All right, good afternoon.

Welcome everyone.

I'm pleased to uh call to order this meeting of the San Jose City Council for the afternoon of September 30th.

Tony, would you please call the role?

Kame.

Campos.

Present.

Tordillos.

Here.

Cohen?

Here.

Ortiz.

Present.

Welcome.

Here.

Don?

Here.

Candeles.

Here.

Casey?

Fully?

Here.

Mayhem.

You have a quorum.

Thank you.

Great.

Now, if you're able, please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

And to the Republic.

One nation.

Under God.

Indivisible.

Liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Today's invocation will be provided by Shaka Campbell, internationally accomplished poet, artist, and performer.

Councilmember Candelas, please tell us more.

Thank you, Mayor.

It's truly an honor to welcome a special guest who brings not only a wealth of talent, but also a deep commitment to using art as a force of change.

Today we are joined by Shaka Campbell, a London-born California-based poet, performer, and cultural advocate.

Shaka is the first black poet laureate of Santa Clara County.

His remarkable career has taken him from local stages to iconic venues like the Apollo Theater, the Lincoln Center, and the O2 Arena in London.

Shaka's poetry is more than art, it's a call to action.

His words carry the power to uplift, challenge, and inspire.

He is a two-time Grand Slam champion, author of several poetry collections, and creator of multiple spoken word albums.

Beyond his impressive accolades, Shaka has collaborated with organizations like the DeYoung Museum and the VTA, making poetry accessible to everybody.

But what truly sets Shaka apart is his ability to connect with people through his art.

His message to the world is simple.

Listen different.

He invites us to reflect, engage, and hear the stories that are too often overlooked in our society.

Now please join me in welcoming Shaka Campbell to lead us in today's invocation.

Thank you.

How is everyone?

Good.

Wow, that didn't sound great.

We're good?

Okay, better.

Alright, so I'm just gonna say before I go in, I'm a poet, not a singer.

You'll figure out why.

Oh, and just like that river.

I've been running ever since.

It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know change gon' come.

Oh, yes, it will.

In these uncertain and challenging times marked by climate disruption, political unrest, and deepening social divides.

Our communities need connection, need creativity and hope more than ever.

We need to shape a more connected, expressive, and resilient future for our region, which leads me to be resolved in the fact that we are humans, flawed, and as such, any attempt to time travel will probably destroy us.

That said, we are also the children of hurricanes, born where the winds howl the loudest, where the earth splits its skin, reminding us of its hunger.

We are the architects of survival, hands rough with the memory of stone, feet scarred from the miles we've walked, chasing a horizon that never stops moving.

See, there's a fire in our marrow.

A quiet rebellion in the bend of our knees.

We bend like willows, but never bow.

Every bruise, a blueprint, every scar, a map.

We stitch ourselves together.

See, there's a there's a song in us, silence cannot steal.

Resilience written into our breath.

So let the storms come.

Let the ground shake and the skies fall.

We will carry the weight of the world in our chests and still find room for love.

Yes.

We are human, fragile, and formidable, cracked but not shattered, always bending toward the sun, yes, but today, today we wear each other rose bush because we choose to.

Because the space beneath us heaves when we are hummingbird to flower.

Unsheathed, we are taught legards learning how to split hairs into creation stories, myths in sync to drown out the uncultivated clutter we hold in our tongues.

We are better than this thing they give us as purpose, this rebellion blood that gallops our veins.

We are committing to be in every stride closer to the we.

See the bouquet of thorns to which the world will plant at our feet is testimony to the need to protect our beautiful.

Together, we will feed it, and the beast will devour.

And in this drunken gaze, when its face is revealed, we will ride this ghost till its skeleton breaks, till it conjures and chants us into a spell of wishes that deserves our magic.

You all are stronger than the menu of outcomes they allow us to pluck life from, and we together are more.

Change gonna come.

Thank you very much.

I am very appreciative.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks, Councilor.

Thank you.

Shaka Campbell, everyone.

Thank you so much.

We are on to our ceremonial items.

We will begin with uh Vice Mayor Foley.

If we'd if you join me at the podium, we will recognize Sardorette Elementary School.

Have your volunteers.

On behalf of the San Jose City Council, I'm honored to recognize Sardar at Elementary School.

Sardarette Elementary School, located in District 9 in West San Jose, and part of the Cambrian School District is led by Principal Debbie Stein and incredible staff and faculty serving around 500 students.

Sardaret developed their Hispanic Student Achievement and Family Engagement Program as a holistic effort built on the understanding that student success and family engagement go hand in hand.

Staff and Hispanic parent leaders collaborated closely, combining best instructional practices with meaningful family outreach to support academic growth and connection.

Together, they integrated cultural responsiveness, compassion, and student voice into teaching methods while listening carefully to family stories and meeting their needs.

These tremendous efforts and collaboration turned ambitious goals into real results.

88% increase in Hispanic students meeting or exceeding goal grade level in English language arts.

As a former school board member, I can tell you 88% growth is incredible.

40% reduction in the achievement gap and a remarkable 662% increase in parent volunteer hours.

All of those a tribute to the success of our students.

This work is a model for what can be achieved when schools and families come together in shared purpose and partnership.

For these accomplishments, Sardaret Elementary was honored with the Santa Clara County School Board Association's prestigious Glenn W.

Hoffman Exemplary Program Award.

One of only six recipients throughout the county across 31 school districts for the 2024-25 school year.

That's 31 school districts, but there's hundreds of schools attributed to that.

So that number is even more astounding.

Today we can commend Sardaret for its commitment to educational equity, student success, and strong community partnerships.

Joining us today are principal Debbie Stein and her husband Jason Stein, very supportive, former and current Sardaret parents, Manuela Diaz Espinosa, Paula Lopez, and Evelyn Torres, former and current Sardaret Home and School Club members, Vanessa Gileno and Wendy Salinas, Sarderet Instructional Specialist Emily White, Cambrian School District Superintendent Christy Schweibert.

Well, I saw you back there.

Cambrian School District Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, Lynn Wen, and Cambrian School District Trustee Carol Prozanka.

The dedication of each of these individuals, the Sardaret staff, and the commitment of their families truly make this vision a reality.

And I couldn't be more proud to honor all of your hard work this afternoon.

Debbie, would you like to say a few words and then the mayor will present you with a commendation?

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Debbie Stein, the very proud principal of Sodora Elementary School in the Cambrian School District, and I want to extend my sincere gratitude to Mayor Mahan, Vice Mayor Foley, and to all city council members for bestowing the great honor of this commendation to our school.

Schools are not just schools anymore.

We with increased needs from students and families, schools have become more like community centers, providing a vital link to services and resources on and off campus, meeting the needs of students as whole people, well beyond being the source of just academic learning.

Most people want to know how we improve student achievement and family engagement so dramatically in such a short time.

It's really a simple idea.

We met students' and families' needs, and we earned their trust.

Improving one improves the other.

Teachers support staff, families, and district leaders collaborated as a team to combine best instructional practices with strategic family outreach, student and parent voice, compassion, and cultural empathy were integrated into optimal teaching methods for academic achievement, giving each student what they needed when they needed it.

After witnessing the academic and community building impact of the program, support is very strong to maintain progress and growth.

We continue to build on the momentum created by Hispanic student achievement and revitalized Hispanic family engagement as high priorities for our school and made that a positive impact on our entire Soderet community.

Our success is not in isolation whatsoever.

It takes the collaboration of a strong team at our school sites and at our school district level.

I brought some friends with me here today, as you can see, each of whom played an important role in reaching our goals for students and families.

District 9 is so fortunate to be under the care and attention that Vice Mayor Foley extends to educators and other constituents to ensure students are getting the very best education for life.

Unique to our school district is that families do not need to be released from their home school district to attend our Cambrian schools.

Everyone is welcome to benefit from our high achieving schools.

Thank you today and every day for the support, partnership, and recognition of the essential work that educators performed for the well-being of our San Jose community.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ortiz, if you would join me at the podium, we will recognize the Dr.

Roberto Cruz Alam Rock Branch Library.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to uh ask the sons of Roberto Cruz to please join us, as well as our amazing Dr.

Roberto Cruz Alan Rock Branch Library staff.

Your dedication makes this library the heart of our community.

And it's only fitting that you stand with us as we celebrate this very important milestone.

Since we're honoring the library today, and of course its namesake, I want to provide a quick reminder.

September is library card signup month.

And today is the last day to get a free mini tote bag when you sign up.

So don't miss out.

I was told to mention that in my speech.

This past July, the Allen Rock Library celebrated 20 years of service to East San Jose.

Over those two decades, it has proven and grown into a trusted community hub, a safe space for families, and a beacon for opportunity for all.

Today we recognize not only the 20 years of service of the Dr.

Roberto Cruz Alan Rock branch library, but also the enduring impact of Dr.

Cruz's vision for East San Jose.

This library stands as a testament to his belief that knowledge, opportunity, and community should be accessible to everyone.

Therefore, it is my privilege to share this commendation with Roberto Cruz II, who is here representing his family in honor of his father's extraordinary contributions to our city, but most importantly, for me, East San Jose.

Roberto, after you share a few words, the mayor will present you with a commendation.

Please accept this commendation as a symbol of our gratitude for your father's legacy that continues to inspire East San Jose and all of our city to this day.

Congratulations, and now I'll pass off the mic to you.

Wow, how do you follow that?

You kind of said it all.

On behalf of our family, my brother Marco Antonio.

We are here to accept this heartwarming gesture from the city.

It's heartwarming to know that more than 23 years after my dad's passing.

You hear something like that right into the record and out into the public.

So thank you very much, Councilmember.

My late father, believed in the access to information and education.

It could be more important now than ever.

That libraries, where we get our information, along with a caring staff, ready to engage you each and every day.

It sits on the corner of White Road and Alum Rock, across from James Lake High School.

Students come from the surrounding schools to visit the library to learn, to look using their own gifts and devices, how they can improve themselves.

And aside from being a very beautiful, just monument to look at, it's like what the council members said.

It's a testament to who the man was.

I would like to thank the mayor and the city council.

The members who saw fit 20 years ago, to unanimously uh vote to name the library after my father in recognition of his contributions.

I would like to thank the team behind me who do the real work every day, who um show the patience.

And I was lucky and and and fortunate enough along with my family to be there for the 20th celebration.

And you know, in 20 years you can imagine I've gone to a few, we've gone to a few um ceremonies on behalf of my dad.

That was the best honoring of my father that we have seen.

Uh my mother, all of us moved to tears.

It was the first time my mother ever, ever shared about my father since he had passed.

And it's a testament to the people behind me who continue very much representative of that legacy that my father began so many years ago.

So thank you all.

Thank you for everything you do.

Um, and we graciously accept um this uh generous, generous uh gesture on behalf of the city.

Thank you.

I started going to your dad's library almost 40 years ago when I was a teacher in the city.

Thank you for the colours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, and last but not least, I'll invite Councilmember Condellas and Councilmember Duan to join me here at the podium to recognize and proclaim October 6th as the mid-autumn festival.

All right.

Um good afternoon, everybody.

Uh today we are here to proclaim October 6th as the mid-autumn festival here in the city of San Jose.

I am honored to celebrate the rich traditions of the mid-autumn festival, an important cultural event observed by millions of people around the world, especially uh here in our wonderful city.

Also known as the Moon Festival, the mid-autumn festival has been celebrated for over 3,000 years.

Um, it's a time for families and friends to gather, reflect, and express gratitude for the harvest and the full moon, a symbol of unity and completeness.

We celebrate not only the festival, the festival itself, but also the cultural ties that bind us uh together as a city.

For many in our community, this time uh to it's a time to pass down family traditions and reflect on the significance of the lunar calendar that shapes so much of our East Asian culture.

Just this past weekend, we supported several organizations, several organizations that hosted beautiful mid-autumn festivals throughout our city, including the Telly Road Eastridge Business Association and Vovi Nam.

Uh, Vovi Nam San Jose, led by Master Cambin Wynne, is a cultural powerhouse to the Vietnamese community.

Vovinam teaches martial arts, lion and dragon dancing, and provides a positive environment for youth to engage with their heritage.

And every year they actually uh do a toy drive and give away toys to a lot of needy families in our city.

Um children need more places like these to develop their self-esteem and grow into responsible, confident individuals with strong values rooted in their heritage.

Uh Vovinam, through their leadership of Eastside community members like Trustee Van Lee standing behind us, invites clubs from different schools, creating an inclusive place for uh community members and students to perform.

Thank you for all the work that you do for our community.

Uh, with that, I'd like to invite Twin Fan from the organizing committee to say a few words before the mayor and council member Duan presents the proclamation.

Twin.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Twin Fan.

Joining me today, I have Master Gambinwen, Master Tomas Wen, and also um the Chiron Moon Festival, Founder Advisor, Trustee of Isaiah High School Unit High School District, Ms.

Wan Lee.

Vovin now, is definitely honored to receive this combination from the city of Sao Zang and from Council Member Domingo Candelas and also Council Member Biendon.

Um reckoning of our volunteer effort, under the leadership of Master Gambin, she Vinam had proudly contributed to the Vietnamese American community through cultural performances and meaningful volunteer work.

Each month, we help to distribute food to the homeless.

Every Christmas, we print joys by giving gifts to children.

And since 1992, we helped to organize the German moon festival for families and youth in our community.

Again, thank you so much for this honor and for inviting us here today.

Um, also we have a token of appreciation from the German Moon Festival for the support of council member Domingo Canelas and also Council Peter Codis, who cannot attend event due to prior commitment after.

Thank you.

Wonderful festival.

All right.

Thank you all.

We're on to orders of the day.

Does anyone on the council have any changes to the printed agenda?

I'm not aware of any requests.

Okay, we do have an adjournment today.

Today's City Council meeting is adjourned in memory of Raymond Ray T.

Hashimoto, who passed away on May 21st, 2025.

Ray worked as a planner for the city of San Jose for a decade and helped guide major projects across the city.

He is remembered for his kindness, humility, humor, and dedication to San Jose's growth, both here at City Hall and in the private sector.

And just before I hand the mic over to Councilmember McCoan to tell us more, I'll just say on a personal note.

Had the opportunity to get to know him over many years, many conversations, a few Chamber of Commerce study mission trips.

We're recently on one reflecting about reflecting on Ray and his life.

And I just think you'd be hard-pressed to find a warmer, more open, more caring uh father figure in a lot of ways, somebody who just really took an interest in other people's lives, particularly younger people's lives, and uh was just an incredibly kind and loving man.

Uh, and it's a great loss for our community.

I'm gonna hand the mic over to Councilmember Cohen to share share more.

Thank you, Mayor.

Today we adjourn in memory of Ray Hashimoto, who was a wonderful community member, former city employee, and friend to many of us.

Ray passed away unexpectedly at the age of 67 while playing in his early morning basketball group.

Ray graduated with an engineering degree from Cal Poly and began his career as a planner in Palo Alto before coming to work for the city of San Jose.

He worked here for nearly 10 years before moving on to the private sector in 1995.

He spent the most recent 25 years as CEO of HMH engineering, a leading civil engineering firm in the South Bay.

Ray played a key role in helping the city improve its processes, often focused on collaboration and mutual understanding.

While in the planning department, he invested in the human side of planning, building genuine connections between staff and the private sector.

Well, after leaving the city, Ray remained deeply connected to serving as a bridge between public and private sectors.

Talking to people who worked with Ray, I learned that he had an amazing work ethic and approach to challenges.

When development projects got tough, as they often do, he remained focused on solutions, bringing people together and working through problems with clarity and purpose.

Ray's legacy is not only in the projects he worked on, but in the relationships he built and the people he guided.

He was known for his kindness, humor, and steady presence, always having a joke or a smile.

Former city manager Dave Sykes knew Ray for over 40 years and told me that Ray believed deeply in the power of good planning to make a difference, and he stayed committed to land use decisions that truly serve the public.

Ray was a passionate supporters of all supporter of All Things Bay Area, cheering on the Warriors, 49ers, Giants, and Sharks with unwavering enthusiasm.

San Jose is better because of Ray's contributions, his mentorship, and his unwavering support for the planning profession.

He leaves behind not only a professional legacy, but a personal one of kindness and connection that will endure.

Now I want to invite uh Zeph Jimenez up, colleague of Ray's from HMH Engineering, who will uh say a few words in tribute.

Thank you, Councilmember Cohen, Mr.

Mayor, Council.

Um it's hard to uh top everything that you guys just said because everything you said is true and more.

Um I've known Ray my entire adult life.

Uh I saw him five days a week.

8 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

And for myself and everybody at our company.

He was such a great mentor.

He was a great person, a great father figure.

And he is truly gonna be missed.

Not just for his impact on our company, but his impact on the community.

His give back to everybody, organizations, Cal Poly, his alma mater, diehard 49er, diehard Giants fan.

But above all, he was a great friend, somebody you can always count on, somebody you can always look to, get advice from.

And Ray is somebody who cannot be replaced.

So I want to say thank you to all of you for giving us this opportunity to be able to say something.

Thank you.

Thank you, Zeph.

Um, thank you, and thank you, Councilman.

Cohen for bringing forward today's adjournment.

Um, again, our hearts go out to Ray's family to the HMH team and everybody who was impacted by Ray and his incredible life.

It's a it's a big loss for all of us.

Thank you for being here today to help honor Ray.

We appreciate it.

We are going to move on to the closed session report if we have one.

Thank you, Mayor.

I do uh council voted uh unanimously to join an amicus brief that is being filed in the first circuit Court of Appeals, uh Federal Court of Appeals, Planned Parenthood et al.

versus Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

et al.

Numbers 25-1698 and 25-1755.

The amicus brief will be submitted on behalf of local governments such as cities and counties.

And it will argue that defunding Plan Parenthood will exacerbate the medical provider shortage and threaten public health in our communities and nationwide.

And that is what I have to report out of closed session today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nora.

Next is the consent calendar.

I'll be pulling item 2.5 to offer a brief travel report and would like to turn to any colleagues on the trip who want to add quick thoughts.

Are there other items members of the council would like to pull?

Okay, not seeing any hands.

Last week, our local chamber of commerce organized their annual study mission, as I think many of you know, the chamber picks a different city in the country where we think we have something specific to learn about an aspect of city operations, urban planning, and particularly economic development, usually at the heart of it.

This year was a fascinating trip.

I was only able to join for about 24 hours.

So I will share what I took away and then turn to colleagues who were able to spend a little more time out in Atlanta.

Part of the reason really I think the primary reason we were in Atlanta was because of the work the city has done to build mixed-use developments around major sports anchors.

And that's a very active conversation we're having in San Jose, as you all know.

We just had a big announcement related to the SAP Center and the Sharks' future here, as has been widely reported.

Our San Jose Quakes are up for sale.

We want to make sure we encourage that next ownership group to be firmly planted here, and who knows, maybe consider an eventual move into a sports entertainment district downtown.

We're seeing more of an experience economy emerged where while office workers are only back at 85% of pre-pandemic levels downtown, nights and weekends were at about 120%.

So we've seen a real hunger for those social uh experiences that are really well served in an area like downtown that has a strong arts and culture scene, great public space, both indoor and outdoor, the theater district and so forth.

In Atlanta, I was able to spend the day uh with the team uh out at the battery, which is next to Truist Park.

That is where the Atlanta Braves play.

They um quite a few years ago, I believe about a decade ago, moved out of the downtown, unfortunately for Atlanta, but did end up out in a county parcel where with help from county government, uh actually built out not just a stadium, but really a much uh bolder mixed-use development around it.

About 600 homes, two hotels, three million square feet of development, including a lot of retail and office or job use.

Um it was only possible because of a very collaborative level of government that wanted to find ways to both help finance parts of the district and streamline the approvals.

The tax revenue from this district, it's been so successful that they actually paid off their bonds in just 15 years versus what was a 30-year expectation.

And what I found most interesting was that this mixed-use development with the stadium as an anchor has nine million visitors a year, and only two and a half come for the baseball.

And so I think that's very telling that people come from music for restaurants for bars to come to their office.

And in our own small way, while it's not sports entertainment, there is a parallel, even just with the success we've seen out at Santana Roe, where we didn't see employers go there first.

It was retail, residential, and now it's competing for employers because people want to be where there's vibrancy, where there's foot traffic, where there are amenities, and uh it was a really really interesting thing to see firsthand and learn, I thought, and I'll end on this and then turn to colleagues most importantly to think about the role of government in helping to finance and facilitate these projects, but also the incredible upside in terms of bringing and unlocking more housing, more jobs, and a greater tax base over time.

So I found it really educational.

Again, I was only there for 24 hours, so I better turn to colleagues who saw even more of Atlanta than I did.

And I'll start with Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, mayor.

Um, first want to just thank my colleagues for the opportunity to be one of the city representatives in Atlanta.

Um I know that these are uh of interest to everybody and appreciate the opportunity to represent.

I also want to recognize the Chamber of Commerce, San Jose Chamber of Commerce, and Leah Tennis Getter, um, who, you know, her organization puts this together.

Uh Kat Angelov, who was our sort of tour guide and and so forth, and then their board president and study trip sponsor, Rob Lindo.

Um I think they put together, I was there for a kind of a shorter period of time as well, but I really felt the time was impactful.

Um I'll sort of try to say a little bit differently than what the mayor just talked about, but I think uh, you know, a big focus was on the battery and what they've done there.

I think what sort of was interesting to me, we kind of had a behind the baselines.

See what I did there, um, from uh Jeremy Strife, who was their executive vice president.

He's really the guy that got pulled in for the Atlanta Braves to really put what was ultimately a development deal together to build a ballpark and an entertainment district.

He walked us through the whole process.

They really created this very unique and powerful public-private partnership.

I mean, it's become the envy, not just of major league baseball, but of all major league sports.

Um, as Mayor talked about the impressive mixed use, the other feature that he didn't talk about was the Coca-Cola Roxy 3,600 seat um venue as kind of a centerpiece in the battery.

The battery really refers to the retail restaurant component sort of attached on to the baseball stadium.

I mean, you know, they're hosting Halsey, Kochi, and Ben Camino in October, right?

3,600, very unique size venue as part of this whole entertainment district.

Um, and what started as a pursuit of a new accessible baseball sites turned into the most dynamic uh, you know, uh venue of its kind in the world.

Just a couple of fun facts I'll leave you with.

Um, these are 22 numbers.

The mayor talked about retiring their debt.

Um they're generating 38.1 million in tax revenue.

This goes back a couple of years, and they just continue to add um venues to improve that.

Taxable property value in 2014 before the battery was there was five million.

Property tax value in 2022 after the battery was 736 million dollars.

And there are cranes everywhere, they're gonna be over 800 million before too long.

Battery employs 7500 people.

I think that was sort of the key feature of the trip for me, mainly the interest in what we're kind of doing in and around SAP and what we hope to do with all of that area around there.

So I appreciate the opportunity to go.

Thanks for that great summary and for I think very appropriately highlighting the hard work done by Leah and her team at the chamber.

It really was a very successful trip, I thought, and I know they put a lot of effort into it.

Let me turn now to Councilmember Tordillos.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you again to all of my colleagues into the chamber for the opportunity to participate in this study trip.

I was really interesting to see kind of the differences in the development models, the financing models for both the battery itself kind of outside of the city, but also centennial yards on the first day, kind of closer to downtown, potentially a little bit more analogous to what we might hope to do out near the SAP center.

And also just wanted to speak to the potential of these entertainment districts e-sports districts to induce additional private development.

You know the mayor spoke to the fact that the original battery development included 600 units.

But one of the things that was really interesting to me is that they mentioned that you know in the decade after they opened there were about 3,000 additional private units that were built separate from the development that was actually led uh by the battery itself.

And then another thing that I just wanted to call attention to from the first day of the trip was uh all the things that the city has happening around Pont's market and the belt line was really great to actually walk the belt line get to see how they're taking advantage of space near their waterways their trail network I think really speaks to the potential to continue to invest in our own trail network here in San Jose continue to invest in cleaning up and better utilizing Guadalupe River Park and the potential that that has to bring vibrancy to downtown and also again induce more private development.

Great insights thank you.

Let me turn now to Councilmember Cohn.

Thank you.

Besides remembering why it is I prefer the weather on the west coast to the uh to the eastern seaboard during summer months I really did enjoy the trip.

And beyond sports there were you know we we saw as mentioned by Councilmember Tordillos on the first day we spent time at a re at a at a um historic building reuse project which which was really very impressive an old Sears roebuck building from that over 100 years old that has been turned into a an amazing mixed use development and being able to see that kind of um you know how that drew people in and the fact that they were able to get businesses especially local businesses and some even larger national businesses to want to be back in downtown because of a development like that actually caused a lot of discussion and thought amongst the group one thing that was interesting to me was to see that there really are three separate downtowns in Atlanta there's a downtown a midtown and what's called buckhead and then they're they're not really necessarily especially Buckhead they're not necessarily close together but it sort of triggered for me as well the idea that we can continue to focus on growing our downtown while also you know can focusing on North San Jose and a lot of opportunity there is in North San Jose and potentially having multiple downtown type regions and be successful.

So that was also that was great.

