All right, good afternoon.

I'm going to apologize in advance for my voice, which is pretty shot here.

If it gets bad enough, I'll ask the vice mayor to take over.

But we will.

Oh, I'm also going to share that we are joined by our new city attorney, Suzanne Alcala-Wood,

if you'd join me in welcoming her.

Susanna comes to us from a very extensive career in public service.

Municipal law has served in city attorney's offices in a number of cities, most recently

as the city attorney of the city of Sacramento.

We're very lucky to have her on the team, now leading our city attorney's office.

I know she's going to do a fantastic job and is already settling in.

I think it's now actually week two on the job.

So welcome to the city.

We're excited to work with you, Susanna.

Okay, Tony, would you please call the roll?

Kamei?

Here.

Campos?

Here.

Tordios?

Here.

Coen?

Here.

Mulcahy?

Here.

Duan?

Here.

Candelas?

Here.

Casey?

Here.

Foley?

Here.

Mahan?

Here.

You have a quorum.

Great.

Thank you so much.

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

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Today's invocation will be provided by Reverend Steve Pinkston,

who I know is Mr. Pinkston from our days at Bellarmine College Prep together,

of New Beginnings Community Church.

And Council Member Casey will tell us more.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just some brief preparatory remarks before I read his bio.

Mr. Pinkston and I are connected all the way back to 1986 when I was a freshman at Bellarmine.

And I can tell you more than a few times, figuratively, Mr. Pinkston had to grab me by the ear and set me straight.

And I appreciate him. Our motto at Bellarmine is to be a man for and with others.

And I can think of no one in my 53 years on this planet that embodies that motto more than Mr. Pinkston.

His impact as a mentor and a father figure to thousands of folks, I mean, it's unprecedented and much appreciated.

And you will be hard-pressed to find anyone that's walking this planet that has a negative word or bad word to say about Mr. Pinkston.

And with that, I'll read some of this information here on this background.

Reverend Pinkston has been a high school teacher in biology, math, social science, and religious

studies for over four decades, famously teaching at Bellarmine College Reparatory School from

1980 to 2020.

He was also their Christian service director and moderated the Black Student Union and

Agape Service Club.

Reverend Pinkston was ordained in 1984 at Antioch Baptist Church, where his father was

a senior pastor.

He served in the youth ministry for 10 years and served as an associate pastor at Maranatha Christian Center in San Jose,

where he ministered to incarcerated people.

Reverend Princeton is active in the community in other ways, too.

He is a board member for the Recovery Cafe of San Jose, is an active member of the Santa Clara County Alliance of Black Educators,

supports the San Jose chapter of the NAACP, and actively serves with the Faith Leaders Board of American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley.

Reverend Pinkston holds a BA in biology for Pomona College has taken classes at the University of Nairobi in Kenya

And holds a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate University and a master's degree in theology from the University of San Francisco

It is my honor to introduce Reverend Steve Pinkston

Mayor Matt

Councilman

Casey and the rest of the City Council, good afternoon.

It is good to be with you today.

I'd like to offer a couple of points before giving this afternoon's invocation.

If my parents are still alive today, November 18th,

they will be celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary today.

They taught me many things in life.

They taught my brother and I how to be loving, how to be generous, how to be men of integrity.

I taught, as Councilman Casey said, at Bellarmine for 40 years.

students every Monday, weekly, offer a prayer, recite a prayer that's been

attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola called the Prayer of Generosity.

Councilman Mulcahy knew that prayer before he graduated Bellarmine in 1983.

Former Mayor Sam Liccardo knew that prayer before he graduated from Bellarmine in 1987.

As Councilman Casey said, he knew that prayer before he graduated in 1980.

I'm sorry, 1990.

Forgive me.

You're not 63.

And current Mayor Mahan knew that prayer before he graduated Bellarmine in 19...

I'm sorry, 2001.

You got it.

My dates.

I taught math.

Who knows dates?

Let us pray.

Loving Lord, teach us to be generous.

Teach us to serve as you deserve.

to give and not to count the cost,

to fight and not to heed the wounds,

to labor and not to seek to rest,

to give of ourselves and not to ask for a reward.

Accept the reward of knowing that we are doing your will.

We pray this in the name of all that is holy and loving and righteous. Amen.

Thank you, Mr. Pinkston. It's always great to see you.

Thanks for all your good work in the community.

Thank you, Council Member Casey.

All right.

We are moving on to our ceremonial items.

Councillor Kameh if you join me at the podium we will recognize and proclaim

National stormwater day

Well, we have everyone come on down.

This is an effort that is not just me, it is an effort with the community and with our

wonderful city staff, so come on down.

Today we recognize the importance of stormwater management and its impact on our environment.

Stormwater runoff is a major source of pollution, carrying contaminants, sediments, and debris

into our rivers, lakes, and oceans.

With increased awareness and collective action, we can address this challenge.

We celebrate National Stormwater Day, raising awareness about stormwater runoff and how

we can help protect our waterways, improve water quality, reducing flooding, and preventing

pollution.

The City of San Jose has many programs that address the impacts and sources of stormwater

pollution across the city including green stormwater infrastructure, full trash capture,

the encampment management program, and our newest citywide initiative, Adopt the Storm

Drain Program.

The Adopt the Storm Drain Program was an initiative launched by my district 1 in collaboration

with environmental services on Earth Day 2024.

This program has demonstrated the city's commitment to environmental responsibility by keeping

the storm drains clear of trash and other pollutants before they reach our waterways

and ultimately out to our bay.

On Earth Day, April 22, 2025, the program expanded citywide, led by the Environmental

Services Department Watershed Protection Division.

Since expanding with the support of our community volunteers, we've adopted six – I think

more than 64 now I heard over the weekend that it was more than 64 storm drain

inlets throughout the city this program success would not have been possible

without the collaboration of multiple city departments including public works

Department of Transportation environmental services parks and

neighborhood services through the team through their teamwork our city has led

the way in protecting our environment and ensuring a healthier community for all

I would like to thank Director of Environmental Services Jeff Provenzano

and Watershed Protection Deputy Director Rajneen Nair, Department of

Transportation Deputy Director Jennifer Seguin and Assistant Director Rick

Scott, Public Works Principal Engineer Norman, I apologize if I get this wrong,

Mascarinas, PRNS and our volunteers and community partners whose active

participation has been key to the program's continued growth.

Let us keep working to protect our water resources and create a healthier environment for generations.

And I want to say a special thank you to my friend and community member Roberta Whitty.

She noticed that there was a need in our community to take care of the storm drains.

And so I just want to say thank you so much for your encouragement.

you know I know that my colleagues love a little bit of competition so we started in district one

and we want to see one year from today how many more are in other districts so with that I want

to say happy stormwater day

Can we come together?

Maybe this way?

Sideways, everybody's sideways.

Thank you so much.

Congratulations.

Happy birthday, Matt.

Thank you.

All right.

Councilman Condeles, if you would join me here at the podium, we will recognize

Idichu Academy, Valle Vista Elementary, and August Boger Middle School.

And we'll invite our guests to come join us as well.

All right.

Good afternoon and happy Tuesday, everybody.

I am proud to recognize the extraordinary achievements by both Idaju Academy and Valley Vista Elementary School, one,

as well as August Boger Middle School from the Mount Pleasant Elementary School District.

Up first is August Boger Middle School, which recently received the Civic Learning Award of Distinction from the Judicial Council of California.

And here today representing the school is Principal Raquel Topete.

August Boger students are deeply engaged within the community with nearly 90 99 percent of students

volunteering through fundraising activism or service the school has built a rich civic program

through project-based learning seminars student government and more in fact last week I had the

privilege of joining Principal de Betta for the Ruby Bridges walk to school day which was very

very well well participated by the students at August Boger and their

collective commitment to civic engagement is something that that's

truly inspiring and looking forward to see what they achieve in the near future

our other honoree today is Ida Jew Academy and Valley Vista Elementary

School we're lucky to have principal dr. Anthony Alvarado and some of the

wonderful staff and a few outstanding students join us this afternoon thank

you for being here. Ida June Valley Vista has earned the Civic Learning Award of

Excellence from the Judicial Council of California. This is the highest honor

that our state offers to schools promoting civic engagement. Their civic

learning practices span elementary through middle school grades and they

emphasize problem-solving in the real world. This award reflects a powerful

combination of innovation innovative teaching and the belief that youth can

be engaged, informed, and participate in our democracy.

Educators like Miss Alyssa Friend are even pioneering

new approaches that will soon be shared with colleagues

across the county, from math club and green club initiatives,

the robotics club, the school's building not only

academic excellence, but also teaching character, leadership,

and civic responsibility.

To the staff and students here with me today,

and all the great teachers and students on campus

who are watching us online, your passion and teamwork

are at the heart of this accomplishment.

And on behalf of myself, as well as my colleagues

on the city council, I want to offer

our warmest congratulations to Idaju

and Valley Vista Elementary School

and August Boger Middle School,

the community, students, and educators, staff,

and their families for earning

this well-recognized recognition.

Now I will pass the microphone to Dr. Alvarado

to share a few words before the mayor presents

the commendations.

Good afternoon everyone.

Good afternoon Mayor Council members and Council Member

Candelas.

My name is Anthony Alvarado principal of Ida Jew Academy

and Valley Vista Elementary in the Mount Pleasant Elementary

School District.

I want to thank you for the time for taking the time today

to recognize our school for earning the Civic Learning

Award of Excellence from the Judicial Court of California.

We truly appreciate the City of San Jose for continuing to lift up this achievement.

It is meaningful for our students, families, and staff.

At iJavi, civic learning is part of who we are.

We work every day to help students see themselves as leaders who contribute to their community.

Through student council, mock elections, civic projects, and classroom discussions,

our students learn that their voice matters and that they have the power to make a positive impact in our community.

I also want to acknowledge and thank the teachers staff students and loved ones who joined me

here today.

I want to thank Miss Alyssa friend or student council advisor Miss Lisa Pereira Miss Annika

Threadgill Miss Sabir Abdul Ghani our student council president Miss Liliana Rodriguez student

council vice president their families who brought them here today.

Thank you so much families and to Miss Christine Alvarado.

you for all your support and for representing our school with pride and

once again thank you to the City Council for recognizing I Javi and for

supporting civic engagement and public education in San Jose we are honored to

be here today thank you

Thank you.

All right, congratulations on to our final ceremonial item councilman Cohen and vice

mayor Foley.

If you join me here, we will recognize and proclaim world day of remembrance and road

safety week in the city of San Jose.

Today we are proclaiming World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims as well as recognizing

Road Safety Week.

Each day as we share the road with other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists, we make countless

decisions that hopefully find us safely at our destination.

However moments of distraction, impatience or poor judgment can lead to life altering

tragedies.

Posted roadsides, alterations to traffic flow patterns and speed mitigation measures are

just a few of the ways that the City's Traffic Safety Vision Zero teams are utilizing to

help minimize the impacts of our split-second decisions on the road.

Traffic safety is not just the work of these teams, but a commitment that each of us make

to ensure that we all end up at home safe and sound at the end of each day.

Because behind every wheel in every passenger seat is a parent, a friend, a child, or a

loved one.

We each have the power and responsibility to help ensure that they get home.

Let us commit to taking steps to be more mindful of our actions and their consequences.

The roads belong to everyone and it is up to us to make them safe for us all.

With that, I'd like to invite DOT Director John Risto to say a few words and then the

mayor will present the commendations.

Thank you, Councilmember Cohen.

On behalf of both Department of Transportation and our partners in traffic safety, San Jose

Police Department, I want to thank you for this proclamation and commitment to traffic

safety.

As you know, improving traffic safety starts with a recognition of the lives lost to traffic

collisions and the impacts of those losses on our family, friends, colleagues, and society.

20 years ago, the United Nations adopted World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims

on the third Sunday in November.

They did so because traffic fatalities are a worldwide issue.

The World Health Organization estimates almost 1.2 million people die each year as a result

of traffic crashes.

Like the effort to combat traffic fatalities, Vision Zero is also worldwide.

In 2015, San Jose became the fourth major U.S. city to adopt a Vision Zero initiative, an

initiative that started in Sweden and has since spread across the globe.

Earlier this year, we adopted our third Vision Zero Action Plan, which sets the ambitious

goal of reducing traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 30 percent by 2030 and eliminating

them entirely by 2040.

Years of work on improving the way our streets are designed and educating the public on how

to drive, walk, and bike safer have already started to bear fruit.

After years of increasing fatality rates, we are finally starting to see the turnaround

in the last two years.

To date, in 2025, we have had roughly 25 percent fewer traffic deaths than last year at this

time.

Though that's good news, our work is far from done.

We will keep designing safer streets, teaching traffic safety skills, and targeting dangerous

driving in pursuit of our goal of zero traffic fatalities and severe injuries.

And we do so with the memory of those lost to traffic crashes as our motivation.

I just want to thank you again for Mayor and Council for all their support and leadership

on this.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

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 not seeing any we do have an adjournment today today's city council meeting

will be adjourned in memory of rudolph tennis who's who passed away on october 10th 2025

Born in Mexico and long rooted in San Jose, Rudolph devoted his life to family, community, and the city he loved.

He was an author whose work captured the spirit of East San Jose and the lived experiences of the Mexican-American community.

He will be remembered for his resilience, warmth, and deep commitment to those around him.

Councilmember Ortiz, please tell us more.

Thank you, Mayor.

Today we adjourn in the memory of Rudolf Rudi Tenes, a man whose journey, spirit, and service left a profound mark on the city of San Jose.

He is survived by his beloved wife, Lily Tenes, and their children, including his daughter, Darlene Tenes,

a proud small business owner in East San Jose, who carries forward her father's legacy of community and hard work.

Rudy was born in Tijuana, Mexico, where he first lived a life full of courage and artistry

as a bullfighter before immigrating to the United States and proudly becoming a naturalized citizen.

In 1955, he married the love of his life, Lily Sanchez, at St. Joseph Cathedral,

and together they raised five children here in our city.

Rudy was a pillar of community activism, a founding member of PACT, People Acting and

Community Together, showing up for countless rallies, marches, and moments of collective

struggle.

He co-founded both Los Amigos and the Latin American Lions Club, building spaces rooted

in service, leadership, and of course, cultural pride.

An entrepreneur at heart, Rudy owned two jewelry stores, providing jobs and opportunities for

others and charmed the airwaves as a part-time Spanish language radio

personality on radio KOFE. He gave generously of his time and visited

classrooms across San Jose including classrooms in Juvenile Hall, sharing

poetry and stories and even his experiences as a bullfighter,

inspiring generations of young people. Rudy and Lily were blessed to renew

their vows for their 70th anniversary, a celebration of love, faith, and family.

And he passed away peacefully the following day. May his memory be a blessing and may we honor him

by continuing his legacy of service, courage, and community. Now I'd like to invite his daughter,

Darlene, to please share a few words.

So I didn't know I was going to say anything today until earlier.

And I love that they showed all his accomplishments, you know, people,

men in particular always think it's the coolest thing that he was a bullfighter.

And then, you know, Spanish radio personality and entrepreneur and all that.

But one of his greatest accomplishments was his relationship with my mother.

And they were, they met in the 50s, early 50s, at a Latin orchestra dance at Sweet Ballroom

in Taddiada, they called it.

And so they met dancing.

And he was visiting here from Mexico.

He was a bullfighter, but he didn't tell my mother that.

He went back to Mexico.

He would write my mother letters.

And he wrote all, my dad's a beautiful, writes beautiful poetry.

And he would write all these beautiful letters.

and poetry, but my mom couldn't read Spanish.

So my grandmother used to have to read all the letters to him.

So they always said that my grandmother and my mom fell in love with my dad at the same time.

So he moved here, and he was intended to get married to my mother.

And then my mother broke off with him to become a nun.

yeah we always get a reaction from that so then my her mother who loved my dad didn't speak to my

mother for two weeks because she was so upset with her that she broke off with my father

so then um they got back together she she called she called him let's just meet he was already

packing us up his stuff he was going to move back to mexico start bullfighting again and she called

let's just meet he's all forget it forget you you know how men are forget you how am I going to

compete with God you know it's that's it right so um so he agreed to meet up with her and he said

all she had to do was bat her lashes at me and it was all over so they got married at St. Joseph

Cathedral down here in 1955 and had the reception at the San Jose Women's Club and so they just

celebrated were able to renew their 70th anniversary. My dad held on and held on because he wanted to

do that for my mother and as you heard he passed away the next day. So that was of course his

greatest accomplishment I believe is this great love that they had and they were able to share

with the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Darlene, for sharing that beautiful story.

Lily, Darlene, the entire family, we all mourn with you.

Rudy was a good man who contributed a lot to our community. We're very sorry for your loss.

But an incredibly full and impactful life. And thank you for being here to help

celebrate his impact and contributions to the community.

