Very deeply that because we did that, it was a catalyst for San Diego being chosen to be the unveiling of lawriders.

I would like to acknowledge a few people, some who are here, some who are not here, but I think they're instrumental in the development of lawrider here in San Diego.

For example, Richie Burgos from the Latin Lawriders.

Landlord as being one of the pioneers, probably the oldest lawrider car club here in San Diego.

In our research, we found that there were other car clubs prior to the land of lawriders.

But we gotta think in terms that most of those clubs were mixed.

Mixed meaning it was a mixture of lawriders, customs, hard rocks, and so forth.

Just the fact that in the 50s and 60s, the fact that you had a car, you were already cool.

But the evolution of law riding that started developing, particularly in the 60s here in the late 60s, the land lawriders was a pioneer club that actually brought it to light.

Some of those pioneers are here with us.

I know Victor Perez is here from Land Lawyers.

Our recognition and respects to that.

Some that are not are people from Brown Image.

One very special person that I like to acknowledge is Teddy, Teddy Egypto, who was actually the founder of Brown Image Car Club, the first president, and also the developer of the plaque.

He designed that plaque for Brown Image back in 1969, 1970, somewhere in that arena.

Once again, our compliments to those folks.

Other folks that are not here with us, unfortunately.

Chacho Amesqua from the classics also was instrumental, at least for us in the SAPA, uh, was an icon.

And the names goes on and on.

Few people though, few people, a handful of people that I could say in my 50-something years of being a lawrider as somebody that has never left.

There's many people that were active in the 70s, they disappeared for 34 years, then they come back.

And that's finally we welcome with open arms.

But there's very few people that have stood that have been consistent throughout the years.

Some of those folks, some of our here, some are not.

I know that I wish Massa was here.

Steve Wade Massa, he's here was a he's been a consistent uh lawrider for more than 50 years.

He's in the hospital right now with Wishamara Love and his recruit operation for health.

Uh David Aguilar, I know he's around here someplace.

He's been consistent.

He's another consistent person that has been here, never left, always was here.

And the names could go on and on.

I apologize for not mentioning everybody.

I would like to acknowledge every single lowrider that brought their cars here today.

For me to name them, we'll be here all night, but there were they are 22.

Now actually 20 because two didn't make it, unfortunately.

Two cars didn't make it, the cars were coming from out of town, and we have programmed 22 cars to be here, but we got 20.

To all those 20 people, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for supporting.

In the lawriders, I still todavía.

Aquí estamos y no nos vamos.

Gracias.

I hope you enjoy this privilege, it's honored to be recognized at this level by the United Postal Service.

And behalf of all the lawriders here in San Diego and throughout the world, muchas gracias.

Now you're here for something truly special.

These are students who are remarkable.

They've done a couple events for me for the community.

And there are you can hire them for Kitcheneras, weddings, divorce parties.

I'm kidding.

All right.

Mariachi Aguila.

All right, good morning.

I will now call the city council meeting of Monday, March 16th, 2026 to order.

Deputy Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilmember Campbell.

Thank you, Councilmember Whipper.

Councilmember Whitburn.

Here.

Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Von Wilbert.

Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Here.

Councilmember Campillo.

Here.

Councilmember Moreno.

Present.

Councilmember Ilo Rivera.

And Councilman President Lacava.

Present.

Also attending the meeting, our city attorney Heather Ferbert, independent budget analyst, Charles Modica, and myself, your assistant city clerk at D.C.

Pantaleon.

All right, thank you.

Quorum is now present.

We will begin this morning with an invocation by Deputy Clerk Panthilong, followed with the land acknowledgement and the pledge of allegiance led by Councilmember Campbell.

We respectfully acknowledge that the co I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Grant those who hold office in the city the spirit of wisdom, charity, and justice that with steadfast purpose they may faithfully serve in their offices to promote the well-being of all people.

We respectfully acknowledge that the Cumiang are the original inhabitants of the unceded land, now known as San Diego.

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

We honor the resilience of their ancestors who fought to protect their culture and land.

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

We stand with the Kumey Nation connected to our past and committed to its thriving future.

Please face the flag, put your right hand over your heart, and let's say the Pledge of Allegiance together.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God.

Deputy Clerk is my deputy clerk will now go over how the public can offer their testimony.

Please proceed.

I will now highlight the slide on the screen that reviews how the public can offer the public testimony during today's meeting.

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.

No further in-person testimony will be taken once the council begins virtual testimony for better meeting management purposes.

Each speaker will have one minute per item per person.

All right, thank you, Deputy Clerk.

With that, please read the closed session items into the record and proceed with public comment.

Conference with legal counsel, existing litigation pursuant to California government code section 54956 point nine D1, CS1 January 2020, uh January 22, 2024, flooding litigation.

CS2, critical infrastructure information relating to cybersecurity.

Conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to California government code section 54956 point nine D2 CS3.

Number of cases one and proceed with public comment.

Okay.

Thank you, Council President.

Um we do not have any in-person public comment.

So I will now uh start the five-minute timer and go to our virtual comment.

We'll go to original Drake.

Please let me know uh what items you'd like to speak to.

So if there's other callers, they're gonna be aware of what's happening.

Hello?

Could you could you repeat that again?

I can't hear anything.

Can we we can't hear you?

Can you repeat what you're saying?

She can't hear us.

She can't hear us.

Okay.

Let me see if I could put up the volume.

Can you hear us now?

I think you need to fix it before moving forward because it's obviously there's something wrong.

We can hear you in chambers.

Can you hear us?

Original Dre.

What is that?

Can you hear us now?

We can hear a little bit.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

We have the next caller, Blair Beekman.

I've allowed you to speak.

Could you speak?

Uh could you say which closed session items you'd like to speak to?

There.

I beakman is also here now.

Yeah, we could hear you.

I can hear Blair.

And I can hear DRA.

Can you guys hear us in the council chambers?

It's it's pretty low.

I'm having the same issue as DRA.

I can't hear the council chambers, but I can hear DRA.

Can you hang on for one second, please?

We're having technical difficulties.

Exactly.

I had the same thing.

Can we mute them?

Yeah, we have a meeting.

I can get my public comment if you'd like.

Okay, perfect.

It's okay.

Okay, we could start.

We can start now.

Could you please do?

Can you hear us, Blair?

I got muted.

Well Blair.

Okay, I'm still unmuted, so maybe I will try to speak.

Mr.

Beacon.

Mr.

Beekman, could you hear us?

Thank you for D R A C offered to be cool about this.

No, they can't.

Calm head.

Mr.

Bigman, can you hear us?

I think we're just gonna have to call in.

I wanted to speak to uh three items.

Mr.

Vikman, can you hear us now?

Um thank you.

I wanted to speak to uh CS1, CS2, and CS3.

Okay, please please proceed.

Maybe I can just try to speak now and see how that if that can uh you know go through your chambers.

Okay, good.

The timer started.

So I will speak to the item and hopefully that can be a starting point for ourselves and maybe you can work on it as the meeting goes on.

Uh for CS1.

Um uh uh good luck to ourselves that um we're working on on flood issues as a community process.

Very nice to DRA mentioned at a previous meeting I was attending.

Um it's it's a crazy scenario that there's uh both suing and counter suing going on over flood issues in what was a natural disaster and in a certain responsibility the city of San Diego has in in these sort of issues.

I hope both sides uh I think the reason why San Diego is counter suing is to kind of limit and mitigate the uh suing claims of people.

I hope uh the people suing and the city of San Diego can both take a deep breath and mellow out as much as they can and and come to reasonable agreements together, and not go all out craziness for a really bad situation.

Good luck to have we work on this together.

I know you're trying.

I thought I'd just remind everybody of that right now.

Um item number uh there was another item.

I guess the closed session uh the the item about uh Brown Act issues.

It seems like you're being um uh there's brown act violations going on again that you're having to address.

Um I know the the council and city governments uh California really love Robert Rules of Order, and they follow that to the letter, and that's forms of representational democracy, representation and republic.

Um it's more internalized, it's more of an egalitarian list of parliamentary procedures, whereas the Brown Act is more, you know, the open uh dissipatory democratic process created by legislature for you know our public.

And uh we have a public that really wants to practice open participatory democracy, but you guys in city government always want to practice right you know representational democracy and egalitarian parliamentary procedures, and and that's more secretive and hidden, and and it makes things uncomfortable.

I hope we really want to be you know making the uh the effort to want to explore open participatory democracy as good procedure ideas and how to uh understand our issues uh more clearly.

Uh we don't have to think of it as mob rules.

Uh there's uh there's I can go on for a long time about this on the goodness of open participant participatory democracy.

We're at a time, we can practice it better.

Let's hope we can.

Uh I also wanted to conclude that uh for item uh the second item.

Uh I'm not remembering its nature fully right now.

I'm gonna have it to pass, but uh good luck that you can fix the council uh zoom issues at this time and snappoos.

Uh thank you for your time and patience.

Thank you.

Can I can I go now?

Or I just want to make sure I'm not being skipped.

Oh definitely okay.

Now it's uh really echoey.

Um just trying to guide keep you guys up to date, but I could hear Blair very clear.

I felt like I was on the phone with him, and you sound like you're in a tunnel or something.

Um but anyway, I'll just thank you for your patient.

Please proceed.

Okay, I'm gonna speak on all of them.

Um, yes.

Appreciate you, Blair, and what you had to say about all that with this um CS1 with the um January flooding that had taken place, and you know, you guys are counter suing many of these people, and that's what's so sad is that you're even asking and coming at the people for five billion dollars because the storm infrastructure is basically at its end of life, and we shouldn't be in that place.

So it's a little bit scary to think about what could take place, knowing that the infrastructure is still not going to be um at a place where it's gonna be able to sustain anything, especially when you know weather modification is happening.

Like I talk to you guys all the time, and during that flood, there was cloud seeding happening before, during and after the storm.

So if that happens again, we're in some pretty big shit, and that's just gonna cost more money from the people because you guys in the city didn't do what it's has been necessary over decades of time to make sure that this infrastructure was upkept.

So it's just ridiculous.

And then with the cybersecurity stuff, there's nothing is secure.

Our phones aren't secure, your computers are not secure.

No matter what you do, everything is able to be hacked.

But outside of that, data is being sold in subscription basis.

We know that with like ALPR and Flock and all that, but then it's like you don't put that into everything else where everything isn't secure, but when data gets sold and shared and transferred from here to there and this and that.

So it's like, and it what's worrisome is that you know, you guys want to bring in things like AI.

That's gonna meet make things even less secure and and less you know, um have an ability because it hallucinates.

And that's another thing is that it takes all our fresh water, all these data centers.

So it's like you just I just don't feel like it's sad that you don't think about things in a logical way that um, you know, would make sure that you're protecting people from the dangers of things.

You actually literally like put face us head on to it.

And with the Brown Act, I mean you don't even uphold the constitution, and you're constantly violating the Brown Act and Robert's rules of order.

So it's like it doesn't matter how many, you know, rules get put in place or policies, it's like you're always you're breaking the law with what you guys do.

And the constitution should be the very first thing that you uphold.

I mean, you take an oath to it.

The other things you don't take an oath to like all these other things, but you can't even you know take an oath and make sure that you stand in that and go, we're not going to violate this type of things, like coming after people's guns.

That right shall not be infringed, or First Amendment right, freedom of the press, like just being able to live our lives.

There's it's just it's sad.

So it's like, you know, but here we're gonna be spending money, and hopefully, this will make you guys course correct and start doing things differently so that we don't have to have this type of litigation come down the pike all the time.

I'm not speaking.

Oh no, it's not a good thing.

Hello.

John Stump speaking, the audio is completely goofed up.

You got a big echo, and uh my comments are really for uh closed session non-agenda.

So when you get to that, I hope we can have the audio straightened out.

Call me back for non-agenda comment.

Okay, thank you.

Do you mean non-agenda public comments?

Did you do you hear the echo you've got?

Yes, yes, there's something working on the technical difficulties.

Okay, are you gonna call me back for non-agenda?

That's the thing, but you know your presentation is not working correctly.

Thank you.

We will get in touch with you, Mr.

Substance.

And the last public speaker, and then the 8700.

Please state which closed session items like two.

Wow.

Thank you so much.

I I don't know the name of the person that is uh uh at the uh control there for the uh uh the working of the technology, but uh thank you, thank you, everybody who's helping.

Love you all.

Okay, all three items, please.

You'll have three minutes.

Uh Joyce and Yata District Three.

Uh I can't really hear you barely, but uh I I hope I'm in there.

Well, let me shut off my there.

That's better.

Okay, so uh all three items.

Uh flooding litigation.

Here is my direction.

Most of us know why there are 57 people bringing their hands out to us.

The perfect storm was is our ally, for it makes us look at our city and what makes it work or not work, and this ally showed us what doesn't work.

This is not the city we want to be.

This is not the city we need to be.

We need to put one very simple thing into the plaintiff's hands, show them that we care, then we can follow the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, love to all.

Number two, cyber security.

Here is my direction.

We are not alone in this matter.

It is happening exponentially faster than we perhaps can keep up with it.

A while back, I spoke of the nation's 1.5 trillion dollar debt of undone IT updates, modernization, and so forth.

Dear public, this item is confidential, yet it is up to us to be stewards of knowledge on this matter, and also to support our city in its efforts to bring it under control as best they can.

Love to all and last CS3 Brown Act litigation.

I wasn't sure what I wanted or needed to say on this matter.

So it's not direction per se, it's just this litigation is full of moments like this.

Life has a way of creating them so we can work together more and foster growth.

Love to all.

Wow, praise God, hallelujah.

Thank you.

Have a beautiful day.

Thank you.

Council President.

All right, thank you, Deputy Clerk, for navigating that challenge.

We will now recess into closed session and reconvene council today at 2 p.m.

or shortly thereafter.

Few people though, few people, a handful of people that I could say in my 50-something years of being a lawwriter, as somebody that has never left.

There's many people that were active in the 70s, they disappear for 34 years, then they come back.

And that's why you welcome open arms.

But there's very few people that have stood that have been consistent throughout the years.

Some of those folks, some of our not.

I know that I wish Massa was here.

Steve Wade Massa.

He's a he's been a consistent law writer for more than 50 years.

He's in the hospital right now.

We wish them are enough and his requirement for health.

Uh David Aguilar, I know he's around here, someplace.

He's being consistent.

He's another consistent person that has been here.

Never left.

Always was here.

And the names could go on and on.

I apologize for not mentioning everybody.

I would like to acknowledge every single low rider that brought their cars here today.

For me to name them here all night.

But there were they are twenty-two.

Now actually twenty because two didn't make it, unfortunately.

Two cars didn't make it.

The cars were coming from out of town.

And we have programmed twenty-two cars to be here, but we got twenty.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for supporting law riders that was today.

All right, good afternoon.

I will reconvene the city council meeting on Monday, March 16th, 2026.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Campbell.

Here.

Councilmember Whitburn.

Here.

Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Von Wilber.

Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Here.

Councilmember Campillo.

Councilmember Moreno.

President.

Councilmember Ila Rivera.

And Council President Lacava.

Present.

Also attending the meeting, our assistant city attorney, Leslie Fitzgerald, independent budget analyst Charles Monica, and myself, your city clerk, Deanna Fuentes.

Thank you, Council President.

All right.

Thank you, City Clerk.

A quorum is now present.

I see a lot of uh faces that I haven't seen in chambers before.

Thank you for showing up.

I'm sure we'll have a number of people calling in as well.

Uh rather than read the whole disruption warning language.

Uh the most effective way for you to communicate when you hear things you like or don't like is by using your thumbs.

If you hear a speaker say something you like, thumbs up.

It communicates to hear very effectively.

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

It is uh again a very easy way.

Doesn't disrupt, doesn't interfere with the speaker's ability uh to uh talk to the council uh going forward.

So I think enough said there.

Uh with that, do we have any comments from the mayor's office, city council members, city attorney, independent budget analyst or city clerk.

Councilmember Whitburn.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh over the weekend we had a couple of anti-LGBT incidents in Hillcrest.

Uh the first one involved harassment and slurs.

That was bad enough.

Uh the second one was worse.

Uh person was repeatedly punched in the face by somebody yelling transgender slurs.

I could report that the suspect in that second attack was arrested, thanks to the quick work of our police department.

But since we had two incidents in one weekend, I want to state this publicly.

Since they were installed, they have been used successfully to arrest suspects in LGBT hate crimes.

Do not come to Hillcrest to commit crimes.

Hillcrest is a wonderful neighborhood where people feel free to be whoever they are.

If you don't like that, don't come.

Because be aware that if you come to Hillcrest to commit hate crimes, we have streetlight cameras, we have automated license plate readers, and we have a police department that will use those tools to identify you, catch you, and bring you to justice.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Uh City Clerk.

Thank you, Council President.

During this morning's public comment period on the closed session agenda, we did experience some technical difficulties with those participating virtually.

Excuse me.

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

It is the last uh page on that packet.

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.

If you are seating time, please be sure to submit both speaker slips or the additional speaker slips all together at one time.

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

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

Thank you, Council President.

All right.

Thank you for that.

And with that, please introduce item 200.

Item 200 is the City of San Diego Crime Briefing January through December 2025.

This is an informational item.

If you'd like to speak to this item, please be sure to submit your speaker slip to the front of the room in the clear box, or if you're participating virtually, now is the time to raise your hand by pressing star nine or the raise your hand icon.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you for that.

Introducing that item.

And uh as we see the chief and staff uh settle in, please introduce yourselves for the record and let us know how much time you need for your presentation.

Uh good uh good afternoon, Council President Lacava, uh Scott Wall, Chief of Police, and we will need about 15 minutes, sir.

Proceed when you're ready.

Okay.

Uh good afternoon.

Good afternoon, President Lakava and honorable members of the city council.

I'm pleased to announce today that San Diego remains one of the safest big cities in the country.

Last year, crime dropped for the fourth year in a row.

Some of our numbers haven't been this low since the 1960s and 70s.

When San Diego's population was far smaller than it is today.

I want to highlight a few key statistics.

Homicides fell by 25%.

Our homicide unit solved 26 of the 27 murders committed last year, and ALPRs uh helped us solve a third of them.

Vehicle thefts dropped by 22 percent.

ALPR has helped us arrest 199 people for auto theft last year, and hate crimes dropped by 32 percent.

I know each of you have specific areas of interest, and we will discuss those in more detail, but it's important to take a moment to recognize what this data means for our city.

I often say that public safety is a shared responsibility.

It takes partnerships of all kinds to prevent and solve crime, including working with all of your offices.

Uh we are better, we are stronger, and we are safer when we work together.

From all of our police officers and professional staff doing outstanding police work to our business groups, our community groups, and the various city departments, like our fire department, our lifeguards, uh, our park rangers, environmental services folks, uh we all are collaborating and have contributed to a decrease for the last four years.

It happened because this city works together.

It happened because we all care deeply about the safety of our neighborhoods, and it happened because we are working efficiently and effectively alongside our communities.

And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Jordan Penckhauser from our crime analysis unit to share the 2025 crime stats report.

Thank you, Chief.

Uh good afternoon.

Um Council President Lakava, members of the City Council.

As Chief mentioned, I'm Jordan Fankauser from the San Diego Police Department.

Um I will be presenting the 2025 crime stats for the City of San Diego.

The statistics can will be continue to be based on the national incident-based reporting system or NIBERS format, as that is our official reporting standard to the FBI.

The NIBERS format allows crime statistics to be more comprehensive with additional crime categories and increased accuracy as they are no longer based on static monthly uh totals but are updated as cases are reported and investigated over time.

All right.

Compared to 2024, overall crime has decreased 6.3%.

And crime clearances trended just slightly up at 2.7%.

As a reminder, an FBI crime clearance constitutes an offense that has been closed by an arrest or some other exceptional means.

For example, the offender was already serving a prison sentence for another crime.

Looking to the five-year trends for each category, we can see the crimes against society experienced an increase, in which we will go into more detail later.

Most notably, crimes against property has continued to track well below our recent trends.

NIBERS Crimes by Category.

This slide shows the year-over-year comparison for all three NIBERS categories by volume.

As is typical, crimes against property accounts for the bulk of offenses in the overall totals.

Since these categories are still fairly new in California with respect to discussing crime statistics, I'll briefly define them for familiarization going forward.

Per the FBI, crimes against persons, for example, murder, intimidation, and assault, are those whose victims are always individuals.

The burgl the object of crimes against property, uh, for example, robbery, bribery, or burglary, is to obtain money or there's some other bit uh some other benefit.

And lastly, crimes against society, for example, alcohol offenses, prostitution, drug violations, et cetera, represent society's prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity.

And these are typically reflective of police enforcement actions of a specific offense.

NIVERS Crimes Clearances.

This slide highlights the clearance rates of all three categories for both 2024 and 2025.

As you can see, all three categories remain relatively similar year over year.

It's important to highlight that crimes against society tends to remain at an almost 100% clearance rate, as the majority of the offenses in that category comprise of events in which an officer arrests an individual during the commission of the act.

The most recent FBI NIBERS data available, which was in 2024, shows a national average of 41.9% clearance rate for crimes against persons, a 16.6 rate for crimes against property, and a 35.7% rate for all categories combined.

