Los Altos City Council – February 2024
February 13
The City Council adopted the Tree Protection Regulations, including amendments to the tree removal permit fee plan. See the January LACC Observer for details about amendments.
The City Council reviewed the city's mission statement. The current mission statement to provide “a good place to raise a family” doesn’t reflect the current diversity of residents now living and working in Los Altos. Council members looked at mission statements from other cities that included more inclusive views of the community but didn’t come up with a unanimous view. Councilmember Neysa Fligor and staff will prepare draft statements for Council consideration at a future meeting.
More amendments to the Los Altos municipal code were discussed to fulfill the city’s commitment to increase housing. The council must prepare a downtown parking plan. They must update citywide parking requirements for any residential, commercial, or other development within a half mile of public transit. Adoption of these amendments is tentatively scheduled for February 27, 2024.
In addition to the amendments aligned with housing requirements, the City Council directed the staff to make changes to manage street maintenance:
- Focus on implementation of the council’s priority of finding ways for vehicles to move safely and efficiently in the city and implement the city’s Complete Streets Master Plan.
- Put less emphasis to complete 76 easy maintenance projects by 2027 on the current street maintenance check off list - Pavement Condition Index (PCI).
February 27
The City Council approved amendments to the municipal code that would implement the parking changes to help increase housing in the city. See Observer notes for February 13 (above) for more detail on the plans.
The City Council held a public hearing to review and renew the Los Altos Police Policy pertaining to the funding, acquisition, and use of military equipment as mandated by California Assembly Bill 481. The bill requires a yearly public hearing of the annual report to review use and purchase of any military type of equipment for police use. This year the department is replacing a non-lethal type of equipment with a newer model used to incapacitate a non-compliant, aggressive suspect. The department also is acquiring two UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System). Commonly called drones, they are for the law enforcement agency’s use to save lives, help capture dangerous suspects, and to use by first responders in hazardous incidents that would benefit from an aerial perspective.
During public comments, residents were concerned that the public hearing at tonight’s council meeting was not sufficiently aligned with the mandate for transparency in the bill. They prefer a separate ‘community engagement’ meeting to review the report. The council discussed changes to presentations of the report in the future.
Others suggested that the purchases were a change in equipment approved in a past report. According to the police captain presenting the report, the police department doesn’t purchase equipment designed for military use as was suggested, rather improvements to equipment recommended that helps keep crime rate minimal.
Other public comments concerned the use of drones for crowd control and drone images for facial recognition. Councilmember Daley reminded the audience that there was a sequence for being allowed to capture an image and authorize access to the image that are restricted to trained staff under specific circumstances, not to identify residents attending an event.