Councilman Ortiz thank you for bringing forward today's adjournment we are going

to now move on to the closed session report there's nothing to report at a

closed session okay thank you okay next is the consent calendar are there any

items council would like to pull from consent I have one I wanted to briefly

comment on I'm sorry were there I didn't see any hands or any others no okay I

I have one I just want to briefly comment ask a question on and then I think I have a brief script

I need to read for item 2.24 but first on 2.17 this is the

resolution authorizing new operators and grant agreements for the motel program

First I want to thank our city manager Eric Sullivan Cupid Alexander the entire housing department

for

the tremendous work that's been done to expand our interim housing and shelter capacity in fact

Yesterday with the ribbon cutting at Cherry Ave, which I know no one was happier, more excited than Vice Mayor Foley who championed the project, we crossed that threshold of adding over 1,000 beds, immediate alternatives to the streets this year, which is just an incredible milestone more than any other city that we're aware of, certainly on the West Coast.

So I want to thank our housing department for your work in scaling up to meet this urgent

need and our partners, partners like Home First have really stretched and gone to great

lengths to support us as we've expanded quickly.

It's great to see PATH, we hope, raising the bar, stepping up and giving us more variety,

more options, and the opportunity to maybe specialize a little bit.

As we build these partnerships and extend a number of these contracts, I just want to

reaffirm the expectation that this council has set through repeated direction around

high quality data collection and reporting of outcomes. The council has directed very

clearly wanting to have a sense, a clear sense of how many people are being served, a breakdown

of exits, where people go next, unit utilization, we've got a great new dashboard for that,

thank you to the Housing Department, and costs. And I think this is important for understanding

the impact of our work and our spending as well as informing our future budget and policy

decisions.

Now, on costs, I couldn't help but notice the variability across sites.

One operator operating one site is doing so at a little over $10,000 a bed.

Another with one site is closer to 19, a little over $19,000 a bed.

Third operator with two sites is at, right kind of in the middle, at $16,000.

And then there's another with five sites that's actually below 10,000.

So we have a range of literally 200%, a 2x shift there.

So, Eric, this signals to me, while not all populations are exactly the same, as we've talked about,

there's some opportunities to maybe standardize and find efficiencies in our operating model.

And we've discussed previously and given direction around rebidding contracts for food security, property management.

I know some of that work has already been happening.

Can you share with us, this is not just a blanket renewal through the end of the fiscal year.

What is the rough timeline and process for rebidding those services,

finding that standardized and hopefully more efficient service delivery model

across these sites now that we've built scale?

And what happens if you rebid and you have somebody, a new contractor,

as these contracts are active?

Thank you, Mayor.

So Eric Silleywan, Director of Housing.

So to speak to the areas of efficiencies we've identified, there are four.

One is security, second is food, third is property management.

The fourth one is case management and how we're doing those staffing ratios based on the sites.

And that one will come towards the end here once we're able to open up the balance of the sites

and then begin to optimize the system.

So the first one on food, so we have, I'm sorry, on security, we have completed that RFP process.

We've identified $1.2 million in savings through centralized distribution of a single provider of security services.

So we'll be rolling that into the sites beginning in January as we have to go through some administrative processes

to pull out those services from the existing contracts and then place our centralized procurement security throughout the sites.

So that'll begin in January.

The second one is food.

We have completed the RFP process.

process we're going through the evaluation analysis to identify cost savings we have an

anticipated number of where we think we're going to get to but we'll know more as we complete the

review of the seven bids that came in as we're going through that evaluation process now with

an anticipation that we'll begin to roll that in and similar to security we'll have to remove it

from the contracts then place our own food providers a little trickier because we've got to

make sure since we feed people every day there's synchronization and that execution of that

operation but we'll be able to provide that begin doing that towards february the last item is on

procurement for property management so we've worked out some kinks with public works and maria and

our team in the finance department and the housing department have reached how we're going to quickly

execute on this so that rfp will be up by the end of this calendar year with a turn to complete and

receive bids by the end of january and then look to implement that by beginning of march as the

anticipated schedule and then within that analysis time frame identify what the cost savings are so

that we're able to achieve kind of hopefully our target here of getting to 20 percent the fourth

item related to case management that comes to the standardization as you saw some of the

bearances across the different sites some of that speaks to the population being served some of that

speaks to just inconsistencies throughout sort of how we standardize the execution of that case

management that's also buttressed by the fact that as the county is rolling out its direct

services onto our outside we're figuring out what is the right sizing for the execution of that daily

management across each of the 22 sites upon the completion of serone here at the end of this year

how we're leveling that off so we can ensure we're maximizing that service delivery coming from the

county and then appropriately right sizing what is our case management

services to reduce and throttle down that execution again to help recoup those

savings great thank you thank you again for your team's hard work on this and

for all that additional context I want to make sure that the council had that

and knew that we are not slowing down or delaying any of that work just because

we're extending the these contracts out to June 30th so that's important

obviously we've all been very focused on the operating model the cost the

efficiency and the outcome so that was useful context I think for everyone thank

you I appreciate it okay and then I was told I have a script for mayor can I ask

one sure sorry sorry sorry I couldn't I couldn't get to raise my hand quick enough

sorry go for it for Eric I just have a question about the Bristol Hotel it

shows that home first will be operating through December 31st but then it shows

path starting up December 1st so there's going to be some overlap there's going to

be a handoff there so it's a warm handoff that we're doing with the client

services that we're providing so home first be phasing off at passive phasing

in we didn't want to do a hard shutdown just given some of the special needs of

the families that are being served at that site okay great thank you that

helps great thanks vice mayor all right and then for item point two four this is

related to the appointment to the board of administration for the federated

retirement plan and to the Civil Service Commission.

Tony, do you have an update for us regarding consent calendar?

Yes.

This consent calendar item?

Yes, thank you.

For consent calendar item 2.24, a supplemental memo was posted with results of the employee

election, which concluded yesterday at 2 p.m.

Based on these election results, Brian Chee is recommended to be appointed to the employee

representative seat on the Federated Retirement Board, and Gary DeQuisto is recommended to

be appointed to the employee nominated public member seat on the Civil Service

Commission item 2.24 can be considered with regular consent calendar with

these two names having been noted for the record okay thanks for that Tony okay

with that and not seeing any other hands do we have a motion to approve the

Move approval.

Calendar.

Thank you.

Tony, do we have public comment?

Yes.

Betsy, item 2.16.

In the July 9th abatement that you put my brother through,

His legs were injured in his frantic rush to save as many of his belongings as he could.

Due to the blood thinners that he takes for blood plots, his wounds still have not healed.

I saw him on Sunday and his wounds were infected.

Green pus was dripping down to his socks because he has no running water to clean his wounds with.

Last night I begged him to come over so that I could help him clean them and bandage them.

And he did. He came over.

When he got there, his neighbor called him and told him that his trailer had just been towed by the police department

because he can't afford to register and he can't afford to move it every three days.

So once again, he's losing what he worked so hard to obtain.

You have no shelter available, no safe parking spots.

He's on parole and can't leave and can't go anywhere else.

And you can't even give up a parking spot to just let him stay.

I hope that that parking spot is worth all the pain and suffering that you are causing.

I hope.

Back to council.

Thank you, Tony.

We have a motion on the floor.

Let's vote.

motion passes unanimously thank you all right we're on to land use consent item

10.1 a there's no staff presentation we have a motion move for approval thank you

Tony do we have public comment not for this item okay let's come back to the

Council ready to vote yes I'm sorry okay sorry I saw one mic up so I thought

maybe there was a request motion passes unanimously thank you Tony

front to item 10.1 B okay so the motion was to the two together okay great as

long as that's everybody's understanding okay Tony is that okay yeah that's what

I thought was happening you moved it I thought it was too sorry I read them

individually but you're right it is consent okay then we're on to the

regular agenda item 3.1 report the city manager thank you very much mayor and

City Council I would like to talk about a subject that's near and dear to my

heart when I'm not at City Hall and that's shopping so the holiday season

has arrived and I'm pleased to share that the city of San Jose's office of

economic development cultural affairs is once again partnering with visit San

Jose business associations and other stakeholders to promote the unique local

shopping opportunities, restaurants, and attractions that make San Jose the Bay Area's ultimate

holiday destination.

This campaign supports the city's growing our economy focus area goals of strengthening

and sustaining small businesses and key business corridors in San Jose by attracting more people

to our diverse neighborhoods.

The campaign will highlight family-friendly holiday attractions like the DOCA Holiday

Lights Festival, Downtown Ice and Christmas in the Park, seasonal performances and shows,

and the best in shopping in artesian markets like Santana Row Valley Fair and the SJ Made Winter Wonder Market.

As part of the collaborative marketing effort, the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs

is promoting local shopping through its online guide, sjeconomy.com slash shoplocalsj.

The site highlights more than 300 San Jose small businesses and cultural experiences in 13 business districts throughout the city,

including Alam Rock, Alam Rock Village, Cali Willow, Downtown, East Village,

Evergreen, Japantown, Little Saigon, Luna Park, the Alameda, Tully Road, Willow Glen,

and Winchester Row. Small Business Saturday is on November 29th and we

encourage everyone to shop and dine local and explore all San Jose has to

offer to strengthen our local economy and support businesses in our city. I'd

I'd like to thank the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs and Team San Jose for

leading this collaboration and to our partners for their help in promoting Shop San Jose,

encouraging residents and visitors to explore our city while also supporting small and local

businesses.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for that.

Thanks for that announcement, Jennifer.

We are on to Item 4.1.

This is the Military Equipment Annual Report from our Police Department.

do have a brief presentation so we'll just give chief joseph and the team a minute to transition

I'm fighting something like you or a bug, so I'll do my best as well, sir.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

I am Captain Randy Torres.

I represent the police department.

I represent special operations, and I'm also responsible for the military equipment

reporting list that we will discuss this afternoon.

Next slide, please.

As many of you know, this discussion is guided by legislation approved by Governor Newsom

back in September of 2021.

Its purpose is straightforward, but it's important.

It's to increase transparency and oversight in the funding, acquisition, and in the use

of military equipment by our law enforcement agencies.

And under this law, any agency that possesses such equipment must make its policies

and supporting information behind those policies accessible to the public.

It also requires approval from the governing body, which is council,

as well as a submission of an annual report and the opportunity

to publicly review in meetings similar to this one.

Next slide.

So our military equipment is categorized in 14 categories.

You should have access to it in one of your attachments.

It's governed by a California government code in description.

But in that appendix that you have, it should show a description, an example, the quantity,

annual cost to operate and maintain, and that's documented and reported here.

Supervisors or UAS pilots are required to report at each deployment, and that's kept in a database.

Next slide.

And then the considerations.

These requirements exist for an important reason.

Equipment we're discussing is only considered necessary when there is no reasonable alternative

that can be achieved by the same basic equipped officer to meet the community safety needs.

This equipment must also be reasonably cost effective when compared to other options and

provide a higher degree of protection.

And just as important, the equipment may only be used by department members who are specifically

trained on that item or as mandated by the Commission on Peace Officers, on the Peace

Officer Standards and Training. It's always under and in consideration to exceptions of

exigent circumstance. Together these safeguards ensure that military equipment when used,

it's used responsibly, it's used effectively with the highest regard of public trust. If

move on to the next slide you'll see our deployments for the calendar year of 2024

as documented the military equipments events specific events were documented

189 events in calendar year 2024 with 246 deployments of a specific category

equipment you can see that 132 of that first category are used for police

activity where the remainder used of deployments used for either training or

community events. Our drone program moving to the next image our drone program is

very popular very effective and very useful you see that our UAS unmanned

aerial tell me with the S please systems thank you sir our UAS flights include

671 deployments. Of those, 505 were used for police activity, roughly three-quarters, and then

166 were used for training. Calendar year 2024, I'm happy to say that we had zero complaints

regarding the use of military equipment. We had zero violations of government code, and then

finally, there were no internal affairs investigations associated to military equipment.

so who's getting the equipment uh it's spread across the board for our equipment military

equipment uh additions for the purchases of calendar year 2024 14 uas

let's say drones let's call it a drone by unit it's various drones were included or added

by either destruction of the old equipment or addition to new inventory.

Our patrol units received four new drones.

Traffic investigation received some of the bomb unit.

Our merge team added three drones to its inventory.

ICAC has drones, and then finally covert response.

Next, the range added 53 rifles to its inventory,

and those come in the form of the M4 rifles,

which is described in one of your attachments as well.

These resources are carefully allocated to ensure that they are available

where they are most needed to support public safety

and promote effective police operations.

Moving on, what we're requesting for addition and for approval

for addition for the military year 2025, fiscal year 2025-2026.

You see that most of the categories listed are going to be either drones

or robotics for bomb detection, bomb mitigation equipment,

and then finally a new chemical agent deployment system

is being requested for approval as well.

The partial funding has already been identified

through department's ongoing allocated operating budget.

Any purchase of remaining equipment, however,

will depend on the appropriation of additional funds.

This ensures that all acquisitions move forward responsibly with financial oversight as established by City and the Government.

Accessibility to this information is public.

It's a simple search through our City's Police Department's website,

and it'll come up with a significant amount of documentation which has been dedicated to military equipment.

reporting accessible through sjpd.org and moving on

this afternoon we're going to ask for two actions first is to accept the annual report which you

should all have a copy of for the calendar year 2024 second is to approve the request of

authorize authorization to purchase military equipment for use by the san jose police

department with the understanding that any purchase will proceed only if the necessary

funds are appropriated. These steps will help to ensure continued transparency, accountability,

and responsible oversight in our department's use and acquisition of specialized military equipment.

Thank you. Thank you, Captain. Appreciate this annual report on military equipment.

Tony do we have public comment yes Tina come on down

good afternoon everybody my name is Tina for three years I worked at Del Mar

High School as a special education para educator I was told year on year that

there were not enough resources to provide glycemically stable meals for

type 1 diabetic students, so they were crashing out every day. Meanwhile, we are

receiving proposals from our police department to purchase the Ghost Vision

was Vision 60, robotic dog which costs $264,000, pepper bullets for $6,000.

Who do you plan on using these pepper bullets?

I was shot in the face five years ago with a 44 millimeter less than lethal munition.

I went deaf for several days.

My skull was exposed.

I needed seven stitches for peacefully protesting.

It took me three years to heal from the injury that I sustained at the hands of a police officer

for peacefully protesting the use of municipal budget.

I think it is a defunct interpretation and feeble interpretation of leadership to believe

that the use of public funds, whether federally appropriated through grants,

which I assume some of this money comes from the feds, to use this money for weapons.

In a time when we are at the precipice of a national movement for single-payer health care

and for the ending of a genocide overseas,

investing resources in poisoning people

who come to express their dissent for their government's behavior

is an irresponsible use of your position.

History will not remember you kindly

for investing resources in the squelching of democracy,

which is precisely what you were...

Thank you. That's your time.

back to council okay thank you coming back to the council we'll start with

councilman Erdogan captain can you explain with these equipment is a

necessary equipment to be used and only when law and orders need to be retained

in a situation is unattainable

because I'm ever Paul Joseph chief of police I'll take that I think you know I

understand the concerns that were just expressed and I think that the equipment

isn't the question, it's the use of the equipment, the appropriate use of the equipment, when it's

used. The items that we're seeking approval for are for safety of our community and safety of

our officers. For instance, the bomb robots that we're talking about purchasing are to enable our

officers who we ask to step into one of the most dangerous assignments within the police department

to be able to carry out that mission as safely as possible. And obviously the greater distance a

human being has from an explosive device, the less chance they have of injury.

That is the purpose of these items.

They have been labeled military equipment by the state legislature, and

obviously there's some overlap in the missions of law enforcement and the

military.

The military also disposes of explosive devices and such, but these are

standard items in American law enforcement today in any big city, so

these are not esoteric or peculiar items that we're asking for.

thank you very much and with that I move for approval of the report and approve of the purchase

thanks councilmember appreciate it any other comments or questions not seen any Tony let's vote

Motion passes unanimously with Campos absent.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you all.

We are moving on to item 6.1.

This is our climate smart San Jose zero waste element report.

We have a staff presentation.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

My name is Jeff Provenzano, the Director of the Environmental Services Department, and

with me is Valerie Osmond, Deputy Director of our Integrated Waste Management Division,

and Megha Prakash, Senior Environmental Program Manager in Integrated Waste Management.

Today we have a different item than normal.

when we're going about doing programs that we implement, the services that we provide,

we come across areas where we're always looking for efficiencies and areas where the work that

we're doing helps benefit other programs. And this is an example here today. This item is on

our zero waste program, which you'll hear about in a minute. We've had in place for many years.

This is our drive to educate the public, residents, and businesses to really reduce the amount of

waste that we generate, but at the same time, as we're doing this work already, all that waste

generates greenhouse gas emissions. So there's really a crossover here between our Climate

Smart plan and our objectives and goals right now on reducing the amount of waste that we generate

as a city and as a community. And this here is a bridging of the two to bring them together. So

work in one benefits the other. And with that, I'll pass it over to Mega.

Thank you.

So Climate Smart San Jose, which was adopted by City Council in 2018, focused on the largest

sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Solid waste was identified as a topic for future consideration.

The chart on this slide shows San Jose's community-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory

for 2023, and you can see that solid waste-related emissions comprise 8% of the citywide total.

Waste reduction and diversion goals in the zero waste element will help the city move

towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2030 and serves as an update to the 2008 zero waste

strategic plan.

This element outlines the city's current waste management processes, the city's goals

related to managing waste to benefit the climate, key strategies to achieve these goals, as

well as tools and resources for the community to move towards zero waste.

The city's contracted local landfill is projected to close within the next 10 to 15 years.

