City Council
City of San Mateo
330 W. 20th Ave
San Mateo, CA 94403
Re: Prioritize Vision Zero
Dear Council Members:
By now, you may have seen emails from parents and residents throughout our city asking this Council to prioritize Vision Zero and safer streets, especially around schools.
We are writing to specifically urge this Council to make these priorities and the acceleration of roadway safety projects, a priority in the next budget cycle through the Blue Sky process.
Over the last year we have seen increased aggressive driving and speeding on the streets around our cities. There have been several recent collisions that have endangered our children’s lives on their commute to school. On four separate occasions this past fall, students were hit by vehicles, or had near misses while traveling on foot or bike — at North Shoreview, Lead Elementary, San Mateo High, and Foster City Elementary
Vision Zero seeks the zero deaths and serious injuries from our roadways. Achieving Vision Zero requires a fundamental paradigm shift in how our culture views traffic collisions — we must affirm the fact that every roadway death and life-altering injury is preventable . Vision Zero applies to all roadway users, traffic collision injuries, and traffic-related deaths. When streets are safe for people walking and biking, they are safe for all road users, including drivers and transit riders as well.
All residents, including students, deserve peace of mind knowing they can travel safely around town. To this end, we make the following requests:
1. Vision Zero Policy - adopt ASAP
We know that his Council is on track to adopt a Vision Zero policy through the update to the Circulation Element in the General Plan. If for whatever reason the General Plan
update is delayed, we strongly urge you to adopt the Vision Zero policy separately anyway. We have been waiting 9 years, since the City’s 2015 Sustainable Streets Plan called for such a policy. We are glad we are finally here, please don’t delay any further.
2. FUND Vision Zero
More importantly, we urge you to prioritize funding and staffing resources to create and implement a Vision Zero action plan. Staff must have whatever resources they need to implement as many roadway safety projects as possible. We need more staff to accelerate the rate of construction of these needed roadway safety projects and make up for years of underfunding these important initiatives.
3. Quick-builds
Through the Vision Zero action plan, we specifically want to see as many quick-build projects happen in our city as possible - at a minimum, we want to see one per District.
There are many benefits of quick-builds, one being that they are an important tool in quickly responding to collisions and near misses - as successfully happened on Franklin Parkway in the Bay Meadows neighborhood (which was featured on CNN).
Other benefits include: they are reversible and illustrate for the community what could be made permanent. Quick-builds can also be adjusted after community feedback to improve the projects.
4. No Right Turn on Red in the Downtown Core
One of the quickest safety projects that can happen in our Downtown Core is banning right turns on red. An analysis of intersections with No Turn On Red in Washington, DC showed a 92% decrease in motorists failing to yield to people walking at red lights and a 97% decrease in conflicts between cars. Almost all of the injury collisions in the Downtown Business District between 2017-2022 occurred at intersections and implementing No Turn on Red can dramatically decrease the number of collisions in our main business district.
We ask that you prioritize Vision Zero, while there is time to prevent any further injuries — or worse. We cannot wait. Safe streets save lives.
Sincerely,
co-lead
co-lead
SVBC Community Organizer
From: Patrice Olds
To: Denise Garcia
Subject: FW: Blue Skies Priority: Youth Workforce Development & Civic Education Opportunities Date: Tuesday, December 26, 2023 1:56:51 PM
Patrice M. Olds, MMC
City Clerk
City of San Mateo
330 W. 20th Avenue
San Mateo, CA
94403-1388
[email protected]
www.cityofsanmateo.org
(650) 522-7042
From:
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2023 4:55 PM
To: City Council (San Mateo) <[email protected]> Cc:
Subject: Blue Skies Priority: Youth Workforce Development & Civic Education Opportunities
Greetings to the City Council,
We are interns with City Councilwoman and Former Mayor Amourence Lee and have been working on a concept program to support youth in our City.
Goal:
Our goal is to increase Youth Workforce Development & Civic Education Opportunities for students and recent graduates who’ve often been disenfranchised by creating paid internship and fellowship opportunities to work at the City of San Mateo. We hope to give an opportunity that allows students to earn job/life experience and positively impact our community in a way that’s flexible with school life. Through these paid internships/fellowships these future youth workers can cultivate a stronger connection with our city government.
We see this idea as a way to build staff capacity for the City to increase service and facility access. For example, if there were young people helping to staff our community centers, we could expand the hours of operation on the weekends. The King Community Center could be open to families on weekends and transform and revive City spaces into affordable and safe ‘third spaces’ accessible to all.
Problem/Opportunity:
Not many flexible jobs for students and recent graduates, who have limited schedules and job opportunities. Internships are more streamlined and accessible, student-friendly schedules than a lot of jobs.
Many jobs are in retail and don’t provide much impact on the community, leading to inexperienced teenagers entering the workforce, who are also
From: Clerk
To: City Council (San Mateo)
Cc: Christina Horrisberger; Denise Garcia
Subject: FW: Request from SMYCA and SMCAT, RE: February 3 Blue Skies Session Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 12:06:09 PM
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Dear City Council,
Please see the below public comment submitted for the Blue Skies meeting.
