What's Happening at City Council

Energy Performance Reach Codes for New Construction - Effective May 1, 2025

On Jan. 21, 2025, the San Mateo City Council adopted reach codes for new construction requiring energy performance compliance margins for new buildings. This reach code helps meet the City's Climate Action Plan goals by requiring more sustainable design than the State code and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from new buildings. On April 10, 2025, the California Energy Commission approved the City's reach code. The City began enforcing energy performance compliance margins for new buildings on May 1, 2025. For more information visit the City's Reach Codes web page.

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General Fund Reserve Policy Update

On April 7th, City Council voted to restructure the City’s Reserve Fund to improve transparency and accountability. The existing 25% General Fund Operating Reserve requirement was changed to a 15% Contingency Reserve. This will cover extraordinary, one-time, unforeseen nonfinancial emergencies (e.g. COVID). A dedicated Capital Investment Reserve was established to ensure that the City can plan for sufficient funds to perform necessary infrastructure repairs and upgrades. The current “Rainy Day Reserve” was renamed the Budget Stabilization Reserve and set at 15% of General Fund monies. Finally, a Pension Stabilization Reserve was established, with an initial $10 million set-aside, to mitigate pension risk and prevent unexpected increases from impacting city services. By breaking out the various uses of reserve funds, our intention is to give the public better visibility into how your tax dollars are being used and to strengthen San Mateo’s already strong financial position.

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Housing Element Implementation – Anti-Displacement and Tenant Protection Policies

City Council received a presentation on the implementation of anti-displacement and tenant protection policies identified in the 2023–2031 Housing Element. Staff shared findings from seven months of outreach and research, which included community workshops, stakeholder focus groups, and data analysis.

Since most evictions in San Mateo are caused by failure to pay rent, City Council prioritized the development of an emergency rental assistance program to help tenants with truly “emergency” reasons for not paying their rent. We also tightened regulations against landlords providing substandard or unsafe housing to tenants. We agreed to amend our Tenant Relocation Ordinance to offer tenants who have lived in a unit for at least 11 months the same relocation protections as tenants of 1+ years when the unit undergoes substantial renovation and related changes. Council also directed staff to strengthen eviction and rental trend data tracking using existing data sources and to enhance educational outreach for both tenants and landlords. Council chose not to pursue development of a rental registry. Formal action on these initiatives is anticipated by the end of the year.