When landfills close, waste disposal costs and emissions will significantly increase,

especially due to the need to transport waste much further away.

waste, recycling, reducing, composting, and recovering as much as possible help prolong

the life of landfills. The city and our ratepayers have benefited from lower rate increases and

long-term stability through our hauler contracts. The commercial and residential contracts will

expire in 2032 and 2036 respectively. Staff are researching and considering pilots to

assess what programs or policies to include in future contracts.

This bar chart shows the avoided emissions due to recycling, composting, and anaerobic

digestion over the past few years.

We are fortunate to have a robust recycling infrastructure within and close to San Jose.

The proximity of these facilities help keep our greenhouse gas emissions associated with

the transportation of solid waste low.

Many of these facilities are amongst the most advanced in the country and serve as national

benchmarks.

They also provide employment to San Jose residents.

Organic waste decomposing in landfills emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, contributing

to hotter summers, more frequent droughts, and wildfires.

Transportation of solid waste also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2016, the governor signed Senate Bill 1383, which set statewide targets to reduce the

amount of organic material being sent to landfills.

Our city programs have already been doing this for many years, even before Senate Bill

1383 was signed into law.

Since 2008, residential garbage is sorted by green waste recovery to recover organics,

such as food scraps and compostable paper, which is then composted.

This process is also referred to as back-end processing or mixed waste processing.

Since 2013, commercial organic waste has been sent to the Green Waste Renewable Energy Digestion Facility

for anaerobic digestion, where electricity and compost are produced from material processing.

So what is zero waste?

This slide shows the zero waste hierarchy diagram presented in this element.

Recognizing that there will continue to be some legacy materials such as treated wood

and asbestos that must be landfilled at the end of their useful life, San Jose's performance

measure for zero waste is 90 percent diversion from landfill.

And for some context, the city's overall solid waste diversion rate for financial year 2425

was 62 percent.

The city has well developed programs to divert organic waste from landfill through composting

and anaerobic digestion, which is in the middle section of the zero waste hierarchy diagram

on this slide.

However, we can't get to zero waste through recycling and composting alone.

Supporting waste prevention efforts through repair and reuse will reduce the quantity

of materials going to landfill as waste.

For example, encouraging the use of reusables over single-use disposable items, facilitating

repair clinics for the community.

Staff will play a supportive role to further zero-waste goals by providing tools and resources

to residents and businesses through education and outreach.

This slide shows the timeline of staff's work to develop the zero-waste element.

From 2020 to 2023, a team of ESD staff and consultants worked to define the scope of

this element, focusing only on Environmental Services Department managed solid waste programs

and services, which include residential, commercial, construction and demolition, and city facilities.

As the element serves as an update to the 2008 Zero Waste Strategic Plan, the scope is focused

at the property level, which includes those that have garbage and recycling services.

The team analyzed the city's net greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the solid waste

sector and re-evaluated the prioritization of the city's zero waste strategies.

San Jose residents and businesses were given an opportunity to provide feedback on the

draft element in the winter of 2024.

During this stakeholder engagement period, the element was updated to incorporate community

feedback, particularly on the priority strategies.

To ensure that the element accurately reflects the priorities and concerns of the community,

the City conducted a series of outreach and engagement events in January and February

of 2024.

This included an online open house, a community survey, and a community meeting.

Over 200 community members, including residents and businesses, provided feedback during this

process.

This engagement aimed to assess awareness and attitudes towards recycling, composting, waste

prevention, along with understanding critical barriers and motivators related to strategies

in the element.

Community members indicated that preventing waste is very important to them.

They conveyed that they want to see the positive impacts of recycling in their communities and

sought more educational resources from the city to help them better navigate waste management,

particularly outreach to schools and all members of the community.

This slide shows all the strategies presented in the zero waste element,

except for the destructive disposal, which is the least preferred method.

Community action is essential to the success of this plan,

and community engagement is one of the foundational strategies of the element.

The city will work closely with the community as it carries out the city-led actions, especially

to understand any barriers and opportunities to reduce waste and recycle rights.

Each strategy is supported by one or more recommended city-led actions or projects.

The actions are categorized as either short-term, implemented within eight years, or long-term,

beyond the eight-year horizon.

The eight-year timeframe aligns with current waste hauler contract lengths.

City staff are already implementing projects that align with the strategies presented in

the zero waste element as well as to comply with current regulations.

Staff will track and report progress through the Climate Smart Data Dashboard, which is

publicly available on the City's website.

The table on this slide shows the indicators and metrics that the data dashboard will track.

The City will use this tool to evaluate the impact of its initiatives and programs and

identify areas where adjustments or new approaches are needed.

Staff would like to highlight a few projects that are already being implemented in alignment

with this zero waste element and relevant regulations.

The OOPS TAG program has been successful in raising awareness on what is recyclable in

San Jose and it aims to reduce the recycling contamination in single family households.

but staff will continue to work with service providers on increased outreach and education.

Earlier this year, staff utilized state-awarded grant funding to launch a free compost hub

pilot open to city departments and city projects.

Based on learnings from this pilot, staff plan to launch a compost hub that is free and

open to the public.

Staff are currently evaluating several community gardens and city parks as potential locations

for the next phase that will be accessible to the public.

Staff are in the process of updating the construction and demolition diversion program.

The construction and demolition waste makes up about one-third of San Jose's waste stream,

and it represents a challenge because it usually composed of heavy materials such as concrete

and asphalt.

These do not break down in the same way as other wastes.

Later this month, staff launched the Zero Waste Innovation Grant Program.

The program is a competitive funding opportunity to support creative, community-driven solutions

that reduce solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

They expand reused infrastructure, public education, community engagement, and innovative

partnerships.

Eligible applicants include nonprofits, small businesses, community and faith-based organizations,

neighborhood associations, and schools or educational institutions who are based in San

Jose or recover materials generated in San Jose.

Staff continue to explore pilot projects to increase diversion from landfills.

Staff may seek grants or present budget proposals in alignment with the elements initiatives

in future budget cycles.

So our recommendation is to request the acceptance of the zero waste element and to direct staff

to incorporate into the Climate Smart San Jose plan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the comprehensive report.

Tony, do we have public comment?

I couldn't read it.

Jordan, come on down.

Jordan Muldow, District 3.

Happy National Stormwater Day.

I think this plan is really important, not just because of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, but for lots of different reasons.

These facilities for just dumping all of our trash in a landfill can't stay open forever.

And so we need to reduce our waste.

And having less things floating around means less things going into our stormwater.

So I really want to thank staff a lot for all the hard work they put into this plan.

There's a lot of good ideas that were put into that plan by staff and from comments from the public.

And I think it's time to get started on implementing a lot of things that we haven't already gotten started on.

There's a lot of good things about reducing food waste, which, again, is another important thing in and of itself

to make sure that more people get to eat the food that we produce rather than it going into the trash.

There's a lot of things that we can innovate on,

such as finding ways to support businesses in implementing circular economies

so that we can reuse things rather than creating new things.

There's a section in the plan called Lead by Example

about different things that the city can do to try and reduce its own waste footprint.

I'd like to see the city produce less swag,

or maybe just stop iterating on swag

so that people don't have to always, I have to pick up the new design.

You know, at this point, many of us already have dozens upon dozens of bags.

We don't need new ones.

So there's ways that we can reduce waste.

And also clothing.

We have Viva Calle sells T-shirts with different designs every time

because we don't give them enough money.

If we gave them more money,

then they wouldn't need to create all these textile waste.

so looking forward to the plan being implemented and thanks for the great work back to council

great thank you let's go to councilman macampos first

thank you mayor and thank you staff for this presentation i um actually wanted to uplift

what was mentioned about textile waste on slide six

we learned that some of the barriers are you know limited access to recycling in

public spaces and the opportunities are participating in repair clinics and

access to free community compost so I'm hearing a need from the community for

potentially more more resources and more spaces and when this item came to T&E

committee earlier I had asked about what opportunities we had to explore working

with our school districts given that they have land pretty available during

the evenings and on weekends and through our school cities collaborative if

there's any opportunity to build that partnership and make sure that our

neighbors have access to some of these recycling opportunities pop-up markets

flea markets we've seen some of this work done in the santee elementary area so is has there been

any exploration from staff and in terms of that partnership with school districts

good afternoon valerie osmond deputy director with environmental services thank you for your

questions council member campos we do some work with schools currently we have some

third-party contractors that go in and do some outreach with various schools throughout San

Jose as well as some more targeted presentations upon request we can go make presentations at

schools those are more outreach and education based rather than events but there are some

events at schools not led by the Integrated Waste Management Division that's certainly

something we can explore further yeah given that school districts are one of

the if not the largest landowners in the city it seems to me like a good

opportunity for partnership especially with this grant that we have that's

focusing on zero waste innovation I know that there is a community group I'm not

quite sure if they're a formal nonprofit 501c3, but they've been doing San Jose clothing swaps

on a monthly basis and recently put out a request for space because literally in their

post it says we've had so much success and community members coming out that the limited

space they had is too small.

And they're growing and I think it's a ripe opportunity for thinking about, you know,

what are those underutilized spaces in the city where we can activate

temporarily with these kinds of programs that encourage recycling and promote the

the zero waste lifestyle that we're working to achieve so those were all my

comments thank you

thank you councilmember let's go now to councilman

yeah thank you thanks for the presentation and Valerie as you know we

always like talking trash so I appreciate the report I I want the

comments by councilmember Campos kind of got me thinking a little bit about some

programs that used to exist to help us reuse and recycle a lot of things that

are not traditionally recycled by our systems and I know there's been organ

there used to be organizations like TerraCycle and others that collected

things that are not recyclable in our system but can be used to to make you

know other equipment or or benches or things that are do we are they still

are there still organizations like that that we could partner with to try to help

get people to get things out of the waste stream and into better uses thank

you for your question councilmember Cohen there are still organizations out there that do different

types of collection of source separated materials you mentioned one I can think of a couple of

others we do have residential contracts that give them exclusive our residential contractors

exclusive rights to those materials when they're placed at the curb so I think that therein lies

some of that challenge is we have contracts in place where that's their material essentially

and so I'd say our residential contractors that recycling collectors and sorters do a really good

job of sorting that material and then and then marketing that and getting the highest reuse or

recycling use out of that material after it's collected okay I mean that I mean that's encouraging

if that's the case, I guess some of these materials are things that I know that TerraCycle

used to collect that go into our, that are at least, my understanding is they're still

intended for our garbage stream and not our recycling stream.

Are you saying that even in our garbage stream there are some of these opportunities where

the haulers are taking things out of those streams and trying to sell those as well to

some of these end users?

In the residential garbage stream, we are sorting, and which Megha mentioned earlier, collecting the organic waste for compost.

And then to the extent that there are good recyclables in the garbage stream, we're sorting those out as well.

Okay.

But yes, there still will be material that is not recyclable in our system that somebody like TerraCycle may be able to take and use.

I think we just we run into that challenge of curbside collection where

because they also take some things that would take away from the profitability of our haulers

potentially yes it would be nice to figure out if there's some way we can partner to find other

ways to separate further from our garbage stream and and reduce of what goes to landfill and could

be reusable in other ways I understand that we don't want to hurt the haulers and take things

a way that they can profit from.

But I do think there's still things that are going into the landfill that some of these other providers might make use of.

Yes.

So something for us to think about in the future.

I know that we've done a really good job of improving the cleanliness of our recycling stream for residential pickup.

I know, and I really appreciate all the work that the city's doing in that regard.

I think I will continue to ask this question every time we have this presentation,

but I'm still a little bit confused by our claim that our public garbage collection can be as clean as our residential

when we commingle everything in our public receptacles in parks and in streets.

And I know that we're working right now to get at least some signage on those garbage cans

to make sure people understand they should throw everything in one place.

But given the trend of other cities around the world to have separate receptacles on the streets for different types of materials,

we've told everybody put everything in one container, we'll separate it later.

Do we have an idea of how contaminated that waste stream becomes because of that commingling?

I think that falls into the city facilities side.

So we usually measure residential, commercial, and then city facilities waste diversion.

and city facilities usually does come out a little bit on the higher end it's a lot of our

city hall and all of our city buildings parks and libraries and everything so that waste stream

combined I think that also comes out around 60 about 60 percent 60 maybe low 60s for diversion

which is still really good at city hall we do a little bit more source separation than you'll see

in a public litter can or in a litter can at a park or on a trail, which is single stream.

Everything goes in there. Everything gets sorted. But they are still pulling out organics and

recycling and able to divert that material. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I understand the attempt to

separate. I just wonder, since we've made such a big deal out of telling residents, don't contaminate

your recycling. And then in our public receptacles, we're contaminating our recycling. Yes. And I

would say that in the residential side it's important to keep them separated because in the

recycling cart if we're putting things that are wet with liquids and foods then that contaminates

the good recycling so paper and cardboard products get wet and then therefore are not recyclable

on the public side of things in the city facilities we do have some separation and i think at a park

you're not going to see a lot of excess cardboard and things like that that we're real worried about

food and liquid contamination, but definitely on the residential side.

Because we're not necessarily having the same kinds of recycled materials at our park receptacles

as we would at home.

Correct.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

I'm still curious as to how we can improve that public side process.

And that's where the zero waste element will help us in the future as we start working

towards the RFPs for our future commercial and residential contracts.

That'll give us the opportunity to help kind of guide those decisions moving forward.

And as you know, one of the things I've been also kind of repeating and bringing up is the reduction of the use of materials before we even are dealing with, you know, how we dispose of materials.

And I know we've put in place a lot of policies.

We were on the leading edge at one time in terms of plastic bag band, in terms of styrofoam and some of those.

And I've been curious about how good compliance is on our commercial side for these material bans and making sure that we're enforcing compliance.

I know that there was a backsliding on plastic bags for a while after COVID.

presumably some of the state changes now are going to help us with that but I

think I've suggested an education campaign for our businesses about

disposable things that go into carryout even for our restaurants which have

exemptions for these bans the fact that everybody is still given disposable

forks and knives I know the state did say we shouldn't do that you should have

to ask but are we educate are we educating our businesses on how they can

be part of the solution here by not by default providing everyone with disposable utensils

and other things for everybody who comes and picks things up.

Because I know many of us who pick things up to take home then don't need the disposable

utensils.

We end up taking them out of the bag and throwing them in the garbage, and it's a huge waste.

And so I'm just wondering if we've considered any outreach to try to educate our commercial

sector.

Yes.

So that's AB 1276, I believe, which is the condiments and utensils

and the single-use disposables on demand,

so they're not supposed to be automatically included.

The enforcement on that is really complaint-based.

So to the extent that we receive complaints from the public,

then we follow up with those businesses individually.

And in addition to that, we also have information

that we've sent to businesses.

We have about 10,000 businesses in San Jose that we provide service to,

and so we provide outreach on that information.

We've got that information online as well as the bag ban.

There's some additional bag ban regulations coming from the state that go into effect

in January, which will close the loophole on the single, they are reusable,

but the not recyclable plastic bags that are being distributed under the current regulations.

and then the EPS styrofoam containers as well.

The bags and the styrofoam containers are also complaint-based.

So we do get some complaints that trickle in, and we do some education on that.

We can definitely look at expanding that education.

Yeah, I think just public awareness, I mean, both from the public side to know,

hey, we have these policies, and here's the way you can complain if you see it,

or maybe even to tell the public when you pick things up and you see these things in there

that you don't need, give them back, don't take them.

And then also, you know, that additional public work

with those who sell to let them know that it's,

you know, not only is it good for our environment

and our of our goals, but it's probably also good

for their bottom line because they don't have to provide

everybody with things that aren't, that they don't need.

So I'm just, anyway, something for us to continue

to work on, I appreciate that.

I'll go ahead and move acceptance of the zero waste element report.

Second.

Great.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let's go to Councilmember Kamaya.

Thank you so much.

I want to thank you for the briefing.

I learned a lot, and I just wanted to share a little bit with what I learned, and if my

fellow Councilmembers and the Mayor know about it, great.

But I was really excited about having access to compost.

And so I know that other departments, particularly PRNS, has been sort of like taking advantage

of the compost.

But I understand that this coming year, perhaps we can, you know, expand it a little bit.

I think it's absolutely wonderful.

I think that if you haven't had the opportunity, and I haven't gone, but because I got excited

about integrated waste management, I thought, well, you know, it'd be great to go see how

it all gets separated.

And if you, having gone, especially since we have new members here, it would be a great

sort of informative thing to see how all the separation happens, because it's like magic.

And I just wanted to thank you for that.

I also wanted to sort of connect the educational piece with something that PRNS is doing next

year.

been focusing a lot on SJ 2026 but next year is the 250 year anniversary of our

nation and so PRNS as I understand is going to try to plant as many daffodils

throughout the city and I thought oh compost daffodils getting the schools

involved so we are all in in district 1 and I know that there's a goal and sort

of a soft goal I guess of planting 250,000 daffodils right they're a symbol

of hope they're a symbol that you know kind of keeps on giving every year if

you take care of them so I think between the composting and you know combining

the education it might be something worth doing I have already approached my

youth commissioner for those of you who want to approach approach your youth

commissioner to take this project on I think is going to be a fabulous way to

you know like be able to educate on recycling composting whatever it is that

we would like to set out there and and have it as a goal for 2026 since it will

be our semi-quincentennial of our nation so thank you so much for you know

inspiring some of this thought and i look forward to finding out when we can get compost

thank you councilmember and ditto i see we've got vice mayor foley now go ahead

i just feel like that's a challenge the i i love the idea of planning 250 000

and daffodils around the city.