Crimes against persons.

Overall, our first category, crimes against persons, was down 3% compared to 2024.

Homicides, which were down 19%, comprised 27 confirmed murder investigations and 12 traffic related offenses, such as DUI related manslaughter or hit and run.

San Diego has not seen murder cases this low since 1968.

Both aggravated assaults and non-fatal shootings have continued to see decreases.

Notably at 96 nonfatal shootings for 2025, that is a 63% decrease since a recent spike in 2021.

The kidnapping abduction category saw a decrease of 19% and was comprised mostly of offenses related to false imprisonment associated with domestic violence or other assault-related events.

Within the sexual assault category, which saw an overall decrease of 7%, rape accounts for approximately half of the offenses.

Other than rape, the sexual assault category includes offenses such as forcible fondling or sexual battery.

The 2025 clearance rate for crimes against persons at 49% was very similar to 2024 and was nearly 10% above the national average.

Nonfatal shootings by council district.

This chart highlights nonfatal shootings by council district for both 2024 and 2025.

In 2025, nonfatal shootings decreased by 25 cases compared to 2024, with notable decreases across most of our districts.

Our second category here shows a decrease of 12% overall.

As a reminder, robbery, even though potentially violent in nature, is classified as a crimes against property as the FBI considers the attempt of the crime to obtain property despite the presence of force or fear being used.

Robbery was down again in 2025, with 35% of offenses occurring while armed and only 4% involving carjackings.

Typically, robberies make up approximately 8% of typically carjackings make up approximately 8% of our robberies overall.

Total robberies have not been this low in San Diego since 1970.

Both burglaries from a structure and thefts from a vehicle saw notable decreases in 2025 as well, at 23% and 25% respectively.

Following a trend with the robbery category, burglaries have not seen similar numbers in the city since 1959.

Most notably, continuing the significant downward trend from 2024, motor vehicle theft experienced a 22% decrease citywide.

Clearance rates for this category remained similar to the year prior at 13%, which was slightly below the most recent national average.

Vehicle thefts by council district.

The chart represented on this slide depicts vehicle thefts by council district for both years 2024 and 2025.

As you can see, all districts experience decreases in vehicle thefts.

It's notable that our southern border region and downtown are often the areas with the highest concentration of stolen vehicles citywide.

However, there were significant decreases in both districts three and eight in 2025, accounting for a large portion of the overall 22% decrease.

Vehicle thefts across the city have not been this low since 1972.

Crimes against society.

Our third NIBERS category depicted here as crimes against society.

To reiterate from a previous slide, crimes against society are generally offenses in which an individual was arrested during the commission of the act and are often a representation of enforcement actions taken by the department.

Increases in offenses of this category do not immediately indicate an increase in criminal activity, but instead increases in proactive enforcement by police agencies.

Overall, this category has seen a 6% increase over 2024.

The most significant increases to note in this category are represented by both drug and narcotics and loitering offenses.

Increased enforcement related to the late 2024 passing of Proposition 36, which strengthens penalties for repeat theft and drug offenses, resulted in increases in both the drug narcotics category as well as significantly in loitering.

The Department of Justice classifies the offense of loitering in a public place for illegal drug activities under this category.

So while illegal lodging or curfew offenses may be present, approximately 60% of loitering offenses are related to narcotics.

Other categories of note include trespassing offenses increasing by 10% and alcohol violations experience a 9% uptick, primarily due to increases in DUI arrests.

As highlighted earlier, clearance rates remain at close to the 100% mark for this category, as the majority of the offenses encompassed are enforcement related, and the offenders are generally arrested at the scene.

Crime categories by council district.

This slide highlights the overall nine crime NIBERS crime distribution by council district broken down into each crimes against category.

As you can see, crimes against property depicted in blue account for the majority of offenses in each district.

All of the districts saw a decrease in overall crime depicted by the percent change at the top of each column as compared to 2024.

Historical crime rate comparison.

Since 2025 was not only the fourth year in a row of decreased overall crime since 2021, but one of hallmark numbers in key categories, we thought it important to display a slightly more macro view of crime in the city since we began collecting uniform crime reporting statistics back in 1950.

For historical comparison purposes, we are using the older definitions of violent and property crime.

In this case, we're looking at rates per 1,000 individuals at five-year intervals.

As you can see, following the severe uptick in the property crime rate in the 1970s, primarily driven by increases in larceny, and a smaller increases in violent crime that mirrored that.

Both crime rates peaked around 1990.

Following the early 90s, both property crime and violent crime have gradually returned to rates similar to what we were experiencing in the 1950s and 1970s, respectfully.

It's important to note that the population of San Diego has tripled since those decades ago, yet we remain at decreased overall crime rates.

Highlighted on this slide are gang specific stats for both 2024 and 2025, depicting crime activity by category and total documented gang members.

While overall crimes committed by known gang members has seen a 13% decrease, specifically violent gang activity has increased.

Arrests of documented gang members has also increased by 20%.

Hate crimes.

There were 41 confirmed hate crimes last year in the city of San Diego, a 32% decrease from 2024.

Hate crimes with an anti-transgender, anti-race, and antisexual orientation have all decreased.

Most notably a 40% 6% reduction in sexual orientation based hate crimes.

Anti-race hate crimes were comprised of one incident per race group with the exception of anti-white.

The remaining four incidents were mixed racial biases.

Anti-religious hate crimes experienced a significant increase throughout the early months of the year, with a severe series of vandalisms focused on religious institutions in the central division of San Diego.

These act appeared to be randomly targeting religious institutions in general and not any one particular denomination.

Following the series earlier in the year, anti-religious hate crimes continued a trend similar to what has been observed in previous years.

As shown in the slides during this presentation, overall crime in 2025 decreased compared to 2024, with significant declines across major categories.

These decreases are in line with the national trend amongst major many major cities of the United States during this past year.

The City of San Diego not only continues to experience decreased crime overall, but consistently demonstrates some of the lowest violent crime rates among major U.S.

cities.

This concludes our presentation this time.

We're here for any questions.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much for the presentation.

Clerk, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Council President.

We have some speakers here in Council Chambers as well as participating online.

And we will be going to a minute and a half each, starting with Pastor Sandoval, if you can please come up to the microphone.

And if the following individuals can please come up to the yellow reserve seats, Robert Ontiveros, Dennis Friedman or Denise Friedman, Blair Beekman, Scott Chipman, and Bob Kazuski.

Pastor, you can have a minute and a half.

Please proceed when ready.

Thank you.

It's a great honor and privilege to be here before the council.

And our collaboration of crime stats going down.

We have the philosophy that it truly takes a village to raise a child and with the wraparound partners.

Being that you're sandwiched between Tijuana, which is one of the cartel capitals, and Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world.

How do you guys keep it down?

Number one is we have the philosophy that those that used to be part of the problem are now part of the solution.

So we have uh what we called credible messengers or lived experience, uh, former gang members that serve time in the prison, and now they're back out in the community, building rapport.

Now they're back out in the community, building rapport.

They they already have credibility in their communities, community leaders, but being strength based using their uh what they used to use for negativity now for positivity.

We have guys like uh behind me, Rudy.

He has a criminal history, really long criminal history.

Uh Rob Bird, different guys, they it's their testimony.

I'm not saying it to shame them.

Um, but and we also have faith-based leaders, um, castwalks, community assistance support teams, um, and uh faith-based leaders, community-based organizations.

We do walk and ox uh with the no shots fired and other community organizations like community wrap round, uh, youth empowerment, open heart leaders.

And so it takes a village and the chief has been um uh a champion in this, and every one of you as well have been a champion in this, and thank you for having representation from your from your district uh active in the commission on game prevention intervention.

Sorry for going over on my time.

One of our one of our staff members will be going over to get an additional speaker slip for them seeding time to you.

Okay, thank you.

Robert Antiveras.

Oh, wait.

Oh, wait, I'm on 42 seconds.

You take some of my time.

Please proceed.

Well, thank you for uh having us here.

My name is Robert Anti Veros with Community Wrap Around, and I'm here with my team, and we're here in support of the crime sats to support Chief Wall.

I know when he first came on in the role, he had had a vision that he shared, and I could be a witness to that vision because it's coming to fruition.

Um I'm seeing it, we're boots on the ground as lived experience mentorship.

Our organization, it's gang prevention intervention is what we specialize in, and so I just here to support Chief Wall and everything you're doing, and just want to keep that going.

Um, we always say it's it's it's not enough, but you know what, it's a working in progress, and so we just need to keep going and working together.

And just like how Pastor uh said that it does take a village, it takes all of us to come together to in order to get things done.

And so, with the collaboration with STPD, with also the vision he shared with the youth senual services that he also brought on.

Uh, we've been working in collaboration with them as well.

And uh just an example of the collaboration of uh working together is not arresting and taking youth into custody right away.

They call us to be able to find out and figure out a way before taking that youth into custody.

So that's just one of the examples of the collaboration, the work that we're doing together.

So thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Let's go.

Well, yes, I'm the honorary mayor of PB, and I've gotten here because of this man.

He got me involved with the community policing and working um in my community and now spreading it out through all of San Diego, and I have worked with these groups too.

Um I'm proud of everything that has been accomplished.

I support you 100% as do all the members of our beach communities, not just PB, but Claremont, uh Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, La Jolla.

We all proudly support your work, and we look forward to working with you this year so the crime statistics are even lower next year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Blair Beekman.

After Blair Bigman will be Scott Chipman and then Bob Kazuski.

Hi, thank you, Blair Beekman.

Thanks a lot for this item.

It's really timely and helpful and important.

We have a lot of national security issues at this time.

Uh, it's nice that this item is here, and we can have a community conversation on uh the intersection between national security, crime issues, how we're gonna work on these issues at this kind of fragile time.

Um good item.

Uh nice to hear it's now been four years of really uh uh reducing crime in San Diego and and in cities across the state, if not the country.

Um these are practices that we've started in the previous Biden administration, basically, and we've been trying to explain to Trump that we have a good thing going here.

Uh, you don't have to like overwhelm an already good situation we're building.

So thank you for this work and effort.

It is with four years now of continual good practices.

Um, I hope we can really look into the ideas of responsible technology.

I know you guys have a philosophy we all do.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Or yeah, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

And so I'm sure you want to keep moving on in the same momentum, but I think it's really important as good progressive practices.

We have to be considering the concepts of responsible surveillance technology and not a plethora of tech.

And we have the capability to ask those questions.

I hope in this coming year where we can be talking about those good things.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Scott Chipman.

And I believe somebody was seeding you time for this, but then we went back.

Okay.

I don't need it for this.

I'm here also to congratulate the chief and his staff.

Excellent.

Um it should be noted that they're running it about 10% down from uh the budgeted number of officers.

Um I also noted and had an opportunity to speak briefly with him about the increase in drug and alcohol crime.

Should be noted that if you want to bring DUIs to near zero, just stop enforcing.

Don't look for them, don't do any saturation patrols, uh, don't do any DOI checkpoints.

And he assured me that the reason these are going up is because we're getting more enforcement on those issues.

So this is obviously a con an indication that the city and the citizens who promoted uh Chief Wall made a great choice.

We look forward uh to the future and doing even better in the future.

There's no community that supports the police any more than Pacific Beach, and so congratulations.

Next is Bob Kazuski, if you can please come up to the podium.

I'd like to add on to Scott's comment that one way to reduce crime is to simply not report it.

Um I'm not gonna address this to Chief Wall because this is something that happened before his term, and I don't believe he's responsible for it, but I do want to share my own experience trying to report a crime that I encountered here in San Diego.

A number of years ago, I was assaulted repeatedly by the son of a former police officer.

Uh David Jeb was the police officer, and his son was Gabriel Jeb.

I went directly to the Northern Division and stood there and tried to fill out a police report, asked to do so, and I was told, uh please go out and wait in your car, and we'll send an officer out to take your report.

Now I thought that was a little strange, but after about an hour of waiting at the end of the day, I kind of figured no one was coming out, and they did not take that police report.

I had went back again and again, and until I brought my lawyer with me, they refused to take a report on Gabriel Jeb, the son of David Jeb.

Now I know that there's got to be camaraderie in the force, and I know you guys do a dangerous job, but please recognize that part of the problem is that your officers are sometimes not taking reports against other officers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That does conclude public comment here in Council Chambers.

I'm starting those that are participating remotely.

We have seven speakers in the queue, starting with Catherine Douglas.

If you can please unmute.

Good afternoon.

This crime briefing report from 2025 is beyond impressive.

Chief Wall, along with his entire hard-working team, delivered these results through precision-based policing that focused efforts on quick apprehension and solving violent crimes.

The use of game-changing technology such as smart street lights and automated license plate readers, helped officers apprehend suspects faster, preventing subsequent offenses, and by fostering a collaborative partnership with the communities they serve.

One great example of this is the No Shots Fired Initiative and the group that spoke first today in chambers.

I met them at the press conference last week.

They're an amazing group of people.

Well done, Chief Wall and team.

Policing is a demanding job, but our SDPD team has clearly done a spectacular job and deserves both our praise and support.

Public safety is the number one responsibility of government.

Please support our police department and the FY27 budget to continue this trend for the safety of every single one of us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is 8700.

If you can please unmute after that, the original 8700 star six.

Thank you.

Joy Sunyata C D3.

Thank you, Chief Wall and the rest of the SDPD for building more trust in how safe we feel in San Diego.

That's a big deal.

Thank you.

And uh the crime decrease again, this time by 6.3%.

Another big thank you.

Now I'm gonna tweak my comments a bit.

I had a lot to say, but it changed because of the public speakers just now in the chamber.

But I'll start with this.

Uh my uh like uh from the offense table was clearance rates.

Um, skip that, skip that.

Uh anyway, I had a question about the uh district attorney not issuing criminal charges, and I wondered what percentage that is.

And I wonder how she was helping those people that she wasn't charged.

So what what happened is the public speakers, the first, second, and third, I believe.

I hope they're still there in the chamber because I love them so much.

I honor their courage.

Uh, it's just tremendous what they've done with their lives.

Thank you for coming and sharing with us.

And I just want you to know gang prevention and that violence is so critical, and I was shocked to find out that it goes to family.

It's a legacy, it's a generational thing that is passed on and expected.

So, what you did with your lives, whether it includes my apologies, the original.

If you can please unmute, and then it's the gambler.

I'd like to give a warm handoff to this of this propaganda update to Stephen Whitburn.

I find it very egregious because there are many things that are not being reported, especially in Tent City because Dreams for Change is actually telling participants not to report the sexual assaults that are taking place.

The police sit and watch people do fentanyl.

You guys give people pipes and needles and tests to test their drugs and make sure it's not fentanyl.

You also give them Narcan.

You're penalizing and criminalizing homelessness because you guys have nowhere to put them.

Um fentanyl is being distributed throughout Tent City and being done again right in front of officers on the street.

Um, and you can find little pieces of foil all over the place, something that's potentially dangerous even for the animals that are just walking there, potentially a child if they wanted to pick it up and then all of a sudden overdose.

So, and then when you have the police who may or may not take in a report, they actually have the discretion to do whatever they want.

So, you know, we have children that are being kidnapped on a regular basis.

There is a massive pedophilia problem within the gay community, within just children in general being targeted in San Diego.

Um, it is very disturbing to see these kinds of things take place while you guys want to paint a pretty picture that San Diego is a safe place.

That is not true, especially when you guys are the gatekeepers of being able to do any kind of um, you know, pushing of criminal uh activity or stopping it.

Thank you.

Your time is concluded.

The gambler, if you can please unmute, and then after that is Ernie Casco.

How are you guys doing today?

I mixed feelings on this primarily how much of the reduction.

I like the fact that there's more police out on there, and I noticed that they're a little bit more active than they used to be.

But what did that come to?

Because you guys refuse to do things for years and years and years, even on the streets that people freaking got killed.

So many people died in the last four years because you chose to look away.

And matter of fact, you have no backing by your by the people sitting in this court.

Like if they would get anything from throwing you under the bus, they would in a heartbeat.

That's a sad friggin' reality that we're faced with today.

If the uh is corrupt people have full control over our elections very easily.

Anyone could go ahead and register anyone and vote for them.

There is no real checks and balances, and the clear initiative is not going to pass.

So we're gonna be stuck in the situation.

So what?

Is this just a temporary retrieve?

And then if you actually enforce something, are you gonna be prosecuted immediately after because of politically just?

I mean, we right now we could go in and solve our money problem very easily by adopting Julian Brown's technology, do you?

Oh, hell no, because you make more money personally if you go ahead and go along with the game because they're gonna go ahead and suppress true inventors, right?

Your time has concluded.

Ernie Casco, if you can please unmute after that is Zoom user.

The five-minute timer has also concluded.

There were three speakers in the queue.

No additional speakers will be taken.

Please proceed, Ernie.

Ernie Casco, Lahoy resident, Tory Pines Gladirport.

I report is serious allegations to SDPD, the real estate access department, and directly to you, Joe Lakava office at Torre Pines Gladerport.

Where are the police reports?

I refuse to surrender my freedom under threat of violence.

This is a negligent homicide and attempted murder case, workplace violence, wrongful termination, assault over the death of a pilot.

It was attempted murder and retaliation by switching my wing that collapsed in mid-flight, crashing on a rooftop.

My home was invaded twice.

Then I was poisoned with a deadly biohazard.

This is an ongoing hate crime that needs to stop.

No citizens should have their life under threat or die over the commercialization of a public park.

It's time to stop the crime with the permanent reinstatement of Torrey Pine's glide report advisory board and the immediate implementation of the proposed San Diego recreational waiver as a proven solution that ends the dispute and addresses the victim and witnesses that have been damaged by Tory Pines glide report negligent operation.

It's a win for city council liabilities and restores recreational rights and freedoms for years to come to what it were originally was.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Zoom user.

If you can please unmute, our final speaker will be Tasha Williamson, Zoom user.

Thanks for taking my calls, Hector.

I want to shout out to the good Lord Jesus for not turning his back on us and having those uh gang guys step forward and take care of uh business in their neighborhood.

They're doing great.

Well, the last four years under Biden and under our own governor, it was legal to steal 950 bucks a day from anybody.

Just walk in and take it.

You know, that was just criminal, man.

I think the reason everything's down is because Trump took over and it's getting hardcore now to break a crime.

You need some other uh stat statistics of ice deportations in San Diego County.

How many criminals were deported?

That wasn't on the stats.

That takes a lot of the bad guys out of here.

And now they know uh that it's gonna be more guys they're looking for and stuff with ice to get them out of here.

And it's gonna get real when we go against the drug dealers, they kill people.

Just like in Tijuana, they had 50 car bombs just a while ago.

So it could come over to San Diego, but who knows?

It's gonna get it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

But the guys that are making a difference with the good lord on their side there, that's gotta be.

Plus, good luck in the in the next year.

So when ICE shows up again, hardcore, and it really gets uh it's gonna be pretty exciting to get everybody deported.

It'll be great.

Thank you.

Our final speaker is Tasha Williamson.

Please unmute.

Tasha, I can unmute for you.

A pop-up should have come up.

I will have to seem to have dropped.

I would like to know for the record that this item did receive three comments in favor and zero comments in opposition.

Um VRE comment form, which has been distributed to the council.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, City Clerk.

Uh, as a reminder, this is an information item, and no motions required.

We'll go turn it over to council member for questions and comments.

And we'll start with council member Von Wolper, the chair of our public safety committee.

Thank you, Council President, and uh thank you, um, Chief, and thank you to the entire department and for the presentation today.

Uh thank you to the community for coming out.

Um, it is good news that we are down once again in crime across our city, making us still the safest, largest city in America, which is no easy feat.

And these results don't happen by accident.

They are the result of the dedication of our officers, their strong leadership, the policies and investments we've made as a city and as the city council, but it's also the result of our community.

Public safety is a community effort, and our officers actually rely on building trust with the community to make us safer, which is also why oversight, transparency, and building community trust is just as important as making sure we have highly trained officers able to show up to 911 calls on time.

Um, I want to thank all of our partners from the Commission on Gang Prevention.

Thank you for being here, Pastor.

Your words are very meaningful.

I appreciate the work you're doing.

Um, I want to thank CNDGO Youth Services and other nonprofits who are helping out.

I want to thank also No Shots Fired, who came into our public safety committee last week to tell us about the incredible gang interruption violence work they are doing, including one of their members was actually shot this past year in the middle of trying to interrupt more gang uh gun prevention, gun violence prevention here.

I want to thank our gun violence prevention team, um, our ghost gun task force, as well as the folks getting gun violence restraining orders.

You know, we can prevent mass shootings in this country.

We have seen it in our school districts.

If you report something, our police will take it seriously and get guns out of dangerous situations.

So please keep reporting things.

I also want to thank our MEA represented employees, such as our 911 dispatchers, who have incredibly hard jobs to hear victims calling for help and ensuring that our officers have the information they need to get there on time.

If you ever want to go see how hard our 911 dispatchers work with information coming at them from four different screens, they're calling, hearing the victim, they're talking to the police officers on the street as they're getting there.

It is incredibly hard work that they do.

I want to thank our ASPE 127 workers who are the mechanics, for example, who keep our cars running and keep our equipment functioning.

