CERT PRESENTATION
I'm Robert Maitland, I'm your Officer of Emergency Services Coordinator and tonight I'm going to talk to you about a program we offer called CERT. It's the Community Emergency Response Team, and just so I know, does anybody here remember our CERT program? Fantastic. So, with that said, I've got some flyers here that I want to share with you afterward. We have a CERT program going on right now, and we have our calendar updated for 2025 and what it is, you come and spend five nights with us, and we have one-holiday meeting activity on a Saturday where we go through a series of modules that FEMA gives us through their citizen court program. So, say for example, you've never used a fire extinguisher before, any of you've never used a fire extinguisher? All right, come to me because what I want you to do is to have that confidence going into a situation that it's not the first time you've ever tried to engage a fire with a fire extinguisher. You will have done that before. Have you thought about what if someone came knocking on your door and t elling you to evacuate right now? Does that ever happen here in California? Does that ever happen in Coffee Park, where a fire was going every second on three football fields? Do you have your medications ready to go? Do you have your passports, your children's birth certificates? Do you have your medication for your insulin out of your refrigerator? These are all things that we'll discuss. We'll talk about emergency preparedness, we'll talk about basic medical, we'll discuss putting out a fire, we'll talk about psychology and we'll put it all together in one big fun-filled activity for four hours over at Fire Station 4.
So, I would like you to come down, spend time with us, find a class that works for your schedule, and if you do, I promise you'll have a good time. Thank you.
PRESENTATION
My name is Arn and I'm one of our Assistant City Managers. I'm going to talk to you tonight about a public measure that will be on the ballot by November 5th. We are in what is currently known as a post-adoption period, which means as staff, I am allowed to provide factual information. I am not allowed to give anything that could be construed as advocacy, but I will be able to point you towards other information where you can be an informed voter like you would be on any decision you make when you go to the ballot on November 5th. So, Mountain View is fortunate in a lot of respects because we have a very healthy financial profile over the decades, but like all other communities, we
also take care of a lot of infrastructure, and that infrastructure ages over time, whether we're talking about firehouses, whether we're talking about our roadways. Part of what we do as an organization is constantly update and refresh the infrastructure that you use as residents, whether it's parks, or whatever it is, we are no different than any other municipality. We need to update our infrastructure and we also want to accomplish new things. We want to have more parks, we want to have updated facilities and things of that nature. So, with that in mind, one of the things the council did was they looked at, how can we raise more revenue to maintain the state-of-the-art infrastructure we have and do new things in the future? They came to a consensus that one of the things they could do that would not impact the average resident is to look at our property transfer tax.
As I mentioned, these are some of the examples that a valid measure could help bring more revenue, whether it is enhancing public safety, improving pedestrian and cyclist safety, expanding parks and open space, investing in our facility and existing facilities, infrastructure advancing sustainability goals or developing and preserving affordable housing. So, what did Measure G do? On June 25th, the Mountain View City Council unanimously approved an increase to our property transfer checks.
That increase is only on properties that are over $6 million in value. That's why we say that it will not impact the average resident, it actually impacts primarily commercial properties when you look at the history.
So, here's the actual ballot measure, and it'll appear when your ballots arrive at your home. They're being mailed out this week from the registrar voters.
Shall the measure to provide additional funding for services that protect local property values, including 9-1-1 emergency, medical/disaster response, street sidewalk and pothole repairs, affordable housing support, and other general governmental services by raising the City of Mountain View's existing voter-approved property transfer tax, imposed on residential commercial property sales above $6,000,000.
The important fact there, is this is a fact that's already on the books, and once again, only above 6 million, up to $15 per one thousand, generated approximately nine and a half million in locally controlled funded annually selected by voters with independent audits be adopted. So that's the language that you'll see exactly on your ballots when they arrive in the mail.
So once again, if approved, it would only impact homes over 6 million. I believe we have a slide that will show what this actually looked like in the last five years. There it is. So, we went back and looked; if this tax were in effect in the last five years, who would it have impacted, that's a fair question. You can see in the last five years; it would've only impacted two residential properties and 60 commercial properties. So once again, due to the nature of residential housing in Mountain View, the average price of a home is currently around 2.4 million. This is not intended to impact the average resident. So, at the conclusion of all of this on September 10th, the City Council went a step further and defined where they want to concentrate money for the next 10 years, if this is approved by voters on the ballot:
public safety facilities, parks and open space and biodiversity, affordable housing and then other general governmental services, which include road maintenance, active transportation, small business support, and homeless support services.
