their flock
contracts.
Santa Clara County has delayed its
renewal pending a full investigation
into unauthorized data sharing and
federal uh with federal authorities.
I believe in providing our sheriff
deputies with the resources they need to
keep Woodside safe. However, safety also
requires that we protect our residents
from the overreaching surveillance and
insecure technology. We cannot simply
infer or trust or review and accept this
report when the when the vendor
providing the data is facing a
nationwide crisis of trust. So I'm
respectfully asking my colleagues to
consider the following.
We should pause the program and the
installation of any additional cameras,
including the one requested for running
me, until we have a full explanation
from Flock regarding the unauthorized
lookup settings found in other cities.
We absolutely need a more robust audit
process. Checking 40 searches out of
118,000
is insufficient to ensure that our
policy is being followed.
And most importantly, we must direct our
town manager to explore alternative
vendors. We need a partner that respects
local control, prioritizes cyber
security, and understands that in a
democracy, transparency is not an
attack. It's an obligation.
To fulfill our responsibility to this
community, we must move beyond the
current reporting structure. The
quarterly and annual reports you receive
are currently prepared by the town
manager's office, staffed by dedicated
municipal employees, but individuals who
are not experts in data privacy, cyber
security, or digital forensic auditing.
Expecting a town manager to verify the
architectural integrity of a nationwide
surveillance database and program is
neither fair to staff nor effective for
our oversight duties. Therefore, my
final recommendation is that the town of
Woodside immediately transition to a
third-party audit model. We should hire
an independent firm with specific
technical expertise in privacy and
security to conduct our ALPR reviews.
This external auditor would be tasked
with verifying that our data is not
being accessed by unauthorized federal
or out of state agencies and that the
vendor is meeting the highest standards
of encryption and security.
Replacing our internal reports with a
professional independent audit is a
common sense measure. It provides the
council with the expert analysis we need
to make informed decisions. And it
provides the public with the assurance
that their privacy is being protected by
more than just a vendor's promise.
If we are to maintain the trust of this
community, we must show that we are
willing to hold our vendors accountable
when they fail to meet our standards.
Safety and privacy are not mutually
exclusive. They both require a vendor we
can trust and oversight we can verify.
Based on the evidence we have seen
tonight and over the last few months, I
do not believe Flock Safety is a vendor.
Nor do I is it is is that vendor, nor do
I believe our current oversight model is
sufficient to protect the people of
Woodside.
Thank you.
Uh, and where are you on sheriff
reporting relationship?
>> Um, so yeah, if I'm interpreting your um
suggestion, so this is actually a a
nuance that I hadn't appreciated. So
you're saying that currently the sheriff
rather than say having a reporting
relationship to the town manager reports
to a committee. I'm saying that
currently the sheriff's department um
goes to the circulation committee.
um are volunteers.
Uh we I I don't I feel shielded a little
bit by not I don't feel like we have
great governance. I don't feel like I
know what's happening uh the way I
should. And I think that it would be
helpful if the sheriff's department uh
as our number one line item and with all
these safety issues and with the cameras
and everything else that's going on that
we would adopt a uh a reporting
relationship that would be a direct
reporting rel relationship which I think
would be appropriate and good municipal
governance.
>> Um well, first I'll say I'm I'm very
curious for my fellow council members to
weigh in on the proposals that I just
made but all to to address your
suggestions. So, you know, I was a
member of the circulation committee for
uh a year or so and um I never saw the
sheriff's presence at the circulation
committee as creating a reporting
relationship and in in a governance
sense, right? Um there was no um
yeah, that that in my mind that's not
what I observed or I experienced. I
think the sheriff um showed up and
offered really valuable information
about the number of traffic stops in the
community and other um factual details
to help inform the circulation
committee's um agenda deliberations,
etc. So, I I would want to see that
continue. Uh that being said, I'm 100%
in support of establishing a more robust
uh governance relationship between the
town of Woodside and the and the
sheriff's office. I think like you said,
it's one of our it's either the number
one or or one of the top um you know uh
costs to the town of Woodside. And so I
think um we absolutely need to to manage
that relationship closely. And um so
yeah, I think that's a long-winded
saying long-winded way of saying I would
very much support a more robust
governance relationship between uh the
town manager and the sheriff's office.
>> Uh so that's slightly different than
what my ask was. So you are not
supportive of moving the sheriff
directly reporting to council. You want
to keep the sheriff continuing to
present at circulation.
>> I don't think that's exactly what I'm
saying. I think I I I don't view the
sheriff's reporting to circulation as
creating a a governance or uh a
reporting relationship in the governance
sense. I mean, they certainly are
reporting information. Um so I don't
think that we need to change anything
about how the sheriff shows up at
circulation committee, but I think we
should establish a uh governance
relationship between the town manager
and the sheriff.
Okay. Thank you. Uh, all right. I've got
one, two, three, or five items. Uh, so I
don't know if anybody like like to go
next on any perspectives and then I'll
just ask these five items that have been
put forth from this
as well.
>> I'll I'll I'll jump in.
>> Okay.
And uh first I'd like to point out that
there's Woodside has a long history with
the sheriff's department and we've
always found to be very very trustful,
very high level of integrity and very
honest with us. Um there's no evidence
of violations in the way they've been
handling flock with us. Um,
there's there's no hard evidence that
says how many
crimes have been prevented
because of flock, but I can tell you my
own personal experiences. The other day,
walked out the door. My I live on
Northgate, one of the streets that has
the Flock camera, and there were two
unoccupied vehicles parked next door,
unoccupied, nobody's around. My first
instinct is we better call the sheriff
and say what are we going to do. Then I
realize I look up there's a flock sign.
Guy wouldn't be crazy enough to try to
break into a house right underneath the
flock sign. And that tells me that there
is a a a strong evidence that it's going
to be a um reduction of our crime and
continue to reduce crime in Woodside.
Um, so I'm I'm very much in favor of
what they have been doing. Can we
improve it? I don't know. I'm not sure
the evidence is any problems in
Woodside.
Nobody tonight has said that there were
any issues that come up with Flock and
the way it's been managed in Woodside.
