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Hello Neighbors,
This week was quite eventful and much of it had to do with work that resulted from follow up from our City Council meeting on April 20. If you didn't get a chance to read the summary from that meeting I wrote or the Recap provided by our City Clerk, you may want to refer to our last Weekly (Week 16) that can be found here. Did you know, approximately 300 people received the weekly and of that about 220 opened it. For the record, a 74% open rate is well above the industry average, so thank you for reading and please spread the word so your neighbors don't miss out.
This week, we had a delightful time supporting our very own Grassroots Ecology at Byrne Preserve helping remove evasive plants. The event drew the staff that were available but more importantly, we had an opportunity to appreciate how hard our volunteers and community champions work to preserve the gifts left from previous generations.
We also had our long awaited second meeting with the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) where we were able to sit down via zoom and discuss all the changes, improvements, enhancement and updates we made to our third update to the Draft Housing Element. We were very encouraged by the meeting and look forward to meeting with them again later in May for another check in. I want to thank the City Council, the Planning Commission and all the residents that provided feedback. We heard all your comments and considered them all very carefully. Our official response was uploaded to HCD on Thursday, April 27th and will be available on the HCD website as soon as they update their system.
Next, I want to recognize and thank all the volunteers that helped organize the Leaders in Safety Volunteer Appreciation Dinner on Sunday April 23rd. The event was intended to thank, recognize, and cross-pollinate the great work of the volunteers from CERT, Firewise, and Neighborhood Watch. Thanks to the Councilmember Schmidt for taking the lead as well as the Councilmember Tyson, Vice Mayor Mok, and Mayor Swan for attending.
We continue to suffer from the painful impacts of residential burglaries that have been plaguing our Town. We have deployed private security, overtime Santa Clara County Sheriff deputies, additional detectives, ALPRs, enhanced communications to residents to harden homes, supporting the formation of Neighborhood Watch, and brought on a special consultant to help us explore ways we can continue to support our residents and reduce the number of residential burglaries in Town. Ultimately, we need your help. Read below and in past newsletters for tips, tricks and hints on what you can do.
Hiring and retaining talent has and continues to be a major hurdle for local government. Due to the post-pandemic shift in how people view "life-work" balance, the number of retirements / exits, a decline in new talent coming into the industry, and the cost of living in the Bay Area, there has been an increasing number of vacancies resulting in more turn-over more often. We are doing what we can to attract and retain talent, but this continues to be a significant challenge to overcome.
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