Uh, and the civilian staff from our retired senior volunteer positions, our PISO officers, the clerical staff who do the purchase orders to make sure that our equipment is actually purchased and funded for our police department.

We have so many city employees who have their hands on public safety, and I'm gonna thank all of them.

Um I also want to thank most importantly our SDPD officers who every day put their lives on the line.

Uh on Valentine's Day at Saturday night, I actually went on a ride-along and I saw one of the most tragic scenes I've seen in my lifetime.

And I served in the Peace Corps in the AIDS crisis in Africa.

I have seen a lot of children buried.

But we saw an horrible stabbing on the street downtown, actually, in Councilor Whitmer's district.

The victim did not survive.

And by the time I got there, the suspect had then fled inside the apartment building and had lit his unit on fire trying to burn the apartment down.

So I was able to witness almost all of the apparatus this city funds from our police cars, our PRT response team, our ambulances.

I now understand why automated CPR machines are so important.

I saw the tower ladder come from the fire department.

I could not believe that this is what one incident required.

And then I saw the resilience of the witnesses who witnessed the unfortunate stabbing, and they waited in the cold into that late hours of the night just for the homicide team to arrive and take their statements.

So there are brave civilians in this city who are willing to stand up and talk about what they saw every day, and I want to thank everybody who's brave enough to come forward.

But I do have some questions as well.

Um in addition to all the great work we are doing with our department, there's also times that we can improve.

And so we also need to continue training.

And so I want to know, Chief, can you tell us about how you're actually increasing training to make sure that we don't you know use excessive force and incidences and we respond appropriately?

I know you're rethinking our training program, so I'd love for you to tell everybody about it.

Sure, thank you for that question, Councilmember.

Uh first, let me start by saying police training across the country is one of the first things that gets cut during tough budget times.

Uh, I'm very proud to say uh working with my staff.

We have not cut training since I started as police chief.

Uh but to be open and transparent, our training is not enough.

We need to increase and do more as this world becomes more and more complex.

Uh as crime trends begin to change, we need to be more adaptive.

Uh, one of the first things I did was I changed over the entire chain of command in our training division uh with the intent to redesign our training program.

Uh we lacked a leader a true leadership development unit and a true leadership development program.

It's one of my top three priorities to develop inspiring leaders that people love to come to work for uh and that can lead this this city into the future.

Uh I'm proud to say that that we we have that leadership development unit in place uh and the leadership programs are beginning, not just for the top part of our organization, but for our frontline police officers, detectives, our professional staff, all the way up to the top of this organization.

Uh additionally, we just last month started two field training teams.

Uh our training cycles have for decades have uh extended for an 18-month cycle.

Back in the 90s and early 2000s when the world wasn't spinning as fast as it is today.

That 18-month cycle was sufficient.

But in today's world, we see trends or uh different types of situations that we're uh facing in the streets.

Uh, and we need to need to adapt our training.

Uh so we now have two field training teams that are working seven days a week.

They're going out to lineups instead of having a longer duration of training, it's shorter, more frequent with high repetition.

Right.

And we're able to change the um the training scenarios overnight.

So we went from an 18-month cycle to an overnight pivot, which is is taking an aircraft carrier, and we're driving it more like a speed boat.

So I'm very proud of our training division for what the work that they've done.

Uh, and we've done that without expanding the budget in any way.

So very proud of what they've come up with.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

And I I do realize the training can be the first thing to cut in a hard budget season, but that will result in harder calls later down the road.

We don't want to set up our officers to fail in the community.

We want to make sure that they are trained and they can adapt.

If something happens, they should be able to address that right away rather than you said wait 18 months for a training cycle to come around when they address something that happened a year ago.

So I think it's very smart the way you're doing this and let us know how we continue to fight for that in the budget because we crime unfortunately is not stopping.

People call 911 all the time.

I mean hundreds of thousands of 901 calls a year.

So I want to make sure we do fight to make sure there is enough in the budget to make sure officers are continually trained in continuous approvement.

I also want to ask and say thank you as well for the incredible work you're doing cutting down the amount of overtime costs.

It's been incredible to see.

So our response times are uh not where I'd like to see them, quite frankly.

Uh we we have different priority calls in our dispatch center uh for the highest emergency calls.

We are underneath just slightly underneath the threshold of seven minutes response time.

And the reason we're hitting that is because when those calls come out, everybody drops what they're doing, no matter what they're doing, and they go to that call.

So we're hitting that response metric, but every other response time uh is sometimes double and triple expected time frame.

Uh we went through a reorganization in my first 60 days as chief.

Uh we've been kind of retooling and refocusing our efforts and moving our overtime around.

To go through the amount of change that we've gone through this past year, year and a half, uh, and to have response times remain the same is remarkable.

We cut almost seven million in in in overtime uh without causing response times to skyrocket and without having to reduce the services we provide to the city.

So it's remarkable work that that my staff and department members are doing.

Very proud of them for that.

I think it's incredible as well.

I mean, we are still not fully staffed for the amount of officers that we could under the budget, and the city of San Diego has grown exponentially, and yet we're still making it to 911 calls.

And so um I do want to keep making sure we're funding recruitment academies because we're losing a lot of good officers to retirement.

So uh I know the budget's very hard, uh, but I and I know we just want to make sure we're continue recruiting and getting uh a diverse group of officers and that who can fill backfill as we get retirements.

Um my last question, which is about the technology we've been implementing to help officers do their jobs quicker.

I mean, I've seen taser 10 out in action that's been very helpful for officers other than the old school tasers, which are not as useful, and also the automated license plate readers.

I mean, we just heard about yet another hate crime happening in our city, and I know the automated license plate reader technology was able to help prevent those and caught the suspects uh two years ago in Hillcrest.

So uh to how is how is it I I know we've been reducing vehicle thefts, we've been solving homicides with it, but it has it still continued to be productive for all of us for the city.

Our staffing levels are uh about we have about a 10% vacancy rate based on our budget right now.

But if you look at the call volume that we have and the amount of time that it takes to handle that call volume, we're about a thousand officers short of what we need.

If you look at similar sized cities across the country, uh Phoenix is uh a thousand or three thousand police officers, we're at about eighteen hundred and fifteen somewhere around there right now.

Uh Dallas, 3,300 police officers, same size city.

So we're definitely doing the job with fewer officers.

Uh we're finding creative ways to try to make sure that we're uh being as efficient and as effective as we possibly can with the limited resources we have.

There's no question that technology helps us bridge that gap.

Uh, whether it's licensed license plate readers that help us apprehend suspects after they commit the first crime or second crime versus allowing them to commit commit multiple crimes before we figure out who they are and catch them, uh, or whether it's using other technologies uh specifically when it comes to uh you know, like taser 10.

Uh you know, tools like that help us save lives uh when we have violent uh combative individuals and we're able to have a greater standoff distance uh and that uh particular system helps us stay further back and have multiple uh attempts at trying to get that person safely into custody.

There's no question that it's uh extremely helpful for us.

Got it.

Um and we've had robust hearings here at City Hall on privacy and transparency and civil rights, which are all equally important.

So if anybody has questions about how automated license plate readers are used, you can see the transparent use policy on the city's website.

You can note where all these cameras are on the city's website.

Um we have weekly audits that the police and our IT department does showing why the the data has been pulled, what it's used for, and we are unique among other cities.

We do not share our automated license plate reader system with any other city.

Others around us do.

The city of Chula Vista has these Oceanside, Escondido, Los Angeles put up ALPRs and smart street lights.

The city of Berkeley uses ALPRs and Star Street Lights.

Oakland, I mean, these are used to prevent and treat crime or prevent and and actually solve crime.

However, there was a caller talking about whether or not the city cooperates in immigration enforcement, and let me be clear, we do not.

It's very we actually led a vote at the city of San Diego to join the lawsuit with Minneapolis against the federal administration for what ICE is currently doing in our communities because that is not law enforcement.

But Chief, can you state on the record again we do not violate the California Values Act and we are not cooperating in immigration enforcement?

Yes, ma'am.

Uh first of all, we don't share with anybody in the state.

Uh we don't share with our federal uh partners.

Uh we definitely don't use it for immigration purposes.

Uh we're in complete compliance with Senate Bill 54 as well as Senate Bill 34 in terms of uh sharing that that information.

We retain it and own that data.

Uh and again, we're trying to be as transparent as we possibly can and have the oversight and auditing in place so that uh people can be comfortable and confident that we're using it the right way to catch criminals.

Thank you.

It is critically important.

People feel safe calling our officers and calling 911, and so I just want to reiterate that again on the record.

So thank you very much for the great news today.

Thank you for the community effort and the work everyone in our department is doing.

Um, but I do want to close in recognizing this incredible progress and keeping us all safe.

There's also something just as important.

There were still horrible victims of crime last year.

I mean victims of horrible crimes.

And I still want to note that that even though our crime statistics are down, statistics are not just numbers.

There are people who've lost family members, there are people who have had to leave their homes due to Mexican violence.

There are children who faced hate crimes in our schools, and so I want to acknowledge that there are still victims that we have to remember in this situation, even as we're celebrating lower crime rates.

I still want to remember them too.

So thank you very much for the briefing.

Thank you for the good news, and I'll close my comments.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Von Wolpert.

We'll go next to Councilmember Moreno.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um the City of San Diego's 2025 crimes briefing data shows meaningful declines in violent railent crimes, robberies, burglaries, and vehicle theft.

Um, I do want to start off by commending the men and women of the San Diego Police Department and Chief Wall for their outstanding work in reducing crime across the city.

Um, as shown um on the graph titled Vehicle Theft by Council District 2024 versus 2025 uh district date is significantly higher with 1,622 vehicle thefts in 2024 and 1,161 in 2025.

Um it does appear that the high number of vehicle theft is due to the targeting operations by criminals around the cross border express um in 2024, more than four million people used um CBX to cross over uh to take a flight um through uh Rodriguez International Airport in Tijuana, Mexico.

Um criminals know the high volume of activity at CBX, and it pres it shows that they're taking advantage of travelers that leave their cars unattended for days, maybe even weeks.

Now, CBX is a vital part of my district, and I I would argue um it's a vital uh part of the city of San Diego and the state of California.

So having uh CBX in District 8 comes with its responsibilities.

Uh my question is what measures is the SDPD implementing to address the high uh rate of vehicle thefts in this area.

Thank you for that question, Councilmember.

Uh, first let me start by saying uh there's been a considerable drop from 2024 to 2025.

I think we were fewer by four or five hundred vehicle thefts just in that in your district alone.

Uh so definitely celebrate the progress.

Uh but there are uh still 1100 other cases uh from this last year that that we do need to address and continue driving that number down.

I will say that with with technology like license plate readers, where we arrested 199 people last year for auto theft based on the license plate readers.

Uh in other cities around the county are having similar progress.

What we're doing when you look at the from a macro level, we're taking the auto thieves off of the playing table.

Uh and we're seeing that across across the country.

But specifically for that lot, it is it is a target-rich environment.

There's thousands of cars there, and they're there most of the time uh for an extended period.

Uh and so what is it's gonna take is is really uh uh focused enforcement in those lots.

Uh some of them are as you know, are joint use uh or or uh federal property uh and so working with our our federal partners as well to try to address uh this issue and trying to bring additional security measures, security patrols, whether it is federal uh agents or if it's security or San Diego police officers.

Um but we're we we're committed to working on this and and of course your office to make sure that that we keep it at the forefront.

Thank you.

I appreciate your response.

Um recently CBX did send um a memo to the mayor.

Um I know they sent one to me uh and requesting focused enforcement in this area as and additional security.

So I look forward to seeing that in the next year.

Uh and thank you for the response.

Um I want to redirect our focus to Dalbergia Street and District 8.

Um, in a few minutes, we're gonna hear item 201 requesting Dalbergia to reduce its speed limits by five miles per hour.

Uh this change follows a citywide study, which determined that Dalbergia has one of the greatest needs for uh speed reduction due to and I quote high levels of commercial activity and traffic volume.

Um while there are several businesses in the area on Dalbergia, such as Etico, Fix Auto, San Diego Galvanize Inc., just to name a few, uh, the high levels of commercial activity and traffic volumes can be associated with ongoing issues related to prostitution activity along Dalbergia.

Uh can the department uh provide an update regarding prostitution activity and what SDPD is doing to combat the prostitution of Dalbergia and just in general enforcement efforts that the PD is undertaking to address this issue.

Well, first let me let me say the additional large vehicles uh construction trucks in in that area, smaller streets, uh having slower speeds down there.

I I if you want my personal opinion, I think is a is a good thing down there with those large vehicles uh in the congested area.

But to your point about prostitution, um with the recent change in law, we were now able to focus on the uh demand side uh and and address the Johns.

Uh, I think we're gonna start seeing large increases in the crimes against society side.

Is that where that would be recorded?

Correct.

Correct.

Good.

Uh it's now given us the tools that we need to have an impact.

Uh and we've had focused uh efforts down there since the day that that bill came online.

Uh, and I think we'll we'll continue over time showing that we're gonna be consistent and we're gonna uh focus on on those areas.

Uh I think you'll continue to see uh the that issue start to dissipate.

Okay.

Um thank you for the response.

I do want to understand the limitations and complexities of prostitution, but I do want to point out if we had open air prostitution on Prospect Street or Kettner Boulevard, I think the response from the city would be very different than what is being shown in Dalbergia.

Um and I just I continue to implore you, Chief and Mayor Gloria to address this issue.

I think the residents and businesses on Dalbergia deserve um better.

And I hate to end on a negative note because um this is a a very good um uptick that we're seeing across the board from for the city of San Diego.

Uh but these are the realities that residents in my district are experiencing, and it's my responsibility to advocate for my district.

So, all in all, kudos for the improvement across the city.

Definitely reflects the dedication, professionalism, and commitment of our officers who work every day uh to keep San Diego safe.

So uh, just in general, just really wonderful job that you guys are doing on those two items.

I will elevate them just so we can get more attention.

But thank you for your response.

Councilmember, if I if I may, uh I think our offices have engaged quite a few memos over the past couple years about prostitution on Dalbergia through that advocacy, the state law, the chief law reference allowed us to take enforcement beyond special operations and really return it to patrol officers to have that sustained enforcement.

Um the work's not done there.

I think as we continue to look at this issue, continue to advocate at the state to have additional legislation that can allow us to go towards the victim services side as well.

I'm gonna ensure folks that are being trafficked in that area have resources and that we're able to engage with them.

So uh understood that the work is not yet done, uh, but looking forward to continuing engagement with your office there.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Moreno.

We'll go next to Councilmember Campbell.

Thank you, Council President.

And thanks to you for the wonderful presentation, the good work that it shows, and to all the police department for all the work uh to keep the city of San Diego one of the biggest, one of the safest and biggest cities in America.

It's great news to see that the crime rates continue to decrease by again and now by 6.3%.

This is the fifth year in a row that crime has gone down.

It's especially good to see that hate crimes in general have decreased by 32 percent in the city.

The issue of hate crimes was one plaguing our communities for the last couple of years, and I'm relieved to see that our efforts have helped decrease hate crimes, especially against our LGBT community, and especially against people of color who for decades have been the main victims of such crimes.

However, it is concerning to see that religious hate crimes have increased in the city by 150 percent.

An increase in religious hate crimes harms the safety and unity of our communities.

It undermines the fundamental American value of religious freedom.

It is essential that we stand firmly against hatred and ensure that every person can practice their faith without fear.

People ask, what can I do to help?

Well, here's a suggestion.

Anytime someone you're conversing with makes a comment that is against someone's religion, tell them to stop.

Tell them to stop saying things like that.

Remind them that our constitution guarantees the freedom of all religions.

As a matter of fact, when we began as a country, all those hundreds of years ago, many of the people who started our country came here because they needed religious freedom.

Never forget that.

And in other words, uh on other items in district two, my district, I want to thank you.

Our crime is down by 6% this year.

And across the city, the numbers are just incredibly wonderful.

Murders drop by 25%, non fatal shootings 21% down, vehicle threat down by 22% overall.

And this is all great news.

And I think a lot of it is because of our smart technology that dramatically improves our officers' ability to do their jobs.

And additionally, these trends show that this mayor and this city council and this department are committed to ensuring that San Diego remains either the top or maybe this year, even we might be number two, I'm not sure.

America's safest cities overall.

I'm once again committing my full support to our police officers because I want our communities to remain safe, and so do my residents.

I want to thank all our officers who are working long hours keeping us all safe.

And yet you've been able to decrease the amount of overtime.

Thank you so much, and and may we please uh have good results in our recruitment for new officers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Campbell.

We'll go next to Councilmember Campillo.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Chief, and thank you to the San Diego Police Department for your good work.

Just want to start by recognizing the work of our officers and our community partners, even while operating with fewer officers per capita than comparable major cities.

They continue to deliver excellent results and he helped keep San Diego one of the safest large cities in the country.

Uh in years past, I've pointed out those figures, but today I'll just remind folks that uh for our population, we should have closer to 2,600 officers.

Uh I personally would like to see a plan to get us to 2,000 officers in the next three years.

I think that's an ambitious but also realistic goal.

Uh public safety also means prevention, and that's why I've supported programs that work directly in communities that interrupt cycles of violence before they're started, as well as supporting well-vetted technologies.

And of course, while hate crimes uh are reportedly down, we know that many incidents still go unreported.

Uh, at a time when hateful rhetoric is more normalized.

It's uh critical that our community continues to speak out and have people report these incidents, hopefully to San Diego Police Department or their law enforcement agencies, uh, but if not to trusted community partners so we can connect them with resources.

Uh also I want to point out uh that we are a border city, and we are also one of the largest safe cities in the country for many years running because we're focusing on protecting people and strengthening communities.

Good crime prevention and good crime solving help to reinforce that we as a city are upholding our top charter obligation at stated plain and clear, which is keeping San Diego safe.

Chief, I have a question for you and your staff about crime clearance.

Um crime clearance, it's an odd phrase to members of the public, uh, but basically it means arrests and apprehensions when a crime is reported.

I'm glad to see that those statistics have stayed basically stable or increased for property crimes because that's the first modicum of justice for many victims to know that the police department has actually apprehended someone who has allegedly created uh committed a crime.

I'm wondering how difficult it would be for San Diego Police Department to see how many of those cleared cases actually have led to guilty convictions or dismissal uh for whatever reason.

Um is that data able to be collected from the DA's office or the city attorney's office in handling those cases so that the public can understand um and have a more complete picture of what accountability is truly being achieved.

Uh can we get that data?

Can we dig into that data so we actually see that a lot of these crimes where people are being apprehended actually lead to substantial justice through either a guilty plea or a dismissal when the person cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt guilty?

I would say it's possible, uh council member.

Unfortunately, we do not retain that information and don't necessarily have access uh to that information.

Uh we'd have to request that through the district attorney's office as well as the city attorney's office.

Um I can imagine for both of them that would be a uh pretty laborious task to try to weed through uh which agencies each one applies to.

Uh as you know, there are a number of other factors that that go into uh each of these cases.

Um but at the end of the day, I do think that they have some data that we'd have to request from them.

Okay.

Um I'm hoping that next year, this time, maybe with a few conversations, you can collect at least some high level uh high level data as to what that looks like.

Um because when you look at the when you look at the types of crimes, uh crimes against persons, oftentimes there's human witnesses, it's a violent crime, there's something substantial, uh, property crime, usually there's no one watching crimes against society, typically the police officer is the is the witness to what is oftentimes a drug crime, right?

So uh I would hope you could have those conversations, see what we can get so that next year we have a more robust picture, because I think the public can look at these these numbers, but also say, well, who's actually being held accountable?

I think a lot of people think that nobody's being held accountable, but I know that's not the truth.

I know the DA's office and the city attorney's office successfully prosecute many, many crimes.

So um, if you can have those conversations and by next year have some report back on that, I'll ask the question next year.

So you have 365 days heads up.

Thank you for your good work.

Thank you for the time, Council President.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Campia.

We'll go next to Councilmember Foster.

Uh yes, thank you.

Um, Council President.

And thank you, Chief.

Um to you and your team for the presentation.

Um I guess I will start with um congratulations.

Um, and a good job.

Job well done.

Um you know, typically um, I think there are folks out there that would say I tend to be more or to criticize San Diego police than to uh congratulate you.

But um I think on the efforts um and the data is clear that we are um the safest, largest city.

And so uh thank you for that.

Thank you to your team.

Um also um I just want to um say thank you, as we have um our our credit one of our credible messenger teams here today.

Um started working on um bringing credible messengers to the city of San Diego as I was the chief of staff for District 4.

Um and it was a task to bring that forward.

And we were able to start with the No Shots Fire team and bringing them on board.

But I want to thank you personally for your efforts because we have expanded things and would like to thank my council colleagues for their support in expanding the alternatives and continuing the investment in no shots fired, continuing to pursue CalVIP grants, and also thank you to my colleagues for the efforts in creating the drop-in centers.

Hopefully you and your team see the importance and the assistance that they provide in certain circumstances.

So just really want to thank you and also thank you to the mayor's office and his team for continuing those efforts.

I myself work closely with a few of the organizations.

So I just want to thank you for those efforts.

No one's uh above making a mistake, myself included.