Um and in terms of privacy issues which
were brought up when we first came into
flock as well as every quarter it come
seems to come up. I want to point out to
everybody and then you know this is your
credit information in case you didn't
know it is on the dark web which
everybody's priv is available on the
dark web. I know that because I've been
talking to um credit fraud companies
about, you know, personal
protection and they told me about every
all of your evidence of all of your
finances all over the dark web. So that
is not a privacy. If you think that's a
protection, um I'd also point out that
um Google
sells your information for heaven's
sakes. um you go into Safeway, you go
down the aisle, they're picking up
information about what you buy and when
you're buying it. Um and so I don't know
where
I would would go further um in terms of
changing what we're doing with the uh
the sheriff department and flock at this
point. Um I I understand what you I
said, Jen, I go I commend you the amount
of work you put into this. Um, I'm just
not sure I'm ready to say do a whole
scale change stop because there's some a few instances around the country
and I I'm I'm
keep in mind how many transactions occur
throughout the law enforcement world
annually daily and we're talking about a
uh a relatively small number of
instances where information has been
improperly disclosed.
um having one one in one officer in one
community using it to go after his his
wife or spouse or girlfriend. That's on
television for heaven's sakes. I've seen
plenty of programs about that. Um and
it's an individual instance. I don't
think it has anything to do with block
as being it's just one more tool they
might use for that, but it's an
individual problem. So, as far as
reporting to the council, yes, I'm all
for that. Uh, I think I'd like to have
more input. Um, and I've seen the
circulation committee and what the the
sheriff does with the circulation
committee because I'm the leazison on
that. Um, I think that information is
very good for them, but the council
should be seeing that information and if
there any action to be taken, it should
be taken by the council ultimately um to
act on it.
So, that's what I have to say.
>> Thank you. Let me just uh for uh sake of
clarity go through the other four items.
Um there was a motion to give direction
to pause the program and installations.
You are a yes or a no?
>> No.
>> There was a motion to uh for more robust
audit searches.
>> No.
>> There was a motion for explore
um alternate vendors.
>> No.
There was a motion to transition to a
third party audit
uh company.
>> No.
>> Okay.
Who's next?
>> I can go.
>> Thank you, Council Member Abish.
>> Thank you. Um
this is uh this is a lot to think about.
I I have to say I I really appreciate uh
Council Member Wall um all the points
you raised and and you also uh Council
Member Brown. Um I do appreciate that
this that there are major privacy risks.
Um, and but but when I personally when I
take a step back, I care most about
safety and of the community, of my kids
selfishly, my family, everybody around
me, my neighbors, my friends. Um, and
what I view as one of the biggest risks
is is criminals. I mean, I don't I don't
think that there's, you know, like a any
significant chance that we're going to
get
um, you know, something's going to
happen in Woodside. I think it's a
pretty safe place, but I mean, I've
known people that have died. I know
somebody, one of my close high school
friends got killed in a convenience
store and never caught the person who
did it. Um I I've known uh somebody else
who got um lost their daughter because
of a a horrible accident where somebody
was fleeing a crime scene. And you know
I I consider those the real risks in my life. The things that I when I
think about them I don't want you know I
want to do what I can to prevent them.
And so for me that is a tangible risk
that that this the flock system you know
with its flaws
it's going to it creates some protection
you know where we we are going to have
uh you know if if a criminal does
something horrific or even you know a
relatively minor crime and starts
fleeing through Woodside
I like to know that there is some safety
net there's some protection that
somebody's going to catch um uh that
there is a system in place that's going
to prevent it. They're not going to, you
know, come flying through
and, you know, look for a place to hide
out and, you know, hopefully run in, you
know, me or my family. Um I'd like to
know that that doesn't exist. And, you
know, and I when I think about it,
privacy, yes, I I 100% agree. Um, I I
worked in law school. I worked uh
temporarily um I did an internship with
the California Attorney General's office
uh and for the privacy sector
specifically going after companies that
were violating privacy uh issues and I
so I 100% value it. Um, but I I feel
like what relative to the other privacy
risks that we're looking at right now,
when you consider it in the scope of
everything, I was just reading about uh
Ring Central cameras can now identify a
dog that's run away. If you're if you're
if you lost your dog, you can somehow
upload a picture of it into Ring Central
and it'll scan their whole system and
help you find your dog. And I would be
shocked if if it didn't work with
humans. I mean, you know, or or
whatever. I mean, license plates.
There's so much information now. And the
same I I was just reading about it.
Google,
I believe it was Google uh settled
another lawsuit, you know, for you know,
hey Google, and then or you don't say
hey Google, you say something else and
it sounds like it and suddenly it's
recording. And the same with Siri. I
remember lawsuits with that. And um you
know uh anytime you use a map
application, I'm sure they have your
data. I'm sure they're linked. You know,
they they have an they know who you are.
They they can track it, your your cell
phone, social media. I mean, our data is
everywhere. So, this is this is one of
the few instances where I feel like we
have a an application. Is it perfect?
No. Um is it are there risks? It sounds
like there are. and you know they're
being explored right now. Um hopefully
you know this is a a learning
opportunity and things are and it sounds
like already things are put in place to improve. Um you know so but I think
that the this program specifically does
provide an actual benefit. Does my you
know device at home my you know hey
Google my Siri stuff does that give me
any real protection? No. this seems to
and I so and I feel like while there
were a lot of voices that were you know
are speaking up against privacy I think
most of the people in Woodside that I
know care most about safety and so while they're not here today and not
talking about it I do think that that's
a very high priority for people um and
so I would want to uh you know consider
that um
so going through the the proposals. Um
>> I don't
>> you like me to call them out or
>> I think I got them.
>> Let me know if I if I miss any. But
>> um the proposal to pause, I don't think
I'm there yet. Um I don't think I'm I
feel like the the benefits outweigh the costs currently. Um the reporting
structure, yes, absolutely open to that
one. Um an external audit. I I do like
the idea. I don't know. I'd want to know
the cost. Um because it sounds quite
expensive. Um
and you know updating the reporting
structure
or or not it's not the reporting
structure but the amount of information
we receive and the the you know is it is
40 random
searches enough? I I would like more but
at the same time I also don't like the
thought of our law enforcement spending
hours and hours doing
kind of this this type of I mean just
you know spending so much time on this
specific thing and on a quarterly basis
it feels like a like a heavy lift when I
would prefer resources directed
elsewhere you know and and I would I I
don't know if there's a more efficient
way to do this if there's another you
know I'm not sure what it is maybe it is
the the outside auditor um might be more
efficient but
um what okay
>> the last one was explore alternative
vendors
>> alternative
>> I'd be open to that because I don't know
I I'm not sure I didn't know that flock
had until today I didn't know that there
were alternative vendors to be fully
honest with you so I'm not opposed to
that one
>> okay thank you
» yes mayor prom gold
>> it's been an interesting night
>> yeah been a I mean, it has. I appreciate
everybody's patience. Um, I've got a
whole bunch of stuff to say and I'll try
to make it brief. I wanted to start with
something and hopefully I'll end there
because I tend to meander around here as
I get lost in my thoughts. Um, what's
before us tonight is to review and
accept the quarterly and annual reports
from the San Monteo County Sheriff's
Office, not Flock, uh, regarding the use
of ALPRs. So, that's what's before us. I find all of this really fascinating
and interesting and meaningful and
reasonable and people make great points.
