This is gonna be a big one.

We thankfully take a break from the spate of closed session meetings, and we start the evening with a special order of the day, recognizing July as Parks and Recreation Month. We have a large number of consent items, mostly contracts, but some budget modifications and a couple of NOVA items as well. Then we get into the real stuff.

Item 2 is adoption of the budget, fee schedule, and appropriations limits, and I’m guessing this will take some time. Included in the proposed budget are $2.1 million in ongoing cuts.  Specific proposed changes include:

• The addition of $2.5 million/year in maintenance funding for five years to address the decline in road/pavement quality, drawing down on the reserves accordingly.
• Reduction in library hours by closing Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m.
• Eliminating funding for Project Sentinel, referring inquiries to Bay Area Legal Aid, the county’s Dispute Resolution Program, and some in-house staffing
• Eliminating five positions through attrition and downgrading three others
• Eliminating three positions through layoffs (two non-sworn Public Safety, one recreation)
• Reducing council travel budget, meals, and membership in US Conference of Mayors
• Eliminating 665 hours of Public Safety overtime and specialty pay for training officers.
• Eliminating shopping cart removal support.
• Closing the Lakewood Pool.
• Reducing teen programs at Sunnyvale Middle School.
• Eliminating the Senior Lunch Program (which is a social program, not a nutrition program).  We’re looking into charging cost recovery to save this.
• Eliminating adult pottery and the high fire gas kiln.  Ditto on cost recovery here.

Item 3 involves revisiting the Mary Avenue Extension Project.  For those of you who’ve been hiding under a rock for the past several years, Council previously approved starting a project to extend Mary Avenue over 101 and 237 into Moffett Park, and as part of that, the city approved an environmental impact report (EIR).  Opponents of the project sued to stop it, claiming that the methodology used in the EIR (and in other EIRs throughout the county and state for the past several decades) were invalid under the California Environmental Quality Act.  The judge and subsequent appeals court ruling agreed and invalidated the EIR.

So we now have to decertify the EIR, according to the court order, and we have to decide on the next step for the project.  Staff recommends putting the project on hold until the EIR can be revised, and staff believes grant funding is available to pay for the EIR revision.

Item 4 involves approval of the five-year Urban Water Management Plan, and my guess is that this will hold the distinction of having the longest RTC (by far) and the shortest discussion…

Item 5 (no RTC) has us selecting a voting delegate to this year’s League of California Cities annual business meeting in September.

And that’s about it. The first two items will probably be pretty involved, so I’m expecting a long night.

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