12/15/2015 Council Preview – Community Choice Energy

Last meeting of the year, and it’s gonna be a very, very long one.

We start the evening with a closed session to discuss labor negotiations with PSOA and SEA.  This is followed by the final performance evaluation of our City Attorney.  And this is followed by a study session to discuss possible uses of 1.6 acres that we now own at Charles and Mathilda.  Finally, this is followed by discussion of which councilmembers have an interest in serving as Mayor for the next two years or Vice Mayor for the next year.

No special orders or presentations, but a really big consent calendar.  We’ve got contracts for a fire station air compressors, three service trucks, a Safe Routes to School project, bicycle lanes on Duane, and renovating the Fair Oaks Park restroom and parking lot.  There is a request to change the City Manager’s contract authority regarding office supplies, which is really interesting.  Recent anti-competitive market changes to office supply retailers has made the existing process for getting office supplies more expensive, so the City Manager is asking for greater discretion, so as to get more competitive terms for our office supplies.  And PG&E needs an easement on the old Armory site, in order to provide power to the MidPen housing project being constructed there.  Finally, we’ve got our annual report on development fees – how much we collected and how we used fee revenue.

First up is a taxicab franchise.  It’s not actually a new one, but an amendment of an existing one.  A merger caused an existing franchise to pick up some cabs with a different color scheme, and that requires an amendment, believe it or not.

Item 3 is a big one – consideration of Sunnyvale joining Silicon Valley Clean Energy, a Community Choice Energy joint powers agency to provide energy to certain cities in Santa Clara County.  This is an initiative that was formed under Sunnyvale’s leadership, jointly developed by us, Cupertino, Mountain View, and Santa Clara County.  So far, Cupertino has voted to join, and we’re up next.

Item 4 has us passing resolutions that would make us eligible for $160 million in state funds for debt financing a portion of the Water Pollution Control Plant rebuild.

Item 5 is another big one – looking at configuration and funding options for the Civic Center modernization.  The report is a complex one, but the recommendation is to poll residents for support for a possible 2016 bond, elimination of a very expensive configuration that would involve purchasing Civic Center land currently owned by Santa Clara County, and elimination of the option of selling Civic Center land as a funding alternative.

Item 6 is acceptance of our FY 2014/15 year end report.  Big news out of the report is that we finished the year $7.4 million under budget.

Item 7 proposes adoption of a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Sunnyvale Managers Association.  In broad strokes, SMA gets a 3.5% raise this year, a 2.5% raise next year, a 1.5% raise the year after that, a 1% “off salary schedule pay” (one-time lump sum), and their share of CalPERS costs continues to increase by 1% each of the three years.  There are a number of other little things.

Item 8 is another important one – approving the appointment of John Nagel as our next City Attorney.  Mr. Nagel is currently the City Attorney of East Palo Alto.  There are a few weeks between Joan Borger leaving and John Nagel starting, so staff proposes appointing Assistant City Attorney Rebecca Moon as interim City Attorney during that time.

Item 9 is an ongoing discussion of crossing guard recruitment issues.

And that’s it.

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