That's just not before us tonight.
What's before us tonight is are we in
compliance, actually the sheriff's
office in compliance with the policy
that we wrote?
And um it's okay if we want to change
it, but that's not where we are tonight.
And and I actually don't mind changing
it. In fact, if I remember correctly,
unless I hallucinated this whole thing,
which is entirely possible, I think
about six months ago, I wrote a an email
to the town manager and town attorney
about a new idea for and it involved a
lot of the things we're talking about
tonight, a much deeper dive in uh more a better sample size, maybe not
necessarily so deep, but there were
other things there. I don't know. Maybe
I'll I'd have to search my email to see
if I did write it. But um the bottom
line is I can get to the recommendation
that um the town is asking us, are we in
compliance? And I I think we are. I
haven't seen any evidence that we're not
yet. So I'm going to I'll I start there
and I'm going to end there as well. Um
there are very few people in this room
who have been involved. I I'm fascinated
with the number of attorneys from
Redwood City and nearby cities and Assan
for sure. And I I I I you know I suspect
anybody who's gone to law school has
been involved in these sorts of issues.
The civil liberties and the you know
personal privacy issue. I've been a
member of the ACLU since 1969.
Yeah. I'm that old. I joined when I was
18. I was in high school and pretty
proud of it. I've I've always like been
into that. And in fact, I'll tell you
the one episode that gave me pause was
the Nazi march in Skoi, Illinois. And I
was really um as a Jew, it really
impacted me greatly. And I thought, you
know, this is why we're in it. This is
exactly why I'm a member of the ACLU was
to defend the essentially the rights of
those protesters and in this case the
rights of privacy. So it is a pretty big
issue. I don't take a backseat to
anybody on that. But it is a whole new
world. And uh I flew to Mexico about a
week or so ago. When I went to the
airport, no passport, no nothing. Facial
recognition,
stepped right on.
I I was pretty shocked to be honest with
you. I didn't have to show anything. And
I'm a not your real ID, not your
passport, nothing. And I flew to Mexico
and they just it was all facial
recognition. Just go right on, wave me
right in. By the way, same thing coming
back into the country. Um which was
pretty um
intriguing to me. Um, I'm also
fascinated by what something Assan has
said. He and I have had this uh contest
going on for a couple of years here.
When we first discussed ALPRs,
um, it was about 50/50 if I remember
correctly. They were like half the
people were, you know, crime at the time
crime was a big deal. Residential
burglaries, especially where I live, it
was a big deal and people wanted
something and um, for whatever reason,
they seem to have gone down. I'm I don't
attribute that solely to ALPRs. I think
our sheriff's patrols have have done a
lot of good as well. And maybe just
nationwide crime is down. But that
shifted and I think when we were here a
couple of years ago, it was about 9010.
I mean, people were like asking for more
cameras. Can we have more? We want more.
This is like they're they're so good.
And I sense that it's shifting back the
other way. So, it's making my friend
Assan
he's in he's in more company now. And I see that and I think that there
have been abuses and that's fine. But of
all the things that I've heard here, I
haven't heard a single abuse from the
sheriff's office. And I'm I'm more, you
know, there's been a lot of talk about
truthfulness. And your jobs are on the
line if you lie. I know that. Um, and so
it's a big deal. But I also question the
truthfulness of Mountain View. How do I
know they're telling the truth? I mean,
they they've said something and we've
heard conflicting evidence tonight. They
say that Flock changed it. Well, I don't
know if they changed it or not. Why why
are we so willing to think that they're
being truthful? But our sheriff's
office, our deputies who we know and we have a long-standing relationship
with them and there's not a single
cintilla of evidence that they've done
anything wrong or misled us that
suddenly their word is in doubt. I don't
view it that way. I I know um our
deputies and the folks at the sheriff's
department and at least I I we have no
evidence that they are doing anything to
um u mislead us. Um,
the last thing I do want to say is
there's there's a right now there's a
major tragedy going on in Tucson,
Arizona with Savannah Guthri's mother.
And I, you know, we're all sort of glued
to the TV. Well, maybe not everybody,
but I've been glued to the TV watching
this. It's a pretty a tragic case, of
course, for the family and for this 84
year old mom, I think. And, you know, I
just can't even imagine uh what that
family's going through and finding blood
and those things. But the first thing
they did was ALPR cameras in the area.
And you could tell that the suspect that
they they saw went after the ring
cameras. You're on camera, you know,
wherever you go. And he did things to
disguise it and erase cameras, but they
managed to sal salvage them. Cell phone
towers. What's what, you know, as this
as the suspect was moving through. It
was like 1:00 in the morning. There's
not a whole lot of activity on cell
phone towers. And did they find
anything? We're being tracked 24/7
on this phone. I can tell you Apple and
Google and, you know, anybody else who's out there, Verizon knows where I
am at all times and uh they let me know
that in no uncertain terms when they're
suggesting me that I buy certain things
when I get near a target. Um but anyway,
um this is anything but business as
usual. We take this seriously. I think
that the comments we the I congratulate
council member wall. It was a very it
was a really thorough uh exercise of the
um the seriousness that we take this and
I think everybody is taking it seriously
and um I can obviously get there with uh
that we're in compliance. But I do think
consistent with that email that I sent
the 6 months or so ago, we need to
revisit this and we need to take a look
at it again. And I would, you know, I
think everything, all the issues that
council member Wall had discussed should
be on the table. Um, I think before we
suggest 1%, we should do a statistical
power. That's a real thing. I mean, you
don't just say, I want to do 1%. Um,
there's a way to power your your surveys
to make sure they're right. We don't
sample 1% of the United States
population to do a presidential poll
when they're accurate within, you know,
plus or minus 3%. Now, I know that
that's an accuracy thing, not
necessarily an audit, but you're no
matter if you change vendors, you're
still going to be dependent on the
truthfulness of those two guys in those
black uniforms back there. Always, no
matter what, audits are always going to
be dependent on the data that you go
through there and whether people are
misrepresenting and you can actually
misrepresent an audit. Um, but anyway,
so I can the biggest question is can I
see my way clear on the audit? I can. I
think that we have successfully checked
those boxes. there's not any evidence to
counter that. And I think that with
regard to all of the points that were
made before, um I think we should put it
on the agenda and we should have a
thorough discussion about a new policy
if that's what we do and how to which
would involve all the things that I
think uh council member Aubberish has uh
went through and his list there. I would
go along with almost everything that he
said in in the way he said it.
>> So you you literally want to say yes to
every
>> what? Uh no, I would I agreed with
>> Take this one by one with you. Take it
one by one if you want, but I think I'd
reflect
>> sheriff's reporting directly to the
council.
