Another full agenda, and we start very early, to boot.
We start the evening with two separate closed sessions. One involves a potential land purchase by the city, the other involves the potential land sale of the margarine factory (an ongoing issue). This is followed by a presentation regarding the El Camino Real Corridor Specific Plan. I guess we’re looking at some examples of designs that we may incorporate into the plan. Finally, we’re getting a demonstration of sorts from Waymo regarding driverless cars.
There are no special orders or other presentations to start our general meeting, so we get right to it. There are a few items on the consent calendar – a purchase order for various supplies, a contract to renovate the Sunken Garden golf building (for ADA compliance and some other stuff), a contract for a consultant to work on the big housing strategy study issue, and a purchase order for five riding mowers. There’s a bunch of resolutions involved in getting us “aerial easements” related to the Fair Oaks bridge. And there’s a grant from CalTrans to pay for a Roadway Safety Plan.
Item 2 is probably the big issue – consideration of an ordinance prohibiting the sale of semiautomatic centerfire rifles to people less than 21. There will likely be a few people with opinions on this issue…
Item 3 is a bit nerdish – considering delaying the CPI increase of our $15 minimum wage by one year. We went to $15 this year, along with Mountain View, and we are supposed to make CPI increases every year starting in 2019. However, most of the other cities around us are going to $15 one year later, in 2019. One of the aspects that came out of our minimum wage studies was that regional consistency is important. It makes it difficult for employers who operate in different cities (both large and small) if they have all sorts of different minimum wages for employees depending on the city. If we and Mountain View both start doing CPI increases in 2019 while everyone else is doing so in 2020, then we’ve got different minimum wages in different cities. One easy fix is for Sunnyvale and Mountain View to both delay the start of the CPI increases from 2019 to 2020. That way, all of the cities with increases are at the same point as of 2019. That’s what will be considered.
Item 4 involves an appeal of a Planning Commission denial of a Design review and Variance. In short, there were aspects of the project that neither staff nor the PC liked, but the applicant has proposed fixes that staff is now OK with, but Council still needs to consider it under appeal, since “denied” is the current status.
Item 5 is also an odd one – consideration of an office complex renovation proposal. This is weird because it has little to do with the renovation and everything to do with the traffic demand management requirements that we place on projects. The applicant has an 8 acre property with a 142,000 square feet set of buildings. They’re proposing some major work that would only add 7000 square feet to the floor area. That alone does require review. But doing so would also subject the applicant to substantially higher traffic demand management requirements (getting people diverted out of cars), all for a 2% increase in floor area ratio. So staff wants direction from Council as to how to handle this.
And item 6 has us giving direction to staff regarding what we do about our garbage franchise. The City Charter prohibits a franchise agreement from extending beyond 20 years, and our existing franchise hits that in 2020, meaning we need to sign a new franchise agreement. That can be done with the existing trash guys (Specialty Solid Waste), or it could be someone new. That means that the city could pursue a single source franchise (just negotiate with Specialty) or we could open it up for competitive bidding. We have to make that call.
That’s about it.
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