All right.

Good morning.

I will now call the city council meeting of Tuesday, March third, twenty twenty-six to order.

Clerk, please call the role.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Campbell?

Councilmember Whitburn.

Here.

Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Von Wilbur.

Council President Pro Tem Lee?

Here.

Councilmember Campillo.

Here.

Councilmember Moreno.

Present.

Councilmember Eli Rivera.

And Council President Lacava.

Present.

Also attending the meeting are City Attorney Heather Ferber, independent budget analyst Charles Batica, and myself, your city clerk, Deanna Fuentes.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Uh quorum is now present.

We will begin this morning with the land acknowledgement and the Pledge of Allegiance led by Council President Pro Tem Flee.

Despite enduring the horrors of genocide and colonization, the Kumei spirit remains unbroken.

Today they carry their legacy forward, ensuring that their traditions continue to thrive in gratitude and strength.

I fled to the United States and we are and to reply which stands.

Thank you, Council President.

I'd like to highlight the slide that's on the screen that does review how the public can offer their public testimony during today's meeting.

Please note the time allocations for proclamations and consent items for meeting management purposes.

One minute per item maximum of three minutes for three or more items are there.

The order can be found on the agenda summary found online or at the back table in the back of the room.

If you are in person, please complete a speaker slip located at the entrance of chambers and bring it to the front of the room in the clear box.

Council ambassadors are available near the entrance and can assist with questions and speaker slips.

No and no further in-person testimony will be taken once the council begins virtual testimony.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you for that.

We will now dispense with the approval of the proclamation items.

Please introduce them and proceed with public comment.

Thank you.

The public comment period for the proclamation items is now open.

Each speaker will have one minute per item per person.

If you would like to speak on three or more items, you'll have a maximum of three minutes.

The proclamation items being approved are items 30 and 31.

Jacob Edwards, if you can please come forward.

And you're speaking on item 30.

Thank you, City Council.

Thank you for the work you do for the City of San Diego.

Senior Chief Deputy City Attorney Donna Adams Day is very important to the City of San Diego, being that the city attorney's office is very important to the city of San Diego.

With that, I'm standing in front of you today to encourage a lawsuit to the federal government by the city attorney's office.

In doing so, along with the federal lawsuit, could come protection orders.

And go far and wide.

That would be standing up for us, citizens, our city, and our country.

I highly encourage you to encourage the city attorney's office to do justice.

Your time has concluded.

Thank you for that concluding remark.

I've started the five-minute timer going to those participating remotely.

Please let me know which item or items you wish to speak to.

Hector, if you can please unmute.

I'll like to respond to what that guy was saying, uh whatever thing he was on.

So you're speaking on just item 30?

You'll have one minute, please proceed.

Yeah, I think my internet's kind of break it.

I'll not respond to what that guy was talking about.

That item.

I think the city attorney should waste and deport all these guys rapidly.

Open up all the different places.

Now that we have 75,000 guys on Medicare that the government knows about and the county of San Diego.

Those 75,000 people that are here illegally taking benefits, they should be at the top of the list that the city attorney to protect us from those guys.

And removed it on the show so we can uh have uh protect the citizens of San Diego, not the criminals, not the uh the woke guys and the government, the state guys.

Those guys gotta go.

So hopefully the city attorney will proclaim ice day every day.

Your time has concluded.

Moving on to Michael Schmidt.

If you can please let me know which item or items you wish to speak to.

Good morning, everyone, my lovely friends.

Um, including Mother Bond and Banner.

Um I'm speaking to 101.

Um 101 is worth doing proclamations, it's just 30 and 31 right now.

Oh, you are uh I'm thinking of the um consent.

Okay, we'll come back to you during consent.

Thank you.

That does conclude public comment on the proclamations.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you.

Um City Clerk.

Uh, we'll turn it over to Council members' questions and comments and entertain a motion, and we'll start with Council Member Whitburn.

Thank you, Council President.

I am pleased to bring forward item 31, proclaiming April 25th as Seroptimist International of San Diego Day in the City of San Diego.

For 95 years, Suro Optimist International of San Diego has been a powerful force for expanding opportunity and economic independence for women and girls across our community.

Through their Live Your Dream Awards, Sir Optimist International provides critical financial support to women who are the primary breadwinners for their families, helping them to access education and career training that transforms people's lives.

Through their Dream It Be It program, local girls receive mentorship and encouragement to pursue their educational and professional goals with confidence.

We appreciate their continued commitment to empowering women and girls in our city.

Juton Laudy Judy Lawton is with us from Suro Optimist International of San Diego, and I'd like to invite her to come up to the podium and uh thank you very much for being here and uh please uh share a few words with us this morning.

What an honor, thank you so much.

Good morning, Council President and Council members.

My name is Judy Lauden, and I'm a proud to be a 45-plus year member of Suraftimus International of San Diego and the chair of our 95th anniversary celebration.

I'm here today to recognize this remarkable milestone, which we will be celebrating on Saturday, March 7th at the Bankers Hill Club.

For nearly a century, Syrahtimus has been dedicated to empowering women and girls throughout our community by providing access to education, mentorship, and financial support, helping them achieve economic independence, build uh better better build brighter futures, reaching 95 years of service is a testament to the dedication of generations of volunteers committed to improving the lives of girls and women in San Diego County.

It is truly an honor to lead the celebration of our legacy and continued impact.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we look forward to April 25th being Suro Optimist International of San Diego Day in the City of San Diego.

And with that, I am happy to move the proclamations.

All right, thank you, sir.

So we have a motion by Councilmember Whitburn to move the proclamations.

We'll go next to Councilmember Von Wolpert.

Uh thank you, Council President.

For item 31, I also want to take a moment to recognize Suro Optimus International of San Diego for the extraordinary work that you've done in our city for 95 years.

It's also wonderful that it march is Women's Histories Month as well.

And so thank you for all the work, especially you do around helping uh survivors of domestic violence get out of those situations so they can then be empowered to lead their own lives.

And I know um in District 5 and my particular community in Rancho Bernardo and Peñasquitos how hard the Suro Optimist work.

So thank you for all that you do.

Um I am also honored to bring forth on item 30 uh to join our city attorney Heather Ferbert to recognize senior chief deputy city attorney uh Deanna Adams.

I cannot believe that Diana, you are um already uh time to leave our city.

Uh, hopefully you can come back as provisional.

Uh but more for more than 28 years, Diana has dedicated her career to serving the people of San Diego with integrity, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to justice.

A San Diego native, like me.

Uh Diana built her an extraordinary career rooted in service from the United States Navy Judge Advocate General Corps to the United States Attorney's Office and ultimately to the city attorney's office, where she has made a lasting impact.

Since joining the city in 1997, she has handled more than 1,300 hearings, 400 depositions, 40 trials, and seven appeals.

Those numbers reflect not only expertise but tireless preparation, steady leadership, and deep institutional knowledge.

As chief of our workers' compensation unit, Diana led with both strength and compassion.

She mentored 11 attorneys, fostered collaboration with our risk management division, and worked diligently to ensure city employees received timely access to benefits in medical care.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she played a key role in advancing critical presumptions to protect our safety, protect um our officers, lifeguards, and firefighters.

Dana's career is that it is defined not just by legal accidents, but by her commitment to the people she worked alongside and the employees she served on behalf of the city council and residents of San Diego.

I want to thank you so much for your decades of service, not only to our city but to our nation as well.

And it's my privilege to be able to join our city attorney, Heather Ferber in proclaiming March 3rd, 2026 as Senior Chief Deputy City Attorney Diana Adams Day in the City of San Diego.

So I want to say thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure and an honor serving the city of San Diego.

Uh that we have the ability to collaborate with our colleagues, take a responsibility for our own cases, and most importantly, to do the right thing.

And I have really enjoyed being in the workers' comp unit and providing timely and accurate benefits along with our risk adjusters for all of our city employees.

So thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

All right, thank you, Councilmember.

So we have a motion by Councilmember Whitburn, the second by Councilmember Von Wolpert to move the proclamations, and we'll go to our city attorney.

Thank you so much, Council President.

Today I have the honor of joining Councilmember Von Wilbert in recognizing a truly exceptional member of the City Attorney's Office and Senior Chief Deputy City Attorney, Diana Adams.

After more than 28 years of dedicated service to the city, Diana is concluding a career of unwavering commitment to public service.

As the council member mentioned, she was born and raised in San Diego.

She is a graduate from San Diego High, the second we have honored this year, um, who have left our office.

She received her bachelor's degree from St.

John's College, a master's degree from the University of New Mexico, and came home for her law degree at the University of San Diego.

Diana joined the city attorney's office in 1997 as a criminal prosecutor.

One year later, she joined civil litigation division, and in 1999, she joined the workers' compensation unit, where she has been assigned ever since.

For more than 20 years, Diana has served as chief of the workers' comp unit, where she's mentored attorneys, fostered a culture of camaraderie, and it's a testament that her team is here and the risk adjusters that she works with on a daily basis.

Her impact on city employees has been immeasurable.

Diana advanced the city's ability to timely and accurately deliver workers' compensation benefits and was instrumental during the initial COVID 19 workers' comp presumptions for safety office officers.

You've heard about the numerous hearings that Diane has already handled, which is remarkable given anyone's caseload.

So I am especially proud to join Council Member Von Wilbur today in honoring Diana's extraordinary career, her deep commitment to public service, and her profound impact on the city of San Diego.

You will be missed, and we hope you enjoy every moment of your retirement.

Thank you so much.

All right.

With that, I'll thank my colleagues and the city attorney for bringing these proclamations.

Congratulations to Robness of San Diego for the work you do every day, and congratulations to Miss Adams on your retirement.

You will be missed.

With that, uh, we have a motion by Councilmember Whitburn, the second by Councilmember Von Wolpert.

Clerk, please call the roll.

That passes unanimously eight to zero with Council Member Elo Rivera absent.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you.

So we will take a brief pause for photos, and we'll start with uh senior chief deputy city attorney Donna Adams.

All right.

With that, we will now proceed with the approval of the consent items.

Are there any requests to pull an item by the council?

Not seeing any request.

Thank you.

Please note each speaker will have one minute per item per person if you would like to speak on three or more items.

You'll have a maximum of three minutes.

The consent agenda includes items fifty, sixty, one hundred, one oh one, and s five hundred.

Blair Beekman, if you can please come forward.

Please proceed when ready at the mic.

Hi, everyone.

I'm back from Maui.

It's been a month, and uh it's nice to be back.

Nice to be back in the building.

Um I wanted to speak.

I I wrote three items.

I think I only want to mainly speak on two items, items fifty and S five hundred.

Um thank you for the subseroptimist item that was here earlier, working on uh child trafficking issues.

Uh so young women can get help, can relate well to trafficking issues here in San Diego on many levels.

Uh really interesting item, thank you.

Um, for item 50.

Um the My Water SD web portal is getting uh software uh service agreements.

This was that committee uh a few weeks ago, and um I went on and on about the importance that of the uh mobile applications that this service agreement is going to serve, and how awesome you guys are doing in public works to build a more uh public uh process for the public utilities department and smart water meter issues that Councilperson Campbell and Von Wilper really worked on in the past few years.

They did awesome.

I went a little overboard, sorry about that.

Um, but just to be clear, uh, they've done awesome work to make a real good public process that this item uh 50 is serving.

Uh, good luck in the continued good efforts.

It's I think a crowning achievement of what this uh current uh council is doing and uh creating a public space.

Good luck on those continued efforts.

And uh for item S five hundred, um resolution excusing Councilperson uh von Wolper from certain city council committee meetings.

I've made a reference, a few references last week.

Um we're beginning a new stage of war at this time.

The work that I do with tech accountability immediately gets thrown under the bus at these times.

Council Person Von Wilpert in her, she's in a campaign, an important campaign.

I really like Council Person Bon Wilbur and what she can do uh running for Congress.

She's gonna be a little uh tender and fragile to talk about that how we can move forward with best practices in public safety.

I want to hope this year we can still have those good conversations here at the local level, and that we can be building a really smart, more intelligent future.

Uh, you know, that's based on best practices and civil rights and civil protections and privacy.

And we don't have to forego or give those things up because of war, because of uh so President Von Wilbur can have a good campaign.

Um learning a lot, and I I hope we can learn how to speak more clearly together that we really can still continue best practices in this coming year, and good luck in the ways to talk about this publicly and then we can do it together.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I've started the five minute timer because there are no other speakers here in council chambers.

We have three in the virtual queue, starting with 7499.

If you can please let me know which item or items you wish to speak to on the consent agenda.

7499.

Uh items 5100 and 101.

You'll have three minutes, please proceed.

Bob Kazuski here.

All three of these items are contracts of one form or another with private businesses and organizations.

I understand that the city sometimes needs to enter into such contracts for products and services, but I have to ask who exactly in this city is on the hook for the conduct of these businesses.

There should be at least one person who is publicly accountable for the conduct of any private business contracting with the city of San Diego.

And that one person's name and contact information should be prominently and publicly available to all citizens, not some bureaucrat that we have to go find.

Should be publicly and prominently available.

For example, who is the one person who is accountable for the conduct of the business leasing our Tory Pines glider for?

And where would citizens find the name of that one person?

With those thoughts in mind, I am asking this city council to ensure that each and every contract with a private business, including these three that I've mentioned, includes the name of the person in this city who is publicly accountable for the conduct of those businesses.

Do not approve any contract unless such an appointment is made.

Thank you.

Next is Michael Schmidt.

If you can please unmute and let me know which item or items you wish to speak to.

Hi, good morning, everyone.

Um I'm very happy um the fact that we're gonna be um having the I hope we're TQ.

Um I just I've been missing having some I've been listening to so much that I appreciate to everyone.

So thank you to everyone here.

Um final speaker is 8700, if you can please unmute 8700s.

There you go.

Which item or items do you wish to speak to?

I'll speak to 50, 60, 100.

Please proceed.

You'll have three minutes.

Thank you.

Uh Joey Signata C D3.

Uh, first of all, I'm number 50.

I want you to know that I do approve this, yet I must say the following.

A smart energy water for my water, SD web portal, total employees, 135, all admin workforce, 57 Asian male, 21 uh Asian female, 33 white male.

Uh out of 105, 135, that's 111.

Uh on the EOC, I disagree with their underrepresented represented categories, yet they say they are doing better.

So I I hope that's true, but they I just I don't see it.

Umce red once the public registers for the My Water SD web portal automatic switch to paperless.

A question.

How many customers so far are now paperless?

Uh the company rating is 2.5 out of five points.

Employee comments uh generally very negative.

Yet if this is a win-win, and I know a lot of people like this.

If this is a win-win for our customer service, let's modify the service agreement.

Uh yet I do think we can do better on contracts.

Thank you, love to all.

Number 60, California building.

Number 60, California Building Standards Codes and Associated Muni codes.

A question Does the Muni Code state fifth safety procedures for public to evacuate the 12th floor?

And if so, could you please post on the 12th floor in a clear location for reading by the public attending meetings?

How to do that evacuation?

A big big thank you on that.

Please listen to me.

I'm 100.

Since legal matters permeate most of what the city is involved in, I fully support our great office of the city attorney and this panel outside council.

I also want to welcome back council member Campillo and to once again congratulate he and his wife Nadia on the birth of their daughter.

All right, have a beautiful day.

Thank you for listening and love to all.

Thank you.

That concludes public comment on the consent agenda.

All right.

Thank you, City Clerk.

And with that, we'll turn it over to council members for any questions, comments, and entertain a motion.

And we'll start with Councilmember Von Wilburt.

Thank you very much.

I'm happy to make the motion to approve the consent agenda.

I just want to make a comment on item 101 for the FY26 uh community programs, projects, and services funding allocation for the Rancho Penny Esquitos Town Council to support uh our annual fiesta de los penesquitos.

Very much looking forward to this event this year, and I want to thank especially our transportation department for working overtime to get all the potholes filled in the road so that we can actually do the fiesta on that road.

So very much appreciate everybody and looking forward uh to joining our community, and I'm happy to make the motion to approve the consent agenda.

All right, thank you.

So we have a motion by council member von Wilpert to move the consent items.

I will go ahead and second and offer some brief comments on item 50, the PUD customer service portal.

This item was heard at the environment committee in February.

I want to thank the public utilities team for restructuring this contract and continue to save ratepayers' money.

This portal has proven successful in letting customers access our accounts and streamlining their payments.

When the original contract came before council in 2021, I made the amendment to remove credit card fees from being paid by the public utilities department.

This still allows customers to pay through automatic debit from their checking accounts and avoid any fees, and as a result, saves all tech ratepayers over 14 million dollars in fees.

Keeping the continuity of this platform is helpful for the customer experience, and thank you again to the good folks at public utilities for restructuring this contract.

And with that, we have a motion by council member von Wolpert, a second by myself.

Clerk, please call the roll.

That passes unanimously nine to zero.

Thank you, Council President.

All right.

All right, thank you.

Um do we have any comments from the mayor's office, city council member, city attorney, and independent budget analyst or city clerk.

Not seeing any, we'll move right along.

Uh, we will now take oh, council member Yellow Rivera.

Uh thank you, Council President.

I just um I won't take too much time on this.

It's just as has been so often the case with the last 13 months or so, uh, 14 months.

Um things that are would be absolutely extraordinary or becoming quite routine.

That doesn't mean that they should be normal over the weekend.

The president launched an illegal war that is putting the lives of Sandy Eagans and the friends and family of Sandy Eggens uh at risk, and I just didn't want things to kind of go on as if that's not happening right now.

Um we've already lost um service members, and uh there's also been tremendous loss of life beyond that.

So um again, just for the sake of not normalizing the um which should never be normal.

Uh felt like worth saying something.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, sir.

Uh not seeing anybody else, we will now take up non-agenda public comment.

The council members respect and appreciate the public's input and are fully committed to protecting every participant's free speech rights at council and committee meetings.

Clerk, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Council President.

Approval 2.7 non agenda public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on items that are not on the agenda, but within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council, each speaker will have two minutes.

Please know if there are eight or more speakers on a single topic.

The maximum time for the topic will be 16 minutes.

If you're in chambers, please submit your speaker slip if you're joining us virtually.

Now's the time to raise your hand by pressing the raise your hand icon, or if you are calling participants, star nine.

If I can have Jacob Edwards, please come forward, and if I can have Blair Beekman please come forward to the yellow reserve seats.

Jacob Edwards, you'll have two minutes when you get to the mic.

You can proceed when ready.

Thank you.

Being the two minutes very quick, I'm going to try to sum this up as quickly as possible.

There's a lot to it.

Uh we have a lot of concerns in this country.

Our country has been hijacked.

Uh, our federal government and agencies by the mafia.

Sounds crazy, and it is.

And it is absolutely the case.

They're doing such things as running federal grant money through mayor's offices, did the same thing in San Francisco, outing the past mayor where the entire city is mafia ran.

Where it is, is that Todd Loria had federal uh uh threats of federal indictments over him for mismanaging federal money.

Now, this is madness.

Absolutely crazy.

And the Chinese, I've recently become aware of well aware of what's going on.

They have paid it close attention to the field agents who's working for the mob and what they do, going and behind them bamboozling them.

Bamboozling them for the hijacking these cities, really maybe hijacked by the Chinese.

That we have some serious national security threats issues, and that's why I was speaking upon uh lawsuit of the federal government, offering protection orders, protecting the mayor, you city council's seats, this city hall, the police department, which would be standing up for the citizens of San Diego.

It would be standing up for the city and our country.

Our country's future is at stake.

Our lives are at stake.

Chinese well aware that the Gambinos and the Genevies and the crime families would have us disposed of and badly hurt American citizens.

They were keeping it on the wraps, waiting, waiting for the crime families to badly hurt us, to swoop in as our savior, take out our government, take out the crime families.

That's why Donald Trump bombed Iran to bait China into a war.

Blair Beekman, if you can please come forward.

Hi, Blair Beekman.