>> Yes.
>> Pausing the program.
>> No.
>> More robust audit services.
>> Uh not an outside vendor, but but
changing changing the audit. I think
>> I'm going to say that's a yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Exploring alternative vendors
>> should be on the table.
He said
>> transition to a third party auditor.
>> Uh probably not because I think that's
going to be an issue for uh the
sheriff's office that is allowing a
third party vendor to come in and access
the data. I I find that somewhat
dangerous.
>> Okay.
>> But it's on the table.
>> Okay. Um Okay. And are you may I just
add a few things? Are you complete?
>> I'm done.
>> Thank you.
>> I have to be
>> uh Uh yeah. So starting uh in regard to
the contract and compliance with the
contract, I didn't hear anything today
that stops us from accepting the report.
Uh it meets all of our written
requirements and uh the answers that
were given tonight were uh
extraordinarily impressive. So I I want
to tip my hat. I I really almost can't
believe uh some of the some of the
answers that happened tonight. Uh I will
wholeheartedly admit there is a lot not
to like right now. there is extreme
reputational damage. Uh the the
self-certification model, couldn't agree
more. Um that's problematic. Uh software
questions, balancing safety with
privacy. Uh
it would be very easy to fold our hand
right now. It's the very it's the easy
thing to do, frankly. Um but I'm not
there. and um and I'm also not there uh
in terms of the integrity of our
sheriffs and um my belief in their
procedures. Uh when you think about all
these events going on around us, I took
a little time to just go back and ask
myself, why did we originally vote 50-0
to do this? And and and why did we just
vote 50-0 as a group just a few months
ago to put another one in? Um the reason
is it's a very very effective law
enforcement tool and uh what we hear
over and over again is it's essential to
the work of our sheriffs. Uh we have a
wonderful quarterly audit uh process. Uh
it takes a long time to go through but
it it is very robust and um we've had in
writing directly on our questions uh
comments from you know in writing from
the sheriffs that they've done their
audits. we've had public uh releases
from the sheriff's department u that our
data is not being misused. Uh I think
some of these examples like the Mountain
View example is a false equivalency and
I'm I'm just can't get there. So I know
one speaker
uh had negative things to say about this
bold comment, but when it relates to the
roads, the license plates, they're
public domain and we're using technology
to capture them. And when you're on the
road, you're in the public domain. So,
uh, in regards to reporting relationship
with the sheriffs, um, I want to see
that change. So, I'm in that category.
Do not want to see the pause. Um, I do
not want to see, uh, an alternate
vendor. I think that's going to be
problematic because I don't think it's
going to be very effective, frankly. I
think some of the value comes from the
network, even though there's so much
criticism about beingworked.
The one thing I really liked though um
was the idea of spending some time
searching for just what what is entailed
in a third party auditor. Uh Jason, your
answers were unbelievable. I've always
been super impressed in the short time
I've known you about how deep you can
dive and have answers that I would have
thought you were the expert in the in
the entire field of license plate
readers tonight. It was unbelievable. Uh
I don't know how you can possibly keep
that up.
uh and having deep expertise would be
very helpful to you. I don't know what
it's going to cost. Um and that person
might come forward and then say, "Hey,
based on what we know, yeah, we should
have slightly more robust uh audit or uh
a bigger sample size or um or whatever
those things are. I don't even know if
that person truly exists. Honestly, I
haven't heard of that position before um
before tonight, but maybe we could look
see if that position is around." So I am
in that camp uh as a reasonable next
step. Um and I've got frankly it's
despite all of this uh a very very short
leash
uh
on this whole thing. Uh it wouldn't take
much more frankly to push me over. Um
but at this point I'm holding ground. So
uh I will say where we are and then ask
for further deliberation. But where we
are is we've got uh four votes for
sheriff's directly reporting to council
going forward and we have three votes on
uh finding a third party auditor to uh
searching and going through a process to
see if that's viable or not. Every other
proposal fails uh but we are still open
for deliberation
if there are any further thoughts or
comments on any of it.
Okay, seeing none, I think we're going
to we need to call for a vote here
because we have some future direction.
So, uh, we'll call for a vote to accept
the report with the direction to
reinstate a direct reporting
relationship to the sheriff's and
>> sorry
because I would like to different ways.
>> Do you maybe vote on accepting the
report and then
>> each of the future directions?
>> Yeah,
>> understood. Uh, excellent suggestion.
Thank you. Okay, we need a motion to
accept the report.
>> I'll I'll move to accept a resolution of
the town council
uh of the town of Woodside requesting
the California Department of
Transportation Trans Oh, sorry. I'm on
the wrong
>> old business there.
>> Just quarterly and
>> sorry. I uh move to accept a quarterly
and annual report on automated license
plate readers ALRPS.
>> I'll second that.
>> Council member Alberish.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Brown.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Gold.
>> Council member Wall.
>> Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes. Uh in terms of future direction to
reinstate direct a direct reporting
relationship with the sheriff's to the
council,
we have a motion on that. You want?
>> Yeah.
>> We need to get I we Yes, I do.
>> Okay.
>> Second.
>> Council member Alberish.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Brown.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Gold.
>> Council member Wall. Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes. and in the hunt to give guidance to
staff to start a search for a
third-party
audit uh capability uh to be brought
into this to help us uh continue to have
good governance and oversight and
supervision.
I don't know if I botched that or not.
Is that close enough? Okay. Need a
motion on that.
Thank you. Second. Any second.
>> Thank you,
>> Council Member Aubberish.
>> Yes. Council member Brown.
>> No.
>> Council member Gold. Council member
Wall. Mayor Donowski.
>> Yes.
Okay. Uh that concludes the topic. Uh a
if you can believe it. I want to just
thank our sheriffs for being here and um
obviously the representative from Flax
Safety and of course all of the comments
from the public uh in terms of input
this evening. Thank you.
And we're going to take a three-minut
break. Thank you.
Bring the our council members back to
the dis.
Okay, moving on to new business. Item B,
a resolution uh on up at four corners on
speed limits. So, I'll hand it off to
you, Jason, uh, to introduce the topic.
>> Yeah, I'll introduce it and then I'll
kick it over to the town engineer.
Ultimately, this is one that I got
involved in before the town engineer was
on uh, staff. And so, I was contacted
uh, by the ownership group of Alyses and
some in um, engaged uh, members of the
public that frequent Alyses and live in
the surrounding area. And based off of
the bicycle accident, the death that
transpired there over the summertime,
uh, we instigated a meeting with Calrans
and Calrans has come forward with a
proposal, a proposed project that would
put two stop signs at that intersection,
making it a four-way stop sign. And
there's concern from the public
currently that it's 40 miles per hour
coming into that intersection and that
they want to be very clear to CALR that
they want to drop that speed because
they are fearful of the safety of people
approaching a four-way stop being
unaware of it. And so we should have
Andy, I believe, online this evening. Is
he uh available online? And then uh
Lewis, do you have anything to add on
this particular one?
