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CC 07-01-2025 Item No. 13 FY 2025-26 Fee Schedule Update_Written CommunicationsCC 07-1-2025 Item No. 13 FY 2025-26 Fee Schedule Update Written Communications From:Venkat Ranganathan To:City Council; City Clerk; Cupertino City Manager"s Office Subject:Comments regarding staff Report and Unsustainable Fee Increases – Agenda Item 13 (07/01/25) Date:Friday, June 27, 2025 6:18:28 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Clerk, Please include the below in written communication for the 07/01/25 city council meeting agenda item on fee increases. Dear Cupertino City Council, I am Venkat Ranganathan, a long time resident of the city of Cupertino. I urge you to delay action on Agenda Item 13. While the staff report claims there are no new fees being imposed, it obscures a nearly 10% increase in existing fees across planning, building, and engineering. These increases stem from the 2024 cost recovery policy and make this an annual, compounding burden. The Council should reconsider the policy and explore sustainable alternatives, including comparisons with neighboring cities and identifying other avenues for shifting the costs. Please require a revised report with clear, department-wise dollar increases before proceeding. Thanks Venkat From:Santosh Rao To:City Clerk Subject:Fw: Misleading staff report for agenda item on resident fee increases. Date:Thursday, June 26, 2025 11:56:39 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. + City Clerk. Thanks. Thanks, Santosh Rao Begin forwarded message: On Thursday, June 26, 2025, 8:59 AM, Santosh Rao <santo_a_rao@yahoo.com> wrote: Dear City Clerk, Would you please include the below in written communication for the upcoming city council meeting.Thank you. [Writing on behalf of myself only, as a Cupertino resident.] Dear Mayor Chao and Cupertino city council, I wish to raise a strong objection and concern on the misleading staff report for agenda item 13 on the 07/01/25 city council meeting. The staff report states “no new fees are proposed” for many of the sections such as planning, building, engineering etc. https://cupertino.legistar.com/View.ashx? M=F&ID=14319557&GUID=8497FFF7-2F5C-4F02-A965-F16FD3CBC240 To the casual reader this may appear as satisfactory. The staff report does not highlight that existing fees are rising 9.7% in most cases. Please require that the staff report do a transparent disclosure of the fee increases in existing fees by department. Stating no new fees are proposed is misleading at best and deceptive to the casual reader frankly. I am including the last column from the redline reports to show the % annual fee increases from each of the departments below. I urge city council to please continue this item till a revised staff report is produced that does not mislead council and residents with irrelevant and misleading statements such as “no new fees are proposed” and instead lists the fee increases by department. These fee increases are a result of the user cost recovery policy that was adopted in 2024 by then council. These fee increases are due to rise in employee costs driven by healthcare and pensions. The increases are not one time. They will recur annually at or higher than the current increase. An increase of 9.7+% annually is unsustainable for residents. 1. I urge you to reject these fee increases, and instead agendaize an item to rollback the user cost recovery policy passed in 2024. 2. Please instead study alternate ways of covering employee costs without passing them directly onto residents. 3. Please ask for a like for like comparative fee schedule for the same items from neighboring cities such as Saratoga, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose. Not the like for like increases but actual and absolute fee comparison for each department and line item fees. Please ask staff to explicitly identify where Cupertino absolute fees for line items are higher than neighboring cities (not picking the highest as the comparison). 4. Please explore ways to pass these costs onto other areas such as commercial or rentals or non-resident fees rather than directly onto residents. 5. Lastly if you are unwilling or unable to do any of the above please agendaize a study of the staffing currently in the city and take action to reduce full time staffing and replace with contract roles to reduce the cost of pensions and healthcare on the city. It is not sustainable to hike fees 9.7+% annually on residents. Please postpone approval on this item until the above actions are first taken. I will vote based on this issue in 2026 and I hear likewise from the residents I talk to. I fully expect residents will be kept informed of the council members that vote to increase fees on residents annually 9.7% or higher so that they can vote accordingly in 2026. Thank you. Thanks, San Rao (writing on behalf of myself only) From:Yuvaraj Athur Raghuvir To:City Council; Tina Kapoor; City Clerk; Benjamin Fu; Luke Connolly; Chad Mosley Subject:Objection to Misleading Staff Report and Unsustainable Fee Increases – Agenda Item 13 (07/01/25) Date:Thursday, June 26, 2025 12:30:32 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Clerk, Please include the below in written communication for the 07/01/25 city council meeting agenda item on fee increases. Subject: Objection to Misleading Staff Report and Unsustainable Fee Increases – Agenda Item 13 (07/01/25) Dear Mayor Chao and Cupertino City Council, I’m a Cupertino resident writing to express serious concern about the staff report for agenda item 13 on the July 1st agenda. While the report states that “no new fees are proposed” for departments such as planning, building, and engineering, it fails to clearly disclose that most existing fees are increasing by 9.7%. That’s a substantial and recurring increase, and presenting it without transparency is deeply misleading to the public. I urge the Council to require a revised report that clearly outlines department-by-department increases in actual dollar amounts. The language used in the current report minimizes the impact and misleads both residents and policymakers. These increases are tied to the cost recovery policy adopted in 2024 and are largely driven by rising employee benefit costs