This is the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting and I am late and I apologize.

So can we take the roll please?

Councilmember Casey.

Here.

Mulcahy.

Here.

Ortiz.

Present come a chair Foley here. Thank you

great

Sorry while I get settled here

We have nothing on consent and nothing on the work plan

Let's move right into the committee reports. The first one is the team San Jose annual and annual performance audit

Which we well because it's annual we hear it every year

Joe, I think you're presenting.

Welcome.

With Adrian Perez from my office, we're here to present our audit of Team San Jose's performance

for fiscal year 24-25.

Since 2004, the San Jose McHenry Convention Center and several other city-owned facilities

have operated on the city's behalf by Team San Jose.

Additionally, since 2009, Team San Jose has operated

the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau

to promote tourism and provide services

such as marketing, public relations,

and convention sales and services.

My office, under the terms of the management agreements

between the city and Team San Jose,

performs an annual performance audit

to determine whether and how well Team San Jose met

agreed upon performance targets that are the basis

for a performance-based fee from the city.

Under the terms of the agreement to operate the facilities,

Team San Jose's annual performance is measured

across five different performance areas.

In fiscal year 24-25, Team San Jose met its weighted incentive fee scores

and Convention of Israel Bureau performance targets.

Specifically, Team San Jose exceeded its target in gross operating results,

Booked 133,500 hotel room nights, exceeding the target of 117,000.

Had an estimated economic impact of nearly $95 million, which is greater than the target of 78 million.

Held 540 days of events at the cultural facilities, resulting in an occupancy rate of 97%,

and received 97% satisfaction ratings on its customer service surveys.

Both of those exceeded their targets as well.

As a result, Team San Jose met its weighted incentive fee targets and qualifies for the

performance-based fee of $300,000 as outlined in the agreement with the City.

We do not have any recommendations in the report, and because of that, there is not

a written management response.

Any feedback we receive during the course of the work has been incorporated into the

body of the report.

I ask that you accept the report in cross-reference to the January 13th meeting of the City Council.

happy to answer any questions and representatives from Team San Jose as

well as from the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs are here

to as well to answer questions thank you thank you Joe thank you for the

presentation do we have any members of the public who wish to speak there is no

public comment okay then I'll move to the committee councilmember Mulcahy

uh thank you vice mayor um thank you for the report joe and team um just full disclosure i'm the

council liaison to team san jose and a founding board member of the organization

um and you know probably one of its you know more outspoken supporters and critic at time

but I said this at their board meeting last week I think a year ago there was

some you know real concern about Team San Jose performance and some of the you

know considerations about their role and I just want to sort of give the

organization a lot of praise for how quickly they've responded to being an

integral part of the way that we market this city. I mean, they're, you know, literally hand in glove

right now with SJ2026. And, you know, one of the things that we'd been doing as a board, but also

as an organization is really finding footing about what you compare yourselves to pre-COVID. It was

always going you know when we get back to pre-COVID and pre-COVID happened to be for this organization

the most successful year in the 20 plus year history of the organization and so

um you know it feels like while we still have some challenges with you know the amount of hotel rooms

and you know tech companies coming back to the fold i just want to sort of raise them up uh having

you know worked very hard to be a really relevant important partner to the city

of San Jose and with that I'll move to accept the fiscal year 24 25 performance

cross reference to January 15th great thank you council meeting January 13th

13th council meeting I will take that friendly amendment thank you council

member come a thank you so much and thank you so much for the report I think

that in the in past years I was one of the the critics and I think that team

San Jose has come a long way and has been able to do a lot more. As we sort of go into

2026 and, you know, 2027, the next year, and we're looking at the performance goals, I really think

that we ought to think about, I know that we added the sports section to a lot of the things

that we're doing next year, but as we move into our 250th year anniversary in 2027, you know,

I hope that, I think being 195% of achieving what they are doing, obviously you're doing really well,

but I also wonder if we're not sort of like being modest and not being more aggressive in terms of

these wonderful things are happening in 2026 and 2027 and I'd like to stretch a

little bit and so as you think about the future I think that you might want to

consider stretching a little bit more as we go ahead and and and do really big

things for both in 2026 and 2027 as we're looking at future performance

goals because I think that certainly the trajectory is going in the right direction, and I thank

you for that, but I also think that there are good and big opportunities that we hope

that we're able to do much better.