Um just a little bit. Uh thank you town
manager. So the town also received a
petition signed by 543
people asking the town council to adopt
a resolution um to requesting CALR for
this speed zone reduction. Um and it is
also um you know establishment
of this 25 miles per hour speed limit on
this section of the state highway. Um,
and it will definitely help improve
safety for motorists, bicyclists, and
pedestrians.
>> Thank you. Any questions for staff?
» Seeing none. Any comments from public?
David
» David Middleman. I live about a mile
away from Alys's or less. Can't
remember. Um, I remember when this
incident happened. I remember coming in
angry about it and talking to you guys
about it. The speed limit is request I
feel like I could speak for the the
community is
kind of the minimum we feel that we can
get out of this. You know, the stop
signs are ignored when people are racing
on 35. Speed limits are suggestion on
35. And what really needs to be done is
a traffic study and a redesign of that
area, which Calran said they were going
to do, but not in a way that was
amicable to anybody listening. It
involved getting rid of the island
that's currently there, cutting down 25
mature redwood trees, changing the
entire character of that area of town.
the solution that was self-generated by
the community but ignored that I believe
Steve Luben also studied was the idea of
a roundabout and so I respectfully ask
part of this resolution you also asked
Calr Calrans to investigate a roundabout
versus just stopping at a stop sign and
lights. Thank you.
If
>> any other public comments on new
business item E
see none in the room and none in the
Zoom, uh we will close public comment.
Any deliberations from councel?
» I think this makes all the sense in the
world. I mean, that's it's a speedway up
there, and we got to give the sheriff,
Cal, everybody that tries to police up
there some tools that they can use to
try to slow everybody down.
It's going to save lives.
>> Yeah,
that's over.
>> Uh, so I live about a half a mile from
this intersection and um and I would
agree. I I don't know a single person
who would not be in favor of this. Um,
you know, it's a it's very dangerous
anytime you have to cross over. Um,
especially where where there's no stop
signs and yet I know they're coming, but
I don't know when. But, uh, but people
will come flying down. You know, when
the speed limit's 35, they'll go 50. I
don't know what they do, but um, and
obviously it's dangerous. And I assuming
there's not going to be any opposition
to this, so I'll keep this short, but
um, yeah. So, I think full fullheartedly
support this.
>> Thank you. Any other comments?
Yeah, I'll just add that we're in a
position of advocacy here and this is
our way to do our part and I think this
speed limit reduction uh request makes a
lot of sense. Uh
and that's all I have to say. So, do we
have a motion? Would you like to make a
motion? It's your district, of course.
>> Thank you. Yes.
>> This time in order. Um, I'd like to uh
make a motion to pass a resolution of
the town council of the town of Woodside
requesting the California Department of
Transportation, CALR, to establish a 25
mph speed limit 500 yards from the
intersection of State Highway 84 and
State Highway 35.
» Council member Aubberish.
>> Yes.
>> Council member W. Sorry, Brown.
>> Yes. Council member Gold. Yes. Council
member Wall. Mayor Donkowski.
>> Yes. Thank you. We'll close item B and
move on to C. A request to establish a
15 mph speed limit within 500 ft of
Woodside Elm.
>> Yeah, this is the town manager and uh
just to state that um I normally won't
steal the thunder of the town engineer
on these items moving forward, but I'm
just connected to them because they
transcend his uh start date with us. And
so uh before I started the circulation
committee had voted on this request and
had talked about it after I began and
ultimately a request came in from the
chair who is here today to speak about
this item. Uh the request has been made
to drop the speed limit from its current
25 during school hours to the flashing
15 mph speed zone. This is something
that is happening in the state of
California, specifically in San Mateo
and on the peninsula all around us. This
is a a normal action that is currently
being taken. And then ultimately, we've
had interest from the school uh to see
an action like this as well. And so
without further ado, I think if the
chair from the circulation committee had
any more comment on this item.
>> Uh yeah, thank you Jason. Yeah. So, um,
so we look at speed trail trailer data
and we've had trailers out there for a
couple different times and I think the
thing we've noticed is there's a lot of
cars going above 25. Like a decent
amount, right? Not all of them um but a
decent amount go above 25 even during
the window of you know 8 a.m. 9:00 a.m.
2 3 4 p.m. And the other thing we've uh
observed is you know coming from this
direction to the school you know there's
the town center there's bucks there's
enough kind of visual noise but coming
the other way from the you know mountain
side you don't actually know there's a
school there unless you live here and
you're aware of the location. Um and so
it's really it's an awareness thing too.
You see you know there's homes there's
the tennis court wall and all of a
sudden you're on the school. So, it's
hard for people to be aware that, hey,
there's something coming. Um, I've stood
out there at various times with uh other
parents and folks and people, some
people speed there pretty quickly and
it's just like this is a narrow area.
Why are you doing this? Um, but really
what it came down to was the speed
trailer data was just excessive for in
school zones. Um, it's a small area. I
think the whole thing is 7 or 800 feet
long. Um, I think the key distinction is
it's during school hours or whatever the
again the statutory language based on
the California law for when it applies.
So, it's not all the time. it's, you
know, when kids are in school basically.
Um, and I think really the goal isn't to
make everyone go 15 or 14 miles an hour.
It's to maybe get them down to 25 from
the 3540 that they're doing, you know,
when they really shouldn't be in that
area. So, I think that that was the
motivation for us. Um, I also personally
don't think it needs to be 500 feet in
each direction. I think maybe library to
tennis court would be a reasonable area.
Uh, because again, it's it's not a, you
know, it's not it's not some it's not a
drag net that's going to slow somebody
down. It's it's a speed limit. And it
also gives the sheriff's tools to, you
know, enforce it because I think
generally from what they've told us in
the past, unless someone's 10 or 15
over, they don't write citations, which
is understandable. So here, somebody
doing 30 is 15 over and they definitely
deserve a citation again during school
hours. So, um, the last thing I'll add,
and I think Jason, you had this in your
email, for some reason in the past few
weeks, there's been a number of near
misses right in front of the school.
I've seen video. In fact, I saw one
happening in front of me two days ago on
Monday morning where somebody swerved
into the church parking lot and almost
took out two girls on bicycles that I
see riding a school every single day and
they had to swerve to a stop. So, I
think that whole area needs to the
sheriffs have been there. I think
circulation is going to look at it from
what other things we can do uh for that
area. Obviously, it's Calran, so it's
going to need suggestions, but I think
this is a nice first step. The lights,
the speed limit reduction, just again,
you're in a school zone, slow down. Um
yeah, I guess that's my thing. Any
questions on maybe what we've
deliberated or anything like that?