Um, and so I just want to thank you for the time and effort you're taking to to work on those types of issues to look at um internally what we can do better.

Um, and I'm sure you'll have some more time to go into more detail about those efforts and um the certain things that you are doing with training.

So I truly do appreciate that as well.

Um the one question uh I do have a couple of questions, um, and and I just want to ask this this of you because um one thing that I will always say um, and I've said this before, I truly do believe at certain times we do a disservice to our officers, and I think we have put a lot on them.

And so I just want to ask do you employ or does the city employ any social workers that you are that you know of uh directly?

Directly no, right?

We don't have any behavioral health per se folks on what I want to say city staff, not to say we may not be contracting as we work with our PERT experts and and certain things, but our core services that we provide, we do not employ those types of individuals, correct?

That's correct.

Okay, I just want to make sure we're clear because we ask a lot of our officers as we deal with our homelessness in certain issues, and and oftentimes I find that as we are dealing in certain circumstances or or certain incidents arise, oftentimes you can tie it back to certain behavioral health circumstances or certain things that um things may not let's say finish the way we would want them to finish.

No, right?

We to be to be transparent, we we do partner and they do ride with us seven days a week uh county social workers.

So while we don't hire social workers as a city employee, we do partner with the county uh from mental health services, we partner with them with for registered nurses and we partner with them for social workers.

So we do have them available as far as uh outreach into the community.

Uh I was thinking you were talking about more internally to work with officers on a wellness side, but well, that is that as well, because that is something that we also need to address because again, we are putting a lot on our officers, and so I do appreciate um the efforts.

I do appreciate the results from the crime stats that that we are seeing.

So I again I just want to say thank you to our officers and thank you for the good work and thank you to your team in the mayor's office.

Um, but I do think we need to do more as we have you know, as we deal with with the behavioral health issues that I think there are um other agencies, organizations that um need to take the lead and to to have more responsibility and accountability so that we can address the core, what I would want to say the core issues of some of the things that we are experiencing out in our communities.

So I just wanted to make sure that we talked about that briefly.

As I look at this, also I just want to ask and and I want to say this before I leave that because I just want everyone to also know that we have a severe shortage in our social workers in our behavioral health experts, and it is a very, very large problem.

Um it's something that we've identified.

Um I do sit on the San Diego Workforce Partnership where we are starting to expand our efforts in regards to apprenticeships and and certain trainings to bring more folks into the behavioral health services so we can try and plug that gap.

So we are trying to approach this comprehensively on all sides, as I do recognize you know, me personally I do recognize the issues that are out there.

Um also I do have a um question on hate crimes.

Um I guess originally, and I'll use a an example.

There was a moment in time where we were having some individuals, I guess I will say were going around and uh taking pellet guns and certain things that we're doing inappropriate activities in communities.

Um and originally I thought we were headed down a hate crime scenario, um, but it looked like once it went through the investigative process, the DA landed where they landed.

It looks like that was pulled back to where it was not a hate crime if I understood what was in the media reporting.

Um so my question is based on the stats that are provided in the report, is that based on your data or is that the deterrent after the final determination of what the DA DA does.

Uh it's a fantastic question, Councilmember.

And without knowing a little bit more information, I don't know that I can answer it correctly, but let me let me at least say this.

Uh when there's a plea deal that's put on the table, they may take that hate crime charge off in terms of negotiating for future uh for a resolution of the case without having that attached to your to your file, if you will.

Um I can talk a little bit about that case because it's a fantastic example of how uh we work together as one community uh and we had some restorative justice there for those three 19-year-old individuals who uh clearly we're making some bad decisions, but I think working with uh the No Shots Fired program, uh working with the courts, working with the community, uh we were able to get these kids back on track, and they're not gonna be tarred and feathered for the rest of their lives because of this bad decisions as 19-year-olds.

So very proud of that case, very proud of the uh LGBTQ community for coming forward and sharing how uh it felt to be uh targeted.

Uh, but having the strength to forgive.

Uh I just think it was that's a perfect example of why San Diego is a great great city.

And I appreciate that because I don't think folks truly understand the details and how everything works together.

So I do appreciate that.

Um let me check my notes really quick.

Um if you can, um there is a slide in the presentation if you don't mind pulling that up.

It I don't see a page number on my end, but it looks like it's NIBRS and it says crime categories by council district 2025.

If you can pull that up really quick in the pres uh on the screen.

Is it the uh green and blue and red?

Yeah, yeah.

Can you control her?

I think she's doing that again.

Oh, we got and we'll try to make this quick.

I have about 14 color 10 seconds left.

Uh there you go.

Um and and and I understand you know, as we drill back, um, because we did see um an uptick in in certain categories as we look at gang um some gang violence and certain things, um, which I know folks are working very hard on.

But I wanted to look at this.

Can you kind of help me to better understand what this slide um represents?

Um as I look at district four, um you know, it looks like we are in a good place as you compare it to the the rest of the city.

Um and and oftentimes, as I am out in the community or I um hear certain references to my community is typically noted as unsafe.

But as I look at this chart, it kind of says the opposite, that it appears District 4 is actually in a in a good place, not to say there's not room for improvement as well.

But it does appear that District 4 is not in the top three, I guess I'll say.

But to explain the the colored chart there, let me ask my partner here to do that.

Thanks, Chief.

Yeah, Councilmember.

So to your point, I think what you're trying to get at is you know, with respect to the volume, right?

Your uh your district is relatively low.

And the way we typically look at this, you know, from ourselves, we're either looking at a uh command perspective or down all the way down to a beat level.

Uh crime, when you're looking at kind of macro, you know, full year view of of you know how did crime go and and where was the crime, it tends to follow pretty similarly with our call volume as well.

So uh, you know, downtown the beaches, our our shopping centers, places where you're gonna have large collections of people, you're gonna have more incidents.

And so um most of your district is more suburban, right?

Um the incidents that that we see occur in that district are gonna be a little more diffuse, right?

They're they're spread out across um a little bit more randomly than they might be in this those centralized locations, like you imagine a shopping center or a place where you might have a lot of say alcohol related uh incidents.

And so to your point, um I I think with respect to the suburban areas we see in the city, they're generally gonna be lower uh compared to our large collections of people.

Okay.

Very good.

And thank you for that.

And and and just um again, I'll say this simply put District 4 is a safe community.

So thank you.

Um thank you for all the work that you do.

And um, you you know, as we look at the the the trends, and um I just want you to know that I am always here to to step up and and to help out in any way I can.

Um you know that I work directly with my community and and folks, and um I have absolutely no problem um doing that and um having those conversations.

Um so with that again, Pastor Sandoval, thank you to you and your team for coming out today.

Um I don't see uh uh I know him as Big Rudy, uh, but you know, you know, you kind of you know, hey Theo, you know, he said you got a big sheep, bro.

You you know, but you know, I just want to say, hey, congratulations, big Rudy.

Um, and just thank you for everything that you do.

Um and you've come a long way, Theo, and um you know, keep up the good work.

So thank you.

All right, thank you, Council President.

That concludes my comment.

Do you need more input from Big Ruby there?

All right, thank you, Councilmember Foster.

We'll go next to Council Member Ela Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

I don't know we could invite hype men.

Uh Theo, if you want to come through any time I just uh Chief, thank you for the for the you know the presentation, obviously, but but more importantly for the the work behind it.

Um to kind of uh piggyback on on Councilmember Foster's comments, um, you know obviously it's important to maintain accountability and and share when we feel like the mark isn't being met, but also equally important to make sure we're acknowledging when uh good work is done and the community um is heading in the right right direction in terms of safety.

Uh and I think it's especially important that we we acknowledge that when the progress is being made to rain in the overtime hours that you've done.

Um I said it before, and I'll say it again.

Uh the progress that's that's been made, we were told was impossible.

Um, and not only have you proven that that's possible, but we've done it without sacrificing the safety of San Diego residents, and I think that's um very, very important to note um and and uh speaks to the work that you're doing in in your position.

So thank you for that.

And uh to that point, uh that's a uh thank you to the community as well.

Um obviously uh the police department plays a very important role in preventing crime and stopping crime, but a community that isn't working well together is not a safe community.

Um and I know you believe that.

I know we've had a lot of conversations about that.

Um so you know, without diminishing in any way the role that the police department plays, I think it's incredibly important to acknowledge the community as well.

Uh the neighbors who look out for one another, um, the folks who have um have turned um their lives into committing to creating safety and preventing folks from heading down the wrong track, um, even though many times those roles are not glorious and certainly not well paid.

Um so it's a community-wide effort, and I think uh all of San Diego deserves um uh appreciation and applause um for that.

So um thank you for believing that that is an important part of the equation to create a safe San Diego.

Um I am I'm I'm glad to see that this is the direction we're headed.

My colleagues have asked great questions, so I won't belabor those.

I just want to say thank you again.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Eli Rivera.

We'll go next to Councilmember Whitburn.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh, thank you very much for this update.

Uh I'm pleased to see that one of the biggest decreases in crime is right here in district three with a double digit drop.

Uh there's always more police volume downtown than other areas of the city with so much going on and uh people coming and going, but it is good to see those numbers moving in the right direction.

Uh it's also been good to see more and more people moving into the area, uh, which is something that uh is uh really indicative of the degree to people uh like living downtown and in the district three area.

I appreciate you including an update on hate crimes.

Uh and I want to thank the department for how seriously you take them.

Uh Captain Dobbs in Western Division is very good about letting me know about such incidents, uh increasing patrols when they occur so that the community sees that the department is there to protect them, uh and keeping me posted on the progress of the investigations, uh, which is why I know that our technology helps to solve these crimes.

Uh I also want to thank Central Division and Mid City Division, which also serve District Three, uh, the neighborhood policing division, which is very active in my district, uh, the officers who police the gas lamp, uh, the officers here at City Hall, who keep all of us safe, uh, and everyone at the department who works to keep my constituents safe.

So thank you, and thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Whitburn.

I think um not seeing anybody else in the lights.

Um I gave away a lot of my time.

So I'll just close by uh thanking my colleagues for your questions and comments and echo them.

Thank you for the very good work.

Um, you know, we rely a lot on numbers and metrics and statistics to provide evidence for the good work that we know you're doing every day, you and the officers and the rank and file.

Um and we try to provide the resources that you need to do that work.

And I'm very proud of the mayor and the council for supporting you in that regard.

Uh as new things come up, of new challenges present themselves.

Um, we look forward to hearing from you about what you need uh and not giving it to you in this difficult budget conversation.

So that's just a joke, folks.

Um so um I also um look forward to state of California figuring out SB 580 and actually giving us guidelines uh that actually amplifies SB 54 and look forward to your work and how you implement that uh going forward.

So uh as that becomes an increasing part of the distraction that you all face is what the federal government is doing.

It's the sandbox we live in, we just have to navigate that.

Uh and I know that you were thinking about that and take that very seriously.

So again, thank thank you, Chief.

Thank you to their staff, thank you to the rank and file and the good work they do every day on our behalf.

All right.

Uh that was an information item.

No motion was required.

So we will move along.

Clerk, please introduce item S excuse me, 202.

Item 202 is the appeal of the environmental determination for 710 Garnet Avenue, street or your project number PRJ-1126, 697.

This item is not subject to the mayor's veto.

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

And 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.

Uh thank you, City Clerk.

Uh, I wanted to make mention as staff uh proceeds up here, especially for those of you that are either in chambers for the very first time or watching uh remotely for the very first time.

There's been a lot of talk in the media about public participation, uh, about uh some amendments to the Brown Act uh that everybody is working very hard to update that will not take effect till July 1st.

We call this a quasi-judicial hearing.

And we have a protocol that we've done for many many years about these hearings and how this uh will proceed is that operation staff uh will make their presentation, uh, will have a statement by the city attorney.

The appellate will go next.

Uh they'll have up to 10 minutes for their presentation.

We will then invite the applicant to come up, and they will have an opportunity up to 10 minutes to make a presentation, and then we will turn it over to the rest of the public comment going forward.

So, with that, staff and I see your seated there.

Introduce yourselves for the record and let us know how much time you need.

Thank you.

I'll need about seven minutes.

All right.

Um, Council President, Council members, and members of the public.

I am Travis Cleveland, development project manager for the 710 Garnett Streetery Environmental Appeal.

With me today is Courtney Hollowak with the environmental analysis section at development services.

Before I proceed, I'd like to read a memorandum into the record.

Um I said this earlier today.

The uh subject project initially requested approval of a 60-foot by 12 foot eight-inch streetery for a total of 760 square feet.

Environmental analysis was performed on this measurement, which is also used in the staff report.

However, the streetery area was actually reduced in the last submittal to 43 feet by 12 feet for a total of 516 feet.

This is accurately request reflected in the latest copy of the project plans submitted to development services, which I did attach to that memorandum.

This does not alter the conclusion of staff's environmental determination.

The item before you is an appeal of the environmental determination for an approximately 516 square foot streetery outdoor seating area at an existing restaurant.

The environmental determination was made October 14th, 2025 and was appealed on October 27, 2025.

On July 29th, 2020, the 710 Beach Club was issued a temporary business operations permit under the city's emergency outdoor operations regulations, allowing them to build and operate a streetery platform in the parking spaces in front of the business in response to the coronavirus emergency of 2020.

These regulations were refined as part of the spaces as places program approved by the city council in November 2021, effective at this location in the coastal zone on August 10th, 2023.

Once the new regulations were in effect, building and land use enforcement or blue notified the business that they needed to remove the platform, will either remove the platform or obtain the required permits under the spaces as places program, including a coastal development permit and a right a public right-of-way permit.

Blue began actively enforcing the unpermitted streetery in October 2024 due to delays in submitting the current coastal development permit application, which was deemed complete in December of 2024.

In September 2025, the business agreed to shorten the platform, pay exclusive use fees for the public right-of-way, open up the disabled parking spaces that they had previously blocked, and keep the platform closed until proper permits could be issued.

The platform remains existing but closed.

This has allowed the platform to remain in the right of way while the permit applications were in the process.

On October 14th, 2025, city staff determined the project to be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA, and a notice of right to appeal or NORA was prepared and posted in accordance with the municipal code.

The NORA was also distributed to the council district, recognized community groups and any other applicable interested parties for a 10 working day appeal period as required by the municipal code.

That period ended on October 28, 2025.

The project.

The project was reviewed in accordance with the CEQA statute and guidelines to determine if it would result in environmental impacts.

Staff concluded that the project was categorically exempt from CECOA pursuant to Section 15332 in-fill development projects.

Class 32 consists of projects characterized as infill development, meeting the requirements of this section.

To qualify for the infill development project, a category of exemption, the project must meet all five listed criteria.

The streetery is an extension to a restaurant which is consistent with the visitor commercial plan designation and zone.

The project site is less than five five acres and is located in an urban undeveloped area.

Because the site is entirely developed with urban uses, it has no value for habit, no value as habitat for endangered, rare, or threatened species.

The project would not result in any significant effects related to traffic, noise, air quality, or water quality.

The project meets the screening criteria for a small project per the city's transportation study manual and therefore would be presumed to be less than significant.

The project would be required to comply with all applicable local, state, and federal regulations, ensuring that impacts to noise, air quality, and water quality would be less than significant.

The proposed project involves development of a new 516 square foot streetery as an extension of an existing commercial building.

The streetery would result in no change in need for public services, and the project site would continue to be adequately served.

Pursuant to SDMC Section 112.0520, an environmental determination for a process 3 project may be appealed to the city council subject to the underlying requirements, which match the boxes checked on the appeal form.

Filed appeals typically attached supporting information and or supporting documents.

However, as filed, the appeal checked only the boxes on the form, and the appellate provided no further support.

The appeal provided no explanation, documentation, or substantial evidence to support the claim that a factual error has occurred.

The appeal does not provide any new information or substantial evidence to support a reasonable possibility that the project will have significant effect on the environment.

The appeal does not demonstrate a conflict with any other matters.

The appeal does not provide any substantial evidence demonstrating that the findings for the application of the infill exemption have not been met.

If the environmental appeal is resolved, the project must obtain a coastal development permit, feature hearing officer decision appealable to the planning commission.

The project is in the Coastal Commission's appeal jurisdiction, so the city's I'm almost done.

So the city's final decision is also appealable to the Coastal Commission.

It must obtain a public right-of-way permit if the coastal development permit is issued, and it must remain in compliance with all permit conditions.

The administrative record demonstrates that the project would not have a significant effect on the environment.

No evidence or documentation was provided related to any of the appeal grounds asserted as to factual error, new information, conflict with other matters, or findings not supported.

Staff therefore recommend that the city council deny the appeal and approve the environment determination.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for the work and for your presentation.

Uh before as I noted before we hear from the applicant and the appellant, I'll turn it over to the office of the city attorney.

Thank you, Council President.

The legal standard of review for environmental environmental appeals is de novo.

That means the council must exercise its independent judgment based on the record for today's item as to whether the council agrees with the environmental determination.

The project is not before you today.

A court will uphold the council's decision if it is supported by substantial evidence in the record.

That concludes my comments.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, uh Leslie, for that opening statement.

So now we will hear from the appellant on the item.

Please come up to the mic, introduce yourself for the record, and you will have up to 10 minutes to make your presentation.

Well, we are here to give you the evidence.

The 710, oh, by the way, I'm Scott Chipman.

You probably would remember me.

50 plus year resident of Pacific Beach.

Been on the planning group about 20 years, off and on.

And the 710 Club Streetery did come to the planning group, and it was voted unanimously to deny the project.

710 has not been a good neighbor.

They've been a horrible neighbor to hundreds of residents across the street in C to C condominiums, as well as to people wanting to enjoy a walk on the boardwalk at night, and the guests and employees of Crystal Pier Hotel.

Thank you for putting up the PowerPoint.

For decades, the nearby businesses and residents have been subjected to amplified noise, DJs, amplified music, amplified obscenities, amplified vulgarities.

They have filed complaints, made calls for service, and have gone have even gone to court, including mediation, but have had no or only sporadic relief.

Now the community is threatened by an expansion onto the sidewalk and into the street of the very problems that they have been plagued with for decades.

But we're not here to just say again that this is a bad bar, but that 710 does not qualify for a CEQA exemption as a matter of law.

Under CECOA, exemptions are to be interpreted narrowly, and the burden is on the city to show the exemption applies.

Following my presentation, you will hear from neighbors who are representative examples of those directly impacted.

There are several reasons the exemption does not apply.

One there are unusual circumstances.

There is an unusual circumstance exception in CECOA.

Two, the cumulative exception.

Three, coastal access and parking impacts, and four, the fair argument standard.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Hundreds of noise complaints, thousands over uh thousands over the decades.

A superior court mandated mediation agreement, a known history of violating sound content containment requirements, a lack of air conditioning, which was required by the mediation, leading to open doors windows during amplified entertainment.

Next slide.

Incident reports.

This is just a few months.

Next slide.

Next slide.

I'm sorry, one moment we're having some technical difficulties.

We will pause your time.

Thank you.

Are we good?

Oh, okay.

We're good.

Okay, yeah.

It looks the same because these continue page after page after page.

Good next slide, please.

Okay.

Residents indicate there's no point in calling for incident numbers.

Most of the time, no one comes, no one does anything, wait time is too long to stay on the phone for hours and wait to file a report.

The majority of time they give up, they do not uh report the noise.

Next slide.

Okay.

These are the unusual circumstances.

Next slide.

Okay, you can see this is the venue from across the street in the condos.

Open doors, open uh skylights.

Next slide.

So this is not a small sidewalk cafe expansion.

It's an expansion of a high conflict, historically non-compliant entertainment venue with documented noise impacts.

Courts have held that when there is evidence of a reasonable possibility of significant noise impacts, an exemption cannot stand.

We do not have to prove impacts will occur occur, only that there is substantial evidence they may occur.

But that is obvious.

Next slide.

Cumulative impacts exception.

And we have years of cumulative impacts, as well as we all know that this area has nightlife concentration, seriously high crime, and there was a prior court involvement.

Next slide.

So here are the crime stats.

7905, 2200 times citywide average crime.

And much of it occurs in the street right in front of this venue.

Next slide.

Everyone knows the parking scarcity near the beach.

Next slide.

This is a letter from the Coastal Commission, indicating that within the coastal zone, they must replace the parking.

So if there's five or six parking spaces, they have to be replaced.

The coastal access impact, this streetery removes public parking, converts public right of way to private commercial use, and potentially affects beach access.

Next slide.

Consider the historic Crystal Pier.

Allows public to go out, sightsee, look at the ocean, and fish.

Parking elsewhere still reduces parking availability here and to the boardwalk nearby.

The city has failed to analyze whether replacement parking fully mitigates access impacts.

The exemption improperly avoided environmental review of coastal access impacts.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Expanding the seating capacity actually increases the demand for parking on that block.

Increased outdoor congregation, the sidewalks are already often crowded and impassable.

Potential for increased noise spillover.

Increased demand for parking as more patrons are accommodated in it.

If you've ever heard of the term beer mussels, that's a very common thing that happens in PB.

You're walking down the sidewalk, it gets crowded, you decide you'll just bump up against the guy and see how he'll react.

If you don't like his reaction, it becomes a fight.

Next slide.

I mean, the idea that they're going to comply with the noise regular noise regulations.