Best wishes,
Martin
Martin McTaggart
Deputy City Clerk | City Clerk’s Department
330 W. 20th Ave., San Mateo, CA 94403
650-522-7044 |
[email protected]
From: Robert Whitehair <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 11:54 AM
To: Clerk <[email protected]>
Cc:
Subject:
Request from SMYCA and SMCAT, RE: February 3 Blue Skies Session
Dear Mayor Lisa Diaz Nash and Members of the San Mateo City Council,
We write to you on behalf of the San Mateo Climate Action Team and San Mateo Youth Climate Action. Our two organizations represent more than 200 San Mateo residents, students, and business owners, united in our concern about the climate crisis.
Those of us who are too young to vote are growing increasingly concerned about the state of a world we’re soon to be responsible for, and the need to implement bold solutions to global climate change. For us, taking climate action is not about doing the “right thing” but about creating a safe future where we won’t have to worry about extreme natural disasters, air pollution, or not having access to clean water. We voice our concerns to you - our City’s top leaders - time and again because, without the ability to vote, it is our only form of advocating for a livable world.
Those of us in older generations support these pleas for strong climate leadership.
We are already experiencing severe climate impacts in our own lifetimes, but younger generations will bear the brunt of this frightening burden, much longer than us. We stand with the youth of our community in advocating for a livable world - for our children, for our grandchildren, for our youngest generations, and for our future generations.
Unfortunately, there is no time to push off our requests to some future date. With the most recent IPCC report, we know the writing is on the wall: the time to prevent such worsening climate change impacts is now.
The good news is that cities can have a major impact in fighting climate change by eliminating fossil fuels from our City’s investment portfolio, building stock, transportation and other equipment. As you set your agenda for 2024, we urge you to be part of the climate change solution by adopting the following objectives for FY 2024-2025:
1. Adopt a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Policy that Ends Direct Financing and Investment in Fossil Fuels, and Further Study Options for an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Policy.
2. Continue Strong Implementation of the “Decarbonization Objective” Adopted by Council in 2022: “Establish policies to decarbonize and electrify existing buildings and eliminate natural gas use by 2030.”
3. Complete all High and Medium-High Priority Projects in the 2020 Bicycle Master Plan and the Pedestrian Master Plan.
4. Assist Landscaping Professionals with an Equitable Transition Away from Gas Equipment.
Please see the discussion of these requests beneath our signature line.
We are running out of time to solve the climate crisis. There is not a single year to spare. San Mateo has been a climate action leader, and as grandparents, mothers, fathers, and youth, we urge you to continue your climate leadership as you set your objectives for FY 2024-25. In addition to benefiting our own community, your climate leadership will set an important example for other cities to follow.
Finally, on behalf of our organizations, we thank you for the opportunity at the upcoming February 3, 2024 San Mateo City Council goal setting meeting to deliver for your consideration a joint presentation.
In Partnership,
on behalf of the San Mateo Climate Action
Team
on behalf of San Mateo Youth Climate Action
# # #
DISCUSSION
1. Socially Responsible Investment & ESG
In alignment with past Council objectives, study sessions and discussions, we urge the Council to adopt a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Policy that ends direct financing and investment in fossil fuels, and to further study options for implementing an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policy.
Implementing an SRI policy will align San Mateo with the County’s Investment Policy as of 2023.*
Furthermore, below are two recommendations to be considered concurrently:
bank divestment and ESG policy, with the latter being a stronger action. If an ESG policy cannot be brought forth as a potential objective to the council, then an SRI regarding bank divestment should.
A. Bank divestment: There are a number of corporate bonds that the council holds that contribute directly to financing fossil fuel projects, most significantly being the city’s bonds in the Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America (Information on these investments are from an information packet provided to the council in March of 2023). These banks are major fossil fuel financers, with JP Morgan Chase & Co being the largest financier of fossil fuels in the world with 434 billion invested just since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016 (Banking on Climate Chaos Fossil Fuel Finance Report 2023). The city should approach these banks with an SRI lens, creating an exclusionary list of banks depending on their extent of fossil fuel financing, adding and removing depending on their behavior.
B. ESG-policy: ESG is the most comprehensive approach to dealing with investing in a manner that will create as limited of an impact on the environment as possible. The Council learned about potential ESG approaches at a 2023 City Council Study Session as a result of the 2022-2023 FY Objective #34. In this Study Session, one of the main concerns raised by Council was the subjective nature of ESG. While this is a fair concern, we feel that ESG was completely abandoned due to its complexity and that more resources should be directed toward fairly evaluating ESG. The Council should continue its work on implementing 2022-23 Objective #34 and retain ESG consulting advisors in connection therewith.