That concludes my discussion this evening. I'm happy to take questions later in the evening, I will provide you factual answers or I will provide you where you can go to get the information yourself.
Thank you.
QUESTION
The first question is, the internet at North Park mobile homes is copper wired, DSL with a maximum of 50 minutes. I have to pay $76 a month for unreliable and slow internet. The park has no intention to upgrade the internet service, but the cost would be in the millions. Is there any way to support the park and upgrade the internet or perhaps applying for some sort of government grant to help pay to upgrade the internet?
I'm going to give you a partial answer tonight. The City is currently involved in a broadband assessment and gap analysis. What that means is we brought in a third-party vendor that is a subject matter expert in municipal and local broadband.
The assessment is going to look at everything, at who are the current providers, what is the cost structure of the current providers? What is the penetration geographically throughout the entire town? What are the facilities that the City currently owns that could potentially be leveraged if we wanted to figure out ways to try and enhance broadband? That assessment is going to be coming to City Council in January/ February timeframe. It's just a review and a lay of the land. It's not necessarily
recommending action going forward, but it's giving all of us a sense of the playing field. From that, we can decide if there's anything we want to move forward with. Thank you.
QUESTION
My name is Anky Van Deursen and I'm the Rent Stabilization Division Manager. We received a couple of questions tonight about the rent increases at the mobile home parks.
As you all know, in 2021, the City adopted an ordinance to control rents in the mobile homes here in Mountain View. It adopted the same rent increase limits as was already previously adopted for apartments in the City of Mountain View with a gap of 5%. So, the questions tonight are, can the city lower this 5% cap?
For a lot of people, the 5% seems to be too high still. Well, you are in luck because the housing element is a study that is going to research what mobile home parks in the Bay Area and beyond are doing. This might be different for a mobile home than for apartment complexes. If you look on page 14 of the neighborhood updates that you received tonight, you see that we made two resident-focused meetings to receive input from all the residents in the mobile home parks.
One is going to be online on Zoom, it's on Saturday, October 26th at 2:00 PM and one is in person. The one October 30th at 6:30 in the evening, and all the details are in this brochure and it's also online.
Thank you.
QUESTION
Hello everyone. I'm Ed Arango and I'm the Acting Public Works Director. My question tonight is related to somewhat transportation, but also to Live Nation.
So, here's the question. Over many years, Santiago residents have regularly spent many hours in traffic because of heavy Shoreline Amphitheater concert traffic. New housing developments will have thousands of residents in our neighborhood by 2030. Reversible bus lanes can't solve your problem with this magnitude and permanent gridlock seems inevitable. If no better solutions are being considered to fix North Bayshore traffic, can the City Council help us by simply letting Live Nation’s lease expire.
I'm going to answer this question in reverse. Your discussions are regarding traffic and possible transportation solutions. The City is being very aggressive with large initiatives to focus on the Shoreline 101 intersection and the traffic that goes into North Bayshore. We have three projects and one of them mentioned here with the Bus Lane project we called the Shoreline Bus Lane and Utility Project. That one starts at Middlefield Road. The main focus of that project is bike lane improvements, pedestrian improvements, intersection improvements, as well as major utility infrastructure improvements. It has a bus line in it. Back in June, this past June, we went to Council and Council supported deferring the bus line component.
Now within the last two years, it's very aggressive with developers planning to do more office in North Bayshore and now it is completely pulled back. As a result, not only has that gone back, some businesses have reduced their staff in North Bayshore.
The Bus Line project, again that component is now phased. We're going to complete the improvement and then we're going to do a feasibility study on an interim regarding improvements through the US 101 interchange. And if it's feasible, it's supported by Council. This will provide some protected byline improvements over the 101 interchange Shoreline.
The third phase is constructing the median bus lane, really when the conditions support effective and well use bus lanes so that's one project. Another project that we have is the Planet Space Park Greenline Project. It's at Shoreline intersection and Space Park. So, you're on Shoreline heading North from first, and then half a block later, you're in Space Park. Space Park is going to stay where it is.
We're going to bring improvements into the intersection with Space Park and just have better operational improvements there to help with the Shoreline Corridor. But the real project that I feel is going to really take volume off Shoreline is the 101. So, I bring all those projects up because they're all related and you may hear other questions get answered related to these projects.