I think it was Lady Bird actually

who planted them in Washington, D.C.

when her husband was in office

back after Kennedy passed.

So daffodils are a beautiful plant and flower

and they grow, you don't have to do anything with them

once you plant it.

So I think that's a challenge

and maybe I'll take that on in District 9.

I want to bring up something Jordan brought up, and that is the swag that we give out and that we receive.

We are constantly receiving T-shirts, pins, giveaways, and I can't use them.

I don't use them.

I tried to give them to my daughter.

She wasn't interested in them.

I have this whole drawer of pins.

I'm not sure what I'm ever going to do with the pins.

huge waste of material same thing with the t-shirts just a huge huge waste there's not

much I can do with it you can't really recycle the t-shirts in our recycle bins you don't take

clothing so you could take them to the Goodwill and sell them but some may have a message that

you know don't really want to give to the Goodwill but what I would so since the public is watching

this I would encourage you that whenever you come to a council member's office it really isn't

necessary to bring a t-shirt a pin or any type of swag bring yourself and your message that's all we

need to hear I'll leave you with that because this is kind of my pet peeve that we get so much stuff

and as I have a little bit over a year left I'm going through all this stuff and thinking what

the heck am I going to do with all of this stuff? So just to throw it out to the universe to be more

careful about things that are being distributed with your slogan on it that are great, but we may

never use it. It may not ever hit the message that you want it to hit, except that you're creating

more clutter and more misuse of dollars and resources. So I'll just leave it out there.

Thank you Jordan for raising it. Thank you Vice Mayor. All right appreciate the

questions and comments from all colleagues we've got a motion I don't

see any other hands Tony let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously. Great thank you. Okay we're on to item 8.1 Master

easements agreement and site works agreement with Microsoft Corporation and Valley Water for the San

Jose Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility. I believe Vice Mayor you have a recusal. Yes I don't

know if I have a formal statement I'm supposed to make but I do own stock in Microsoft and I will

recuse myself in this vote. Perfect thank you we'll come get you in a little bit. All right and we do

have a brief verbal report from staff as I understand it so we'll we'll start with

that Thank You mayor good afternoon Kevin ice director of real estate assistant to

the city manager in the office of economic development and cultural affairs

I'm joined in the box today by Jen Baker director of OEDCA Cameron day the city

City Attorney's Office, Real Estate Attorney, Senior Deputy City Attorney, and Jeff Provenzano,

Director of Environmental Services.

So this is the first of two items that we're bringing to you regarding land use at the

Regional Wastewater Facility, or RWF.

And this item concerns agreements with Microsoft for easements and site works on regional wastewater

facility land in support of their data center project to the east of the RWF.

You can see Microsoft's property shown here in green.

And this slide shows the easements that Microsoft requires, including for ingress and egress

and below ground utilities such as potable water lines, recycled water, sanitary sewer,

fire water, and storm drains in addition to temporary staging.

Microsoft will pay the RWF full fair market value for these easements, which is $9.27 million.

City staff have worked with Microsoft to place these easements in a manner that is most helpful

for our future development in the plant's economic development lands,

which is the topic of our next agenda item.

We've also preserved maximum flexibility on behalf of the plant,

so our future developer won't be blocked by any of the infrastructure

and can rearrange things as needed, provided we preserve service to Microsoft.

The infrastructure will be private and maintained by Microsoft until such time

as our developer on our lands chooses to tie into it,

at which point it would be publicly dedicated.

and this will offset city maintenance costs in the meantime.

Microsoft will also perform various other actions,

including relocation of the Valley Water Purified Water Visitor Center,

construction of a parking lot for the visitor center,

and installing a traffic light at the intersection of McCarthy and Zinker Road.

We presented these actions to TPAC, who recommend approval,

the Treatment Plant Advisory Committee.

and with that we just wanted to provide a brief overview of this action and

staff are available for any questions great thank you Kevin Tony do we have

public comment yes Alina come on down

good afternoon council mayor so my I understand this project was approved a

while back and as we've seen just seen from the diagrams and the upcoming 8.2

it seems that these projects are very intimately connected and so I'm

wondering if there's been any studies of these projects cumulatively and if this

Microsoft data center is a hyperscaler a generative AI data center have we had

community engagement on this and have we had any study sessions on the public

health impacts that we've been seeing across the nation in terms of the news on hyperscale

data centers. Additionally, I know that we typically call these empty plots of land next

to water and wastewater treatment underdeveloped, but I actually had a career in water and wastewater

treatment for about six years. And the reason we do keep underdeveloped land around the

water treatment facilities is when we're upgrading and when we are expanding our water treatment

system we can't just shut down the ones that we have we have to build concurrently and so we keep

space around so that we can build and expand as time is needed and as we're seeing like micro

plastics in the water droughts i think water infrastructure is going to be a growing importance

and so how do we plan for the future as we are allocating these parcels of land out to private

companies how do we keep control so that we can continue to plan for our future resilience

and our water security thank you

back to council great thank you uh jeff just as we turn to council questions and comments do you

want to share a little bit about some of the issues that were raised and just the uh the space needed

for the plant maybe the recent investment in the the overflow site and just kind of how how you

think about the use of the space there for the wastewater treatment facility and then if there

there any comments on environmental impacts would love to hear those too

sure I'm a high level here then on the environmental impacts it's kind of

mentioned this project has gone through Planning Commission and Council several

years ago this is just the the they're in the construction phase and the easements

needed to kind of get there so when we look at plant lands that is most of that

all of it is correct the city of San Jose and Santa Clara initially bought

this land all around the wastewater treatment plant for two purposes. One for buffer lands,

we're generally usually pretty odorous on the wastewater side, and so one is to kind of give a

buffer between us and development so that our odors aren't causing a nuisance in general public,

and the other is for expansion purposes. In our in our plant master plan that we did in 2014

timeframe, sorry, 2010 timeframe. This, the Microsoft property, which is not ours, was

not included in that, but in the next item, 8.2, and just in all general lands around

there, there was areas that were set aside for economic development, other areas as buffer

for the wastewater treatment plant, and then we have future expansion areas to the north,

northeast of the project too. So we are looking at all the lands that we have in control around

the area for our uses now and into the future. Great. Great. I appreciate it. I know there's

a lot of history and probably a much longer item we could have on this. I just think given

how we have another item coming up and how much data centers and AI are in the news,

it's just helpful to provide context. Maybe we'll get into more of that in the next item. But

let me, this is a narrower question on this item for a data center that's under construction. Let

we turn to Councillor Cullen, his district.

Yeah, I just want to thank you for working with Microsoft on figuring out how they're

going to deal with all the utilities and things they need on their site.

It's also a revenue opportunity for our wastewater treatment plant and our city to be able to

get the revenue from them to lease these easements from us.

I—well, this item isn't really related to land use because it's really just about

easements for utility lines just just to follow up on that where you know

there's a there I do want to make sure it's clear that staff is making sure

that we still are saving enough lands for future expansion of water

purification and we're also freeing up many acres from our drying beds that

will actually become more more space available next to the wastewater treatment

plant in the future for any but for many potential uses of which recreation I'm

hoping will be one major one but that's a topic for future discussion but

But I'm going to move ahead and move this item.

As people might know, if you've driven by, Microsoft's already under construction on

their site.

While there's a lot of debate over whether data centers are the best use of land from

an environmental standpoint, they certainly are good from a revenue standpoint.

We know that.

But as I will point out, data centers will be built somewhere.

I really do think it's important that we build them here where we have much higher standards

and much better partners in terms of doing things with the minimum water use,

with clean energy sources, because when they're built in Arizona, Virginia,

Oklahoma, and all the places where they're building otherwise, they're not built that way.

So we have to also keep in mind the overall picture of the fact that data center growth

is inevitable and it's important for us to be a leader in doing it right.

so anyway I'll make a motion for this item yeah well said I appreciate that

point we've got a motion a second let's keep moving I don't see any other hands

Tony let's vote

motion passes unanimously okay thank you all for the presentation run to item 8.2

this is the request for and councilor tordeos would you mind grabbing the vice

mayor we're back there thank you item 8.2 this is the request for qualification

selection of developer and backup developer for 159 acres at the San

Jose Santa Clara regional wastewater facility we have a slightly more robust

staff presentation on this item and then we'll hear from a rep from the awardee

or the proposal that's been selected as the primary choice and then we'll go to public comment

thank you mayor manuel pineta deputy city manager a pleasure to be here today to present to you

regarding the rfq developer selection for the rwf facility i was going to do an introduction

but the front row has already introduced themselves as part of the last item.

So we'll note that Debbie Kern from Kansas and Marksons is in the audience as well,

one of our consultants.

I want to thank also two members of the selection team,

Rosalind Huey from the city manager's office, of course,

and Lawrence Tam, a principal engineer from the city of Santa Clara.

And also, as somebody observing was Madeline Silva from PG&E,

power such as who could component of this project.

PG&E joined us as part of that process.

And of course, last but not least is Lucy Armantrout, who's up in the audience somewhere.

I see her waving.

She was our project manager on this.

And two key notes, as you look at this group that we have here, she was able to keep us

in check to get us through the process, but not only keep us in check and get us through

the process, but actually be here in front of you early.

We initially had a schedule to be here in December.

We're here in November, so we're ahead of schedule as part of the project.

I do want to note just a couple of notes that part of the reason we wanted to finish this

early as well is because we're all very excited about this incredible opportunity.

This is a very unique opportunity not just in the Bay Area but also in California.

We have here 159 acres and we have a 250 megawatt commitment from PG&E to the city.

In addition we're also looking for opportunities to get additional power to that site so we

can realize the full vision of it. As part of a previous item, I mentioned that San Jose

is open for business, and projects like this is what's going to allow us to stay the hub

of innovation as we move forward. So with that, today you're going to have a number

of recommended actions in front of you, selecting Prologis as a preferred developer, selecting

Catalyst DEC as the backup developer, and then authorizing the city manager to negotiate

and execute an inclusive negotiation agreement. And with that, I'll pass it over to Kevin,

We'll go to the details of the presentation.

Thank you, Manuel.

Hello again.

Kevin Ice, director of real estate, assistant to the city manager.

So running through the background of this development opportunity,

the 159 acres is owned by the regional wastewater facility or RWF,

which is co-owned by the cities of Santa Clara and San Jose.

And San Jose staff are representing the RWF in this process as the administrating agency.

The 159 acres are part of the RWF's buffer lands.

And the plant purchased these lands in 1998 to prevent odor sensitive uses

from being constructed because odor complaints are a regulatory issue.

The RWF completed a master plan in 2013 which was certified through CEQA

and which identified industrial uses on the buffer lands.

It also set aside 40 acres as recreation lands and 180 acres for burrowing owl habitat,

which was later protected in a conservation easement and increased to 201 acres through a

private donation. This land requires infrastructure investment to develop. While there's lots of

infrastructure underground, it's not actively serving the site. For example, the property's

sanitary sewer cannot tie into the six-foot force main that traverses the property and supplies the

the RWF. However, there are positive variables that signal this is an optimal time to advance

development on the property. The current real estate market pays a premium for the types

of industrial uses that are served with sufficient power, and there is 250 megawatts available

from current supply dedicated to the property. CBRE research shows the San Jose industrial

market is outperforming other regions with an industrial vacancy rate of 4.1 percent,

which is the lowest of 18 major Western U.S. markets tracked in their research, and below

the Western average of 7.4 percent and the national average of 6.6 percent.

By capitalizing on this opportunity, we will maximize ground lease rents that will go to

the regional wastewater facility and benefit rate payers.

This figure shows the 2013 Plant Master Plan land use diagram.

The 159 acres are shown at the bottom of the figure adjacent to Highway 237.

Calls for office R&D, light industrial, combined commercial industrial and retail uses.

The EIR for the Master Plan analyzed this range of uses and we expect that a new land

use proposal consistent with the highest and best use of the property will need to be analyzed

again under CEQA.

Now, a short background on the RFQ process that we're concluding.

This was a request for qualifications of a developer and not a call for development proposals,

meaning the submittals that we received are conceptual only and details of the ultimate

land use will need to be determined and a corresponding CEQA process completed.

We began this RFQ process by running a request for qualifications to secure a planning and

development consultant where we selected Kaiser Marston to advise and help define our solicitation.

We issued the developer solicitation in May of this year and received three qualified

responses from interested developers, Trammell Crow, Catelus Deca, and Prologis.

The panel that reviewed these responses included staff from the cities of San Jose and Santa

Clara.

The panel invited Prologis and Catelus DECA to make oral presentations and selected Prologis

as the first choice developer and Catelus DECA as the backup.

The panel issued a notice of intended award and the protest period passed without a challenge

being made.

On November 13, the Treatment Plant Advisory Committee, or TPAC, heard the panel's decision

and unanimously approved their support for staff's recommendation today.

Now, to run through the submittals, very briefly, Trammell Crow included predominantly warehouse

space in addition to some office and retail spaces.

Cattellus Decus included the bulk of space in a flex designation that could be warehouses,

data centers, or business park.

The Prologis submittal split the concept between data centers on the west side of Zanker and

advanced manufacturing on the east. It included an appropriate layout that works for California's

regulatory structure to develop data centers with four data center buildings on four separate

parcels, each served by a separate substation and four advanced manufacturing buildings

on one parcel served by a single substation. Prologis is headquartered in San Francisco

and has a global portfolio of 1.3 billion square feet of building space and $215 billion in

assets under management. Prologis is capable and prepared to self-finance 100% of the infrastructure

and development costs, and the submittal included a simple ground lease structure with a reasonable

rate of return for the developer. So this figure is showing the Prologis concept. Again,

this is illustrative only and subject to change as a project is designed and analyzed under

CEQA. This shows approximately 1.6 million square feet of data centers and 785,000 square

feet of advanced manufacturing space. These are the highest and best uses that will deliver

the best return to the regional wastewater facility under the ground lease. And now to

expand on why Prologis stood out to the panel as the winning respondent, I'll pass it to

Manuel to discuss the approach to data center development.

Yeah, I think it's very important to note that the design is just for illustrative purposes.

It clearly showed a really detailed and forward approach to data center development in California.

The fact that the buildings were sized to really maximize the flexibility and take advantage

of California rules and regulations as it relates to data centers.

We also had each data center in each own parcel of land with its individual substation, which

gives you a lot of flexibility with what ultimately you might want to do and who you might serve

with through those data centers.

Working with the land use plan that was proposed, there was a clear path to maximizing the 250

megawatts that have been committed by PG&E as part of the San Jose PG&E agreement, but

also based on the way it was laid out and proposed as a concept, also showed a path

forward to also maximize future power use as part of it.

So that was really a winning concept as we're looking at maximizing near-term and long-term

development when it relates to data center in the RWF property.

Okay, so proper utilization of the available power drives the highest and best use that

will result in the greatest lease payments to the RWF, benefiting ratepayers, but also

the greatest tax benefits to the city of San Jose.

estimate estimate generation of 12 million in utility taxes from data

centers in phase one and 24 million after full build-out including the

advanced manufacturing at full build out we estimate 27 million total in utility

taxes annually to the general fund the city share of property taxes levied on

public lands as possessory interest taxes through the county increases our

estimated tax revenue to greater than 30 million annually at full build-out.

For next steps, if Council approves staff's recommendation, the City Manager will be

authorized to negotiate and execute an exclusive negotiating agreement or ENA.

Staff have not negotiated with Prologis and this process will begin after we enter into

the ENA.

Santa Clara City Council will hear the panel's recommendation on December 16 for Santa Clara

to sign on to the ENA as well.

The ENA will allow us to open negotiations with the backup developer if our terms are

not being met.

The ENA will run for a period of two years with three one-year extensions at our discretion

so we can keep the process going provided we're satisfied with the progress being made.

Under the ENA, the developer will design the land use, infrastructure, phasing, and financing

plans and run the project through SQL review.

Based on this, we'll negotiate terms of a ground lease.

After SQL review is completed, we'll return to council for authorization to enter into

the ground lease.

And finally, we want to call out key considerations that we know our developer will need to address

during the project design. First, we want to see robust outreach to the Alvizo

community to understand its perspective and gain their input. We're also looking

to the future of the 40 acres called out in the Plantmaster Plan for Recreation

or other parklands. The burrowing owl habitat adjacent to these lands is

important and we want to see collaboration with stakeholders like the

Santa Clara Valley Habitat Agency and the Open Space Authority and incorporation

of wildlife friendly development standards.

We want to see engagement with the labor community

and I'm confident that Prologis understands

that this is an expectation on them.

And finally, a project of this scale provides an opportunity

for San Jose to be on the leading edge

of sustainable development.

With data centers, it's important that there are measures taken

to mitigate consumption of power and water and a development

of this scale affords an opportunity to innovate.

with the availability of recycled water which is produced near the property and

San Jose clean power these are great resources to offset the environmental

impact of this development and with that staff are available for any questions

great thank you all for the presentation we are now going to hear from a

representative from Prologis who will have up to five minutes yes

Ali. I want to invite Ali down to present whatever we'd like to present and then we'll go to public comment.

Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members, and staff. My name is Ali Herandi with

Prologis, a local investment officer here. I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today

and to express our appreciation for the thoughtful work that's gone into getting us to this point.

We're very grateful for the unprecedented partnership between the city and PG&E, which

also has brought this opportunity to life.

We're thrilled to enter into exclusive negotiations with the City of San Jose and other stakeholders

on what we see as a transformational project for the region.

Together we're looking at more than 150 acres with the potential to anchor advanced manufacturing,

digital infrastructure, and data center development, creating a new hub of innovation and economic

vitality here in San Jose. As a company with deep roots in the Bay Area, Prologis considers

itself part of the fabric of Silicon Valley. We're proud to be a local partner that understands

this market and the city's vision for sustainable, inclusive growth. We bring the resources,

relationships, and experience needed to deliver on that vision. Prologis has a long record

of working with cities and the building trades to deliver complex projects responsibly. Across

Across the state, we've partnered with labor to create quality union jobs, uphold high

safety standards, and deliver lasting community benefits.

That same approach will guide us here in San Jose.

We also recognize the importance of environmental stewardship in every phase of development,

and we're committed to advancing the city's climate and sustainability goals.

In closing, I really want to thank council and staff for their leadership and vision.

This is an exciting moment for the city, an exciting moment for Prologis, and we're eager

to move forward collaboratively and with purpose.

Together we can deliver a project that sets a new standard for what responsible development

looks like here in Silicon Valley.

Thank you again, and we look forward to hitting the ground running in short order.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Tony, let's go to public comment.

Yes, when I call your name, please come down.

You can speak in any order.

McGovern, Will Smith, Danny Mangan, and Doug Block to start.

It could be black, but it looks like block.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Jack McGovern, and I'm with the South Bay Labor Council.

This development represents one of San Jose's most significant opportunities to advance

good jobs, economic growth, and community-driven development.

We know the project can ensure that redevelopment of public land delivers high-quality construction

careers and economic mobility for our local residents.

This is a great opportunity for the City, and we support the Cendejas and Cohen Memo recommendations.

We strongly urge the Council to approve the project and require good union construction

jobs and pathways for local and economically disadvantaged workers.

As the owner of the land, the City has the authority to direct staff and Prologis to

begin discussions promptly with labor stakeholders to ensure the best community benefits and

job standards for residents and workers in San Jose.

Thank you for supporting responsible development in Silicon Valley.

Thank you, next speaker.

Alina and Waskar come on down. Good afternoon Mayor Mayhem, members of the

council. I appreciate the opportunity this evening. My name is Will Smith. I'm a

business agent with IBEW Local 332. I proudly represent over 3,500 electrical

workers right here in Santa Clara County. Many of them work right here in the

great city of San Jose. Speaking in favor of moving forward this project with Prologis.

Prologis has been an excellent partner not only here in our in our county and in our

wonderful city but in northern California in general. They've been partnering with

unions and and the labor throughout the Bay Area on their several projects. Obviously as

As the staff had mentioned, the opportunity and the revenue that this project can generate

for the city is going to be immense.

And so with the labor standards and the labor practices that Prologis has exhibited in the

past, I know without a shadow of a doubt that they're going to continue those fine practices

and develop responsibly right here in the good city of San Jose.

urge you guys to move forward with council member cohenz and council member dominguez uh memo and

thank you for the opportunity today thank you thank you next speaker

all right good afternoon mayor council members my name is danny megan i'm a union representative

for Sprinkler Fitters Local 483.

My local is an affiliate of the Santa Clara County Building Trades

and also part of the MEPSI group in the area.

Our unions have had a longstanding regional agreement with Prologis,

and we built industrial facilities all throughout the Bay Area,

including right here in San Jose.

And, you know, I'm also proud to say that we, you know, we're building all the major

data centers in the area under project labor agreements.

And, you know, that ensures that these large complex projects are being done safely, efficiently,

and also utilizing highly skilled and trained and local workforce.

And this project deserves the same standards.

And so it should be built union and our members are ready to work on it and build this project.

I also just want to highlight our apprenticeship program and our pre-apprenticeship program.

Just for offering avenues for San Jose residents to obtain a career in construction and earn good union wages and benefits.

and uh lastly i just want to thank uh council members kundalas and cohen for their uh for

their memo and i strongly support the memo uh for highlighting the uh the importance of strong labor

standards on a on a project of this scale so uh thank you for your time appreciate it thank you

next speaker good afternoon mayor and council my name is doug block and i'm with the silicon valley

MEPS which includes the last two speakers and also UA Local 393 and Sheet Metal Workers Local 104

and together we are the largest affiliates of the Santa Clara and San Benito County Building Trades

Councils and I'm happy to report that the MEPS have a regional agreement I think which has been

mentioned with Prologis and we're bringing that to this project I also

personally helped to negotiate what I believe was the first project labor

agreement and community benefits agreement that Prologis ever agreed to

back in 2012 in the city of Oakland which was historic on a very large city

owned parcel for a massive development project just like this and that project brought a lot

of very good paying union construction jobs to workers in the area and people that we cared about

just like this project is going to do if it gets approved

Last thing I want to say is to thank the council members for their memos

Councilmember Cohen councilmember Ken Dellis and everybody that signed on to those memos

We all have willing partners here and we appreciate your partnership as well

And we ask for your support for this item and thank you staff for selecting prologis

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Also, Oscar, come on down, and Jordan.

Hello again.

So I have seen that this is providing jobs, and I do understand that.

In regards to the proposals, I think that there was only three proposals submitted,

even though according to the mayor, hyperscalers are scouring the world

for land and power, yet we only received three proposals.

Additionally, Prologis has never completed a construction project

of this hyperscale data center, of this scale.

They only have, at least on the public record,

130 megawatt conversion of an old building into a hyperscale data center.

And like Councilmember Cohen was saying about this being modern

and it's going to be different here,

what I'd like to see an explicit discussion and details on how and why

and how we're going to hold them accountable.

And so in terms of how is this going to be sustainable, what is the energy source

and what is the transparency between clean and fossil fuel electricity?

Before approval, is the developer going to close the expected energy mix that they will consume?

Will there be full disclosure on water cooling, evaporative cooling,

liquid to air systems cooling, and what about drought years?

Additionally, does PG&E carry any liability for this disruption

of if there was a large load customer to drop off.

For example, in the implementation agreement,

it states that initial service may require customer action

during transmission contingencies

if there are stresses on the grid.

So to me, that sounds unstable.

And how are we addressing, you know, these instabilities

and how are we going to address community concerns?

I know that there's a lot of talk about revenue and tax dollars,

but there should also be equal concern for the future of present and future generations and the sustainability of our environment and

I know that

Tordios you campaigned really aggressively on PG&E with your opponent and so I'm very

Thank you next speaker

I'm Dashiell leads Linda Hutchins Knowles and Kenneth come on down

Good afternoon Mayor and Council. Huascar Castro Working Partnerships. I'd like to

express support for all the memos that have been laid out into this item and really would like to

highlight the memo the single signer that was put forth by Councilmember Cohen which intentionally

lays the path to begin these conversations around community benefits and development agreement.

Public land use initiatives warrant conversations and negotiations that are rooted in moving good

jobs forward and community benefits. As previously mentioned, we've seen this developer do a similar

agreement in the city of Oakland, which really resulted in moving a project forward and creating

good jobs and other really big economic mobility opportunities. So we really look forward to

setting forth that process where this project can continue to move forward and the developer

begins to engage with our partners in labor. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Jordan Muldow, District 3.

First of all, I thought all the points that Alina made were really good, so I urge you

to consider all the points made by Alina.

To the extent that I assume that this action is going to be approved today, I think it

does make sense to approve the three memos in addition to whatever the stack representation

is.

I do think that the memos seemed a little weak to me.

was a lot of like well we recommend you consider the owl habitat and we recommend that you

consider San Jose clean energy.

I feel like this is a big project and it makes sense to be a little more I guess make those

less recommendations and more requirements.

I think we want to make sure that the owl habitat is protected and we want to make sure

that our water resources are protected and that clean energy is used.

Some of my concerns about building data centers, specifically in Alviso, you know, this is

a sensitive habitat.

These are future or present floodplains that might be underwater as sea levels continue

to rise.

And when floods happen, we do need empty spaces where the floodwaters can drain to as opposed

to flooding our businesses and our homes.

I'm concerned about, you know, as much as we say, well, we'll invest in San Jose clean

energy, there's only a finite amount of clean energy.

And with the current federal landscape around the EPA and tariffs, I'm concerned it might

be incredibly difficult to increase the amount of clean energy at the rate we need for these

hyperscaler data centers.

And if we're not able to do that because of federal regulations, then we're going to see

more dirty energy replace it.

And so I'm concerned about that.

And to the extent that we build data centers,

there's lots of underutilized land in North San Jose

outside of Alviso.

And I'd prefer to see us use those kinds of lands.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Afternoon, mayor and council members.

Thank you for giving me the time to speak today.

My name is Oscar Masariegos.

I'm a carpenter.

I'm a representative with the Carpenters Union,

representing about 3,500 members here in Santa Clara

County, more specific about the 2,000 members in the city of San Jose.

I want to start off by thanking Councilmember Cohen for your memo.

Also, I want to thank Councilmembers Candelas, Ortiz, and Campos for your memos and encourage

the inclusion of the NorCal Carpenters Unions to the memorandum.

And I did want to ask to please, if this project goes to PLA or workforce, to please include

the NorCal Carpenters Union into the negotiations as we're our own entity separate from the

building trades.

So I did have this whole other speech kind of prepared and whatnot, but I don't think I'm gonna have time for all that.

So more than anything, just want to encourage labor standards and this project.

That's mostly everybody sitting here talking about.

And yeah, this project is going to be great.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Also, I have called all of the cards.

So if you submitted a card and did not hear your name, now's the time to line up.

Good evening, Mayor.

Council member my name is Kenneth Doe I've been a lifelong San Jose residents

for over 45 years I work for the NorCal Carpenters Union and I represent local

405 and 9144 between those two locals we have anywhere between six to seven

thousand members majority of those members live here in Santa Clara County

I believe this project will be a great asset to San Jose being a San Jose

resident. San Jose has always been the city of innovation, right? So this project will continue

to move it forward. We just kindly ask that Prologis commit to using labor standard. I mean,

we're just talking about livable wages, health care, apprenticeship program. You know, those

kind of jobs create careers. You know, not everyone has the means to go to college, right?

Prologis, they probably control 3% of the world's GDP.

So they got trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars

running through their business.

So they have the means to do the right thing.

We're just looking for the opportunity to work with them.

And yeah, thank you for your time

and the opportunity to speak.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello Mayor Mahan and Council. I'm Dashiell Leeds, Conservation Coordinator with the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter and a San Jose resident.

I've heard lots of talk of opportunity today, but where is the discussion of risk?

We are asking you not to proceed with this resolution, which will lead to data centers and advanced manufacturing consuming 159 acres of open space.

These lands by the bay are important to preserve and protect burrowing owl habitat, wetlands and vernal pools,

and to provide resilience from sea level rise and for disadvantaged communities in Alviso.

In March, we sent a joint letter with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance, Mothers Out Front,

and Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action.

In that letter, we identified multiple policies in the 2013 plant master plan that are contradicted

by the item being discussed today, such as policy 6-31 that states that land uses that

propose permanent buildings or hardscape should be discouraged.

Buildings, such as data centers, which are already driving major climate and air quality

problems, water consumption issues, noise pollution. In San Jose, we've seen new gas-fired power

generation and diesel backup tied to data center projects. And AI scaling is hitting a wall. It

takes an increasing amount of compute to achieve diminishing returns in AI model accuracy. And

these data centers are already hemorrhaging money. The industry wants to build an exponential amount

of data centers to achieve smaller and smaller improvements to their models. So is this really

a safe, long-term industry to be investing in? It's no wonder that AI proponents like Ilya Stutzkiver

and Sam Altman have made public statements imagining the surface of the earth largely

covered with data centers. Is this the vision of the future that San Jose shares? San Jose

shouldn't sacrifice its open space, habitat, water, climate resilience, and vulnerable communities

to bet on a risky and harmful industry. There's been a lot of talk about opportunity today,

but what if this is a hazard?

Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mahan, Vice Mayor Foley, and council members.

My name is Linda Hutchins-Knowles.

I'm the co-founder and team coordinator of Mothers Out Front Silicon Valley

and a District 9 resident.

I'm speaking today in opposition to this plan.

I feel that it is a risk to our community, as the previous speaker mentioned,

and especially to our climate resilience.

Recently Mothers Out Front Silicon Valley participated with the city and SPUR on a public input session on the climate adaptation and resilience plan, the CARP.

And that is a really great thing that the city is working on.

This land, the best use of this land is for absorption of sea level rise and floodwaters from the Coyote Creek.

It is not a place to put hardscapes.

You are going to be stealing from our future resilience by allowing a data center to be put there.

It's the worst possible place for a data center.

Also, as previous speakers mentioned, there are enormous energy and water costs, and I

appreciate the memo from, sorry, I just lost my notes, from I think it was Campos and Candelas,

and I'm sorry, two others.

Here we go.

Ortiz and Casey about environmental safeguards.

That is really important, and if you are going to go ahead and approve this, which I really

hope you won't, but it looks like that's where it's going, please make that stronger.

Number one, the energy should be renewable, clean energy.

You should prohibit the use of gas powered fuel cells to back up the data center because

that is with hydrogen that is produced with gas methane.

And second, potable water is better than using, I'm sorry, reclaimed water is better than

potable water, but the scale of the water you're talking about, hyperscalers, our water

system was built for daily use.

It was not built for this.

are putting at risk our water resilience and it's in a city that's at risk of drought and finally

the then the harm to the community this is located in a low-income community that it's really harmful

to put in more industrial pollution in that community so I hope that you will vote no

thank you that's your time back to council

all right thank you Tony thank you to all of our public speakers

representing a diversity of views I appreciate that I wanted to say a few

words on the project and give a little bit of context and then I'll I'll turn

to colleagues starting with councilmember Cohen you know first I want

to thank our city team say manager McGuire Manuel Pineda the environmental

services department our real estate team external partners including PG&E and the

City of Santa Clara and of course the members of the TPAC board for years of

planning and coordination that got us to this point this is not a there's not a

new idea this is something that has actually been planned for for years and

I'll talk a little bit about the specific opportunity but I do I just want

to note on a couple of the questions that came up I think it's fair to raise

the questions and have concerns there's a lot of discussion about this massive

build out of data centers that we're going through another technological

revolution reminds me a little bit of growing up in the late 80s and through

the 90s as kind of the internet was emerging and there was a lot of change

and disruption and dislocation this one's a little more energy intensive and in

some ways but we have so it's it's right to ask the question about power water

job displacement and there are things we can do to do it better to mitigate I

think Councillor Cohen made one of the most important points on the last item

which is we sometimes in striving to live up to our values say no and end up

just pushing investment to other places that are less innovative and have lower

standards I think we've effectively not intentionally but at times we've done

that with housing where we're paving over fertile farmland and other places

for low-density housing that's putting people in their cars two hours each way

And so I think we often kind of push, it's not that the investment and the innovation

and the change doesn't happen, the question is will we shape it and mold it and facilitate

it here and set a new standard or will we more or less say no and push it out.

One bit of context that's important for everyone to know on the PowerPoint is that in many

other parts of the country, because they have no capacity, they're having to scramble to

find new resources, build out new infrastructure from scratch, and there are cost pressures

in some areas. The picture is very mixed. In some areas it's reducing costs, in some

areas it's increasing costs. We're in a very unique and fortunate position in San

Jose and we can take no credit for it but Kaiso years ago decided to authorize

significant new transmission capacity to the city. A thousand megawatts coming in

at the wastewater facility, the RWF, and a thousand megawatts from the south. That

That represents a tripling of the capacity.

Now, we could say, no, we don't want it.

Don't invest and build here.

We'll just let it go to Santa Clara as it's done.

And I will remind colleagues and the public that over the last decade, the city of Santa Clara and the city of Sunnyvale,

each closer to a tenth of our size, significantly smaller cities,

each individually facilitated more construction of new commercial industrial space than the city of San Jose.

So we have not generally positioned ourselves well to compete for investment in dollars and good high-paying jobs and tax base

It's worth noting. I'm glad we stole Manuel back and brought him back to see of San Jose, but when he was over there

He and others helped them build

Help private investors build dozens of data centers and there's a reason that the city of Santa Clara

has about a third higher tax revenue per resident and

therefore about a third higher staffing and

and quality of services in all departments, public safety, libraries, roads, parks, etc.

So the power is there and it's being built as we speak.

Now it's up to us if we want to use it or have it just flow to the rest of Silicon Valley,

but the power is there.

In fact, PG&E's estimate is for every additional gigawatt on the grid here in Silicon Valley,

because those lines are already coming in,

we're actually in a position to reduce the per unit cost of power,

in fact, reduce rates by about a percent or two per gigawatt of new load.

Because the infrastructure is there and it's being built and the power is being built out,

the capacity is being contracted.

So if you have more large load users, you spread the cost of that across more people,

which brings down the unit cost for all of us.