It'd be nice to think that all the whales I was hanging around with in Hawaii and Maui can be listening into this conversation.

It's nice listening to their conversations this past month.

Um I hope I can offer a few words from the international level that uh relate to our work here at the local level uh at this time.

To note the surprise of the recent US Israel air strikes in Iran in Iran.

Uh, there was also a respected negotiation process that was taking place between these different sides in the Middle East.

Uh it makes these current airstrikes all the more surprising as it possibly has no clear end plan and a reminder and how often the U.S.

itself can break agreements of trust.

Thank you for the words of Council Person El Vera that our national security here at the local level does need to be seriously uh questioned by ourselves.

Good luck in the work we do together at this time.

Um it's from this to note at the local level we are simply getting better in how to seriously limit and to not simply allow the practices of continual war from the national level to overly affect the day-to-day practices here at the local community level.

The current growth uh at the local level, better reasoning and best practices and the current local efforts that specifically can work towards peace and not war, can simply offer incredibly good examples in how countries at the national level can also limit war.

As these ideas of best practices uh here we're doing, uh, can simply help work towards the dialogue of peace to solve differences in the future.

I can't stress enough that the work we do with tech accountability, just creates incredibly good examples of open democracy, uh best practices, dialogue.

We work on these things locally.

It creates incredible examples, our federal level will have to take notice of.

So good luck to ourselves in our continued work at doing best practices here, what we know how to do best, and that will just bring peace to everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry, the five-minute timer going to those participating remotely.

Currently have four speakers in the queue.

8700, if you can please unmute.

After that is Peggy Walker.

8700.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

Joyce and Yada C D3.

Our precious water.

It begins with snow.

Then it becomes the Colorado River water.

Then, after a long journey of over 242 miles, we lift the cup and drink the miracle of water.

This miracle deserves our utmost respect.

And that is not what is happening from the people involved and the systems they have put in place to harness it and manage it.

Please read the UT article from this past Valentine's Day titled Western States again.

Here's what Wade Crowfoot, California's natural resource secretary said.

Talks would continue even after today's deadline negotiations in after today's deadline.

Negotiations in recent weeks have centered on a five-year plan during which states share in water cuts while investing in conservation.

Conservation, that's from me, in hopes of stabilizing the water supply so a longer term water sharing deal can be struck.

End of quote.

From me from Google.

If the federal government intercedes, it will involve legal pushbacks, involving our precious miracle of water.

Please don't let that happen.

More from me later.

I'm really following this closely.

Please join me in this.

Love to all.

Thank you.

Next is Peggy Walker.

If you can please unmute.

Peggy Walker, after that is 7499.

Thank you.

Good morning.

As a public health professional and youth mentor, I came to share that yesterday was World Teen Mental Wellness Day.

It's observed worldwide annually to raise awareness about mental health issues impacting teenagers, but it should be a daily observation.

We need to better educate about the devastating, devastating impact of the increasing number of intoxicating addictive drugs being normalized and made available to young people in today's marketplace.

Easy access to high potency marijuana bounce in dispensaries and on the internet.

Promises that legalization would prevent youth access have failed, and studies show youth use goes up when dispensaries are located where young people live.

The harmful mental health impacts are well documented.

Further, teens are confronted by a bevy of unregulated, intoxicating drugs sold in never neighborhood convenience and liquor stores, gas stations, and smoke shops.

Many are exported from China.

Addictive Kratum, 70H products are increasingly available but unregulated, as are nitrous oxide products like galaxy gas.

The DA's office and doctors are warning that youth are suffering addiction and serious cold burns from nitrous oxide.

I'm here to urge increased public education, which is critical for public understanding that these intoxicating but unregulated products are increasingly common and dangerous.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next to 7499, if you can please unmute after that, is Ernie Casco.

7499.

Bob Kazuski here.

My recent speeches have been highlighting the problems that arise when a government shirks its duties and turns government functions over to a private business.

That's been happening in San Diego for years under recent administrations, and I've given several notable examples.

Let's remember San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders allowing a private business to set up their own red light camera system to issue tickets to citizens and take a cut of the property.

Let's remember the ongoing requirement for citizens to be tracked by constant contact and Highland Cloud in order to obtain updates and to access city documents like the agendas for this meeting.

Let's remember the ongoing requirement to join USHBA private business and sign an abusive contract with Air California Adventure, another private business, in order to hang glide or paraglide at our own Tory Pine City Park.

That abusive contract requires citizens to pay to use their park and agree not to sue the business, even if the business is negligent.

But it's even worse than that because being a member of USBA limits citizens' rights to even speak to this council or to even testify in court against Yushpa-backed businesses.

In other words, in order to use our city park, we cannot come and speak to this council about abuses at that park.

We cannot testify in court about abuses of at that park, or we risk expulsion from Yushba, which denies us access to our city park.

That is outrageous.

These are just the examples that I've personally encountered in the city.

It's likely just the tip of the iceberg.

In all of these cases, citizens are forced into relationships of one form or another with a private business in order to access city-owned resources.

This must not be allowed to continue.

Joe LaCava, it's time to reactivate the Tory Pines City Park Advisory Board and implement the Tory Pines waiver to protect citizens against the abusive business that you've put in charge of our Tory Pine City Park.

If you can please unmute.

Yes, uh Ernie Casco, La Jolla resident, senior pilot, Torre Pines Gliderport.

I second Bob's uh statement there.

It's time to stop the crime within Joe Lakava's administration.

Torrey Pine's Glide report complaint is well documented on your desk.

I should not be forced to sign a leaseholder illegal access pass and waiver when city liabilities are already covered by California statutes laws.

It is misappropriation of public funding going into private accounts and demands a full transparent city audit that would end the corruption.

It is illegal for anyone, for anyone, Joe La Cava, to turn our freedom into a privilege for a license and a fee under any terms, circumstances, or conditions allowing this crime to continue is a violation of your oath of office, automatic forfeiture of your chair.

We have a petition, a black speech recreational scandal to stop the illegal commercialization and privatization of Tory Pine's glider port.

What else do we have?

We have unanimous letter of support from La Jolla Town Council, La Jolla Shores Association, to stop uh the corruption out of your administration and reconvene Tory Pine's advisory board for public safety and oversight.

Why haven't you taken action, Jolicava, when city council has a beautiful proven solution known as the San Diego Recreational Waiver that would end the dispute on your desk.

The San Diego recreational waiver stops the city leaseholder internal corruption by separating the business, your out of control business from public access.

Your city leaseholder is caught, blatantly robbing America, forcing citizens into an illegal contract.

It is your job to stop it, Joe Locava.

The city council is ultimately liable and needs to address victims and witness witnesses who have been damaged.

The San Diego Recreational Time.

If you can please unmute the five-minute timer is also concluded.

No additional speakers will be taken.

Judy String and then Hector, please unmute.

Yes, good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you from my work site.

I don't take this opportunity lightly.

I wanted to share with you that California has an act of the first law, AB 455, to require sellers of single family homes to disclose in writing any known indoor smoking, vaping, or third-hand smoking or vapor.

Contamination to prospective buyers.

This is marijuana or tobacco.

Third hand smoke refers to toxic residue left behind from smoke or vapor when they settle into surfaces into building materials.

These pollutants are classified under Prop 65 as carcinogens and reproductive toxins, because they can persist for years and pose particular risk to children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised individuals, and it's very hard to remove.

AB455 classifies third hand smoke is an environmental hazard comparable to a bestos, radon, and lead paint.

I bring this to your attention because it is the first in the nation.

It's so pervasive that it becomes part of the California Department of Toxic Substance Control.

And it'll go in the homeowner's guide to environmental hazards.

It's significant that it recognizes the role of tobacco and marijuana smoke and vapor in the health of everyone around us.

One has to ask ourselves here in the city why we have businesses that promote and make available those things that can be smoked and vaped when it's so clearly hazardous to all of our health.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our final speaker is Hector.

If you can please unmute thanks for taking my call to Hector here.

So there's a these guys gotta take their bodies and their families and go back to their countries, man.

Because Trump, you got your number now.

You got those illegal benefits.

You don't want to have the knock on the door.

When I start ramping up the raise, so if you care about your family, sit down with them and say we've got to go back to wherever it is we came from because we're afraid of the knock on the door.

You know, if that's what's going to happen, they know where you live now.

So it will actually free up a lot of housing for American citizens in San Diego County.

Just think of 75,000 people have to go.

That's probably more 120,000 people.

That'll lower the rent, it'll like uh create less traffic on the freeways, open up a lot of jobs for American citizens, and we can go about trying to build that dam before it breaks in Del Mar.

So uh if it does break up there, it might wipe out Bill Gates' house.

He's got a house on the beach down there.

Maybe it'll be a good thing if it does break, takes out Bill Gates' house.

And we can move on with our lives.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

That concludes on agenda public comment for today's meeting.

All right, thank you, City Clerk.

And with that, we will now adjourn for the noon recess and reconvene open session at 2 p.m.

or shortly thereafter.

I can count to five.

Good afternoon.

I will now reconvene the city council meeting of Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026.

Clerk, please call the role.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Campbell.

Councilmember Whitburn.

Here.

Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Von Wilbert.

Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Here.

Councilmember Campillo.

Councilmember Moreno.

Present.

Councilmember Elo Rivera.

And Council President Lacava.

Present.

Also attending the meeting, our assistant city attorney, Michelle Garland, independent budget analyst, Charles Monica, Council Affairs Advisor and the Mayor's Office, Coda Zeiser, and myself here, City Clerk, Deanna Fuentes.

Thank you, Council President.

All right.

Thank you, City Clerk, for that.

A quorum is now present.

Uh clerk, please introduce item 330.

Thank you, Council President.

Item 330 is an informational item.

It is the performance audit of the city's key performance indicators.

If you'd like to speak to this item, please submit a speaker slip to the front of the room in the clear box.

If you are participating remotely, now's the time to raise your hand by pressing star nine or the raise your hand icon.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you.

With that, staff, as you're starting to settle in, uh, please introduce yourselves for the record and let us know how much time you need.

Good afternoon, Council President, Councilmembers Andy Henous, City Auditor.

Uh, we are here to present our performance audit of the city's key performance indicators or KPIs.

And can we have about 10 minutes, please?

All right, when you're ready.

Thank you.

According to the city's strategic plan, the city values transparency and the use of data to make informed decisions.

To that end, KPIs should be a key management and transparency tool, but we found the city underutilizes them due to concerns about accuracy and relevance and a lack of venues for the city council to discuss and provide feedback on the KPIs departments produce.

We want to thank uh the performance and analytics department for all of their assistance on this audit and all the city departments and council offices who responded to our survey on how they use KPIs and their suggestions for improvement.

We heard back from almost every department and council office, and we appreciate all the time and feedback uh you all provided to help this audit identify many key issues and make actionable recommendations to improve the usefulness of KPIs for various stakeholders.

The audit team with me uh here today is Principal Performance Auditor Nathan Otto, Senior Performance Auditor Nikki Kalmas, and performance auditor Alberto Marillo, and I'll hand it over to them for the details on what we found and recommended.

Thanks, Andy.

Uh so for any large complex and multi-billion dollar organization performance measurement is an essential tool, uh, in this case allowing residents and taxpayers to monitor and engage with how we as a city are performing.

And as you're aware, of course, the city is facing considerable fiscal challenges for the foreseeable future, which makes performance monitoring uh just that much more important.

So you can see our three formal audit objectives there on the slide.

But overall, we had two formal findings, and broadly we found that KPIs are are underutilized, like Andy said.

Um the result of that is the city is missing chances to make the best data-driven decisions and monitoring for key services.

We found that improved oversight of the city's KPIs is needed to ensure accuracy and accountability, and a formal KPI philosophy is needed to improve comparability.

So we made five recommendations to address uh the issues we found, and management did agree to all of those recommendations, so that's a good thing.

Uh and just the last slide from me here, uh, just by way of background uh KPIs, as you know, are reported annually uh and published for each department in the city's budget documents.

There's also a KPI dashboard, but you can see the more familiar version there, uh, the blue and white table that uh is in the budget documents.

This is a generic form here.

The KPIs include a baseline, which is based off of recent historical data uh uh and a goal set by the department.

And uh performance and analytics plays a supporting role, but the departments have uh a lot of autonomy.

They're responsible for selecting, monitoring, and reporting their own KPIs.

Um go ahead.

I'll have Nikki and Alberta walk through the findings and recommendations.

I am Alberto Morillo, a performance auditor in this project.

In finding one, we found that our in our survey of city council offices and city departments, only one out of seven council offices and nine out of twenty-seven departments, reported routinely using KPIs to inform budget, policy, and our operational decisions.

Thus, the city is not consistently using KPIs to inform high-level decisions.

When used correctly, KPIs can lead to meaningful improvements.

We found examples of city departments and other cities using KPIs to help deliver improved outcomes for residents and evaluate programs and services.

For example, quotes on the slide are from our survey showing specific examples of how departments have used KPIs for decision making.

The Office of the City Clerk use their performance data to improve customer satisfaction.

Similarly, the library department use their KPI to not only improve their future performance, but also taking action to meet the accessibility needs of the community.

There are limited controls and oversight that would ensure key performance indicators are accurate and reliable.

For example, part of council policy 000-02 requires departments to provide explanations for performance measures not meeting or trending towards performance targets.

Shown on this slide, we found that departments were not consistently provided explanations.

Additionally, for the past for the last 10 years, the statement of budgetary principles has included guidance for KPIs to be reviewed at the budget and government efficiency committee.

However, we found no evidence that KPIs have been discussed in a systematic or regular manner at BNGE from fiscal year 2015 through fiscal year 2025.

Reviewing performance data on a regular basis can help identify trends before they become problems and help ensure timely performance management.

Because KPIs receive limited scrutiny and examination, a standalone performance report specifically for KPIs could strengthen oversight, create a culture of continuous improvement, and promote performance monitoring as a year-round activity.

Inaccurate or unreliable KPIs put the city at risk of inaccurate performance assessments resulting in improper policy or management decisions.

Shown on the slide, 11 different audits by OCA have identified various issues with KPIs that were unrealistic, inaccurate, not relevant, or did not follow best practices.

We also found that council offices have concerns regarding the accuracy of the current KPIs reported in the budget.

Although Panda requires all the city's KPIs to meet certain standards, such as calculation methodology, PANDA does not have the capacity to check KPIs for accuracy.

Thus, publishing the KPI calculation methodology and the annual performance report can strengthen the oversight of KPIs by providing a dedicated forum for departments to review their KPI methodologies and potentially discuss them with city council or city leadership.

The city's KPIs are currently published in tables in the annual budget and a performance dashboard.

However, the city does not publish tables or graphs with historical KPI data.

We found that most cities that we benchmarked publish their historical performance in online dashboards.

Therefore, the city can improve its online KPI dashboard by incorporating visuals and historical data.

Being able to visualize historical data can help identify performance trends over time and improve monitoring and oversight.

As a supplement to this audit report, we built a performance dashboard, which is shown on the right, as an example of how the city's dashboard could be improved to include historical trends and description.

You can access the city, you can access the dashboard we created to view the city's current KPIs at the link in our slide and in our report.

Therefore, in this finding, we recommend developing and publishing an annual performance report for the city's KPIs, creating a KPI data validation process and ensure accuracy of the city's KPIs, and developing a publicly accessible dashboard that includes historical performance.

Nikki will now walk you through finding two.

Thank you, Alberto.

I'm Nikki Kelmas, Senior Performance Auditor on this project.

In finding two, we found that PANDA provides support, training, and guidance to departments on their KPIs, but the city does not have a formal, enforceable policy on whether KPIs should be aspirational or realistically achievable.

For example, one department may set aspirational KPI goals, meaning at the ideal service level, and therefore may not be able to achieve all of the goals with their department's budgeted resources.

At the same time, another department may set its KPI goals to be attainable and therefore can report meeting all of their KPI goals.

Thus, we found that meeting a KPI goal is not necessarily indicative of how a department is performing.

As a result, as you can see on the graph, we found that the percent of KPIs that met their targets varies widely across city departments, ranging from 0% to 100%.

Due to the differing ways in which departments select KPI goals, it is unclear what conclusions decision makers and the public are supposed to reach.

Further, our survey found mixed beliefs on whether KPIs should be more realistic or aspirational.

The quotes on this slide are from our survey.

One response is that KPIs should be aspirational so council can decide if increased budget is required.

But the other states that aspirational KPIs could lead to unreasonable expectations from the public.

Most departments and council offices that took our survey did agree that departments should have at least one realistic KPI and one aspirational KPI.

Thus, a citywide KPI policy where departments must clearly define if a target is realistic or aspirational would help City Council and the public to compare KPIs across the city and understand how a KPI should be used.

Finally, at the time of the audit, the city attorney's office was the only department without at least one KPI due to its concern that certain KPIs could lead to the perception of improper motives or incentives to meet them from their office.

However, we benchmarked against eight comparable offices and found that many do have performance measures.

Therefore, in this finding, we recommend that PANDA work collaboratively with city leadership to create a formal policy documenting the city's KPI philosophy, and that the city attorney's office work with Panda to establish and report a KPI or KPIs.

PAND and city management agreed to all five of our recommendations.

This is an informational item, so no action is required, and we're happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Thought they would roll right in.

So we actually have a presentation, I think, first by Panda.

Alex, I want you to introduce yourself for the record.

Sure, thank you.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Council President.

My name is Alex Hampton, and I serve as director of the performance and analytics department.

Our department's mission is simple to improve how the city works.

We do that by putting people first by making data more usable, processes easier, and services better for the residents of San Diego.

I'll say candidly that transparent and holistic information sharing hasn't always been the city's strongest area.

We know that our key performance indicators can and must be outcome-driven, clearer, more useful to both decision makers and the public.

The good news is that we are making steady incremental progress, even within limited resources.

Thanks in part to this audit and to the work already underway across departments, we're seeing measurable improvement.

One important step forward this year is the release of the first volumes of our comprehensive citywide performance report.

For the first time, this report will provide a citywide view of how the organization is performing.

It will include performance details for every city department and will complement and strengthen department's annual KPIs.

This is about more than just reporting metrics, it's about helping us measure what truly matters for San Diegans and ensuring that performance information is clear, accessible, and aligned with community priorities.

I want to thank the city auditor and the audit committee for their support and recognition of the importance of this work.

And I would also like to thank the independent budget analyst and Kim Desmond and the Division of Race and Equity for their partnership and collaboration on this effort.

We look forward to continuing this work and strengthening how we measure, share, and improve performance across the city.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Alex, for that.

And now I'll turn it over to the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst.

Thank you, and good afternoon, Council President La Cava and members of the Council.

I'm Erin Noel with the Office of the IBA, and with me is Kim Desmond from Race and Equity.

Our office does not have concerns about this item, but I would like to provide brief comments on three items.

And after I conclude, I'll pass it off to Kim to make some comments regarding the importance of KPIs and race and equities work.

First, as the city auditor staff noted, this report is intended to help start a broader conversation on the city's use of key performance indicators.

The audit highlights and we agree that KPIs are essential for transparency, accountability, and data-driven decision making, especially as the city faces ongoing fiscal challenges.

KPIs can be valuable tools for prioritizing programs and services, evaluating program effectiveness, and enabling course correction and ensuring that limited resources are allocated to areas with greatest impact.

This means focusing on outcome-oriented KPIs rather than just outputs or activities.

For example, DSD has a current output-focused KPI measuring the percentage of building inspections completed by the target date, which provides a more actionable insight than simply counting the number of inspections.

Second, our office worked with the performance and analytics department and race and equity to provide feedback for some key department KPIs in December and January.

And we plan to continue reviewing departmental KPIs as part of our overall review of the proposed budget.

And lastly, regarding the budget and government efficiency committees review of KPIs, as mentioned by Mr.

Hampton, Panda is anticipating bringing an item on the comprehensive citywide performance reports related to KPI philosophy to BGE in potentially June or July.

And this will help to initiate review and discussion of KPIs.