The question was, can Council help us by simply letting Live Nation lease expire? So, here's a Live Nation component. The lease to Live Nation is in the final five-year extension of the current lease has been executed in 2030. So, negotiations for a new lease beyond 2030 haven't started between the City of Live Nation, but these discussions are scheduled to begin in the next few months.
Should the City obtain a new lease for Live Nation Beyond 2030, Live Nation will need to provide a variety of information regarding the desired facility, proposed operational changes, as well as plans to improve traffic position, ruling that a number of traffic-related projects are identified in this area for the next several years. Should Live Nation move forward with a new lease, there will be opportunities that will be created for the community to be engaged with the City and Live Nation as potential lease terms are negotiated and prepared, including the traffic.
QUESTION
So, the author of this question, if I'm not responding to what you're asking, please just let me know and I'm going to start with what I think you're asking. It says, what are our property tax supposed to cover? This is a pretty broad question. So, let's start at the top and work our way down, and like I said, for the author of the question, if I'm going in the wrong direction, please tell me.
Property tax is by far the largest revenue source that the City collects. It's probably about 43% of all our revenues, a big portion of what pays for public safety services. All the staff you see here tonight, the parts like if you think in terms of what government does and what we provide, 48% of the property tax.
So now let's drill a little deeper. When you pay your property tax, the city receives 16 cents out of every dollar. We receive a very small percentage of the property tax. We're grateful we get our 16 cents, don't get me wrong. You folks should be grateful because it is why this building is here and the services we provide, but we only get 16 cents out of every dollar. The majority of property tax actually goes to school districts and other agencies.
And the n it says, should I be worried about losing my home for future condos? And so, this is more like a development question. If there's a developer that wants to try to come and do a development, they go through the whole zoning process. If they haven't purchased your home outright because they're trying to cobble together properties to do a development, I don't see any way that they can force you to leave your home. But there are others here who can answer this question a lot better than I can, if this is actually the focus of your question.
In terms of the presentation, I gave earlier on the property transfer tax, a hundred million dollars transaction equates to about one and a half million. It's usually split between both parties, buyer and
seller, about $750,000 each. A hundred-million-dollar development isn't going to not pencil because of what we're bringing forward in November.
If I may add something to that answer. The mobile home parks are specifically zoned for mobile homes. So that is one more deterrent for a developer if they want to come and buy a mobile home park to try and develop into condos.
QUESTION
Hello everybody, Michael Canfield, Police Chief. In the last year, Santiago Villa has had domestic violence cases and a few cases of theft. In addition, a major incident involving a homeless person with a trashy bust on Space Parkway was handled deftly and sensitively by MVPD over several weeks. To longtime residents, it seems that such incidents are increasing. Has MVPD noticed an increase in illegal or violent incidents in the North Bayshore? If so, has MVPD hadx to deploy more officers to our neighborhood?
I pulled some crime data quickly, although I do want to make a promise right now for a new crime dashboard, not just crime, but a dashboard that will allow you to look at different types of crime in different neighborhoods including the ones that are in the North Bayshore. Some types of crime are kind of isolated into regions for anonymity, so you don't feel victimized twice by the internet, amongst other suspects. But we do think it's going to be a very valuable tool for folks to use. It has some feedback mechanisms, so you can tell us if you like the functionality of it or not. It includes traffic, collusion, some of our traffic stop data, arrest data, etcetera. So please take a look at that. We sent out a press release related to it, but we're going to share it soon also on our social media channels to make it easy for folks to see.
With that, I can say that overall, in the City, we have seen a slight increase in some of our personal crimes. So, assault on a person, domestic violence, those types of things, but a nominal less than 10% increase in general are property crimes.
So, burglaries, property theft, those have gone down a little bit more than our personal crimes have gone up, but nothing's dramatically significant.
For the North Bayshore region and specifically for 1075 Space Park for Santiago Villa. Crime reserve is going to probably surprise you because they're pretty low. Now in 2023, we had six assaults at 1075 Space Park. So that's any kind of like a battery on a person, but not a domestic violence case. We only had one in 2024, and that was in April. In 2022 we had two cases. There was one domestic violence case in the last year in 1075 Space Park. So, all in all, I would say fairly low numbers.