And then um as Councilmember Tordios mentioned the Beltline trail project it's a 22 mile loop trail that's parked that was built with a lot of public private investment combined and it it doesn't just go through the downtown but it connects a lot of the suburbian areas around certain areas around downtown to the downtown and it's really a great it was amazing to see even on a hot day how many people were out on that trail and how activated it was and you know just made us uh think about that.

We did learn about um how all these developments relied on a lot of public investment in addition to private investment.

So you know these things don't come for free or cheap but um there there's a lot of there was a lot of uh great food for thought um you know I had a different feeling about the look I love going to a baseball stadium as everyone knows.

Having a baseball stadium as an anchor is a very different thing that not all cities have the opportunity to do Atlanta does have probably the largest fan base geographically of any team in the United States because they're they they draw from eight states is unlike most other teams so they do have an up did have an opportunity that was kind of unique.

But they did buy property in a different county than Atlanta.

So the the development that they did didn't actually benefit Atlanta at all and so we have to be really careful about I mean in some sense I I saw that as a parallel to Levi's being in the city of Santa Clara it's a it's great for the region is not necessarily uh directly great for us but we need to but there are ways that we given our proximity can take advantage that is not possible in Atlanta where they built that stadium 14 miles away from downtown Atlanta.

So anyway, those are some of my takeaways from the trip.

Yeah, great points.

Thank you.

And I was sad to miss the trail, but I understand they did a tax increment along the trail and then really invested significantly there.

And I think there I I don't know that it's a perfect analogy, but we certainly have the potential to have an incredible, we have the makings of an incredible park and trail network.

There's some connectivity issues.

Obviously, you have to make sure they're safe and clean, but we are really poised to have one of the more exceptional trail networks in the country.

I would I would say of any any big city.

I'll try to be brief.

Three quick points.

It was interesting to see the Orange Borough digital displays out in the wild.

The city was peppered with them, and they actually were kind enough to display San Jose and the chamber while we were there.

That was interesting to see what we can anticipate here in San Jose.

They're pretty cool.

Secondarily, it was the batteries iterator process between the municipality and the developer in terms of they had three million square feet that they were allowed to build, and they let the market dictate what they built.

And then third, um, really jealous that um Georgia is the number one state to do business with, and I think it bore out with the projects there.

Not only was the municipality giving a tax break, but the state as well was chiming in, and I think that's an important factor in terms of financing that won't be an apples to apples scenario for us.

Um but I was very jealous of that setup.

Thank you.

Thanks, Council.

Actually, that's a great point to end on.

Something we heard again and again was there's one thing we're all on the same page about, which is economic development.

Doesn't matter, Democrat, Republican, or city, county, state.

We all know we gotta lean in and attract investment because that's how we grow the pie and have more resources, and they were extremely proud of how aligned they are at every level of government and across party lines in promoting the state and its cities for economic development, which was really interesting and I'd say maybe a little different from where we've been, at least in California.

Um, thank you all for the readout.

I think in the interest of time, we are going to move on.

We were lucky to be joined by our city manager and members of her team and had a had a really good delegation there along with all of our private and nonprofit sector partners and representatives from the county, which was which was positive.

So with that, uh we do still need a vote, and we need public comment and a vote on the consent calendar.

Can I get a motion?

Second.

Great.

Thank you.

Tony, do we have public comment on consent?

Yes, Brian.

Come on down.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh just a reminder October 30th is disabled awareness day.

So thank you.

Back to council.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um let's vote.

I don't see any hands.

We have a motion.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you.

Now I'll turn to our city manager for item 3.1.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

I do not have a report out today on 3.1.

All right.

Well, thanks for coming to Atlanta with us.

All right.

We're on to item 3.3.

This is approval of the terms of an agreement with the San Jose Police Officers Association for the term of July 1st, 2025 through September 30th of 2028.

And I do want to just acknowledge our city manager and her team for all the work they did with uh the POA and really both sides in that negotiation working very hard for countless hours to get to yes and ultimately secure council approval.

So I'll turn it back to our city manager.

Thank you very much, Mayor and City Council.

Good afternoon.

Um, yes, we are very pleased that the city and the San Jose Police Officers Association, otherwise known as SJPOA, reached an overall tentative agreement on a successor memorandum of agreement.

As the mayor said, the agreement's term is from July 1st, 2025 through September 30th, 2028, and it has indeed been ratified by the members of the SJPOA.

It does include items that are important for both parties and will be beneficial to our police department employees, such as wage increases, longevity pay, a tier two retirement evaluation process, compensatory time accrual changes, changes to the discipline arbitration process, resolution of several outstanding grievance matters, and a pathway to continue discussions on police department operational improvements through labor management meetings.

There were many people, as you can imagine, involved in reaching this agreement that I want to personally thank, including all the people up here, the mayor and city council for their support and guidance through this process, the SJPOA negotiating team for the time and effort they put into these negotiations, including Steve Slack, SJPOA President, Kat Alvarez, SJPOA Vice President, Dave Woolsley, SJPOA CFO, Ryan Ferguson, SJPOA Board of Directors, Ashley Travagelloni, SJPOA Board of Directors, Greg Adam, the SJPOA attorney, and Tom Sigau, SJPOA Consultant.

Lastly, I want to thank the city's negotiating team, including Deputy City Manager Jennifer Shembri, Employee Relations and Human Resources Director Aram Kurunjun, and from the Office of Employee Relations Deputy Director Elsa Cordova, Assistant to the City Manager Bill Gold, Senior Executive Analyst Hoshona Brown, and analyst Gerald Bernalis, and from the police department, Chief Paul Joseph and Assistant Chief Brian Schab, and finally from the budget office, Director Jim Shannon and Assistant Director Bonnie Duong.

It does take a village, and I really appreciate everybody keeping at that negotiation because obviously there was lots of issues to resolve, and I think we all came out better for it.

Every year we must establish our budget priorities to address critical issues, and together we've made a decision that workforce stability and the recruitment and retention of sworn police officers is critically important and remains a high priority for the city, which is reflected in this agreement in a fiscally responsible manner.

Thank you again to the SJPOA and the city's negotiation team.

Because of their collective efforts, the agreement was able to be reached through the negotiation process and is presented to the city council today for formal approval.

Thank you again.

Excellent.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Appreciate that overview.

Ditto to all the thanks.

And let me turn now to Tony for public comment and then we'll come back to the council.

I have no cards for 3.3.

Okay, well, coming back.

I just want to echo the thanks to everyone, including Steve Slack and the team over at the uh POA for coming to the table in good faith and working through what was a lengthy but ultimately very successful negotiation process.

This agreement provides stability over the next three years.

It includes meaningful raises for our police officers who do some of the hardest, most essential, and frankly most dangerous work in our community, recognizes long-term service through new longevity pay, and helps us stay competitive by offering incentives to attract and spirit experienced officers at a time when I think we all know recruitment for this role in particular is challenging.

I really appreciate the collaborative effort and stick to itness of the teams on both sides who are committed to getting to yes, and I think it just shows our shared commitment to supporting our police officers and making sure San Jose continues to be a place where officers want to serve, and we enjoy one of the safest, I would say safest big city uh in the country.

So uh with that I'm gonna turn to colleagues and we'll entertain a motion whenever folks are ready.

We'll start with Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, uh Mayor.

First, I just want to thank City Manager, our negotiating team, of course, our chief, uh Chief of Police and his team, as well as uh staff at the POA police officers association for this outcome.

For those who are in the know or are utilizing the new police dashboard for gang-related incidents, um they are aware that East San Jose and the Foothill Division has recently reclaimed the mantle of being the top division for gang activity.

Something we should not take pride in.

And I want to be honest, that dashboard, though necessary for decision making, didn't reveal anything new to our community.

Our residents have been living this reality, and while we we do have people boasting and ranking the headlines about being the safest big city in America, which is something we should be proud of about, that may be true in some zip codes, but it's not the experience felt by residents in the Foothill Division.

If anything, issues in our area are underreported.

Our small businesses, pillars of our neighborhoods are getting hit repeatedly.

Peters Bakery has been robbed multiple times.

This last week I had a press conference with them, they've been robbed three times, and El Rincon de Rita on Alam Rock has also been robbed.

And of course, the businesses in King and Story have been impacted as well.

It's important to note that these aren't just storefronts, these are landmarks, their family legacies, and their community gathering places, especially for our east side community.

And they're being robbed and vandalized by people who know precisely how thin our public safety staffing is.

However, I would like to thank the department leadership for their work in turning this around.

The chief and his team are doing a stand-up job, but they also need support from the council.

So when we talk about fair pay for law enforcement, we're not talking about a perk.

We're talking about a strategy.

We want officers who actually reflect our community, speak our languages, whether that's English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and stay long enough to build trust.

We need to give them a reason to choose San Jose.

And a reason, of course, to stay.

And right now, other cities are out recruiting us, and we're feeling those consequences, especially in areas like District 5, District 7, and District 3.

But I want to be clear: this proposal isn't some wish list item.

You know, the as we already heard the city manager and the administration support it.

That means it's vetted, it's affordable, it's viable.

The real cost that I want people to be concerned about is the cost our residents pay when we don't invest in law enforcement.

Slower response times, businesses closing their doors, and neighborhoods being written off as problem areas.

Something that in my own district, I'm trying to correct for the trajectory of the future of our neighborhood.

So we cannot be settled by symbolic safety.

We need to be focused on real safety.

The kind of safety you feel when you lock up your shop at night and you know that everything's gonna be safe.

Or when you walk your kid to school in the morning to make sure they get to their school safely.

And staff compensation is a major part in getting us there.

I do just want to add that um, you know, law enforcement is the end all be all in public safety, and we need to invest in intervention programs specifically for our youth.

I was a former gang member.

I was able to turn my life around thanks to intervention programs funded by this city, Moxa, Mexican American Community Service Agency, the Clean Slate Program.

There are no shortage of smart kids who are caught up in violence and who are caught up in gangs.

And so I just want to elevate that this is one part of the equation, but we need to continue to make sure that every family in the city of San Jose has access to quality education and quality of services.

Thank you, and I'd like to motion um to vote in support of this.

Thanks, Councilman.

Well said.

Uh, agreed and appreciate your comments.

Let me turn now to Councilmember Duan.

Thank you, Mayor.

I want to extend my sincere thanks to our San Jose Police Association, RHR and our CMO for their hard work and dedication in reaching a collective bargaining agreement.

Public safety and the well-being of our officer and our community is deeply important to me.

As a former fire captain with the San Jose Fire Department, I work hand in hand with our police department, and I spent my career prioritizing the safety of our residents and that commitment remains just as strong today.

The men and the women of the San Jose Police Department are true public servant.

Heroes who put their lives on the line every single day to protect our city.

The courage, professionalism, and sacrifice do not go unnoticed.

So when we rebuild our police department, we are rebuilding our community.

I just want to say thank you so much for all you do.

I yield my time.

Thanks for those comments, Councilmember.

Let me turn now to Councilmember Kamei.

Thank you so much.

I also would like to thank the city manager and the negotiating team as well as the San Jose POA for coming together.

And these things sometimes are not very easy.

They're difficult, they require, you know, almost 24-7 over the weekend, and you know, there was a lot of work that was involved, and so I just want to say thank you.

Um the other thing I want to say is that you know, in these collaborative efforts, I am really pleased to see that there's a continued collaboration effort that will keep going on to see what are the things that we can do.

We all know that it's been very, very difficult to recruit and retain uh officers, and you know, in terms of looking at the competitiveness with others surrounding us.

Um, sometimes they come here for a little bit, then they go somewhere else.

So I think that over the next few years, I think that we need to be creative in looking at what might be other alternative ways in terms of being able to recruit, retain, and be competitive.

And you know, we may be able to offer something that others may not have, and I think that that's going to be a very positive thing.

So I want to say thank you so much for getting to this point.

Thanks, Councilmember.

All right.

I think we've exhausted the comments.

Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

All right, thank you all.

Excellent.

We're on to item 3.4 city council focus area semi-annual status report.

We have a staff presentation.

Staff will come down just before I turn it over to the city manager.

Just want to thank my colleagues for their support for focus.

We've all agreed over the last three budgets that picking a smaller set of things to elevate as our top priorities and be especially disciplined about setting goals, measuring performance, and really pushing ourselves to show measurable progress is how we actually have begun to show some measurable progress.

And I think it's really unlocked the incredible talent that we have at City Hall, and I'm just really grateful to the council for their support for focus, and then to the city manager and her team for following through on that mandate and now helping us really better quantify and understand where we're making progress, what we're learning, what's working, and what is it?

What should we rethink?

So that's the spirit of this.

Excited for this update, and I'll turn it over to our city manager Jennifer McGuire.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council once again.

Today I am very proud to present to you all a very much stronger and more effective model for how we manage and show progress and results on the city council's five focus areas.

Over the past two years, the focus areas have helped us align the city council, administration, and our budget around the issues that matter most to our community.

They have kept us focused on tackling some of the hardest, most complex challenges facing San Jose.

Some would call them wicked problems.

From that experience, we've learned a great deal.

And today we bring you a revised model that builds on what has worked while addressing where we need to improve.

This new model sharpens our focus on results.

It is designed to hold us accountable, to learn from what is working and what isn't, and to identify the strategy that will truly move the needle on outcomes for our residents.

Importantly, it elevates transparency and community participation through enhanced dashboards that will not only just show numbers, but will tell the story of what we are doing and if our actions are leading to meaningful progress.

I want to recognize the incredible work of our city staff teams.

These are tough problems, as I said, and progress is rarely simple.

But our staff has embraced the challenge to drive real, tangible benefit for our community.

With this improved model, we are more confident than ever that we can make long-term measurable progress.

And I'm excited to continue this work in partnership with the city council and the community.

With that, I'll turn it over to Lee and the team to tell you more.

Over to you, Lee Walcox, Assistant City Manager.

Thank you, Jennifer.

First, I want to introduce everyone.

I have deputy city managers Angel Rios, Rosalind Huey, and Jennifer Shembry with me, as well as Deputy Director Sarah Zarate and Dr.

Shannon Arvisu from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.

Also, I do want to thank.

They don't all fit in the box because the box is very small, but I do want to thank for getting us here today and very important members of the team, Peter Hamilton, Caitlin Kenny, Eric Genton, and Jerry Rutner, with really helping us facilitate the process over the spring and summer with what we're calling focus area 2.0.

So today isn't just a present, we are here to present the semi-annual report.

Today's presentation though reflects not just a status update, but a shift and how we define, measure, and drive collective impact in our community.

The evolution from Focus Area 1.0 to 2.0 represents a very deliberate move from program management to performance leadership and how we organize our organization and workforce to move forward our most complex change initiatives.

After two years of focus areas, we've had a model that we needed to get us started to get us focused.

Now we have the opportunity to evolve the framework for this next chapter of driving change.

The council's challenged us to take another step forward with the focus area as a learning framework and one that elevates the conversation to a strategic and policy level discussion with our council.

Our team has spent the summer co-creating this with the Goldman School of Public Policy, and we are very excited to share where we're going.

The team and the partnership are building a more strategic public sector, one that applies evidence-based government principles to local challenges.

We're embedding the logic model methodology not as a compliance exercise, but as a tool of adaptive learning and operational cohesion.

Today we're going to walk through at the very beginning of the presentation what our opportunity is to evolve this framework and how we work together.

We'll introduce the partnership with UC Berkeley and the project goals and opportunities.

We'll walk through the evolution of 2.0 so you understand where we began and what we're recommending today, and then we'll go through the dashboards and the logic model of all five focus areas.

Focused area 1.0 brought necessary structure to strategic or change initiatives within the organization.

Also recognized that we've had limitations with this model, chiefly that without clear long-term goals, cross-cutting strategies, and consistent performance feedback, we risk working really hard without knowing if we're working smart and achieving results.

Not all city work is created equally in terms of complexity, coordination, or the timing of when something goes wrong.

While our core work and programs form the foundation of day-to-day government form the foundation of our day-to-day government.

Services we know how to manage well.

Focus areas sit on top of the pyramid because they are cross-cutting, complex, and often require transformational change and greater greater leadership capacity among leadership among the council and senior staff in the organization.

These focus areas represent, as Jennifer said, what public administrators and social scientists call wicked problems, challenges with no clear owner, no linear solution, and are often high stakes.

Quite frankly, our focus areas are not unique in the United States of America, whether it's homelessness, economic mobility, or public uh public safety trust.

These don't just demand more effort, but different kinds of effort.

Cross-departmental coordination, adaptive leadership, real-time feedback, and in all of the cases, we're seeking new solutions to a community problem.

The base of the pyramid in front of you reflects more mature systems.

The 74 core services and 259 programs, we have structures.

We have metrics that you approve on an annual basis, and we have institutional memory in place.

We continue to refine and improve on these any given year, but we don't need to reinvent how we work around those solutions.

In contrast, the top of the triangle is where we're building new muscle, experimenting, aligning across silos, and often co-producing solutions with the community or other public agencies.

That's not to say that plenty of innovation doesn't happen every single day within our core services and programs.

They do.

And at the end of the day, our city managers are responsible for the outcomes of this entire pyramid.

Whether it's the dashboards and the outcomes that we're about to walk through with you, in the middle of the triangle, the citywide balance scorecard, where we pick various things that we need to look at on a weekly, if not monthly, basis with the budget office and other departments to look at organizational health, or the rest of the pyramid, which I've said before on an annual basis serves as uh program perform uh performance-based budget, where you annually approve targets that we are supposed to hit every day.

In addition to the administrative administration evolving our approach, do want to give credit and thanks to the to the mayor and the rest of the council for the March message adoption, which you also evolved your own approach.

Knowing that we needed to think more logically and have a theory of change broke up the attracting investment jobs and housing into two separate focus areas.

As you'll see today through the methodology, and some of you have already seen briefings, how we're going to go about these are very different, and that's important to break it up.

So I do want to say, as much as you're you are uh asking us to evolve and kind of move in a new direction.

Do you want to give credit and thanks to the council for also doing so and giving us the ability to be more focused on some of these that require different approaches?

Or focus area 1.0 gave us proof of concept.

What you're about to see will raise the bar.

This evolution builds our organizational muscle around strategy execution, requiring clarity of purpose, capacity to deliver, and a willingness to learn in public, which is not always easy for you and for us doing in this room together.

1.0 placed value on measuring both outcomes and performance, especially with dig disaggregation of data and equity analysis.

It increased cross-departmental coordination across the organization, and it also strengthened our performance management skill sets.

2.0.

We recognize the opportunity to increase focus and capacity to do this, is only realized with the council's adoption of MBA number three, which was approved as part of the budget that broke down some of the referrals, limited council committees so that staff could work on this, the results we're trying to achieve, and have more discussions at a strategy and policy level with you.

We also have the opportunity to foster more strategic curiosity and create more space for innovation.

In this way, council should expect to hear throughout the year more about lessons learned through this work, which by definition may involve lessons around things that did not work out as originally intended.

And we want this model to encourage the mindset of openness between council and staff.

We're institutionalizing a new model around civic performance, one rooted in transparency, learning, and long-term outcomes, as our city manager said.

Luckily, we don't need to take this step by ourselves.

In particular, with Dr.

Shannon Arvisu, who has helped us look at comparative models and design a more strategic framework for us to work on together.

Most recently, Shannon served as the senior advisor to the chief data scientist at the White House and chief data officer to the U.S.

Department of Commerce.

And we're deeply grateful for her partnership and expertise in our journey.

And with that, I will turn it over to her.

Good afternoon, Council members.

It's a pleasure to be with you today.

I would like to address a challenge that we're all very familiar with.

We passed ambitious goals, plans, but how do we turn those plans into reality that residents can feel in their everyday lives?

Cleaner streets, safer communities, more affordable housing.

I like to offer a provocation.

The model that we're putting in place is going to set San Jose to be a leader in turning strategy into execution.

There's a lot of talk right now about government efficiency, government effectiveness, but your city is actually doing it.

Tackling five focus areas, really challenging social problems, and developing a smarter people system to be able to address these challenges.

We've been talking about wicked problems.

I want to define what a wicked problem is.

It's a problem that's complex, interconnected, has many different factors at play.

Take homelessness, for example.

It's a factor of not just employment trends, housing, mental health.

No one department can fix that alone.

So how do we build a learning system that gets us thinking together?

A little bit about myself.

I have experience at the national, state, county, city level, helping public sector leaders develop their capacity for building collective intelligence.

And I'm here as a partner with you all as a practitioner and as a researcher.

So we've been working on V2 now for a couple months.

We looked at over 50 city dashboards by focus areas, developed logic models for each focus area, a lot of deep dive consultations with the city manager team and frontline teams to make sure that everyone is aligned, everyone is committed, everyone is working on really interesting innovative projects to help figure out what it is that was going to help us make progress on these challenging areas.

And V2 is not just about getting better at knowing what data to track, but it's about building a culture of continuous improvement.

And I have this quote here from David Osborne, who's the author of Reinventing Government.

This is a book that was written about 30 years ago.

It started the government performance movement, and he says the hard part is not creating the systems, the hard part is creating the culture that uses them.

And so that's what we're focusing on next.

How do we create a culture at every layer of city government where people feel safe enough to take risks and grow together and figure out how to make progress?

So, some of the top-line insights from what we learn from other cities.

Boston, for example, has done a really good job of defining long-term goals in plain language so everyday residents can understand.

We looked at Wake County, where they shared data stories where they explain the key challenges.

They're learning in public.

They're saying, look, we've tried a lot of things.

Some of it worked, some of them did.

And here's what we're taking away from that.

Raleigh has been a great example for being clear about their strategy for overcoming those challenges.

And then from the city of Burlington, transparent reporting on not just what the measures are, but what they mean, what the trends are, what the trends mean.

So when we look at all of these dashboards and we look at the performance systems behind them, we find that all good systems have these four things in common timely, accurate data about what's happening on the ground, improvement projects that are adequately resourced, strong leadership that builds collective intelligence, encouraging people to collaboratively solve problems well under a variety of circumstances, and creating this culture of planning, doing, learning, improving, running monthly retrospectives, coming to the city council on a quarterly basis and sharing what's working, what's not, and what we're going to do differently in the next quarter.

Lastly, we want to talk about how do we tell these stories to the public, not just showing graphs and charts, but how do we turn those numbers into stories that everyday people can understand?

And being okay to learn in public because that's what builds trust and accountability.

I also just want to say that this work requires humility.

We're not going to get everything right right away.

It's about iteration and about commitment.

Cities that do this well commit to building a culture of continuous improvement for multiple years.

And so I want to encourage everyone here to just level set expectations and know that we're in this for the long term, and this is about committing to be the best public problem solvers we can be.

Your role, council as partners in learning is also about asking the right questions.

So I'd like to encourage you all when we're giving presentations to ask what are we learning, what's working well, what could be better, how can we help?

Wicked problems.

It's not going to be just a city that addresses it.

Oftentimes it's county leaders, it's state leaders, it's private sector leaders.

So how do we start having those conversations across multiple layers of government?

And with that, thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

I want to take a moment to personally thank Dr.

Arvisu for her thoughtfulness and patience through this process in helping us reflect on what's working well outside of San Jose in the space of government innovation and performance management.

That reflection helped us clarify opportunities for improvement and see the elements that were missing to inform our own organizational learning, but also bring the public along and help them be a part of that conversation with additional context.

Model 1.0 scorecards essentially reported a lot of activity, but they didn't connect the projects to outcomes.

And we realized we needed measures that tell us if we're doing the right things, measures that give us strong signals and not just data that say we did things.

One of the exciting aspects of the dynamic public dashboards will be the opportunity to disaggregate data where it's possible to enable staff and the public to ask different questions like who is benefiting or who is being left behind.

For example, our focus area community survey alone can be disaggregated by over 20 demographics, demographic factors to enable equity analysis.

That's where we're headed.

But model 1.0 scorecards essentially asked the public to fill in a lot of gaps.

It provided an outcome measure and reported activity through some success measures, but didn't connect what we were doing to those outcomes.

It skipped a lot of the story that we're filling in through Model 2.0.

So this diagram represents the logic model that the teams across this organization have been working through over the last two and a half months.

For each focus area, we've worked to clearly articulate the long-term goal we're trying to achieve for the community.

And what are the obstacles or problem areas that are within our organizational sphere of influence that are preventing us from reaching this long-term goal?

For each problem area, we thought we thought through near-term goals that are clear, measurable, and realistic to implement within a fiscal year that would help provide early signs of progress and tell us what's working or what we might need to change.

And each near-term goal has a change initiative or project that is chosen based on a hypothesis for how it can help achieve that goal.

So how will we know if we're succeeding?

We've selected three levels of metrics to inform our learning.

At the highest level, we have indicators that measure progress towards the long-term goals.

And at the near-term goal level, we have success measures serving as feedback loops to tell us if the change initiatives are making an impact.

These will be the primary focus of a lot of our quarterly discussions.

But we're also tracking progress at an operational level with individual change initiatives.

This color diagram was created for purposes of seeing the connection between these different elements that are being introduced.

Long term goals, problems, near term goals, and change initiatives.

This layout here is just so you are aware of what our reports will look like going forward.

It won't be in the color coded section.

So, bottom line, with focus areas 2.0, we're shifting from just reporting to shared learning.

We want to see evidence of impact and what works.