And now I'll pass it off to Kim Desmond from Race and Equity.

Good afternoon, Council President Lakava and members of Council.

Kim Desmond here serving as the director for the Division of Race and Equity in IBA.

So wanted to provide some comments in three categories.

First and foremost, you heard the current state, and thank you to the auditor for providing this level of analysis.

We'll be candid from a race and equity perspective to say it is a challenge to identify equity without consistent KPIs.

And so with that in this partnership to address gaps, disparities, and deficiencies in recreation programs and stormwater systems, we need to be clear about the data.

Equity is an outcome.

And if it's inconsistent around the department, it is really a challenge for us to do our work to really systematically dismantle inequity in the way that we allocate either fiscal allocations or how we change on operations.

And so with that, grateful for that.

And so as noted in the report, we see the inconsistency in that.

So for race in equity to do our job, we want to make sure that we're partnering with Panda to work with all the departments to get more pointed and precise around the subjectivity in the ways that KPIs are set.

And so that is a huge culture shift.

So some of the things that we have seen, for example, is making sure that department goals and objectives actually match their KPIs.

And so, in order to measure progress to the auditor's comment, how do you know historically you're addressing the challenges if that's inconsistent each year?

And so these are the things that Dre, instead of just complaining about it, we're working with Panda to figure out how do we fix these things and how do we make sure that there is an organizational shift towards what it means to be more concise with setting KPIs in that matter.

And so with that, I will say this.

Data without context is just information.

And so what we endeavor to do is to look at the tactical equity plan infrastructure as a way to contextualize how we're talking about programmatic disparities through our different departments.

And so the TP dashboard is going to be used to provide context.

So when you're talking about, I'm looking at you, Councilman Moreno, around your excellent work with the programming audit, that's the context, right?

And so in that context, we may then ask questions.

I'm looking at Councilmember Foster around where are we at with addressing those programmatic gaps.

So these are all KPIs.

Equity is an outcome, and we gotta do better with how we showcase that in our work to address those gaps, disparities, and deficiencies.

And so in that, we know that volume two is hard to digest.

We could all admit that, right?

And so it is council may want to consider how do we have a volume two chart that really gives us the information that we need to increase the auditors' perspective or thought around who's actually utilizing these KPIs.

And so we want to make sure that the information that you have is easily digestible and understandable as you are looking at volume two of the budget book.

And so I do want to close with this by saying the work to change a culture shift to do consistent KPIs is a large structural change in this organization.

And so pointing to the auditors finding around there's one FTE, and our team has started to offer workshops with those FTEs.

And so I want to give uh um shout out to Alex Tang and Justin around getting into the work of an outcome is different than an input.

Don't say you're making progress when you're counting five people, right?

And so we want to make sure that we are being more concise with the way that we are reporting outcomes, and also I would say the ways in which different council districts may have different levels of engagement as a part of this conversation.

And so these are all the things that we want to make sure that we are able to shift that culture, especially in the space where the city budget constraints will um happen our ability to allocate more staffing to this endeavor.

But from I will close with this by saying for race and equity to do this work well, we need to fix the inconsistency in KPIs.

That is our huge challenge.

And so happy to address any questions and how we see that throughout all the departments.

All right, thank you to the Office of the Independent Auditor.

Thank you to Panda, and thank you to the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst and Kim's work under race and equity.

So with that, clerk, please proceed with public comment.

We have no speakers here in council chambers going to those participating remotely.

We currently have four speakers with their hands raised.

Doreen Diaz, if you can please unmute and to speak on the item 330 regarding the performance audit.

Yes, thank you.

Um I'm very happy to hear that race and um auditing.

Sorry, I didn't write down the full name, race and equity is going to be looking at the KPI for accuracy.

There is issues other than inconsistency in KPI, but please pay special attention to all the KPI you receive from developmental services and from the planning department.

Because there are latent errors, drastic errors, false areas stating even that homes are not in very high-fire zones and applications when in fact they are, and these developers are getting away with it.

So when you see something, unless you're actually verifying it, please do not rely on this KPI.

Another example is the Hammershad drainage channel.

It's been cleaned twice since the January 2nd, 2024 flood, twice, and it is still loaded with invasive weed.

I had a neighbor report last month or January, sorry, I guess, that the hammer shadow drainage channel had come into her backyard, destroyed grass, it made mud, but your wreckage might say, oh, we had maintenance done in this area.

If you do not go there, drive there and look at it, please do not believe what is put on paper from that stormwater department or that DST or planning, because we are witnessing latent fraud.

And what's your time has concluded?

Next is John Stump.

If you can please unmute.

After John Stump is 8700, please proceed, John.

Hi John Stump.

KP KPIs.

You know, I am past chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission under three mayors, and I served on the government efficiency and fiscal reform body.

I also served the city and county on a joint powers agency for more than 20 years.

You know, the problem with KPIs at the moment, it's it's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The ship, you are in fiscal crisis.

You don't have the ability to budget and you overspend.

The council needs to focus its time on reducing its spending and learning how to budget.

You know, it's very nice that we're going to spend a lot of time.

I think there's what six staff persons here working on KPIs, but yet the city is a hundred million dollars overspent.

The first thing that you need to do is get the performance indicators that you can spend only within your revenues.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next is one number ending in 8700, if you can please unmute.

First of all, uh, I I have a dream realized just now, and that is because the KPIs are have been looked at and audited and it's unfolding.

And the second part of the dream is there sits Kim Desman, and she's part of race and equity.

Thank you to the forces that be.

Now, here we go.

Uh I vote for real realistic, please.

Uh all realistic.

Uh, okay, this is my letter to start with the dear public.

I say dear public.

I have put at the top of my FY27 budget needs any additional needed cost and funding for implementation and monitoring.

Let's say keen transparency and oversight of what the audit committee so beautifully is recommending.

Dear public, the best way to get your needs realized in your communities is with the vigilant use of KPIs.

If we need more resources, let's get them.

If we need more money, let's find it.

Council member Elo Rivera.

This shell shell provide one answer to your beautiful important question.

What city are we trying to be?

Office of the city auditor, five stars award on this.

Thank you, Panda.

Thank you, IBA, thank you, Office of Race and Equity.

And lastly, could we please have Panda shadow each department during implementation like they did with the PUD?

This is a beautiful moment.

Let's celebrate and let's get it done now.

Love to all.

I'm so excited.

Thank you.

Next is Al Dun Lastro, if you can please unmute.

Hi, my name is El Del Mastro.

Um performance indicator, I can't tell you how disappointed I am in San Diego.

I know that the revenues are at all time high, that our staff, your staff has increased 27% over the last five years, even though the population is only increased one percent.

Some of the decisions that have been made, I I can't find anybody to even do to understand why.

Going out and spending 65 million dollars on trash cans in the middle of this crisis when many of the citizens have pretty functional trash cans, uh, and being able to replace them.

Um is just baffling to me.

The other thing that's baffling is the accountability here that you have for your employees.

In 2004, uh an attorney that works for the city made 200,000 and she was and she got a hundred thousand dollar raise and was able to take a four-month cruise, which was considered working at home.

This is the kind of waste and abuse that the public sees, and we just don't understand it.

You want us to believe that if you cut that out, I don't understand why you wouldn't cut that out.

I haven't heard an explanation by these panels on these different issues.

I don't even know how many city employees go to into the office every day, what the policy is.

There could be a lot of overstaffing there.

And uh only thing that seems to be willing to be cut is a library or a park or something.

Why is the staff so large?

And how is that helping any performances?

Our roads are terrible.

Um, street lights aren't on.

Uh thank you.

Thank you.

The five-minute timer had concluded.

There were five speakers with their hands at the time, no additional speakers will be taken.

There are only two speakers with their hands raised now as well.

No additional speakers will be taken.

Blair Beekman, if you can please unmute.

All right, thank you.

Uh Big Ben, thanks a lot for this item.

Uh, it's kind of new to myself.

I mean, I've been hearing you guys talking about KPI for the past year or so.

Um, and I'm still not totally familiar with it.

I'm kind of slow with this stuff, and uh, but I'm trying to catch up.

I really liked the comment from the first public commenter today on this item.

Uh is she made a lot of sense in how I can understand this issue.

The way I'm understanding it uh for myself and understanding is that um KPI can be a very nice reference point and factual uh reference point of how to understand uh you know your projects and items and how they're working.

And it sounds like what you were talking about in the presentation is do you want to uh add to that and present it uh more in terms of what uh can be project goals and how to incorporate uh P KPI into actual corporate uh project goals, or do you want to treat KPI?

What I think KPI should be treated as as a very factual accountable thing, giving information about the project, very specific.

And you shouldn't try to over-emphasize being uh persuasive or overly flowery with its subject matter.

Um now that comes back to what the first public commenter said, where he was describing they're just getting their facts wrong, and something's going wrong with the facts process.

You're not even doing that part correctly fully.

So I think you got to really bear down and make sure that KPI is doing something incredibly factual, and we can just trust it to no end that there's no partisanship involved with it.

It's just delivering you know straight facts about if this is happening and this is happening, and that takes practice to do that, and then on top of that, then you can add the flowery intentions and what you know our hopes can be of a project on top of that.

That's my guesswork.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our final speaker is Francine Maxwell, if you can please unmute.

Good afternoon, Francine Maxwell, Southeastern San Diego.

Thank you so much for the um presentation from a department, the audit committee, audit department that we truly trust.

We have some suspects when it's time to shift and look at other departments that are independent and who they actually are working for and reporting for.

And so KPIs are extremely important because right now, given our fiscal challenges, we are going to be leaning and paying close attention.

We're looking for the city council, who happens to be the housing authority, absolutely, to let go over 33 since San Diego Housing Commission did.

And so when we're looking at cuts, when we're looking at a continuation of care, when we're looking at equity, absolutely equity for the taxpayers, the citizens, the residents, and again, when we're looking at the fact that there's too many deputy directors, too many middle management.

This Panda department should be screaming KPIs on how much waste we have when we look at our org chart.

So again, thank you so much for this presentation.

We look forward to March 10th, and we have a lot of work to do as a city.

Thank you so much for allowing me to speak.

Thank you.

That does conclude public comment on this item.

All right, thank you, City Clerk.

Uh, as a reminder, this is an information item.

No motions required.

Uh, but we'll turn it over to council members for questions and comments, and we'll start with the chair of the audit committee, Councilmember Moreno.

Thank you for the presentation, and thank you again uh to the audit team for another uh great audit.

Uh key performance indicators are important tools uh for not just the department using them as metrics throughout the year, uh, but also for the public and the city council, which is why I requested for this audit to be done.

Uh when done right, they allow us to make budget decisions based on data and allow us to see the effectiveness of spending taxpayer dollars on one activity versus another.

Uh, unfortunately, the way many KPIs are used and produced here in the city uh not are not very useful for members of the public or the city council uh to utilize when evaluating the effectiveness of a department in providing a service.

Uh the annual budget includes KPIs within each department, and I could attest to the fact that they are often simply not a good metric to use to determine a department's effectiveness at providing a surface uh service.

Uh this creates a scenario where the KPIs are not relied upon by the city council during the annual budget discussion.

Um, and that is just very unfortunate.

Uh we love to say we're a data-driven city, but this audit shows we are budgeting year in and year out without good data to support budget allocations.

Uh, one part of the problem is that the KPIs are all over, uh, all over the place and not consistent in what is being measured.

Uh, some, as was mentioned, are aspirational goals, uh, while some are focused on realistic outcomes based solely on what can be done down to the dollar.

Uh, these inconsistencies make them less meaningful measures for policymakers to consider when balancing the budget to ensure uh these are improved and helpful to the public.

The council and public must have an opportunity to interface with department staff to create meaningful KPIs.

Uh, recommendation 1.1 is to develop and publish an annual performance report for the city's KPIs separate from the city's budget document and to discuss it at the budget and government efficiency committee.

Um I think this makes sense and is definitely a good start to making improvements to our KPIs.

Um, in fact, our own statement of budgetary principles say that the KPIs will be reviewed and discussed at committee.

Um, so we should already be uh doing it.

Uh however, I would go beyond just issuing and agendizing a report and say that multiple council committees should discuss uh the KPIs of the major uh city departments that are tasked with monitoring each year, that we're tasked with monitoring each year.

Uh PUD, transportation, stormwater, SDPD fire.

Um, those are some uh that could be a focused conversation that provides department directors with clear direction about what would be the what would be most helpful in determining the effectiveness of a department's activity throughout the year.

Uh finally, I do very much agree with the recommendations regarding the city having a publicly accessible dashboard that includes historical data to demonstrate departmental performance um over time.

Other cities do this, and um uh updating it regularly is good and transparent government policy, and it would be very useful uh to the members of the public, especially when discussing the budget each year.

Uh the report includes five recommendations, including developing an annual performance report, establishing KPI data validation process, and creating a policy that documents the city's KPI philosophy.

Um I do want to make note that the performance and analytic department is doing well with the resources that have that they have in assisting departments with their KPIs, but any real success at updating the metrics we use comes down to the management within each department coming to PANDA with accurate and meaningful metrics to be considered and then um using their expertise to redefine it.

So once again, um thank you for the audit, and that concludes my comments, Council President.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Moreno.

Uh we'll go next to Councilmember Ila Rivero.

Thank you, uh Council President.

Um thank you to the auditor, the Office of City Auditor as always for the work that you all do.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Moreno, for um uh your commitment to uh not just the office of the city auditor, but to make sure that we have robust discussions about uh what's brought to your committee.

Um our KPIs are should be very important and could should serve as a backbone of effective governance and accountability.

And the city does not have a formal enforceable policy that clearly defines whether our KPIs should be aspirational or realistically achievable.

I appreciate that this was named in the report.

Uh I often talk about the difference between standards and goals and uh what do we want to set as standards for our city and what do we want to aspire to be as a city um in the future?

And the city should absolutely be aiming high and signaling what excellent looks like excellence looks like.

Uh and that you know, we at the same time we need targets that are honest about current capacity and budget so we can measure our progress toward those standards.

So finding two lays out a couple of recommendations.

Um I'm wondering if if uh the auditor could walk us through what implementation of those findings would look like in practice, specifically um are there changes in department operations, reporting structure, or over site I can take uh a first crack at that.

So finding two, um there's a couple of recommendations that go with that.

The easier one uh is a smaller one, just it has to do with the city attorney's office uh to develop a KPI, and they've actually agreed to do that.

So implementation to your question there, uh implementation should be good to go there, and we'll check that with our regular recommendation follow-up process.

The other recommendation in that um finding was uh essentially the KPI philosophy uh which goes to that chart we had on there with the the blue bars are all over the place.

Some departments are achieving zero percent, some are achieving a hundred percent.

So the in to bring it back to your question about what would implementation look look like there, I think PANDA would probably be the lead quarterback working with city leadership, hopefully, such as yourselves and your offices in terms of like what do we want to do?

Do we want to do uh a mix of realistic and aspirational KPIs like they do at the federal government or um the city and county of San Francisco, some other examples?

So uh it would really be uh probably PANDA working with city leadership to articulate that guidance for departments so that we as a city are not just all over the so all over the place.

Yeah.

Um well, I I certainly like the idea of of us setting some standards for ourselves across departments of um setting some baseline expectations expectations about what uh the public and the council um should expect from different departments and then you know always aspiring to do to do better, and and in that conversation, um there should be an understanding of what would be required in terms of resourcing in order to get to that higher level.

So um, thank you again for all the work that went into this.

Uh very much appreciate it.

That concludes my comments, Council President.

Right, thank you, Councilmember Elo Rivera.

I'll go next to Councilmember Von Wolpert.

Um thank you for the audit and the work on this.

It has been a challenge to try and negotiate how KPIs are tracked across budget years, and sometimes KPIs are different across budget years without any notice, and sometimes there are no KPIs, and so I just appreciate you doing this work as well.

Um, I think one question I do have, and it might be for our management side is how do we involve our workers in developing our KPIs?

Because our unions, our representative employees are the ones doing the work every day, and so they may see things on the ground that our management doesn't.

So, how do we involve the workers in developing our goals for our city?

That's a great question.

And I I know for our team working on KPIs, we're we want to involve as many people as possible in the process.

One of our constraints last year was we two positions from the team that works on KPIs were reduced, and this year we're anticipating another reduction.

So that does kind of limit our capacity to do as many workshops and get as much input as we would as we would like.

But I think you bring a really valid point, and we do work with departments largely upon a request from the departments, we'll reach out for a coaching session, and that's a great opportunity to analyze the employee sentiment survey results that we do twice a year.

So that's one great way to incorporate feedback, but we can look into that more and make sure that we're casting a wider net.

Yeah, in meeting within the REOs, for example, the represented employees all have leadership within our unions and said they could be very helpful in providing feedback too.

Um I appreciate the the work on this, and I'm looking forward to improving our KPIs going forward.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Velen Wolbert.

Uh, not seeing anybody else in the lights, I'll offer a few closing comments.

Uh, I want to thank the oh Councilmember Foster, you can jump in.

Thank you.

Um, I'm I my apologies, Council President.

Um I'll keep my comments um brief because this has been something that has been discussed for quite some time.

Um appreciate the work of the um auditor on this.

Um I I think it's um good to have this item come forward, acknowledge that the KPIs do need the extensive work that they do need.

Um also appreciate the comments by the IBA when they're as it relates to equity.

Um but I do want to say this, and and I do appreciate how this conversation is um tied to the budget, um, but it does leave me um in a position as I have dealt with these over the years, and it takes me back to um operations, and as I say, do our directors truly understand their book of business, their obligation, and how to execute in accordance with um all of our standards, the charter, federal statutory requirements, state requirements, and our policies that we set, right?

As we talk about the council, as we talk about council policies, as we talk about how important equity is.

As you can see, when we have an equity conversation, um, I do appreciate the transparency that we're hearing.

As now the IB, you know, the uh Department of Race and Equity is in the IBA's office because um Kim, I will tell you I appreciate the conversations that we've been having over the past month as we are looking at what improvements we can make.

Um but I think this drives to the bigger picture in what I have been saying that it's very important that we do have a COO and someone with operational experience, because I think we need that expertise to make sure that we are executing and meeting our obligation.

Um so with that, um, Council President, I will leave that there.

Um, as budget chair, I will say I am very open to this conversation, looking forward to this conversation.

Um, but I am looking for um impact, transparency, and accountability, right?

I I just can't, I I just have to make sure I state that.

So thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Again, not seeing anybody else in the lights off for a few closing comments.

Uh thank you to the Office of the Independent Auditors for the good work that you've done in bringing this forward and putting it in good plain speak so that we could wrap our heads around it.

Uh thank you for the work of um performance analytics panda uh for the work that you do uh and thank you to the office of the IBA.

Um clearly the move that the the city council made last June to embed uh the Office of Race and Equity in IBA was um a very smart one, and I think is ultimately gonna be very productive.

I was one of those individuals who had a very, very low opinion of KPIs going forward and until I actually heard a briefing from Mr.

Esman and folks from PANDA, I had little hope that there was anything to be resurrected recommendations or not.

If there was no path forward, why bother?

Um I think it's somewhat ironic that most of the work that's going to be done going forward is being done by those middle managers who often get castigated as the problem with our city budget.

Uh so I look forward to those middle managers who bring that expertise to the conversation and change it.

The only thing I didn't hear, and I appreciate Councilmember Moreno and her leadership at the audit committee and Councilmember Whitburn's uh role on the audit committee as well.

Is where do we go from here?

And a couple of things that were mentioned.

I would like this is there's no action item here, but to suggest that a, we don't do a dashboard.

We've already convinced ourselves that the KPIs historically were not worthy.

We why bother repeating them?

Um and even to go so far as to suggest that we don't put any KPIs in the FY27 budget.

The work that Panda and the Office of Race and Equity is doing, I've already heard will not be completed or reintroduced until after the budget has to be adopted.

So why keep repeating stuff that actually is not helpful, that the councils are not off, council members are not using that departments don't really believe in.

