Blake who are not here, which is okay.

Let's first uh this is the community and economic development committee.

If you could please take the roll.

Councilmember Casey.

Here, Mulcahy, Absent Ortiz, President fully.

Here.

Thank you.

Great.

We have the review of the work plan.

Status report will come, has been dropped.

It's been added into another plan a report, actually.

We don't have anything on the consent calendar.

Before we move to the reports on the committee, I would just like to note that we will be hearing the item number two last.

That's the 2026 major events status report.

He's in another meeting, and we need him to accomplish his work there before he comes down and talks to us.

So with that, why don't we begin with the cost of special events audit report?

And I believe Joe, you're kicking it off.

Yes.

Thank you.

So good afternoon, Joe Royce City Auditor.

I'm here in the box with Brittany Harvey, Michael O'Connell, and Dil Nosa Cadoid Barraganova from my office for our city costs for outdoor special events audit.

Opportunities exist to enhance customer service.

Also in the box are Carrie Adams Hapner for the from the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, or OEDCA.

And Sergeant Tony Diepp from the police department.

In fiscal 2324, there are 84 outdoor special events that, because of their size and scope, required permits and services from multiple city departments and coordinated through OEDCA.

These include large annual events like Christmas in the Park and San Jose Summer Fest, Jazz Fest, as well as smaller scale community or cultural events.

Overall, they attracted an estimated 330,000 attendees over 300 event days.

City costs charged to event organizers, which include the cost of permits, labor, such as for security or traffic control, and other costs, such as uh the rental of traffic control and equipment, totaled $622,000, the majority of which was for labor.

The objective of this audit was to assess city required security or other costs to organizers for large outdoor special events.

The audit did not include city sponsored events, for example, Viva CAE or similar events, or smaller private events that did not involve multiple departments or were not facilitated by OEDCA, for example, a corporate event where a park facility may have been reserved.

The report had two findings.

The first finding is that more transparent and predictable police staffing costs can help event organizers.

Of the $622,000 collected from event organizers in fiscal year 2324, $319,000 or roughly 51% of overall costs were for police department staffing, which included both sworn and non-sworn staff, such as community service officers and crossing guards.

We found that cost estimates for security and traffic control were not consistently provided to event organizers, and not all hourly rates are posted on the city's special events website.

Sworn and non-sworn police personnel voluntarily sign up for work to work special events through the police department secondary employment unit or SEU and fully staffing events has been a persistent challenge for SEU.

Lastly, roles and responsibilities for sworn officers, non-sworn staff, and private security are not clearly defined, and clarifying those roles and encouraging the appropriate use of private security can help organizers ensure a safe and affordable event.

In this finding, we had recommendations to the administration of the police department to identify a threshold for which cost estimates would be required, update the city's website for sworn and non-sworn rates, and update the special event guidelines to define and prioritize roles for private security and non-sworn staff.

The second finding is improving coordination in the event process may help enhance customer service.

The city has developed a customer service vision and standards to improve customer service across the organization.

And while the outdoor event processes meet some elements of these standards, there is room for improvement to better support event organizers.

We found that currently event organizers receive separate invoices and go through different billing processes for each department involved.

And in some instances, they may receive multiple invoices from the same department months apart.

And a more coordinated approach can streamline the permitting and invoicing processes to provide a seamless customer experience to event organizers.

So in this uh finding, we have a recommendation to assess how the city can better coordinate the permitting process, potentially through a technology solution, and formalizing OEDC's OEDCA's procedures to follow up with departments around timely invoicing.

The report has four recommendations to approve cost transparency for outdoor special events and uh and costs generally.

I'd like to thank the Office of Economic Development, Cultural Affairs, the police department, and all the other departments that helped us provide their insight in the in the course of the audit.

Um I ask that you accept the report and cross-reference to the August 19th City Council meeting.

Happy to answer any questions, but first I'll turn it over to Carrie for the administration's response.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joe.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the city auditors, entire team for always having you know excellent fact base, um very responsive approaches to your audits.

So I am the director of cultural affairs for the city managers office of economic development and cultural affairs.

I'm here today with Sergeant Tony Diet from the Secondary Employment Unit.

Also, we have Lieutenant Paul Hamblin with us as well in the audience.

So again, we want to thank the auditor's office.

You know, the the City of San Jose does take pride on it the way it supports outdoor special events in terms of the quality of the city services as well as our facilitative approach.

We always want to get to yes.

That said, we also do recognize that we need to have a spirit of continuous improvement and also a consistent and coordinated approach to our service levels as well as our overall approach to costs as well as innovation and also looking at how can we adopt new tools.

So we consistently across all of these four recommendations agree with the city auditor.

Um, furthermore, with the exception of one which I'll uh give you more detail on.