So we're in a different position than, say, Wisconsin or Minnesota

or many other parts of the country.

So I just want to note that.

On Prologis and their experience and whether or not this is the highest and best use

and the best applicant.

I would say having looked at the three finalists,

not only three submissions, but the three finalists.

In fact, this went out to 19,000 potential,

as I read in the staff memo.

There was a lot of interest in conversations,

but of the three finalists,

I do think this is the highest and best use.

And Prologis is, it's just worth noting,

headquartered in San Francisco,

largest property owner in the United States,

largest commercial and industrial property owner

in the world, developer.

owner in the world number one contributor to the tax base in the state of

California so we're not talking about a partner without a track record in fact

part of what's appealing about this application is a commitment to not ask

for any subsidies and to in fact 100% finance it and not ask us to help them

do it they're in a position to follow through in a way that I know this

council has had a lot of experience with the disappointment of seeing beautiful

renderings approving projects and we asked five years later what happened

Well, it didn't get financing.

So if anybody's going to deliver on this project, it would be prologis.

And then on the tax-based point, and I don't think tax-based is the be-all, end-all, but it's important.

We want to create jobs.

We want the innovation economy to stay here.

Cities are never stagnant.

They're either growing and evolving and attracting new investment and continuing to grow and change,

or they're stagnating, declining, and ultimately we're losing.

And it's hard to pay off debt, and things get worse.

So I'd rather be a city that is growing.

In this case, this project on land that is not suitable for residential, hotel, or retail

because of the location and the odors.

You can't put housing here, just to be clear.

This is a project that once fully built out will generate over $30 million a year just for the city,

millions more for school districts, the county, the state.

So we're talking about tens of millions of dollars of revenue.

And to me, one of the things I was looking for and I was pleased to see in this proposal

was not just data centers, but a commitment to also invest in a more balanced campus that

offered the possibility of advanced manufacturing.

Because San Jose is also unique to be a city where we are what made in America looks like

in the 21st century.

17% of our jobs are in manufacturing still.

Of the big cities in the country, very few that come even close to that ratio.

So we still make stuff.

And the great thing about making things is those are good, high-paying jobs.

And so the advanced manufacturing component of this, I think, is really special

and something where we want to continue to have an edge in hardware and making things.

So I think there's a lot to like about the project.

I do think it's important that we continue to use San Jose Clean Energy to push the envelope on the highest mix of renewable

because we have some control here over how it's powered.

That's important.

I do think tapping into and using this as a way to facilitate demand for recycled water and actually expand that infrastructure.

Again, if you're not growing, then there's no way to expand and do more purified and recycled water because there's no investment.

So that's a great opportunity.

The tax base is a great opportunity.

On the point about labor, I appreciate colleagues' memos.

I will admit, you know, given Prologis' regional agreement with labor and long track record,

I figured that was kind of baked in.

But given that there could be a fallback to a second if things didn't work out in the

exclusive negotiating agreement, and just to make clear what our values are, I think

it makes sense, and I'll support the memos as long as they provide enough flexibility

for that negotiating period and opportunity to kind of work through that as we do with

other projects.

overall I just I think this is a site that is gonna either continue to sit on

paper colored in as economic development but sit as an empty field and do

nothing for the community for the tax base for our ability to deliver services

by the way it also pays rent to waste waste for our treatment facility which

means a lower pressure on rates for the treatment facility as well so anyway I

I think there's a lot to like here.

It doesn't mean we as a council should not continue to talk about how do we have the cleanest energy,

the cleanest, most efficient use of water, ensure the highest labor and environmental standards,

and make sure that we're preparing our workforce for this future that will be more automated.

And I think we do better by having growth and investment and capacity to provide better services

than kind of pushing it elsewhere and hoping for the best.

So I'll be supporting the staff recommendation, but I want to turn to someone who I know has

also followed data centers and advanced manufacturing.

And it seems like everything's going on up in D4 these days.

So Council Member Cohen, I'll turn to you.

Thank you.

And before I start my comments, I'm going to ask if you can, whoever, the controller

of the slides, get the, put the map back up so I can reference it a little bit later in

my remarks.

I think that's a good question.

I think that's a good question.

I think that's a good question.

I was going to say it's exciting time in District 4.

I've been trying to count the number of large construction sites

in the district right now.

I believe there's eight sites with active large-scale construction,

four of which are multifamily residential.

Three are manufacturing R&D data center sites.

We have Second Harvest headquarters.

So we have a lot of exciting things happening in District 4.

of construction not including this because this isn't within a year or two of construction.

I think it's an important point to start by saying this is the first step of several that

needs to happen and this is a qualification of an exclusive partner to start to master

plan a site which would still require coming back to council for a development agreement

in the future probably I would imagine at least a couple years away before that would

get to that stage and then have more detail at that time of what the project entails,

what agreements are in place, and more details of design.

And to the points of some of the comments before, if in fact data centers no longer are the

highest best use, there's no data center being put in the ground in the next year or two.

And in two or three years, we should actually know better about the demand and needs on

the types of use on the site.

So I think that's important.

I wanted to actually, maybe you don't have a map in here that is larger of the, more of the regional.

Okay.

There you go.

Okay, so I just wanted to just kind of point out kind of larger overall land use in the region.

The property that we're just dealing with is the property that fronts 237, Highway 237, and Zanker Road,

the area at the very bottom of this image that in this case was mentioned light industrial, office, R&D, retail.

There was a number of foreseen potential uses for this site.

That's been in the general plan for a long time.

200 acres to the west of owl habitat, clearly important to preserve.

another 40 acres of some areas of plant buffer which is empty land buffered next

to the plant plus another 40 acres of what's called here recreation space I do

I've raised this concern I don't necessarily know that we want to call it

recreation space but probably call it open space because I don't expect there

to be a park necessarily built or city investment in recreational opportunity

although our group memo does call out the idea that given the owl habitat next

door, we might want the Habitat Agency or Open Space Authority to potentially put in

some kinds of trails or other kinds of interpretive areas to help people understand the owl habitat

and maybe make it a destination a little bit on that land.

On the upper part of this image, though, north of the Advanced Regional Water Purification

center, there's a green space east of Zanker Road that is

or actually east of that, that is the

current drying beds on, I don't forget how many acres it is, you can

probably tell me how many acres the drying beds are. There's about 800 acres.

800 acres of drying bed land, which is currently not high

best use or open space, it's currently very wasteful drying beds

but because of the

facility that's being built next to the water treatment plant right now to do

to why am I drawing a blank on the term but anyway they're they're going to that will be replacing

with a continuous process these drying beds that will be in commissioned early in 2026

and we will be decommissioning over the next decade the drying beds opening 800 acres of buffer land

next to the bay, which is the real good place to make sure we have the natural wetland buffers

between the bay and North San Jose and Alviso.

I'm envisioning a lot of open space, a lot of recreation, other potential environmental

uses on that property.

So I think we ought to be thinking in context of the entire region and how lands will be

repurposed going forward as we think about this space.

I want to thank Prologis for their interest in the site and for being what I've heard is a really, really strong partner of many of the interests that we have in the city of San Jose.

And for being a willing partner on a lot of the labor recommendations that have come forward to help make sure that we have good jobs that will be created at this site at the time that the site is moving forward with construction.

I want to thank all of the folks who spoke to me over the last couple weeks about concerns at the site.

We made sure in our group memo to take into account good bird management plans for protecting owl habitat.

I want to be clear.

I guess the language doesn't sound strong enough, the words recommend and consider,

but I think it's pretty clear that we are at some point when this comes back for a development agreement,

will make sure that the items under the bird protection are baked into the project coming forward.

Also, while there's a list of potential environmental innovations that can be used on the site,

the use of San Jose Clean Energy to me is a non-negotiable,

but it's among the list of other things that need to be considered as the project moves forward.

I will say that over the years that we've been talking about work at this site,

I've had several different interested parties who have talked to me about potentially making

the site a model for environmentally responsible development.

That would include net zero development.

It would include doing some cogeneration on site.

It would include power generation locally that requires less importing of energy.

And I'm excited by a lot of what I've heard.

and I just want to make sure, I hope that moving forward,

Prologis will consider a lot of these kind of ideas and input

to make this a real model for what can be done on a large property

when we're doing economic development.

And then I want to also point out that we did have a,

we had a presentation here and a commendation in the spring

from folks who are very excited about the recognition of Thomas Foon

Chu his street runs right through this property Thomas Phu Nchu way so I am

want to make sure that moving forward we find a suitable alternative location

for Thomas Phu Nchu way to make sure that he's still recognized appropriately

in the region where he had his canneries many years ago and and by the way the

legacy of Alviso was as an industrial manufacturing site with all the

canneries that were there in the past and the trains that came in and out and

the shipping that came in and out of Alviso so the legacy of manufacturing is

strong in that community. So I'm going to make a motion combining the memos that

were submitted. The memo, well first of all the staff recommendation, secondly

the memo co-authored by myself, Vice Mayor Foley, Council Members Cordillos,

Kameh and Mayor Mahan. The memo that was submitted by Council Members Candelas,

Candela Campos, Ortiz, and Casey, and my single signer memo with a slightly

reworded recommendation under the main recommendation, I'm just going to read

this out and I can actually send the new text to Tony after, direct prologist and

negotiated workforce community agreements which may include benefits such as

access to high quality construction jobs that pay prevailing wages, utilize

apprenticeships from joint labor management apprenticeship programs and

set local higher goals for economically underrepresented workers and mechanisms

for resolving labor disputes that may arise during the course of the project

thank you all right thanks councilmember let me turn now to councilmember Ortiz

thank you mayor and thank you staff for your thorough work on this very important

item, especially the RFQ and ENA recommendations.

I'm encouraged after hearing from Prologis today.

I appreciate their commitment to both environmental stewardship as well as their commitment to

labor standards and worker protections on the work site.

I also want to thank my colleagues for both sets of memos.

Thank you, Councilmember Condellos, for allowing me to join onto your memo, very important

items that we were able to raise together.

But across all of them, I think it's very clear a shared focus on reducing the environmental

impacts of data centers, especially regarding water, air quality, and energy use.

I appreciate that alignment, and I want to echo that while I am very supportive of this

project and I will vote for it, I believe the city needs to fully understand if there

will be any environmental tradeoffs.

With that in mind, I just wanted to ask a staff a few, just a very quick question about

our CEQA plan review process, especially for this rapidly changing type of development.

And that's hard to say because we don't necessarily have a development right in front of us, but

when it does come before us, we need to be prepared.

And so I just wanted to ask what major considerations as it relates to water, air quality, and especially

energy use, should we be prepared to evaluate as part of this CEQA analysis?

Thank you, Councilmember Ortiz.

As part of the project, this project will be required to follow all CEQA requirements,

as well as with any other project.

That will include all those elements related to water use, energy use, as well as any other

elements.

I think some of the key items that are significant for us here that we already mentioned is when

we do that CEQA analysis that we do have sounds like clean energy, which provides a significant

amount of renewable energy and carbon free energy as well as the proximity to recycle

water.

But we will look at the entire, all the projects, Prologis will have to look at that, disclose

what the analysis is and what any impacts are.

We're still a ways away from getting to that point, right?

We'll have to kind of work with them on a project and everything, but they'll have to

fully analyze all CEQA items including the ones you mentioned.

Great, thank you.

So for example, if there are any, you know, environmental impacts to the conditions of

water surrounding that community or I don't know, for example, the energy use is at a

point where it may increase cost to, I don't know, rate payers, just saying, not saying

that that's what this project will result in.

Will that be flagged for us through the CEQA process?

Well, typically the cost of energy is not a CEQA issue, but we'll definitely look

at energy needs and how those energies are going to be met.

I will note that an incredible highlight for this project is if you look at the argument

with PG&E that the first 250 megawatts are actually within existing capacity.

They're going to be fed by the existing Los Esteros 230 kV substation.

One of the key items that's come up with our work with PG&E over the last seven months

is that PG&E, because their system is so big, they actually do have existing capacity where

certain projects don't have to wait for the transmission lines that the mayor mentioned.

And this project specifically is being fed by Los Lesteros plant next to it.

So we will definitely look at the current 250 megawatt commitment.

We will look at the additional 250 megawatts where that would come from and what projects

would be required.

And we will look at how that fits within the overall capacity that PG&E has to provide.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

I think there's, you know, for me, I mentioned in regards to data centers in the past, I

just want to make sure that, you know, the decisions we make are aligned with our very

own climate goals and steps that we've made and I don't think it's fair to you

know tie all that to this item but I would like to see if we could have a

study session in the future in regards to data centers about you know how to

make sure that we're doing everything we can to be proper environmental stewards

of our of our city and you know ways in which we can partner with future

developers to reduce the impact and so but that that's not you know here no

there in regards to that project I think it's just we need to make sure we're

thinking about that and that is our North Star as future projects come in

because as we know the economy is changing this is going to be a new type

of project that we're going to see more and more of and so not necessarily fair

to tie just to this project but overall in the future I'd like to maybe we could

develop some sort of checklist or standard of how we have approached these

projects I just want to you know again close by thanking my the staff of course

and my colleagues of course Prologis all of our labor partners for being here and

advocating for this I think you know definitely a you know a major factor and

my decision to vote yes is the fact that there will be workplace standards labor

standards and this can create a lot of jobs here for for our residents I want

to thank Councilmember Cohen for his leadership especially given his history

of being in a huge advocate for the environment I think part of the reason

why our city has gone so far as to be one of the most environmental friendly

cities is partly because of his advocacy so I wanted to give him the kudos that I

know he he deserves and and also I just want to also thank him for his memo as

it relates to the project labor agreement and the community benefits

agreement which would allow the city and community to benefit directly from the

value generated on on this land I guess just one one final question I guess this

could be to prologis i know that there is a an agreement um regional agreement with labor and i

know that our our memo specifically um directs or recommends direction for to meet with stakeholders

like the building trades can you can you maybe just explain what the agreement currently is with

with labor is it with certain trades are we going to be opening the door for

the the entire building trades just so that you know people can be a part of this conversation

Hi, Matthew Sims with Prologis.

Excuse me.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Yeah, our project agreements are project-specific.

They're unique to each project, and we weigh the benefits and the values of each project by project.

Okay, great.

But you're fine with our language in the memo that asks you to reach out to stakeholders, including the building trades?

Yeah, at this point, as we're undertaking negotiations with staff,

and we would move into that next phase.

I think it would make sense to talk to other folks.

So thank you.

Okay, great.

So then just so that I understand before you walk away,

just because you have an agreement elsewhere

that this new project would essentially be a new agreement

that you would have to form.

I think through the process, we would understand

if our existing agreements are applicable

or if we would need to look at something else.

All right, thank you.

Well, I look forward to these discussions.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Great. Thanks, Council Member.

Let's go to Council Member Condellas.

Thank you, Batman. I mean, mayor.

Now, I just wanted to express my appreciation to staff and the stakeholders who came out to speak on this item.

I know, you know, Council Member Cohen and I sit on TPAC, and, you know, I appreciate his leadership,

especially with this blue memo that came out yesterday explaining some of the concerns,

especially around the folks who are going to be building these data centers.

I also wanted to give a quick shout out to those folks from our Brown Act who signed on to the group member, Council Member Ortiz, Compost, and Council Member Casey, I got you.

Some of the commenters just left you out.

But, you know, Mayor, I also wanted to ditto your point earlier as well about the city's precious industrial and commercial land and the urgent need to preserve and maximize its utilization.

I think that's critical as we start evaluating these proposals.

we have to be mindful at making sure that we're leaving our city and our future generations in a better place than where we are now.

And this is one of those unique opportunities to do so.

And, you know, as mentioned, TPAC unanimously approved it last week.

And for a unanimous approval on TPAC is not very common, kind of, right?

But, you know, part of the reason behind our group memo specifically is to have an approach,

and as staff engages in conversations with Prologis, where we have an eyes-wide open approach to the impacts of data centers.

We know the net benefit and the boon it is to our city with regards to low services, police, fire, and the tax benefit.

but we we want to make sure that we're addressing any potential environmental

impacts whether it's energy or water water needs and so I look forward to

staff negotiating with Prologis and bringing us back a thoughtful and

robust agreement that that incorporates the feedback not just from today's

conversation but from our from our memorandums thank you thanks council

member appreciate your comments your joke as well and your service on TPAC we'll go to councilmember

Tordios thank you mayor and thank you also to staff Prologis and all of the members of the

public who came out to speak today I think a lot of very reasonable concerns about a project of

this scale and what it might mean but I want to just hone back in on something that I believe

councilmember Cohen and the mayor both said which is that we know from the market that data centers

are going to continue to get built at large scales, regardless of what we do here.

I was just looking at the most recent data, and just in the first seven months of the

year nationwide, there were 125 data centers that broke ground.

So clearly, this is a sector that has a lot of demand.

We know these are going to get built.

The opportunity that we have here is for San Jose to actually join in in some of that

wealth and investment, and then, as was also said, make sure that locally we're building

data centers that do have higher environmental standards than some of the ones that we see

in other places in the country.

And I know that there was some concern that maybe some of the environmental commitments

in the memo, the language was not strong enough, the commitments were not rigorous enough.

I just wanted to reinforce again that this is just the very first stage in the process

and that I imagine a lot of these details will be worked out in the city's negotiations

with Prologis in the years ahead.