We plan to facilitate monthly retrospectives with execution teams and quarterly touch points with council and committees.

So everyone is part of the learning cycle.

Important, we also see a direct link to the budget.

Mid-year insights could inform the mayor's March budget message and help prioritize resources towards what's working.

And we're designing a dynamic dashboard that goes beyond numbers and telling the story of progress in a way that our residents can see and understand.

Each executive sponsor will now go through the model for each focus area.

The first example, increasing community safety, will go through the full focus area structure in full detail.

And then the other four focus areas will go through overview summaries.

All the detailed versions can be found in the appendix to this presentation that is posted.

And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Jennifer Shambri.

Good afternoon, Jennifer Shembri, Deputy City Manager, and I am the executive sponsor of the increasing community safety focus area.

I'm very happy to go through detailed slides on our logic model.

Starting with this slide, this is a very high-level overview of the logic model for the increasing community safety focus area with a long-term goal.

There'll be specific indicators that I'll go over in future slides.

We have four problem areas, and each of those problem areas will have goals and metrics assigned to them.

So looking at our long-term goal, San Jose residents live in a community with responsive emergency services and safe streets and roads.

And we are very proud that San Jose is recognized as the nation's safest major city, and yet, as Councilmember Ortiz indicated earlier, we know we have a lot more work to do.

As of June 2025, more than 80% of residents feel safe in their neighborhood, and that is an increase of 10% since September of 2023.

And while overall crime rates continue to decline, ongoing efforts are needed to keep this progress moving forward.

So on this slide here on the right, you'll see the indicators that we will be looking at resident safety perception, police response times, fire response times, crime rates, and traffic fatalities, which we will be moving to killed and serious injury rates, KSI over time.

And these indicators will be published live on our public dashboard tomorrow, should the council approve staff recommendation today.

We have five goals under that problem area.

And looking at that first problem area, our lean staffing and high call volumes strain the capacity of police and fire response.

We are a leader among public safety agencies, and again, we yet we know that the police profession policing profession faces a workforce crisis nationwide, and fire station demands challenge our existing capacity, especially near the city's central core.

As we have identified five goals in this area, which I'll go over in more detail.

So the first goal under emergency response is to increase our police academy size to 40 police officers enrolled per academy class this year.

We also are including lateral police officers in that, as that is a very good way to recruit police officers to the city.

And to accomplish this, we're investing in a variety of different things, including marketing, recruitment, and background efforts, in addition to implementing lateral hiring bonuses and cadet stipends.

And we believe that these efforts will increase our recruitment numbers.

Moving to goal number two, the second goal is to implement a report transcription technology pilot and assess the impact of that on police officer report writing time.

We hope to complete this pilot by December of 2025, and that pilot is testing an AI-based tool to help officers spend less time on paperwork, which would allow them to respond to more calls for service.

Goal three under this problem area is to evaluate the impact of improving police response times by completing three patrol deployment projects.

And a couple of these were actually approved in the POA agreement that you just approved.

The first is implementing a new custody officer unit, which would free up officers in patrol from spending time booking offenders at county jail, amongst other things.

The second is district-based deployment, which is testing if eliminating beats at the lowest level of geography will improve response times by allowing all officers in a district to respond to a call.

And the two officer patrol car deployment, which is evaluating if two-car deployment improves officer safety and the degree to which it may impact response times by eliminating the delay waiting for a second arriving unit.

Goal four under this problem area is open fire station 32 with a single company by June of 2026.

And through Measure T funds, we've expanded our fire stations in the community, and that fire station will provide needed capacity to meet service demands in the busiest area in the city.

Starting in a phase one with medical only calls for service.

So looking at the second problem area of crisis response, we have missed opportunities to connect crisis calls that have a behavioral health component with a more appropriate response that does not drain emergency response capacity.

We have early processes and programs in place to integrate 911 with the county mobile crisis response network through 988.

However, these are tough calls to effectively triage, and so we are pursuing strategies to improve integration with the county.

We've identified three goals in this area.

The first goal is to increase call transfer volume from less than 10 calls per month, which is what we are currently doing, to 75 calls per month by June of 2026.

This work would include enhancing staff training on transfer protocols and our efforts to partner with the county on that curriculum.

We think these efforts can help increase transfer volumes while freeing up officers to respond to other calls for service.

The second goal is to support the county to increase community awareness of 988 from 25% to 30%, which is the equivalent of reaching 50,000 residents.

We think that additional outreach and education can help increase resident understanding of services available through 988, such that people call directly instead of being triaged through 911.

And the last goal in this area is to implement the first responder fee program that was recently approved by the City Council by January of 2026 to help recover costs related to emergency medical care.

And again, that program is expected to go live in January 2026.

Though crime rates are trending downward in the city, a few crime categories remain stagnant across California.

Compared to other large cities and peers, San Jose stands out for having low crime rates, but again, more work can be done in this area.

And there are some crime types that are stagnant across California.

For example, retail theft, auto theft, and drug narcotic offenses.

We've identified five goals in this area among the targeted crime reduction strategies that the city is pursuing.

The first goal is to operationalize 1,020 public safety cameras, 1,000 private network cameras, and 490 automated license plate raiders in the real-time intelligence crime center to increase our ability to hold offenders accountable.

We think that centralizing the collection of live data can help achieve better on-scene situational awareness and reduce the amount of time it takes to conduct investigations.

The second goal is to increase efforts to combat organized retail theft by increasing the number of retail theft cases submitted to the DA's office from around 1,000 in 22 23, which was prior to establishing the ORT detail to 2000 in fiscal year 25-26.

Through a state grant, the police department has added capacity to proactive patrols and investigations in order to deter and decrease retail theft crimes over time.

The third goal is to expand the types of referrals made to the Mission Street Recovery Station by June of 2026 and evaluate effectiveness.

The police department currently partners with the county's recovery station to divert individuals with some specific exceptions to sobering and other recovery services for DUI, public intoxication, mental health, and narcotics offenses.

The police department is currently working with the county to expand those types of diversions to all nonviolent misdemeanors to minimize incarceration while allowing officers to return to beat structure more quickly to be able to respond to calls.

The fourth goal is to monitor implementation of proposition 36 during the fiscal year and identify areas of advocacy.

As you know, California voters passed Proposition 36 in November of 2024, allowing felony charges and increased sentences for certain drug and theft crimes.

While the police department has implemented this new law, it is critical for the city to continue to work with the county, including the district attorney's office and public defender's office to identify early challenges and areas of shared advocacy.

And the fifth goal is to implement one new school site with intervention programs and launch two new demonstration sites for systems of care neighborhood programs through the San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance, and this is aligned with the Children and Youth Services Master Plan.

These strategies are geared towards addressing chronic absenteeism among justice-involved youth and increasing access to youth and families for prevention and intervention services.

And problem four, traffic safety.

We know that speeding is the primary cause of traffic of fatalities and serious injuries in San Jose, and we've made very important strides towards vision zero over the past decade to change driving behavior and to build safety streets that prioritize safety.

The city is investing in infrastructure improvements and new technologies to increase safety.

We've identified two goals this year.

The first is to build safety streets by completing 100% of planned traffic safety projects each quarter, and we will continue to build out capital safety improvements, quick build and pedestrian safety and traffic calming projects across the community.

We think that these projects, along with continuous evaluation, will help protect all road users.

And the last goal in this area is to improve safe driving behaviors through technology by operationalizing four red light running camera intersections and piloting 33 automated speed enforcement cameras along key corridors.

Thanks to the long road of advocacy passed under AB 645, the Department of Transportation is piloting cameras at four high-risk intersections and will be piloting 33 automated speed enforcement cameras along priority corridors to deter unsafe driving behaviors and reduce severity of collisions.

So with that, this slide here just shows a chart, which is a quick view of the full set of problem areas, goals, and change initiatives.

And this is a sneak peek preview of the dashboard that will be published tomorrow after approval of the council.

And now I will turn it over to Lee to discuss reducing unsheltered homelessness.

Thank you, Jennifer.

As Sarah mentioned, that was a more in-depth presentation on that one specific council focus area.

The remaining four will be at a higher level.

San Jose has made unprecedented progress.

Scaling interim shelter at a pace few other cities can match and maintain and are maintaining compliance across 26 miles of waterways.

These are not minor wins.

They're foundational to public trust and environmental stewardship.

However, shelter capacity alone won't get us to functional zero.

We face four structural challenges.

First, a growing mismatch between shelter supply and real-time demand.

Second, unsustainable reliance on one-time funding sources.

Three, displacement and inflow pressures driven by enforcement without coordination, coordinated exits, and fourth, data limitations make it hard to forecast need and manage the system proactively.

To succeed, we need to optimize throughput into housing, align operations across all 24 sites, and close our forecasting gaps.

We're using sharper indicators of encampment resolution, cost per bed reductions, and real-time data integration to manage the system like a supply chain.

We continue to, our approach to this work continues to be centered on compassion.

It is grounded in coordination efficiency and throughput, however, we're on track to open 705 new shelter and safe parking units.

This is the most rapid expansion of shelter in the city's history.

However, hitting this number is just a floor.

What matters is activation.

These units need to be accessible, equitably distributed, and well utilized at all times.

Our goal or our long-term goal is to reach functional zero and unsheltered homelessness.

This means homelessness in San Jose would become rare, brief, and non-recurring.

To track progress, we're focusing on five big indicators.

Bringing the rest of the 705 new units online by the end of the year, achieving up to 20% cost reduction across all 24 shelter sites, maintaining no encampment zones in waterways and public spaces, and quickly resolving re-encampments, and finally the development of a better forecasting tool that integrates data across multiple departments and agencies.

These indicators will give us both a clear line of sight on progress and a way to measure accountability as we move towards our long-term vision.

Even with the record-breaking expansion of shelters, San Jose still faces a structural shortfall of more than 3,000 units below the estimated need.

By the end of 2025, we'll have over 1,800 shelter units and safe parking spaces online.

That's progress, but yet not a pathway to functional zero.

We'll be doing two things at once.

We'll be continuing to grow the system and optimizing it for its performance.

This means accelerating delivery of the 250, or I'm sorry, the 705 planned units while also standardizing operations across all 24 fights or 24 sites to improve efficiency, lower costs, and strengthen accountability for us and our partners at those sites.

The goal isn't just more beds, it's a smarter, more navigable system.

That's why we're tightening how we manage referrals, caseloads, and site performance at all sites.

We'll also be improving how outreach is tracked and coordinated so that every engagement becomes a doorway to housing and not a one-time interaction.

Ultimately, this is about treating shelter not as an emergency measure as we have in the past, but as a critical pathway and part of our housing continuum with operational standards, throughput goals, and fiscal sustainability baked in.

While we've met rapidly made gains in our shelter capacity, the financial foundation underneath it does remain fragile.

We still rely heavily on one-time allocations, either from us, state government, federal government, and that doesn't allow us to provide the predictability or durability of a system in which we need performance out of on an ongoing basis.

That means diversifying revenue streams and blending more state and federal and philanthropic sources and integrating Cal Aim billing so that eligible services like outreach and encampment can be supported long term.

We've identified a structural funding gap and presented that to you over the last few years.

Historically, we've been able to patch this gap and make adjustments on one-time infusion.

But that's not sustainable, and our goal is to close that gap within gap with intentional reoccurring funding that reflects the system ongoing that reflects the system's ongoing value, not just in the short term, but in the long term.

Simply put, without stable funding, including state support, even the best design shelter system will stall.

With more regularity or guaranteed funding, we can maintain progress, plan more sustainably, and move closer to functional zero.

One of the most visible markers of the city's progress has been the successful maintenance of 26 miles of waterways and priority corridors through our no encampment zones.

These efforts reflect public health, preservation of environmental quality, and maintaining access to critical infrastructure throughout the city.

But our work here is far from complete.

Over a hundred and thirty miles of waterways remain outside of the no encampment protection zones.

Displacement from one area may res it continues to result in encampment in another, and we need to solve for this.

This cycle undermines both equity and effectiveness of the system and will be addressed in the coming year.

The city's next step is twofold for this problem statement.

Sustain and enforce existing no encampment zones around waterways and EIH sites and reduce the downstream impacts of displacement by aligning our shelter access to outreach and resolution activities in real time.

This is about more than just encampment removal.

It's about sequencing public space management with housing solutions.

When the public sees that we're not simply moving people around, but moving people into safe shelters, we can build public trust in local government.

Right now we still rely heavily on the biannual point-in-time count and siloed department data to track system performance overall.

This creates major blind spots, especially in understanding how people enter homelessness, how they exit it, and how fast the system is moving for those individuals.

To close the gap, San Jose is building a real-time forecasting model for homelessness.

This tool will integrate data from outreach, shelter utilization, and housing placements, and produce quarterly projections to guide smarter and faster decisions for the administration.

We'll also be strengthening strengthening data integration with the county's HMIS system and aligning it with Cal AIM workflows.

That's how we move from compliance-driven reporting to performance data decision making in real time.

Ultimately, this is about predictive capacity, the ability to forecast demand, identify bottlenecks, shift resources proactively, not six months later, but in real time.

Uh sustainable funding, public space management, and data infrastructure.

We've set near-term goals that are clear, measurable, and time-bound.

They're supported by performance indicators, but more importantly, they're backed by change initiatives like the county partnership, new forecasting tools, so that we're measuring progress and we're enabling it at the same time.

The through line here is intentional.

Every new unit, every dollar invested, every outreach contract should push the system forward through output towards housing and ultimately towards functional zero.

We're not trying to manage homelessness better, we're trying to reduce it visibly and measurably.

This means treating shelter as an entry point, aligning contracts and capital with throughput, and holding ourselves accountable, not just for activity, but for the outcomes you are asking for.

And that ends our reducing unsheltered homelessness section, and I'll turn it over to Angel Rios to continue the presentation.

All right, thank you, Lee.

Angel Rios W city manager, and I'll be walking us through the clean up our neighborhoods focus area.

This is a summary of our cleaning up our neighborhood's focus area structure.

Our overall goal is that San Jose residents can enjoy a city with clean public spaces and well-maintained private property.

We've identified three problems that are obstacles to that goal.

First, blight on private property continues to be a concern for our residents.

In addressing this problem, code enforcement faces a number of challenges, including increasing case volumes, expanding scope and static staffing for general funded positions.

We want to build on the operational assessment we completed last fiscal year to address these challenges.

Secondly, while we have an effective service for removing graffiti, the amount of graffiti we're removing has continued to increase over the past 10 years.

We'd like to prevent graffiti from happening in the first place so we don't have to remove it.

Finally, we become more effective at picking up illegal dumping, but the amount of illegal dumping we're picking up has continued to increase.

Similar to graffiti, we'd like to prevent it from happening in the first place.

We'll take a closer look at the long-term goal and then walk through each of these problems in detail.

On this slide here, we're measuring progress towards our long-term goal through our quarterly community survey.

We ask residents about the perceptions of the city as a whole, their neighborhood, and downtown.

The graph on the bottom right shows the percent of residents who rate each of those categories as clean or very clean.

We can see how perceptions have changed over the past two years.

We've made notable progress with clean or very clean rating for the city as a whole, going from 33% two years ago to 47% today.

Neighborhood ratings have gone from 68% to 70 to 76 percent, and downtown ratings have gone from 25% to 35%.

I believe this progress reflects some of the budget investments and focused efforts we've pursued over the past two years.

The goals we'll see on the subsequent slides are intended to continue this progress.

These are our goals to improve code enforcement's efficiency and effectiveness in addressing blight.

Many of them are drawn from the recommendations of the operational assessment that we brought forward to city council last fiscal year.

I'll note two of these goals in particular.

First, the chronic offender resolution and enforcement pilot is a pilot program intended to move repeat violators through the enforcement process more quickly.

When a repeat offender has a new violation, this pilot would have them skip over some of the initial enforcement steps so that enforcement can happen more quickly.

They would also be required to register in the program and undergo follow-up inspections.

Second, we've listed our work to evaluate code enforcement fines.

We brought an increase to the administrative fines forward to you in August, and we will return with a full fine study in February.

Overall, our goal is to increase code enforcement speed and efficiency to bring properties into compliance in a timely way.

Last fiscal year, our graffiti removal program removed over 2.5 million square feet of graffiti.

This program is very effective at removing graffiti, but to get at the root of this problem, we need to stop graffiti from happening in the first place.

Our goal here is to deter graffiti with our enforcement and diversion efforts.

Two officers have been assigned in the police department to make cases against prolific taggers.

We've seen some early success with this effort in apprehending suspects whenever possible.

And working in coordination with the DA's office and the public defender's office, we're working on redirecting offenders into diversion programs, such as painting community murals and community service.

Our goal here is not to punish, but hopefully to put people's lives on a better path and deter graffiti before it happens.

Our final problem is illegal dumping.

We collected over 10.5 million pounds of legal dumping in last fiscal year.

And the amount we've collected has increased steadily over the past four years.

Removing this volume of waste from our streets is a real achievement and likely helped contribute to our improving cleanliness perceptions.

But like graffiti, we would prefer to avoid the legal dumping in the first place.

I'll note three of these goals in particular.

Our first goal is in a legal dumping enforcement program.

We're coordinating between code enforcement, PRNS, and PD to gather evidence and enforce against violators.

Paired with that effort, we're implementing our second goal, illegal dumping education, which focuses on outreach to school and resident groups and the building of community pride.

We also want to make it easy to dispose of trash items through legal means.

Our third goal focuses on improving usage of the free junk pickup program.

This program is already very well used with over 8,700 tons of junk items collected over the past fiscal year, but we've identified ways to improve the customer experience and also to improve usage by multifamily residences, which the data shows lags behind single family intents collected.

That brings us to the end of this focus area.

This slide here shows the summary of all of our goals across the three problem areas.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Rosalind to discuss growing our economy.

Thank you, Angel.

Rosalind Huey, and I'm the executive sponsor for the Growing Our Economy Focus Area.

So to orient you, this slide shows the overall structure of the focus area.

This includes our long-term goal to cultivate an ecosystem of thriving businesses and resident prosperity.

Ecosystem is a key term here as we recognize that there isn't one strategy to grow our economy, but that we must take a multi-pronged approach to increase prosperity citywide for all of our residents and businesses.

We've identified four problem areas that help us make progress towards our long-term goal.

First is business development and workforce preparedness.

We will engage key growth industries and prepare our residents for jobs of the future.

Second, infrastructure readiness.

We will provide companies with infrastructure that enables them to succeed throughout the city.

Thirdly, downtown and neighborhood business districts.

We will execute strategies to propel both downtown and neighborhood business districts forward as force multipliers to grow our economy.

We will leverage initiatives and activations for 2026 to position our city as a premier destination for future sports, arts, and entertainment events.

As a major innovation hub, San Jose operates within a region marked by high demand and competitiveness.

External conditions affect investment decisions, yet the city remains focused on advancing growth and opportunity and marketing our comparative advantages to tackle our four problem areas.

We've identified five indicators to track our progress: jobs, tax revenue, downtown vibrancy, community survey data, new small business licenses, and income diversity ratio as a measure of income inequality.

These long-term indicators are our North Star and our groundwork and the community level outcomes we hope to influence.

The first problem area is business development and workforce preparedness.

You'll notice that these goals and various others in this focus area are supportive of the key results identified in the Council approved Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs Economic Strategy Work Plan.

There are six goals in this section aimed at both engaging our employers to retain and grow jobs as well as workforce development.

The first three goals are around targeting job retention and attraction through data informed strategies.

This includes a targeted set of outreach strategies and market intel tools to understand current economic opportunities, challenges, and trends.

The last three are around workforce development and supporting our residents, including our youth, transition from low-wage work into high-wage, high growth careers.

The second problem area is infrastructure readiness.

This section covers the portfolio of work to attract transformative economic investment through strategic city infrastructure.

There are five goals for this problem area.

The first three are around facilitation of the development services process for new data center or large energy projects to generate revenue for the city.

The last two goals are about the economic development lands around the regional wastewater facility and the LS Power Project to add energy capacity to the city.

The third problem area is downtown and neighborhood business district investment with six goals in total.

The first three are around downtown, commercial lease renewals, attraction, and placemaking.

And the next three goals are around neighborhood business district, the formation of new business district, implementing two new small business grant programs, and making it easier to start our small business in our city.

The last problem area is sports and entertainment district formation with six goals for this fiscal year.

The first two goals are studies to understand the potential return on investment of a sports and entertainment district and a convention center expansion and potential new headquarters hotel.

The next three goals are around special events, including implementation of best practices around entertainment zones and citywide special events.

The last goal is around measuring the economic impact of 2026 major events and creating a consistent methodology so that we can track major event impact over time.

So this slide shows the summary of all of the 23 goals across the four problem areas of the growing our economy focus area.

And next up is the building more housing focus area, of which I am also the executive sponsor.

So this slide provides the overall structure for building more housing or the building more housing focus area.

This includes our long-term goal to number one for land use, policy and regulation.

We will be exploring policy alternatives that facilitate housing goals.

Number two is development services.

We'll continue to analyze performance data and communicate with our customers.

And then third is linking land and capital, where we'll outline strategies to align land use and housing policies with market feasibility.

As we all know, building enough housing to meet the ban in San Jose is complex.

There are many external factors that make it expensive to build housing, including cost of land and materials, and recent state regulation.

Yet we are thinking strategically about how the city can pull the levers we control to get more housing built.

The long-term indicators for this focus area are housing entitlements, building permits issued, and certificates of occupancy issued, disaggregated by affordable market rate units and by income levels.

The first problem area for the focus area is around land use policy and regulation with two key goals.

While the city has been a regional leader in adopting pro-housing policies over the years, there is still not enough housing being built.

Knowing that we need to get creative in how to facilitate more housing production, we will be exploring policy strategies during the general planned four-year review process and through exploration of a ministerial process for in-bill housing development throughout the city.

Our second problem area is the development services process with four goals.

There is an opportunity to continue to approve our processes to deliver timely project review and communicate our performance in a way that makes sense to our customers and to the public.

A financial feasibility analysis of key entitled projects, an analysis of the city's existing financing programs, and an alternative financing program for existing multifamily housing projects in the city.

So that brings us to the end of the building more housing focused area.

And as you can see in this slide, it provides a summary of all of the 10 goals across the three problem areas.

And now I'll hand the presentation back to Sarah Zarate to close the presentation.

Thank you so much.

Okay, we know that was a lot.

So thank you so much for your patience.

We just wanted to close with a timeline that just summarizes the touch points we have with you during this fiscal year.

This is the first one, the semi-annual City Council uh report.

We'll be back in committees in December, where we'll give full presentations and updates on the focus areas.

And then to close this out, I again wanted to take a moment to thank what I consider an elite policy team in uh API, City Manager's Office, including Kaelin Kenney, Peter Hamilton, Eric Jensen, and Jerry Rutner.

They collectively spent hundreds of hours facilitating this process over the last two and a half months.

And also want to thank all the staff across the organization that engaged with openness and curiosity and offered us their deep expertise of their work.

And with that, we are open for questions.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

I know there's a lot of content there.

There was a lot to consume.

You guys covered a ton of ground, but I hope we don't uh lose sight of just the power of this framework and how much progress has been made.

It's really great to have you here, Professor, and your expertise.

I want to also give a huge shout out to the API team and the city manager's office.

You guys have done tremendous work.

And I'll just reiterate, I think we've been on this journey now for a few years, particularly in the conversations we've had through our budget process and to bring that level of focus, get aligned through priority setting, pass a budget that gives that clear direction, makes trade-off and resources the work, and then to have this framework overlay that and give us a way to actually learn together and have that feedback loop where we can say, Well, we tried this and here's how it went, and here's what we learned from it, and here's how we can adjust and to be all on the same page about where we're spending our dollars and our staff time, what's actually happening on the ground, what we're learning, and have it come back.

It's just really exciting.

When I saw it when I got the briefing, I I think I exclaimed this was the best uh CMO briefing I had ever gotten.

So I get pretty excited about dashboards.

But really, I think it's more that I think it's gonna help us empower our staff, the 7,000 people who work at our city to know what the goals are and learn with us and all of us to be better at our jobs and have more impact for our community.

So I'm really excited about this work.

We're gonna go to public comment now.

Tony, do we have comment cards?

Um yes.

When I call your name, please come down to the microphone.

You do not have to come down in the order you're called.

I have four speakers: Shannon, Deborah, Emily, and Brian.

Come on down.

Read most of that last night.

Thank you.

That was a lot of work that you put in.

Um, just a suggestion: you have 900,000 people that live in San Jose.

Some of us work here that really want to be a part of this process too.

And if we felt like folks were listening to us when we write emails and we spend maybe 100 hours researching an email like I did on homelessness with ideas, I went back and actually called several places in I don't know, maybe five or six other states, what they did on my dime, which I don't mind, and none of us do.

If somebody would actually just respond back, I think that would be something that would be pretty amazing to be quite honest with you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, City Council and Mr.

Mayor and Madam Vice Mayor.

Um, my name is Emily Ann Ramos.

I'm here representing SV at home, and also the real coalition, which is the Race Equity Action Leadership Coalition.

Um, so first of all, great job.

Yay data.

Um, and thank you so much for staff and council for your work on this.

Um, some things that we think could improve some of these metrics.

