Street safety, vibrancy and environment are top goals for San Mateo

The city has seen a precipitous drop in the number of RVs based during census counts, down to 13 citywide compared to about 70 at its peak, with four citations written for using a vehicle as a home.

Regulating mobile vending and food trucks has proved to be a more complex task based on available legal mechanisms, which largely revolve only around parking.

“The sidewalk vending is more complicated,” Barberini said. “It’s kind of a square peg, round hole approach. The laws available to us to enforce food trucks and vending are not laws that are intended for that purpose. They’re primarily parking enforcement type of law.”

The city also has a variety of street-safety goals that revolve largely around traffic and roads in varying stages of completion. Phase Four of the smooth streets program, which is designed to reconstruct failed streets, has been completed, and the city is waiting on Pacific Gas and Electric and Calwater for next steps.

“Please, please, please, please, please ... can we do everything we possibly can to complete Phase Five of safe streets by the end of 2026,” Councilmember Lisa Diaz Nash said. “The folks who are on the streets [for] Phase Five have been pushed out so many times.”

San Mateo is currently working on identifying grant opportunities for a feasibility study targeting downtown grade separations and long-term train corridor improvements.

In addition, the city is working on improving traffic flow on 19th Avenue and Fashion Island Boulevard, with a project design at 35% completion, and a bike master plan and pedestrian master plan.

A sizable number of San Mateo County’s goals are environmentally related — revolving around climate resilience, decarbonization and preparing for more efficient stormwater drainage and collection.

One of these long-term goals is to implement a citywide green fleet by 2035. While that ambition has not yet been realized, electric vehicle infrastructure projects are underway at City Hall and the Corporation Yard, and 12 existing gas vehicles are set to be replaced with electric vehicles this fiscal year, staff said.

It’s important to balance the desire for environmentally friendly vehicles with the reality of city work, particularly the work of officers, Councilmember Danielle Cwirko-Godycki said.

“I would love to see a green fleet,” she said. “We need to also balance what’s realistic in achieving that goal ... and also what our officers’ day-to-day needs are.”

San Mateo is also working to develop a citywide Capital Infrastructure Plan — with a draft planned for completion by June 2026 — and an expedited plan for the storm drain system. Eventually, the city hopes that will include a full dredging of the Marina Lagoon, which has not gone through an environmental review, though spot-dredging is set to occur in 2026.

Other environmental goals include an ordinance to ban gas leaf blowers, coming in the new year, and policies to decarbonize existing building infrastructure, which were previously developed via the Electrify San Mateo sustainable building strategy.

The city has also progressed in its emergency preparedness priorities, sending staff members to a comprehensive emergency training this year and preparing emergency backpacks for City Hall.

“Is there any other city that has sent 35 people to a four-day training? We started emergency preparedness at a tremendous deficit ... I think this is an example of how we have come tremendously far,” Diaz Nash said.

Moving forward, the city will be restructuring its priorities away from a year-based goal format and creating larger priorities and smaller subhead goals. That process will begin in the new year.