Um and so that would be my suggestion just to strip the KPIs out of the FY27 proposed budget.

Let's take a start a clean slate.

Let's go back to ground zero, given what we've learned, what the auditors figured out, what the IBA is determining, and use that as the new baseline going forward, and maybe allows us to focus a little bit more on how we're gonna balance it our budget uh rather than creating tools that won't be done in time.

Uh the last thing I'll say is, and I it probably didn't need to be said in this audit, but I would throw out there.

The city departments don't produce widgets.

Some departments do.

Some of you can say, Did you produce you should be producing 10 widgets a day?

Are you producing 10 widgets a day?

Very easy metric.

A lot of what departments do is responding proactively or reactively to what we see going on around us.

They're responding to new state laws.

I'm working on policy that I don't want to be working on, but Sacramento made a new law, and I have to stop everything I'm doing, focus on that.

So the initial briefing of when I see where PANA and the IBA is going gives me hope that we can actually figure out and tailor KPIs.

Um as my colleagues have said, both can be very fundamental, can also be aspirational.

And that also tries to figure out what resources we need to actually deliver those KPIs, which I think has always been sorely lacking.

So with that, I'll stop.

Again, thank you to everybody that's brought this forward.

This was an important thing to hear.

Uh it took us a while to agendize that, so I appreciate your patience as well.

All right, thank you.

Again, that was an information item.

No motion was required.

So with that, clerk, please introduce item S501.

Thank you, Council President.

Item S501 is the consideration of an empty homes tax ballot measure proposal by Councilmember Sean Elohivera.

If you're hearing council chambers and would like to speak to this item, please be sure to submit a speaker slip to the front of the room in the clear box.

If you have people seeding you time, please be sure to submit those speaker slips together.

If you are joining us virtually, now's the time to raise your hand by pressing star nine or the raise your hand icon so that we can hear from you.

Thank you, Council President.

All right.

Thank you, City Clerk.

With that, um, and before we turn it over for the presentation, um, I see a number of individuals, some of you um perhaps even many of you may be in chambers for the very first time and just wanted to offer sort uh a little bit of thought about protocols going forward.

There's clearly a lot of passion about this item.

You will hear things you agree with, you will hear things you disagree with.

Extend the courtesy to whether it is staff, whether it is a council member, whether it is a member of the public that is speaking.

What we have found uh is really quite effective is by giving us hand signals.

You like what a speaker is saying, thumbs up.

From up here, it's very obvious what your feelings are.

If you hear things you don't like, thumbs down.

Again, a very strong visual there.

But do extend the courtesy to whoever is speaking.

Uh I know we're gonna have a lot of speakers here.

We want to give every of them, every one of them a chance to say their piece, and again, whether you agree or disagree, extend the courtesy to them.

Uh, and uh let's get started.

So, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Councilmember Ila Rivera, and after that we'll turn to staff for the presentation.

Sir, all right.

Thank you, Council President.

Um, appreciate uh the opportunity.

Um I've just got some introductory comments before we hand it over to Maya.

Um we're here for a really simple reason, and that's because San Diegans are paying too much for housing and families can no longer wait for additional action.

When homes sit empty for most of the year during a housing shortage, that hurts all of us.

It hurts renters, it hurts first-time home buyers, it hurts the communities that depend on teachers, firefighters, and other essential workers being able to live near where they serve.

Throughout this process, we've referenced the vision and values that motivate this proposal.

I'll ask why to bring that up because we want to reiterate those.

And we simply want San Diego to be a city that works for the people who live here, where the people who live here can see a future for themselves, for their families, and their friends.

And we know that that is only possible when people believe that they will be able to afford to live in this city and ideally own a home that can provide the foundation they need to grow a family and pursue their dreams.

The proposal Maya will present is the product of months and months and months of rigorous work.

We worked closely with the treasurer's office to build a measure that is operationally sound and implementable.

We worked extremely closely with the city attorney's office since uh late spring of last year, who brought in expert outside council to ensure the council and the public can feel confident in the legal foundation that this measure is built upon.

To that point, um have raised a similar measure in San Francisco as a reason for concern about the legal defensibility of our proposal.

Um I saw what I will actually refer to as pretty irresponsible, not even reporting but opinionating about whether or not the uh the amount of the proper amount of due diligence has gone into bringing this measure forward.

I want to reiterate that the city attorney's office has been working on this since last summer.

Um they've brought in outside council, and they've worked extremely hard, and I want to make sure that that work is appreciated because there's been a significant amount of work, and the result of that is a measure that is clearly distinguishable from San Francisco, much more closely modeled on one that has withstood uh that's been operating successfully without successful legal challenge for over two years.

With that, I'll hand it over to Maya for the presentation.

Thank you, good afternoon.

My name is Maya Rossas, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.

On behalf of Councilmember Ela Rivera, I'm here to present the consideration of an empty homes tax ballot measure proposal by Councilmember Sean Eliveira, and I will need 12 minutes.

The requested action for this item is as follows.

Request the city council adopts the ordinance in subitem A to place on the June 2nd, 2026 municipal special election consolidated with the California State primary election.

One measure amending the San Diego Municipal Code by adding Chapter 3, Article 12, Division 1, Sections 320101 through 320123 relating to an empty homes tax.

Furthermore, requests that the city council adopts the resolution in subitem B directing the city attorney to prepare a ballot title and summary and an impartial analysis, directing the mayor, independent budget analyst, and city auditor to prepare a fiscal impact analysis and assigning ballot arguments all regarding one measure amending the San Diego Municipal Code by adding Chapter 3, Article 12, Division 1, Sections 320101 through 320123 relating to an empty homes tax to be submitted to qualified voters of the city of San Diego at the municipal special election consolidated with the California State primary election to be held on June 2nd, 2026, 2026.

Once again, our vision of San Diego that works for the people who live here, where everyone can see a future for themselves, their families, and their friends is what guides us as well as our goals.

Homes for San Diegans protect San Diegans from displacement, protect San Diego's neighborhoods, and makes speculative investors pay their fair share.

In the United States, there are nearly as many homes kept for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use than the combined number of homes listed for rent or listed for sale.

The U.S.

Census Bureau found that in 2020 there were over 4.6 million homes vacant for occasional use compared to 3.8 million for rent and 1.2 million for sale.

At the same time, the current housing supply shortage is estimated at 2.8 million homes nationally.

Other cities are taking a stand to counter the negative impacts of empty homes, and they are all tailoring their approach based on local circumstances.

In Berkeley, voters approved the empty homes tax in 2022.

The tax is imposed on homes vacant for more than 182 days annually, and Berkeley has begun collecting the tax.

The Montana legislature increased taxes on residential properties used as vacation homes while reducing taxes for primary residences.

And Washington, D.C.

adopted a tax for vacant residential and commercial properties.

What is an empty home?

Empty homes are homes that are not the primary residence of a San Diegan and are left vacant for more than 182 days a year or over half a year.

These may be speculative investments or a vacation home for personal use.

Bottom line, these are homes the owner has chosen to keep empty.

What is not an empty home?

This tax will not apply to homes where San Diegans live.

If you live in the home you own, this does not apply to your home.

If you are a renter in San Diego, you do not pay this tax.

If you are a landlord to San Diego tenants, you and your tenants do not pay this tax.

Whether your tenants are long term or even medium term, such as traveling nurses who rent for more than 30 days.

If you live in your home with an ADU that you keep empty as an office or for occasional visitors, you will not be taxed for your ADU.

And whole home year-round tier three and four short-term rentals are not empty homes in this ballot measure and won't be taxed as they can be occupied up to year round and contribute revenue to the city via TOT.

In other words, 99% of San Diego homes are not taxed.

99% of San Diegans are not taxed, and 100% of homes lived in by San Diegans are not taxed by the empty homes tax.

Empty homes can be high priced downtown condos with bay views, such as these on Pacific Highway.

As you can see, many of the bay facing and top floor condos are vacant.

In La Jolla, many of these beachfront condos are also sitting empty.

But this is not just an issue with luxury high rises and beachfront properties, which are not affordable to most San Diegans, even if they did return to the market.

There are also homes in our neighborhoods that are being left vacant.

These are homes that many, though certainly not all San Diego families could realistically afford if given an opportunity.

Along Friars Road, there are 48 condos sitting empty and not available for a San Diegan to move into.

There are 36 in the college area, including three in this condo.

The most up-to-date figure is that there are currently 5,140 homes sitting vacant with no renter or owner living in them based on the owner's filing of a second home exemption of the rental unit business tax with the treasurer's office.

That exemption is the mechanism available for identifying empty homes.

The Treasurer's Office will be able to identify empty homes using this available data but has the flexibility to adapt in the future.

The data shows that while these properties exist across the city in every community, they are especially concentrated.

Forty-five percent of empty homes are in the downtown La Jolla, Pacific Beach, and Peninsula communities.

Currently, owners of empty homes do not pay any additional taxes or fees for their impact on the cost of housing or additional impacts such as hollowing out neighborhoods, reducing school enrollment, and changing the neighborhood character.

For all these reasons, we have proposed an $8,000 annual tax per empty home beginning in 2027, which increases to 10,000 beginning in 2028, with CPI increases beginning in 2029.

Empty homes held by corporate and institutional investors impose additional burdens on San Diego's housing market by removing homes from residential use and treating housing primarily as a financial asset.

Corporate ownership is also a reasonable proxy for commercial scale activity and speculative behavior that undermines neighborhood stability, reduces housing availability, and makes it harder for San Diego families to compete for home ownership in the communities where they live and work.

Corporate entities often benefit from structural advantages that individual homeowners do not, including easier access to capital, the ability to make all cash offers, portfolio strategies, and the capacity to hold properties vacant without the same pressures faced by a household seeking stable housing.

Those same structures can also make enforcement more difficult.

When an empty corporate owned home creates blight, code issues, or neighborhood impacts, it is often harder for the city and neighbors to quickly identify responsible decision makers and secure compliance.

In practice, LLCs and similar entities can reduce transparency and diffuse accountability, increasing public costs and delaying remediation.

For these reasons, imposing a higher rate on corporate-owned empty homes is a fair and administrable way to reflect their disproportionate impact, promote compliance, and protect housing availability and neighborhood quality.

Accordingly, the measure applies an additional surcharge of $4,000 beginning in 2027, increasing to $5,000 beginning in 2028 with CPI increases beginning in 2029.

We developed exclusions from the tax that are reasonable and allow for some empty homes to not be taxed, with appropriate verification by the Treasurer's office.

Exclusions include disaster period, family and residence period, homeowner period, lease period, newly built housing period, non-ownership period, owner death period, legacy owner hardship period, owner in care period, and qualifying military service period.

Exemptions are slightly different than exclusions, but still require verification from the treasurer to be exempted from the tax.

This exemption, an owner of an empty home that had a bona fide lease or leases for occupancy for that specific residential unit for more than 182 days in the calendar year prior to its becoming an empty home, can cover several different scenarios where a rental property is not occupied for more than 182 days in a calendar year.

Another exemption is for an owner of a property composed of four or fewer separate residential units where the owner occupies one of the residential units as their principal residence.

Our office began meeting with the city attorney's office in May of last year to start developing our original tax proposal, which followed a similar framework as the proposed empty homes tax being presented today, 10 months later.

Our work with the city attorney's office, which included engaging with outside outside council, focused on answering legal questions to ensure that we felt comfortable moving forward before we even began drafting the measure.

We presented our previous proposal twice at committee, creating significant opportunities for feedback from the public and committee members and shaping the current proposal for an empty homes tax that we brought forward to rules last week.

If the measure moves forward today and is placed on the ballot, that will be the result of nearly 10 months of working in close partnership with the city attorney's office and the treasurer's office to build a strong and legally defensible ballot measure.

Then, if this passes in June, the Treasurer's Office will have over a year and a half to develop administrative regulations, hire staff, and procure tools needed to implement the measure before they will send the first bill.

The requested action for this item again is as follows.

Request the city council adopt the ordinance in subitem A to place on the June 2nd, 2026 municipal special election consolidated with the California State Primary Election.

One measure amending the San Diego Municipal Code by adding Chapter 3, Article 12, Division 1, Sections 320101 through 320123 relating to an empty homes tax.

Furthermore, request that the City Council adopts the resolution in subitem B, directing the city attorney to prepare a ballot title and summary and an impartial analysis, directing the mayor, independent budget analyst, and city auditor to prepare a fiscal impact analysis and assigning ballot arguments all regarding one measure amending the San Diego Municipal Code by adding Chapter 3, Article 12, Division 1, Sections 320101 through 320123 relating to an empty homes tax to be submitted to qualified voters of the City of San Diego at the municipal special election consolidated with the California State Primary Election to be held on June 2nd, 2026.

I want to express our team's appreciation for David and Brett from the City Attorney's Office, as well as Liz, Ricardo, Matt, and Gerardo from the Treasurer's Office.

We are all available for questions.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Maya, for your presentation.

With that, we'll turn it over to the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst.

Thank you, Council President and Council members.

To help inform the rules committee's consideration of this item last week, our office released a report analyzing the potential fiscal impacts of this measure on Tuesday of last week.

As you are all aware, and as you heard in the recommendations, should this item move forward to the ballot, my office in consultation with the city auditor and the CFO will be tasked with preparing the fiscal impact statement for the ballot.

Given the timeline for when that statement must be submitted, which is March 10th, so a week from today, we have been working with the CFO and the auditor over the last several weeks and continued working with them to finalize our assumptions and fiscal modeling that will go into that potential fiscal impact.

I would note that some of our projections have shifted slightly since last week to take into account their input, and our presentation today will reflect that, although by and large, the overall takeaways that we presented in our report in our analysis last week remain today.

Noel Fleischmann from our team will walk you through our analysis, and this presentation will take about 12 minutes.

Thank you very much, Charles.

Last Tuesday, February 24th, our office released IBA report 26-25, which analyzed the proposed empty homes tax.

We presented the report to the rules committee last Wednesday.

This will be a similar presentation with a new fiscal impact modification that I'll note later on.

The proposed tax, if placed on the June 2026 ballot and approved by voters, would create a new excise tax on empty homes in the city of San Diego.

The tax would be $8,000 in the first year and 10,000 in the second year.

There would be an additional surcharge of $4,000 in the first year and $5,000 in the second year on empty homes owned by corporations, not individuals.

The base tax and surcharge would be increased annually by the change in the consumer price index, which has grown at an average rate of 3.2% over the last four decades.

The ordinance language provides multiple ways for owners to be exempted or temporarily excluded from paying the tax.

However, we'd like to draw your attention to the bottom right hand box of four potential scenarios where owners may exit the taxpayer base, which is different than receiving an exemption.

These include converting the property to a short-term or long-term rental, the latter of which is a stated policy goal.

The property is sold to a new owner who does not use it as an empty home.

The owner reclassifies the property as something other than an empty home, or the owner avoids paying the tax by other means.

Both exemptions and exits would require documented proof to be provided to the city treasurer, and there will be enforcement mechanisms in place that I'll discuss in a later slide.

The number of units exempted or that exit the taxable base will have a direct impact on the potential revenue the city may receive from the tax.

This dynamic was observed in other cities with similar taxes.

To help frame expectations, our office compared San Diego's proposal with vacancy taxes in four cities Berkeley, Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Vancouver.

While the type of tax and structure varied, I would like to direct your attention to the two columns on the far right.

These columns show the variance between the preliminary estimates those cities had for their projected number of taxable units and revenue and the actual number of taxable units there were in revenue they received after the taxes were implemented.

The pattern across all four cities was that early estimates of taxable units and revenue were significantly higher than what was actually realized.

The exceptions were Oakland, because staff there already assumed that 60 to 70 percent of parcels were initially exempted in Washington, D.C., where the vacancy tax was assessed as an ad valoran property tax that increased with the value of the homes, resulting in revenue growth.

While vacancy taxes are a relatively new tool for cities to generate revenue and disincentivize real estate speculation, there are a few key takeaways I'd like to highlight from our office's research.

First, cities experienced high exemptions or drop-off rates, and revenue tended to decrease over time as more units were occupied or exempted.

Cities reported data accuracy challenges challenges, including inconsistencies in self-reported data and the need to for extensive data cleanup prior to billing.

And lastly, vacancy taxes do help reduce the number of empty homes.

However, research research shows limited evidence that these taxes alone improve housing affordability because effects on rents and new construction tend to be minimal unless paired with broader housing policies.

These findings informed the assumptions and estimates in our fiscal impact analysis.

After this item was heard in rules committee last week, our office met with the chief financial officer and city auditor to refine and update our fiscal impact model.

The significant changes include new data from the city treasurer, which indicates the potential taxpayer base is actually 5,140 units, a small half percent increase from the previous number reported.

We increase the number of exempted units for our conservative estimate in the first year of implementation to adjust for outcomes seen in benchmark jurisdictions.

We also assume a new 10% decline in the taxable unit base in year two as units become rentals or become permanently excluded from the tax in different ways.

And lastly, we incorporate a tax collection rate of 90% into the model to account for the reality that not all the bills will be paid while appeals, audits, and penalties are processed.

This collection rate is consistent with the current collection rate of the city's rental unit business tax.

We believe these changes better reflect a revenue forecast for this new tax where shifts in owner behavior are highly unknown.

Based on the city treasure's rental unit business tax data, or REBT, we identified 5,140 units that were self-reported as vacation or second homes in 2025.

These are the properties most likely to meet the ordinances definition of an empty home, which is a residential unit that is not the owner's primary residence and is vacant for 183 days or more in a calendar year.

Of the 5,140 units, we believe that 5,097 or 99% are owned by individuals or revocable trusts, and that the other 43 units are owned by corporations.

We'd like to note that the RUBT exemption data is a proxy for the potential number of vacant units, but does not include all units that may fit the ordinance's definition of an empty home and may also include units self-reported as empty homes that no longer meet the proposed taxes definition.

The latter is the latter is a data accuracy challenge that will need to be addressed by the city treasure if the tax is approved.

Well, we estimate there to be a total of 5,140 units that may be empty homes.

There are multiple ways for the units to be excluded from paying the tax that will reduce the total number of taxable units and therefore the actual revenue of the new tax.

To model the potential number of units that may be excluded from paying the tax, we looked at Berkeley's experience implementing a similar vacancy tax.

As we previously noted in our benchmarking table, Berkeley saw a 45.5% drop between the initial estimated numbers of units that would be subject to the tax and the actual number of units that were billed.

Some differences between Berkeley's tax and the San Diego proposal that we believe justify modeling a more conservative range of excluded units include Berkeley's data came from the rent stabilization board, which maintained data more likely to accurately estimate the number of vacant units than San Diego's RUBT data.

Also, while Berkeley's tax was targeted towards homes already on the rental market, the intended taxpayer in San Diego may be more likely to have the ability and incentive to change their behavior to be excluded from paying the tax.

And lastly, the relative tax amount in San Diego is larger than the amount in Berkeley.

Taken together, we believe it's a reasonable to project that of the 5,140 units, the percentage that may be excluded from having to pay the tax will range between optimistically 45% and conservatively 70%.

This range is also in line with other benchmarked cities like Oakland and Vancouver.

Based on our office's updated model, we estimate net general fund revenue in year one, which is fiscal year 2028 to be between $9.2 million and $21.4 million.

Then, in year two, revenue is projected to increase to between $10.4 million and $24.2 million.

The increased revenue in year two is the result of the larger tax amount.

Beyond year two, we would expect revenue to decline over time as more units convert to rentals, sell or otherwise become occupied, which is one of the stated policy goals of the proposed tax.

These revenue ranges reflect different scenarios for the proportion of units excluded from paying the tax and tax collection rate, a 10% plus and minus contingency for uncertainty, and the treasurer's preliminary estimated costs to administer the program.

The city treasurer indicated that administering the tax would require an additional four employees and a one-time IT system upgrade, which together would potentially cost one million dollars in the first year of implementation.