So thank you.

Thank you.

This is the annual auditor's report.

We will have Team San Jose come and present,

I think in our next CED meeting,

their annual report that they do.

They come, CED, or Team San Jose comes twice

and the auditor comes once.

So those are fabulous comments to challenge them,

but that's all part of our contract negotiation with them too,

how the numbers are set and how we reach those goals.

But good comments.

But as I as I look into as we think about the next budget cycle and that's when the performance goals are set

I just wanted to plant that seed to be able to start thinking broader

Great, thank you seeing no other hands. Let's vote

Great motion carries now we move on to

one of two focus areas that report to CED the first is building more housing and

I assume we have some people stepping down for that

Thank You chair Foley Rosalyn and Rosalyn, thank you deputy city

Manager while the directors are coming. I'm actually going to kick off the presentation and

And so this item provides the first semi-annual update

to the CED committee on the building more housing focus area.

And our purpose today is to share what we are learning

through doing the work while actually still building

the infrastructure for a culture of learning.

And I want to start today by thanking all of the staff

and many staff have been involved

throughout our different departments.

And also wanna give a huge shout out really to our leader

for both of these focus areas she's working across city departments in a wonderful way and that is

caitlyn kenney assistant to the city manager next slide i don't know who's doing the slides for me

thank you so much so as you can see here this is our agenda for the afternoon

we're going to speak about focus areas 2.0 and that evolution we'll talk about how we're learning

and then at the end we'll talk about what's next so the next slide shows that most of our work

thank you eric involves cultivating an organizational mindset of learning

with the following key elements we know that numbers alone don't really tell the full story

we want to get used to learning in in public that builds trust and retrospectives are a big part of

of our learning.

And we know that progress requires a work environment

that ensures our staff feel supported to test new approaches,

to identify challenges early, and to learn openly.

So with this new mindset, our staff

were asking a lot more questions.

And as we go through this process, and actually today,

we invite the committee members to also ask questions

about what we are seeing, what are we learning,

perhaps are there opportunities for us to pivot as well.

So this slide is a review of our process to date.

Some steps that we have taken in recent months

include training on this new model,

retrospectives on each of the specific projects,

and republishing our public dashboards,

which I'm very pleased to announce that were just went live this afternoon and we invite

the committee members to take a look at those.

So at the September 30th City Council meeting, we shared that the purpose of the logic model

is underpinning the focus area.

They help us clarify how our work is intended to create impact by clearly aligning strategies

with problems and articulating testable assumptions that we can learn from and adapt to.

So this diagram represents the logic model framework that we use to organize each of

the two focus areas.

We first worked to clearly articulate the long-term goal we are trying to achieve for

our community.

Next we identified the obstacles or problem areas that are within our organizational sphere

of influence that are preventing us from reaching this long-term goal.

And then for each problem area, we thought through near-term goals that are clear, measurable,

and realistic to implement within the fiscal year.

So this slide, you can see our three priority areas for building more housing.

There are land use policy and regulation, development services, and linking land and

capital.

And with that, I'm going to hand the presentation over to Chris Burton, Director of Planning

Building and Code Enforcement.

Thank you, Rosalyn.

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee members.

Chris Burton, Director of Planning, Building, Code Enforcement.

So as Rosalyn mentioned, we're working across three priority areas, and within that we have

ten near-term goals.

I'm going to go through the first two priority areas and then hand it over to Eric to cover

the third.