Um we think in terms of the housing metrics, uh, you could also have some data pulled on um including affordable housing and the levels of affordability would actually probably be very helpful.

Um, in terms of homelessness, um, which is a goal that we all hope that we can all tackle together.

Um, it would be really helpful to show some homelessness prevention metrics such as displacement data, eviction data, and you'll already have a rent registry, which uh San Jose worked really hard to fight for, which is great.

Include and a really robust eviction diversion program.

Getting some data from that, I think it's also gonna be very helpful.

Um we also support in the COMPOS memo getting the metrics from the McKinley Vento uh students.

I think that's an important thing, especially as we look at our most vulnerable populations, is our children and our families.

Um, and we also support incorporating maybe equity indicators uh such as racial wealth gaps, cost of living, and affordability pressures across all focus areas.

We think that would really, really improve um how the city views as a whole holistic uh project um moving forward on these focus areas.

So great job, everyone, and we hope to see these improvements.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Next speaker, um, good afternoon, council members.

My name is Shannon Zing of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits.

As the city adopts its new priorities in the Model 2.0 framework, we would like to emphasize the continued importance of measuring equity outcomes.

Firstly, um affordable housing production levels of affordability are not factored into the scorecard.

And with that being a high level report, the inclusion of this information is necessary to accurately capture the city's work.

Furthermore, the report lacks focus on racial justice and equity.

Data on the wealth gap, cost of living historically marginal for historically marginalized communities is absent.

And findings on these indicators are imperative to understanding that the city's becoming a more livable and equitable place.

For example, um the report can include demographic data on race, age, gender, and language to capture disparities in the unhoused population.

The city is also committed to tracking outcomes related to new policies on encampments and trespass, which are absent as well.

Data on sweeps may have, data on how sweeps may have deepened homelessness, affected mental health outcomes, job retention, and arrests have yet to be released.

This kind of data is necessary to gain a full picture of what the city's doing.

We support Councilmember Campos's memo to include McKinney-Vento data to further understand youth and family homelessness and for more concrete actions to strengthen child care infrastructure.

These efforts are essential to support working families and for the city to deliver on the focus areas.

We'd like to thank staff for these reports as well, and we hope that these data questions and outcomes are captured in future city reporting and in the new dashboards.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Deb St.

Julian, and I'm with showing up for racial justice, and I'm a D2 resident.

And I'm a data-driven person, so I appreciate this report.

My research statistics statistics prof taught me that the data you select to collect and amplify impacts the um what's brought to light.

And so I agree with the last two speakers.

We need to look at what's brought to light when we don't look at certain kinds of data.

So I especially support the COMPOS memo, to uh integrate the McKinley Vento data to better integrate youth and family member homelessness, and what the other two folks said that we need to strengthen our focus area framework by aligning the dashboard measures with the city's racial and justice equity commitment.

And like they said, it should be integrated across all focus areas by including um indicators like cost of living, racial wealth gap.

When you do affordable housing, you look I go to this church right over here, and we've been I've spent two years researching affordable housing and affordable housing because we're talking about um looking at using our property for affordable housing.

Affordable housing is like such a catch-all term.

There's people at low income, like zero to 15, 15 to 30, you all know this, but when you just put that off in a report, it's not obvious.

So that needs to be in your data for sure.

Um, so expanding your home, and also I agree with them about expanding your homeless metrics.

What's happening to people that are being removed from in these things we call I I don't like the word sweep because it sounds like I'm talking about people being trash, but expand your data focus and include more metrics.

Thanks.

Back to council.

Thank you, Tony.

I'm gonna open up by asking a few questions about a few of the focus areas, uh, maybe a couple questions on the memo from our colleague, Council Member Campos, and then turn to colleagues.

Um I think I already expressed my excitement and thanked folks, so I'll just jump right in.

On the 988 call transfers, um, do we believe I know the county was um not willing or able uh perhaps to embed a clinician in our dispatch center at this time?

We've talked about training as an alternative uh method of trying to improve those transfers.

Do we think that training alone is likely to get us to the goal we've set?

I think we should always be setting realistic goals, or if we have a goal that's a firm goal, we should make sure our strategies are likely to get us there.

So I'm just curious what thought has gone into that.

Yes, that's a good question, Mayor.

Um, the police department came up with that goal and they looked at it strictly as if we're just doing just training and curriculum.

Um we do kind of view this as an interim step.

So if it doesn't work and we don't get to that 75, the county is aware that we are going to be revisiting the clinician embedded in into our call center.

Um, and I do want to clarify the training curriculum is a little bit more expanded than than just training.

I mean, one of the options we talked to the county about that I don't think we were able to get across the goal line for their September training is actually bringing a clinician into the training, maybe showing calls or playing calls that we would be good to transfer over to 988, so expanding that a little bit more.

Um, but again, it's just an interim step, and if we are not able to meet that 75, we will be revisiting the clinician issue.

Sounds good.

Thanks.

Um, also within public safety, so I was impressed that we have metrics that cover the full scope of crime trends, response times, diversion efforts, many of the pieces of the criminal justice system.

And I'm glad to see that we are working with the county to monitor Prop 36 outcomes and understanding sentencing for repeat offenders.

One thing I would suggest as we look at that Prop 36 data with our DA and judges and others is um to understand a little bit upstream of the sentencing.

How many felony drug cases are being uh pled down or charged down as a misdemeanor, which then removes the mandated treatment, which is the kind of the point of it, and then the question of how many convictions are actually leading to an enrollment and treatment, which is obviously a gap that we're seeing, partly because of lack of supply of appropriate treatment placements, which needs to be a focus.

But I would just suggest that.

One other piece I've noticed, and we've talked about this a lot around downtown safety, but I have a top of mind case from Councilmember Ortiz's district recently with a 15-year-old assaulted on his way to school, and then the individual who uh the suspect almost certainly committed the crime right back, right back in the exact same place the next day, and this poor child and his younger brother no longer feels safe walking to school.

Um, do we have a way in this focus area of partnering with county counterparts to understand the that what we've called it revolving door, whatever the right term is, but where we're not intervening.

Often it's somebody needs drug treatment, mental health care, they need some kind of intervention, but it seems like it's kind of in a black box.

We've done some some occasional data dives and found some really disturbing data.

Not a huge number of people, but an incredibly high frequency of arrests for a subset.

Do we have the ability to report on that, or is that still kind of a an area where we're trying to figure out how to even know what's going on?

So I think there's work being done on it.

We'll do it through NQOL, but also the high utilizer pilot program that the police department has, and I think they are talking to the county or will be talking to the county about that.

So it's a very good point, and I think something we'll continue to work on with the police department.

Okay, thanks.

And then moving on to home assessments I'm just gonna fly through a few more questions.

I just I want to get a little more insight on a couple of these and then um maybe ask a question or two on the on the memo.

Um, Lee, as we've all seen, and we've and Councilman Cohen and I and others have talked about this for different sites.

While we've done some amazing work around expanding interim placements, we've also seen the majority of the pro, I think the majority, many of the projects have unexpected barriers and take longer than we initially project.

Sometimes with the target completion date moving multiple times.

And since the whole spirit of this is to measure, report, and then reflect and learn.

And I guess what I'd like to ask is when we miss our goals, such as on completion dates of interim sites, how do we use as an organization as we try to embrace more of this?

It's okay to make mistakes, how do we learn and do better?

How do we use this tool to basically reflect and learn internally and then go faster or avoid pitfalls the next time around?

Can you give us a little bit of insight?

Sure.

So when we are missing targets on those site, public works has pulled together the entire team to really how did we get here?

Here are the three or four things that led the to this date being pushed 30, 60, sometimes 90 days.

And the the remainder of those projects, we're building in checkpoints to make sure we're addressing some of those early before projects have even started.

We're building in okay, these need to be addressed earlier.

It's really helped us kind of figure out from a procurement standpoint, too, how we advance procurements and how we scope those out, like who's actually going to build these, who's delivering the units has been quite frankly a huge undertaking and you know, a very big linchpin and in the delivery of those units, whether on time or actual the quality of those units.

So we've built in things around procurement as well as talking uh very far in advance with our utility companies in the way of under any undergrounding and electrical work.

So we're using kind of that post-mortem to just advance the projects in real time to try and mitigate those early on in the process.

Okay, I'm I'm really glad to hear that we're doing that, and I hope that it leads to tightening our time frames going forward.

In the interest of times and of time and and my colleagues' time, I'm just gonna offer comments rather than questions on a couple on slide 49 around goals 1.1 through 1.3.

Um, I think on goal 1.2, we ought to be considering, we've talked about this before, but maybe having a metric of average cost per per bed or cost per unit.

I I don't know, I mean, I'll leave that to staff to fair what the right metric is, but it it and it may be better aligned under problem area too, which is really sustainable funding.

I think we the next phase as we move from system expansion to recognizing our financial limitations will now be I think system optimization.

How do we bring down operating costs per bed per year and maximize utilization of those beds?

I think we're gonna have to dig deeper into the weeds of what are the cost drivers.

Does it need to cost $25,000 a year when maybe we could do it at $20,000 a year without sacrificing quality?

On 1.3, our focus is getting people indoors and and therefore I'm wondering if our goal here should be to actually measure and track how many referrals from outreach are actually resulting in placement in any type of shelter or housing as opposed to a measure of services more broadly, which which feels more like an output.

So would love to see if we could create some hard outcomes around how much of this outreach is actually leading to somebody coming indoors to an appropriate placement.

And then I would suggest considering in this cat in this area, looking at goals and metrics on graduation rates and being able to better break down each exit by type.

We want to at the end of the day, when it comes to any homelessness, we don't want to just house people in the interim system forever.

We want to optimize around how do we get people into the most appropriate, most permanent, more sustainable outcome?

Reunifying with family, uh getting job skills and a job and being able to work and earn income, uh getting into a subsidized or unsubsidized unit as the case may be, in some cases, permanent supportive housing if if necessary, but really kind of understanding those exits and what those graduation rates are feels like a place we need to go.

Okay, I'll leave it at that.

Quick question on the memo.

So I very much appreciate the spirit of Council Member Campos's memo.

I think we all are very committed to ending homelessness broadly and and agree that family and children homelessness in particular is awful and something we we need to prevent and address quickly.

Um I do just want to make sure as we prioritize new work, if that's what we're doing here, that we're clear about trade-offs because we typically do prioritization.

We don't have a lot of existing direction around children, family and children homeless homelessness specifically.

On items two and three, can staff just tell us before I turn to council member camp the kind of your interpretation of numbers two and three and any workload impacts or trade-offs that we should just be aware of?

Sure.

I'll start on number two and I'll have Sarah answer number three since it's a policy question, and if um Eric wants to jump in on number two.

I would start just on the data and much of what the public speakers said in the ray of uh in the way of what different data that we look at or performance, much of that is included, and we look at that all the time, whether it's within existing outcomes or performance metrics within the department, or all of the different measures that are behind this work that we just didn't mention today.

So we have the ability to look at a lot of different data and plan to include a lot of that as we make these decisions.

Specific to number two, that is something that is currently tracked in the housing department that they look at, and I would ask Eric, you know, if he has any issues specifically or any clarity around recommendation number two that he needs to add.

That'd be great.

And as he comes down, I know McKinney Vento puts actual substantive mandates on school districts, there are at least a few mandates that stem from it, but I'm just curious how we use this data and if I'm more concerned about number three, just making sure we're explicit about staff trade-offs.

But if you want to comment, go ahead.

Yeah, so Eric Sullivan's director of housing.

Yes, so as uh experts articulating.

As we think about the Mechanic Vento Act is divided into two parts.

The first part is really directed at local municipalities and agencies, it covers what COC data, continuum of care, emergency services grant data, municipalities are supposed to collect, which, as Ms.

Wilcox mentioned, we collect a lot of that data in the background through department metrics.

And then separately, as it was amended in 2000 to add the vento part of it, it is directed at the Department of Education related to child and youth homelessness and reporting out that they do as tethered to Title One, which we as a local government entity are not mandated to collect.

Got it.

Okay.

And then finally on number three, and then I'll I'll um turn to my colleague here.

Do we so we obviously we all want to support more child care infrastructure?

We don't have explicit direction with um budget allocation for staff to work on this.

So, how much can staff do with this direction before we get into a place where we need to go to priority setting and actually work on this through the budget process?

I'd just like to know where that line is, just so we're all on the same page.

Thank you for the question, Mayor.

Um, so this body of work would fall uh primarily on API, and um as is was demonstrated through the presentation.

It does take um quite a bit of uh analytical policy um uh time to work through the logic model.

Um so I'd probably have to assign someone on the policy team to probably spend at a minimum about 40 hours to work through the logic model framework.

What we understand would be a deliverable of this work would be some sort of high-level description of what a problem area would be under the focus area with some research around what the state, the county, and the city does in this area, what the different roles are, and very high level uh recommendations for areas that you would potentially explore as part of the budget process because we can't dictate any goals with no resources to implement that.

Um, so just that's what the deliverable would be that um we understand if if the city council uh directed us to do this work, and then the timing would probably be a little bit different from the December committee.

Um, and I could get into more detail as necessary.

Okay.

And is there a lighter weight version of what the council members asking for than something quite that exhaustive?

Obviously, to actually allocate staff resources to do the work, we'd have to go to the budget process and priority setting next year.

But I just in terms of updating the logic model off-cycle like this, is there something lighter weight that we could do to satisfy starting to get a little more information, maybe as part of the children youth master plan or coming to the youth empowerment alliance, or is there some other way we can do this that's slightly less.

I just I don't know what the trade-off is for API, and I think we always want to make it explicit.

If I may, I did want to make a modification to the memo, so that might spare Sarah from having to think and speak to you.

Perfect.

I'm gonna come to you next.

Let me just get the last answer to this question, and then I'll come to you and maybe we can modify rec three to make it fit with whatever Sarah tells us here.

Thank you.

As I understand, and Angel might be able to speak to this a little bit better.

Uh we are organizing right now a joint NSE meeting with the county's children, senior and families committee for November.

So as part of that discussion, uh they're gonna be prioritizing children and youth services master plan.

So we could at a high level have a discussion around uh child care as a subject.

And Angel, I don't know if you want to add anything there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, um Mayor Child Care is called out in our children youth master plan, uh, especially under early care and education and learning.

So I I think uh when you look when you look at the agenda that we're developing right now in concert with the county, that is actually one of the topics that we plan on discussing because we're looking at that whole zero to three, three to five uh population.

So there may be an uh an opportunity to have some conversations there uh with some follow-up coming back in around a February time frame uh with a report out to uh the NSE committee.

So that might be an opportunity.

Great.

Thanks.

And I apologize, Councilmember.

I just wanted to give go into that a little bit to try to elicit a little of that conversation before we go to a motion because I'm hoping we can be responsive to the intent of the memo you submitted, but also recognize staff's existing direction and workload and normally I think we would put this into prioritization, but maybe there's a way to do a little of this without unnecessarily disrupting existing commitments that staff have on their plates.

So anyway, I hope that was helpful.

Let me turn to Councilmember Campos.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and but before I get into uh discussing my memo, I really want to start off by thanking staff for this presentation.

I heard that over a hundred hours of staff time were put into this, and it shows this was a tremendously uh amazing uh presentation with a lot of data, a lot of very important information that helps us make decisions.

And so I I appreciate the framework that our city is using to implement and track progress as we are looking at these focus areas.

Um, I also uh am grateful for staff's work and helping me think through the memo and think through uh staff capacity limitations and really um understanding how to hopefully craft something that is doable for our city council.

So um before I get into my questions for staff, I did just want to remind our council that in 2023, so just two years ago, the San Jose City Council unanimously approved a resolution with seven members from this current body who voted yes, including Mayor Mayhan, Vice Mayor Foley, and others.

And in that language, it says that the resolution will refocus our attention on this key source of economic strain for San Jose families, that being child care, which would reduce these threats for our youngest residents.

And I also want to remind you all that in 2025, child care remains the second highest expense in a family budget, and the economic burden of child care gaps on households, businesses, and tax revenues for the county of Santa Clara is in between 821 million dollars, 518, 790,000.

That is on the low end.

On the high end, we are looking at 1,251,610,820,000.

Now, if you think about the fact that San Jose is about half of the population of Santa Clara County, what does that economic burden mean for our residents?

Household impacts look like income losses from parents who have to reduce their work hours or leave the labor force entirely when they don't have access to child care.

What does it look like for businesses?

It looks like direct productivity losses, such as hours of foregone worker productivity.

And what does that look like for tax revenue impacts?

It is lost household and business income that would have contributed to our general fund.

When parents have more dollars in their pockets, local economies are stronger.

That is a fact.

Can staff please provide more information about what this means and how this will affect each of our service yards in District 2, we have a service yard with residents right next door who have experienced concerns about how our city is disposing of trash and waste collected by BSJ.

So, yeah, yeah, council member.

Um, so what was one of the high points is that over the last five years we've gotten really good at collecting trash and picking up trash and really deling in that service system.

When you take a look at when we first started kind of benchmarking this in 2021, this past year, we we picked up 13.5 million pounds more than we did in that first baseline.

That has definitely created a a problem in terms of our waste sites.

Uh so right now what we're doing is we have commissioned a uh in encampment trash assessment to really what to do a few things.

One assess our current capacity, predict our future capacity, and thirdly, look at looking at ways of streamlining and optimizing so that we can actually uh continue to pick up you know the the this high volume of trash without with while at the same time minimally impacting our current capacity.

So, right now that report we've just finalized, we're assessing it now, and we'll be making some recommendation in the next couple of weeks uh around you know some some uh streamlining and optimization uh around that uh but it's looking pretty promising.

I appreciate the clarification and our staff's diligent efforts in making sure that we are working to benefit both our our city, our residents, and and everyone who is impacted by these changes in the community.

So thank you for that.

Um my second question is looking at the building more housing focus area.

Goal 3.4 is to provide alternative financing programs to preserve housing at all income levels.

Can staff please clarify what this means and give some examples of these programs?

Would this include preservation of existing market rate units?

Thank you, Councilmember.

The short answer to that question is yes, and I see Eric Sullivan is coming down to provide some more details.

Thank you, Councilmember, for the question.

Eric Sullivan's director of housing.

So what this item refers to is, and I'll provide 10 seconds of quick context.

Throughout the city, we have ever-increasing operating costs, challenges regarding valuations, and ever-increasing challenges to stabilization of rents across the city, whether that's more affordable all the way to market.

And so, in order to address both the challenges and the opportunities that this presents, what this item is speaking to is where do we find to opportunities to be nimble as well as innovative in the ways in which that we could preserve some existing housing stock, expand some opportunities for affordability, and look at ways in which that we can advance our overall goals within our housing production and stabilization.

And so that's what that is speaking to.

There's a whole host of challenges throughout the city across the entire spectrum of affordability and happy to kind of provide some more details to you for that offline.

But that is what this is speaking to is that this is a body of work that we are forecasting is going to come forward as we are looking at ever challenging situations and underlying economics of some of the developments throughout the city.

Thank you, Eric.

I appreciate that clarification.

Um really appreciate staff being available for those responses.

Um I do just want to go back to the motion to make a motion in the memo that I've submitted.

If I come across strong in my remarks, it's because I am very passionate about this issue, as are so many of our residents in our city who are impacted by the lack of affordable, accessible child care in their neighborhoods.

And it I would be remiss to not bring that up in this moment.

I want to remind my colleagues that as we talked about the Children Youth Master Plan, literally written in this, says that the vision and strategic direction of the Children Youth Services Master Plan will align with and will be instrumental in fulfilling the outcomes of the city council focus areas.

This can be found on page 17 of the Youth Master Plan as well as in my memo.

So I want to thank staff again for supporting my office and myself in workshopping this memo, making sure that we are being diligent in understanding the trade-offs that this memo might create for our city, and based on guidance that I received from staff, I would like to move my memo with the one modification to recommendation three.

Um thank you, Councilmember.

So the modification is that instead of returning to NSC in December, the recommendation is that we will hear this in the context of the joint meeting in November with the city and the county, and that the city manager would then return to NSC in February with recommendations or a proposed work plan, because we know that this discussion about child care infrastructure is instrumental in enhancing the competitiveness of our business community.

It allows families with children to contribute to our ambitious economic development goals and implement both the focus area objectives as well as those of the children and youth services master plan.

So I thank you all again for the work that you've done, and I hope that my colleagues will be in support of this motion that elevates the urgency to meet San Jose families' top needs, which are more affordable housing and early learning.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilor.

Appreciate your comments and your motion.

Second from Councilmember Ortiz.

I do just want to note for folks on a point of history.

Um I think I think it is very much an issue worth being passionate about as a parent.

I know how critical it is.

You can't have a career, can't, I mean, it's child care is essential and it is inaccessible and unaffordable to far too many families.

So it's definitely an issue worth being passionate about.

I think the joint meeting is a great place for it to be discussed.

I do want to just clarify for everyone though, just so we have the same facts on this.

Children youth master plan.

I very well recall because I was on the councils, was noted.

Uh now Supervisor Arenus made the motion.

I seconded it.

We have uh worked together on it.

Um, it was not funded.

And in fact, after that, we had a lot of reflection, and it was part of the reason we changed priority setting because we'd had a pattern of passing memo after memo of policy direction that was unfunded where we didn't allocate dollars or staff time, and they became expressions of values, which is important, but the work wasn't getting done, and there was a lot of frustration that we all felt.

And we have since moved priority setting and married it with the budget process to force ourselves to look holistically at our priorities and acknowledge trade-offs and say, well, who will do the work?

Now I think it's very valid to do research.

I think it's valid to set goals.

It's great to do joint meetings with other entities like the county to discuss these larger policy items.

I think that's all very valid, but when it comes down to saying we will do this, we will set this goal, we have to also say, well, what will we not do and how will we fund it and who will do the work?

Personally, because it hasn't been funded, and I've been frustrated by that.

I have been working on a philanthropic initiative to raise dollars for the children and youth master plan because there is a lack of city funding and staff resources currently devoted to the work in a framework that I very much support.

And so I do I want to be clear, I'm not saying the work isn't critically important.

I strongly support it, but we explicitly change priority setting and budgeting largely because we had continued to pass policies without dedicating staff or making trade-offs.

So I just I do just want us to be eyes wide open on that reality as we move forward.

But I will uh support the motion with the modification and turn to council member Ortiz.

Thank you, uh Mayor.

I also just want to thank uh councilmember compost for her memo um and her advocacy.

Um and of course, thank you to our city staff for their great presentation and the hard work that has been uh apparent that was put into this uh report, as well as the new focus area framework.

I guess I'll we don't have much time, so I guess I'll jump into my questions.

First thing I just wanted to discuss was on page four of the memo, the report shows that there has been a drop in resident satisfaction when it comes to junk removal, which is a major issue in my district, as I know it's it's a major issue in many of my colleagues colleagues' districts.

It looks like it went from 64% to 55%.

Can staff explain what is or what their you know uh assumption is of what is contributing to this change?

Yeah, council member, that's a great question.

And and when you look at the data, uh the the perception doesn't align with the data because if you take a look at our our our trash removal, we have actually exceeded our goals, exceeded our our our response time, and yet uh the the perception on that hasn't really shifted.

What we attributed to is that we're thinking that it for those work orders that are reported through 311, sometimes the closeout process there could be challenging, right?

Uh the other thing too is that um we're not we're not actually assessing the customer that called all the time.

So and so when there's a perception survey, there's a survey that someone gets that may be disconnected from somebody who's actually used the service.

So one of the things that we're trying to grapple with is how can we reconcile those a little bit more directly so that there's more of a one-to-one correlation?

But when you look at the data, I mean we are exceeding our our goals when it comes down to trash collection, time response, et cetera.

Great.

Uh thank you so much for that.

And I uh you know that I'm really appreciative of staff's work, beautiful ISJ and all of that, you know, uh team that has done excellent uh effort to clean up our city.

Um I just would like to ask, I know that there's also data in regards to information in regards to uh outreach as we look at 3.2, uh, which focuses on a legal dumping education through schools and neighborhoods.

I think that's great.

I wanted to see, are we also reaching out to um multi-unit housing, uh multifamily housing?

I know that in my district, you know, around every apartment complex, there is consistent illegal dumping.

So just wanted to see what what that looked like.

Yeah, absolutely, council member Feck, you hit it right on the money.

That that's our number one target right now.

Right now, for example, if you take a look at the free junk pickup uh service, we have more single families using it than multifamily.

We need to flip that because what we're finding in and then because if you then conversely take a look at our legal uh uh dumping pickups, it's largely at multifamily complexes.

So that's something that we're trying to hone in on.

More education around both the property owners as well as the residents uh there at those locations so that we could make greater use of the free junk pickup and and really uh nip that one.

That's that's that's spot on.

That's that's our number one target right now.

Great, great.

I know we're gonna be meeting later about how to explore like streamlining enforcement against these housing.

I know we're gonna be meeting in regards to code enforcement and then how we can partner with our city's attorney's office because I think we need to have education, but we also have to have the enforcement type as well, and these individuals know that you know they can't rely on our dump uh uh junk pickup either.

And they're gonna think, oh, well, the city of San Jose is just gonna pick it up, put it to the street corner.

So and I know you guys are looking at that, so just wanted to use my time to put that on the um record.