A potential challenge will be establishing a clear and enforceable standard of proof for occupancy.

This will likely require the city treasure to implement new processes and procedures to validate self-reported documents.

The relative magnitude of the new proposed tax may incentivize avoidance, but violations would result in a misdemeanor, and the treasurer would have the power to audit owners.

Our office would like to clearly explain the assumptions and limitations that underpin our fiscal impact estimates.

We assume the tax will be effective January 1, 2027, and that exemptions will be processed and billing completed in the third quarter of fiscal year 2028.

Significant delays to that timeline would likely change the estimated revenue.

We assume the treasurer's operating costs will be the only new cost to the city.

We also assume the tax collection rate for the units subject to the tax will be at 90%.

We assume 50% of the units excluded from the empty homes tax will pay the rental unit business tax fee, but since the RUBT tax is about $55 per unit, it will have minimal fiscal impact.

And lastly, we assume that the taxable pool of units will decrease by 10% in the second year, and that corporate and individual owned units will have the same tax exclusion rate.

The scope of our model's projection is limited by timing and data availability, most notably.

The range of excluded units, we assume, is an aggregate of all exemptions and exits, and we cannot estimate the number of empty homes not in the RUBT exemption data.

And lastly, our office's analysis was conducted in a relatively limited time frame, and therefore we were unable to solicit significant stakeholder feedback.

In closing, our office finds that the proposed empty homes tax would be likely to generate additional net general fund revenue and increase the number of homes available for long-term rental or occupancy over time.

At the same time, revenue from the tax will likely decline over time if the measure is effective in reducing vacancy, which aligns with the policy goals of the tax.

Our office's updated fiscal impact estimate in consultation with the CFO and auditor projects the city collecting $9.2 million to $21.4 million in net revenue in year one and $10.4 million to $24.2 million in year two.

Though we note the fiscal and housing impacts will depend heavily on owner behavior.

Thank you very much, and we'll be available to answer questions that you may have.

Okay, thank you very much for the presentation.

We always appreciate the office of the IBA weighing in on these important matters.

So with that, City Clerk, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Council President.

We do have over 50 speakers here today, plus those online, another 14.

So they will be going down to a minute per person.

If I can have the following individual, please come up to the yellow reserve seats at the front of the room.

And then this first individual, please come up to the microphone.

Ken Miller.

After Ken Miller, can we have George Ching, Noah Yi Yik, Patricia Serrano, Mohammed Omar, Wesley Morgan, Laurie Lipsman, Christopher Kennison?

If you can all please come up to the front row and be prepared.

And if you can proceed when ready, you'll have one minute.

Thank you.

With respect to the San Francisco case, that case is now before the Court of Appeals, and it will have ramifications throughout the state of California, and in particular here in San Diego.

That case was resolved in the trial court by a motion for summary judgment where the court ruled that the measure violated the taking clause of the Fifth Amendment.

It was preempted by California's Ellis Act and was unconscionable burden upon due process, equal protection, and private rights.

I think it'd be wise to wait for the outcome of the Court of Appeals decision instead of rushing to litigation.

The United States Supreme Court has held that the right to exclude others from months property is a core constitutional property right.

The government cannot compel an owner to rent a unit over their objection by opposing financially coercive penalties on owners who choose to keep their property vacant.

Thank you.

If you have any written statements, we can definitely continue to pass those out to the council as well as well.

George Good afternoon, Council members.

Thank you for your time.

My name is George Ching with the Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors here to speak in opposition to the proposed tax.

Because the messaging for this tax is targeting vacant properties.

I don't think that uh the general public is aware that this is going to create a legal burden for every homeowner to prove that they live in their own home every year.

Even if they're exempt, they're gonna have to file paperwork in order to prove that they're exempt, and that's creating an opportunity for errors and the need for appeals.

The other thing is uh reviewing the language of the actual ordinance.

I don't see the particular section where properties that are in the process of being sold or vacant because they're being sold are exempted from this.

So if you're an owner looking to sell your property, there's the potential that it could be vacant for more than six months because of a transaction, and then do they consider baking that increase of 8,000 potentially into the price that they're asking for, or do they choose to rent it out?

That just creates less opportunities for people to buy a home.

Please vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Noah.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Noah Yik.

I'm a researcher and policy advocate with the Center on Policy Initiatives.

And we've known for years that our city has a structural budget deficit, but every year we're not identifying any new revenue.

Instead, the mayor tries to balance the budget by cutting the programs and services our community members rely on.

Cuts to libraries, parks, rec centers, and public restrooms have become the norm, and this year is no different.

There's a 120 million dollar deficit, and no new revenue has been identified.

At the same time, there are thousands of San Diegans that struggle to keep a roof over their heads while homes across our city sit empty, owned by people wealthy enough to leave them vacant.

That is why we must support the empty second homes tax.

It is a revenue solution that stops asking working class people to pay the price and instead ask the wealthiest to contribute their fair share.

We urge you to support the empty sec empty homes tax, take a step away from austerity and toward a city that invests in people and prevents harm before it happens.

Thank you.

Patricia Serrano.

Good afternoon.

My name is Patricia Serrano, and I work with Pana.

I'm in support of the homes for San Diegans.

Working families, emigrant refugees, communities of color, are the ones who are struggling because the housing costs is too high in San Diego.

While corporations and wealthy investors purchases thousands of properties, leaving me living many of them begging.

These empty houses reduce the supply and driving oil prices.

This is about prioritizing homes for people who live in working here in San Diego.

This proposal creates accountability for the wealthiest.

Thank you.

Next is Mohammed.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Mohammed Omar.

I'm with the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans and also co-facilitator for CED Coalition for Equitable Development.

I would like to thank Councilmember Sean Elivera for his leadership in bringing forward the homes for San Diego's proposal.

San Diego continues to face a serious housing housing shortage when homes remain vacant.

It reduces the availability supply and contributes to rising costs.

This proposal provides a balance solution by encouraging properties to return to the market or generate revenue for affordable housing and infrastructure.

This proposal creates accountability.

Homes should be for San Diego's not held empty as an investment assets as support for this mission.

Thank you.

Thank you, Wesley.

Good afternoon, Council members.

I had to look at the data before deciding whether or not this policy would be meaningful, and it turns out it is in two ways, especially in our coastal communities where it's the hardest to build new housing.

The city's own data shows that Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, La Jolla, and Peninsula has 1700 empty second homes.

Over this entire arena cycle since 2021, those same communities have permitted just 526 non-ADU homes.

That's more than three empty homes for every new home we've permitted in the last four years.

In La Hoya, the ratio is six to one.

Pacific Beach, three to one, Mission Beach, 18 to 1, and Ocean Beach and Peninsula 2 to 1.

And in these coastal areas, 80% of the owners are not local to San Diego.

We're in new construction phase of the most resistance.

We can't afford to let existing homes sit vacant.

And turning to downtown alone, there's 792 empty second homes, the equivalent of three full towers, like Savena, Luma, or Bayside that stand empty.

And 80% of those owners are also not local to San Diego.

Thank you for that concluding remark.

Lori.

Good afternoon.

My name is Lori Lipsman.

She, her, resident of District 3 since 1988 in support of item 501.

It is a disgrace that a city with such extreme wealth has an unheising crisis and a severe lack of low income housing.

And where people are being housed in tent.

Stop capitulating to money and start working for your constituents.

Taxed wealth, individuals, and corporations, and invest in housing, health care, and education for all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Christopher.

After Christopher, if I can have Zach Schlag, please come up, and public advocate Shane Harris, Karen Eed, Bruce Karen, Christopher O Gomez, and Ise Le Maganda Chavez, if you can all please come forward, as well as uh Patricia Mandragon.

All please come forward with yellow reserve seats.

Please proceed.

Okay.

The fact that we're here fighting for a better opportunity to get housing yet again is mind blowing.

Opportunities is all we're asking for when it boils down to it.

People shouldn't have to commute an hour or two just to get to work and still live check to check.

I'm one of those people.

I leave my home by 7 30 every morning just to get to work by 9 a.m.

I'm not here to dismiss the opposition's thoughts or feelings.

I'm here to speak for the greater good of all the people.

We have 5,000 homes sitting unoccupied.

The way I see it, that's 5,000 opportunities for people to give their families a better quality of life.

That's 5,000 opportunities for people to have a roof over their head.

That's 5,000 opportunities for kids to have access to a quality education.

That's 5,000 opportunities for a kid to grow up in a healthy home and strive for success.

I grew up in a two-bedroom apartment with seven plus people for most of my life.

If we live in a true democracy, we have to end the hypocrisy of elected officials and community members knowing the issues that need to be fixed.

Thank you, Zach.

Good afternoon.

I'm here on behalf of PATH to support the proposed empty homes tax.

I want to thank Council Member Ilo Rivera and the rules committee for moving this item forward.

At the end of the day, what the people we serve need the most is affordable housing.

This proposed tax could create that by opening up underutilized housing stock and by bringing in some much needed additional revenue to build new units.

While this proposal won't solve homelessness on its own, every single unit of housing stock that would come online due to this tax would meaningfully impact our efforts to combat this trend and make homelessness more rare, brief, and non-reoccurring.

We urge you to support this proposal to create more homes for San Diegans.

Thank you.

Public advocate Shane Harris, you have people seeding you time.

If they can please raise their hand.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council President and members of the City Council.

I'm San Diego Public Advocate Shane Harris.

I was born and raised here.

I lost both of my parents at a young age and aged out of the San Diego foster care system at 18 and went homeless.

When you leave foster care, you don't inherit property, savings, or a safety net.

You're trying to build stability from nothing.

Building something from nothing is something I understand.

And some of the 5,000 homeowners, second homeowners come from that background too.

That experience shaped how I view housing and building yourself up from the ground.

Housing is not just policy.

To me, it is a security, it is dignity and foundation for opportunity.

I support housing, but I support smart smart housing built through collaboration with neighborhoods builders and stakeholders.

But I cannot support this proposal as written today.

My primary concern is simple.

If this measure passes, the revenue does not go into a protected housing fund.

It goes into the city's general fund.

The same fund facing a 121 million dollar deficit and total mistrust from the voters.

If this were truly about housing, the dollars would be locked into housing, dedicated to building units and increasing affordability.

Instead, the revenue becomes general revenue.

And we've seen where that goes.

That raises serious questions for me.

This is about housing policy, or is this about plugging a budget hole?

I'd say a budget hole.

Before asking homeowners, second homeowners to pay more.

We should take a serious look internally.

The city has full not fully examined the bloated mental management layers, or whether consolidating the city's media department into the mayor's office where it already is working in array could save us somewhere between 1.5 million and $3 million annually.

Those savings could go into parks, roads, infrastructure without imposing another tax.

We should exhaust internal efficiencies before creating external burdens.

And we should stop framing second homes as if they automatically mean wealthy spectators.

I've met families in District 4 and District 8 who bought modest homes in the 1990s.

Today on paper, those homes appreciated.

That does not make them rich, that makes them long-term homeowners.

I've met families in District 9 who inherited a small house from their parents.

It is not a luxury estate.

It's not a it's a legacy home, the first generational stability their family ever had.

Does that make them villains?

Many second properties are inherited.

Homes in probate, modest condos purchased decades ago, or small properties owned by retirees relying on rental income.

These are not hedge funds, these are families.

This vacancy tax would be layered on top of overwhelming property taxes in one of the most expensive housing markets, and might I add property taxes in the country.

If we're serious about solving the house housing crisis, this is not the route.

Please say no to this erroneous tax measure.

Thank you.

Karen.

Hello, Karen Eid.

Tax revenue from this proposal is noted that it may, not shall go to a general fund for specific specifically related to housing.

Therefore, this is an arbitrary tax to be used to fund anything from the general fund.

It is a money grab tax.

Owners of second homes have no obligation to subsidize other San Diegans for their housing.

They pay property taxes on their properties like everyone else.

The people that own these properties successfully made good financial decisions to purchase and maintain these properties for their own enjoyment, not for the benefit of everyone else.

If people in San Diego cannot afford the local rental market or purchase market of a property, they should likely relocate somewhere else that is financially responsible for them to live a good quality of life and not expect to be subsidized by others or expect a handout by others.

This proposal is an arbitrary and discriminator tax on select group of less than one percent of the homeowners.

This proposal is a violation of the California Constitution, which allows for the right to thank you.

Thank you, Bruce.

No.

Bruce Karen.

Next is uh Christopher.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Christophoto Gomez, and I'm an organizer with the San Diego and Imperial County's Labor Council.

Uh I want to thank Councilmember Ilo Rivera and his staff, along with city staff for their hard work on this item.

Uh, you know, at the Labor Council, we represent over 130 unions and 200,000 uh working families across the county who don't want to move out of the county.

Uh many of these folks are feeling the impacts of the growing economic uncertainty in the country and the crushing cost of housing in the city, which is only made worse by a stock of homes that sit empty while there are San Diegans living on the street.

With this Federal Administration showing zero interest in addressing the needs of the working class, it is incumbent on local government to do everything in their power to relieve some of that pressure to be bold, to put forth policy, and to compromise when necessary in order to make the city more livable for the working folks who keep it running.

We urge your support on this item.

Let's move it to the ballot so that San Diego's San Diegans can have a say on the matter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Itsen.

Yes, you do.

When so you walk up.

It's a you have seated time by Andrea Guerrero, if you can please raise your hand.

And Aaron Zeramonte Rossi and DeForest Hancock.

Thank you.

You'll have three minutes, please proceed.

No, you have four minutes, please proceed.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Itsel Maganda Chavez, Civic Engagement Director with Alliance San Diego and resident of Golden Hill in Council District 3.

I've called San Diego my home for over 26 years, and my experience in this city has always been that of a renter.

I arrived here in 1999, and at that time, my family of five shared a small room in a three-bedroom apartment that housed at least five per room and a few others in the living room.

My childhood memories are filled with a full house and the hard fought smiles of working people.

After a few years of working two jobs, my mom and aunt saved enough to get us into our own apartment, just the five of us.

That was probably about 2005, and I remember the rent bill was about 1,200 for a spacious three-bedroom apartment that allowed my siblings and I the personal space that we always wanted.

Things were good for a while.

However, as time went on, my mom's and aunts' wages didn't keep up with the rising rent costs and the cost of living.

And we were fortunate to stay with family to keep up with the rising rents.

But between the ages of 16 to 19, since we could only afford a two-bedroom apartment at $1,600, I slept on the living room couch.

Fast forward 12 years, and my husband and I pay $2,250 monthly for a one bedroom, and we have no option but to stay in our 500 square foot unit until we can't afford to buy, which we know is not any time soon, and that directly impacts our ability to grow our family.

We are both first generation graduates of San Diego State University, actually the first in our families to cross many milestones, and yet the possibility but the possibility of buying a home in the city that raised us, educated us, and shaped our commitment to community feels more and more out of our reach.

And unfortunately, our story is not unique.

It echoes across neighborhoods with young families doubling up in tiny apartments, with our elders watching their children move away to more affordable cities, and with essential workers commuting long hours because they cannot afford to live where they serve.

While thousands struggle to find stable housing, home is homes here sit vacant.

They are treated as mere investment vehicles rather than places for people to live.

Today in history today is history in the making, and I am grateful for the opportunity to push San Diego into a better direction, one that just makes sense.

Today's vote will have a direct impact on my life, and if the more than 5100 homes left vacant in the city were put up for sale, my husband and I might actually have a shot at making San Diego our forever home.

Three times the chances we have now.

And if these homes are put back on the market for rent, San Diegans have more homes to choose from that make better sense for their commute, their careers, and their communities.

Both of these options help San Diego significantly increase the housing supply and drive the costs down.

This is a win-win.

In Alliance San Diego, we are a human rights organization building community power to bring human rights home.

We stand in strong support of the empty homes tax because we are invested in real solutions.

And we start we stand strong today with community-based and fair uh housing organizations, labor unions, and everyday San Diegans that are just looking for a chance to keep calling San Diego our home.

We urge that we urge you all to vote yes and move forward the empty homes tax so that voters can have a say and make that final decision.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Patricia Mandragon You have some time seated to you by Marco Briones.

Thank you so much.

You'll have two minutes, please proceed.

Good afternoon, Patricia Mondragon, D3 resident.

I'm here in support of a tax on second vacant homes owned by wealthy investors and corporations.

San Diego and North Park have been in my home since 1969.

Like many longtime residents, I'm still struggling to afford a home to stay in the city I love and retire here.

I don't want to work for the rest of my life just to rent and build wealth for someone who may already be a billionaire.

The cost of moving, rising rents, and wages that haven't kept up with the cost of living, make that unsustainable.

I wasn't able to buy earlier because of student loan debt, but year after year, I watched prices rise beyond what working San Diegans could afford.

Even when families qualified, they were often outbid.

Working in real estate, I routinely saw speculators beat out local families with all cash offers.

When our neighbor passed away, an investor bought the house next to my parents in North Park.

They left it vacant for over five years, while its value more than doubled.

It went from 464,000 to 940,000.

940,000.

That's a 103% increase on a two-bedroom, one bath cottage.

No housing was created, no family was helped.

Profit was the only goal.

Corporations and wealthy investors have purchased thousands of homes in our city and left many empty.

These vacant homes tightened supply, drive up prices, and erode the community.

Homes should not be for people who live, homes should be for people who live and work here, not for corporations to warehouse wealth.

As you have already today, you will hear fear mongering and disinformation from those who profit from keeping housing out of reach for work in San Diegans.

Please vote yes and let the voters decide.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jesus Martin Gallegos.

You here?

If I can ask the following people to please come up to the front row, Jesse Schmidty, Anna Ramos, Damaris G, Kaylee Flores, Steve Russell, Karen Barton, and Robert Um Cavane.

If you can all please come forward and you'll have one minute, please proceed.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jesus Martin Gallegos Munoz.

I am a community organizing coordinator with the Chicano Federation, a member of the Community Budget Alliance, and a resident of District 8.

For the past three years, we have been faced with a budget deficit which has disproportionately affected San Diego's most marginalized and disenfranchised communities.

But this proposal could allow us to bring in a substantial amount of revenue to continue funding the services that our communities rely on.

Furthermore, this proposal will allow individuals like myself to remain in San Diego.

To the contrary, San Diego continue will continue down the path of becoming a city who does not cater to the working class like myself.

On behalf of the Chicano Federation, we urge you to vote in favor of this item to uphold our community's democratic values and to empower our residents to exercise their right to vote for their values.

Gracias.

Thank you, Jesse.

Good afternoon, Council Jesse Schmidt, District 8 resident, here today in full support of the second homes tax.

Growing up in San Diego, my family had anything but a stable housing situation.

My mother often worked two and sometimes three jobs just to make sure that she had the means to provide for my sister and I.

From growing up and living inside of friends' houses to sleeping in freezing cold garages and on the couches, these challenges resonate deeply with the community behind me here today.

Last week we heard a public commenter say, Stop being poor.

Let me ask you a question.

Do you tell that to the hands of farm workers that put food on your table?

Do you say that to the military families struggling to make it here in San Diego while laying their life down for your greed?

Or the teachers barely making it by just to make sure that your child has a bright future because that is who we are.

Let me be abundantly clear.

Poverty is not a moral failure, it is a policy failure.

If we're going to throw slogans around, here's three that actually work.

Tax the rich, invest in San Diegans, and build more housing.

Thank you, Councilmember Ila Rivera for your work on this.

Thank you, Anna Ramos.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Anna Ramos.

I'm a community organizer with ACE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

And although I don't live in the city of San Diego, I've been organizing in District 8 for some months now.

And in doing so, uh have helped the community form the first ever ACE chapter in San Isidro with the goal of coming together as a group of neighbors who care deeply about improving their community and improving the uh quality of life of everyone there.

Um they have been meeting for months talking about the issues their community faces, and at the top of the list is of course housing affordability.

We have members who have shared their struggles having to live with six people in a one-bedroom apartment because that is the only thing that they can ever afford.