There was also a mention of PGE during the public comments.

And to that I would just note that the city, again, already has an agreement for that 250

megawatts of power and that capacity is specifically for these large load

customers but developments like this are how the city actually capitalizes on

those agreements and sees the economic development projects that are ultimately

what are going to generate the jobs and generate the revenue that we're hoping

to see we all know that the city has structural weaknesses in our budget we

have a shortage of jobs relative to our population that makes it really difficult

to provide the level of service to our residents that they deserve and economic

development projects like this you know the mention was over 30 million dollars

of annual revenue at full build out that helps us to shore up those weaknesses in

our budget deliver better services to our constituents and in this case I'm

very excited that Prologis has a long history collaborating with our labor

partners to make sure that that economic development also includes good union

jobs and workforce development so I will be excited to support this motion

thanks councilmember well I appreciate your comments let me turn now to

councilmember come in thank you so much a lot has already been said so i'll just be very brief

i will say that as as far as i've seen this council we have very high environmental and labor

standards and i think that you know i know that this is the very first initial sort of negotiation

part but I think that we will not waver from environmental and labor standards

and I also think that you know we balance that against bringing a project

that you know helps us in our economic development we know that there's a total

imbalance from jobs to housing and this really is one of the biggest projects

that I have seen since being on council and I think that it is really really

going to help grow the revenue pie so I'm very excited I'm very excited at the

the choice that was made through our process and and I want to thank staff

this takes a lot a lot of work to get to even this point and we're not even to

the building anything so so I really want to say thank you I'd like to thank

all of those who participated in getting us to this point and I look forward to

seeing some really really exciting work and progress forward so thank you and

I'll be supporting it as well all right thank you councilmember appreciate you

referencing the jobs to housing ratio it is it's really relevant okay appreciate

all the comments questions including the thoughtful comments from the public I

believe we are ready to vote motion passes unanimously all right thank you

all very much thank you to staff well done we are on to our final agenda item

today this is item 8.3 2026 major events status report we have a staff

presentation and then we'll turn public comment

Thank you.

Hello, Council. Tommy O'Hare, 2026 Sports and Special Events Director, just here to provide an update on how everything is going for the major sporting events for 2026, going under the name SJ26.

Biggest thing you'll start to see throughout the community is we developed the SJ26 brand, debuted that back in August at the airport, and now you see that to start to flourish throughout the city of San Jose.

So we have our street pole banners that are up now.

We're combining that also with IP from the National Women's Soccer League Championship game,

which is taking place right here in San Jose this coming weekend.

You'll start to see more IP from the other sports properties happen throughout the year.

So you'll see Super Bowl street pole banners that will come up, NCAA March Madness banners,

and hopefully and ideally World Cup banners as well mixed in with our San Jose 26 banners.

Our paid media campaign is running right now.

It is focused on booking hotel rooms for the World Cup.

And that's because related to the Super Bowl,

people generally book their hotel rooms within 30 days of the Super Bowl

once they know what the teams are.

So focused on the World Cup hotel room bookings right now.

Wayfinding, making really good progress on that.

You'll start to see 10 new street signs that will go up throughout San Jose,

doing wayfinding, directing people to parks and restaurants and places like that.

We also will put in sidewalk stencils to direct people during the major sporting events for SJ26,

and also exploring potentially combining with the arts community to do some in-person wayfinding

in a fun sort of theatrical way throughout San Jose.

We continue to evolve on the SJ26.org website.

You'll start to see an interactive map that comes to us from the San Jose Downtown Association,

making it really easy for people to see and direct themselves to where these major sporting events are taking place.

On the small business front, we continue to make progress on that.

Team San Jose recently held the bash at the convention center this past Thursday.

It was really successful in terms of combining the arts community as well as the hospitality

community and how they can participate in SD26.

The San Jose Downtown Association has created a small business toolkit that is available

online and we've also created a business toolkit link on the SJ26.org website.

Also continuing to partner with the Downtown Association to further distribute small business

toolkit information.

SJDA is taping a webinar to put up on their website and we'll also do further live webinars.

We'll start to do a little bit of door-to-door outreach as well to the business community.

We have table tops and posters available for businesses to download and use, and we'll

also look to distribute and print some of those on our own and build those out to the

businesses.

And also doing a little bit of work on the premium hospitality side of things.

There's good opportunities with our restaurants to be booked by the major sponsors.

We've recently had a big win in that category as well with one major sponsor moving all

their hospitality business to San Jose for the Super Bowl.

Our next major effort to bring out throughout San Jose is the SJ Game Changers program.

This is really designed to get schools really interested in the major events that are happening

as well as teach kids about the values and principles of being an athlete.

We're probably 30 days away from launching that program.

We found a partner to help us with that and we also have a mobile app that will launch

sometime in the next 60 days related to that.

We're really excited about this.

We think this is a great legacy program as part of SJ26.

Good afternoon. My name is Carrie Adams Happner. I'm the director of the Office of Cultural Affairs

and the City Manager's Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. Our office

is extraordinarily excited about some of the art installations and neighborhood activations coming

up throughout 2026. We're going to start in January right here at City Hall. We're going to

have three exhibitions as part of our City Hall exhibition program. We'll be featuring the

work of 29 local artists whose work demonstrate the theme of hometown heroes. Also on January 31st

we'll have a very significant and exciting installation. It's called Invisible Skies.

It'll be right here at City Hall Plaza and it is free to the public so we encourage you to promote

this to your residents they can sign up at sj26.org and it's really an exciting opportunity for us to

bring people together and build community. We're also very very very much looking forward to having

installations featuring the work of San Jose State professors and their students. We'll have

several temporary installations happening across the downtown and then also a very exciting

Projection Mapping Project on the site of the SAP Center as part of March Madness.

Our City Dance series will be coming back next year and it'll be expanded so that we will have

a City Dance the evening before a FIFA World Cup match. We will be curating the different genres

according to the participating teams in FIFA World Cup. And then finally, I want to emphasize

that we are very much focused on activations across the city. There is a partnership with

the Directors Alliance for Activations in Neighborhood Business Districts, including

soccer clinics, concert series, and watch parties. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ray

Reardon. Thank you. Thank you, and good afternoon. I'm Ray Reardon. I'm the Director of the Office

of Emergency Management, and I'm going to talk a little bit about keeping us moving forward,

are keeping our best foot forward and keeping everyone safe.

There's already an established departmental work group comprised of public works, DOT, PRNS,

police department housing, code enforcement, and economic development,

where they've mapped out where the detailed priority events will be taking place

and the adjacent neighborhoods and the streetways and the access ways to make sure they're clean and safe to walk.

Plans are also under development to ensure that the city, the public rights of way, are

in good condition to facilitate safe and convenient access.

Through the remainder of 25 and in January 26, final advance planning will take place

to complete the work that's necessary and address any infrastructure right of way encampments.

On the public safety side, we've been working closely with the NFL and FIFA, including special

districts like VTA working closely with the City of Santa Clara, the county, the

state, and other federal agencies that are participating in the safety component.

Multi-department planning coordination teams take place between city

departments also making sure we have plans in place for any event that may

take place and key efforts are occurring with human trafficking and de-escalation

efforts during ice operations. Now turn it over to John. Good afternoon.

or should I say good evening.

John Poach of the San Jose Sports Authority.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members.

We're taking lessons learned from past events of the Sports Authority,

but more importantly, events we just completed,

which fit the SJ26 scope.

The Valkyries' first playoff game,

which we were able to move on less than a three-week notice to the SAP Center.

So we used templates to host a watch party in San Pedro Square,

which were very successful as far as operational.

The San Jose Rock and Roll, it's our 15th year, my 10th year, and it's amazing the coordination

of OCA with SJPD and SEU to be able to facilitate an event that closes 13 miles of streets, goes

through downtown as well as the Rose Garden, and at the same time we're able to get the

course cleared by 1.30 in the afternoon, which we thought was important because Little Italy

had their festival. So I thought the coordination of work with OCA and SJPD and Office of Emergency

Services were a perfect test run for us. The previous year we didn't finish clearing the

roads until 415, so they improved by almost three hours. And then the shark season opener with the

festival that we did now on Shark's Way, the unveiling, it showed that there was a clear pathway

that we can develop to almost make the back of the arena the front of the arena for a nice pedestrian

walkway for fans attending pregame facilities in downtown San Jose. What's happening this week,

it's been an amazing run since we submitted a bid in April to bring the NWSL championship game

to PayPal Park. We thought it was only fitting since we spent two years trying to get a franchise

in San Jose and we were awarded a franchise and now a year and a half later they're trusting us

to host their marquee event.

This is an important event, and it's a great setup for us preparing for SJ26.

As you can see, we're hosting their biggest events.

The award show will be actually at the Civic Auditorium.

It's too big now for the Montgomery.

It's not open to public.

It's private for their corporate sponsors and all the top players in the league,

but it's shown live on ESPN2, I believe 2.30 p.m. for 5.30 Eastern Time.

This is their marquee event for their television.

We'll be hosting the NWSL Media Day the next day, also at the Civic Auditorium, but selfishly

we're more excited about the 9 a.m. flag raising with Mayor May and Vice Mayor Foley with the

Commissioner NWSL to put the championship flag above City Hall.

And then also we're hosting a VIP reception in the Rotunda, which all members are invited,

to celebrate the championship and NWSL Select in San Jose.

On Friday, it'll be a skills contest where the top players in the league will show off their skills at the San Jose State Soccer Complex.

It's been affordably priced to target youth soccer players that will sell out.

And there's a meet and greet with all the players.

That's also nationally televised.

And then November 22nd, we roll into the Fan Fest at Creekside Social from 12 to 4.

NWSL set up transportation following the pattern set by the earthquakes to take people on public transit with VTA,

as well as Caltrain's to PayPal Stadium.

And this is done to help take away the traffic congestion

because the sharks dropped the puck at 4 p.m. the same day.

And then the championship game would be at PayPal at 5 p.m. kickoff.

The exciting news is that there's a complete buyout of San Pedro Square

for a post-championship party for all fans and league sponsors.

In addition to this, the NWSO did complete buyouts of the Glass House, San Pedro Social, Blanco Urban Venue, and the San Pedro Square Market, as I previously mentioned.

So it's a nice boost for our local restaurants.

And exciting to follow our office of real estate.

Our visitor center is getting very close.

I believe December 15th might be the grand opening.

I'm hoping to do it earlier, hopefully December 8th.

We met finally with the electrical contractors today,

and that's the last scope of work to be done.

They'll start their work on December 1st.

But it's night and day.

We're excited to be able to serve as a concierge for our city,

for the entire South Bay, of not only events to do in San Jose,

but in all 10 districts, and also promote our hotels and restaurants and why San Jose

is the place to be.

So we're very close.

I'm hoping realistically for a December 8th opening, which you'll be the first to know

once we complete the contract work with the electoral.

Okay, moving to the big three sporting events coming to the area next year.

We continue to execute well on our concert plans.

We have our major concerts on February 6th and February 7th.

We'll have a concert near the convention center on February 2nd, which is opening night slash

media day.

So all of the media will be here in San Jose to do media interviews with all the teams

at the convention center.

And then we have concerts that associate themselves around the same timeline as the major sporting

events for March Madness as well as the gameplay for the World Cup.

We continue to move forward trying to acquire watch party rights across Super Bowl, March

Madness and the World Cup.

Super Bowl is a little more difficult.

The NFL has traditionally not allowed watch party rights, but there are ways to do this

through commercial cable and satellite television package providers and commercial establishments.

And so we have some ways of having watch parties for the Super Bowl right now at Santana Rowe

as well as the San Pedro Square market.

We're working on the NCAA watch party rights right now

and also are in negotiations

for the World Cup watch party rights.

On the drone show side of things,

we have contracted with our drone show provider

to have drone shows around the times

that we have sporting events here.

Those will be in downtown San Jose as well.

And then we've made progress as well

on the projection mapping.

We're in a good spot related to NCAA.

We're working through the contractor in place

for Super Bowl and then waiting until after December 5th for the World Cup announcement

on what teams will have here in San Jose.

So I would say significant progress on the major events and the major things

that are going to drive foot traffic into downtown San Jose.

And to show there's more than three events.

As you can see, just this year alone, that was a calendar of sporting events

that we have brought to San Jose.

And as Tommy mentioned, NWSL starts this week on Wednesday.

But the FIFA team draw watch party is beyond significant

because we all know on December 5th that 10 countries will be coming to San Jose

with their fans every three days from June 13th through July 1.

So that's significant so that our restaurants, hotels, retailers

could target the fans of those countries knowing who they will be.

And then you see 2026, there's plenty of events.

Obviously the Super Bowl, the NCAA Regionals, the Dwight Clark Legacy Series, the FIFA World Cup, USA Table Tennis.

And we're proud to announce we were selected to host CrossFit Games.

Not only is the CrossFit World Championship, we're also hosting the Masters and the Adaptive the week before.

So we'll have a full week of the fittest people on the planet at San Jose at the Convention Center and the SAP Center.

followed by Slam Jose was our goal to have 500 to 1,000 teams.

We want to build it to our three-in-three outdoor basketball tournament.

So it's a full-scheduled event in addition to the big three that we've been talking about.

And that concludes our slides.

Great. Thank you for the comprehensive presentation and all the good work.

I'll say a little more but let's go to public comment first if we have any I have no cards

okay coming back then to the council just want to thank the team here I've been so impressed

when we started talking maybe a year ago about wow we've got a big moment coming where we'll be

on the world stage with Super Bowl March Madness World Cup only Metro to ever have both Super Bowl

World Cup the same year. We got to start getting ready and have to admit for a

little while I was nervous that we were we seem to be just kind of talking vaguely

about the same things over and over again but to see it all start to come

together the last few months has been really exciting and it's been fun to be

part of the some of the fundraising pitches and see the the energy and the

excitement. I think this is something frankly our city and region really need.

I think that we were especially hard hit by the pandemic,

shutting down completely as we did

and have been a little slower to rebound

than other parts of the country.

And I've taken some real hits on social media,

as you all know.

And I think there's a moment to kind of reemerge

in the national and global consciousness

and show off what's so amazing about the Bay Area,

It's diversity, innovation, cultural richness, and sense of community, great food, access to the outdoors, all of that.

Being able to kind of showcase what we're all about and what makes this the best place on earth is just a really exciting moment.

One of the things I know we're committed to, and I appreciate everybody here shares this goal and isn't always the way that this happens,

is just acknowledging that the vast majority of people in our community

will not be able to get a ticket financially or otherwise.

They won't be able to go to the game itself.

And so the responsibility we have, and I think the great opportunity,

is to create a fan experience, really a series of experiences,

that allow everybody to participate, whether it's in a classroom,

it's at a watch party at a local bar,

it's at a larger event at the Mexican Heritage Plaza,

It's at a huge concert downtown, whatever it is, to be able to be part of it and have those memories

and be proud that we hosted and that we hosted well and that it was safe, that it was clean, that it was vibrant,

and that they didn't have to sit in traffic and go 90 minutes north to experience something.

But there was something for them, something happening here in San Jose.

So tremendous amount of progress.

I know there's still a long way to go.

I will turn to colleagues to see what questions they have.

But I really just wanted to thank the cross-functional team that has been working very hard for months.

And I know we're getting ready, Tommy, to announce some of our initial sponsors, some of our initial talent.

There's real substantial progress that we're making.

And I just think it's really exciting.

It's been a great team effort.

I know you all have worked extremely hard, probably more than we realize.

So I just want to thank you all for that and recognize all the work that's gone into being ready for next year.

okay so with that I'm going to turn to Councillor Kamei first

thank you so much first I want to start by recognizing the team and the tremendous amount

of work that you've done over the last few months preparing for San Jose 2026 it's really as the

mayor has just mentioned initially earlier in the year we were like oh my gosh when is it coming

When is it coming?

And here we are.

And it feels really good.

So thank you so much for that.

You know, this is going to bring global attention

to the city of San Jose.

And the staff's work so far really

is demonstrating that we are preparing accordingly

and to be successful.

So it feels really good to see that.

You know, I met with you, or some of you,

and I know that I expressed interest in community engagement

regarding safety and whether people felt safe enough

to come out, and so it was great to hear that yes,

you know, you're doing all these different things

to ensure safety and as the mayor just said,

safe, clean, and vibrant spaces for people

to gather together, be together,

but I think that one of the things that my memo emphasizes

is we're demonstrating to the community that yes, in fact,

we're thinking about these things.

Yes, in fact, we want it to be safe, clean,

and vibrant wherever you experience 2026.

So we've been very upfront about acknowledging

some of these fears, and I think the community needs

to hear that.

I want to thank you for sharing the small business toolkit.

We've been pushing it out.