>> Okay.
>> Were there um I guess my question is,
you know, sometimes when there's a
behavioral issue, it's really can be
handled by enforcement.
>> Uh I don't know if that was talked about
or or if it just was straight to the
limit.
>> Yeah, we've talked about it. I think the
challenge lies in and you know this all
too well. We talked about it extensively
tonight. you know, there's two sheriffs
usually on two deputies in town at, you
know, any even time. They've been at the
school, both both of them recently,
which we appreciate.
>> Um, I think it's just if they're not
there, it's not going to happen. The
other statistic that I will share is one
statistic we've asked, I know Council
Member Brown knows this, when we get uh
our reports from the sheriffs on the
citations each month, what percentage
are addresses outside of Woodside? And
it is almost exactly 75% every month. So
that mean 75% are outside Woodside. So
they're not Woodside residents, which
means they're not part of our community.
Maybe they don't know they are, they
don't care, whatever it is. It's, you
know, people who probably care less than
everyone in this room and the people who
live here. Uh, shame on the 25% to get
them here, but that's different
discussion. And so I think that tells me
that it's an awareness thing. If that
number was coming down over time or was
changing, you know, the number of
recitations stays sort of constant. That
percentage stays constant. So we just
need awareness. We need enforcement, but
I think you need all of them. Um, and I
think, you know, I know there's concerns
about, you know, the speed going through
there, how much it might slow things
down. I think the traffic really is just
some people pulling in and out of the
school, which sometimes there's some
silly things that happen to literally
relock the whole thing. But I don't
think slowing down that little section,
you know, if you did the whole 500 ft,
it might be a little bit too much, but
that little section in front of the
school, dropping it, again, if you if
you're doing 20, the sheriff's not going
to give you a citation. I could just
tell you that right now. Um, if you're
doing 30, then you probably will get
one. So, I don't think it'll cause
traffic. Obviously, I assume Calrans do
a traffic study before they implement
anything. But, um, we've looked at the
options and the sheriffs haven't they
haven't say, "Oh, yeah, we'll just take
it everyone who goes 26." Like, that's
not something they can commit to and we
know realistically that's not possible.
So,
>> your your last comment interesting too.
I was one of the things I was a little
bit concerned about is traffic backup
and maybe some unintended consequences
at Kinata or all the way up to Pioneer.
It's already as we know in the mornings
it's the speed limit's already like 5
miles an hour in the morning.
>> Um
the idea of any sort of uh doing like a
trial period or where we can do an
observable uh what what actually happens
do people start sneaking around in the
on Manuela and Olive Hill to sort of get
around it or I mean I'm not sure what we don't know I guess uh when you do something
>> you mean if there's backups. Yeah,
backups and traffic patterns. And it's
the idea of a traffic study, but an
observable traffic study that we would
actually be able to
>> witness and and understand that
>> make sure we're not solving a problem
one place and creating it in another.
>> Um, is that something that you think is
viable or or you want us to just proceed
full-on resolution to
>> I mean, I'd ask the town engineer like,
can you temporarily change a speed
limit?
>> We do a trial speed limit or no?
>> Is that even possible?
>> I don't even know. on a state highway.
>> We would definitely need Calrans to
weigh in on that.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> I know. Well, there was one example. So,
I think it was was it two years ago when
they were doing the storm drain next to
Bucks where they started like literally
they would start at like 8 a.m. I don't
think some of you weren't here for that,
but they started at 8 a.m. They started
like the week school started and they
would close a lane if you wanted to see
a disaster. I mean, I actually fell in
behind you the other day, uh, mayor, on
the way. I was was leaving the school. I
was
>> driving all right. Was
>> fine. Okay. Okay.
>> No, no problem.
>> Oh, thank you.
>> Um, there's too much traffic doing.
>> Thanks for adding that to the public
comment.
>> You're wonderful.
>> Um, but that was a disaster because it
was literally blocking a lane right
during drop off and Calrans refused to
do it any other time. Then people were
using Manuela Al the back roads.
>> Um, but I think I used it as well
because I live near there and I would
drive the speed limit. I wouldn't speed.
But unless the thing was completely
stopped, that route is not faster. So, I
think it's only if you are literally
like staring at a, you know, excavator
un getting unloaded in front of you for
the next 10 minutes that it would make
sense to go around. Um, otherwise kind
of the stop sign traffic, at least in my
personal opinion, driving through there
every single morning,
you know, like you said, the school
traffic, the the pulling in and out is a
problem. Not if it's 9:30 a.m. and
you're just going through there 10 miles
an hour slower, I don't think it'll be,
you know, a massive thing. And then
weekends, right? Weekends we see tourist
traffic. It won't apply weekends because
kids aren't at school.
>> Yeah. You know, I I I I tried to drive
15 miles an hour, 500 feet on either
side. It is
>> it is painful. Uh that is a painfully
slow drive. Um your idea of library to
tennis court, uh literally property line
to property line for the school. That's
is that viable? Um or does it have to be
by state law 500 feet off each side or
something?
>> I thought it was within
>> I don't even know. Oh, I mean I just
it's just it's a very long arc to go 15
miles an hour and it's and if for
anybody that's living out west of that
area that is and it's a main artery. A
lot of constituents
>> Yep.
>> use it for other reasons than school
drop off.
>> I think the school itself when I roughly
measured it was like 7 or 800 feet. So
500 each side would be a huge percentage
increase. Yeah. Which is why I said I've
always I thought the rule was
>> to within 500 feet.
>> I don't think it's absolutely 500 feet.
So I suspect we can advocate for what
you know again what we think is
appropriate for that area I think but
I'm neither a lawyer nor a you know
licensed engineer.
>> Yeah. Town engineer is that your
understanding as well is that uh we we
ultimately can make that request and
then we can find out from CALR or do you
happen to know the answer to this
question as far as the 500 ft? Um, I
know ultimately we can consult with
CALR, but I think it's within the uh
local district's um authority. So, we
will check with CALR on that.
>> Okay. And one last one, I didn't mean to
dominate, but um I don't know if that's
possible tonight. I think uh um uh TCAP
uh there's sort of a global approach
that's happening here with circulation
and um traffic calming and all sorts of
things. Um this is I'm assuming part of
the jurisdiction of what TCAP is
considering and with some global master
plan. I'm assuming it's coming at some
point um or out of TCAP that would
include this area in terms of I'm just
thinking about oneoff dealing with
something one-off versus dealing with
something sort of globally.
