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8.A. - Page 11 of 61 economic impacts of the pandemic have resulted in a largely non-public safety hiring freeze until long- term economic impacts are better understood, likely not until later this year. As a result, these additional Planning staff positions remain vacant, though the recruitment for the Assistant Community Development & Transportation Director classification will be underway in the near future. Given the number of active and proposed development projects, once the Revised City budget is approved, staff will likely begin the recruitment for the two vacant positions to assist with Planning's capacity to process this number of complex land use applications. On-call planning services - At their November 25, 2019 meeting, City Council also approved contracts with three professional planning firms to provide on-call assistance for the Gatekeeper projects. The Planning Division anticipates using these on-call services to help process some of these projects. Grants - On November 25, 2019 and May 18, 2020, City Council approved resolutions for non-competitive grants (SB2 funds and LEAP grant respectively), totaling $610,000 in financial assistance for long range planning activities that plan for additional housing or accelerate the production of housing. The SB2 grant has been awarded and staff awaits response on the LEAP grant, which is anticipated to be awarded in 2021. The City committed to using these funds, if granted, toward the community visioning process for the Central Redwood City Plan and the Housing Element Update, following the upcoming cycle 6 of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). While these funds will go towards efforts to increase housing production within the city, these funds cannot be used towards processing the Gatekeeper projects. Staff conducted an internal review of the available staffing resources, including current staff and available contracting resources to determine the number of Gatekeeper projects staff could reasonably process. Considering senior level planners within the Planning Division will likely process such complex projects, staff considered staffing resources, current workloads and ongoing long-range initiatives and current planning projects on file with the City. Given these factors, it is anticipated that current staffing could reasonably process up to 3 Gatekeeper projects and contract planning resources, with City staff oversight, could be used to process an additional 2 projects. Of note, this estimate assumes the current vacant positions within the division being filled. If these positions remain vacant, or the City Council initiates more than 5 projects, staff would likely need to pause the Central Redwood City planning process and potentially pause the Transit District process and develop a new resource plan to process these projects for Council consideration. Initiating more than 5 projects and the subsequent impacts that would have on both the Central Redwood City and Transit District cannot be understated and should be part of Council's consideration process. In line with the staff recommendation and identified staffing and resource capacity, staff again recommends initiating the following housing projects, as they align with the Council's strategic priority of creating additional market rate and below market rate units within Redwood City. 1. 1205-1295 Veterans Boulevard 2. 651 EI Camino Real (American Legion) 3. 505 East Bayshore Road Page 11 of 15 City of Redwood City 1017 Middlefield Road, Redwood City, CA. 94063 Tel: 650-780-7000 www.redwoodcitV.org 278