There are folks living in mobile home parks who dream of one day being able to afford a home, but that has become almost impossible.

So on their behalf, we strongly support uh this empty home tax.

Sandigans really need this housing crisis to be addressed as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you for that concluding remark.

Uh the gentleman in the second row, can you put the sign down?

It's important for the people.

You away in the back.

That's cool.

There's nobody behind you.

Uh but it's important that the audience can actually see the speaker or actually see the reaction of the council members.

So thank you very much.

No worries.

Thank you.

Lamaris, if you can please come up.

Hello, my name is Dee.

I'm a resident of District 9, and I'm here in favor of the empty home tax.

Again, I'd like to personally thank Shawnee La Rivera for prioritizing people over profit.

It's imperative that we keep the San Diego for the families that have built it.

And we shouldn't forget that black and brown owners were barred from owning homes in the La Jolla and expensive districts just until recently.

These people that own multiple homes were benefiting from systematic racism and white privilege.

Yet the families that have spent here generations shaping the culture and character of the city.

By focusing on our neighbors, we're reinvesting in the stability of the communities, which will yield in a stronger district and a more sustained local economy.

Keeping vacant homes does the opposite.

It contributes to nothing, it doesn't support the local tax base, it doesn't fill the seats in the schools, and it certainly doesn't contribute to community.

It's a depletion of the city's vitality.

And we hope to see you past this.

And thank you again, Shawnee La Rivera.

Thank you, Kaylee.

Hello, Council members.

My name is Keely Flores, and I'm here today as a member of ACE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, to show my support to put the empty home tax on the ballot.

Although I am not a resident of San Diego, I do work three jobs in the city, and yet I cannot afford to live in this city of San Diego, where I spend most of my time, most of my commute, and all of my money.

And I could no longer live afford to live there, and I fear that that is the direction San Diego is headed in if we do not make a change.

With this empty home tax being put on the ballot, we would be taking a step in the right direction to a more affordable city so that the people who work in this beautiful city may continue to live and grow in a place where we are proud to call home.

And I've dreamed of living in this city.

Don't make me change that dream.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve Russell.

Steve Russell, you have time ceded to you by Juliet or Nellas.

Thank you.

You'll have two minutes, please proceed.

Thank you.

Well, good afternoon, honorable council president, council members.

I'm Steven Russell, president and CEO of the San Diego Housing Federation.

And at the Federation, we believe that everyone has the right to uh have the opportunity for a safe and affordable home, safe and affordable place to live because all other social goods come from having that stable home environment.

We do know how housing crises develop.

It's there's very good uh scholarship on this, and there's a simple formula basically create a lot of high-wage jobs and then don't build the housing to house those workers.

What will happen is folks with resources will will find homes, most typically homes that were previously rented or owned by poorer folks.

And that is a downward ladder that reaches down to where we have families who are being forced out onto the streets.

They're doubling up, tripling up, or leaving the region.

So this dynamic is well established in the supply and demand patterns in constrained housing markets.

To be clear, there are multiple strategies that are needed to address the housing crisis.

One is expanding overall housing production to help increase availability and alleviate price pressure, and the other is to increase the availability of affordable housing, housing affordable to the lowest income individuals in our community.

Uh and ensuring the other, but a third strategy is to ensure that existing homes are actively used rather than sitting unused.

This measure today, which we urge you to support, focuses on improving the availability of a portion of the existing housing stock in a market where supply is already limited, and it also creates the opportunity to have new resources with which we can develop new affordable homes.

The majority of properties, uh such as primary residences simply won't be affected.

It's important to remember though that a house is not a home if no one's living there.

So we urge you to support the action before you today and give the voters the opportunity to vote on this issue.

Thank you for your time and attention today.

Karen Martin.

Hello, council members.

I'm Karen Barton, and I live in District 2.

I'm representing my neighbor today who's at work.

She owns two homes on the same neighborhood.

She's got three kids at home, and her husband travels a lot.

They work hard and have little time for themselves.

Her parents come into town twice monthly to care for the little ones.

They trade off with other grandparents.

One week on, one week off.

She uses that second home 120 days per year.

Is this the family you team too rich or in need of double taxation?

I don't think so.

They have come up with a creative solution to use family to provide care.

Instead of sucking away savings for their own retirement or college, they are investing in their family.

They bought a second home, a modest condo, providing a place to live for their parents to help raise children.

Please vote no on this initiative.

Thanks for your time.

Robert Yes, I'm uh Bob Caban, as president of the San Diego Association of Realtors representing 10,000 members.

Chair La Cava, I would appreciate if I could have three minutes.

I'm really sorry, we have to treat everybody exactly the same.

Okay, fine, thank you.

We have submitted a formal letter to you setting forth some of the reasons why we're against the proposed empty home tax measure for before us today.

And uh I hope you come up with the right conclusions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

If I can have the following individuals, please come up to the yellow reserve seats and up to the microphone.

Darrell Cotton, Nicole Lilly, um Rohan Hari Haran, um B E E E R Y, Barry as a last name, Bretta Lindstrom, Shane Pendergrass, and Brian uh Gorork and Mary Gork, if you can all please come up to the first row.

Please proceed when ready.

Good afternoon, council.

My name is Gerald Cotton.

I am a 45-year resident of the city of San Diego, and I am here because what I've got to tell this council is I don't think we really have a uh budget problem as much as we have a collection problem.

And although we should incentivize people getting into homes, I believe there are other ways to do it if we can take care of the uh budget, the deep hole that we've dug here in this city.

And what I have come to find is that there are millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenues in the cannabis business tax that aren't being paid.

And I have evidence of that.

I've had to, through public records act try to get that information from the city, they won't give it to me.

So I finally file a writ a petition of Man Damus to get the city to give me that record, and they won't.

The city attorney tells me they won't give it to them either.

So I have a document here.

Anyone on the council that's willing to see it should, because if we can pick up junk budget foot shortfalls, we don't have to tax parking, and we don't have to pick up the housing crisis by burdening owners.

That shouldn't affect them.

Thank you for that concluding sentence.

Nicole, you have time ceded to you by uh Sparky Mitra.

I think she may be.

Did Sparky was she?

I wasn't sure if somebody was uh clapping or raising their hands.

Oh, okay, you were raising your hand.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So you have two minutes.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Nicole Lilly.

I'm a 23-year-old renter, resident of District 3, and executive director of Our Time to Act.

We're a youth-led nonprofit organizing powerful youth for housing justice.

I'm here today again to urge you to vote for housing justice.

Everyday San Diegans are struggling to survive in the city.

A majority of San Diegans are renters, and the majority of renters are paying more than 30% of their income on housing alone.

This is an unacceptable, unavoidable reality.

This is the result of treating housing as an investment and profit gouging tools rather than the human right that it is.

As more of our neighbors are thrown into houselessness and housing insecurity every day, as we continue to fall woefully short on our housing development goals, as we face devastating cuts to essential services due to growing budget shortages.

It is inexplicable to me why we should allow over 5,000 homes to sit entirely empty without consequence.

I want to live in a city that prioritizes its people, not property and profit.

Whether it creates revenue or puts these homes back into the hands of San Diegans, your vote on this item tells us how you see housing.

Do you believe housing is a tool for profit or a human right for your constituents?

I urge this council to pass this item and bring this decision to the people.

And finally, I'd like to speak to my fellow neighbors, which you all are as well.

Owners of second homes who allow them to sit empty while the rest of us struggle to survive in this city are not victims.

The people who are struggling every day to pay our rent and to work and support the needs of this city need you to support them.

We are human beings.

Renters are human beings, and this is not them being victimized.

This is not them subsidizing their fellow neighbor.

This is them paying their fair share.

This is only a first step, and this deserves to go to the people.

I appreciate your time today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Aerohan?

Oh, my name is Aruhun Hariharan, and I work at Our Time to Act alongside being a student at UCSD.

I come here on behalf of all my friends and the many students, all of whom have who have not had an easy journey with finding off-campus housing and who wish they could be here but had to prioritize their classes instead.

This policy will affect over 5,000 homes, homes that could house students, homes that could house families.

Even by conservative numbers, this could lead to housing thousands of families and students.

And if not, the city can use the revenue from the tax to help fund our most basic needs and improve San Diegans' lives.

Youth are struggling with housing.

We need you to help us.

This is a step in the right direction, and you can show us that you care about us by taking this step.

Those who own multiple homes while the rest of us struggle to survive are not victims for being asked to pay their fair share.

I hope everyone understands the urgency of this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Or Barry.

Hello, council.

My name is Tristan Beery.

I'm here with Youth Will to speak in support of the empty home tax going to the ballot.

As someone who has spent many nights searching for a roof over my head at many points in my life, housing should be a fundamental right for all and not a opportunity for profit.

That doesn't seem to be the case currently in the city of San Diego, though, as we see the hoarding of empty properties by the very wealthy, leaving both city and revenue leaving both city revenue and unhoused individuals by the wayside.

We must rectify this greed that is costing San Diego instability, dignity, and their rights to the to a home.

The proposed empty home tax is a crucial step towards housing justice in San Diego.

It is a great method for us to generate necessary revenue to address our budget deficit without a burdening us, the people.

The less of a deficit the city finds itself in, the less of a burden there is on programs and services that youth and families of San Diego heavily rely on.

It is important that this decision will ultimately be made by the people of San Diego.

You are allowing the process of democratic decision rather than impeding it.

Please vote yes today to move this empty home tax ballot to the to the ballot.

Thank you, Britta.

Britta, you have people seating your time if they can please raise their hand.

Thank you.

And Elizabeth Kelly.

Thank you so much.

You'll have three minutes, please proceed.

Great.

Uh hello, council members.

I am in opposition to S501.

I would like to focus on the legal and operational realities of implementing a vacancy-based tax.

First of all, how do you identify the vacancy?

Is it you utility usage thresholds, self-reporting, physical inspection?

Each presents legal and privacy implications.

Second, enforcement and due process.

Property owners must have clear notice standards, appeal rights, and transparent evidentiary requirements.

Ambiguous definitions, increase rate disputes, and legal exposures.

Third, administrative costs.

These systems typically require compliance tracking databases, verification staff, audit procedures, appeals processing, and legal defense capacity.

Also, what is the actual projected net revenue after all these full implementation costs?

I believe it's much lower than projected.

Third, uh, excuse me, fourth, uh, legal exposure.

Targeting tax structures can invite litigation on constitutional, statutory, or procedural grounds.

Has this city fully assessed the litigation risk and the long-term administrative burden?

Finally, scalability.

Once created, compliance systems tend to expand.

Over time, this can grow into significant regulatory structure and financial nightmares.

So before even voting on something like this, there must be the evidence of enforcement methodology, privacy safeguards, appeals framework, administrative cost estimates, and net revenue projections, and measurable affordability benchmarks.

Do not develop and implement these processes after it's on the ballot.

That without these processes in place, our money will once again be spent without accountability and without reaching your stated objectives.

Please do not create more chaos.

Do the right thing.

Do not advance this further.

Your constituents are watching how you are voting.

But I would like to just make an additional comment, and that is I completely empathize with the people here who are saying they cannot afford housing.

They're work, they're hard workers, they're smart, they're dedicated, they cannot afford it.

That now being built, there are ADUs, there are 450 square feet, and they're going to be going for 17, 14 to 1700 a month.

Nobody can afford that.

This is not going to solve that problem.

This is not the answer, and it's not gonna it's gonna fail in the courts.

So please, let's find an accurate solution.

Let's stop this.

There's no way I could afford any of these housing if I were young.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

Shane.

Pender Chris.

Yeah, um, the woman Shane in the audience.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

Um, my husband and I bought our condo here 13 years ago.

We have children and grandchildren here.

We live in Maryland, where I'm a retired state legislator, and that's where we spend the majority of our year.

We're here about 170 days a year.

I get to be a part of my grandchildren's lives here and my grandchild's life back in Maryland.

I'm very grateful for that.

We worked hard.

We both were government employees.

We did not earn enormous amounts of money, and we spend a lot of hours trying to do the right thing just as you do.

I appreciate any consideration you can give to people like me who want to contribute to our grandchildren and our children's happiness and growth.

Thank you.

Brian.

Hi, I'm from District 5, and I've made several changes to my comments based on the opening comments that were made.

The San Francisco case is relevant to this measure.

The same constitutional issues apply, and the Alice Act applies.

The Berkeley Property Owners Association filed an amicus brief opposing the San Francisco measure.

They are watching the Court of Appeal decision very closely.

And if the Court of Appeal agrees with the Superior Court ruling, they will undoubtedly sue the City of Berkeley to overturn the measure, and they'll most likely be successful.

That being the case, don't move forward on this measure until litigation is settled.

Otherwise, if it's found to be illegal, you'll have to refund taxes collected.

Exhibit A, the Trump tariffs.

Remember that.

I love San Diego and I hate to see it making mistake after mistake.

101 Ash Street, the trash fee, and Balball Park parking fee.

Today we have an opportunity to prevent another mistake.

This measure is flawed and legally dubious.

You can't vote away people's constitutional rights with a ballot.

Thank you for that concluding remark.

Mary.

This measure is based on the assumption that properties that don't have a county homeowners' exemption and are not rented are empty.

However, some owners no longer rent out a second home because they maintain and use their home to help not only immediate family, but also an aunt and uncle, a niece or nephew, a cousin, and even close friends, and they maintain and use the second home themselves.

Examples include during times of illness, surgery, rehabilitation, through job losses and other calamities, such as after the fires.

The amount of tax is unsubstantiated and arbitrary and has been set to motivate the rental or induced sale of properties.

The tax amount is unaffordable and will force some owners to have to rent against their will or force the sell of their properties against their will.

There hasn't been a study of who this tax would affect.

The people we know who own a second home are mostly between the ages of 65 and 80, throwing seniors under the bus when their properties have already started changing hands and will continue to change hands anyway, is unnecessary and unlawful.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

Christina.

Christina Marie Green, if you can please come forward.

After that will be Ted Womack, Liliana Soriano, Claire Snyder, Mike Fritale, and then Jason Lopez.

If you can all please come forward.

Please begin when ready.

Good afternoon, City Council.

My name is Christina Marie Green, a renter in District 8, advocate for the ACLU of San Diego Imperial Counties, and the program director of the poverty project at UCSD, advocating for housing insecure and unhoused students.

I am in favor of the housing that empty house homes tax towards owners of second, third, and more homes.

As a former student who navigated being unhoused, cow chopping in a housing market designed to price students out and to price out workers and families out.

The city of San Diego is losing the bright minds and leaders meant to stay and contribute to this amazing city.

During a time where federal funding is being cut for vital programs and the greed of homeowners who continue to escape paying their fair share, it's time to redistribute housing availability and punish those who continue to make the housing market unbearable, inaccessible, and monopolized.

Thank you so much for your time and vote in favor of the empty homes tax.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ted Womack.

Hey, how are you doing today?

Um I'm here in support of the empty homes tax.

Uh I grew up in D4, where my grandfather was a homeowner before he passed away.

He taught me the strategy and the steps about, you know, growing up and getting into this things of owning a home.

Unfortunately, today, like those steps, and that strategy is not possible because of affordable affordability and availability.

Um, there's a lot of things that are said by folks who do own different homes, but my question to all those folks is why don't we deserve a chance to buy a home ourselves?

There's a lot of different factors in why people can't buy homes, whether you talk about cost of living, whether you talk about how much you get paid versus how much that is.

But you know, we hear a lot of people say that we need to do things for tourists, we need to do things for the revenue, we need to do things for all these other people.

But what about real San Diegans?

You know, I want to have an opportunity to invite my family over from out of town to my home.

I want to have an opportunity to maybe even gain a second home myself.

But at the moment, that's not possible.

So can we have the opportunity to gain one home for ourselves before we start saying it's you know, thank you for that concluding comment, Liliana?

Good afternoon, Council members.

I am the director of policy at Youth Will.

The item before you is an important step to address the budget deficit.

Young people for the past few budget cycles have not been a priority in many of your memos.

Many of our youth members continue to express their own and their families and ability to keep a roof over their heads.

Meanwhile, around 5,140 homes sit empty, cost of living continues to rise, and services meant to be safety nets before their eyes disappear.

As a community-based organization, we strongly support this fair approach to reduce anticipated impacts to real public safety programs and services utilized by many youth.

Please vote yes and let the voters decide to move or not move this tax forward because many of the residents will not be impacted by this, and the people in this room do not represent the entirety of San Diego, especially those that are against this proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you, Claire Snyder.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Claire.

I am with YouthWill, and I'm a resident of District 3, and I'm also a renter.

I'm a renter.

Rent paying rent is fine, kind of sucks, but like I can afford it, and I feel comfortable with that.

But that so me being comfortable with that means that other people who can afford all these homes are much more well off.

And other people in San Diego deserve the opportunity and the chance to be able to own a home and not have it be a dream that maybe they can afford a home when they're damn near dead at like 85.

It should be a reality for us now, and I think that we should give this opportunity to the rest of San Diego to be able to vote on this matter in San Diego to make the decision.

So I urge you to move this um forward.

Thank you.

Mike Good afternoon, Mike Ritali, District 6.

Uh, I'm speaking in opposition because there's three major problems with this proposed tax.

Uh one, it may not help the city financially.

In the absence of budget budgetary reform, there's no guarantee the additional revenue to this to the extent that there is additional revenue uh will go to public safety or critical infrastructure maintenance.

Two, it probably won't make that much of a difference to make San Diego more affordable.

There are 1.5 million people uh in this city.

Focusing on 5,000 units is little more than a distraction.

Three, and most importantly, it will create what has been referred to as an audit industrial complex.

The IBA has noted, and I quote, the magnitude of the proposed tax will incentivize tax avoidance.

Given that the city will use, and I quote, flexibility to adapt to identify such avoidance is not reassuring.

As a consequence, all homeowners will be burdened by the possibility of an extensive and unaccountable monitoring and enforcement regime.

Proving that you own your own house should not be more complicated than getting parking at the boa park.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day.

For that concluding comment.

Jason Lopez.

After that, it will be Paul Kruger, Anselmio Estrada, Kevin Venno, Connor Robbins, Grace Rojas Jimenez.

Please proceed.

Good afternoon, Council.

I'm Jess Lopez, and um I'm here to speak in opposition of the tax measure.

Uh I had the privilege of serving as the 2023 president of the Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors here in San Diego, and I currently serve on the board of directors and the executive committee with the California Association of Realtors.

Our members represent tens of thousands of homeowners in San Diego who also oppose moving this forward.

I've often said that the associations exist for a couple of reasons.

Among those are to protect private property rights and to promote homeownership opportunities.

This measure would impact those negatively uh by putting the burden on on homeowners to document their occupancy when they may not have a need to.

So we speak in opposition to this and would ask that uh you work in partnership with the associations and other local housing advocacy groups to come up with real solutions for San Diegans.

Thank you.

Thank you, Paul Krueger.

I know you have a something to share, so we'll get that up.

What I'm going to show you is just two paragraphs from the Union Tribune editorial.

It's not the voters who are going to decide this issue, it's the courts.

And the San Francisco vacancy tax was struck down in the most forceful way possible, which is that the court said there's not even enough argument to take it to trial.

Berkeley has not gotten an exemption from court review.

There's no indication that the Berkeley vacancy tax will ever be held to be legal because the landlords there are simply holding off their filing, as the gentleman noted, an amicus breach.

If you think that this uh Supreme Court of California and more, the Supreme Court of the United States is gonna uh back a vacancy tax.

You know they're not.

Please don't rush into this, and more importantly, please listen to the IBA.

Those figures uh conflict greatly with what you're hearing.

Thank you for that completing comment.

Hey, good afternoon, council.

My name is Strada, AJ Estrada.

Uh I am the political director for the San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council.

Um, you know, working people work hard, it's uh it's literally in the name.

Um, but every by every definable measure, every metric that we can we can speak to, they've been what we've been left behind at every uh every single uh benchmark, keep like key point, uh, health care, housing.

