J.R. Fruen

speaker

756 appearances 13 recordings 2 series first heard Oct 2024 last heard 15 Sep

J.R. Fruen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

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Cupertino City Council · City Council on 2026-01-13 6:45 PM - Special Meeting - Jan 13, 2026 · 13 Jan 2026 meeting

I do think it's interesting to look at the potential for the rideshare tax just because it's a unique space, but I certainly want to echo what the city manager has mentioned about it being rather volatile.

It's definitely...

You know, much like TOT really, really requires that we have a vigorous economy at the time where the people are using the service in order to make it valuable.

So I do think that we're going to run into very significant headwinds if anything were to be placed on the ballot.

And I think in particular that 2026 is probably an especially bad year.

That is just my...

view of the sentiment of the area in general.

There was a comment raised earlier about CUSD and its proposed parcel tax, which failed.

And that was with the clear knowledge that there would be schools that would close as a consequence.

And yet, irrespective of that, the city of Cupertino voted against it.

I think that we need to be rather circumspect about what the likelihood of the passage is of any sales tax or other revenue measure that we might put on the ballot.

I do think that it is worth at least looking at what the appetite might be of the public

TO SUPPORT RENEWAL OF THE USER UTILITY TAX BECAUSE RENEWALS OF TAXES ARE GENERALLY SPEAKING CONSIDERABLY EASIER TO GET PAST THAN, YOU KNOW, A NEW TAX.

AND IT WOULD BE GOOD TO AT LEAST SEE IF THERE IS AN APPETITE FOR THAT SO THAT WE'RE NOT DOING IT AT THE LAST MINUTE IN 2028 OR 2030.

Yeah, just one additional thought.

We fund the fire suppression services through a special district, and I would be curious to know whether that might be a mechanism that could be useful for other public safety in the city, since it's something that I think is an essential service.

It deserves a funding source that is

strongly dedicated, and if the cost of the sheriff's contract rises to full cost recovery, we start to look a lot more like all of our peer cities that have their own police force, so we might as well be looking at how we take care of this essential service for ourselves.

We could even do that potentially with our interagency partners that are already in the contract with us like Los Altos Hills and Saratoga.

So it need not necessarily even be just the city of Cupertino.

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