Uh thank you, Angel.

Next is in regards to homelessness.

Um, it's great to see we are hitting our target for interim shelter utilization.

I just wanted to ask if we have any data on how effectively, or I guess how soon each of our intern interim shelter services are able to transition these residents into a more self-sustainable situation so that those beds can be made available for future residents.

Sure.

So right now that varies site by site depending on the operator, um, which is why why we'd like to standardize and take the ones that are moving quicker to all 24 sites.

So we can, you know, now have a window on some sites, whether it's an individual moving out and it's a 24 hour turnaround, and others are longer.

So we'll be looking at very specifically standardizing that across, but also, as we said, measuring the throughput from the time of entry to the time of a permanent solution as well, so we can make larger decisions around operations.

Okay.

I look forward to that.

Thank you.

And I just do want to elevate that I I definitely support the model uh 2.0 framework.

Um I think it's it's crucial that we tie results to the budget process.

Um if something isn't working, we need to shift resources to initiatives that are showing success, especially as we're talking about our unhoused um residents, and especially who knows what's gonna happen with federal dollars in the future.

We may need more be me more selective with um service providers uh in which we provide uh uh funding to.

So definitely I'm looking forward to ways in which we could you know hold uh providers accountable and and shuffle funds to those who actually return on the uh investment.

Um I guess next my next question is gonna be in regards to goal 2.3, the first responder fee.

Um I appreciate that the program includes compassionate billing and forgiveness policies.

My concern is ensuring that every resident knows that this safeguard exists, so no one hesitates to call, you know, for that you know, lifeline when emergencies do happen.

I wanted to ask what does staff outreach look like currently to let residents know that these programs exist for them.

So, do you know the fire department is working on a full communications plan for this?

Chief is headed down.

Thank you, good afternoon, Robert Sapien, Fire Chief Councilman.

Thank you for the question.

Uh yes, just uh in the last few days we've been uh working to finalize uh our work with uh our third party billing firm, which includes our policies.

Um that particular question that you just asked, uh, we're addressing by way of how billing information will be provided to each person receiving uh a bill.

Um, and I'll refine that by saying that not everyone will receive a bill, they'll receive essentially a statement uh uh informing them on on what the charge was if they had uh medical insurance, but it would very clearly say that this is not a bill, and that we are soliciting soliciting information on uh the insurance provider, and so there would be no instance uh in the the draft policies that we have right now that somebody would receive uh a bill directly to them as a private payer or or an individual pair okay I that's that's important for us to know I think it'd be good I look forward to seeing your communication plan uh to re to do outreach I have received uh communications from the public pretty upset about this I mean uh uh who obviously it's because individuals aren't aware of the avenues in which they wouldn't be paying or they could get some leniency so I think um some communication out uh to the general public would be thank you and that is part of the the plan that we uh we did uh commit to council that we would get out that information once it's finalized.

Okay.

Great.

Um next I just want to say I really appreciate goal 3.2 the creation of the organized retail theft detail.

Um I know I just mentioned earlier about some of the businesses being impacted in my district.

Um I look forward to you know working with this unit to advocate for our businesses.

I did want to ask how many officers are being assigned to this and what kind of cases will will they be focused on is this like snatching grabs is this like organized crime what what can we expect to be addressed by this by this unit.

So I do know um they are using the ORT grant funds to hire a rehired retirees and I believe there are six of them at 20 hours each but I will ask Brian to answer the second part of that question or assistant chief shad.

Good afternoon Brian Shab assistant chief of police and just so I can clearly um articulate the answer, council member can you just repeat the second part of that question for me?

Oh yeah yeah no thank you for that I just um I wanted to ask you know how many officers are assigned uh to this uh unit as well as what kind of cases are going to be are they going to be looking at like is it snatching grabs is this gonna be you know looking at you know organized crime targeting retail is it all the above yeah it's all of the above the six rehire the retirees that are currently working those cases they're assigned to our financial crimes unit and where they look at um all types of organized retail theft it doesn't have to be these giant organized rings that are working statewide it can be any one or two three four suspects that are working in conjunction or um and hitting multiple places within the city.

Great well really appreciate that update I look forward to the excellent work of this unit just to just to close out I just want to mention that I do support my colleague Councilmember Complos's memo.

It has the highest concentration of unhoused youth in this country um and we need to be laser focused on the issues because when we let youth fall through the cracks we are losing their potential to contribute to a thriving city and a thriving economy.

So thank you so much.

Thanks council member let me turn to councilmember Cohen.

Thank you and of course I want to start the same thanks everyone's given for the thorough um presentation and all the detail in there it's there it's a lot to digest but I just gonna highlight a few things that um stuck out at me to me during the presentation and some questions I have about some of the areas.

First I just want to make a general comment that the I I appreciate that the triangle on that early slide page three with the core service the focus areas on top but all the core services which are the base that that really we have to continue to make sure we nurture we don't want to lose sight of core services our libraries, our parks, our climate smart program, our roads and transportation those are our core functions and clearly if we don't uh continue to provide them with the resources that they need um you know the I think the whole triangle collapses so I I want to just make sure that that's uh highlighted um on page uh 25 I guess you have that there's that the on on public safety I saw um an area about emergency response and improving response times this is something we've been talking about for a long time.

What I didn't see on here, and I'm not sure it's it's it might be because it's buried somewhere in in section 1.3, it might be in there.

Um police patrol deployment projects.

I feel like we've been talking, I know we've been talking for five years that I've been on council about the redistricting of our police division, uh police districts, and it seems like we're always close and we're not there, and I and we have particular interest in my area as I represent the area with the longest police response times in the city, and one of that is because of the geography and the distances.

Um is that still a priority?

Is that still happening?

How is that moving forward and when can we expect to see that kind of come to some fruition?

So that is still something that is on uh the police department's work plan to look at, and actually, we in the POA agreement you just um approved it is actually in our work plan to talk to the POA about on our ongoing operational discussions.

Um, as far as timeline, I think that that is kind of a broader project that it's gonna take a while to get off the ground.

So it's not in this focus area, it's not in the 1.3.

The um the eliminating beats is a different different issue.

I don't know if we have a if PD has a better timeline than that, other than it is going to take a little while to get that off the cool off the ground.

Again, Brian Chab, Assistant Chief of Police.

Um, so we absolutely are looking at it.

It's actually one of the recommendations that came through the matrix report.

It's a multifaceted project that's gonna require a lot of moving parts.

Probably the most involved part of that is going to be our CAD redesign, um, which is um very involved, very expensive.

We need to make sure that gets done before we can actually push out the redistricting piece of it.

We're hoping to really look at that maybe post-FIFO World Cup stuff, and so that we're not putting too terribly much on our plate, and trying to work through that whole system at a time when we're gonna see a lot of activity in the department.

Okay, thank you.

I'm just gonna express my frustration about the length of time this is taking, and we you know, to hear words like getting it off the ground.

When I know I've been at community meetings or this has already been discussed with consultants who've come out to begin the process and to sort of feel like even though we've gone through a number of things with the public and with the council, to feel like it's something that's still in the future, doesn't make me happy.

I'll just say I mean, I'm not it's not necessarily as a direct question for you, but just to express my can my concern.

This is something we've been talking about for a long time, something I think is important in the context of all the other things that we're all the great work that we're doing in the with the police department, but um it just feels like they were spinning our wheels on this one topic, which we've been discussing year after year after year.

So just wanted to to say that um, but thank you for for the update.

Um homelessness, um, there's um first I wanna so I think slide 48 that has the um metrics on homelessness.

Um, I'm gonna start by sort of sort of asking this question.

The overall at the top, the long-term goal is to moving towards functional zero.

Obviously, our goal should be reducing unsheltered homelessness and overall homelessness numbers.

The indicators here seem to be are are obviously on some of the right things because they're about things that we can do to provide service, um, but the indicators, at least not on this slide, don't seem to this on this slide, don't seem to be highlighting actual numbers of uh homelessness numbers.

I assume uh in terms of improvement in the in the the ult the the on the street homelessness impact that we see.

Is that where how are we how are we building in that actual progress toward what is the real goal into this into the metrics?

So I would say, and and Sarah, please jump in.

You know, the indicators obviously are you know are telling in the way of information if we need to pivot to see if we're addressing the main challenges to move forward, but they're also a means to address um the long-term goal as well.

So if you have a number of units, cost reduction, no encampment zones maintain, that's an indicator that we're moving people into a system and out of a system in an effective and an efficient manner.

Okay.

I mean, I I I guess I'm confused a little bit uncertain about the term indicator, because to me the real indicator is how many you know unsheltered homeless do we have on the streets, how well are we actually serving the people that need service?

How well are our communities um, you know, what are the numbers of our Vs, I mean, whatever the total, whatever measures we have for the problem on the street.

So Eric Sullivan's director of housing, thank you, Councilmark, for the question.

So when we look globally at the one of our challenges that we're servicing creating a system to respond to, the unsheltered homelessness is what our system and our shelter system has been built to respond to.

So we look at more globally challenges around homelessness for those that may not necessarily be unsheltered, that's a challenge as well, but there isn't a clear indicators for how are we addressing that.

One of the ways in which we've devised the data input section to expand how we're counting it, is to get at how are we ensuring that what is needed on the streets in terms of RVs, in terms of encampments, in terms of individuals who are on our streets and sidewalks, how we'd rather capturing that totality of that demand side of homelessness that we're trying to address and have a system that can respond to that need and to that demand.

So we are capturing those necessities around homelessness, and what are those triggers in which we're advancing that work, we're just doing that within the response system that we are building and investing in.

Okay, and that oh thank you for that.

Thank you for that.

On the on the top two items, number of new units online and cost reduction, those are obviously really important.

How much it costs us to operate the site, how many sites we're bringing online.

I feel like there's a third piece that's missing, which is how we're utilizing them.

What is the throughput?

What are what is the success of these sites?

How many people are being served per year per unit, for example.

I I just feel like that number is an important one as well as we move forward.

The other thing I'm gonna just say, and I said this in many contexts before, those bottom two, the middle two items, no encampment zones maintained, those to me are meaningless pieces of information.

I know that I disagree with the mayor on this one, but I find that we can decide that there's certain areas that should be no encampment zones, and we can say that this is great, we've created a no encampment zone in these areas of the city.

There could be none in my district, and homelessness is getting worse in district four because as we create and maintain no encampment zones everywhere else, what we're doing, it you know there's all these analogies, whether you'd squeeze a balloon and the area, other sides of the balloon spread out somewhere else, or you take a piece of glass and you shatter it and you create all the shards spread out across out from the middle and out to the edges, we have more smaller area homeless encampments going up because we're creating no encampment zones in other areas.

I will I'm gonna also add say to that, clarify that by saying I do think the problem is improving overall.

Numbers are going down.

I'm not going to to completely say this is being ineffective.

It is being effective.

I think the problem as I as I drive around and see things scattering around the area, the numbers are less than they used to be.

But as long as we as long as what we're hearing from constituents is all of a sudden there's five new encampments in this part of the city, and we're patting ourselves on the back for for maintaining a no encampment zone in Quas de Guadalupe River, I I just not convinced that I'm comfortable with this as a metric of success in the city.

That's so I just wanted to throw that out there to dummy it up a bit.

And council member, I would just say on its own, I would agree with you.

I think that metric is about two things.

It's about environmental stewardship and public trust.

Especially around all of you that have gone through the community meetings with EIH or safe parking, including yourself, I would say so that that standing alone, yes, I would agree with you.

But as we mentioned in the report, I think you know, we have other measures and are trying to be much more intentional about outreach.

So it's not a one-off interaction that it actually gets someone into a system, and we're gonna be measuring that very deliberate, you know, and as well as kind of the outcome and indicator where we would like to avoid whether you look at shelter capacity or the efficiency of the system to be able to move through throughput to create additional capacity, is the longer term goal that we have is that we're not just moving people around.

We actually very much want to get away from that and get them into the system because we have an ultimate solution.

So if that was the only measure on its own, I would absolutely agree, but we're actually being very deliberate about how we're intentional about just not moving people from one side of town to another, because that creates a lot, that creates even uh less public trust.

Um, and and just to be clear, um I I don't know the number of sites that we have in terms of no encampment zones, but what I will say is when we when if we're using no encampment zones as a way to signal our um uh to the public that they can trust what we're doing, it for for areas that are not on the no encampment zones list, I we we end up actually I think doing the opposite, and I'll just you know just say there's many many locations that we've worked on in areas that are not no encampment zones that we've cleared and three months later they're back again, and then through clear them and then three months later they're back again.

And it's because we're moving people from other places that are our priority no encampment zones, and so the folks who are in areas that where there's not a defined no encampment zone, I think are getting frustrated that we can't hold on to some of these other locations.

So I just want to you know try figure out that ways to think about this on a citywide scale and not be too focused on this this subset of sites, although I certainly am very big supporter of making sure that our creeks and waterways are clean and clear.

Um the last thing I'm gonna just mention uh is the on the junk pickup item on the on the clean neighborhoods.

Um I had a question about how well our outreach is going as far as getting more people to utilize our junk pickup service.

You know, we have a great service with unlimited junk pickup, and we my theory has been that if we can get more people to utilize it, fewer people will take their trash and dump it on the sides of the roads and in the creeks and other places.

And I'm curious if we can include in the future some some data about um how utilization is changing over time.

My understanding is unfortunately from seeing some diving into some of the data in the last few days is that it's actually hasn't been increasing in the last few years.

Um it's been kind of flat, and that's disappointing because I know we've made a big effort to try to publicize and promote the program.

So why don't I just ask about that?

Yeah, Councilmember, what you know, if you look at the data, you'll you'll see that prior to us getting real good at picking up the illegal dumping kind of proactively and in response, uh, you actually saw the numbers on the free junk pickup a lot higher.

Those have dipped slightly.

It stayed pretty flat over the last few years, so it hasn't you know dipped significantly, but it has it has dipped to your point.

Uh our number one goal right now, and it's really it's item 3.3 and on our dashboard uh is really honing in on uh improvements around uh just getting the word out around the free junk pickup and and not only using traditional marketing means but also folding this work into our neighborhood uh conference that's coming up in October, for example, uh folding this work into uh our grantees around beautify SJ grants and just just being a lot more creative around how we get the word out and then just trying to uh work with with uh with with landlords, especially multifamily complexes uh to to use the service.

Uh in reality uh you know many of them find it easier to just kind of put their stuff out there and then call legal dumping and uh so it's it's it's uh it's double-edged sword, so all right, yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, counselor.

Appreciate all your good questions and comments.

And I'll just say for the record, I don't think we're that far apart on no encampment zones.

I I think you're right that they're a very limited tool, and it's not like people just disappear because we have a no encampment zone.

I will just say though that this council gave at least near unanimous, despite our disagreement, direction around it for waterways where we're obligated to have no encampment zones for 26 miles, and I think where the pucks going on that is pretty soon we're gonna be obligated to strictly enforce no encampment zones for all 140 miles of waterways, every waterway, every district in the coming years because of the mandates under the Clean Water Act.

And then I will also say we made a commitment to neighbors in many districts.

I remember explicit discussions about sites and D2, D9, and other districts were the only way we approved an EIH was a commitment to enforce a no encampment zone.

So I think it is a limited tool, certainly doesn't end homelessness, but it's one piece of a broader uh set of strategies.

But I I hear your point, and I think it's very fair.

Um let me turn to Councilmember Kamet real quick.

Thank you so much.

You know, um when I first got on council in 2023, one of the things as we were going through the budget process was asking the question in future uh uh budget processes what are the what are the things that staff, the city manager, others can do to think differently.

And this is this is certainly very different.

And I want to congratulate the city manager.

You have an awesome team, you really do, and those other team members who've been putting so many hours and getting the work done, thank you, because it is a process, and we have gotten to a place that is much better today than it was previously.

So I will say congratulations to the city manager.

Um I love this um 2.0 framework, and you know, having used logic models before, it makes a lot of sense to me.

And going through the different processes, it's very ambitious, I will say, but I also think that um uh it is it is achievable.

The one thing that I will point out is we talk about or there has been some references to us to achieving functional zero, right?

The long-term goal says move toward functional zero because we don't have the 500 plus million dollars to achieve functional zero, even if we do all the fundraising in the world, because it is so it is so persistent in terms of the the wicked problem that it is.

Um so I I I just want to point that out because words matter, and if we say, Oh, we're gonna achieve functional zero, I think that you know we're fooling ourselves, right?

So I think that we're moving towards, and we've moved quite a bit.

So I I really think that it's it's really great.

I love the way that cross departments, disciplines, cross-functional, you've been able to address uh some of these wicked problems because that's what they are.

I love this um this uh little wheel of plan, do, learn, improve as a continuous form of improvement.

Now, I wanna emphasize something that council member Cohen said time, and I've said this before on this council, time is not our friend, and you know, things take a lot longer than you think they're gonna take, right?

So I think that having um, you know, sort of a realistic way of of thinking about things in terms of oh we can do this by whatever, and I think that being open uh, you know, to the council to say, you know what, if we do this, we can't do that.

That's just reality, right?

Because I think we have to have these conversations that make it real, because if not, you know, we're hearing, oh yeah, it's coming by you know next year, and it doesn't come for another few years, and we're just fooling ourselves.

So I think that as part of this new framework, I hope that we can have those conversations as we start entering into the budget process to say we can do this, we can't do that.

And you know, there are a lot of priorities, but I also think that you know each one of us needs to be real, and we all want certain things, but we also need to understand that you know, yeah, we can plan, but when you gotta do, and I think that we need to hurry up and do, you know, and and go on to the next learn and you know, kind of iterate because I think that sometimes we get stuck on wanting everything so well done or perfect, and we kind of like spin a little bit, so none of that.

I think that that this framework really provides a way of, you know, trying to get to a better place uh for all of us, for all of us, and we need to we need to try different things because not everything's gonna work, right?

And sometimes uh, you know, you really need to um make those mistakes, right?

Because we're human.

So I I just want to say thank you.

Um I love the framework.

I can't wait till next year when we get 3.0, and it's better and better, right?

But but I think that this works, this really really works, and I think that it's gonna be a way that we could um, I don't know, I find it easier to explain to the community.

It's a little, it's still complex, but I think that um it has a methodology to to be much more understandable.

I think uh point one or one point oh was good, but you know, it was a little confusing, I think, for some people.

This one I think sets a stage of more clarity, so um I thank you very much for that.

Thank you.

Thanks, councilmember, appreciate those comments.

Let me turn to Vice Mayor.

Okay, I'm gonna pile on on the thank yous.

I think this report and focus area 2.0, and maybe we'll get 3.0, I don't know, but 2.0 is really fabulous.

It was easy to read, and I think what we're learning from other cities, other jurisdictions is really helpful, particularly the bullets about plain language, using language with the public that is meaningful to them to them, that they can understand and means I can understand it too.

That why are these numbers important?

Why do we care?

What are we doing to move these numbers and make these numbers uh relevant and improve the overall life of the the community who we represent?

So I I think the report is fabulous.

And looking specifically at the public safety portion of it, I look forward to the economic development portion that will come to CED, and we'll dig deeper in that in December.

But looking specifically at the public safety portion, one of the targets is to get a thousand public camera or private cameras registered.

Looks like we're only about less than 50%.

So I'm curious how you're going to go about that.

One of the things we do did a few years ago is we had a pilot program where we actually funded cameras in our community.

We had a uh rebate that we gave to the community and said you have to register them in order to get the rebate, which that worked, but we're not, you know, we're 20.

Our budget was really small, so I think we did like 200 cameras or someone.

It's not even not even close to where we need to be.

But they work, they're helpful, they're helpful in uh both preventing crime, but then recognizing when someone has committed a crime at your doorstep and having access to that information.

So I don't need actually the answer to that question now, it's just one thing I'm I'm throwing out.

I do want to thank you for focusing on vision zero and traffic safety and how important that is, and the two bullets around uh infrastructure and making sure that we complete the quick build projects and the infrastructure that we need in order to make our streets safer is one strategy, and the other is the red light cameras and the uh speed cameras, which we're in the process of installing both.

I know the red light cameras are starting to go up already, the speed cameras not yet, but both of those are important strategies, and I look forward to the vision zero reports and and our numbers coming down just over the last just this week.

We had another fatality on our streets, so we know that every that speed is uh one of the leading causes of fatalities on our streets, and uh we need to make sure that we address that as quickly as possible.

And one is the in the infrastructure, the other is the cameras.

The cameras are really gonna help catch people as they're speeding or as they're violating red light laws, and they're gonna start getting tickets, and the tickets are gonna start being painful, and they're gonna start thinking about that.

So I I commend you on that because every life we la lose is not a statistic, it's a human being, excuse me, with a family around them who loves them and supports them and now have lost them.

So thank you for elevating vision zero to that point.

Um, one question I have actually, Councilmember Campos, around your memo.

I I'm a little confused about the modification that you made to item three.

Can you restate it for me?

And what I'm curious about is: are you anticipating any staff trade-offs, any budget reallocations, or what kind of resources are you anticipating in Ida in your restated three?

So for clarification, the recommendation three is now going to be modified to be a staff recommendation that the discussion of the child care infrastructure is in the broader context of the children and youth service master plan and her during the joint meeting in November with our city's NSC and the county's children, senior and families committee.

In that conversation, and what I hope we will see come from that is in February recommendations or um information that would help us inform uh some potential next steps, but it isn't directing staff to do um anything other than analysis.

Okay, you're not asking staff to do anything other than analysis.

Is that correct?

Okay, Lee, is that your understanding?

I was gonna say I I think someone in the comments around this uses the word work plan and and long-term goals.

So I think we would stay away from that when I think of this body of work and agree with the council member, the the county private sector us, there is a lot to sort out here.

So I honestly think of the community plan and homelessness, which was an 18 to 24-month endeavor to come up with a very extensive work plan.

It was resourced a lot by the county in this organization.

When I hear the council members' comments right now, I view like a skinnier down version or a high level version of what you just saw for a focus area with the possible problem statement or areas of you know that we would address given our role and kind of what we hear from the county and other partners at that meeting and time for you to have it and the council member to have it in February to give us further direction, it would probably need to be resourced.

So, in some ways, I think we're treating this as how we would at rules committee in some ways.

Like I view this as kind of 40 hours or less, something that we can devote a little bit of time to with little trade-off.

But if it was a full-blown work program, work plan, I think we'd have more concerns about being able to achieve that.

So, the the just to clarify then, council member campos, it does not include the word work plan because work plan would indicate budget resources, and that would be have to go through the budget process next year's.

Is that what I'm hearing from staff in correct council member?

I do not need to include work plan in and then the recommendations and the tactics are at the discretion of the city manager.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Happy happy to support it then.

Thank you.

That's that's it for me.

X excellent work, city manager, echoing the comments of council member Kamei.

You have a fabulous staff.

I I just do need to thank staff and the API team and really all the departments.

Um, it is it is the culture is in the conversation, and we have a culture we've really been working on the last few years to be of one of continuous improvement, and we're we're always a work in progress, but I couldn't be more proud of the team.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

All right.

Let me turn now to Councilmember Duan.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you for the uh presentation.

That's a lot of information, 150 pages, a lot of thoughtful um process in there that improved from 1.0 to 2.0.

On page 48, uh it stated very clearly that talking about shelter supply shortfall, even with the new shelter and safe parking sites coming online.

Overall demand for the demand far exceed the current capacity.

And I know even at the end of this year, uh, we'll be shortfall of 1,089 new shelter that the our goal to hit.

And I I've kind of go back to the the crisis situation that we have here.

We have a homelessness crisis, right?

And when we have natural disaster, extreme weather uh events, COVID, mass displacement, pre-engineered modular shelter have always been used.

And and I would hope, and I built I've been on the sounding board that push us toward the pre-engineer modular shelter, because it's effectively can get the shelter in weeks versus months or years.

If you look at the pre-engineer modular shelter right next to the convention center, which's sitting empty, that including heat and and air conditioning, and we can section it, modify it to really use it to support our unsheltered residents in COVID.

We did it, and I don't know why we're not going toward that model because it's so much cheaper, efficient, versus brick and mortar type of shelter.

And the shortfall of these shelter exposed our unsheltered residents and the vulnerable individual out there to unnecessary suffering and death.

But as we know, we're running out of time, we're running out of resources, and we run out of finance.

And right in the report, it stated very clearly that those things are we're running out of.

Until we really truly go to the pre-modular shelter, we're not talking about bunks bed, we're we're talking about cubicle that give people the dignity, the respect, the security, and all the services.

And it's just befuddle me that we we keep going around in circles where other states, another city, um is doing it, and I would hope that and I and I believe even housing director, you know, clearly support the the PEMS, which is pre-engineer modular shelter, it's a new way to address the amount of uh homeless that we have in our city because right now I think the numbers at 6,000.

Even if we do our best with the EIH, we barely get about a thousand shelter.

What about the other 5,000, right?

And I have talked to unshelter residents that coming from other states, because we building permanent shelter and then make it easier.

And just the recently, I look at the stat, it's practically a million dollars per per door.

I don't see how we can sustain that.

And and again, I I implore and inspire and empower all of you to think of the pre-engineer modular shelter.