like pensions and healthcare. This is not a one-time issue—it’s an annual, compounding burden that I and many others believe is not sustainable. Rather than approving another near +10% increase on residents, I believe the Council should revisit the 2024 cost recovery policy and consider rolling it back. There should be a serious exploration of alternative ways to fund employee-related costs without passing them directly to residents year after year. A proper study comparing Cupertino’s absolute fee levels—not just the percentage increases—with those in neighboring cities like Saratoga, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose is essential. We need to understand where Cupertino stands, especially for individual line-item fees, and identify areas where our residents are paying more than their counterparts elsewhere. If these increases must happen, then cost shifts should be prioritized away from residents and toward non-resident users, commercial operations, or rental groups that use city services and facilities. And if none of that is workable, then we need to look seriously at restructuring staffing—possibly reducing full-time roles and transitioning to contract-based positions to ease the long-term cost burden on the city. I respectfully ask that you delay action on this item until these issues are addressed in a clear community are paying attention. Decisions like this will certainly shape how I vote in 2026. Thank you, Yuva Athur Cupertino Resident From:Ajith Dasari To:Tina Kapoor; City Council; City Clerk; Benjamin Fu; Luke Connolly; Chad Mosley Subject:Objection to Misleading Staff Report and Unsustainable Fee Increases – Agenda Item 13 (07/01/25) Date:Friday, June 27, 2025 1:21:48 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Clerk, Please include the below in written communication for the 07/01/25 city council meeting agenda item on fee increases. Subject: Objection to Misleading Staff Report and Unsustainable Fee Increases – Agenda Item 13 (07/01/25) Dear Mayor Chao and Cupertino City Council, I’m a Cupertino resident writing to express serious concern about the staff report for agenda item 13 on the July 1st agenda. While the report states that “no new fees are proposed” for departments such as planning, building, and engineering, it fails to clearly disclose that most existing fees are increasing by 9.7%. That’s a substantial and recurring increase, and presenting it without transparency is deeply misleading to the public. I urge the Council to require a revised report that clearly outlines department-by-department increases in actual dollar amounts. The language used in the current report minimizes the impact and misleads both residents and policymakers. These increases are tied to the cost recovery policy adopted in 2024 and are largely driven by rising employee benefit costs like pensions and healthcare. This is not a one-time issue—it’s an annual, compounding burden that I and many others believe is not sustainable. Rather than approving another near-10% increase on residents, I believe the Council should revisit the 2024 cost recovery policy and consider rolling it back. There should be a serious exploration of alternative ways to fund employee-related costs without passing them directly to residents year after year. A proper study comparing Cupertino’s absolute fee levels—not just the percentage increases—with those in neighboring cities like Saratoga, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose is essential. We need to understand where Cupertino stands, especially for individual line-item fees, and identify areas where our residents are paying more than their counterparts elsewhere. If these increases must happen, then cost shifts should be prioritized away from residents and toward non-resident users, commercial operations, or rental groups that use city services and facilities. And if none of that is workable, then we need to look seriously at restructuring staffing—possibly reducing full-time roles and transitioning to contract-based positions to ease the long-term cost burden on the city. I respectfully ask that you delay action on this item until these issues are addressed in a clear and revised staff report. This issue matters deeply to me, and I know many others in our community are paying attention. Decisions like this will certainly shape how I vote in 2026. Thank you, Ajith Cupertino Resident From:Vidya Gurikar To:City Council; City Clerk Subject:Proposed Fee increases Date:Thursday, June 26, 2025 2:39:32 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Clerk, Please include the below in written communication for the 07/01/25 city council meeting agenda item on fee increases. Subject: Objection to Misleading Staff Report and Unsustainable Fee Increases – Agenda Item 13 (07/01/25) ———— Dear Mayor Chao and Cupertino City Council, I’m a Cupertino resident writing to express serious concern about the staff report for agenda item 13 on the July 1st agenda. While the report states that “no new fees are proposed” for departments such as planning, building, and engineering, it fails to clearly disclose that most existing fees are increasing by 9.7%. That’s a substantial and recurring increase, and presenting it without transparency is deeply misleading to the public. I urge the Council to require a revised report that clearly outlines department-by-department increases in actual dollar amounts. These increases are tied to the cost recovery policy adopted in 2024 and are largely driven by rising employee benefit costs like pensions and healthcare. This is not a one-time issue—it’s an annual, compounding burden that I and many others believe is not sustainable. Rather than approving another near-10% increase on residents, I believe the Council should revisit the 2024 cost recovery policy and consider rolling it back. There should be a serious exploration of alternative ways to fund employee-related costs without passing them directly to residents year after year. A proper study comparing Cupertino’s absolute fee levels—not just the percentage increases—with those in neighboring cities like Saratoga, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose is essential. We need to understand where Cupertino stands, especially for individual