It sounds really exciting to hear the neighborhood

programming because I think that also will quell some of the fears and and and

that sort of thing but I think that we need to kind of like keep encouraging

people to let them know that yes we have understood that some people will feel

apprehensive and you know I think that we need to be proactive transparent and

multilingual in our outreach when we're talking to people about you know

whatever spaces are going to be created through the either watch parties or

celebrations and that it's okay to come out our goal here has been always to

make sure that safety is number one and it's that we are continuing to be a

welcoming city so I want to thank you for all of what you've done and I know

I KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO BE DOING THIS INTO NEXT YEAR, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO GO AHEAD AND MOVE MY MEMO WITH COUNCILMEMBER ORTIZ TO REALLY BE MUCH MORE EXPLICIT SO THAT PEOPLE KNOW, YOU KNOW WHAT, WE UNDERSTAND AND WE WANT TO ENSURE THAT WHATEVER HAPPENS, WE WANT THINGS TO BE SAFE, CLEAN AND VIBRANT. THANK YOU.

thanks councilmember okay we have a motion a second let me turn to councilmember Ortiz

thank you mayor I want to thank our city staff our partners at the Sports Authority team San

Jose visit San Jose in the office of cultural affairs and our multiple sport organizations and

every department that's been working to prepare what will be one of the most significant years

in San Jose modern history. I appreciate Councilmember Kamey contacting me to

partner on the memo before us today. We included recommendations to increase

outreach to small businesses across the city as well as to promote best

practices for preparing for federal immigration enforcement at any of our

events. Because as exciting as 2026 will be, none of it will worth be worth it if

our residents feel unsafe in their very own city. With that being said I just

to lift up a few questions and concerns we're hearing from the community we know the city

already has a framework for de-escalation and safe site protocols but residents are asking for

more clarity on what is being done specifically for high profile events in a year when federal

comments and actions have heightened fear within immigrant communities and while the major games

are in 2026 as we just reviewed many related activities start to begin this year alongside

other larger events happening weekly across our city and our community is

already feeling the increased presence of federal agents today how is the city

preparing for public safety risks related to immigration enforcement not

just inside major venues but also rounding us around the surrounding

neighborhoods watch parties and community gathering citywide we're the

the Office of Emergency Management, the Police Department, and the Fire Department are working

very closely to have response protocols related to the de-escalation plans.

We've been having regular meetings.

We still haven't developed the detailed list of response actions, but we do have a framework

that we're expanding, and we meet continuously.

It's like tomorrow we have another meeting on session on more details.

Great.

Maybe you speak into the mic, but I heard you.

And so that's great.

I'm glad that work's being done.

There's ongoing discussions about that.

That's really important.

Is there going to be or when or will there be a plan that's tailored and transparent that we could review it with stakeholders?

That'll be coming. We've been talking about the end of December, early January in the time.

Okay, great. So around December, latest early January?

Yeah, because we want to make sure we have it and test it and process it, socialize it.

Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Thank you for taking the concerns of my community seriously.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge Helen Masamori, who's here.

Hey, Helen.

She's president of the Alum Rock Santa Clara Street Business Association, also a resident of District 10.

Councilmember Casey would get mad at me if I didn't mention that.

Thank you for joining us here today and for lifting up the priorities and concerns of our neighborhood business districts.

We've heard, you know, I've heard directly from Helen and also members of that business association

that they're very excited about the opportunities ahead,

but they also want to ensure that this moment is equitable,

accessible for all businesses and beneficial for every neighborhood,

not just a select few.

With that input in mind, I wanted to just ask a few questions

to make sure we're setting up all of San Jose's districts for success.

So I just wanted to see how are we ensuring equitable support

for all neighborhood business districts through clear, transparent

funding options and multilingual outreach. Thank you, Councilmember Rosalind Huey, Deputy City

Manager, and thank you, Helen, for being here. The good thing is we are working with lots of

partners, not just in our downtown, but across the city, working very closely with the Directors

Alliance, SJ, which is an organization that was formed from the 12 Neighborhood Business

associations so those executives from those 12 business associations are a part of that alliance

and we have just begun working with them to actually help us package the various resources

that are available to our small businesses and getting them out to them and thank you council

member because we're partnering with you to host east side small business town hall on december

8th we will be providing various panels on all of those resources including how small businesses can

access capital to increase their inventory to higher staffing for increase the increased

traffic that we anticipate as well as giving them tips on how businesses and other organizations

throughout our neighborhoods can plan and organize their own community-sized

activations as well great great and I'll make sure that the association is there

and that you guys get a fair shake in those conversations I know that the

City of San Jose has like a local preference ordinance is there anything

that we can do as a city or local agencies to make sure we're keeping the

money local and you know when we're contracting out how do we make sure it's

a local small business we're contracting at or all right we're gonna be doing

pop-up events what how can we make sure that local businesses I could say we're

doing an event at MHP how do you make sure that East San Jose you know street

vendors have a shot at getting those you know those potential contracts or or

vice versa is there a way for us to elevate local small businesses or local

vendors in this process yes councilmember I mean obviously as we begin

to plan the events, particularly in neighborhoods,

that would be our priority and our work would be centered

to making sure that we are using local San Jose businesses,

particularly ethnic or minority owned,

to deliver those services.

And I already know John Poach, for example,

in all the events that he is involved with,

he definitely uses local talent and businesses

in those procurements as well.

great thank you I appreciate that and then I know that there's going to be

quite a bit of beautification maybe a heightened security in certain areas

specific you know to whether it's the games or whether it's the events are we

going to be looking at beautification and safety precautions citywide it went

as we do other other events throughout the city yes we're obviously already

targeting those key areas in downtown so Ray showed earlier that our city

departments have completed assessments we'll be taking a look particularly at

those properties that are vacant to see if there's opportunities to actually

place our SJ 26 branding and logo in those vacant storefronts and we can

certainly do that in the various neighborhood districts throughout the

city as well I'm sure because I'm sure that you know think of Alham Rock you

know Center Road Monterey you know it's plenty of buildings that we have that are

vacant that could use that type of you know vibrancy and so I'd love it if we

could make sure that you know I absolutely want to invest in the

downtown but I want to make sure every every district gets some support and

then in regards to the activation budget and I know vast majority of it is

going to be focused on downtown but is it possible for us to you know set aside I

don't know 10% for a dedicated activation for areas outside of

downtown we have been working with Nathan

Olch of community strong strategies to talk about setting aside some funding to

help support those neighborhood business districts in producing their own

neighborhood events I know Tommy is working regularly with Nathan I'm not

sure about the exact amount but there is a particular amount set aside for those

activities as well okay great I'm thankful that that that conversation is

being had I would love to see you know I'm not sure what the sweet number is

I'm just saying 10% because that seems like a good number but I think having

some dedicated funds for activation and in all neighborhoods or at least all

districts doesn't have to be all neighborhoods would be good you know

business business districts business parks because I feel like we have a very

historic opportunity you know one that no other city really has in the United

States during the 2026 events and so I just want to make sure that we are

taking we're making good use of the great culture that we have the cultural

hubs that we have throughout the city whether it's you know the Vietnamese

community in district 7 or the Latino community and in district 5 or the

Indian American community in district 8 I just want to make sure we're everybody

is able to benefit from this this great event and and benefit I mean by

investments and activations from that from the committee and so thank you all

and really excited to vote yes on on my joint memo with councilmember Kameh

thank you thanks councilmember let's go now to councilmember Dwan thank you mayor

I'm excited and thank you to CD staff and team San Jose and Sport Authority to

collaborate with many other entities to make this happen.

Thank you for Council Member Ortiz have already asked the question regarding

immigration, the equity funding, and

to spread the wealth

throughout different districts. My district, I happen to have

the Tropicana, which is the Little Mexico, and then the Little Saigon, which is

of Vietnam town there.

And so we want to make sure that our immigrant feels safe.

And the money that is spent as a total, if we, I don't know what is the number that we're

looking for as a total amount to invest into the city of San Jose.

And I think it's only fair that we spread it throughout the 10 district.

One of the things I like to ask is, as you well know,

these large events, we will have enormous amount

of human trafficking.

That will come with sex trafficking, slavery,

including crimes, including gangs and gambling.

if you will, and drug trafficking as well.

All that encumber within these large events.

While we're finding a lot of funding to have a lot of fun,

but are we putting any of that funding towards our public safety

and safeguard against human trafficking?

The police department works very closely with the DA's office and other public safety officers.

We also work with the planning building code enforcement officers.

When they go out, they get trained on observing conditions that would tell them something is

happening in a location.

investigations in or handled in through the police department after gathering

evidence and then the DA's office is supporting any prosecution of such

activities and I don't know if the police department wants anything to add

to that general statement

Paul Joseph, chief of police.

So we're preparing for this.

I was just at a conference last week in San Francisco and had police chiefs from all over

the Bay Area, district attorneys from all over the Bay Area, our federal partners, community

advocacy groups.

And this is obviously something we're preparing for.

We know it's going to come.

budgeted overtime for the police department to handle these and other safety related issues.

You know, as Councilmember Kameh mentioned, if people don't feel safe, they're not going to want to do these things.

And so it's our job to ensure that they do.

Thank you, Chief.

And with these big events, beside the human trafficking, there's this huge amount of gambling, illegal gambling, if you will.

So is there a particular, beside the code enforcement and with your department, how do you handle something like that?

You know, I think it's as we find it.

You know, we're not specifically going to be proactively trying to put a stop to gambling.

You know, if we come across illegal gambling actions, you know, we've done a lot in the last several years to uncover illegal casinos that operate in the city.

and there's often drugs, prostitution, and weapons violations that go along with those illegal casinos,

and they're everywhere, and we've worked on those.

But I don't think—we don't have exactly a region-wide effort on the gambling as we do with the human trafficking

because I think, obviously, the human costs of that require our attention the most.

But we will certainly not ignore gambling activity if we discover it.

Thank you, Chief.

and back to the board do we have funding where we can put more signs in in public

restroom or even encourage private businesses to put those little placards

that said you know if if you be in human trafficking or sex trafficking the way

1-800 numbers throughout the city of San Jose or even a billboard sign said

zero tolerance on human trafficking councilmember I think there is an

opportunity to use those existing resources particularly if there's

signage or posters we have them here on the City Hall campus for example to see

if we can replicate those and actually provide them to small businesses so

that they can have them in their establishments as well we can certainly

take a look into that thank you very much and I will be supporting this memorandum

thanks council member let's go to councilmember Campos

thank you mayor and thank you staff we had such a great presentation heard from

so many people working together to make something really special happen for our

city in our community in 2026 and I want to thank the mayor again for

emphasizing the importance of ensuring all families in our city have access to

the fun and festivities that we're preparing for I have several questions

that I came across reviewing the materials and one of the things that I

thought was really interesting and just wanted to learn a little bit more about

what what it takes to make happen are the street pole banners so are these

happening or these being put up throughout the city or is it just

downtown they're being put up throughout downtown we have to pay for the cost of

printing those and putting those up so that's why we focus on downtown where

the fan fest will be it's possible if other districts want to have street

we're happy to let you use the IP and put those up,

but we don't have budget to go throughout

all of San Jose for those.

And who or what department is coordinating this work?

Assuming maybe Public Works is putting them up,

but I'm not sure, I'm curious about that.

It's the San Jose Sports Authority,

and then we work with Sal, with Public Works.

He's been doing street pole banners for the last 10 years.

as Tommy mentioned, we focus on areas where the concentration of activations will be.

Okay. Thank you for that. I also noticed the visitor center, and I just wanted to

make sure I saw this right. So there's going to be a podcasting booth inside the visitor center?

yes we create a podcast studio which is free to use for any groups that registers

with a request to create a podcast and the whole focus is to create a podcast from downtown

to draw people with interest to come visit san jose

um so i'm curious how uh if like how much space that's going to take up in the store

and then if there was consideration for a photo booth,

is that something that could also get put in there?

The studio's already built.

It's a pretty good size, probably 15 by 8, glass-enclosed,

having the door installed next week.

And it has to be a door enclosed and locked

because it's expensive equipment.

So it can also be a photo booth

because it's a room with a backdrop of SJ26 for the backdrop.

But the intent is for podcast studio, but it can also serve as a photo booth.

I am just thinking about when I go out to things, if I want a quick memento,

I think I can stop and take five minutes to take a photo.

But stopping and recording a podcast, I can imagine is a bit more time consuming.

And so I'm just curious about the impact that we're hoping to achieve with the podcast.

And if there is some similar level of impact that can be achieved with the photo booth that, you know, people can publish it online.

Right. I've seen the apps where you get a printed one and one to your phone and then you can create the banner that's around the specific event.

So just wanted to share that as an idea because.

Yeah. So the podcast booth is not for SJA 26.

It's for any, in every event in San Jose.

If a nonprofit is arts-based and they want to generate a podcast in the podcast center in a professional studio,

they can do it no matter what district the event is in.

We just want to offer professional podcast studio service to any nonprofit group in the city of San Jose.

As far as the, I guess, some old school Kodak moments, like an example of the Super Bowl,

we'll have a Super Bowl trophy that I think is eight feet high.

painted by a San Jose local artist

depicting our San Jose art culture.

It'd be a place to be determined

in a public setting where anyone can do that.

We did that with the NHL All-Star Game,

made eight foot figures of the NHL logo

for people to take and put them in the plaza.

We did it for the college football playoff,

created a 12 foot logo where people take Kodak moments.

So we'll have that for the Super Bowl, a beautiful Kodak moment with the sport event symbol,

more importantly, San Jose's twist on it.

Thank you.

If I could just jump in really quickly to Councilmember, and I guess John doesn't want to brag,

but part of the direction from this body is also position us beyond 2026.

And so the importance of the podcast booth is for the influencers who come to town that

talk about this every single day and what John and the sports authority are doing to position us

with those folks so they see downtown San Jose and this region as a place to do other big events

so really what's great here is you know Tommy, Carrie, team the teams that are going to be

working in the business districts in downtown thinking about our residents and the visitors

experience versus the podcast booth is what's going to happen in 2028 and 2030 and so they're

different streams of us trying to market the city to different people. And so I do want to give

kudos to John for thinking about that because we will be hosting hundreds of podcasters who are

going to come talk about this for the next several months. And those are big, big influencers when

Super Bowl, WrestleMania, college championships, or anything else that may come to town.

Thank you, Lee, for bringing that up. And it helps me segue to the next question I had,

which was objective two of the SJ26 strategic plan is to create a lasting value with these investments.

And so that sounds like one opportunity.

What are some of the other opportunities that we're looking at that are going to really bolster us in that regional tourism space?

Well, just the fact that we're hosting FIFA World Cup,

The reason why we're hosting World Cup is that we've done every level of domestic and international soccer tournament.

We've done the Gold Cup, which is our championship for the confederation.

We're able to successfully launch a women's professional team, the Bay FC,

based upon our work with five women's college cup championships we have hosted in San Jose.

And now the reason why we have the FIFA World Cup is because of the success of our domestic and international competitions.

So I truly believe that the events we're bringing in, the fact that we can host a Super Bowl,

shows any event organizers, we can host the largest sporting event in America.

Not in the world, but in America, in San Jose, based upon our track record of the diversity of events we've hosted.

So, you know, 2026 is really a reflection of the work we have done with the city.

That goes back all the way to the big event years of 2016, 2019, and 2023,

with figure skating, USA Gymnastics Championships,

and now events like that is what brought CrossFit Games here,

a completely diverse event that we've never hosted.

So I think that's the legacy of 2026,

that the events right holders see that we can do more than just the big game.

And I completely agree with that assessment that we have the right landscape.

I also just want to uplift the traffic congestion that sometimes comes with being, you know,

with the way that the city is built.

And given that we might have people coming in from East Bay, San Francisco,

they're used to public transit.

How are we encouraging that public transit ridership?

And also the civic pride.

I know that that's something we've talked a lot about.

And so what would the highlights of how we are uplifting civic pride look like for us in 2026?

I know that my colleagues are going to want to share.

We're all going to have our own highlights, but there's one that I wanted to showcase that I think that you'll appreciate is really an emphasis on our local culture.

I mean, what we're doing is we're sending out a postcard to the world about the unique cultural identity that is uniquely San Jose.

So that's one of the highlights that I have.

And while they're not here with us at the table, Team San Jose, through its CDB that visits San Jose,

has been doing an outstanding job in terms of marketing San Jose to international, national, and regional visitors.

And that is going to have a lasting effect.

And also through the Office of Cultural Affairs Investment, we are launching our first cultural tourism campaign that's going to uniquely provide a digital tailored PR campaign for 12 arts organizations.

So we are anticipating a huge return on that investment that will last us well beyond 2026.

Yeah, and we think that the culmination of this will be the FIFA World Cup from our work with Visit San Jose.

Our Fly, Stay, and Play campaign is really going to go in earnest once the FIFA World Cup draw is done.

We know that 10 nations come in here because no city in the country can share their 39% of their population is foreign-born.

There's 100 languages spoken in San Jose.

So we feel whatever 10 countries are selected to play in San Jose, they already have a base here.

And so the focus with Visit San Jose with the Fly, Stay, and Play is why you have to fly to San Jose, not SFL.

And then when you fly, why you have to stay in San Jose?

Because here's how you can play in San Jose based upon the cultural offerings that we can do,

and I don't think any other city can.

So that's what, to me, my Christmas Day is going to be December 5th,

when we know the country's coming here so we can plan our activations

that no one can celebrate diversity like San Jose, if we do it right.

Thank you, John.

And I'm just gonna wrap up my comments

with this one last suggestion that I heard

from a District 2 business owner

who also owns businesses in Seattle,

close to the Seattle Sounders Stadium.

And so before each Sounders game,

there is a march or a rally to the stadium.

The fans gather and they get into the stadium together,