Dear City Council members.

We address our message to you as homeowners and part of the community of the city of East Palo Alto.  We are outraged with the City COPA activities conducted in a secretive manner without involving and informing homeowners. The COPA ordinance, in the way it is written, will hurt the city and its residents in multiple ways and cause a huge financial loss to homeowners. It will not bring any benefits to renters either.

References to the COPA ordinance in San Francisco as precedent are absolutely misleading in many aspects including

- in the SF COPA applies to 3 and more unit properties, not single family homes (+ADU)

- the time limits given to participants are 5-10 times less (for example, 5 days versus 30 or 60 in EPA)

- homeowners' money lost from not being able to use the 1031 Exchange.

 All the undersigned found out about the COPA on November 17 after the first reading only thanks to active members of the EPA community and did not receive anything about the COPA from the City staff.

Compared to the SF COPA the EPA ordinance is outrageously abusive, which explains to us why it is done in secret.

In its current state the ordinance will expose homeowners to financial losses, it will cause harm to the City budget, will result in litigation, and it will demotivate builders and investors. Home owners will build fewer ADUs on their lots.

We demand:

- Open public discussion of the COPA ordinance with owners invited

- Enough time for informing all the interested parties

- Translating the ordinance into Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Tongan, Samoan and other languages spoken in the city of EPA.

- organizing the discussion in those same languages, so, non speaking owners might fully participate.

I truly hope, that the City Council will take our opinion into consideration.