Two, we we talk about you know increasing community safety focus area until we doesn't matter how we what you call dynamic deployment, if we lack a resources, we'll for example, within the fire department, we don't have enough station to cover the geographical area, or do we have enough firefighter to do so?

Same thing with our police department, doesn't matter how we slice it, if you don't have enough resources, you can't really reduce that amount of time of response.

And then we we talk about overtime, right?

If we don't have enough police or fire, then our existing personnel have to make up for that lack of resource.

So therefore, the overtime we continue to grow.

And yes, we support our police department and our fire department in resource.

And just this afternoon, we have that agreement to bring us to where we're at to the modern age for better retention and recruitment and retention.

But people have got to remember we supposed to be at a thousand personnel for the fire department and two thousand for the police department.

We're not even near that.

Until we get enough resources, we can really truly say that we support the safety of our residents.

And three, I'm going to write right into the illegal dumping.

It's fantastic that we're picking up more garbage.

We pick up four million pounds of garbage.

And on page 55, and it the amount continues to increase.

And again, if we don't have any in for enforcement, and I know that there are contractors not only from our city from other city are coming to our city and just dump it.

Doesn't matter where they dump it, we continue to pick it up, and we're creating a behavior that is unacceptable until we have the enforcement, until we make example of those who illegally dump on our street and in our neighborhood and in front of our businesses, we're going in around in circle.

And it continue to cost our taxpayer dollars to accommodate these illegal dumpers, right?

And we know that 99% of the illegal dumping come from what?

A residents, including our commercial retailer out there.

We need to think differently.

We need to start enforcement.

And to my understanding, from the beginning when I came on as a council member, until now, how many tickets that we enforce, right?

We have these signs that $10,000 up to a $10,000 for illegal dumping.

We need to make example out of these people because the mayor and many are the council members.

Every weekend I'm out there picking up garbage.

But I know that we are doing our best, but sometimes our best may not be good enough to our citizen.

And I'm not saying that you guys are not doing the best you can, but we have to think of other think out of the box.

We can't continue to operate the way we are because we only got a hundred dollars coming in and we're spending 150.

That's that's not fiscally responsible, and it's gonna bankrupt us, and when that happened, all of us gonna suffer.

I yield my time, thank you.

Thanks, Councilman.

I appreciate all your comments.

I'll just say on the the pen the prefabricated pre-engineered modular modular shelter.

Thank you.

One thing I'll just note for any council member, um, and I've we've seen this happen is identifying a site, maybe identifying a philanthropic partner, um, particularly when council members bring forward a site in their own district and have done some of the pre-work.

I have seen this council come together to figure out how do we help get it done.

I know I can think of many different examples around sites in different districts over the last few years.

So uh hope it's something you'll bring back to us in advance of the budget cycle next year for consideration.

But I I hear you, and I think I think there's a logic to needing more scale in the system.

So I do appreciate those points, and I'd be very willing to work with you on that.

Okay, uh, I think we've we've definitely got a motion, and it doesn't look like we have any other hands.

Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you.

All right, thank you all again.

Great work to uh city manager and team.

We are on to item 3.5.

This is an or a proposed ordinance prohibiting law enforcement officers from concealing their identities in the city of San Jose.

There's no staff presentation, so we will go to public comment first.

Tony?

Yes.

I have several cards.

I have about 22 cards.

When I call your name, you can come down as soon as you hear your name.

You don't have to wait your turn.

If you are speaking another language, your words will be interpreted for the council.

They'll see it on their screen.

And your words, I'm gesturing so you guys can know to look up at the screen.

So I'm gonna start with Brian Darby, Carly Peach, Deborah St.

Julian, Shannon, and Lewis Powell.

Come on down.

This is a real important subject.

Um, just one other thing.

Maybe if we could adjust the schedule for folks that are like, I don't know, everybody knowing each issue is important, but uh land use issues maybe could come earlier for folks uh because it's also important.

Anyways, um I just want to we we this is a very emotional issue, and I know that's why we're voting on this because we can't direct we can't direct federal agencies.

There's a lot of talk going on about civil war and we're at war with each other and stuff.

We do not ever want to go through a civil war again in this nation.

The last one cost the lives of 600,000 people, a million people or more were injured.

It devastated the South for 100 years or more.

We are still living with that.

If we have a civil war now, like people are talking about, our infrastructure will fall apart, our grid will fall apart, and it is something that you cannot restore back.

I just think people need to think deeply about that.

We all need to because it is an existential threat.

On that, I think people should be held accountable, they should be identifiable, and I think that's needed for the support of our constitution, which is in danger.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Louis Powell, executive director of Santa Maria Urban Ministry in the Guadalupe, Washington District 3.

Uh, about a mile and a half due south from these chambers.

Every day I see the people of our city want to do the right thing, they want to cooperate with law enforcement.

They want to protect their families.

They want to give back, and they want to live without fear.

The San Jose Police Department has done a good job of building trust across our community, trust that is critical to gathering information in order to fight crime.

And when an officer's identity is concealed, that trust is eroded.

For our residents to confidently cooperate with legitimate officers of the law, they must know with whom they are speaking.

Even worse, hidden identities create an opportunity for vigilantes or bad actors to impersonate law enforcement or to commit illegal acts, spreading unnecessary fear and confusion in our neighborhoods.

This ordinance ensures transparency and accountability of harm by those who would exploit our community.

Passing this measure affirms this simple truth.

The rule of law requires accountability.

I respectfully and urgently ask that you adopt this ordinance so that every resident of San Jose will be able to support legitimate law enforcement with confidence and with accountability that our democracy deserves.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, council members.

This is Shannon again, the Silicon Valley Council Nonprofits.

SBCN and real coalition stand in allyship with the Immigration Protection and Empowerment Network in supporting this proposed ordinance to prohibit law enforcement from concealing their identities.

We especially thank council members Ortiz Kamei Cohen and Campos for bringing this item forward.

This anti-masking ordinance is necessary for preserving the safety of the immigrant community.

When law enforcement conceals their identities, it gives opportunity for anyone to pose as enforcement and kidnap and target immigrants.

As the immigrant community faces ever increasing threats from the federal government, the city needs to continue to prioritize their safety and well-being.

We urge the council to continue its strong leadership in protecting its immigrant community alongside new state laws.

The city signals to its residents that it is willing to stand up for them and protect them.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call Kimberly Wu, Alexander Weber, and Johnny Lee Dang.

Hi.

Deborah St.

Julian.

I'm a member of Serge Santa Clara County.

I'm a trained rapid response network legal observer and a D2 resident.

And I wholeheartedly thank the originating council members for this ordinance and urge unanimous support.

My home is 1.4 miles from the ISAP.

That means intensive supervision appearance program office, which is an ICE-contracted office, which used to be where you went if you were an asylum person for your routine check-in, and you went and you checked in and they made sure you were following all the rules, and then you went home.

That's not happening now.

So on June 4th, I along, and I've been back to that office multiple times, but the first time was on June 4th, and we witnessed and continue to witness people be handcuffed, shackled, and removed from this office.

On my first encounter, we're always we're trained to like ask who are you?

Can you show us your badge?

Who are you with?

And their response is routinely, um, none of your business.

And it's like a bad sci-fi movie.

People are all wearing military accessories, they have masks up to here, sometimes they have weapons, and like I say, this is my neighborhood.

So this is this feels very personal to me, and these are my neighbors.

And so I'm just asking you to support this common sense democratic ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Lucilla Ortiz.

I am the political director over at Working Partnerships USA, and we're also part of IPEN Network.

We wholeheartedly support the memo that is in front of you, and we hope that it gets passed today.

This is about building transparency and accountability, which in turn build public safety.

We can't be build public safety without holding law enforcement officials accountable to the constitutional rights of our community members.

And so I hope that this continues to have your support, and I hope that you can continue to stand up for the values and the ethics in the city of San Jose that we need in this moment.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, City Council members.

Uh my name is Alexander.

I'm a member of the Ross Calarista Club, CPUSA.

Uh people have legal rights to exercise when dealing with law enforcement and federal agents, and in order to exercise those rights.

They need to know that they're dealing with such agents.

Uh allowing any agent to go around massed up and without identification leaves the uh door open for anyone to pose as an agent.

And honestly, if it were to happen, it would be an offense to the constitution and ideals our country was founded on.

Uh and with the ultra-conservative project 2025 in effect and its open attack on immigrants and citizens, people need to know when and where ICE is active.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Sean Allen, come on down and Lawrence Dang.

Good afternoon, honorable council members.

I'm Kimberly Wu and I'm a community organizer with SIREN, which stands for services, immigrant rights and education at work.

We're also part of the IPEN network who helped organize the press conference back on September 10th on this ordinance.

We strongly support a policy that prioritizes transparency and accountability by prohibiting the concealment of identities by all law enforcement.

We respectfully urge the City of San Jose to direct the city staff to develop a strong ordinance that holds all of our law enforcement accountable to the most basic principle of public safety.

When someone claims authority over you, you have the right to know exactly who they are and what agency they represent.

It is already scary for black and brown communities of color who are already over police to see armed men investing our streets and an even scarier reality when we don't know who they are.

It's even more scary when federal ICE agents don't clearly identify themselves and voice from the wrongfully and purposely misrepresent themselves as police, which is exactly what ICE did when they kidnapped one of our immigrant loved ones in Conseil just last week.

This is illegal composition, and masking is another new and intentional tactic designed to intimidate and create a violent environment of fear and distrust.

It is not an essential function for law enforcement to mask.

So we demand that this masking practice should be prohibited to prioritize the safety of our communities.

We call on the city of San Jose to use all our tools to protect our immigrant neighbors during this emergency crisis.

California recently signed new legislation, SB 67 SB 805, to require visible clear identification and prohibit the conceit moment.

So thus we urge the city of San Jose to follow the state's courageous direction and direct the city attorney to write an ordinance of the city council prohibiting the use of masking by law enforcement, requiring clear and visible identification.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Sean Allen.

I'm the president of the NACP.

Today I want to address a pressing issue that affects the very fabric of our community.

The operation of ICE within our boundaries and the lack of accountability they face.

Our public trust in law enforcement is built on transparency and the ability to voice our concerns about those who serve and protect us.

However, this becomes impossible when we are unable to properly identify law enforcement personnel by their faces, badges, badges, and name tags.

Every individual working in law enforcement, whether federal, state, or local, is obligated to adhere to the law.

Especially regarding the use of force.

Yet how can we hold these individuals accountable if we can't recognize them?

They're in an enemy, these agents operate under erose the necessary checks and balances that keep us safe.

Moreover, the conduct of some agents raises serious concern.

When law enforcement officers operate within clear with without clear identification, they might be mistaken as criminals, engaged in activities such as human trafficking or sex trafficking.

This confusion could lead community members to feel they must defend themselves potentially escalating to violence and tragic incidents.

It is critical to emphasize that when local state and law and local state and federal law enforcement officers act outside the law, they are still subject to local prosecution.

Accountability must be upheld for everyone regardless of their badge.

Therefore, we urge our local leaders to enact strong ordinances that mandate the clear identification of law enforcement personnel, including federal agents.

Together we must advocate for these ordinances to ensure we create a system that fosters accountability and transparency.

By doing so, we can restore public trust and enhance safety in our community.

Let's work towards a safer San Jose where identification and accountability of uh is mandatory for our law enforcement officers.

This is common sense, right?

So, as a career law enforcement officer and retired, um, it's it's it's it's unacceptable that that our law enforcement officers are causing fear within our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Ms.

Rayan Mendoza.

Come on down, Mark Adams and Dilza Gonzalez.

Go ahead.

Um good evening, Council.

My name is Lawrence, and today I want to quickly mention, make a comment on 3.5.

So we urge the city, San Jose City Council to direct staff to develop a strong ordinance that prohibits law enforcement officers from concealing our identities.

As you may know, um we live in a diverse state, diversity and a diverse democracy.

But what's very important is that we respect we gotta respect everybody no matter our differences.

One thing I can tell you is that science states have signed signed two bills, AB 627 that prohibits the concealment of law enforcement.

805 that requires visible clear identification.

And starting tomorrow, federal and for federal enforcements will begin to expand, which is gonna spread fear and which will also block transparency.

One of the biggest goals that we must do here is that we must protect our vulnerable.

We must protect our undocumented immigrants, and we need to do more to ensure that we can help those in need.

Whether if it's services or necessities, every component of the city matters, and your and your role here is also very important.

Because what ICE is doing is abusive, it's cruel and it's humane, and it's also a it's also a violation to human rights.

That is definitely unacceptable, and we need to do something about it.

But most importantly, here here in San Jose, one thing that's going on right now is that when ICE continue when ICE goes for one, they go for all of us.

That is unacceptable.

This needs to stop, and we need to do everything we can to to strengthen protections.

Under the leadership of Gavin U of Governor Gavin Newsom, he has signed those two, both AB2627 and SB 805.

It is time for local leadership, especially this city, this city chamber, this city council, to strengthen these laws.

We are running out of time, and we must we must take action now because there will not be a tomorrow if there is no action, and I urge the city council that we that we stri pass this this or this item today and get this done now.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello, City Council.

My name is Ms.

Raim Mendoza.

Um with Amigos de Guadalupe, I'm the organizing manager with them.

I'm very proud to stand here today.

Um this is a set case, right?

I wish we now have to do this, but we need to step up.

The city has been doing good work.

Keep doing the work you've been doing because I want to show you a picture.

I'm sure you guys seen these pictures, but uh as you can see, the officer over there, you can see the name, the batch, the logo, right?

Looks very very good.

What about this guy right here?

Huh?

What about this?

Will you feel safe with people walking around like this?

When you ask them for the name as a responder, as an RRN responder, I ask them for the name and they told me Google.

Go Google it.

You don't know us, but we know you.

That's what they tell me, right?

So imagine now this guy over here.

Okay.

What about this guy?

Only says police.

Only says police there, right?

It doesn't have a face mask, but only says police.

That says sheriff, what what police?

I can buy this in Google and and Amazon and put it and buy our uniform like this and go out and terrify people.

Okay, so we need to step up.

You guys have been doing good work, very proud.

Okay, but I'm um our our people, especially our Mexican people, is getting wiped out.

We need to do something.

And I also hope when these scripts come to our city, I want to see each of every one of you shoulder to shoulder with us, with council member Pierre Ortiz, with Pamela Campos, when they end the protest.

We need to see you guys there, especially those that have privilege.

You guys need to step up and come out with us.

Okay, please.

I'm telling you and I'm looking at your faces and then you eyes.

Come out with us.

When these freaks come out, I hope to see you out there with us too.

Okay?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'm gonna also like to call Cindy Bautista, Rebecca Armendez, and um a Kimi Flynn.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon.

Uh my name is Lisa Gonzalez, and I live in San Jose.

And I am the organizing director of the heart, as well as part of real coalition and IPIN group.

I am here to urge the city council to prohibit law enforcement officers to conceal in their identities.

When officers wear masks, it creates fear and confusion.

People can't tell if it is law enforcement or somebody trying to harm them.

That makes families and our children feel unsafe and erodes the trust of community deserves.

We're in danger here.

If you're not white, you're a target.

That's the that's that's the message.

Regardless of our immigration status, our communities are being unfairly targeted, and it's our shared responsibility to defend our rights, safety, and dignity.

San Jose has a proud history of standing up for their residents, transparency, builds trust, clear identification, protects the public, and accountability honors our human rights.

I urge you to take action today and support this ordinance.

Our youth, our families, and our children that you swear to protect when you were campaigning, need you now, regardless of our status, regardless of our language, or regardless where we come from.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'm gonna call the last cards, because I think some people may have left.

I have Sandra Asher, Christopher Andrade, Julie Meyerson, and Katherine Hedges.

So I have called all the names for this item.

If you did not hear your name and you submitted a card, please come on down.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council members.

I'm a Kemi Flynn with the immigrant protection and empowerment network, IPEN, which is a cross-sector network involving the city of San Jose, County, many nonprofits and school districts, etc.

I'm here speaking on behalf of IPEN, but also as a daughter of a mother, and grandparents and aunts and uncles who were incarcerated during World War II at a time when we had an environment that was a similar kind of racist discrimination, fear, and attack on people.

And so I am like Ms.

Rain's call to all of us with privilege that we need to stand up and we we need to stand side by side in uh solidarity with those who are targeted today.

So I I appreciate Miss Ryan's call to all of us.

And I ask you, with all of the messages that we've already heard, that I just want to emphasize um a couple of things.

One first of all, thank you so much to Councilmember Ortiz, Kameh Campos, and Cohen who brought this memo forward.

And then secondly, um I would ask for you to encourage the city attorney to move as quickly as possible on this ordinance.

I know that the memo says 60 days.

I know that the city attorney's office said in rules committee that they thought they could beat that time.

Um we've already lost a few weeks.

And as was already stated, October 1st is tomorrow.

So I ask that uh we move that as quickly as possible and have the strongest ordinance possible.

While there are sometimes challenges about why is this a local business, let us remember that as um Kimberly shared, masking is not essential to immigration enforcement.

So having a it is reasonable for local policymakers to set a standard for all law enforcement.

So thank you very much for your courageous, bold leadership for our community.

Thank you, next speaker.

Uh good evening.

Uh mayor, vice mayor, city manager, council members.

I'm Catherine Hedges, a member of Surge Triumph for Racial Justice and a frequent visitor to San Jose after six years residing in District Three.

Um, our allies urge the city San Jose City Council to direct city staff to direct develop a strong ordinance that prohibits all law enforcement officers from concealing their identities.

We must uphold full transparency of officers and prioritize safety for all, whether people are immigrants, legal or not so legal status, born here and just happen to be brown.

ISIS is not discriminating.

They are picking up everyone who looks like they're not white or has an accent.

We deserve a city where law enforcement is visible, is accountable, and respects our constitutional and human rights.

We must fight against authoritarianism where masked men kidnap our neighbors for alleged violations without due process.

California has two new laws on this subject.

SB 627 prohibits the concealment of law enforcement.

SB 805 requires visible clear identification.

We are at San Jose City Council to direct city staff to follow this courageous direction and bring an ordinance back to council as soon as possible, as the last speaker is just discussing.

San Jose has a proud history of protecting its residents.

We'll continue that legacy by challenging any overreach that threatens the safety of our community.

When the people of San Jose are attacked, we have not only the right but the duty to stand up and do what is right for our people.

Federal enforcement will expand significantly tomorrow.

Our community needs protection now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, C Council.

My neighbor, Clara County.

I am, well, first of all, let me say I agree with everything that everyone else has said prior to my speaking.

But what I want to let you know is that this last week, a mother of two children was taken to and deported to Columbia by President Trump, and she was a member of my church.

Now that really has gotten in my gut, it has really hurt.

What are those two children going to do?

What is their dad going to do?

How is he going to get to work without the mom there?

We are a people who were formed under life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Born to be governed by people who were so vicious.

Thank you for your time.

They can't even let us know who.

Thank you.

I want to thank my colleagues, Councilmember Ortiz, Kame, Cohen, and Campos for their memo and bringing this important item before us.

I also want to thank the members of the public who took the opportunity to come down here and sit through that prior discussion so that you could express your point of view and your uh your perspective right now.

It's really important.

This is a very important issue, and I look forward to supporting the item when the motion is made.

With that, I will turn to my council colleagues, Councilmember Ortiz.

Thank you so much, Vice Mayor, for your kind words.

Um, colleagues, today we have an opportunity to take an important step to strengthen transparency, accountability, and trust between our community and federal law enforcement.

The ordinance before us is straightforward but powerful.

It aims to require federal immigration and custom enforcement agents operating in San Jose to not conceal their identities.

By doing this, we put ourselves on record as standing with other agencies and the state of California that are calling for federal agents to display visible identification and the prohibition of the use of face coverings unless necessary.

These protections are not just about procedure, they are about dignity, fairness, and public trust.

We saw the consequences of not having regulations in place exactly a week ago at Cunexhon, where ICE agents entered without clearly identifying themselves.

Community members, staff, and even students were left shaken and fearful.

They didn't know who these individuals were or whether they had any authority to be there.

That moment of confusion and fear illustrates exactly why this ordinance is necessary.

No one in our shit city should ever be questioned or have questions on whether the person approaching them with a badge or weapon is legitimate.

Across California and the nation, we are witnessing a troubling rise in heavy-handed immigration enforcement, coupled with a Supreme Court decision that opens the door to racial profiling under the guise of immigration enforcement.

This ruling gives federal agents a green light to act with less accountability, and it puts communities like ours at even greater risk.

This isn't just a Latino issue, and it's not just an Eastide issue.

This issue affects all communities and all districts.

We can't ignore the very real human cost.

Take the case of Rafi Shawhet, a 79-year-old U.S.

citizen from Los Angeles.

Just weeks ago, he filed a $50 million claim against the Department of Homeland Security after ICE agents body slammed him during a raid at his car wash, ignored his proof of citizenship, and denied him medical care for over 12 hours.

He was released without charges, but only after suffering injuries so severe, he required hospitalization.

Or Andrea Velez, a young U.S.

citizen detained in June while simply being dropped off at work.

Agents slammed her to the ground without asking for identification, held her for two days, and then dropped the charges.

She and her mother believe she was targeted because of the color of her skin.

These are not isolated mistakes.

These are a pattern of abuse enabled by a lack of transparency and accountability.

San Jose has a responsibility to lead on this issue.

Our residents, regardless of their background, status, or neighborhood, deserve to know that those who enforce the laws are held to the highest standard of transparency, accountability.

And accountability is not optional.

It is the foundation of public safety.

I want to acknowledge my colleagues, Council Members Campos, Kamei and Cohen, as well as Candelas who joined the Brown Act after the authoring of the memo for joining me in this effort.

But really, I just want to mention that there are many council members probably unanimous who'd be interested in partnering on this memo.

Together we are affirming that fear and intimidation have no place in our city, that this city stands firmly on the side of fairness and openness.

With that being said, I'd like to make a motion to approve this memo and send a strong message and a united message.

In San Jose, transparency is a standard our community deserves.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for the motion.

Thank you for your passion around this issue and for bringing it forward.

It's really an important one.

I'm not sure who seconded, but I think I heard Councilmember Collin down there.

Councilmember Candeles.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, I'm gonna start off with the statistic.

Forty-one percent of San Jose residents are foreign born.

Including my mom and dad.

Okay.

Um, you know, I think this is uh one of those actions that we're taking to reflect where our values are as a community.

Um this is a commitment that we're making to our residents.

Um, and and I think it continues to hold true that San Jose is a welcoming city for everybody, and and our ordinances need to reflect that.

Uh, we're showing our neighbors, um, our our our community members, where we as leaders stand with what's going on at the federal level.

Um, we've seen instances of people impersonating ice.

This is this is happening across our nation.

Um, in Philadelphia, a man was arrested for robbing an auto shop with a gun and a fake badge claiming to be ice.

In San Francisco, a man wore a windbreaker with a fake ICE immigration logo on the front and back while eating at a local restaurant.

You know, without clear identifiers, in place for our law enforcement officials, our community members are left in a valuable in our in a vulnerable position.

And you know, this is a common sense action that we can take uh to enhance public safety, and and as leaders, we ask that the community put their trust in our law local law enforcement agencies.

And when they raise concerns about crime in their neighborhoods, we ask them to trust our police department's ability to get to the bottom of whatever crime was committed.

And so we've already seen what happens when that trust is broken.

People stop calling 911, they refuse social services during that time period, and most importantly, they don't engage with our city and our community.

Um, and and during a time where where our families continue to live in fear, we need to do everything in our power to protect our community, not just uh folks who are citizens or or or folks who you know have their immigration papers.

If you if you have your your papers or your your legal ability to be here, but you speak with an accent, you may be targeted.

And so that's what I walk in fear of when my parents leave the house, and all they have is their California ID, not even a real ID, because they may get swept up being at the supermarket, they may get swept anywhere just because they speak with an accident, it doesn't an accent, it doesn't matter.

And so we've seen things like this happen, and this is what I'm afraid of, and I'm hoping that this action today provides a little semblance of hope for our community who's clearly as those public speakers who are here are clearly afraid.

Um, so I appreciate my colleagues uh listening to to my uh my points today, but this is something that that's really really important to me, and and something that I think that we should uh unanimously approve.

But anyways, thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Candelas.

Councilmember Collins.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, public safety only works when everyone trusts those who enforce it.

It doesn't work when people are afraid, it doesn't work when there's an environment of intimidation.

It works when people feel safe, valued, and supported.

Public safety is about protection that is applied uniformly for every member of our community.

We are a city that is welcoming for all.

We've uh joined many coalitions about being a welcoming city, making sure that all of our residents feel like they're part of our community.

We are a city where 41% of our residents are foreign-born, and therefore we can't afford to have people be afraid to interact with those tasked with keeping our community safe.

And the Supreme Court seems to be allowing racial profiling by enforcing by those enforcing immigration policies, further causing fear amongst our community.

And by the way, this isn't just about undocumented immigrants or even immigrants in general.

This is about all of us.

Just today, the administration in Washington is releasing a list of those who they it's views as enemies.

And I'm I actually just want to point out a few of the things on the list.

People who can be identified as following indicia of violence, mean anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for overthrowing the government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, by their definition, extremism on gender, hostility toward those who hold traditional American values.