I'm sorry, that's embarrassing.

The city has not, we already heard from the police chief.

These are not high priority calls.

So they just stack up and stack up and stack up and frustrate the residents and the businesses nearby.

Next slide.

This is the calendar of abuse.

We understand they want to have entertainment, but the entertainment can't come at the expense of your quiet enjoyment to be able to watch TV or sleep in your own abode.

Next slide.

A handicapped space was removed so that they could expand or create a streetery.

Obviously, it was put back when residents filed a complaint, said what's going on here.

Surreptitiously moving a handicapped parking space for your own financial gain.

Next slide.

And that's can be okay, but not to this extreme.

Next slide.

TVs and speakers mounted on the sidewalk, basically saying this is our sidewalk.

It's not public, it's not public access.

Scott, you're gonna run out of time, so I'm gonna give you an opportunity for a concluding statement.

I'll wrap up.

Thank you.

A concluding statement.

You had your 10 minutes.

Thank you.

The exemption cannot apply due to the unusual circumstances, the substantial evidence of potential significant noise impacts, the cumulative impacts, and the parking loss in the coastal zone.

The city cannot rely on replacement parking without analysis.

We're just asking for analysis, not an exemption.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for the presentation.

Now I'll invite the applicant.

You will also have uh up to 10 minutes to make your presentation.

I don't know who the spokesperson for the applicant is.

I had thought there was a presentation by the applicant.

I believe you have a slide deck as well as well.

There you go.

I have one slide.

There you go.

All right.

Uh introduce yourself for the record and let us know.

Uh you have up to 10 minutes.

Perfect.

Uh so my name's Scott Slaga, uh owner of 710 Beach Club for 36 years.

Uh started as an engineer in LA and came down to San Diego to do some work and bought a bar, bought a bar in PB, uh, spent a lot of time in PB because I was 26 years old, and um love music, big fan of live entertainment.

I own two music clubs in San Diego, and I do a lot of music production in the city of San Diego.

I believe that, contrary to what some of the statements that have been made today, I've done everything I can in a commercial zone uh with a license that I paid dearly for for live entertainment to be there at 710 Garnett, and it was there prior to that for 30 years, prior to the condominium complex that got built across the street.

So I believe that as long as I haven't had a violation in the last 35 years, which is the case, um, I do have the right, I believe, to operate within my permits.

So having said that, the handicap parking issues, the only thing I'm gonna address from what Mr.

Shipman talked about.

I did that legally through DSD.

Everything was done, it wasn't serendipitous.

Okay, I've never never done anything illegal.

Okay.

So with that being said, I'll give you a little bit of history about 710 Beach Club.

It used to be blind melons.

I named it blind melons in 1989.

It was a blues club.

When I purchased it, the bar that existed was called Bangers.

Bangers was basically a motorcycle club.

I eradicated that.

Um I got embroiled in what the you would call um politics, and I became the president of the largest business improvement association in the United States.

I spoke right here in 1995 to create the largest BID as I was the president, and that took four years of my life.

During that time, I actually created a nonprofit that created Citizens Patrol, PB Citizen Patrol.

We were the ones that actually caught the PB rapist.

I was instrumental in that part because the PB rapist was a band member playing in my clubs at the time.

We work with the FBI.

So I am a community guy from that perspective.

I fouled that with 15 years of being a director on the Food and Beverage Society of San Diego.

So I do put my time into the community in Ocean Beach, where I own my other bar called Winston's.

Um to add to that community's success.

Freedom Station Wound Wounded Warriors about 10 years ago.

You'll hear from the director uh sometime today.

I've raised over a hundred thousand dollars for that organization through my businesses.

So I'm just trying to say to you, counsel, that I do have the right, I believe, to do what I'm doing.

And a couple of really interesting things that occurred over the last 30 years.

I don't even own the building there.

I had to put 150,000 into a complete remodel to try to reduce noise.

I happen to be an engineer, I understand sound.

We, by doing that, 150,000 out of my pocket, we reduced the sound by 3 dB, which is double the power.

Later, I actually added air conditioning and large, they call them big ass fans to reduce my, I guess, conceptually, if I have to open doors and windows when it's hot in the summer, I don't have that problem anymore.

Scott Shipman did mention about I did have uh a speaker pointed outside to the streetery during COVID.

I was desperate.

I wanted people to enjoy outdoors.

I was losing $60,000 a month with no income through my four enterprises during COVID.

And to that end, if you look at this slide up here, all I'm trying to do is get a streetery approach, and I have already spent $125,000, and I have been closed since April of last year.

Okay, it's just sitting there.

And during this $125,000 expenditure, there were people from DSD, and specifically a Carrie Lindsay, that literally told me I had to pay $57,000 at the time to not remove my streetery, $57,000 for back rent during COVID.

So I don't know how many of you own a business during COVID, but I almost lost everything.

And here I am for a simple streetery.

Okay.

All right, thank you for your presentation.

Um we're probably gonna hear a lot more things you like and you dislike, thumbs up, thumbs down really helps us move right along.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

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

Thank you, Council President.

Before I begin, I will note that it will be a minute per person.

We do have several speakers here to speak on this item.

But one housekeeping thing, um, I know there is confusion understanding if you're in favor or in opposition.

The speakership should be if you're in favor of the staff recommendation or in opposition of the staff recommendation.

The staff recommendation is to deny the appeal.

Everyone submitted uh request to speak in favor.

So we just want to make sure if when you come up to your to the lectern to please say if you're in favor or in opposition so that I can get that appropriately for the record.

So if you're in favor, you're in favor of the denial of the appeal.

If you're in opposition, you're in opposition of the staff recommendation, which is denial of the appeal.

Starting with Rengaraj, if you can please come up to the microphone.

After that is Rakesh.

If you can please come up to the yellow reserve seats at the front.

Then we have Dale Gothier, Candy Hogan, Willis Allen.

I'm not seeing anybody get up.

Um is Ren Garage here?

R-E-N-G-A-R-A-J.

He had to leave.

Okay.

Rakesh, are you here?

Okay.

Dale?

Yes.

You have time seated to you by Gordon.

Right.

Is Gordon still here?

Gordon for Lika?

Yes, I just need you to raise your hand.

So if you're here, you'll have two minutes.

Please proceed.

All right.

Um, I am in opposition to the staff recommendation.

Thank you.

Whatever that however that word works out.

Okay.

Uh good afternoon.

Um council members, staff.

Uh, my name is Dale Gothier, and I'm referring representing myself as an owner of uh property in the C condominiums, which are directly uh across Carnette from the 710.

Kept hearing it called a restaurant.

It's a bar.

I've owned my property for more than a decade, and the impact this bar has had on my property and quality of life in the neighborhood is indescribable.

The loud, raucous music at all hours, they're open, but particularly at night.

The music is blasting and even worse with live bands.

There's vulgarity, sidewalk fights, public intoxication of the 710 at night that we're all subject to.

Not only does the 710 ownership and management allow this behavior, they actively act to amplify the behavior, resulting in direct threats to public safety.

This is not your neighborhood cheers bar.

As you heard from others that, you know, or from Scott's presentation, doors, windows are often left open with blastic music coming out.

The proposed streetery bar will only make noise levels from to the neighborhood and that we experience worse because the food the food and beverage servers will have to have e-grass ingress to the bar to deliver the services to the streetery bar.

Um as it is now, the property values on the north side of the building are devalued over the rest of the units in the building.

If you look at historical resale prices, they're typically four to five hundred thousand dollars less, not because of ocean view differences, because of this 710 bar.

When the when our building was originally built, cool ocean breezes, we didn't need AC.

Now we have to have all the windows and sliders closed.

Thank you for that concluding remark.

Okay.

Your time has concluded.

Strongly urged that CQ.

Candy Hogan.

Candy Hogan of the following individuals can please raise their hands.

Kathleen Lippitt.

Thank you.

You'll have two minutes.

If you can, if you need anything over here, spam?

Yes, you'll give it to my staff, they'll give it, they'll get it distributed.

These are photographs I'd like.

You'll have two minutes, please proceed.

If you can go to the higher microphone, it will capture you a little bit better.

Thank you.

Well, first of all, I want to thank you all for your hard work.

I know that's a thankless job sitting up there.

So uh I I really appreciate it.

If you look at the photos, you'll see that the building is across the street from 76 condos.

These homeowners have paid taxes and supported this city.

Several years back, we went to mediation for a full year.

We're told that if we did, they would do something about the noise.

We all gave up time and everything just to go to mediation 710 club because the decibel readings in the condo that I owned at night were above inside my condo, 65 decibels at night.

My floor, actually, you could hear every single drum beat.

They would uh leave the doors open, the skylight open, and after a year of mediation, the owner said he admitted that he wanted to blare the music out to attract the patrons from the other bars.

It was agreed upon that they would close the doors and shut everything during the time of amplified music.

It wasn't a real solution because now they have all the opening, and every time they open the doors, all the sound still comes out.

And they kept the skylight open.

No matter what we did and how many times they called, it it wouldn't, it has not stopped over years.

Please consider the 76 homeowners of this com of these condominiums across this small street and realize that the 710 club is not an owner of the real estate, but that we we who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax are being affected very horribly and negatively.

Please help us.

Also, I don't know if you know additionally, you'll see in the pictures, they are now serving beer and and the screen.

Your time has concluded.

Thank you.

Willis Allen.

Willis, you have time seated to you by Claudia Allen.

If you can please raise your hand.

Thank you.

You'll have two minutes.

Thank you very much.

Um, Council President, Council members, my name's Willis Allen.

I'm uh representing the ownership of Crystal Pier Hotel and Cottages in Pacific Beach.

We're adjacent to the 710 Beach Club at 710 Garnet.

I'm here to respectfully request that you grant for our appeal and deny any continued sequel exemption for the 710 Club Streetery.

Our hotel and the large condominium building directly across the street have endured endured significant adverse impacts from this bar for over 35 years, and those impacts have been intensified, not relieved by the streetery.

First, the noise during the day and late night disruption are constant.

Noise from the bar and his patrons is so bad that our front staff has to close the doors of the office of the hotel, go into the back office to try to speak to customers.

We've had to extend our security guard hours simply to deal with the noise and unruly patrons at the bar closing.

This is not compatible with a visitor serving Coastal Hotel or with residents trying to live and sleep in a condominium across the street.

Secondly, there is a direct economic and quality of life harm.

We have had to comp rooms and provide discounts to guests who were disrupted by noise and bad behavior associated with this bar.

Guests who are kept away awake feel unsafe and they don't really return they they don't rebook, and uh with all these negative experiences they share with other people.

So it's kind of damaging to a long-standing business.

The hotel's been in business consistently for 90 years this year.

The condominium residents likewise, they live with these impacts night after night, day after day, with no ability to check out when it becomes intolerable.

Thirdly, the streetery worsens parking and circulation on Garnett.

That was two minutes.

Thank you for your concluding comment.

Okay, but did I oh so I had the two minutes?

So you get the point.

Thank you.

Holly Burtz.

Holly Cherry Tabb, seated your time.

Thank you very much.

You'll have two minutes.

Please let me know.

I'm the president of the HOA at C to C Condos.

I've lived there since 1982.

The condominiums were built in 1972.

We had a card room across the street from us.

Twenty-five years later, Scott Slega put in the blind mill and 710 bar.

So as far as who was there first, it was us by 25 years.

We had a mediation agreement.

Scott agreed during the mediation agreement with the judge to keep all the doors, windows closed and the vents and install an AC.

There's no AC that's working.

Doors and windows, the vents are always open.

We are subjected to we he also promised that he would answer the phone when we would call.

Not only does that not happen, if you do manage to get through, you're called every name in the book.

One other thing I want you to know is that we have a theme song of the 710 bar, and this is what we get to listen to, and this is played during the day.

And it's by a guy called Afroman, and it's called Because I Got High.

And this is what we hear.

So since children can hear this in our neighborhood, you guys should be able to hear it too.

I could have cheated and I could have passed, but I got high.

I was gonna go to court before I got high.

I was gonna pay my child support, but when I got then I got high.

This is what we hear every day.

This theme song.

Great for kids and tourists.

I urge you not to grant the sequel exemption.

We've been there 25 years before them, had no problem.

We're surrounded by bars, the hideaway, PBL house, you name it.

There's only one bar we have a problem with, and we're actually closer to the other bars.

But this is the one that's the one that's causing us trouble.

Thank you.

Well, you caught me by surprise.

There are children occasionally listening to these council meetings as well.

Please keep that in mind.

You can make your point.

And then I'd also ask, as Denise makes her way up to the microphone, if Todd Pursall can please come up here to the side.

My staff will be speaking with you.

Todd Purcell.

You'll have one minute, please proceed.

Thank you.

I am speaking on behalf of myself, not any organization or my title this year.

In January, I chose to have a staycation in PB.

I was awakened late in the evening by cheering and screaming.

I dressed, went outside to try to figure out where this was coming from.

And it was coming from 710.

I noticed from across the street, because the sidewalk was inaccessible, that there were a group of people out there with buckets of beer as I watched the bartender refill that bucket of beer.

That's not allowed out on a public street.

Having served for years now on our community court, it's a big no-no.

People are ticketed all the time walking out of seven, the 7-Eleven and popping their beer and getting tickets.

I politely went over and advised the young group that it was illegal and they should be bringing it inside.

It didn't work.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

Next is uh Jay Scott Shepper, I believe I'm saying the name correctly.

Thank you.

I'm speaking in favor of the denial of the deal.

Time's okay.

Mm-hmm.

Please proceed.

So I'm a local attorney for two decades.

I've represented this business.

Um it has its own valuable property rights that aren't being mentioned.

What we're hearing today is a lot of complaints from other property owners seeking to advance their own property interests by shutting down a business that operates lawfully under an existing entertainment permit and pursuant to San Diego ordinance regarding noise levels.

These uh appellants do not really understand the application of the noise ordinance, which is a one-hour weighted averaging.

I was part of the mediation, and it was found at that time with we sound engineers we hired that this noise from this location does not exceed those levels.

The entertainment permit requires them to operate with their doors closed in hours when they're doing that during live entertainment.

The outdoor stuff is just a modest thing.

This is about a sequel review, and when you look at those standards, these complaints do not reach what we're dealing with.

Uh this thing has been reviewed by the staff through a rigorous vetting process.

Carefully considered each required element, it meets the criteria.

Think of the concluding sentence, Patty.

Patty Golickson, yes.

Hello, sorry.

Um Patty.

I'm uh single mother out of the out of the Pacific Beach community.

Um I've known Patty and Scott for over 10 years, and they are a wonderful part of the community and wonderful people.

They actually um my daughter's um on the 2012 uh blast um Pacific Beach soccer team, and they um offered graciously offered to sponsor my daughter's soccer team, and then um her soccer team is going to Spain in July, and so they offered to um do some fundraisers to help us raise money to get um her team there, and um I love the patio.

I go there every a couple times a month, and um I really miss the patio, and I'm excited to get it back, hopefully.

Craig, um Craig Borghazani.

Wonderful job pronouncing my last name, by the way.

Thank you.

Uh esteemed council members, President Lacava.

If I may uh quote Star Trek.

Spock once said the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and I feel that's what we're experiencing here today.

Twenty-five years I've been in Pacific Beach, and I've watched, I believe, what you guys have blessed for bringing lots of people to my beach via the TV spots I see.

They're working qualitatively, I can say they're working.

And it upsets me to see that the local beach businesses, especially Seven Punch Beach Club, cannot scale to meet this demand that you guys are are bringing to our beautiful beach.

They do a wonderful job what they do in Pacific Beach and they give back to the community.

So I'm here to say I believe in the recommendation to deny the appeal Todd Purcell.

After that will be Sandra Lemcooler, Glemcular.

I think I just lost my good pronunciation.

And uh Ms.

uh sweet, S W E E T George Sweet, I believe, and then Blair Beekman, Bob Kazuski.

If you can all please come forward to the other reserve seats, please proceed.

Good afternoon, thank you for being here.

My name is Todd Pearsall.

I moved to our wonderful city in 1988 from Wisconsin.

I came here to play rugby with Omback, and then I went to California Western School of Law.

I'm a 64-year-old attorney.

I do like going around and having a refreshment in the sun, and I hope you will grant this a streetery.

But let me tell you how good Scott is.

Thirty-two years ago, I had a small pack or bar, we had a Toys for Tot Drive, and after we delivered our toys to the a fire department in PB, I stopped by on a little sunny tour of PB, the 710 Club, which was blind melons, and told him what I did, and he said we'd like to be part of it.

For the last 31 years, blind melons and/or the 710 Club, as it's called, has been part of this Toys for Talk Drive that I have ran in this in the city of in PB at 12 bars.

We need a 40-foot truck to get the toys.

And we get eight grand a year.

Sandra, please come forward.

First of all, President Lacava and Council members, thank you for what you do.

I'm amazed by this whole process.

Thank you.

I really want to say I don't think you guys get thanked enough.

So thank you.

However, this turns out, I'm amazed by this process.

I wanted to introduce myself.

My name is Sandy Lemcooler.

I was the founder of Warrior Foundation Freedom Station, which is right here in Councilman Whitburn's uh area.

I have resigned last year to move on to a more focused nonprofit called Freedom Ranch Veterans Foundation.

I know we're not here to talk about nonprofits.

I want to tell you about a gentleman who is a businessman and he is a pillar of our community.

His name is Scott Slega.

Scott's from Chicago, I'm from Chicago, we're both Bears fans, yada yada.

Okay.

I wanted to share with you that I met him in 2015.

He called me up, did not know who I was, and said, I want to help the military in San Diego.

I want to help the military in Camp Pendleton.

That was quick.

Thank you for your comments.

Allow our warriors to be able to go to the outer concluding comment.

George, sweet, they fit in that outdoor area.

Thank you.

After George Sweet will be Blair Beekman and Bob Kazuski.

If you can please come forward to the front row to be ready.

He has me come down and train his people.

Every six months for security.

The third item on the training list is windows.

When the band is playing, the windows are to be closed.

When there is no music, the windows can be open.

Scott is very strict with those.

Don't know what they're talking about.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

Blair Beekman.

And then after Blair Beekman is Bob Kazuski.

Hi, thank you, Blair Beekman.

I'm I'm working neutral on this item.

With the sport field uh issues in uh up by the Delmar area a few months ago now.

I was hoping City Council could take a more active role in how the corporate entity and the community could work together on the item.

I hope they can do that for this item.

Um I I want to try to be friendly to all sides.

And um, is it possible that if this project was to go through that there could be new adjustments, acoustic adjustments to really make sure and overall efforts to coordinate that the owners of the bar can be respectful to the community and there can be dialogue, continual dialogue, and you know what's working well and what can be improved, changed upon.

Can this turn into an active conversation of working towards things for everyone?

Thank you.

Thank you, Bob Kazuski.

I'll defer my comments until 201.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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

We have 12 people in the queues, one minute each, starting with the original after the original is Chris Steggan, the original, please unmute.

How ironic is it that uh this woman, you know, uh sharing the words, uh, lyrics of a song that is being played at that place is you know detrimental to children, yet you only care about it in the uh chambers, but you don't seem to be caring that it's happening in the community, and that people are concerned about that.

It's interesting to see what you guys do with your CEQA exemptions.

Um, and you know, when some are used and what some aren't when you're claiming that you want to do all this environmental stuff, and all of these streeteries and things that you guys brought forward during COVID, the regulations and policies regarding them have changed on a revolving door basis.

Um, and you know, so like when they were first implemented, they had to be a certain way.

It had to have, you know, a certain awning, and then all of a sudden it was like, oh, that changed, and so the people had to go in and pay to take that away.

So it's just a bunch of nonsense things you guys do with this.

You kind of make people jump through hoops, but I think you need to be listening to the people who have lived experience in that community and what they're um experiencing right now, but obviously if lease gonna pass.

Thank you.

Next is Chris Duggan.

If you can please unmute.

After that is John Stump.

Good afternoon.

Chris Duggan, representing California Restaurant Association San Diego, come before you today to express COA San Diego support for the proposed streetery and to respectfully request the council support staff recommendation and denied denied appeal before you.

First, it's hard to believe that nearly six years have passed since schools, businesses, and governments closed their doors due to the global pandemic.

However, immediately, with the help of this city council, we came together and figured out how we could stay open, and that was spaces as places.

So thank you.

And while the pandemic may be in our rear view, the road to restaurant recovery continues, and the importance of expanded outdoor dining remains critical, especially for a project like 710 Beach Club.

So therefore, on behalf of the CRA San Diego, we respectfully request the council deny the appeal before you and allow this project to continue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is John Stump, if you can please unmute.

Hello, um, John Stump.

I wanted to observe this process and this process de novo because I'm considering filing an appeal myself on the environmental determination about using the parking lot and loss uh penosquitoes reserve as a hiliport.

Um this is the staff has made an environmental determination that this project is exempt from CETA under exemption 32.

It's not whether you grant the appeal or not.

It's not over because after this, they still have to get permits, and after this, the community might decide to file an environmental suit.

This has taken six months to get here.

Think about that when you talk about it.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

Next is 8700.

If you can please unmute.

After that will be Shyla, 8700.

Sorry, I hadn't pressed the button.