Today, like every day uh working San Diegans are awaking up and wondering how they're going to afford to buy a home, whether wondering whether they can afford to uh expand their family, have a kid, uh, and right now they can't.

So this is actually the only resume revenue measure that we might be able to uh have move forward here in San Diego.

Uh and if and uh it's the only one of the only opportunities that we have to actually put housing out there on the market.

I'm asking you to please move this forward to please uh give us the chance to actually have the housing that we've all been talking about for decades at this point.

Thank you, Kevin.

Uh good evening, council.

My name is Kevin Vino.

I'm the housing justice director at Our Times Act, we're a youth-based nonprofit uh fighting for housing justice here in San Diego.

Um so the average home price right now in San Diego is around one million dollars.

So if people have the luxury to have two of these, they're not just a millionaire, but by definition a multimillionaire on average, when the average San Diego can't even afford one of these homes.

So I really appreciate uh Sean's office for bringing this as a tax because we are sick and tired of having taxes that target lower uh income and middle class San Diegans, and this is primarily going to be affecting people who can afford this tax.

Um so I strongly advert uh urge council to bring this to the ballot and so that we as San Diegans can vote on this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Connor Robbins.

Good afternoon, City Council.

I'm Connor Robbins, the chief steward for Teamsters Local 986 representing San Diego Life Guards.

We're in strong support of the empty home tax, and I appreciate Councilmember Ilo Rivera for bringing this item forward.

I hear from my members all the time about how hard it is to live in San Diego, and this is largely because of the cost of housing.

This tax supports our members' ability to build a stable future here in San Diego.

That's why we support this.

Thank you all for considering, and we hope you'll vote in favor.

Thank you, Grace Rojas Jimenez.

After that, if I can have Patrick uh Ferrier Farrier, my apologies.

Jonathan Ray, Carmen Um Alosa Valdez, and Ramses.

If you can please come forward, these are our last speakers here in Council Chambers before we go virtual.

Please proceed.

My name is Grace Rojas Jimenez, and I was born and raised in San Diego Cumiai territory.

I'm a member of Ace Alliance of Californians for community empowerment, an intern for CPI students for economic justice and a renter for District 4.

Um I'm here to support the empty home tax ballot measure.

Vacant homes should not be left to sit and stale for months when so many of our communities are in danger of becoming houseless or already our houseless.

If these homes were to open up and be made more affordable to renters, it will help with safety to our San Diego residents and prevent displacement to families.

The taxation of empty homes will ensure much needed investment on infrastructure and services for the people of San Diego.

I also do not give consent of my tax dollars to be used for Israel's genocide on Palestine, nor the terrorist uh group ICE who are attacking our people.

Invest in affordable housing for everyone, not on just wars.

Patrick Farrier.

Crane Friedman is seating at time.

You'll have two minutes, please proceed.

Council President Lakaba, distinguished members of council, members of public here today to talk.

My name is Patrick Farrier, Straight Day Director, San Diego City Firefighters, Local 145.

I'm here today to speak in favor.

Local 145 was disappointed.

The initial version didn't make it through rules committee.

However, we are in strong support of the initiative as it stands before the full council today.

I thank you, Councilmember Elo Rivera, for your hard work and your dedication to bring affordable housing to the firefighters and the citizens of this San Diego City.

They all deserve a good place to live.

But they're exasperated.

The inability to afford a home within the city limits has left them grasping at straws and frustrated.

And they bring their concerns to us.

Now they're commuting from out of state, out of county, sometimes out of the country, and it leaves them exhausted.

I want to put you into a situation here.

Imagine you're up all night in our fine city.

You're going to fires, you're taking care of our most vulnerable populations, and you're giving the best service that you can.

Then you drive two to four hours to your house.

Imagine trying to be a good parent, a good spouse, or just enjoy your time off.

Now, whether this initiative brings revenue, frees up homes or both.

It's a win to the firefighters and the citizens of this great city.

I urge you to please move this forward to the voters to decide, and I thank you very much for your time today.

Jonathan Ray.

Hi, and thank you for doing this.

I just turned 62 on February 26th.

I currently live in an affordable housing building for age 55 plus, which is actually a converted hotel with no kitchen run by the San Diego Housing Commission.

I cannot legit I cannot find legit housing living on Social Security at 3,350 per month.

I have resigned.

I have resigned to never owning my own home, condo or otherwise, in a city that I have resided in since 1988.

I would like to at least be able to rent a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood.

I find this proposal very acceptable.

We need to weed out corporate and rich people and once again make housing affordable in San Diego.

Some say live within your own means.

What is living with your own means?

Social Security doesn't allow thank you for that.

Thank you for doing this.

Carmen.

Hello, my name is Carmen, and I'm a resident living in District 9.

I'm here with Youth Will to comment on the empty home tax proposed to go to this year's ballot.

Housing is a fundamental human right for all and not a profit opportunity for a select few.

While thousands of San Diegans struggle to keep a roof over their heads, including myself and other family members, living on the street or on the verge of homelessness currently, ownership of multiple properties is a reality for wealthy people and corporations.

It is this greed that caused San Diegans stability, dignity, and their right to a home.

The measure is clear.

This will not impact primary homeowners or renters and only applies to homes sitting vacant for most of a year.

If you're in San Diego and you can own this many homes, you can take this tax.

Like this has been affecting us and like low-income marginalized communities for years.

So yeah, please vote yes today to move the empty home tax proposal to the ballot.

Thank you.

And our final speaker here in Council Chambers is Ramses.

Hello, uh, I want to speak in favor of this item.

Uh so over the last year of the budget discussion, one thing has become absolutely clear.

The poorest people of San Diego can no longer afford to fill this budget deficit.

We saw that with the failure of Balball Park, making a net of less than what, three million, less than that.

And now we have an option that could potentially get us tens of millions of dollars.

So on that on that level alone is a no-brainer.

Now personally, I've wanted to live in San Diego my whole life.

I was born in San Diego.

My parents relocated to East County, and uh we had a house, and shortly after 2008, uh private equity purchased that house, and we lost it.

Um I tried moving into San Diego, and unfortunately, I was I was met with the prices and I was not able to.

So now I live exactly half a mile away from the border.

But everything in San Diego still affects me.

Everything that you guys do still affects me, so that's why I come to these things.

One day I hope that I can afford to live in San Diego, but right now, that's not today.

I'm saying the five-minute time we're going to those participating remotely.

We have 14 speakers in the queue, starting with Mary Carson.

If you can please unmute.

What concerns us the most with this proposal?

If it goes into effects, it will significantly impact our local businesses.

The one thing we all do when we visit San Diego is spend money by going out to eat, drink, and we go to entertainment venues.

And I haven't read any in economic impact analyses of the fiscal consequences to local businesses as a result in the reduction of second home ownership.

The very people I feel council member Elo Rivera is trying to support and protect are going to be hurt the most with a contracting business environment.

This tax feels very punitive to not just second homeowners, but to the people who work locally.

Next is Zoom user.

If you can please unmute.

Sorry, your time has concluded.

If you can please unmute.

Hi, my name's El Del Mastro.

I'm a disabled veteran.

I'm an ex-blue-collar worker.

I'm a senior, and I'm a small mom and pop landlord.

Um, this is being pushed through without being completely reviewed.

I um my issues with it is that in 2024, January, I had a tenant give me notice.

I was in such so much pain physically, I had to have a hip replacement in March.

It took me longer than the 183 days to be able to re to get my apartment up.

The same thing happened for me in 2005, where I had another hip replacement.

Now I need a knee replacement.

Is there a way I can have an extension here if I have health issues?

I'm a senior.

I mean, it shouldn't discriminate against disabled people or handicapped people.

Most mom and pops are seniors, and we have issues not being able to get it.

Your time has concluded after John Stump.

After John Stump, it is Tony, and then 8700.

John Stump, please unmute.

I can't unmute for you.

Uh, thank you.

Uh, I sent in a letter.

Uh, this is a pure tax measure.

If it was a housing measure, housing would be the dedicated use of these funds.

But of course, there is no dedicated use of this fund.

Please, council members, at least modify the proposal so that funds are dedicated to housing, that reporting on the actual number of housing units created by this occurs, and that the audits audit the number of housing units created by this tax.

Otherwise, you're pouring this tax into a general fund, and it's gonna disappear down the drain like all the other overspending.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Tony, if you can please unmute.

That also concludes the five-minute timer here in Council Chambers.

There are 14 speakers in the queue.

No additional speakers will be taken.

Tony, if you can please un uh proceed with your comments.

Hello, city council.

Thank you very much for letting me speak with y'all today.

And I want to start by uh apologizing to council member Vivian Moreno uh yesterday.

Um I falsely attributed uh uh the credit that should have been given to you to Stephen Whitburn uh for supporting the uh empty uh house proposal uh in the committee last week.

Um and uh I wanted to speak today in favor of the measure.

Um I also did want to address the concerns that have been raised in San Francisco and in Berkeley as well.

I want to say that um the everyone's concerns about the litigation in Berkeley and and waiting for reservation for uh whatever happens there to determine what we decide to do here.

Um I think we're missing the point.

We need bold leadership now.

We don't need a wait for other cities to tell us what to do in our city.

We that's why we have our own courts to decide those things for ourselves, and we need bold leadership to take action now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is 8700, if you can please unmute star six to unmute.

Uh thank you, uh Joey Signata, CD3.

I'm gonna repeat what I said at rules.

Uh I feel good about it.

There are parts of this item that will only be clear as we implement and live them.

Yet we must have the courage to take our leaps.

Here is my main point.

We are one people equals we are one family in one San Diego.

One family has one pot of money used to cover their needs in our city family that includes all levels of income and revenue for sharing, for sharing with all San Diego homeowners are part of this family's assets.

Let's do one step at a time.

This is exciting on this item, and if we get it on time as concluded for San Diego family, move this up.

We try and if you can please unmute after that is Francine Maxwell.

Hello.

Hi, my name is We Trans, and I'm executive director for the voice.

Um, I'm want to call in to continue to aspect my support for this ballot measure.

Um, like I said, a lot of time is really difficult to build housing and did the most strategic thing that we can do is to ship a lot of the empty homes and make it make them available for many, many folks um here in Danego and make it more affordable for us to live.

Randy's so high, not a lot came in my home anymore.

I have friends are leaving the town, and I really don't want them to leave.

I don't want any more about to leave.

So please vote for this and support for that too, and then you know, put them on the ballot and um so thank you.

Thank you, and excess Francine Maxwell, if you can please unmute Francine Maxwell, District 4 in opposition data can be manipulated as we have seen before as it pertains to our trash fee.

We had an outside attorneys, I understand that was named.

We have a plethora of city attorneys, but we continually spend money to get an outside attorney.

So again, we are paying attention closely to how our tax dollars are being spent.

When you look at this, this is going to be uh dedicated money for public safety, because again, we are one of the safest big cities, and public safety is number one for all.

So there's other ways that we can do this, and when somebody keeps saying that people are just so evil because they have two homes, remember what it took for some people to purchase their parents' home.

And so they are also working two and three jobs and can't afford their parents' home.

But generational wealth starts with making sure that grandma and mom's house never get sold.

So please keep that in mind.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

Blair Beekman, if you can please unmute.

Hi, uh Blair Beekman.

Um this item was at uh committee last week.

I was in Maui uh learning about it now, back in San Diego, and we're finalizing things.

Good luck in your efforts.

I think this is uh an important item.

We we're having an important shift in thinking.

Uh that you're trying to develop a sense of care uh for our the people of our community and our society.

I don't think anybody can fault council personella and uh staff for what they're working on, their goals.

Uh they're commendable.

Uh, really good luck in such efforts.

I think we're trying to address uh San Francisco and that Oakland and Berkeley have improved upon San Francisco's ideas.

Uh that that needs to be considered.

And I don't know quite what to do with the taxation issue, how our founding fathers would view taxation versus uh an overall care for people that we're trying to offer for this item.

Good luck how we can uh move forward in our human history in thinking of care as an important concept of uh our belief systems.

Thank you.

Next is one of branding in 3856, 3856, and then after that is Zach.

3856.

This is Carol Water said.

I oppose this unfair tax.

I'm a residential real estate broker of over 40 years in San Diego.

Letting this tax on uh likely non-residents who have no voice in this conversation and they will have no vote is absolutely unconscionable.

They already pay their fair share.

I put fair share a number of times, they pay their fair share.

It's all done on property tax valuation.

Many of these people are recently purchasing, they're paying over 10,000.

You want to pay them another XYZ amount arbitrarily.

That's way more than their fair share.

These are visitors to our city, which used to be like San Diego's best place to come, you know, not anymore.

Not if you're gonna have this unwelcome map at your door.

I I don't like where our city is headed.

I don't think you have any right to tax second homes.

Why give you the privilege to stand there and discriminate against one group of people?

And you say to them, oh, you, you people over here have to pay for our bad management, that's wrong.

There's so many things wrong with that.

Your time has concluded, Zach.

If you can please unmute.

I am a resident of D5, and I am calling in to support this measure.

I believe that housing is a human right.

I believe that the city has a responsibility to ensure that its housing stock is being used by residents by the communities, by people who are currently struggling to afford to live in the communities that they work in and serve.

Um, if somebody wants to have a second vacant home or have a vacation home or speculate on real estate, that's fine.

Um, that's not something the city will ever be able to stop.

But I believe that the city has a duty to disincentivize it.

And if that goes to help provide more services by giving a progressive tax measure that supports our general fund, I'm fine with that too.

I live in this city, I benefit from the services here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is uh respect Birdrock.

If you can please unmute.

Good afternoon.

I'm Harry Bobbins with Respect Bird Rock in Mojoya along the coast.

Uh we're here to say build more first homes first and support the empty second home tax.

But pair it with the coastal height limit update on the 2026 ballot.

Don't be scared.

Taxing vacancies manages scarcity, but it does not end it.

The 1972 Nixon era coastal height limit update will end scarcity.

For 54 years, this Nixon era law has used I-5 as a concrete barricade to opportunity.

West of the three-way coastal neighborhoods approved only 25 affordable homes in three years.

That's just not fair.

These measures are partners.

One treats a symptom, the other treats a disease, an artificial water gate era, 50 year scarcity of land.

Please place both on the 2026 ballot.

A draconian 30-foot height limit on buildings miles from the coast is simply not serving San Diego.

Great turnout today.

I hope people work on that.

Thank you.

Next is Lupe Rojas, if you can please unmute.

After that, we'll be not gone.

And Nancy Bem, please proceed.

Thank you.

Hello, the Mid City Community Advocacy Network is in support of this proposal.

Thank you, Councilmember La Rivera, since we believe that it is time to address the housing crisis that the city's residents have been experiencing in these recent years.

People who are actually working and are contributing to the city.

Please people don't choose to be poor.

San Diegans are stepping up and doing what they can to continue living in the city.

It is difficult to hear of parents taking second shifts just to be able to afford rent.

For many mothers, this is their first time working, but they are willing to step up out of their homes and work because they understand the reality that they are facing.

This year, we will start to see the effects of the many budget deficits happening at every single level.

And it is difficult to imagine how much worse the housing situation will get.

That is why we asked city council to vote yes on this proposal and let San Diegoans have final say in the June elections.

Like many advocates, we want to see more housing for working class San Diegans.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Next is Nagan, if you can please unmute.

I um I want to touch on the fact that Joe Locava talked on it in the rules committee on this, is that what'll happen if somebody takes a house back, they get it back for uh three months or what and they have to renovate it, then they have to list a home, and then most first-time home buyers are gonna need 60 days for loan approvals, or that particular seller can just go and sell it to a corporation.

The idea this law that be put into place is going to promote selling your home to a corporation over selling it to a first-time home buyer.

This six month period is uh is is is a wrong idea without any kind of extension for motivation.

Um, for me, I have health issues, so I need to have an extension at times longer than 183 days.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy.

If you can please unmute.

Uh hi, can you hear me?

Yes, please proceed.

Thanks.

Uh, I'm Nancy with San Diego Families for Justice, calling in support of the empty homes tax ballot measure.

I also work in homeless services with staff who have previously and currently are experiencing homelessness.

We believe housing is a human right.

We are grateful for Sean Ela Rivera's persistence in finding a way to address our housing crisis.

We need both bold solutions, and this is one of them.

It's all the better by being a voter decision.

We are a collection of families who are finding it almost unbearable to raise our kids here under the burden of housing and child care costs.

Many of us wish to have kids or more kids, but can't because of the inability to rent or buy bigger.

For the commenters with two homes that have called in, please wake up.

You are not suffering.

You can avoid this by making your property available for short-term renters or other ways for the days that it's not occupying.

Maybe even increase your income.

Last but not least, our budget lows could be quickly solved with public outrage over SCPD, murdering and spending 30 million dollars of our taxpayer dollars on the city.

Chris Dean, if you can please unmute.

After that is Lynn.

Christine, please proceed.

Hi, I'm in District One.

I don't understand why there's a rush to get this on the ballot.

You guys have had 10 months, you've been working on it for 10 months to get your propaganda out and everything else.

You know, people in opposition only have a few months to get the other side out.

So I think that's really wrong.

I also believe there's going to be a lot of unintended consequences that come with this.

Um, people are gonna be turning their homes into Airbnbs, it's gonna destroy neighborhoods.

I don't think it's a good thing, and I I just I don't like the rush.

Also, currently, right now in my area, rent is 10 to 20,000 a month.

That's gonna go up because when you guys changed the zoning, the fire zoning, now all of a sudden we've lost our homeowners' insurance.

So we're probably gonna have to go with the fair plan, which is anything but fair, it's expensive.

And if people are renting their homes out, if they're gonna have to increase the rent from 10 to 20 to 20 to 30,000.

It's not a good thing.

Please vote no.

Your time has concluded.

Next is Lynn.

Hi there.

Um, my name is Lynn, and I'm a San Diego resident.

Uh, strongly in support of the empty homes tax.

I've uh been in San Diego over 30 years, and I once owned a condo that I lost in the crash of 2008.

And after that, I I could never seem to get caught up as prices continued to rise, etc.

But when the pandemic hit in 2020, um, all of my friends, even the ones that were somewhat poor like me, became millionaires overnight who owned homes.

Anyone who owned a home, even if it was a you know, 400 square foot hovel.

Um, well, I spent the last five years getting worrying about getting kicked out of my apartment that I rent.

Um, so I've been checking into all kinds of things like California Dream for All, ADUs, tiny homes, but none of those things are doable uh because of permitting and all that kind of stuff.

And I I'm glad somebody that concluding comment, Janica.

After that is Doreen Diaz, and she is our final speaker.

Janica Faulkner.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, please proceed.

How come you to menu way?

I am Janika, a D4 resident.

People who live and work in San Diego know firsthand that the cost of renting and buying a place to live is sky high.

Part of our housing crisis is due to big corporations and wealthy investors snatching up over 5,000 homes.

These empty second, third, and fourth homes tighten the housing market and make it more expensive to rent or buy.

San Diegans can increase access to housing by supporting a proposed ballot measure that would tax big corporations and wealthy investors who are keeping homes off the market.

This will encourage them to either put homes on the market for San Diegans to rent or buy, increasing the supply and lowering the cost, or pay a tax to generate revenue to build more affordable housing and infrastructure.

Please put voters in control of deciding how revenue for affordable housing and other items are spent through public input, transparent oversight, and an independent budget audit.

Thank you for serving our communities.

Have a good night.

Thank you.

Our final speaker is Doreen Diaz.

If you can please unmute.

Hi, I am in favor of this.

Hammer Shah has been fighting a vacant home for five years.

This home was a public nuisance since December 2021.

Code enforcement abatement.

There was no action taken.

The project 11283 also states that this lot is empty because DST allows fraud with the Diva LCC and ProCal permitting fraud, saying it's an empty lot.

But SIS use this with this vacant property.

And can an empty lot get a demolition permit?

And why would an empty lot be given a demolition permit?