I can see anybody who participates in a protest in a city being deemed as an enemy by this government.

So what we're doing today is not about protecting even one class of people or one type of person.

If everyone here isn't afraid, they aren't paying attention.

The federal government's reliance on fear and intimidation betrays the very purpose of public safety, to protect every member of our community.

These common sense measures that are proposed, and I'm thankful for my colleagues who uh along with me brought it forward.

Although I, as I said, as Councilmember Ortiz said, I know that many others would have been very happy to join in on it as well.

Um, these common sense measures to make sure our officers are easily identified and are not masked and are not uh intimidating residents in our community are about restoring trust at a time when too many people feel singled out and unsafe.

I understand many people talk about the supremacy clause, whether or not we can enforce this policy on those who come in from the federal government is beside the point.

This is an expression of our local values and expectations for what perform what public safety um officers and police officers, how they should conduct themselves.

And our police department, to their credit, has made it clear that officers should not be masked when they carry out their duties, it's part of their policy manual, and this will codify that policy into ordinance, which I think is particularly important for us to say we stand behind this value and these behavior, and I want to thank our police department for being um behaving appropriately with our residents.

So I'm very um happy to vote support this measure today and hope that it will make some difference in the way our community feels about our um the way that they're all being treated, and um, and we'll move forward from there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Cohen.

I agree with your sentiments and your uh raising the alarm.

Councilmember Kamei.

I'll be brief because a lot has been said from my colleagues, and I agree with it all.

Um I um I will say this is about transparency and accountability, and I know Ms.

Rael uh had to leave, but I wanted to say how I stand shoulder to shoulder with our immigrant community and and thank all of those who spoke today and uh you know just want to let the community know, hombro a hombro con nuestra comunidad imigrante.

It is very, very important.

You know, many of our parents are immigrants, and my father uh was an immigrant, and so um I know how um this is so impactful to our community.

So with that, I will support the motion.

Thank you.

Seeing no other hand, uh Councilmember Duan, you have the last word.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

We cannot erode the public trust, and we cannot afford the mass misconduct, show any public servants from accountability, or community expect transparency, trust within a law enforcement, policies and practice must reflect that expectation, because trust is built through openness, it built through the action, and not opaque city, and I urge our council to vote to support this measure, and I will be supporting it.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Seeing no other hands raised, Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously with Mayhem absent.

Great, thank you.

Moving on to item 8.1, actions related to the acquisition of 447 South Elmaden Boulevard will be heard concurrently with joint financing authority item one, issuance of City of San Jose Financing Authority Commercial Paper.

But we're going to vote on these separately.

I assume we have a presentation on these.

I need to vote.

Oh, okay.

I think it needs to go.

I think before we need to do it for financing the school posts.

Yeah.

We do indeed have a presentation to do queue up.

Good evening, council members.

Jennifer Baker, Director of Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, joined today by Maria Oberg, Director of Finance, and OEDCA team member Kevin Ice, Director of Real Estate, and Cameron Day, Senior Deputy City Attorney.

I'm happy to share with you a broad overview of the opportunity detailed in your packet, after which Kevin will share more on the property, diligence, and terms, and then Maria will explain the financing vehicles that would be used to facilitate the purchase.

We will invite the opportunity for your feedback and to provide clarifications.

Then there is a bit of sequencing between council and the financing authority roles to find us back in back to in-session council vote on the acquisition.

All right, about the project.

This afternoon we present an exceptionally strong opportunity for the city council to support the acquisition of a price competitive, revenue-producing, geographically strategic property, relatively small in size, but by virtue of its location, this property presents an opportunity for the city to own and control an asset that is already producing revenue for us.

A property that checks the box for all key tenants of real estate portfolio management.

The purchase represents minimal to no risk.

If operationalized otherwise, the asset could create expanded returns, and all the while the property creates complementarity and grows our capacities across properties already in our portfolio.

The 477 South Almaden property has a downtown general plan designation as an entitled and is entitled for 1.4 million square foot office development.

This property is strategically located between the convention center to the east and Discovery Meadow and the Children's Discovery Museum property to the west.

If you approve today's staff recommendations, the city's purchase would link the two city holdings and form a 32 contiguous acre city holding downtown, which provides significant flexibility for the city's future uses in this area.

The property is currently in use as the children's discovery museum parking lot managed by the Department of Transportation.

And the property has been leased by the city since 2001.

So to run through a few key terms of the proposed acquisition.

For reference, Boston Properties, now known as BXP, their acquisition price was $35 million in the year 2000.

The property was listed on the market for sale by BXP, and there were five bidders total, including with a local developer that made a competitive uh bid to purchase.

All due diligence is complete, including title review and environmental services performed phase two investigations and cleared the site.

Staffer prepared to close the transaction quickly upon council authorization.

The city will assume the disposition and development agreement or DDA held by the successor agency to the redevelopment agency.

Jennifer McGuire has the authority to sign as executive officer of SARA, or successor agency to the redevelopment agency to consent to the assignment of the DDA to the city.

So why are staff excited about the opportunity to acquire this property?

First location, as Jen mentioned.

Across the street from the convention center, it connects with that, it connects that holding with the city held assets on the west side of Guadalupe to create that 32-acre contiguous block in a prime downtown location.

Securing this property will provide greater flexibility for the city as we consider a range of possibilities, including potential convention center expansion or other sports and entertainment district uses, such as a flagship hotel, retail, restaurants, arts and cultural venues, or other gathering spaces.

This flexibility will be important as the city is now beginning sports and entertainment district planning with our partners.

And we heard about our goals related to those efforts earlier today.

The flexibility provided by ownership of this property could also benefit the convention center expansion during construction through allowing for the possibility of phasing aspects of construction, more efficient layouts of large column-free spaces, or facilitating more efficient parking or loading facilities.

But the key message is that this real estate market is an excellent time to act for an entity like the city with a long-term planning horizon.

The property sold for $35 million 25 years ago.

That equates to $225 per square foot.

Just five years ago, before COVID, entitled property downtown would transact for $125 per foot of entitled office space.

For this property, entitled for 1.4 million square feet of office, that equates to roughly 175 million dollars, or 1,128 per square foot.

So the COVID pandemic has depressed the downtown office market and prices have yet to rebound.

With our proposed acquisition price of $87 per square foot, this current real estate market has presented an excellent opportunity for the city to strategically add to its downtown property holdings.

After acquisition, this property would remain a parking lot for an end-term period.

This parking lot is profitable to operate and serves as the best location to park for the children's discovery museum.

Should the property be sold to a different entity, the city is only leasing the property until 2027.

And with that, I'll pass it on to Maria to go through the city's process to pay for the property.

Thank you, Kevin.

Good evening, Maria Oberg, Director of Finance.

So now comes the fun part.

How do we finance this?

As the city and financing authority are aware, we have a commercial paper program that was established back in 2004.

We can issue up to $175 million of commercial paper notes, also known as CP notes.

They are short-term or enter and borrowing at variable interest rates.

They're secured by lease payments, pledged assets, and a letter of credit.

So the financing of this particular acquisition would involve issuance of taxable CP notes for up to $13.5 million.

The notes principal will be amortized over seven years.

The source of repayment will be the parking and the convention center facility district's funds.

And of course, there are fees on the purchase.

They add up to 0.485%.

Here is the current utilization of the financing authorities CP program.

I'm not going to go through it all, but basically we have about $26 million currently outstanding.

We would add the $13.5 million to that.

That would bring us to $39 million or so outstanding.

So here comes the complicated part.

So there are two sets of recommendations, one for the financing authority and one for the city council.

So for the financing authority agenda item one, we recommend that the financing authority conduct a public hearing in accordance with section 6586.5 of the California Government Code, and that you adopt a resolution to approve and authorize the issuance of lease revenue commercial paper notes in an amount not to exceed $13.5 million to finance the purchase of the property.

It's important to note that under both the debt management policy and the San Jose Municipal Code, Section 4.34.200, approval of the issuance of these CP notes requires a two-thirds vote by the council, and in this case the financing authorities.

So that's eight votes.

The second set, which is for the council agenda, item 8.1.

These recommendations are that council adopt a resolution for resolution authorizing the city manager or her designee to negotiate and execute a purchase and sales agreement for the purchase of the property, and that you adopt the 2025 26 appropriation ordinance amendments in the Convention Standard District Revenue Fund and the General Purpose Parking Fund.

And with that, our presentation is done.

Thank you.

So just to be clear, council is going to uh approve or discuss two motions, but first we will adjourn as a city council and convene as the joint San Jose Financing Authority.

I have a script that I am to read.

The City of San Jose is hearing and considering information and public testimony concerning a possible financing by the City of San Jose Financing Authority and the City of the City of the purchase of real property located at 447 South Almaden Boulevard, San Jose, California, through the issuance of lease revenue commercial paper by notes by the authority.

This hearing is the opportunity for all interested persons to speak and submit written comments about the proposal to issue lease revenue commercial paper to finance the acquisition of real property.

Would anyone like to submit any written comments?

Would anyone like to speak at this time?

I have no cards for this item.

Okay.

Oh Brian coming up.

I did since we're doing this, 13.5 million for four acres.

At one time it was over a hundred million.

For us that don't have houses, it's why it's important to build.

Because none of I couldn't afford that in 500 lifetimes.

And so I just thought it was a good point to point that out.

I think this is a good purchase, though.

Back to council.

Thank you.

We will now close the hearing and vote on discuss and vote on item one of the financing authority.

Do we have council member Tordias?

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Reflecting on, you know, two recent lessons from our trip to Atlanta with the chamber last week.

I think one is just the power of sports entertainment convention oriented districts to really drive significant economic impact for the city, and two, the significant power that comes from having significant land holdings that give you the leverage to then you know guide the development of these districts.

So I think this is a really rare opportunity for the city to add to its landholdings in a significant way in a very strategic area at a great price.

Uh this will obviously give us a staff set the opportunity to guide the future expansion and development of the convention center.

And I would move to adopt these staff recommendation.

Thank you.

To be clear, that is the financing piece under item one of the San Jose Financing Authority.

Any further discussion?

Councilmember Kamei.

Thank you so much.

You know, I remember when this piece of property, the water district was interested because it's right on the Guadalupe, and there was just no way that that piece of property was ever going to be sold.

So I'm really uh pleased to see that you know it was up, and we're able to do this at a very reasonable price.

So thank you so much for your work.

Great.

Seeing no further hands, let's vote on item one of the finance authority.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay.

That's step one.

We will now adjourn the meeting, the joint meeting, and reconvene as the city council to act on item 8.1.

Is there a motion or discussion on 8.1?

Which is the actual acquisition.

The other was put the money in place.

Now we're motion to approve.

Seeing no hands, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you.

You should all report to the mayor that I can follow the script pretty easily, although it's very complicated.

Moving on to item 8.2.

Actions related to loan commitment and land purchase of the gateway tower.

I understand we have a presentation on this.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Eric Sullivan, Director of Housing, and with me today is Bonusan, Deputy Director.

And so we'll go through a brief presentation regarding the gateway tower.

And I want to know Chris Neal and his team are represented here in the audience.

And I'll go through a few slides here, just providing some context, and then Bonnie Assan will go through the details of the financial transaction and then we'll summarize at the end.

So first and foremost, so this deals 100% workforce housing development within downtown.

There's a significant city contribution to this as well as contributions from the county and the housing authority in order to advance this objective forward.

You can see here on the slide just a listing of the total public subsidies on a per unit basis as well as a total summary of the subsidies going into the project in order to advance what is just an expensive bill type within downtown showing a total cost of development on a per unit basis of just shy of about a 900,000 dollars.

So this project is located in downtown as mentioned in the SOFA district.

It's near some of our other complementary developments.

Pacific Motor Inn was just rehabbed and converted into interim housing, and it's currently operating, so this would complement some of the work there, but targeting a different population.

As the goal for this site is workforce at an AMI range of 40 up to 80%, with a goal of providing some immediate downtown available uh housing units for all the workers within the downtown area, and it complements some of the work that's being done in the convention center and the prior item just brought before council.

And so now this just shows a great picture.

This tower and its work uh that it will bring to downtown will certainly add to the value and the appeal of downtown, as well as bringing affordable housing within the district and adding additional housing units to our overall goal of getting to abundant housing stock.

But it certainly is a significant public investment to advance the initiative forward.

So, but you will now go through some of the financial details.

Thank you, Eric.

Oops.

Okay, got it.

So we can see the variety of uh funding sources here on this slide, mix of public and private funding, as is the usual multiple funding sources that affordable housing construction needs.

The bank uh senior loan and the investors equity represent about sixty-four percent of the total financing for this development, and thirty-four percent remaining funding will come from public sources that includes uh state, county, and the city's commitment that we're presenting to you today.

The approximate per unit gap as Eric mentioned uh uh from the city will be 175,000 per unit.

The uh construction financing closing for this will be around February.

Uh, this project was allocated uh through Calicha Face uh tax credit allocation back in August, and the construction is expected to start around March of 2026, and will be completed in about 24 months.

This is a part of the um unit mix.

You can see that it's uh there's workforce housing for extremely low income, and the development offers a balanced mix of uh affordable workforce housing across all income levels for individuals and families, ranging from extremely low income to moderate income.

And uh you can see the income ranges here from 42,000 to 60,000 and rents between a thousand to fifteen hundred sixty-five of the homes will be supported by project-based voucher rental subsidies, which help provide a much more uh stable income stream to support operating expenses and debt while tenants are paying no more than 30% of their income.

This is the remaining units.

Uh it's showing a from you know low income to moderate income range here and as well as the type of bedrooms, and we can see the um the maximum income and rent limits here.

Um so by offering a diverse unit mixed disability serves a broad spectrum of residents and strengthens the local housing market while supporting families and working households.

Eric, so thank you.

So overall, this required in order to move this project forward, substantial collaborations both with the county and the housing authority as well as working with the developer to advance this work.

As I mentioned, the total cost of development just speaks to the high challenge we have in building these types of build developments within the downtown area.

And so, as we look at how do we further advance our goals around redeveloping and building out more downtown, we have to look at ways in which we either continue to expand public subsidies and all its forms and incentives or alternatives as these developments are just challenging to bring forward.

And that leads us to sort of how do we continue to align as discussed in the focus areas discussion earlier today, aligning our work around land use and financial capital in order to have more synchronization between the two so we could advance our goals around abundant housing stock.

With that, that is the completion of the presentation, and we're ready to answer your questions.

Wonderful.

Thank you for the presentation and excited to see affordable housing come into downtown.

Uh I'm happy to support the memo that's coming forward too.

I love the idea of the artist uh set aside.

Before we go to the council for comments, uh, do we have any public comments?

Chris Neal.

Does Chris get five as the applicant?

Chris, you're the applicant, so you get five minutes, but don't feel you have to stretch it if you have five minutes.

Good evening.

I will try not to use the five minutes.

Um, so excited to be here.

We've worked on this project for probably over 10, 20 years if you ask my father.

Um my name is Chris Sneal.

I'm president of the core companies.

Uh Core has been a San Jose-based developer and general contractor for over 40 years, and our office has always been located in downtown San Jose.

We predate Light Rail SAP Center and Fairmont Hilton Hotel.

Um we are very committed to the City of San Jose and its downtown to have the greatest potential it possibly could be.

In San Jose alone, we have developed and built over 4,000 homes for San Jose's families, workforce, and residents, and with over 3,000 of these homes being deed restricted affordable housing.

Uh, we could not have done this without the great partnership of the city of San Jose over the last 40 years.

Um, and Gateway Tower is the next great example of what this partnership could do.

Um, in addition to the support and commitment from the city, I would be remiss in also mentioning what Eric mentioned is the uh uh the contribution of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority and their project-based vouchers and the county of Santa Clara and their early commitment.

I have a vivid memory they took us to their board for their early commitment at a Board of Supervisor meeting in March of 2020, and we all remember what was going on at that time.

So it was a great accomplishment, but that also contributed to the delay.

We are also working with some of the local arts groups.

We have a commercial component, and we would like to see one of the local arts groups occupy that space in our years in downtown the sofa.

What we've realized is arts groups who have a commitment to their own headquarters and locations really helps them thrive.

So we're talking to several local partners to be uh the tenants in the property for no rent.

Um, and we are excited about the memo that was mentioned to have a preference for artists.

Uh we have a project just south of downtown called Art Arc, which was designed for a target to artists.

So we would we love the idea of continuing that in this project.

I would especially like to thank Eric Banu and the entire housing department team for getting us here today.

Affordable housing is definitely a team sport, and we couldn't do it without you guys, so I really appreciate it.

And I ask you to vote in support of the items presented, and we are here for any questions.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for bringing this project forward to us.

Do we have any more public comments or is that it?

That was all.

Okay, then turning to council, Councilmember Tordillos.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

And I want to start by just thanking both the core companies and city staff for the many years of hard work to get this project to this point.

I've personally been following this project for over a decade.

And I'm glad to see, and I really want to commend the core companies for sticking with this project over the years and very excited that we are just on the cusp of a groundbreaking early next year.

This is obviously a very special project for our downtown.

And over the years, I'm glad to see that through all of the redesigns and reimaginings, it's kept that architectural flair, as you saw in the renderings.

And I think that once this project is built, it's really gonna add to the character of this southern gateway to our downtown.

It's also unique, as you heard, as the only purpose-built affordable housing high rise in our downtown, and excited that we will soon have 220 new workforce housing units uh contributing to our downtown core.

But it's also special because of where it's located.

In the heart of the Sofa District, uh, our cultural district for downtown, nestled between our convention center and all of the museums, galleries, theaters, and eateries of First Street.

We all know that arts and culture are critical to the health of our city.

I'm sure we've all heard the stat that every year nonprofit arts and cultural organizations contribute over 300 million dollars to our local economy.

Uh, and research has shown that uh access to the arts improves outcomes for our young people, uh, and also helps to build a more civically engaged society.

And nowhere is the power of the arts on clearer display than in Sofa, where on any given day you might catch folks catching a show at the Ritz or visiting one of our local museums, uh seeing a play at the San Jose stage, or patronizing the opera uh at our historic California theater.

Uh San Jose has rightfully become uh you know the center of arts and culture for all of Silicon Valley.

But our local arts community and our local creative economy cannot succeed without artists.

And as housing costs have continued to rise, our local artists are increasingly under pressure and at risk of being priced out of our city.

With Gateway Tower, we have a unique opportunity here.

Our memo would direct the city manager to work with the project developer to create a tenant preference policy for 10% of the LITEC funded affordable units to give local artists priority during the application process.

With this application, we can uh work to support our local creative economy and help to ensure that our local artists are able to live, collaborate, and create in the same community where their art uh comes to life every day.

I want to start by just thanking my co-authors on this memo, Mayor Mahan, council member of Cohen for supporting this work, as well as Eric Sullivan from the housing department for helping us navigate some of the technical intricacies of this memo.

And with that, I would like to move our memo, which accepts the staff recommendation and directs the city manager to establish the aforementioned uh tenant preference system.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second.

Councilmember Duan.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

The Gateway Tower project represented critical investment in affordable housing.

It's amazing to have 218 new units in a central location.

This kind of development is exactly what we need.

More of dense, accessible, and community serving.

San Jose, Sofa District is a unique cultural asset.

Artists who contribute to the vibrancy and identity of our city should be able to live here, not be pushed out by rising housing costs.

Just as artists are an essential to our cultural ecosystem, other frontline workers like teachers, nurses, first responders, city workers, and child care provider are essential to our daily lives.

They too are being priced out of the communities they serve.

I'm more than happy to support this artist's preference as a model, while also exploring similar priority system that can help retain the broader essential workforce in the city of San Jose.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Seeing no further hands, let's vote.

Motion passes.

I hold on.

Casey?

Is that an aye?

Okay, motion passes unanimously.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 10.2, which is early consideration of a privately initiated general plan amendment for the property located at Emory Street and Alameda.

The Alameda is do we have a staff?

We do have a staff presentation.

I see you in the box.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening.

Council members.

Ruth Gueto, Principal Planner, here to present on early consideration for file number GP 25-002.

The general plan policy IP 3.11 provides an applicant of a privately initiated general plan amendment to request early consideration of their project.

The process allows the city council to decide whether or not to continue processing the amendment before the full review of the application is completed.

As part of the application filing for this project, the applicant has requested this early consideration hearing.99 gross acre site, a corner lot with frontage on both the Alameda and Emory Street.

It's currently vacant and is adjacent to multiple uses of fraternity hall use to the north, religious assembly use to the south, and offices and single-family residences to the east and to the west.

The area is characterized as a low-density neighborhood with mixed-use residential and commercial uses.

The subject site is not located in a designated growth area.

The closest growth area is approximately 2200 feet to the north, the Alameda West Urban Village.

The subject site also fronts the Alameda Right of Way, which is a designated city landmark.

The existing general plan land use designation of the site is neighborhood community commercial, which supports a very broad range of commercial activities such as neighborhood serving retail uses and office.

The proposed general plan land use designation is mixed use neighborhood, which can accommodate a density of up to 30 dwelling units per acre.

However, it does not have a minimum density.

The mixed-use neighborhood designation is typically applied to areas intended for development primarily with either townhomes or single lot family residences and should be used to establish new neighborhoods.

Although mixed use is allowed in this designation, it does not have a minimum requirement for commercial uses.

So a wholly residential project can move forward.

The proposed general plan amendment is inconsistent with the general plan in two main areas.

First is focused growth.

The focus growth major strategy directs new growth in specifically identified growth areas and strictly limits new residential development outside of these areas in order to preserve the quality of the established neighborhoods.

Land use policy 2.3 and 9.17 also restrict development outside of growth areas and limit residential development to the existing land use designation.

Secondly, this proposed amendment is inconsistent with economic development related policies.

Major Strategy 4 intends to promote and develop San Jose as an innovation and regional employment center by preserving existing employment lands and utilizing regional transit systems to support the city's fiscal health.

Redevelopment of the site under the current designation could allow for a commercial development of up to approximately 150,000 square feet, the maximum FAR for the site.

The proposed MUN designation does not require commercial uses.

Thus, the proposed general plan amendment would convert employment land to predominantly, excuse me, residential land with optional commercial.

The proposed amendment is consistent with housing social equity and diversity goal H-1, which seeks to provide housing throughout the city in a range of residential densities to meet the city's share of regional housing needs.

The proposed amendment could allow up to 30 units to be built above what is currently allowed.

However, the city's housing element has identified other sites to meet the city's allocation through focus growth, including the site, should a wholly 100% residential project be proposed.

While no rezoning or development permit application was submitted with this general plan amendment, we do have a conceptual site plan that was shared with us, and it currently shows 18 townhomes, which would put the project at a density of 18 dwelling units per acre.

If the project is deemed to continue processing, a plan development rezoning conforming to the new general plan designation and a PD permit application would be required to be submitted.

A plan development rezoning would be required, would be required to be able to preserve the historic character of the area.

The standards of the zoning district would be determined after historic review is completed.

Staff conducted preliminary analysis of state housing laws that may facilitate housing development on the site without the need for a general plan amendment.

Based on recent state legislation and the current zoning, which primarily only allows commercial uses.

The site likely qualifies for a 100% affordable multifamily housing project under AB 2011, which allows for streamlined ministerial process with no sequel review.

A market rate or residential mixed use project could be also allowed under SB6, provided that all the development standards and prevailing wage requirements are met.

Staff also provided analysis on an alternative general plan designation that could be supported under current general plan policies.

Mixed use commercial land use would allow maximum density of 50 dwelling units per acre and would require commercial on uh commercial space within the project, which the minimum requirement would be 0.5 and would translate to approximately 22,000 square feet.

Staff did suggest this for the project site, however, the applicant explained they face challenges trying to achieve that FAR and the proposed density of 18 dwelling units per acre is the most feasible option for them at the time.

As part of the consideration, staff recommends looking at the site and surrounding area as part of the general plan four-year review.

The four-year review will provide an opportunity to evaluate policies and goals related to housing, and staff will conduct a comprehensive analysis to identify areas outside of current growth areas to accommodate more residential growth.

The surrounding area of the subject site is one that would be examined comprehensively to possibly allow a change in land use designations.

Staff would also review and consider amendments to existing policies that currently do not support growth outside of identified growth areas.

This slide shows the planning commission, how the planning commission voted, and they recommended that city council deny staff's recommendation and allow for the continued processing of the general plan amendment request.

This slide shows staff's recommendation, which is to deny the request to amend the land use transportation diagram from neighborhood community commercial to mixed use neighborhood and direct staff instead to evaluate the subject site in the context of the general plan four year review.

And this last slide shows both options, approving staff recommendation or denying staff recommendation.

And with that, I believe the applicant is here.

Thank you.

Eric, you're representing the applicant.

He has five minutes.

Thank you.

Great.

Good evening, Vice Mayor Foley, members of the council.

My name is Eric Schaenauer, and I represent Dan Mount Sear, the applicant for this project.

The per year earlier focus discussion, the best solution for the lack of housing supply is to approve more housing.

That's that's the solution to the problem.

So tonight we hope you will support the unanimous planning commission recommendation and the memo by Councilmember Mulcahy, Councilmember Campos, and Mayor Mahan to allow our application to proceed forward.