From what we are seeing in the North Bayshore we're not seeing significantly larger increases in personal crime or property crimes. The issues that we do see often in the North Bayshore area are going to be related to auto burglaries or perhaps an incident at a concert. Some concerts have a higher call volume for us than others. Whatever the most popular hot country concert is, that's going to be pretty high.
Regarding, have we had to deploy more resources in the neighborhood? No, we have not. But related to perhaps that one RV or bus that was out in the area in City by Space Park, we do have a team.
We have community outreach officers, who work with a sergeant and behavioral services unit and our patrol officers who address issues. So, if you are seeing folks that look like they're in need or that are making you think that there's a greater need or a different type of resource that we can provide, please reach out to us.
We have more tools than just policing tools. We like to bridge community services, work with the City Manager's Office and Human Services on addressing the underlying issues for folks that are experiencing.
QUESTION
Hi, Robert Maitland, your officer of Emergency Services Coordinator. Again, I have a question here about fire safety.
Recently, the Mountain View Voice reported an incident in the Santiago Villa Mobile Home that was started by a ceiling fan. MVFD went above and beyond to point out the fire by donating $250 to the residents and help them repair the damage. MVFD also recently put out a fire that killed the resident in Moffett mobile home park. Residents of these parks who own mobile homes could use the information
on preventing such fires. What cases has MVPD found that might help us fix and find these problems before they cause fires?
Now, I know it says MVPD here, but I'm going to answer on their behalf. I think it's important to acknowledge that particular fire, that fire was put out by an officer from the police department who went into the building, used the fire extinguisher, and then took those two ladies out.
Also, join CERT, we will help you with these fires and what to do, but before the CERT class starts next year, I would recommend some maintenance. Have a professional regularly inspect and maintain the cooling and heating systems, as well as electrical systems and appliances. Smoke alarms, test your smoke alarms monthly and change the batteries twice a year. I change my batteries on the smoke alarms that have batteries every time I change my clocks. Install smoke alarms on every level of your home, including inside bedrooms, and outside sleeping areas.
Do not overload outlets, extension cords, or electrical circuits. The circuit breaker trips or if a fuse is blown call a licensed electrician. It's going to get cold now. So, with that said, portable space heaters.
Have them at least three feet away from anything that can burn and turn them off before leaving or going to sleep.
Store your flammable liquids and improve containers outside of your home. Develop an escape plan that includes alternate exits from every room. Practice that plan twice a year and I recommend practicing that plan in the rain. Consider having fire extinguishers in your home. Store your firewood away from your home and never leave a candle, a lit candle unattended. Okay, thank you.
QUESTION
Good evening everyone. Lorenzo Lopez, City Traffic Engineer.
Will the City of Mountain View review the traffic flow issues on Shoreline going north? There should be a right-hand turn lane on the corner of Shoreline and Faire to allow traffic to flow more easily.
QUESTION
Why are there two left-hand turn lanes going to the movie theater and no right-hand turn lane on Pear/Movies?
Again, it's coming, but as Ed Arango, mentioned earlier, the Shoreline bus lane utility improvements project. As part of that project, there will be bicycle facilities installed, but there also will be signal improvements installed as part of the project or phase one of the projects. So, the improvements at Fair intersection will be coming with the phase one of that project, which includes the construction of a right turn lane to Faire, northbound to Faire and only one lane will be turning into the movie theater.
What this also does is improve the flow on Shoreline because both north and south will be able to go at the same time, which right now it does not. It's a split phase, unfortunately, it is a split phase and that's what's causing a lot of the delays because the two northbound left turn lanes into the movies, one of them is a through and the left. So, when that's green, you cannot have the opposing left turn going otherwise a collision would happen. So, it purposely is a split phase in the northern-south direction. This project will eliminate that split phase and allow the north and south to go and everybody will be happy, I hope.
The roads are not safe around Santiago Villa due to all the construction.
Yeah, there's a lot of construction there. As part of the construction projects, they do have to do some street improvements. I don't know if you're aware, but there is a new extension of Indigo Way that's connecting behind the fences. It's connecting Space Park to Faire. That'll be another release valve for traffic to connect to those two roads. There are no road lines painted on the street, specifically Space Park Lane. That's something that if it is not part of the construction projects, now we can evaluate to see if lane lines are needed once everything is cleaned up and the construction is out of there. Also traffic from concerts at Shoreline Amphitheater as Ed mentioned improvements will be becoming as part of the future lease agreement. And we're always, even now we're always working with Live Nation on ways to try to improve their traffic control for these events.