* See excerpt regarding SRI objective, from the 2023 San Mateo County Investment Policy Statement, approved by the Board on January 17, 2023, located at the end of this Discussion section.
2. Continue Strong Implementation of the “Decarbonization Objective” Adopted by Council in 2022: “Establish policies to decarbonize and electrify existing buildings and eliminate natural gas use by 2030.”
Please continue your leadership to rapidly decarbonize our City’s building stock through an equitable approach. Specifically, we request that you provide sufficient funding, community education/outreach, and additional sustainability staff in the City Manager’s office and in other city departments, as well as legal review, to fully vet and implement the strongest policy directions adopted at the January 17, 2024 Study Session of the City Council. These can be summarized as:
A. Follow state and BAAQMD mandates for Zero NOx in 2027 and 2029.
B. Adopt new building reach codes.
C. Require electric replacements of fossil gas equipment, ahead of the 2027/2029 BAAQMD requirements.
D.
Establish Building Performance Standards for electricity usage in commercial buildings.
E.
Adopt an electric first policy for City facilities, including funding.
F. Smooth the building permit process for replacing fossil gas equipment with electric alternatives.
G.
Establish a fund to assist homeowners and businesses with electrification.
H. Prioritize electrification efforts in the areas of San Mateo historically affected by pollution.
To the extent that Options A and C are mutually inconsistent (i.e., only one of them can be adopted), we urge Council to adopt Option C.
3. Complete all High and Medium-High Priority Projects in the 2020 Bicycle Master Plan and the Pedestrian Master Plan
We urge the Council to expand its efforts to reduce harmful emissions from transportation. To that end, we request that the Council prioritize the completion, with full funding, of all high and medium-high priority projects in the 2020 Bicycle Master Plan and the Pedestrian Master Plan, as set forth in the 2023-2024 City Council Objectives.
We believe that the best way to implement these projects is to publicly adopt a Capital Improvement Plan showing funding, year the design will begin, and year construction will begin. We are aware that there is a shortfall in funds. But we are asking for a full project implementation calendar with funding requirements including short falls. This we believe is the best way to implement the Bicycle-Pedestrian Master Plan.
4. Assist Landscaping Professionals with an Equitable Transition away from Gas Equipment
According to the California Air Resources Board, more air pollution is created in California from landscaping equipment than from cars. We salute the work of the City of San Mateo in the past year related to the elimination of gas leaf blowers.
Supporting a rebate program is a fair, equitable and small first step toward reducing the burden on small businesses of eliminating gas leaf blowers. We appreciate how the City has demonstrated its commitment to the program by purchasing electric backpack leaf blowers for some City Staff.
We ask that the City ramp up the program by holding an additional study session in the spring that highlights how successful the current efforts have been. Given that sales of new gas-powered leaf blowers and other small off road engines are slated to end on July 1, 2024, we ask the City to adopt a specific objective relating to the end of use of gas-powered equipment.
We recognize, however, that there are many hurdles that must be overcome before small gas-powered equipment can be eliminated:
A. Dialogue with the impacted community of small business owner landscapers is essential to avoid placing the entire burden on the backs of a historically vulnerable population.
B.
Dialogue with homeowners who can support battery electrification of landscaping equipment by making fully charged batteries available at their homes.
C.
Learn whether/how landscapers may need some additional wiring at their homes, in order to safely charge replacement batteries overnight.
D.
Determine how the program will be monitored for compliance.
We ask for the City of San Mateo to actively participate in this dialogue process through outreach to landscaping businesses and affected homeowners.
We further ask that a road map be created to provide a date when gas-powered equipment will no longer be allowed to operate in San Mateo.
Finally, we ask that, as a demonstration of its commitment, the City of San Mateo include funds in the budget to fully electrify the landscaping tools of City employees.
* SRI Investment Objective of San Mateo County 2023 Investment Policy Statement -
“D. Socially Responsible Investment Objectives
In addition to and while complying with California Government Code provisions that regulate the investment of public funds (which require that, when managing and investing public funds, the objectives shall be, primarily, to safeguard principal of invested funds; secondarily, to meet the liquidity needs of the local government; and third, to achieve a return on invested funds), the County Treasurer recognizes the importance of socially responsible investing. The Treasurer will consider and promote investment in authorized issuers that display adherence to strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles, including but not limited to, environmental sustainability, social and economic justice, and good corporate governance. The Treasurer will forego investments in fossil fuel issuers if able to do so while complying with all legal and fiduciary mandates, including with respect to safety of principal, liquidity, and return on invested funds. The Treasurer will seek to invest in a socially responsible manner by considering investments in corporate issuers that meet designated risk score thresholds, as provided by an independent organization or organizations that supply analytical research, ratings, and data to institutional investors regarding issuers’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices.
Issuers will be reviewed and confirmed against these thresholds on a periodic basis, and any investments in issuers that fall below designated thresholds may be sold or held to maturity.” (San Mateo County Investment Policy 2023)