The site, which is on the screen, the brown grass that you see at the corner of Emory in the Alameda, has been vacant for 62 years.

The only use that's been on the site is residential.

There were two houses, they were demolished, and then it has sat vacant as a nuisance with weeds, litter, homeless encampments, and periodic Bellerman boys drinking beer in the back corner.

This is not advancing.

I guess that's the mystery spot.

So, an important thing to know is that the context at this corner is very residential in character and also historic.

So all of these structures that you see are adjacent or within a parcel away from our site.

Although some of them facing the Alameda do have businesses in them, they were built as residences and appear to be residences.

They also are very historic.

Behind our fence is residential courthomes, which you can see here.

And our proposal, as you can see, three-story buildings, the scale of the buildings, work with the historic structures next door as well as the surrounding neighborhood.

So the scale works, and the design that we are committing to, we're committing to a vintage architectural style to blend into the eclectic historic mix of structures along the Alameda and within the neighborhood.

We did want to point out that the whole notion that we're not in a growth area is beyond silly, and hopefully the general plan update will solve this problem.

Our site, which is the black dot on the screen, is within five blocks of three growth areas.

The Alameda West Urban Village, the Alameda East Urban Village, and the downtown greater downtown boundary area.

How absurd is it to think that housing on this block is somehow less important than housing within those boundary areas.

The clock's not working, so I don't know how much time I have.

I'm trying to go as fast as I can.

So, and also the notion that somehow affordable housing will be built.

This particular site does not meet any of the screening criteria for affordable housing tax credits and funding.

It is not in a qualified census track.

It is not in a difficult to development area designated by HUD, and it is not in a high resource area designated by the state of California.

With the oversubscribed programs for funding affordable housing, you need to meet all three of these criteria, or it's almost impossible to get funding for affordable housing.

So to summarize, the site has been vacant for 60 years and is a nuisance to the neighborhood.

The market has proven over six decades that there is no interest for commercial development at this particular site.

The site has a clear residential context, and the last use on this site was in fact housing with two housing units on the property.

The proposal is compatible with the adjacent and nearby historic structures.

The site does not meet any criteria for affordable housing tax credits and funding.

New housing will bring customers to the urban villages and downtown.

And overall, it's a reasonable and common sense proposal to provide new for-sale housing in our city center and in the neighborhood.

So with that, we hope you will approve moving forward with the processing of our application, and myself and Dan are available for any questions that you might have.

Thank you.

Do we have any other public comments?

Yes, I have a few cards.

Jeff Bedola, come on down.

Karen Lynn, Catherine Mathewson, Sandra Weber.

I'm going to keep reading names because I think some of these people may have left.

Brian Franzen, Edward Saum, Andrew Crockett, Stephanie Ligsay, and Brian Darby.

So I've called all cards for this item.

If you are still here and you submitted a card for 10.2, please come on down.

Thank you.

You know, I I think they could get a better housing development that they would be happier with on that very side.

Boy, there's been great content here today.

I'm a college park resident.

I have uh doubts about the uh the wisdom of the proposals I've heard in our neighborhood recently.

There is a deep backdrop for these projects, which uh with implications for me personally, um, and for the city as a whole, I believe.

The latter may be missed on first look.

I see a need to step back and look again at San Jose's urban strategy with the prompting of these two specific proposals.

These projects have regional implications.

What is best for all of San Jose is to pause to consider what is possible so that we can prudently determine the highest and best use of the property lots before us for consideration.

We can see I see a vision for a stronger new San Jose.

And I'd like this opportunity here to help us make of San Jose a beacon for the future.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you, next speaker.

All right, Vice Mayor Foley, City Council City Staff.

Good evening.

My name is Edward Soum.

I've spoken before this body many times as the planning and land use director for the Shastahanchet Park Neighborhood Association, the former chair for six years of the city's Historic Landmarks Commission, and the current secretary of the Alameda Business Association.

While my comments today are my own, they are directly informed by this 30 years of cumulative volunteer work in and around the area being discussed.

Empty lots encourage illegal dumping and graffiti, two things that this lot suffers from.

Commercial uses along the Alameda have been permissible for decades.

The current commercial vacancy rate in San Jose continues to show a historically low demand for commercial space.

New residential developments directly support existing commercial and retail corridors, especially local restaurants and small businesses.

These are also the lifeblood of the newly approved CBI for the Alameda Business District.

Much of the nearby commercial space along the Alameda is within converted estate homes built in the early 20th century.

The existing physical context is primarily one of a residential scale.

The staggered massing and detailing of the proposed development directly address its surroundings.

The project's request to maintain the current sidewalk width is in keeping with the historic context.

To expand the sidewalk width in front of this project, but reduce the number of residential units on the parcel.

The neighboring homes turn commercial spaces have stood for decades and are unlikely to be redeveloped in our lifetimes.

To widen the sidewalk in front of this parcel would be to create a jarring one parcel wide change in the current sidewalk with little or no likelihood of it being extended.

There are no fewer than eight historic resources within 200 feet of the site.

The proposed use that offers the best compatibility with this historic fabric is residential, not commercial.

The developer has engaged the surrounding property owners, which should be a standard requirement for any proposal.

Changes in state and local laws have minimized and devalued community input.

This developer still believes in its inherent value.

I strongly support the memo from the mayor, Councilmember Campbells and Councilmember Mokekee, and hope that you do the same.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello.

And I am a K 12 graduate of the Rose Garden Schools with an undergraduate degree and uh a master's from UC Berkeley in environmental planning.

I helped Singapore create the garden city of Asia, and have had my secret gardens company since 1980.

I am here to request that you not approve the recent new housing project on the Alameda in Emery.

My nearby historic neighborhood has not been informed about the housing project.

Last week I heard the um architects speak about this pro heart this project at Bell Eirman High School.

The project's modern design uh lack of uh historical open space setback, which is on all the buildings on the street.

It's no interest in saving its mature trees, and no interest in foundation plants and and the historical buildings setbacks that we've got on Alameda.

Uh it makes it clear that the project cares little about the history of Alameda.

Um, the project takes um all the um land and is too short and should be the buildings are too short and should be taller with more green around them.

Um if you approve the project, it will be an eyesore for for over our 1890s oldest San Jose Street.

Please protect the Alameda and its historical developments from the harsh building, modern building design, and reject it.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Thank you.

Hello again.

Um, I wasn't going to speak on this, but I was listening to the conversation with two of the developers.

Uh I was here before when we were talking about where I lived.

I actually had a house, and um took care of my sister and my mom and my nephew there.

And so I had a lot of memory, and now there's a bunch of big tall apartments sitting on it.

I because of lease issues, no hard feelings.

I understood.

I as long as I was mad and angry, but the people who own the property had a right to develop it.

That's a hill I was willing to die on, and I paid a heavy price for that.

Um we've got good money to finance, and it's been interesting living some other places.

But we have to build more housing.

I don't want to see neighborhoods change.

I love that part of town.

I I, but it's a blank lot, and it hasn't been filled for 60 years.

That sort of hammers that out.

But what other people are sharing is true, and I'm sure you can talk with people about it and work it out, but we have to build, or a lot of us aren't going to be able to stay.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello, my name is Stephanie Ligsay, and I'm the president of College Park Neighborhood Association, the neighborhood where this is being built.

I do want to clarify, I think that my fellow neighbor might have been talking about the renderings for the McKendry site.

It is very modern looking, and I will talk about that one at the next opportunity.

I wanted to speak on behalf of the many neighbors who weren't able to be here today.

Last Monday we had 40 plus neighbors attend our general neighborhood meeting where Dan Mount Sierra spoke at length about the potential development of the Emory and Alameda site.

I, along with College Park neighborhood residents, support this project, and that is why we are urging you to vote in favor of the moving project, the project moving forward today.

The site has been vacant for approximately 60 years, and we are concerned about dumping, camping, substance use, and other undesirable activities that could be attracted with the recent cleanup of Columbus Park.

As Eric mentioned in his presentation, the area around the site is primarily residential with nearby structures currently being used as offices that were originally built as homes.

The Alameda was designated as a historic landmark in 1984, and there are eight historic structures within 200 feet of the site.

The proposed use offers the best complement of the historic context with regards to architecture and scale.

This historic context is a large part of why we live there.

It is unique and it needs preserving.

College Park consists of Spanish Revival, Craftsman, Victorian, Queen Anne, Tudor, Bungalows, and even Colonial.

The elective eclectic style is indicative of College Park and surrounding neighborhoods where architects were commissioned by families to be unique masterpieces.

Our neighborhood is pro-housing, and we want housing that complements the current character and historic significance of the neighborhood.

Please approve this proposal for the site.

Thank you.

Thank you back to Council.

Thank you for thank you for all of your comments.

Let's move to the council member who represents this area.

Councilmember Wolkey.

So look, I mean, the reality is the site's been vacant for 62 years.

It has survived as a vacant site through every general plan the city's ever done.

The Pistana family owns the site since 1976.

They are real estate people, and yet over the decades, there have been all kinds of proposals that have come forward.

I think I probably even tried to buy the site at one point from commercial and office to mixed use and assisted living, but nothing's moved forward, mostly due to tough market and financial realities and a neighborhood fit.

I think we've heard some of that today, where the neighborhood is saying yes.

Meanwhile, this lot adds to blight and community frustration, one that we hear about pretty regularly in district six office.

Current general plan designation is not working to solve this vacancy.

While I value protecting our general plan, in this case, we're seeing real harm.

This site just isn't viable as it stands, and keeping things unchanged only means more stagnation when what our community needs is housing and revitalization.

In August, as we've heard, the planning commission unanimously recommended continuing this project.

There was overwhelming community support at that meeting as well.

In my time on the council, I haven't seen this kind of alignment from residents and organizations for a district six land use item.

People want housing here and quality investment for their neighborhood.

So when I ran for office, I told the community I would do two things when a developer brought me a project, and you have all heard me say this.

First thing is have you talked to the neighbors?

And the second is don't bring me a pretty picture that you cannot build.

This applicant has taken the time to build trust and do genuine engagement.

I have heard from many of the people that this applicant has talked to, and I urge every applicant to follow this example.

And while architectural specifics, you saw a little bit of it today, they aren't fully decided yet.

The developer has committed to honor the historical context of the Alameda.

It's important to recognize the reality.

The site is listed for 95 low-income units as part of our housing element.

But building that is financially out of reach.

It's not eligible for the tax credits needed to make the project work.

Insisting on density that can't pencil out risks leaving this lot vacant for years to come.

Rejecting practical lower density solutions like town homes in this case would be a missed opportunity.

Town homes are achievable in demand and attainable for families and first-time home buyers.

Supporting them here does not mean we're moving away from higher density housing elsewhere.

It's about being realistic about what's feasible on this site right now.

Zooming out a little bit, just recently we all approved the community benefit improvement district for the Alameda starting next year.

We will have property owners who have essentially agreed to self-assess, they'll raise about 330,000 annually to improve this corridor.

So adding residents here within walking distance brings more support to our local businesses and creates more vibrancy in the Alameda core.

Finally, if we're serious about solving our housing crisis, we have to tackle the hurdles that keep good projects from breaking ground.

We talked a little bit about this in our memo, and I want to thank the mayor and council member compost for uh signing on and uh and working with us on that.

But we have to to be proactive with staff collaboration on issues like park strip and sidewalk widths and overall setback requirements so projects like this can succeed.

So, with that, I'll move the memo from Mayor Mayhem, Councilmember Campos, and myself in support of stack recommendation B or two, I think it's B, to allow this general plan amendment application to continue processing.

Great, happy to see the project go forward, and I should note that this is just for early consideration to allow it to go into the next step.

So I see no further hands, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, last order of last item on our order of business is item 10.3.

We have a presentation as well.

Very similar.

Okay.

So we are here on early consideration hearing for general plan amendment file number GP 25-005, similar to the item we just heard.

However, in this case, the applicant did not request early consideration.

This policy does give staff the ability to bring forward a general plan amendment that we feel is uh fundamentally inconsistent with the general plan, and that's why we're here today.

The subject site for the general plan amendment is a 0.46 gross acre site compromised of two parcels located at 1038 and 1030 McKendry Street in Council District 6th.

The site contains a parking lot that is connected to additional parking through the rear of the site.

It is surrounded by office commercial and church youth to the southwest, office single family and duplex uses to the northwest, single family and duplex uses to the northeast, and a parking lot to the southeast.

The existing general plan land use designation of the southern parcel is neighborhood community commercial.

That this designation is intended for commercial uses, and the existing general plan designation for the northern parcel is residential neighborhood, which is intended for low density residential, up to eight dwelling units per acre, single-family homes typically.

The proposed general plan designation is mixed-use neighborhood, which allows up to 30 dwelling units per acre and commercial uses, but similar to the previous project, there is no minimum requirement for commercial or no minimum density as well.

While a development permit has not been submitted, the site plan that was included with the general plan amendment application provides context for the intended development, and the proposal indicates it would be for the construction of 12 townhomes across these two buildings shown here in the two lots.

So roughly 26 dwelling units per acre.

The proposed amendment is inconsistent with the general plan in two main areas.

The first is our general plan includes a major strategy around innovation regional employment and seeks to preserve and expand employment land because of its economic and fiscal benefits.

Additionally, policy FS-4.4 supports maintaining these sites to provide commercial uses for residents and visitors.

The proposed amendment is inconsistent with because it would convert commercial land to non-commercial uses.

I'm sorry, to non-commercial uses, again, because mixed-use neighborhood does not require minimum with commercial.

Secondly, the general plan includes the focus growth major strategy, which focuses new housing and job growth in designated growth areas.17, which restricts development outside of growth areas and limits residential development to the existing land use designation.

I'm sorry, jump ahead.

The proposed amendment and project would allow up to 12 residential units on the site and could contribute to reaching the city's RENA allocation goals.

However, the city's housing element is already planned to meet this allocation through the focus growth strategy and other affordable housing policies.

Therefore, this project is not required to meet that allocation.

Under the current general plan and use designations, there are several state laws that would allow for residential development above what is allowed by the current land use designations without the need for a general plan amendment.

The northern parcel could potentially use SB9 to allow for two options.

The land designated for single-family homes, it could allow for the development of a single of a duplex.

And these duplexes are also additionally allowed ADUs under state law.

The southern parcel could also potentially use AB 2011 and SB6 to allow for residential development on commercially designated land if all the development standards and prevailing wage requirements are met.

Staff believes this site and surrounding area is one we should consider as part of the four-year review, and we would conduct a comprehensive analysis to identify other areas outside of growth areas that could accommodate more growth.

We would also review amendments to existing policies that currently do not support growth outside of these areas.

The planning commission voted to recommend that the city council deny staff's recommendation and allow for the continued processing of this general plan amendment.

Staff's recommendation is that the council deny the proposed general plan amendment and direct us to continue evaluating this site and surrounding area as part of the general plan for your review.

That's the end of our presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Do we have any public comments?

Yes, Susan and Stephanie.

Come on down.

I'm I'm sorry, I think the applicant is here.

Is the applicant here?

The applicant is here.

The applicant.

Thank you.

The applicant gets five minutes.

My name's Jeff Current, architect with Studio Current, and working with the applicant.

We're excited to present the opportunity.

This is an interesting site.

It's a small infill site, three streets north of the last presentation on Emery, just off the Alameda.

The site you see in the center diagram there.

This was originally part of the, well, actually, originally it was two houses, so it was two single-family homes.

At one point in the 70s, early 70s, the owners of the 1900, the Alameda office building, six-story office building that you see at the bottom, the bottom image in the slides.

The houses were demolished, and the parking lot was expanded.

The present owners have owned the site for almost 20 years, and the parking became less and less in need, and about 10 years ago they split the parking off, and I think for the last five years it's been chained off because it was really just causing kind of attractive nuisance.

The neighborhood is as you all know, the Alameda has a more of a dense busy corridor along the Alameda, and then it steps down into the residential community just to the east of that.

What we're proposing is that this site, which is presently got two general plans and two zonings, neighborhood community commercial on 0.23 acres, residential neighborhood on the other.23 acres, proposing to convert both of them to mixed-use neighborhood in order to develop the 12 units.

Presently we can't really develop anything on the two lots.

When the property was purchased originally, both of the lots were actually zoned R2, and a proposal was submitted to the city to develop two duplexes, sort of in the form of a four-court home development on the site.

And then it was rejected at site development permit because of the incongruency of the general plan.

And so the ask back then ten years ago was that we would do a general plan amendment so both parcels could be brought into one designation.

This diagram shows the pink, the NCC, and the residential neighborhood in the yellow.

And we're in the middle as a three-story and then to our east are mostly one and two-story residential properties.

And that's it.

And the the architectural style is intended to be Spanish style, much like a lot of the homes in the neighborhood.

And this is a color and material board inspiration image.

And I want to thank you, and we are available to answer any questions if you have any.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Susan and Stephanie, come on down.

Good evening.

Vice Mayor and City Council.

My name is Susan Allen, and I live at 9 30 McKendry, which is just one block away from this proposal.

I've lived in that house for 37 years, my husband and I, and we raised our son there.

And it's a very vibrant neighborhood, college park neighborhood.

And I think I would not be out of line to say we we welcome this project.

I've been very impressed with the developer's willingness to talk with us, let us know what his thinking is and get feedback.

And I really think he's doing a good job of look and feel of the neighborhood.

So I would uh recommend that in favor of advancing this project.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi again, Stephanie Lakesay.

Again, I speak on behalf of many of the neighbors who weren't able to be here today.

As previously mentioned at our neighborhood meeting last week, Jeff Current spoke at length about the potential development at the McKendry site.

I, along with many of our CPA residents, support this project, and that's why we are urging you to vote in favor of moving forward.

The site has been a parking lot for 40 years and posing the same issues as the previous site.

The vicinity around the site presents both residential and churches and office buildings.

The proposed use offers the best complement and transition from commercial to residential.

Mr.

Current and his team have done a great job of researching what the best architecture and scale would be for the neighborhood.

They have met and listened to our residents and are committed to doing so during the entire process.

The current renderings, while they did look modern, we expressed concern to that, and they they um we wanted to keep it in the style of the current residences in College Park.

He mentioned to us that the drawings were just the beginning and that they were willing to work with us as well as Councilmember Mulcahy in the design.

That means so much to our neighborhood.

We are looking forward to the added vibrancy and engagement that these townhomes and as well as the other one will bring to our neighborhood.

Please approve the proposal for this site.

Thank you very much.

Back to council.

Thank you.

Thank you for the public comment and the presentation by the applicant.

Exciting to see mid-range properties being proposed in our infill 8 neighborhoods.

Councilmember Tordillos.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Just wanted to start by making a quick disclosure.

I discovered yesterday when I was doing some uh conflict search for the agenda today that I had a Levine Act issue with this item uh due to a donation over $500 from the project applicant.

I'm in the process of returning the excess uh above and beyond 500, but wanted to make the disclosure on the days today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, I want to start by thanking the College Park Neighborhood Association.

And um for those of you that showed up at 1.30, and it's now 6.30.

Thank you for your stamina.

It's um inspiring for those of us who have to do this each week.

Um, but thank you for your engagement.

I think the meeting at Bellerman, I think it was just last week with the College Park Neighborhood Association gave neighbors a real opportunity to see both projects and appreciate the applicants for um being there to do that.

Um as we heard about past proposals on this side.

Well, proposal the duplexes in 2017 that never move forward.

We have another site, which is an opportunity that's being presented to us right here and now.

It's a well-established residential neighborhood, mostly one and two stories, as the um applicant showed us, and I think it's a real logical sort of opportunity for gentle density.

It creates an appropriate buffer uh between that alameda frontage and the single family neighborhood.

On the product type being proposed, again, it's another townhome project, might be a theme that we're gonna see here moving forward.

Townhomes offer a practical way to deliver new housing.

Uh, we've heard recently both from our housing director and housing department and our planning departments and our um uh kind of lead up to the four-year review, the need for the missing middle options in San Jose.

Projects like this help fill that gap, turning long vacant lots into much needed homes.

On August 27, 2025, the planning commission unanimously recommended allowing the general plan amendment process to continue, in part again after hearing real strong community support.

Moving this amendment forward will give us a chance to replace a long vacant property with new homes that strengthen the residential fabric, provide a logical transition between uses, and address the ongoing challenge of underutilization.

With the commission's recommendation, the lack of feasible commercial alternatives, and the clear benefits of reactivating the site.

So with that, I move to approve staff recommendation B or two to continue the process.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember Mulcahy.

Let's move to a vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

So concludes our general session.

Now we move to public comment, open public comment.

Okay, I'm going to call your name.

You can speak for two minutes on city business that has not already been discussed on the agenda.

Brian Darby, Peter Friedrich, Van Lee, Harvey McKeon.

I'm going to stop there.

I have a few more cards, but I'll let I'll call those in a few minutes.

Go ahead.

This is the main reason I came today.

Those other things were important, but this was really, really and um last week I came and I said something about it, and I got a little annoyed because I thought people weren't paying attention to me, and um decided instead of being annoyed and poking the needles in the well, never mind, getting angry, try to do something about it.

Three people were murdered not too long ago.

Terry Lynn Taylor, Janessa Laura, and Max Chavez Ryan, who I understand worked here.

I think this and the horrible violence of this weekend and the teetering victims of crime often get left out in the dust after the vigil, after people remembering, after the memorials.

But there's no active, there is a national day of victims' rights.

But San Jose acknowledges a lot of things, I think, in the memory of these people, and in all the other people, having a day of remembrance or a memorial, a day of reaching out to victims of crime, and quarterly meetings, dealing with crime all the way from violent crime through just property crime because it all affects us.

And I think we all should really, it's not gonna cost any money from what I can see, and it might really help develop communities.

I've put the more details in this.

I'm gonna give it to the courtroom.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Also, Jaime Ortega and the last name Cesar.

Come on down.

When I was last in these chambers 10 years ago to the month, I came to warn city officials that their presence at a rock star reception hosted for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would place a stamp of approval on a on the record of a mass murderer.

I said that because Modi got his start in the RSS, which this report by Human Rights Group Justice for All explains as a paramilitary group in India that embraces a fascist Nazi-inspired majoritarian ideology called Hindutva, and which has a well-documented record of promoting anti-Muslim, anti-gristian, and caste-based bigotry and violence.

In 2015, Modi had been banned to the US for nearly a decade after overseeing an anti-Muslim program by his RSS stormtroopers.

Despite that, then San Jose Mayor Sam Licardo welcomed Modi at the airport and presented him with the key to the city while ignoring thousands of Indian American protesters.

Aside from Modi's murderous record, city officials should have considered how the 2015 reception was organized by leaders from the overseas wing of Modi's International's political party, the BJB, and from the HSS.

As Justice for All's report explains, the HSS is the international wing of the RSS.

Fast forward a decade, and Modi is now aligning with Russia and China against American interests.

Under his RSS-led regime, India has slid into autocracy, freedoms of the press, assembly, and religion are cruelly curtailed, and massacres of both Muslims and Christians have been carried out under the auspices of RSS BJP leaders.

To top it all off, the Modi government spy agency was caught attempting to assassinate an American citizen who was critical of Modi's inductful policies.

Meanwhile, HSS leaders continue to promote Modi in America, and the HSS, which has four cells in San Jose alone, regularly approaches city councils like San Jose's to solicit your stamp of approval and presumably access to our political power.

Amidst all this, the state legislature just unanimously passed SB 509 to train law enforcement agencies how to combat transnational repression.

Ten years ago, San Jose leaders failed when they chose to shake Modi's bloodstained hand rather than denounce his atrocities, but today you have a chance to make things right.

You could do this by urging Governor Newsom to sign SP 509 without delay and by rejecting any and all over speaking towards the city hall.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Also, Ha come on down.

Hi, my name is Van Lee, a community activist and founder of the Moon Festivals in 1992, School Board More Trustee.

I would like to let you know that I held a press conference this morning at West Plaza to announce the filing of my government talk claim with the city of San Jose and a complaint with Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury.

Our message is simple.

Our community deserves accountability, fairness, and respect.

We are calling for an end to a political retaliation for elected officials to stop abusing power and taxpayer resource and for reform so that whistleblow complaints are handled responsibly, not weaponized for political purpose.

Yes, city department have remained silent even after repeat requests for accountability, which only deepened the harms.

When public trust is undermined, everyone suffers.

Council Member Bien Duan of District 7 used the whistleblower allegation to make his false accusation against me and the Children Moon Festival.

He directed his chief of staff Jonathan Fleming to send a letter to his on his behalf to my colleagues, and then to appear at the school district meeting on April 8, where he dragged in my husband and niece, both volunteer at the Moon Festival, and I was humiliated in front of teachers, staff, and students.

These actions were taken without any due process and involved school district matter, which are outside his role as a city council member.

The school district has since completed an investigation that fully cleared my name and the only Moon Festival organization.

Yet, despite his fighting, Councilmember Don has ignored our request for a public apology.

His interference has damaged my reputation, disrespected our cultural tradition, and hurt the volunteers who have dedicated decades of service to this community.

Council member and staff time must serve the people of District 7, not be used to divide our community.

Elected officials should be a role models, not source of shame.

We will not stay silent, and we will not allow our co-thank, that's your time.