>> Yeah, that is the hope. I think from
some video footage that we both I think
have seen uh there's an issue and
actually I ran into Christina who's also
on circulation today and she was stating
that she really felt like that bike lane
was allowing the cars uh a location to
drive into and so there was video that I
saw recently you have children crossing
at the crosswalk so naturally cars are
stopped and some car took it upon
themselves to cut around all of them and
try to gun past everybody almost hitting
the children that were crossing the
crosswalk. And so trafficcoming measures
that maybe stick a median or there's a
trail there's a there's a path that's
matching the other side of the p of the
uh of the road would ultimately make it
that impossible whereas 15 m hour will
not have any effect on that level of uh
concern that we currently have. So yes,
I think that um that is our expectation
is through the TECAP we're going to see
all kinds of traffic calming measures
that would um also lead to better
mobility for the pedestrians and the
community.
>> Any other questions? I mean,
>> yeah, I guess I guess Yeah, I I I would
like to before we jump into something
like this, I'd like to think that we've
done a thorough study of I mean, you've talked about some other examples,
but I'd like to see it perhaps in
writing presented to the council
>> as here's what we've looked at to slow
traffic in and create a safer
environment in front of the school and
here's what's going on in other other
communities. here's what the technology
says you can and can't do and here's why
we recommend this specific action um
instead bank go 15 miles an hour
>> I don't know if it's gonna fly if it if
it works great but let's find out where
it's working and why it's working what
are they doing that maybe we can adopt
ourselves but that's a big leap for me
to go this duric on a state highway that
>> so yeah
>> used by 75% of the people from out of
town
>> so your question is could there
um further work done basically on this.
Do you think basically
>> on this on this idea?
>> Yeah, I like the idea, but I don't know
if it's
>> want to make sure
>> feasible. Really do until I that's why
I'd like to see some some kind of study
by the circulation committee. Maybe
along the lines of what was done on uh
some of the work that was done east of
uh 280.
>> I don't mean to cut you off, but we
can't we don't I just want to make sure
we don't deliberate quite yet. I
>> She going to cut me off. Okay.
>> Yeah, I don't mean to cut you off. You
know that. Um, any other questions
before we go to public comment?
Okay. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Public comment. Uh, David, we got one in
the room. Okay. And then we'll go to the
Zoom.
>> You posed a question. I wanted to offer
some anecdotal evidence about how this
would affect people that live west of
town. One of the things I noticed when I
moved to the mountain nine years ago was
that when I was coming when I when I'm
going north on 280 to the city or coming
back that it's equate time to get off at
uh Woodside Road or Sand Hill Road in
terms of going home and that's probably
because of the speed limits and what I
can currently do. And so in terms of how
to change traffic patterns, at least
anecdotally, if you were to drop it down
at the school for
unknown how far, right, make that
longer, you might shift that traffic to
San Hill. So that's all I wanted to
offer anecdotally.
>> Thank you. U we'll go to the Zoom room.
Christina Warren,
» hello.
>> Yes. Hi.
>> Okay, just want to make sure you guys
can hear me. Um, hi, I'm Christina
Warren. I am on the circulation
committee. Um, I also live west of um,
the elementary school and I also have
three children at the elementary school.
Um, two things I wanted to point out.
one in terms of how effective is this?
Um the reason that this measure was
brought into California law and passed
is because of the um survival rate of
children at 15 miles hour verse 25 miles
hour. So there are lots of studies and
lots of data um as to why so many towns
across California have implemented this
law. You can see it in Menllo Park,
Athetherton, San Monteo, Redwood City,
San Carlos, all up and down the
peninsula. Um, and I think another thing
that's really important to note is that
we our elementary school is positioned
in one of our busiest cutthrough streets
in our entire town. And we have people
from all different communities cutting
through the town who are unaware of the
fact that there is a school um
approaching when they're driving through
our town. Um living west of the school.
Um I am about I'm like right across from
Fox Hollow. So I'm halfway between the
school and the little store. And there
has been nothing done to address safe
routes to school for children that live
west of the elementary school. So in my
mind, the absolute least and coste
effective thing we can do is to reduce
the speed limit for kids walking to
school so that they can safely get to
school because people are flying down
the hill at 40 miles hour. Kids can't
there's no crosswalk for kids to safely
walk the streets. There's no safe
sidewalk for kids to get to school.
Everything's been addressed for kids
east of the school from the Glenns to
get to school. But we have tons of kids
west of the school that are having to
deal with high-speed cars passing them
while they're trying to get to school
that live less than 500 yards from the
school. So um to me this is a no-brainer
and um I would hope that the committee
would put the safety of children first.
Um, part of the reason that it's been
brought to light, um, is because so many
parents are now realizing that there's
an outlet to voice um, all of the near
accidents that occur every single day in
front of our school. Um, I think I've
been encouraging people to start sending
in the videos and writing in to town
council and things like that, but this isn't a new problem. We see these
near misses every single day. And I just
would like the council to think about
this as a preventative measure instead
of waiting for a child to be killed to
do something about the safety in front
of the school because it is a daily
problem. And um I think there are lots
of parents that can vouch for how
problematic it is in front of our
school.
>> Okay. Thank you, Christina. Uh, moving
on to Kim Hatson.
» Hi, thank you. Um,
so I'm also on the circulation
committee, so I don't know if I'm
speaking as a member of that committee
or just as a as a citizen. Um, I would
like to say that I am in favor of the 15
mile um speed limit reduction. Uh I
think that the if we um use Los Altos
schools as a model that 15 mile per hour
speed reduction is just the by the
school boundary and um it's a small area
but uh for me as a driver it's it's been
effective. So I would recommend that. Um
I I've really been impressed by the um
advocacy of um parents and members of
the community, but I feel like this
school, Woodside Elementary School, has
been really non-participant in this. And
I would like for um I'm just kind of
surprised, you know, we really haven't
heard from schoolboard members or from
the administration. and I feel like they
need to be part of this that um they
have to want it as badly as us. So
that's my personal opinion. Um the other
couple comments are unrelated is that
this agenda has really been amazing but
too packed for this town council
meeting. Um, I think everybody's really
tired and I think that y'all have had
too many really important topics on one
night's agenda. And the other item is
that I cannot hear um everyone's
microphone during the voting part of the
after your deliberation. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Kim. And thanks for the
reminder to keep that microphone close.
Um,
any comments from the hall before we
take the what looks like the last call
here in Zoom? See none. Uh, Staca Gar.
>> Yeah. Hi.
>> Hi.