And they lie in the application saying it's no to very high fire zone.

No to code enforcement.

And anybody who can't rent a home has a problem.

They're deliberately not wanting.

Your time has concluded.

That does conclude public comment.

I would just note for the record that we did receive four speakers in favor that did not wish to speak, one speaker in opposition that did not wish to speak.

And we received 20 comments in favor and 94 comments in opposition via e-comment form, which have been distributed to the council.

Thank you, Council President.

All right.

This time you could clap.

No more.

No, we have to be fair.

Anyway, it is not an easy task, and uh her and her team uh do a fabulous job.

We very much appreciate it.

Make sure everybody gets heard uh that wants to speak.

Thank you all for showing up.

And speaking, those who participated remotely appreciate that as well.

So now we'll turn it over to council members uh for questions, comments, and entertain a motion, and we'll start with council member Ilo Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Um Maya, um and Molly, for all the work that you put into this.

Um thank you so much.

Um thank you, uh Charles, to you and your team for all the analysis that you provided.

Um Treasurer's office for their work and the again the city attorney's office.

And I also want to say thank you to folks who came down here to share your story.

Uh I think you helped ground us in what is at stake today.

And I could not help but notice how many young faces we saw here today.

Um the desire to just have a damn chance to live in this city.

Um strong, and we need to encourage that.

We need to make folks know that we are trying to give them a again, no one's asking for a handout.

No one here was asking for free housing.

They want a chance to live in the city that they love and that they work in.

We heard it from teachers, we heard it from firefighters, we heard it from students, we heard it from recent grads, and I have so appreciate you all showing up here and sharing your stories.

And that's why homes shouldn't be sitting empty during a housing crisis.

We are making strides as a city.

We've strengthened tenant protections, we've increased permitting and production, we've created tools to preserve affordable housing, and we have an opportunity today to take an additional step and ask voters whether they want another tool that can directly help San Diego stay in San Diego.

The empty home stacks that's proposed would do two things that matter.

First, it changes incentives.

Some homes currently sitting vacant would are more likely to be rented or sold to people who actually live here.

As a council, we've celebrated breaking ground and approving financing for the development of 50 homes, 75 homes, 100 homes, and we should celebrate that.

Every time we build a home, we add a home, we relieve pressure in a market that has become a pressure cooker for everyday people.

We cannot predict exactly how many homes will return to the long-term market if this measure passes, but we do know this.

Incentives will change and homes will come back into use.

And just like every new home we build, every home return to the housing market is worthy of celebration because it opens a door to a family or a young professional that gets to stay in San Diego, potentially even as a homeowner.

The second thing it does is generate new revenue for general city services, services that support housing stability, homelessness prevention, and the basic infrastructure that residents rely on.

It's a genuine win-win for San Diego and for San Diegans.

The overwhelming majority of San Diegans will never pay this tax because it does not apply to primary homes, it does not apply to long-term rentals, it targets a narrow category.

Homes left vacant for most of the year, again, in the middle of a housing shortage.

I want to be explicit for the record.

I did this at committee, I'll do it again on a legal question that's come up in recent weeks regarding the Ellis Act.

This measure does not require anyone to rent their home.

It does not compel anyone to remain in the rental business.

Nothing in this proposal changes the Ellis Act, changes eviction law, or creates any right for the city or for anyone else to occupy private property.

Owners retain the full right to keep a home vacant if they choose.

What this measure does do is straightforward.

It sets an objective standard, vacant for more than 182 days, and says that if an owner chooses to keep a residential property vacant beyond that threshold during a housing shortage, that choice has real public costs and a tax applies.

That is a legitimate exercise exercise of the city's taxing authority, and it is meaningfully different from what San Francisco tried to do.

San Francisco's measures would strip San Francisco's measure was structured in a way that courts found effectively compelled rental of specific residential buildings.

Ours is not that.

Our scope is different, it's more carefully crafted in its exclusions, and modeled closely on a measure which has operated successfully for over two years without a successful legal challenge.

So while amateur legal analysts are throwing spaghetti at the wall because they know the people are broadly supportive of this proposal, the city's attorney's office with outside expert counsel has reviewed this carefully, and I'm very confident in the foundation we've built.

I also want to be clear about how carefully the rest of this proposal proposal has been put together.

We work closely with the treasurer's office and with people in the community to create a measure that is implementable.

We took into account real life circumstances where a tax should not apply.

And I hope that some of the opponents who spoke today listened to this because some of the concerns that were raised are not actually you're going to be exempt from this tax.

If a family member is living in a second home, that home should not be taxed and it won't.

If a loved one has passed away and the family is navigating probate or cannot yet afford needed repairs, that home should not be taxed and it won't be.

If someone is deployed in the military, their home should not be taxed, and it won't be.

These exclusions exist because good policy has to be sensible and fair while staying focused on the goal, getting homes back into use for San Diegans who need them.

My priority is San Diego families, it's young professionals, it's the public workers who want to live in this city.

This is one piece of a broad strategy to lower the cost of living and expand opportunity in this city.

The opportunity before us today is straightforward.

We can act or we can leave intact a system where thousands of homes sit empty while everyday people work their ass off just to afford a place to live.

With that, I move I move staff recommendation and authorized myself, Councilmember Ila Rivera to sign and file a written ballot argument in favor of the ballot measure for inclusion in the voter pamphlet.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, Councilmember.

So we do have a motion to move the staff recommendations as it's shown on the screen.

Um we'll go next to Council President Pro Tam Lee.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Councilmember Ila Rivera, for bringing this proposal forward.

Uh we all know that San Diego is facing a housing crisis.

We need more homes as part of that housing supply.

Yet many homes that could house San Diegans are sitting empty, built, ready, but unused, while families struggle to afford rent, first-time home buyers struggle to compete, and young people who grew up here wonder whether they'll ever be able to stay.

That disconnect is what this measure is intended to address.

At its core, this proposal is about fairness and responsible use of housing.

In a city where housing is scarce, homes should be lived in, rented out, or sold to someone who will live in them.

What this measure says is simple.

If someone chooses to keep a home empty, then they should contribute a little more to the community that makes that investment possible.

If someone can afford to own a second home and not use it for any purpose, they can absolutely afford to pay this tax and should.

Importantly, this proposal still leaves the choice with the homeowner.

A homeowner can continue to leave the home empty and pay the tax, or they can put the home to use by living in it, renting it out, or selling it.

This is why I view this as a very reasonable and targeted approach.

Does not impact, as Councilmember Ilo Rivera mentioned, any primary residences or renters, and is focused specifically on the roughly 5,000 homes that already file an exemption to the city's rental unit business tax and identify themselves as a second home or vacation home.

That list already exists, doesn't require some audit.

Many of these are likely owned by people who live elsewhere and are not part of our local housing supply.

The measure also includes thoughtful exemptions for homeowners facing unique circumstances, such as those in long-term care or on military deployment.

And I also want to thank Councilmember Ilo Rivera for taking our amendment at committee to ensure that the measure does not impact newly built housing.

We appreciate the report provided by the IBA, which helps us to understand how this measure compares with similar policies adopted in other cities.

And the end result is a range of revenue expectations that I believe gives voters a realistic understanding of what this measure can generate.

That revenue may be modest, but at a time when the city faces ongoing budgetary challenges, every responsible source of revenue helps support the services that our residents rely on.

Ultimately, today's action is about giving voters the opportunity to weigh in on a focused and reasonable proposal.

I believe this is a thoughtful step for us to place before the voters.

Again, in a housing crisis, homes should be for living in, not sitting empty.

And for these reasons, I'm proud to support this measure, and I'm happy to second the motion.

All right.

So with that, we have a motion by Councilmember Ila Rivera and a second by Council President Pro Tem Lee to move the staff recommendation with the additional languages shown on the screen.

I'll offer a few comments because I don't see anybody else on the lights.

Oh, Councilmember Campillo.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you to the members of the public who came in at rules committee and today to express their views.

And I appreciate the District 9 staff for the work in bringing back a revised proposal, and I thank them for excluding tier three and tier four short-term vacation rentals in the definition of an empty home.

You know, I'm all ears on ideas that could potentially put homes on the market.

And it seems that this proposal certainly would.

And when this item came to rules committee last week, I asked for one thing to help make my decision at full council: a robust legal memo analyzing the tax's ability to withstand a lawsuit.

I have not received it.

It is hard to believe that after months of developing the proposal with significant similarities to a version that's been stopped in court in 2024, that there is no memo to share.

When we have tight lines, tight timelines, as we do today with less than one week between committee and council, we should rely on the analysis, not just the conclusion to make responsible decisions.

Councils past and present have relied on recommendations that ended up wasting staff time and taxpayer dollars without demanding the analysis first.

I won't make that same mistake.

Let me be clear that our deputy city attorneys are competent and diligent and dedicated public service servants working on the most important issues facing our city.

I know this personally because I have worked with them for as a council member for over five years and as one of them for two and a half years before that.

But I weigh the potential legal viability and risk together with the net public benefit in the decisions I make, no matter how compelling or urgent the motivation behind it is, and certainly there is an urgent and compelling motivation.

I'm hesitant to vote for this today because I have not received the information I need to be confident in that decision, and confidence in our decisions is something the public truly lacks these days.

I wanted simple information to make the best decision for my constituents, and I cannot in good faith vote yes today when the reasonable request I made last week has not been fulfilled.

As stated earlier, there is so much at stake.

I agree.

And that's why moving forward without the final piece of work, and perhaps the most consequential piece of work being done is inadvisable.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Campio for your comments.

Um again, not seeing anybody else on the lights.

Okay, I want to give you that extra time.

Um let me offer um a few comments uh of my own and then maybe ask a couple of questions.

So I too want to thank Councilmember Elo Rivera and your team uh for the good work in bringing this forward.

Uh I want to thank the IBA for your in-depth analysis, uh, which this council relies on uh and the candor you described in terms of trying to frame how much uh from purely a revenue uh point of view this could generate.

Um I'm a little frustrated by those who throw the IBA under the bus when they don't like the numbers and then tell us to follow the IBA carefully when they do like the numbers, but I do appreciate uh the good work you've done and that the very thoughtful way in which you've approached it.

And I know there's more work to be done if this does get on to the ballot.

I want to thank the city attorney's office for the good work uh that uh they did in helping to craft this language.

Uh and the one thing that um I'm assured of is that the city attorney's office would not put something in front of this council for a final vote that not had had not been fully vetted in light of case law, federal law, local law, state law, uh, and uh litigation.

I also want to thank all the members of the public, whatever side you were on, uh you brought compelling arguments, both for and against this measure.

Uh you were respectful to one another, which as council president, I certainly appreciate.

Um, and I hear the passion uh in your voices.

We face many challenges as a city, and two of our most pressing are housing and our structural budget deficit.

The empty homes initiative is not a silver bullet in of itself to solve these challenges.

We know there isn't one solution to make everything better.

But let me be clear: every action we can take, small and targeted, big and bold, is important.

This measure has the potential to move us in the right direction by generating new revenue to fund city services, turning empty houses into homes for San Diego for some combination of the two.

And however, this mix plays out, this is a good measure for San Diego and for San Diegans.

I also uh want to thank Council Member Yillow Roder and his team for moving this proposal forward over the past several months, for listening to stakeholders right-sizing the initiative to the version we see today.

I also want to put this measure in proper context because I heard a number of things that are a little bit at odds uh with reality.

The fact is we all operate in a way driven by state, local, and federal law.

We also make decisions based on the tax code.

The tax code, the federal and state tax codes is the very essence of driving the public's investments and financial decisions, incentivizing their behavior.

The Federal Text Code, ironically, in this conversation, for example, literally incentivizes empty second homes.

How?

The tax code allows the owner to deduct mortgage payments, deduct a portion of property tax.

This measure has the opportunity to level that playing field for the rest of us.

However, the empty homes initiative plays out is in the hands of the empty homeowners.

It is their choice.

Pay the tax, change behavior, offer their units for rent, or sell the property.

That's their choice.

Many of those tax uh uh owners of empty homes tell us they operate in a certain way.

This may be an incentive to slightly change how you operate.

As so many other laws and tax code uh provisions to impel us to do.

So make no mistake, every home that comes in the market for rent or for sale is something to celebrate, whether it is high end or workforce housing.

Every new unit that is available to San Diegans is a win.

This measure could bring hundreds of empty homes back into the marketplace, making more homes available to San Diego residents.

That's a win at any scale.

This measure could generate new revenue.

Even the low end estimate of what I hear now is nine million per year, will be a significant contribution towards our structural deficit.

That's a win at any scale.

And if these homes are flipped to short-term rentals, well, that's new TOT that flows to the city budget, as Council Member Camp you mentioned at committee.

And that's a win as well.

So in closing, however, empty homes initiative plays out, keeping that empty home empty and paying the tax, changing the owner's behavior based on the language of the ballot measure, converting it to rental, converting it to a short-term rental or selling it.

No matter what choice these owners make, it is a win for San Diego and a win for San Diegans.

So I will be voting to support the empty homes tax on the June ballot.

Um, you know, sitting up here as council president, um, I hear a lot of things, and I have to decide what I'm gonna talk about.

I'm a little bit disturbed that there is an implication here that the city attorney has not responded to a committee member's request for a legal interpretation.

Now, you would never ask your personal attorney to tell the world what your legal strategy is.

That would be fullhardy, and I think everybody in this room knows it about it.

It was very uncomfortable to listen to the questions at rules committee that essentially was asking the city attorney to risk to resuscitate that's not the right word, to repeat what their legal strategy is in defending this ballot measure.

So I'm very concerned about the idea that is being represented in these chambers that the city attorney has done nothing since committee.

They have done things in the best action that a city attorney should provide in terms of informing council members of legal basis for a measure.

You may disagree with it, that's okay.

You can disagree with it, you can have your own opinion.

We have attorneys on this council that may have a different interpretation.

I'm okay with that.

But to represent to this public that we have received no legal uh briefings on this measure is just frankly false.

And I'm really disappointed by that.

I'll leave it at that, but I will be supporting the measure, and we'll go next to Councilmember Von Wilburn.

Thank you very much for the work in the presentation to uh Council Vera's office.

Thank you to everyone who's waited on this measure.

I know it's been a lot of time and effort and thoughtfulness.

I've heard from many of my residents, not only in District 5, but across the city actually, who have varying opinions on this on this ballot measure.

And some of the concerns that I did hear from residents are one only not only we can't afford to live here, or my daughter became a teacher and she can't afford to stay in the city to folks who have a second condo and their parents come in to do child care for their grandchildren, and that's you know what they use it for.

And so I've heard from all sorts of folks on this.

Um, and I did have a couple concerns that I'm glad have been addressed, uh, including our military service members.

I have quite a few members of the military who live right outside of Miramar in my district, and um I'm glad to see that if they are deployed, which is completely out of their control, especially given the national events going on right now, this empty homes tax would not apply to their home while they're there deployed.

That's correct.

Thank you, Councilmember Von Wilford.

That's correct with the exclusion.

Okay.

Um thank you.

And I also um have heard from many of my constituents uh that own a second home but have family members that live in that second home.

Um they may not have a formal lease.

For example, their their children may come back from college for the summer and in the fall season, and they are here more than you know, 183 days a year, but they don't have a lease with their kids.

Maybe they should, maybe their kids are actually you know should learn how to get into leases.

But my understanding is that there is a rental unit business tax exemption that's available for individuals in the circumstance where family is using the home, so that they can you know show what they're doing with their home.

It's not an actual empty home, that their children or their relatives are in it.

So can anyone from your office or the city treasurer, anyone please speak to the process and what's involved in exempting a property or that has their own family staying in their second home?

Thank you.

I can start us off, and if the treasure's office wants to chime in, they're more than welcome to.

But you're right, in the RUBT, which owners of residential units, um, they pay for the rental unit business tax.

There's an exemption that is available for I forget what it's called in the REBT, but there is an exemption for um family members living on the property, even if they don't have a lease, even if they're paying less than the cost to operate the property, and we did copy that same exemption um practically uh into the sec into our empty homes tax as well.

Okay.

Uh got it understood.

Um I don't know if if the city treasurer wants to weigh in on that now or later, but happy we our residents will want to know what the process is to make sure that they are exempt from the tax if they do meet the qualifications of having their own family in their home.

Um this is Gerardo.

This is uh I'm the uh business tax program manager with the city treasure's office.

So yes, we do have a current exemption um where um the family member, if a family member is living in the property, uh we have the exemption form we require to some um certain uh documents, for example, like uh proof of residence, which could be like a bill and utility bill.

Um there's also the amount that it's the that the uh property is being rented for.

So it has to be rented at less uh than the owner's ex uh owner's expense.

Um so if it's for a profit, then uh it's not exempt, but there's a specific um uh formula we use to exempt homes, and that'll continue.

Council Mr.

Ron Wilfer, very quickly.

Now we're talking about multiple exemptions at the same time, so I want to make sure.

So the exemption that was referenced there, and and the treasurer can correct me if I'm wrong.

They're they're referring to the exemption from the rental business rental unit business tax, right?

So we've got the exceptions and exemptions for this, but the nuances of being able to be exempt from the rental unit business tax that we're just spoken to as well.

Okay.

Understood.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um got it.

So this is the I just appreciate knowing that if there is you know a homeowner who does have their children coming home for the summer or you know, parents coming in to help with grandchild care that will they will be able to use the exact existing exemptions and law to make sure they're exempt from this tax when their home isn't truly empty.

If it is empty, it'd be a different discussion.

Okay, um, thank you.

I appreciate that very much.

Uh and I appreciate everyone who's waiting on this.

Um, since you know there are people who have very different opinions uh back and forth, but you know, we are in the middle of a real housing crisis here in San Diego, and I do believe that big policy decisions like this deserve public input.

And I do support giving voters the chance to weigh in on the empty homes um ballot measure.

Uh I've heard from too many local San Diego families who are struggling to find housing there that they can afford.

And it's reasonable to ask whether a vacant second home should be part of that conversation.

But I do appreciate that this ballot measure includes important protections for other San Diego families who are using their second homes to house their own family or to house their own parents who are coming in to make sure they can care for grandchildren and other things.

So since it would not apply to homes occupied by family members or properties that are vacant through no fault of the owner, including military deployment, disaster, anything or inheriting a home suddenly due to a death in the family.

I do think that this was crafted in a way to make sure it only applies to truly vacant homes.

Um this is about transparency and democracy, and I believe that letting the voter decide how we address our housing challenges is appropriate and right, and I think that the goals of this are very important, and so I will be supporting it today.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Vaughn Wolpert.

We'll go back to Councilmember Campino.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh respectfully, sir, you and I are both bound by the attorney client privilege as members of this body regarding the legal advice we are given.

So I'm unable to respond to your assertion that you just made without violating that privilege.

I'll just repeat the line I said in my comments.

We should rely on the analysis, not just the conclusions to make responsible decisions.

All right, I appreciate that clarification.

Uh not seeing anybody else.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Just oh my very briefly.

My apologies.

Certainly.

The city attorney as the deputy city attorney is on this case, as I pointed out, are diligent, competent, and dedicated.

Just to reiterate, I asked for a robust memo that went into some depth.

You can see my comments at rules as to what that was asking for.

That is what I have not received.

Thank you.

Fair enough.

I'm tired of reading things in the paper that are not what we meant, but how they get interpreted.

And that's the sandbox that we're all stuck in.

So I appreciate your uh clarification.

So with that, I don't see anybody else on the lights.

Uh we have a motion by Councilmember Eloh Rivera that moves the staff recommendation with the uh authorization for himself, Councilmember Elivera to sign and file a written ballot argument in favor of the ballot measure for inclusion in the voter pamphlet, and was seconded by Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Clerk, please call the roll.

I'm sorry, the voting system, please cast your vote.

That passes eight to one with Councilmember Campio voting no.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you.

And with that final vote and final action, we will now adjourn council to the next regularly scheduled council meeting on Monday, March 9th, 2026 at 10 a.m.