8700, you can unmute now.

Uh thank you.

Joy Sunyata C D three.

Blair, I agree with you.

Uh I I beautiful words.

Uh, yet I do want to say this from my perspective.

The exemption from CQ based on the staff findings stand.

It stands, and and uh I listened to you, Mr.

Stump, and uh wow, uh on and on it goes.

Um I want to speak out to the man that owns the bar because I want to tell him that I love him.

And I love the conduit owners.

I love both of you.

And this is a family, and why the dialogue didn't happen earlier, and and you somehow found a way to work this out.

I do not know.

Uh, I hope the bar did honor the mediation.

It sounded like there was an attempt to do that, and maybe it kind of got bumpy and they failed a little bit.

I don't know.

But the bar owner, I want to tell you how sorry I am for your struggles during the COVID crisis.

Shiloh, if you can please unmute.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Shaila Hales, and I'm the president of Discover Pacific Beach in favor of the staff's recommendation to deny the appeal.

Discover PB represents the collective interests of the business community in our district.

Our board is made up of local business owners who care deeply about the future of Pacific Beach and the success of the businesses that help make this neighborhood vibrant.

Our board supports outdoor dining, including 710 Beach Club's streetery, because it helps create the active, welcoming environment that residents and visitors expect in a coastal destination like PB.

Speaking personally, I am in PB most evenings along with members of my staff, and over the past four years, we have never observed anything out of control or even remotely too loud associated with this location.

I have served the community court for over a year now, and I've never heard from anyone with a citation for open container from 710 Beach Club.

But do you see this from other businesses?

Parking has also been addressed.

Additional parking has been added, and 710 Beach Club has even worked to reserve parking for customers to move vehicles off the street.

When that timer went off, no additional speakers will be taken.

Starting with Sunny, our next speaker is Sunny after that.

Is Guthrie?

Hello, uh Sunny Lee here, executive director of Discover Pacific Beach.

We're the business improvement district representing businesses in PB.

And our mission is to support our business community while helping create a vibrant, welcoming environment for residents and visitors.

Outdoor dining and treateries are an important part of that vision, and they allow our small businesses to activate our public spaces and create the kind of kind of lively street experience that makes Pacific Beach special.

Discover PB supports the streetery at 710 Beach and the broader concept of outdoor dining in our district.

I will say it has been challenging for many of our businesses to go through this process, and we appreciate 710 for fighting the fight to get that streetery put up.

Um, in my experience as well.

Um frequently businesses here in Pacific Beach.

I never have been to 710 and seen it as loud as it has been described today.

So that was definitely news to me.

Thank you.

Next is Guthrie.

Leonard, if you can please unmute.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, please proceed.

Hi.

Um I'm really here to speak on item 201, but I just wanted to come in here and say I totally understand.

I hate uh noise interruptions.

That's been a really big problem in places I've lived in the past, but I really do think this is a textbook example of CIQA being an antiquated law.

It should not take a hundred thousand dollars and a year to put up fences around some tables on a couple parking spots.

Um, it sounds like most of the people complaining about this project really just have a problem with the bar and not the streetery in general.

And so I really don't think there's any grounds to allow this appeal.

Please deny it.

Thank you.

Next is Zoom.

If you can please and zoom user, please unmute.

After that is Leaf Genser.

Please proceed.

Hi, this is Hector.

I'm uh commenting.

I'm like a 72-year-old guy with a big beach cruiser.

I would consider myself an endangered species.

Because when I go down there at night, cruising on the boardwalk and there's drunk people, it's kind of a little dangerous sometimes.

But uh, I would say the guy should put his eatery up on the roof and restore the parking spaces and the sidewalk is a normal sidewalk for uh the general public.

Thank you.

Leif L E I F, if you can please unmute.

Hello there.

My name is Lars Genson.

I'm a resident of North Park.

Um, and I go to PB quite frequently.

Uh, I'll play many contents.

This is a great venue.

I'm speaking um in support of the appeal.

Please don't uh please let the owner have a speeder on the section.

Um, it's quite interesting to see a common pattern that we see all over the country, not even seen it in other uh in other countries where um the residents are opposed to something that potentially creates noise, therefore robbing the youth and people who want to go out of something like that.

PB is a lively neighborhood, noise has to be expected.

Um, I will also say it is kind of fine that we're using Sequel.

For me, this is a textbook example of Cos.

Everybody wants to restore parking lots, therefore increasing the demand for cost, which is a clear, um, a clear environmental pollutant.

So, but using Sequoia to reduce noise is a clear violation of that.

We've seen that in in Berkeley.

So uh what I want to say is yes, please staff follow the staff recommendation and um um appeal and uh reject the appeal.

Thank you.

Next is Tanya, if you can please unmute after that is uh 1335.

Tonya, hello.

I'd like to specifically address the concern that the 710 Beach Club is impacting local parking.

To suggest that five spaces significantly alters of parking availability in PB is respectfully a mischaracterization of the data.

When you consider the huge amount of visitors PB welcomes daily, five spots represents a nominal fraction of the total capacity.

Between the ample parking within a short walk and the high volume of ride share usage in this corridor, these spaces are far more valuable to the city as a source of tax revenue and local business growth than as asphalt for five cars.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is 1335.

If you can please unmute star six.

After that will be Denise Bahan.

1335, I can't unmute for you.

You do have to press star six in order to unmute.

We will have to move on to our next speaker if you can unmute.

Going to Denise.

After that, our final speaker is Ted Denise.

Hello, my name is Denise Bahan, and I have been a patron of 710 Beach Club for over 15 years.

And I have seen what Mr.

Slega has done from the upgrades that he has made through the mediation to mitigate the sound noise that is coming from it, as well as being at the bar when live music happens, and all of the doors are shut per the mediation requirements.

I also believe that having the streetery does give an more vibrant um and lively situation for Pacific Beach, which continues to allow for more revenue and taxing that can help the city rebuild whatever they need to do.

So I am in support of the denial of the appeal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our final speaker on Zoom is Ted Wiggler.

If you can please unmute.

I'd like to recommend and deny the appeal.

Um I believe that Scott and his business have uh covered everything that the SQL application has stated.

And there should be no appeal with that.

I do know that the people across the street have had an issue with Scott for over 30 years.

Scott's tried to hypothetically appease every possible way for them.

They continue to be abandoned in existence.

As you can see, that long list of calls dated over three years.

That was presented.

I assume most of those are coming from the same exact people.

As well in the presentation that was presented at the calendar.

If you look at that closely, every one of those dates had karaoke or trivia.

Couldn't imagine that being such a big problem for the neighborhood.

Seven Towns in a place that's employed 40 people at a time during the time of the pandemic.

If you've raised your hand, the five-minute timer had also concluded, so no additional speakers will be taken through the virtual queue.

We did have 14 speakers.

14 people register their um requested to sorry, let me say this a little bit.

We had 14 people donating their time to Scott Slager that did not wish to speak, noting that for the record.

And we have Rich Richards, who was in that pile in error.

So if Rich Richards can still please come up, I'll also note while you make your way up that we did receive three comments in favor and nine comments in opposition via e-comment form, which have been distributed to the council.

Please proceed.

Very good.

Thank you to the council for allowing me time to speak.

I've been a homeowner and resident of Pacific Beach since 1990, 36 years.

I just want to give my support to 710.

It is an important integral part of the Pacific Beach community.

It's a restaurant, social meeting spot, sports venue, and while the only night spots to provide live music, which is now a dying art in San Diego.

When I first moved there, there was probably seven venues that serve uh uh had live music.

Scott's place is now a one.

On a personal note, I was in Thailand when the war uh when I got hit by the tsunami.

I was on one of the smallest islands.

Uh when I did come back, Scott Slago, without hesitation, came up to me and asked how he could help.

He decided to do a fundraiser, and he donated his establishment as well as his staff and provided live music for that uh event.

It was quite successful.

Now he helps out with uh beach cleanup and working with wounded veterans.

PB will always be a destination spot for San Diego residents for the US and the world.

It's good to have a multi-venue about like the seven.

Thank you for that concluding comment.

That does conclude public comment on this item, Council President.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Clerk.

Uh our apologies that we somehow missed your slip, so wanted to give you a chance.

Uh one of the things I like to do on these big items is give our city clerk a round of applause for managing all the speakers and the remote.

So that goes to her team as well.

So thank you for that.

So I want to thank the staff, the appellant and the applicant.

This is now in District 1, so I'll take the lead on this.

Thank you to those who showed up in chambers and spoke or showed your support of things you liked and your position to things you didn't like, and as well as those who participated virtually.

So a couple of questions before I jump in.

This one's for staff, and I think you've been given a heads up.

To start the I want to make sure for myself and for my colleagues here on council.

The applicant did submit a pretty lengthy document detailing their appeal.

Council typically receives from staff an explanation or a rebuttal to each issue raised by the appellant.

And yet the staff report and the slide deck appear to be silent.

How should we take that?

So what the staff report was threatened on was the appeal that was filed, which checked all of the boxes on the appeal form but provided no additional information.

The balance of the information was provided very close to the hearing, and staff did not receive it in time to respond in kind.

Okay.

But also as a message to anybody else who chooses to appeal that you need to submit your documentation when you file the appeal, or to make sure that staff gets it in plenty of time for you to respond to.

So thank you for clarifying that, and I can I can understand that because this is a notice hearing, you have a time limit, uh, and you have to do your work.

So uh as to the environmental determination, um, in addition to the testimony today, I did review the material that was attached to the docket uh as well as the comments that were submitted online that the city clerk uh relied on or referred to.

Staff relies on categorical exemptions related to the in-filled development, so that's where the conversation needs to focus on.

As was mentioned, Section D of the categorical exemptions includes approval of the project would not result in any significant effects relating to traffic noise, air quality, or water quality.

And we're of course we're not talking about the approval of the project, but the evidence to uh support whether we have enough information in the environmental determination.

Excuse me.

Uh staff included information that compliance with San Diego municipal code 59.50401 would ensure noise impacts would be less insignificant.

Uh, and yet the city's own track record is that this property has not necessarily complied despite numerous enforcement efforts by Blue.

Uh the appellant included information about dozens of noise complaints.

Uh complaints does not mean violation, uh, but it does show a pattern.

Um staff also relies on CECO guidelines, Section 15300.2B, saying the project is expected to have no significant cumulative pact, but that appears to treat the streetery, in my opinion, as a standalone project, separate and distinct from the restaurant.

The CD is an expansion of the restaurant bar, and the two cannot be separated as suggested in the environmental determination.

We must examine the cumulative impact of at least the street ran the restaurant with with regards to especially noise.

I recognize that the only action before us is the environmental determination.

However, the CEQA exemption relies on this council to find the project would not have significant impacts.

There is significant impact, uh evidence in the record, uh, and whether it's the owner or the customers or the operations about compliance with the municipal code.

This evidence to me constitutes unusual circumstances.

One of the criteria in considering the appeal.

But the frequency of violations over a consistent period of time demonstrates a history that constitutes those unusual circumstances.

The determination also used the small project exemption and ignore the cumulative effects of the street combined with the restaurant bar, which really kind of surprised me.

This wasn't just a small project, is it a definitive expansion of an existing one?

CQI guidelines state that a significant effect is a substantial, potentially substantial adverse change in any of the physical conditions within the area affected by the project, including quote ambient noise.

While I'm loath to require an environmental analysis for convening converting a tobo to a streetery, there is substantial evidence in a record that several exemptions listed in the determination in my opinion do not apply.

I cannot make the findings in support of the environmental determination.

So with that, I will move to grant the appeal and set aside the environmental determination in accordance with section 112.0520F.

I leave it to staff as to the appropriate level of CEQA analysis to address the issues raised in this afternoon's hearing.

And as a reminder to everyone here, this is not a decision on the permit application, just a narrow one on the environmental determination.

So I have made a motion and we'll go next to Councilmember Campbell, who used to have Pacific Beach in her district.

Thank you, Council President.

I'm happy to second your motion.

Okay.

Um so a motion by myself to uh grant the appeal and set aside the environmental determination second by council member Campbell.

I don't see anybody else on the lights.

Councilmember Von Wolpert.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you to everyone for coming in.

Sorry, this is very loud today.

I know this is your council district, and so of course you have expertise on it.

I just had a question about the the last statement you made that this was what we're deciding today is only the sequel appeal, not about the permit itself.

That is correct.

So if we were to deny the appeal today, would there still be a permitting process the business owner would have to go through to continue operating?

I'm sorry.

Do you have an answer?

Okay.

Um I believe the project plus the new determination would come forward to city council.

City council would take jurisdiction.

So we would hear this again.

You would hear the project plus the new determination.

What's the new determination mean?

I'm so I'm sorry.

The new CEQA determination.

Um may I clarify?

You mean if the council were to deny the appeal today?

Your original question?

Correct.

Okay.

So the project uh the environmental determination would be final, but the project would still be a it would go before the hearing officer for a process three decision that could be appealable to the planning commission if appealed.

And the city's final determination could also be appealable to the coastal commission because this is in the coastal commission's appealable jurisdiction.

Okay.

Um then I know the Coastal Commission had required any streetery which took away parking spaces to have an offset of parking spaces.

So are there new parking spaces being provided here?

Yes, the uh the applicant has located five off street parking spaces at an adjacent paid parking lot in the next block.

Eight eight, four, five garnett, I believe is the address.

I can't rem I don't recall whether the coastal commission would allow for paid parking as an offset.

Well, these were paid parking anyway, weren't they?

Uh I'm sorry.

Weren't these the street parking, they were peak parking meters, so I assume they were paid parking anyway.

Okay.

Yeah, I remember the Coastal Commission coming down on us for this issue.

I just they come down on us a lot, so I don't recall.

Um Mr.

S uh Mr.

Slega may be able to maybe able to speak to this further.

I believe he's paid for those spaces, so they are paid.

People can park in them.

Understood.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I guess my my overall question is I understand the very narrow grounds on which we have to evaluate a CEQA appeal.

At the same time, I do know that there's a lot of community concern about the conduct and the noise and everything going on.

So can that be if it if that cannot be addressed through a sequel appeal, could that be addressed through the permit process by which the community could be heard and and the owner could make any kind of modifications about the noise and about the violations and all that it it depends on what you mean by address.

Um in order to be able to approve a streetery here, we would need to make sure that the streetery operated according to the regulations for streeteries.

Um they don't specifically address noise, but they do specifically address a lot of um other things like hours of operation at et cetera.

So it it really depends on what you're concerned with.

Okay, I just I want to make sure that folks who are facing challenges from an adjacent business are able to get their concerns addressed, even though we may not be able to do that in the narrow grounds of a SEQ appeal.

So I will just leave that there.

I understand that we're very limited right now on what we can review, but I'm hopeful that there would be a process by which this could be done.

So thank you.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Valmulbridge.

Um to your point, I just want to emphasize a number of things that the appellant brought up are old descriptions of the project, no longer in place.

They've made the application has been updated, and I wanted to be very careful not to get distracted by how the the application, as you said, were constrained in a very derail conversation about the environmental uh determination.

Um to your other point, if I might um there was a decision by city council many years ago that projects were getting caught in a do-loop, that the environmental was appealed to council, council would send it back.

The environmental would be updated, only the environment would come up, they'd send it back again.

So they made a decision that once the environmental thing gets appealed, then council takes full responsibility for the project.

So you're not bouncing around.

So to the degree that might be helpful.

So uh so there is a path for uh the applicant, maybe not one they're going to like, but there is a path.

So I'll I'll be candid about that.

Uh councilmember Campio.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you for the presentation, staff.

I appreciate all the members of the public for their participation today.

Obviously, uh a small business trying to thrive in San Diego is is going through a lot to do that and succeed, um, and neighbors have uh concerns about uh impacts that happen in the neighborhood.

I appreciate both of you for putting that forward.

My question for staff.

So, in essence, the determination was to grant the application of the restaurant.

Uh and we have an appeal here.

Did I not hear you correctly that the appellants who want to stop 710 from moving forward didn't submit what they needed to submit in a timely fashion?

Uh I thought I understood you saying that in response to the council president's question.

That's correct.

Okay.

So is there not a municipal code or council policy that states that if you don't turn in is as valid as some of their concerns, and I hear them loud and clear are if they don't turn in their documentation appropriately, if they don't allow staff to have the ability to rebut, is there not something in place in our code that says if you fail to turn this in, it kind of moves forward.

I I know the council makes the ultimate final decision, it's process five at this point, but what is our policy or municipal code say about failing to protect your appeal rights?

Our policy is if the appeal fee is paid and the form is filled out, then the appeal is valid.

The code requires an appeal to be valid, but that that is the way that we currently interpret it.

Okay.

I feel like um excuse me.

I see staff conversing.

Occupied.

I'm just wondering if the comments uh if there was something that needed to be set on the record for the code.

I'm not we're not aware of anything in the code that says that they have to submit the paperwork at the time that they submit their application.

Okay.

All right.

I I'm wondering if the well, as you heard what they were saying, and you saw the evidence in front of you and the um points that the appellants were putting forward.

Because it seems I mean I know that's hard work because you have to go through a lot of hoops with the city attorney's office with the departments to figure out what's going on.

I feel like the place I've been put in is between a rock and a hard place where we have a valid appeal because they filed the piece of paper correctly, but didn't give staff the ability to discern what was correct versus incorrect.

And we have an applicant who is really worked hard to answer a million questions that undeniably the city puts in place for small businesses.

So do you have any response to the appellants that I can hear and making my determination?

What I can say is that the uh baseline conditions are the restaurant that is existing and including the noise that is already in the restaurant, and we analyzed the uh what if whether the whether the streetery would cause an increase in noise, and we determined that that would not be the case.

Okay.

So uh just last question for the city attorney.

So there's nothing that's a waiver of your appeal rights in this process for failing to supply evidence or reasoning with a piece of paper where you check boxes.

The code does not require submission of arguments at the time you submit your form.

I understand.

Okay.

Um to add to that, council member.

Yes, please.

There is some case law that discusses this, but generally the applicant can make additional arguments the day of the hearing.

So that is not legally prohibited or shortly before the hearing.

However, there's always an option for the council to continue the item to allow staff more time to evaluate what's been recently brought up.

Thank you for that answer.

Um I th I feel like there uh there, well, my my analysis of the situation is that it's it's it's uh I'm in a position where I can't make a decision without the staff's ability to respond to what in the presentation sounded like valid arguments.

Um but on top of that, to your point, Ms.

Fitzgerald, the without that information, the applicant also can't defend themselves from those allegations as well.

So we're in a place where uh it seems like the the process uh has um fallen apart a bit, um, or at least or at least the rules we have in place don't allow us to discern very well.

Uh I I won't believe it any further.

I think from a policy point of view, my I I think that to be able to give both sides the the fairness of it, there should be a continuance, but since that's not the motion on the floor, um I'll end my comments and I I appreciate the council president for uh his uh questions and discernment.

Um thank you.

All right, I don't see anybody else in the lights, but I will say councilmember campaign, if you want to work together to raise the bar.

I am old enough to remember a time when appeals were actually judged whether they in fact were sufficient.

Um maybe it was the fact that we raised the fee to a thousand bucks that may have changed that thinking, but um I think there is some validity uh going forward um to pursue that.

So um so I appreciate your question line of questioning there.

Uh council member Foster.

It just a quick question.

Um I guess I'm unclear on violations versus complaints.

Um I guess are there were there no com were there no violations on record?

Or I'm not understanding exactly where we stand with that.

So you're referring to noise complaints versus other types of violations, perhaps?

So the bait what what we were discussing i and I'm assuming um the issue is the noise is is kind of as we're looking at the environmental part of this, it at least that's what I gathered from the conversation, and I'm trying to understand and I think if the the owners here when he showed his presentation, there was a note of a violation that said a thousand, I think it said one K, if I remember correctly.

So I guess my question would be do we have a record of violations?

So just actual violations.

The the project is submitted in part in response to the streetery being out there and in need of a permit, they were cited for um having the unpermitted streetery.

of a violation that said a thousand I think it said one K if I remember correctly so I guess my question would be do we have a record of violations so just actual violations the the project is submitted in part in response to the streetery being out there and in need of a permit they were cited for um having the unpermitted streetery okay and so that was that violation was cited by development services noise complaints go to the police department so I wouldn't have uh in-depth information on that at this time okay so I as it went through this process at no point in time did you guys say hey San Ego PD do we have any valid findings regarding noise complaints I I don't believe we would consider that a CEQA issue.

Okay Courtney That wouldn't be a SQA issue no okay we'll do at the end of the day as we look at the process this is going to come back before council with I guess a re if I understand this a revised SEQA determination and then council makes the final decision as regards to um permit status I guess I'll say is that correct if you uh if the council upholds the appeal then yes okay all right thank you council member campio again sorry just briefly so if the motion passes come back to us with a different uh resolution that would find that it does it it it does qualify under CQR that it it is impacted uh rather let me state it correctly saying that the project is not exempt from a CEQA correct that's what the new resolution would say because your determination from staff was that environmental determination is that the project is exempt from CEQA so you're gonna come back to us with one saying it it's not exempt from CEQA.

Not necessarily it just depends on the environmental analysis that is done we could come back with another exemption.