>> I just wanted to um voice my support for
lowering the speed limit as another
parent in the school. Um, I've also
witnessed many near misses. Um, both
seeing cars go around on the bike lane
side and then actually also cars coming
in and passing on the left coming into
uh where the first crosswalk is if
you're coming from from Kenyatta
Corners. Um, honestly, I don't know why,
but recently it just has seemed to be a
particularly significant problem and I
would like us to do something like
Christina said before somebody gets
killed. Um, one thing I wanted to just
mention is I agree with the point that
particularly coming from the west into
town into by, you know, by the tennis
courts, it can be hard to see that there
is a school there. So we don't, as I
understand it, we don't have to actually
extend the length equidistance. So like
for instance, the amount of the 15 mph
could be shorter on the Kinyatta Corner
side than it is um toward the mountain
side if we want to kind of give more
warning on that side for people to slow
down. Um I believe that that's one of
the options. Um and then I think the
other thing I just wanted to remind
folks is that this is only during school
hours. So when you know we back up on
the weekends and those other times this
won't be in effect. And so you know I
think that some of the traffic uh impact
concerns may not be as relevant as we
feel like they are because you know if
we're not there during the school hours
um you may not may not realize kind of
the impact. So anyway it's it's late and
I'm not sure I'm making as much sense as
I would have a couple hours ago. But
thank you all for taking this and I
really really would encourage you to
look at lowering that speed limit as if
nothing else to follow the the pattern
that we see in the rest of California
and also just to keep our kids safe.
Thank you.
>> Thank you. Any other public comment?
Seeing none, we will close public
comment. Deliberation from council. Any
thoughts from councel?
already heard mine.
>> Well, I I can go. Would you like to go?
Yes. Great. Great. Thank you.
>> Um yeah, I I still as always I I think
of safety as the number one issue. Um
and especially when it comes to our most
vulnerable community, which is little
kids. um you know and I've seen every
single day when I drive down uh Woodside
Road and I have um at 25 I it's not
every single time but most of the time
there's somebody tailgating me because
they want me to go faster and they're
making it as clear as they can by riding
my bumper and I don't know keep going
the same speed. So um yeah I think I
think people drive too fast. Uh I
totally support it.
>> Okay. Thank you,
Ben. Council member Wall, would you like
to weigh in?
>> Um, yeah, I'm very supportive of this
proposal. I think, um, it's like like
many of the commentators, residents
said, um, it's a child safety issue. Um
I really appreciated um Christina
Warren's comment around that there's a
lot of data showing that the survival
rates of children that you know god
forbid somebody that an accident does
happen um you know that to have it be at
15 miles an hour versus you know much u
faster speed um the outcomes are very
different and yeah I mean it's very
convincing to me to to take a
preventative measure like this rather
than you know we're we're hearing a lot
of anecdotal evidence and stories you
know coming out that there's been a lot
of near misses so I think it's uh you
know important for us to take this
preventative step um you know generally
I'm very supportive of of you know safe
routes to school initiatives and I I
think it was a one of the people that
commented made a really good point that
really nothing has been done to address
um kids that live west of Woodside
Elementary School. So, I think this is a
really important next step. Um, and I
think, you know, we're seeing, you know,
other towns around us make similar
changes to their speed limits, uh, near
the school. So, I don't know, I could
keep going on repeating the good points,
but uh, the point is I'm very supportive
of this.
>> Thank you. And, Vice uh, Mayor Prom
Gold,
>> this is good. Um
I drove around a little bit uh area
schools that are a mile or two away and
um sort of surprised in front of Los
Lamita the speed limit is 25. Um on
Alamita Stellis Pulgus um front of Cord
Madera the speed limit is 25. Um this is
just I was just I've been thinking I
mean this affects a lot of
constituencies is on my mind. It's a
main artery. Uh I don't disagree um uh
with the comments that have been made.
I'm uh
I'm wondering uh as a compromise or what
we heard tonight. There were two
insights that grabbed me. One was that
we might be able to just do this
property line to property line. I would
find that to be a far more reasonable
compromise than what I think is in this
document, which is 500 ft of either
side. I think if you try to drive that I
think it's almost punitive beyond
reason. Um
the other thing I did I did love and I
just you know hearing that today the
survival rate at 15 mph versus 25 might
be enough to uh that that's a really
interesting stat that I hadn't thought
about. So, um I guess what I would ask
is uh would we be open to just a uh
modifying the resolution to be property
line to property line? I think we kind
of heard that from the chair of the
circulation committee. I think it's
reasonable. Um
uh and if you haven't tried to to do
what is being requested in this
resolution, um I would ask you to try to
do it. It's uh yeah, I get it. We all
make sacrifices for the benefit of
safety and I I understand that. But I
just I guess I'm just wondering if
there's a a way to modify this to
into a reasonable um a reasonable space
one side or the other.
>> I like I like that proposal. I think one
thing that we should talk about though
is, you know, had the speed limit been
15 within 500 ft of school, I presume
there would be a sign up, right? Kind of
announcing that speed limit. And one of
the things we heard from uh one of the
people in in public comment was that
often times, especially for very much
especially for people that aren't
familiar with Woodsides Roads, that are
from out of town, simply don't know that
a school is coming. And so what I would
like to prevent is somebody speeding.
And I think we heard from Assan like,
you know, people aren't, you know, just
doing 25, they're doing 35, 45. Um, so
maybe in addition to your proposal, um,
where the speed limit sign would have
otherwise been put, maybe we can put a
sign that indicates the school.
>> Yeah. School zone ahead or whatever.
Yeah. Okay.
I'm thank you and I would support that
uh continued modification.
And of course the signs will say when
children are present obviously in a big
yellow thing over the Yeah.
Okay. Are we Yeah. Can we get that
motion?
>> Sure. Um, I would move to approve a
resolution of the town council of the
town of Woodside requesting the
California Department of Transportation,
CALR, to establish a 15 mph speed zone
within the property
uh limit property line of Woodside
Elementary
>> uh on State Highway 84, Woodside Road
and work with CALR District 4 on its
implementation. Additionally, uh we
would direct the town of Woodside, town
manager or department of engineering,
whoever needs to be directed, um to put
up a a sign indicating that a school zone
is approaching
um within 500 ft of the school uh west
of the school.
>> Second school. Yeah.
>> Council member Alvarish.
>> Yes. Council member Brown.
>> Yes.
>> Council member Gold. Yes.
>> Council member Wall. Mayor Donowski.
>> Uh reports volunteer.
>> No report.
>> Thank you. Mayor in council
communications.
>> March 21 on your calendar is the
senior's uh memory workshop and then
followed by April 25 for the second
stage of that. What's the date again?
>> March 21 is the first one and then
another one in April 25.
Got them in. Thank you. Any other
comments?
Okay, then I think we're going to close
it uh at a 10:48, a late one.