line-item fees, and identify areas where our residents are paying more than their counterparts elsewhere. If these increases must happen, then cost shifts should be prioritized away from residents and toward non-resident users, commercial operations, or rental groups that use city services and facilities. I respectfully ask that you delay action on this item until these issues are addressed in a clear and revised staff report. Thank you, Shrividya Gurikar Cupertino Resident From:Santosh Rao To:City Council; Tina Kapoor; Kristina Alfaro; Benjamin Fu; Luke Connolly; Chad Mosley; City Clerk Subject:Re: Misleading staff report for agenda item on resident fee increases. Date:Friday, June 27, 2025 11:08:22 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Clerk, Would you please include the below in written communications for the 07/01/25 city council meeting on user fee increase agenda item. [Writing on behalf of myself only, as a Cupertino resident] Dear Mayor Chao and City Council members, I am writing to request that you continue/postpone the user fee agenda item to a further out date and instead ask staff for more data along the lines below. Next week is the week of July 4th and attendance from residents will be light. Please do not discuss an item with such a major impact on residents at a time when attendance may be light due to a holiday week. Further I am including snapshots from the informational memo published today (06/27/25) of the fee hikes passed last year in 2024. You can see the last column across the board on the below. The fee increases in 2024 were mind boggling and it is being followed up by another 9.7% fee hike. This is not sustainable and is broken. Please ask staff for a line by line item level fee comparison with smaller neighboring cities comparable to us. Los Altos, Saratoga. Los Gatos etc. Please ask staff to produce a table of what the hikes would have been if the cost recovery policy had not been adopted. This cost recovery policy from 2024 is breaking the backs of already over taxed residents. It is a huge burden. I implore you to rollback the cost recovery policy and take a fresh look at this whole area. Residents considering a remodel are often those who have lived decades in their home which is in need of repairs or improvements. Many may be seniors and on the verge of retiring or retired. Indeed of the 6 - 8 remodels I know of in the past 12 months almost all fit that bill. The other category are new residents who just bought a home and are looking to remodel. These are already burdened with a huge cost basis for the purchase and a huge tax basis for property taxes. Residents cannot bear the brunt of employee healthcare and pension costs while you give developers $77M fee waivers. Please do not keep this agenda item for 07/01/25. Please postpone this item till a holistic study is done on the above areas. Thanks, San Rao (writing on behalf of myself only, as a Cupertino resident) On Thursday, June 26, 2025, 8:59 AM, Santosh Rao <santo_a_rao@yahoo.com> wrote: Dear City Clerk, Would you please include the below in written communication for the upcoming city council meeting.Thank you. [Writing on behalf of myself only, as a Cupertino resident.] Dear Mayor Chao and Cupertino city council, I wish to raise a strong objection and concern on the misleading staff report for agenda item 13 on the 07/01/25 city council meeting. The staff report states “no new fees are proposed” for many of the sections such as planning, building, engineering etc. https://cupertino.legistar.com/View.ashx? M=F&ID=14319557&GUID=8497FFF7-2F5C-4F02-A965-F16FD3CBC240 To the casual reader this may appear as satisfactory. The staff report does not highlight that existing fees are rising 9.7% in most cases. Please require that the staff report do a transparent disclosure of the fee increases in existing fees by department. Stating no new fees are proposed is misleading at best and deceptive to the casual reader frankly. I am including the last column from the redline reports to show the % annual fee increases from each of the departments below. I urge city council to please continue this item till a revised staff report is produced that does not mislead council and residents with irrelevant and misleading statements such as “no new fees are proposed” and instead lists the fee increases by department. These fee increases are a result of the user cost recovery policy that was adopted in 2024 by then council. These fee increases are due to rise in employee costs driven by healthcare and pensions. The increases are not one time. They will recur annually at or higher than the current increase. An increase of 9.7+% annually is unsustainable for residents. 1. I urge you to reject these fee increases, and instead agendaize an item to rollback the user cost recovery policy passed in 2024. 2. Please instead study alternate ways of covering employee costs without passing them directly onto residents. 3. Please ask for a like for like comparative fee schedule for the same items from neighboring cities such as Saratoga, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose. Not the like for like increases but actual and absolute fee comparison for each department and line item fees. Please ask staff to explicitly identify where Cupertino absolute fees for line items are higher than neighboring cities (not picking the highest as the comparison). 4. Please explore ways to pass these costs onto other areas such as commercial or rentals or non-resident fees rather than directly onto residents. 5. Lastly if you are unwilling or unable to do any of the above please agendaize a study of the staffing currently in the city and take action to reduce full time staffing and replace with contract roles to reduce the cost of pensions and healthcare on the city. It is not sustainable to hike fees 9.7+% annually on residents. Please postpone approval on this item until the above actions are first taken. I will vote based on this issue in 2026 and I hear likewise from the residents I talk to. I fully expect residents will be kept informed of the council members that vote to increase fees on residents annually 9.7% or higher so that they can vote accordingly in 2026. Thank you. Thanks, San Rao (writing on behalf of myself only)