Understood okay understanding that this isn't the um understanding that I pre I I have total respect for what the council presidents put before us as a motion I'm finding that that the complete failure to provide evidence beforehand is what is really sticking in my mind as a procedural issue.

I know that that's not a requirement we have but in just as a pure matter of fairness I I sympathize with what the community is saying in terms of their concerns but there I I feel like we have to hold applicants and appellants to turning in the evidence appropriately for discernment.

So I can't bring myself to vote in favor of the motion at this point just out of out of from a pure philosophical point of view I don't disagree with where the council president's coming from and I respect his motion but I'm gonna have to vote no all right I can appreciate that and I appreciate your candor uh not seeing anybody else in the lights we have a motion uh by myself and a second by council member Campbell it's up on the lights to grant the appeal and set aside the environmental determination clerk please call the vote I'm sorry the voting system please cast your vote I'm sorry can you give me your vote for the record please that passes eight to one with council member campio voting no thank you council president all right thank you again thank you everybody that showed up thank you to staff for the good work that you did so uh with that please introduce item two oh one item two oh one is to determine and declare posted speed limits throughout the city of San Diego vision zero update and findings of speed management plan if you'd like to speak on this item now's the time to submit your speaker sip to the front of the room in the clear box or if you are participating remotely please be sure to raise your hand by pressing star nine or the raise your hand icon thank you council president all right thank you so uh staff you don't need to rush up too fast we're gonna let the chambers kind of empty out of no if you wouldn't mind taking your conversation into the foyer or down the elevator and for the lobby all right uh staff um item two oh one uh please introduce yourselves for the record and let us know how much time you need

If you wouldn't mind taking your conversation into the foyer or down the elevator and for the lobby.

All right.

Uh staff, um, item two oh one.

Uh, please introduce yourselves for the record and let us know how much time you need.

Good afternoon, Council President Lacava, Council members.

Uh my name is Alex Ribaldo.

I'm the interim deputy director with the Transportation Department.

I am joined by my colleague Everett Hauser, program manager with the Transportation Department as well, and Naomi Chavez interim director TD.

And we will need 15 minutes.

All right, when you're ready.

By way of establishing a background, the city adopted a vision zero policy back in 2015.

The goal of Vision Zero is to eliminate severe injuries and fatalities from traffic related crashes within the city.

Vision Zero is a citywide effort with contributions from many different departments as listed on the photo here, including police, planning, communications, development services, engineering and capital projects, and transportation department.

The city has tracked the number of severe injuries and fatalities each year since the adoption of Vision Zero.

There's clearly still a lot more work to do, but this data here shows if you add a trend line, the total fatal and severe injury crashes have decreased in San Diego since 2018.

This progress stands in contrast to the national trends, which have seen increases in fatalities and injuries, especially in the years following the COVID 19 pandemic.

All crashes matter, but this data here shows that people walking are overrepresented in serious crashes, and that's because they're the most vulnerable when interacting with vehicle traffic.

We'll be reviewing these elements in more detail in the next few slides.

We conduct proactive system-wide safety analysis.

We implement over 2,000 traffic safety improvements annually, and we also develop additional plans, including the upcoming speed management plan.

To give a bit of a background, in 2022, the city applied for the safe streets for all federal grant and was awarded a three-part award to develop supplemental plans to support a Vision Zero strategic plan.

One of those elements was the preparation of a comprehensive speed management plan.

To give additional background on how speed limits are set, Transportation Department is responsible for performing the speed surveys to establish the speed limits citywide.

The speed surveys are done on a seven to 14 year cycle.

About 842 miles are surveyed, that's a quarter of the street network.

Speed limits are based on the 85th percentile, that's a speed at or below which 85% of drivers are traveling under free flow conditions.

And not all of our street networks are surveyed.

Any unsurveyed street are set at 25 miles per hour by default, and these are mostly our residential streets.

California Vehicle Code does require that speed limits be established by resolution, so any reductions that we're proposing as part of this plan will have to be adopted by city council.

This slide is a reminder that effective speed management is more than just about the posted speed.

The photos shown here are our most prominent Vision Zero projects and their evolution from traditional capital programming to our quick build installation of safety improvements, the quick build roundabout, something the transportation department can build quickly in-house and significantly cheaper than the traditional build projects.

The urgency that we're all feeling with Vision Zero really pushes our department to move faster with less resources, hence, the department is actively working on more of these quick build facilities in addition to finishing up several of these traditional build projects.

It's using the data and information from the city's systemic safety analysis.

That evaluation essentially looked at 10 years' worth of injury crash data to find patterns and common characteristics where these crash sites are happening.

And by doing that, it allows the city to be more proactive in programming improvements rather than reactive and waiting for crashes to occur.

I think it's important to emphasize the speed management plan relies in part on the systemic safety analysis to help narrow candidate locations for speed reductions within the select categories of Assembly Bill 43.

State Assembly Bill 43 AB 43 allowed for a number of changes in the vehicle code, which allows the cities to be more flexible when setting the speed limits.

The table here shows the four major categories that we will review and what they mean for speed reduction.

AB 43 allows for an additional five-mile per hour speed limit reduction for safety corridors for ped bike generators and business activity district.

It also allows further reduction at school zones, and we'll go over each of these categories a bit more in detail.

Safety corridor is defined as the highest number of severe fatal injury crashes, and only about a one-fifth of the network can be in this category.

The plan focuses on reducing speed limits along systemic safety corridors where fatal or severe injury crashes have occurred, and where these common patterns or roadway characteristics are present.

Speed reduction is important, but as mentioned, we also want to pair them with improvements for maximum safety benefits.

We are proposing in fiscal year 27 a CIP budget request for a handful of quick build projects to help support these speed limit reductions at the safety corridors with additional requests planned in future years.

This triggers a lot of locations throughout the city, features like crosswalks, sidewalks, bikeways can trigger this criteria so a lot of street segments can qualify.

The plan's approach is to focus on these where these measures are going to be most effective, which is within the systemic safety corridors, particularly on transit routes that generate high pedestrian and bicycle activity.

In summary, the safety corridors and the ped bike generators are essentially being combined and proposing to reduce speed limits that would include all 488 intersections that's been identified through the systemic safety analysis.

Business activity district is another category where speed reductions are allowed.

The state regulation sets a very specific criteria for what qualifies as a business activity district.

And through this plan, we evaluated the rest of the city to identify additional corridors that meet this criteria and are eligible for speed reduction.

As a result, qualifying business activity districts, streets across the city will see speed limits reduced down to 20 or 25 miles per hour, depending on the street design and how that street functions.

Finally, we have the criteria for school zones.

The plan recommends speed limit reductions at schools citywide, lowering speeds to 15 miles per hour within 500 feet of a school and 25 miles per hour between 500 and 1,000 feet of schools.

The 15 mile per hour sign would typically have the standard when children present condition included as part of that signage.

And this approach is being proposed and applied consistently across all schools throughout the city of San Diego.

We do receive a significant amount of requests from stakeholders, constituents, advocates to lower speeds, especially near schools.

This slide brings everything together.

The mileage is broken down by the criteria shown.

The key takeaway here is that through this plan, the city is proposing speed limit reductions on roughly one-fifth 20% of the overall roadway network.

That's nearly 680 miles total.

We can't emphasize enough the plan also recommends funding for future safety improvements along these corridors and pairing speed reductions with traffic calming measures to make them most effective.

Implementation is expected to begin in fiscal year 27, and that's contingent on funding.

The same crews who would install these speed limit signs are fully dedicated to parking operations and expansions and the normal routine traffic service requests that they perform throughout the city.

To support implementation, we are requesting $2.4 million in fiscal year 27.

That funding would cover materials and installation for approximately 3,000 new speed limit signs, including 1,200 new polls.

3,000 signs exceed more than half of our signed shops annual capacity, so an external fabrication vendor will be needed to avoid impacting day-to-day operations.

That cost is about 180,000.

The remaining funds primarily cover staff overtime that's needed to deliver this work efficiently within one fiscal year.

If overtime funding is not approved, we do expect impacts to our routine traffic service requests and other traffic safety improvements simply because this work would be competing for those same limited staff resources.

With this funding in place, however, the department will be well positioned to deliver the speed management plan in a timely manner, minimize impacts to our core services, and accelerate safety benefits for communities throughout the city of San Diego.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for your presentation.

I do want to note for the record that we also have Naomi Chavez, the interim director of transportation, as well as Bethany Bizak, and I'm sorry I have to read this.

Chief Performance and Logistics Officer.

We appreciate both of you being here for this item.

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

Thank you.

If I can have Aria Grossman, please come forward.

You'll have a minute and a half, and then if I can have Ian Hembry, Blair Beekman, and Bob Kazuski, please come forward to the yellow reserve seats at the front.

Please proceed when ready.

Hello, my name is Aria Grossman.

I'm the policy manager at Circulate San Diego, and I'm speaking in strong support of advancing the speed management plan.

Um I want to thank you all for taking this up, and to everyone who worked um hard on this effort.

We know for a fact that lowering speed limits saves lives.

Five or ten miles per hour can be the difference between walking away from a crash and perishing.

I am excited that the city is moving forward with this.

I think it's a fantastic example of good leadership.

Um I would also like to thank the Transportation Department for stating that it plans to prioritize school zones at this implemented when this was heard at ATI.

Um we are very supportive of this approach as prioritizing making streets safer for children should be a shared goal for all of us.

Um I encourage the full council and the mayor to make funding implementation of this plan a priority in the 2027 budget.

This effort, if paired with targeted infrastructure improvements like fixing the fatal 15 and the traffic calming measures we saw in the presentation, will together go a long way towards making streets safer for San Diego residents.

This plan that we're hearing today is great progress, and the city has the chance to make a real deference with this effort through the budget process, and I urge you to do so.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Ian Good evening, good evening, City Council.

My name is Ian Hembry, and I am the advocacy and community manager for the San Diego County Biccho Coalition.

I'm here to speak in favor of the adoption of the city speed management plan.

I want to begin by thanking the transportation department for the presentation and their hard work on this plan.

It is truly ambitious, and the speed reductions identified in this plan will save lives.

Speed is one of the largest factors determining the outcome of a crash.

A person hit by a car at 40 miles per hour is eight times more likely to die than a person hit by a car at 20 miles per hour.

And for those who survive a crash, the effects can be life changing.

Brain damage, lost limbs, and burdensome medical bills are among the costs incurred by those who survive traffic violence.

Reducing speed limits is the first most obvious step for making our streets safer.

The next steps, including building safer infrastructure, reallocating roadway space to other modes, and increasing dangerous driving enforcement should follow.

Make our streets safer by approving this plan, allocating the requested budget item for next year, and following through with the commitments to plans, policies, and projects that save lives.

Thank you.

Blair Beekman, please come forward.

Hi.

Thank you, Blair Beekman.

I'd just like to first very much thank Councilperson Von Wilbert, who I think uh offered really nice uh questions about uh the previous item with uh the police chief about our current public safety practices.

Um I think she did a really good job in asking important questions that I think work towards concepts of peace in this time of we're in a fragile state of war.

Good luck how we can talk in terms of of openness and important questions of best practices and what Vision Zero tries to do.

I think you've taken a really good approach with Vision Zero and with technology issues overall.

You don't beat us over the head with with tech provision zero.

You don't want to overly enforce vision zero things.

You want us as individuals of the community to come to our own conclusions that the slowing down is important.

And thank you.

You're doing that.

And you're you're you're working towards the good principles of vision zero.

Um the quick build ideas, um, that is also gonna fast track new technology.

I hope you're wanting to have more open, accountable practices for all our technology.

The more you practice that uh open technology practices, it simply invites better ideas and creative thinking for your projects overall.

I say that at Sandag all the time.

I hope you can remember that.

Um it's important uh how our how we build our vision zero feature.

Thank you.

Bob Kazuski.

President Lakava.

Um I've been watching this meeting all day today, and I understand that you're not a fifth grade teacher, but I urge you to properly chastise and or discipline your fellow council members who are routinely chit-chatting and looking at their phones while the citizens are speaking.

Uh, they could at least pretend to pay attention.

Also, President Lakava, um, where's the picture of the president?

I think it's been over a year now, and I still don't see it in our chambers.

We've had it there for as long as I've been coming here, probably as long as you have, too.

Seems highly partisan and disrespectful to intentionally uh omit that from our chambers.

Finally, with regard to this particular item, um, the cited uh speed of 85%, uh that means 15% above it and 85% below it.

That already makes 15% of our citizens criminals.

I I think that's enough.

Thank you.

Sorry, the five minute time we're here in Council Chambers going to those participating remotely.

We currently have 13 speakers with their hands raised.

Jason B.

If you can please unmute after that will be Becky Rep.

Jason, please proceed.

Hi, I'm a resident of downtown.

I fully support the speed limit plan, and thank you to the city staff for putting it together.

One thing I would like to see is a reduction of speed limits in our parks.

I believe this use case is covered under AB 43 because parks are pedestrian and bike generators.

Uh, the big one is East Mission Bay Drive, which is inside Mission Bay Park and is used for both recreation and is also a key bike route for commuters and students to UCSD, but it's very dangerous because there are no bike lanes and cars speed down it at over 45 miles an hour to skip traffic on the five.

Another one is uh Balboa Drive on the West Mesa of Balboa Park when the council voted against a multi-use path in favor of diagonal parking.

Uh, we were promised that joggers and bikes would be safe because of the 15 mile an hour speed limit there.

However, somehow in the intervening time, the speed limit was raised to 25 on Balboa Drive.

And since then, a cyclist has already been hit by a car.

Um, and there's also, you know, no no longer nearly as many people jogging and walking doors, dogs on Balboa Drive.

So please uh, you know, return the speed limit on Balboa Drive at least to 15, if not 10 miles an hour.

Thank you.

Next is Becky Rapp, if you can please unmute.

After that, is the original.

Becky Repp, I can't unmute for you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Becky Rapp.

Thank you for bringing this item forward as vision zero is critical to public safety.

And I urge you to consider a critical piece of traffic safety that is often overlooked, and that's the drug-impaired driving, particularly driving high on marijuana.

Unlike alcohol, there's currently no universally reliable roadside test that can measure real-time marijuana impairment.

THC can remain in a person system long after use, and impairment levels vary widely from person to person.

This creates a serious challenge for enforcement and for public safety.

Because there is no clear threshold that guarantees safe driving.

The safest public message is simple.

If you have used marijuana, you should not drive.

Vision zero should include stronger education, enforcement tools, and policy guidance addressing drug impaired driving, just as it does for speeding, distracted driving, and alcohol impairment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is the original.

If you can please unmute after that is Harry.

You guys invert everything.

This is to do with controlling people's movements.

You're actually putting people in danger by doing things like roundabouts.

We've already seen the data come forward of this happening in other locations, yet you guys refuse to acknowledge it.

So you're literally putting people in danger by putting in that type of infrastructure, and we shouldn't have to pay for it.

Um, because you guys want to control our movements.

You need to quit telling people that this is for uh safety and they're you know, all of this and that, because in reality, like doesn't matter, people are always gonna die.

It's a part of life.

And nothing you guys do is actually going to slow that down, especially when you guys are engaged in it yourself.

It's just disgusting because it's like you want to sit here and you know uh literally make it so that people drive around more by taking away parking spots and lanes and then making things slower, and you act like not only is that gonna bring public safety, but that it's gonna save the planet.

And it's just it's ridiculous how much money we have to spend in order for you guys to change something like that.

We shouldn't have to spend 180,000 on freaking signs because you guys want to go in and lower the speed limit when there's people on the street suffering and dying because of your guys' negligence.

Your time has concluded.

Harry, if you can please unmute after that is Guthrie.

Good afternoon.

Harry Bobbins here with Respect Bird Rock.

I'm speaking in support of this item.

Thank you to the AI ATI committee for their unanimous vote and Chair Whipburn's office and city staff and the transportation department for their enormous work and the mayor's direction.

Speed determines whether someone walked away or is carried away.

This plan will make San Diego the statewide leader in implementing AB 43.

Lower speed, save lives, and protect children, seniors, and everyone who drives, walks, or bikes.

Reduces emergency response and litigation costs.

Creates quieter, more peaceful neighborhoods.

And safe streets are good for business.

In Bird Rock with street calming, revenues went up and jobs increased.

We're grateful that La Jolla Boulevard is included.

We appreciate Council Member Lakava and the staff responding to many community concerns and continue to work with residents.

The city could sell street signs as the revenue generator, like other cities do to have offset costs.

That's just a quick idea.

But the cost of implementation is modest.

The cost of doing nothing is measured in lives lost.

Please support this plan and prioritize swift implementation, especially in school zones and high traffic recreation corridors, parks, and beach access areas from Tormaline to Mission Bay Drive.

Thank you.

Next is Guthrie.

After that is Leaf, if you can please unmute.

Hi, thank you so much.

Guys, this is this is great news.

I'm so excited for this.

This is the type of bold and important action we need.

It's Vision Zero is a thing that breaks my heart every day.

I've heard way too many stories of children dying, of parents dying, of pregnant mothers dying just this year in LA.

We get to do something special.

We get to show the state that this is an important issue and that we're going to take the initiative and actually address it.

So I encourage you to follow through with what your staff is recommending.

Follow through with lowering these speed limits, follow through with implementing the actual physical safely safety uh structures to make this happen.

Because I do want to say I'm as excited as I am about this, signs are signs, right?

And and as uh a YouTuber I watched once said physics is more powerful than signs.

So I would encourage you to implement stuff like La Mesa's new quick build speed bumps, implement the other quick build measures that your staff are talking about.

We have opportunities to save lives.

And and I love what Harry said.

The cost of inaction is measured in lives.

The cost of action is really pennies on the dollar for what our transportation budget is.

So I encourage you to pass this measure and just show people that you care about their lives.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The five-minute timer has concluded.

There are eight speakers in the queue.

No additional speakers will be taken.

Leave if you can please unmute.

Hello, my name is Live Gandlett.

I'm the vice president of Riders D, and there's a lot a lot.

I'm in strong support of this measure.

Please approve it.

There's a lot been said from a previous speaker.

I can't really add any much more to it.

But I want to point out a couple of things where it is great that we're going to reduce the speed limit.

I strongly agree that we have to put in physical barriers to actually ensure that people keep to the speed limit.

This should also come with enforcement for people going over the speed limit.

Ultimately, also what we want to see is we want to see um structures that uh encourage pedestrians to walk safely where they want to go, have bike lanes that are physically separated that gives cyclists more safety when they ride their bike, and then long term, what we also want to see is we want to see dedicated bus lanes and transit signal priority so people can go to the places where they want to go fast.

Um, and then also if people do want to have a drink, we we highly encourage them to take public transport so that they don't uh that they're not driving drunk.

Um, thank you for uh for the attention to this uh to this item, and yeah, please approve it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Zach, if you can please unmute Zach, please unmute.

Thank you.

Uh I'm calling in from District 5 to support this measure.

As everybody here is aware, um, multiple children died last year, either nearest school or on their way to school, and uh that is something I am unwilling to accept.

And seeing this measure passed uh through committee and through council, as I hope it is, would show us that uh the city council is unable to accept that as a cost of doing business too.

Um, as multiple commenters have pointed out, speed of vehicles makes a huge difference in pedestrian safety.

Five or ten miles per hour doesn't mean a lot when you're behind the wheel of a car, but if you're hit by a car, that is the difference between as uh another commenter, Harry Bevins put being carried away and walking away.

Um, I I do want to second the calls to increase enforcement in these zones and add um infrastructure to for both traffic calming as well as uh pedestrian-friendly and uh safe bike infrastructure.

Since a sign will only go so far, it must be paired with other measures to ensure that drivers are actually following those signs.

Um I particularly think of a road near me, Pesteo Losido, which runs in front of middle school, and frequently parents are parked in the bike lanes, and kids riding to and from school are forced to merge with 35 mile per hour traffic uh just to get to their classes, which is completely unsafe and a protected bike infrastructure would go a long way paired with this to keeping them safe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is John Stump.

If you can please unmute after that is an R.

John Stump.

Speed kills.

There's no question about it.

You know, in the time since we've been tracking automobile deaths and injuries, the number of deaths and injuries has kept at about just under 50,000 a year.

Now the decrease at first was because we put in padded dashes and um collapsible steering wheels and all those sort of things.

But the real problem is speed.

I support this item.

I hope that enforcement will enforce speed limits on home avenue.

I live a half mile from it, and every night it's a racetrack.

Home avenue, please include speed containment on home avenue in District 4.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anar.

If you can please unmute.

After that is Catherine Douglas.

Hey, good afternoon.

My name is Anar Salaev, and I'm the executive director of Bike SD.

I want to thank city staff and this council for making the right choice here and advancing the speed management plan.

And I look forward to it passing and eventually being implemented.

About two years ago, Bike SD launched our legislation that saves lives campaigns to push for the implementation of two critical state laws, AB 43 and AB 413.

These laws together give cities the tools to reduce speeds and improve visibility at intersections, proven ways to save lives on our streets.

We're grateful for the willingness of many council members and staff who have met with us over the past two years and have worked collaboratively to move this forward.

Lowering speed limits is a meaningful step in the right direction.

But if we want to truly achieve vision zero, we know that signs alone are not enough.

