Mayor’s Friday Update
Happy Friday, March 11th, Belmont! It has been a busy week. Here are some highlights:
On Tuesday’s council meeting, held another public hearing on the transition to district elections from our current at-large election process. Thank you to those who participated by making public/written comments and who watched for the entire 5.75 hour-long meeting!
At the public hearing, the council took public comment and reviewed districting maps that created four separate districts, taking into account public input. All maps are drafted based on traditional districting criteria as established by the Fair Maps Act including those districts are of relatively equal size, contiguous, maintain "communities of interest", follow city and census designated place boundaries and keep districts compact.
We selected two maps for consideration and will decide on one at our next meeting March 22, 2022. They are being finalized for viewing and then will be found here : https://www.belmont.gov/.../city.../district-elections-2
We also passed an ordinance establishing a by-district system of electing four members of the City Council and an at-large Mayor. We determined the term for mayor will be 2 years.
Our next steps for the March 22nd meeting are to do the following after taking public comment:
1) Select a final map establishing 4 council districts
2) Decide whether the first mayoral election is in November 2022 or 2024
3) Decide which district seats will be up for election in November 2022 and 2024
Great news! We also adopted a resolution approving a housing preference policy for those households living or working in San Mateo County and households that have recently been displaced from housing in San Mateo County applying for multi-family affordable housing units funded by the City. This is good timing as we have housing coming available soon for which this resolution is applicable.
I had the honor and privilege as your mayor to provide the State of the City Address this past Wednesday. The event was co-sponsored by the Belmont Chamber of Commerce and Chamber San Mateo County. The theme of the event was “Past, Present, and Future” and I was proud to report the progress we have made on our strategic planning efforts as well as detail some of the concerns. Sprinkled into the address were images of our historic past and renderings of the changes to come. Thank you to all the attendees, the two chambers, and our staff for the effort to make this State of the City successful. For those who may have missed the live address, you can find it here: https://www.belmont.gov/.../cit.../mayor-s-state-of-the-city
Don’t forget to spring forward one hour this Sunday!