So, if I get a complaint, I'm on the phone right away with City staff and violation to make some improvements. If I hear that something is not going right, I'm on the phone with them the next day.
So, if you have complaints, please send them in and I'll make sure to pass those on. Thank you.
QUESTION
We have three questions on this sheet. The first one is, can a Moffett Mobile homeowner sell their home to the park?
A mobile homeowner can sell their mobile home to anyone they like. They have free choice. That could include a department owner if they so desire.
The second question is, if they can, how much money will they give the mobile home resident? Probably that will be the market value of the mobile home.
The third question, will the mobile home park owners provide relocation services for the mobile home resident?
In this case, when you voluntarily sell your home, tenant relocation assistance is not available.
The tenant relocation assistance is available when you are involuntarily being evicted or removed by the owner. I hope that answers your questions.
QUESTION
I am the Economic Vitality Manager for the City of Mountain View. I have some questions here. The first question is, can we get to court opening or forming home businesses in the parks? Absolutely. There are two ways to support you in this effort. One is the Economic Development Team, which includes myself and two of my colleagues, we have put together a starting business portal on City's website, and that's https://econdev.mountainview.gov/home-econdev If you wish to do some self-selection and identification, all that information is posted online.
Alternatively, I or my teammates would be happy to schedule some time, either to visit with you in person or over a phone call and walk you through the parameters of operating a home out of your business. The best way to access our team is by email, [email protected].
One of us will be happy to follow up with you.
There are some rules and regulations and what you can do in your home as a home-based business.
We are happy to walk you through what that is and what those parameters are. Our team is happy to support anyone that is interested in entrepreneurship.
The second question is very specific to a parcel of land that is waiting, for redevelopment.
So often when property is acquired or has a redevelopment potential, property owners will eventually let leases go and the property will go into this period of nothing's happening. So, there are buildings there, there is vacancy in them as they work through a permitting process.
Most recently our team hired two different consultancies. We are working with property owners to do short-term activations.
QUESTION
I recently saw a large sign for development at 400 Boulevard. I see that it is under review, what is the timeline, and will there be public engagement?
So just for everyone else, this is a proposed project of a mixed-use apartment complex, and it is under review. It's probably looking like it's going to go to a hearing sometime in Q2 or Q3 of next year.
The planning division has asked the applicant to hopefully have a community meeting. Just to clarify, that project does not require council approval, that will be approved at the Zoning Administrator level.
That's my understanding. That's important for the public to know it's going to be a little bit more under the radar than many of the development proposals because it doesn't have to go to the Planning Commission or the City Council.
Is the owner of that parcel also an owner of a mobile park? I don't think so. I think they sold to Prometheus. I think Prometheus owns that land now.
QUESTION
The second question on this sheet is, is there a possibility of having a sidewalk on both sides of Middlefield Road going over Highway 85?
On page 17 of your Neighborhood updates, we have a description of a Middlefield Complete Streets project from Moffett Boulevard to Middlefield Road. I'm going to describe the project and then we'll dial into the cross over Highway 85. Middlefield is a four-lane arterial road with two travel lanes in each direction and a bike lane in each direction, and it connects Mountain View with the Cities of Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. There is $2.4 million in federal funding for this project, which is great news for us as we could really use that funding to help for these road, these big road improvement projects. The
proposed design scope is going to include road resurfacing between Moffett and Ferguson, new classical protected bike lanes, the ones with buffers and vertical elements, between Moffett and Bernardo, and protected intersections at four intersections.
So, we've got the Moffett Boulevard intersection, and North Wilson Road, so that's really going to change the overall profile of the street. It's going to feel much different as a driver, as a pedestrian, and as a cyclist. Specifically, the overcrossing, right now there's a sidewalk on the southbound direction, but there's no sidewalk on the northbound direction. We really need to look at that area as a potential road guide. We need to study that, depending on how volumes look, if there's room, we can steal a little bit of space from vehicles and put a sidewalk in place there. It's very narrow. It's a very challenging location for us. So that's where it looks now. It's like, as part of this project, we will be looking at that gap so to speak in the sidewalks. The intersection will be a PHV of pedestrian hybrid view.
RESOURCES
City website https://www.mountainview.gov/
Business https://econdev.mountainview.gov/business
Non-emergency phone number (650) 903-6728