The next step must be street reconfiguration and infrastructure that actually slows vehicles down by design.

That means safer intersections, daylighting, traffic calming, and protected spaces for people walking and biking, as well as enforcement.

We appreciate the progress today and look forward to continuing to work with the city to build streets that are truly safe for all San Diegans.

Thank you.

Thank you, Catherine Douglas.

And then Nicole, your final speaker, speaker, Nicole Burgess.

Long meeting today.

It's not that I'm opposed to lowering speed limits, but that alone is not going to solve the issue you hope to mitigate.

Lowering the speed limit will have zero effect unless coupled with consistent widespread enforcement, which we do not have.

Lowering the speed limit does not change bad behavior.

Enforcement changes bad behavior.

Put the 2.4 million dollars into SDPD so they can do the needed enforcement.

Lowering the speed limit will have zero effect unless coupled with consistent widespread enforcement, which we do not have.

Lowering the speed limit does not change bad behavior.

Enforcement changes bad behavior.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nicole.

If you can please unmute.

If you raise your hand after that.

There are no more speakers to be taken.

The five-minute timer had concluded.

Nicole, please proceed.

Good afternoon.

Uh my name is Nicole Burgess, and I'm here to show support for the speed management plan and all quick build projects that can come with uh good budget management.

Um I appreciate all of you, uh staff and all the orgs that have brought this forward to try to uh get this to this point, and I appreciate all of you for your support in moving this forward for all the reasons that so many speakers have said, speed saves lives.

So speed kills and lower speeds are what saves lives.

So imagine you on a 30 mile an hour street riding your bike.

The thing that's going to make you feel more comfortable is when those cars are going 20 miles per hour or less.

Our kids going to school is the biggest thing, so I appreciate that being our focus.

Safe routes to schools, and getting these kids active and moving to school is going to be the best thing we can do for our kids.

So, all around, this is better for our communities, our people, um, the people on our streets every day, whether you're in a car, bike, foot, we're all going to be safer.

So thank you, staff and board uh for pushing this forward, and um appreciate you all on this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That does conclude public comment on item 201.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh thank you, City Clerk with that.

So we'll now turn it over to my colleagues on the council for questions, comments, and entertainment motion.

And we'll start out with the chair of active transportation and infrastructure, Councilmember Whitburn.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh, and thanks to everybody who came down or called in to offer public comment on this.

Uh the active transportation and infrastructure committee voted unanimously last month to recommend the council pass this.

And I thank my committee colleagues for that.

And I want to thank the transportation department for all the work that has got into this, and this has been a lot of work.

Uh I appreciate all of the neighborhood residents and traffic safety advocates who've been calling for speed limit reductions for a long time.

They have inspired much of this work.

This will make our neighborhoods safer by reducing speed limits in school zones, business districts, and areas with lots of pedestrians and bicyclists, and in places where there have been a lot of crashes.

Speed limits in school zones will be reduced to 15 miles an hour when children are present.

This will be much safer, especially for young children who may not be paying attention to traffic.

Most other areas that get lower speed limits will see a five mile an hour reduction.

Just slowing down speeds a little bit could make a big difference in safety.

People across the city have been asking for this.

Our neighborhoods want safer streets with slower speeds.

Many people are asking us to prioritize the school zones when we begin implementing the reduced speed limits.

Ms.

Grossman uh from Circulate San Diego referenced that in her comments this afternoon.

So for the record, I'll ask the same question that I asked at committee, which is can we start by reducing speed limits in school zones?

That's correct, Councilmember.

It'll be prioritized at school zones.

Thank you very much.

Uh and thank you again for all of your work on this, and I will make the motion to adopt the staff recommendation.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, Councilman Whitburn.

So we do have a motion to move the staff recommendation by Councilman Whitburn.

We'll go next to Councilmember Campio.

Oh, maybe we won't go next.

The council member can be here.

You want to give him the second when his time comes back, and we'll go next to Councilmember Hilo Rivera.

Uh all right.

Uh yeah, thank you, Council President.

Um I'll withhold the second.

Um, just I think it's important to correct.

And we'll go next to Councilmember Cambio.

My apologies, thank you.

Sorry, Councilmember Elo Rivera.

Uh, thank you, staff.

Thank you very much uh for your presentation and your good work.

Um I'm happy to second the item, and I thank Councilmember Whitburn for his good work and his partnership and quite frankly, the entire council's partnership on this type of issue.

Um we hear from constituents so often about how they just want safety in their community.

Um we can point to police, we can point to fire, and very, very often I point to the transportation department for their work.

Um, as colleagues have shared.

Eliminating preventable traffic deaths is so important.

The heartbreak we see in communities lasts a lifetime, and it's a fundamental responsibility to make sure ref uh residents can move around safely.

Um and we know that unsafe driving is the primary cause of the severe crashes we see.

And what I've heard for so many times in so many town halls is that lowering speeds is what people want to see.

And I've always had to point back to state law or or antiquated regulations that say we really can't do that for all these different reasons.

But today we can fix that.

And we have an action before us.

It's a major step forward, and I want to recognize the significant effort of staff and state partners and advocates, uh, community members, my council colleagues, Bethany Bizak, thank you so much.

Uh people should know that you've saved so many lives in this city.

Um of course, as the staff report notes, this isn't this isn't the only thing we're doing.

Uh lowering speeds alone is not the whole picture.

Safety comes with pairing new limits with design improvement and education and enforcement to truly change that behavior.

And so while today's action sets the new speed limits, $2.4 million are needed to install those 3,000 new signs needed to operationalize it.

Uh as we discussed last week, the CIP outlook shows the gap we have in mobility safety funding, uh, which is the same pot that supports these safety projects that communities ask for.

Uh for District 7, um, many of the corridors in this speed management plan include Jackson Drive and Waring Road, uh, Zion Avenue, Claremont Mesa Boulevard, so many school area streets where families are walking and biking every day, and where these paired safety upgrades will matter the most.

So with all of that in mind, staff, my question for you is what is the plan to prioritize and coordinate the work so that we can see the reductions and those improvements roll out along those corridors.

So we will prioritize areas as we mentioned where the safety benefit is going to be the highest.

But that's uh how it's being prioritized currently based on feedback that we receive.

Understood.

Um well, I appreciate the good work of the transportation department working with my office with my staff uh and uh and working with your team uh whether it's 7:30 in the morning, paving roads or talking in briefings about how we're gonna make places safer for people to walk.

Um my constituents deeply appreciate this item, and so I at that will conclude my second.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Campio.

So we have a motion by Councilmember Whitburn, the second by Council Member Campio to move the staff recommendation.

We'll go back to Councilmember Ila Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Um for all the work that brought this here.

I I do want to just quickly correct the record because Council President, you were unfairly blamed for something.

Um photo came down a few years ago, came down before this president per my direction, because I thought it was weird to have the president's head floating in our chambers.

This is not a monarchy.

Um this is a city council chambers, and thank God that that fascist face isn't in here.

Um the item at hand.

Um sorry, you take enough in that seat.

Um you don't need to take residual for my decisions of uh a couple years ago.

Um this is super important, and I'm really really grateful that this is here in this way.

Um as has been said time and time again, speed kills and slower speeds save lives.

We we know that.

We've known that, and far too many times we've heard families of victims of traffic violence beg with us to make streets safer in this city, not because it will bring back their loved ones, but because they with all of their hearts do not want to see anybody else feel the pain that they feel on a daily basis, and they can see throughout the city the the many, many places where people's lives are in in danger.

Um we saw uh uh a couple of just um unspeakable tragedies last fall.

Um, one in Councilman Campbell's district, another um in District 9, um, where a five-year-old um uh died crossing the street.

And I remember vividly um learning about that, and it was right around Halloween, and I remember holding my son's hand so tight that weekend when we were going out to look um at the monsters uh that he enjoyed um looking at in different neighborhoods.

Um we just have to do better by and and I know we are, and this is a great step in that direction.

Um I want to vote kind of yes and some of the the comments that we heard about this not being enough.

We know it's not enough.

We know that this requires investment, and um I think one of the I one of the issues that this council has been super super um collaborative about and in agreement about is the need to make our streets safer and to invest uh in in those those changes.

Um so it is true that simply posting a street sign won't necessarily improve safety, but it is a step in the right direction, and we know that um it will help reduce speeds, and um we can make changes by way of traffic calming and street redesign and enforcement strategies.

Uh ultimately um vision zero is about accountability and not just accountability for dangerous drivers, but accountability for us as a city and and demonstrating that if we're serious about eliminating traffic fidelities, that we're going to invest in every tool available from street management to safer street design to data-driven investments.

I I will just reemphasize why I think given where we're at in terms of our structural budget deficit, the backlog on street repairs, why it's going to be so important for us to continue to lean into I've said this time and time again, but quick build projects and working with community to make changes quickly so that communities aren't told that the changes that they need are going to come in a decade or decade and a half, but instead in the amount of time that feels appropriate for the danger that they feel and the protection that they feel for their families and their neighbors.

So I'll say thank you again.

I also want to uh give Naomi, I want to give you credit in your new role about being super communicative about the ways that our um parking revenue is being used to make improvements.

And I will give you an opportunity if the kind of seeing the way that this is rolled out, um, if there are any ideas you have about the ways that we can use that revenue to improve street safety and and speed up the way that we were making street safer.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera, Eli Rivera.

Um, yes, that is something that we could look into utilizing so yes, we can definitely look into uh utilizing CPD revenues for making some of these safety improvements in those areas.

I I appreciate that.

And again, thank you for being communicative.

The work that's been done has been pretty remarkable, the number of street lights fixed, potholes filled.

Um I see you are following in Bethany's big uh filling the big shoes that she left behind to get work done at a fast rate and um and and make sure that the this the community feels um the benefit from those investments.

Um thank you again for all the work to bring this forward.

I'm glad we're taking this step.

Uh that concludes my comments, Council President.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Yula Rivera.

We'll go next to Councilmember Von Wolpert.

Um thank you, and thank you for the work on this item.

Um it's incredibly important that we at least strive towards our vision zero goals and making sure pedestrians, cyclists, children walking to school, children walking to parks are safe from collisions.

So thank you to Councilmember Whitburn for your leadership here.

Uh I asked most of my questions at our committee level at active transportation.

Um but I just want to um reiterate that we did ask at committee that since we are going to prioritize school zones when lowering speed limits first, we are working with the school districts to coordinate with them.

Um so I'm glad that we are doing that.

I also want to thank uh the folks who come in, you know, circulate San Diego and the bike coalition for your continual advocacy for making our streets safer.

I'm proud to support this item.

And I know that this is only one of many tools we can do to make our streets safer.

Uh on December 21st, 2025.

Um a 911 call set things in motion after a pedestrian was hit in a crosswalk in the corridor neighborhood, and the SUV who struck the pedestrian uh pulled over for a second and then took off, leaving the victim seriously injured in the middle of the roadway.

And it was only notified to SCPD by one of our automated license plate readers and a smart street light that caught the collision on camera and notified RPD in real time.

They were able to dispatch an ambulance to the seriously injured pedestrian, and because of the license plate reader, they were able to catch the hit and run driver who stopped, noticed they had seriously injured someone and drove away.

And we've seen this as well with fatal collisions with bicyclists as well, uh, catching people who um who are murdering people on the street and and leaving.

And so I just want to thank Circulate and others for advocating for the responsible use of automated license plate reader technology because it is saving lives, even in this way.

But I do have a question though that I get asked often about enforcement of speed limits.

So I see our sergeant is here.

Um, I get asked by my by my my neighbors and folks in my district all the time about you know, people are speeding down residential zones and everybody wants a speed limit or speed bump or a stop sign, and it breaks my heart because often these are our neighbors who are speeding through our streets.

But you know, what can we do about enforcement of these new speed limits given the police department's serious constraints and staffing?

Um well, we continue to accept um suggestions on where to uh conduct enforcement.

We have um motorcycle officers and traffic officers who dedicate a lot of time to speed enforcement.

But uh as you said, we don't have the resources for every street in the city and every school zone.

Um we're working on getting uh traffic complaints and to get it done.

I think that's something that we really need to prioritize.

Um that will allow you uh citizens, anybody to submit the complaints, just like with parking complaints, and those will go to traffic division and and our motorcycle officers or our traffic officers will be able to pull it up on their on their phone if they're in northeastern division, they could see um where the complaints are, and then they could update that information and go right back to the um citizen via email or or or how however.

So we have to uh prioritize based on uh crash data that we have, but really citizen complaints, the people that know their neighborhood where this meeting is.

Okay, thank you very much.

I will let our constituents know to file get it done requests, and uh, we are also always working with our school districts saying, hey, do you have personnel who can come out and help uh with crosswalks and everything?

But thank you for being here.

I appreciate all the work you do, and I'm proud to support this motion.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Von Wilbert.

We'll go next to Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Thank you, Council President.

Um, and thank you to the team for uh your presentation.

We of course heard this at ATI.

So I I think I just want to add sort of a pragmatic lens to all of this.

You had mentioned that if uh this were to be implemented in the FY27 period, that the uh anticipated need in the budget would be about 2.4 million dollars, correct?

Uh and I think everyone on this status and and probably even the public recognizes that given the budgetary constraints that we're facing.

I I'm going to even assume that that is going to be a tall order.

Um at the end of the day, we we need to actually think about a couple of factors.

And so I I I want to emphasize asking that the department um, as you're looking at the potential for implementing uh work with the data that we do have, um, recognizing that from a capacity standpoint, you noted that we're not gonna be able to make all these signs in house as well, and some of it would have to be sent outside.

Um I think depending on what we are able to allocate on the budget.

Uh we have a bit of data throughout the city that I think is actually quite helpful as we determine what the priorities are.

Some of that might be from traffic reports, some of it might be from citizen complaints.

Uh, but we also have a pretty good sense of the most dangerous intersections around the city, and when you tie that to nearby school zones, I think it gives you a sense of corridors where traffic um and speed can be an issue because I think, like many of my colleagues would echo that we all recognize that simply changing the number on that street won't necessarily slow the traffic down.

Uh it's one step, but it's gonna require um additional follow-up, whether that's other traffic calming uh enforcement, uh, et cetera.

I had a chance to tour Governor Drive with a number of residents from uh the university community planning group uh recently, looking at a quarter with a number of um schools that are on it.

It's the governor drive itself is not necessarily considered a school zone, but what we see is that it is adjacent to multiple school zones, and that's where some of the heaviest speeding takes place.

And I still remember a stretch between um Regents and Genesee where there is a flashing um sign already that notifies you when you're speeding on that street.

And so it's a very good example from residents who say, well, you could change that limit down, doesn't stop people from actually speeding on the street.

So I think having a targeted sense of what the priorities will be in terms of available funding and capacity, tying that to some of our most dangerous intersections and corridors, um, and again prioritizing for schools uh or adjacency to schools, I would hope gives us at least some sense of where we can start uh given whatever funding ultimately gets allocated.

Um then hopefully we can go from there.

So uh thank you, and otherwise I'll be supporting that.

All right, thank you, Council President Pro Temily.

We'll go next to Councilmember Foster.

Uh yes, thank you.

Um Council President, and thank you for the presentation.

Um I just really wanted to um, you know, when we heard this item previously, um brought up safe routes to school, and just want to thank the mayor's office, Randy, um, and the staff.

Um we had a very um what I thought was a very productive meeting with San Diego Unified School District immediately following.

Um, I want to say it felt like it was within days, within a week, um, and being able to um pull everyone together to start those conversations.

Um, just really want to thank you for that.

Um means a lot to me as as um we are really trying to um increase safety.

So uh thank you for that.

And that concludes my comments.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Not seeing anybody else on the lights.

Um, I'll add a few closing comments myself.

Joining my colleagues and thanking all the staff at transportation uh for the work on this.

This was a pretty significant lift in bringing this forward, and I appreciate the time and effort that went into it.

I appreciate you when did the commercial districts first to kind of get the ball rolling and then came in and do this heavier lift on the remaining streets.

That's my colleagues who said our communities are hurting in the wake of traffic fatalities.

We've had three and just in 2026 alone.

Um, you know, how do you explain that to the family and to the community?

One of them, the first one we actually seem to understand how it happened as horrific as it was.

The other two, I think, are still being investigated, and we'll learn more about that.

And over the years, we've made progress towards our vision zero goal goals, but we know there's still a lot more work to be done to ensure streets are truly safe for everyone.

Any effort that supports our vision zero goals moves us in the right direction, especially given that speed remains a leading factor in both fatal and serious injury crashes.

That said, as I think you pointed out, as my colleagues have pointed out, lowering speed limits alone is not enough to create truly safe or streets and corridors, reduced speeds must be paired with safety improvements such as roundabouts, pedestrian refuge islands, leading pedestrian intervals, rectangular rapid flashing beacons, hawk systems, and more.

And that's why I appreciate the speed management plan.

Takes a more comprehensive approach by recommending uh street safety improvements alongside lower speed segments, particularly at key safety intersections.

And I also want to recognize your willingness to embrace quick build projects, which allow us to make safety improvements more efficiently and respond to community needs quicker.

So I look forward to this seeing this plan come to life.

Uh, just a couple of comments, a couple of which I mentioned at the briefing.

Um, you know, there was a lot of uh agony in the public when we instituted the daylighting where we didn't actually paint the curbs red, but enforcement started whether the curb was painted red because that's what the state law said.

Uh, what about reduced speed limits?

Will they be enforced if we take action today, or you would the enforcement start only when the new signs went up?

Council President, the enforcement will start when the signs go up.

Okay, great.

Thank you for stating that on the record.

Um, one of the public callers called in something that we didn't really check into because it's not entirely within our district, and that is East Mission Bay Drive, which I believe is currently signed for 30 miles an hour, and perhaps Mission Bay Drive as well.

Uh that's a very active street, it has share rows, these are a lot of bicycle use.

Um, it's also a pretty narrow street, especially when you have RVs parked on both sides.

Um, given what the plan is in front of us today, how do we get consideration of uh reducing the speed limit on East Mason Bay Drive or just even Mission Bay Drive?

Council President, we can still take we can still do evaluations uh as long as constituents submit those requests for traffic calming.

Um we could certainly look into to see whether AB 43 will also apply for for that street or that corridor.

So those are still be submitted, and we do evaluate you know every seven to fourteen years for all these streets, and that could be considered as part of that analysis as well.

Okay, um, that constituent might be me, but uh I'll go ahead.

And it also occurs to me that a lot of that street also has reverse parking stalls, which you know adds its own factor.

Uh the last thing I'll ask about is when I did uh most recent town hall, some folks alerted me that there's a pilot program in this state about uh speed enforcement.

Maybe this was the governor's idea that they measure speed enforcement, and if you go X miles per hour over the speed limit, you just get a ticket flat out.

No, it's not a ticket, it's a right to go that fast on that street.

Very clever use of terms.

Has the city looked into that, Coda?

I maybe that's a better question.

We are aware of the state law.

We have explored it with uh STPD and Transportation Department um utilizing some of our existing technologies like ALPRs.

However, our use policy around ALPRs prohibits it for um only for traffic enforcement.

And so you would essentially have to explore a different type of technology, and and right now we're just not in a position uh fiscally to be able to do that.

Okay.

The state didn't bring any money with that new law.

Unfortunately, no.

Uh as I suspected.

But I'm glad thank you.

At least we know that you looked into it.

Um we'll see how future budgets go.

Uh, and I'll be supporting the motion as well.

Again, thank you all for your very, very good work on this.

So we have a motion by Councilmember Whitburn, a second by Council Member Campio.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Please cast your vote.

And that passes unanimously eight to zero with council member Moreno absent.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you.

Uh City Clerk, and again, thank you to everybody at transportation for bringing this item forward and to the mayor's office as well.

Uh, with that, we're not quite done.

We'll take up non-agenda public comment.

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.

But within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council, each speaker will have two minutes.

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

If you are in chambers, please submit your speakerslip now.

And if you're joining us virtually, please raise your hand to speak by tapping the raise your hand icon.

Or if you're calling participants star nine, Scott Chipman, are you here?

I don't see Scott Chipman.

Kathleen Lippitt.

I don't see her here in Chambers.

Blair Beekman, if you can please come forward.

And I'm sorry, um, we do have a new speaker.

So Anthony Ralphs per the rules of councils.

If you have not spoken before, you're supposed to be going first.

So Blair, if you can take a seat, and Anthony Rolfs, please come forward.

You'll have two minutes, please proceed.

Thank you.

How are you doing today, Council?

I wanted to start by um asking Councilmember Raul Gampeu uh to please show us your constituents and the people of San Diego more respect by being more present when you're here in the council chambers.

Um I've noticed at least three times that I've come on the occasion this year that you haven't been present, and one time you were on a Zoom meeting.

Um and there's nothing wrong with being on the Zoom meeting, but when you are here, I would ask that you please be present in the council chambers, especially considering that I've read that you are interested in running for mayor.

So if that is the case, that will require even more responsibility, and therefore I would ask that you again uh do what uh your constituent Bob has asked and show us in the city more respect.

With that said, I want to move on to uh why I was here today, which is to talk about um flock uh security cameras, uh, ALPR license plate readers.

Um I particularly wanted to address what I was here to mention last week.