There's a lot here, so we'll probably skip through quite quickly.

happy to answer all your questions. So just to kind of set the tone, as we think about

sort of the building more housing focus area, really what we're talking about is that long-term

goal of meeting the needs of our residents as it comes to housing and doing so across

all income levels. But ultimately, it's a conversation about helping drive market because

the city doesn't build housing. We regulate it, we process it, we facilitate it, but we

rely very much on the private markets to deliver on that housing. So as we think

about our indicators in this area what we're looking at is how housing units

are moving through our process. We talk about these three kind of key moments,

the first being entitlement, so allowing somebody to you know work through what

they can build, the second being their building permit issued, so that's really

the construction phase, all the way through inspection to occupancy and

that's allowing us to kind of see in real time how that market is really

performing and how we're seeing units move through that process.

Obviously, you know, as I mentioned, it's really about fostering a system that

facilitates the production of housing and that works in partnerships with all

of the organizations that work both in market rate and affordable housing. So

within problem area one, so this is sort of really around land use policy and

regulation. Obviously we all know that land use policy, especially around housing, is

complex. It's been made significantly more complex in recent years as the state has become

involved. But we still think we're really leading the way as a pro-housing city within

the state. We work closely with other major municipalities in the state of California and

really are in line and driving new housing policy that advances our goals. There's still

more that we can do, one of the key areas in ensuring that we're delivering on this

is working with all of our partners to get creative on how we facilitate more housing

and how we think differently about our land use and policy approach.

The way we're doing that in goal number one is we're continuing to look at our policy

framework, so obviously we're pretty unique in San Jose in that our general plan includes

a four-year review process that allows us to take on some of these major objects and

sort of policy issues and take a fresh look without doing a complete review on the general

plan.

So we've kicked off that four-year review process.

One of our key learnings and adjustments this time has been to use the Planning Commission

as our task force to really drive that conversation.

I think it's been a really interesting experience for us having a body that has got a grounding

and land use policy and has come up to the issues very quickly.

So we're moving through quickly on that approach.

The focus of this four-year review is truly to look at housing and key issues in the general plan.

It's really intended to lead up to the next housing element in 2031.

So as we look at those four major issues areas in the four-year review, that's really keeping that all top of mind.

The second goal in this priority area is continuing work around a ministerial permit process as we continue to expand that into the downtown.

We recently approved our first city ministerial project that moved through our process incredibly effectively and efficiently.

The key with the ministerial process is obviously it becomes statutorily exempt from CEQA.

So not categorically exempt where there may be some reports required.

become statutorily exempt now obviously there's a lot of work going on at the

state level right now regarding AB 130 that's also looking at statutory

exemptions we still think there's benefit to our own process there's

additional conditions and requirements that are tied to some of the other

processes that you know we believe they have the ability to impact and improve

the availability of housing as it moves through our second priority area is the

opportunity to continue to work on our process. So obviously it's something

that's talked about a lot, something that we're very aware of and something that

we've been working on for a long time and kept it very much in focus.

The highlight from this area is that we continue to exceed timelines, our

timeliness goals, not timelines, our timeliness goals for multifamily

residential building permits as they move through that process. A lot of this

work has been driven by an enhanced process around affordable housing so as

we've needed to meet the critical funding timelines for major affordable

developments we've looked at how our interdepartmental teams work together

and really sort of focused on streamlining that process and making it

more effective although we work well across those teams and across the

different departments there's always the opportunity to continue to develop the

way we work together. Many developers are unaware of some of the tools that are available

for them to track projects, especially as we continue to expand our technology offerings.

So we believe there's more work to be done there, and we believe that there's an opportunity

to continue to communicate better across our process as we continue to focus on that time

in this goal.

In this area, we have a number of different goals.

Goal 2.1 is about analyzing options to report on development services timeliness across

the pipeline and continue to bring this back.

It's a goal that's currently underway, that we're continuing to work on this performance

measure.

What we hope to learn from this process is that we can offer a comprehensive evaluation

of what information we currently provide and how that connects to our customers and provides

them the transparency and the predictability in our process so they can manage their expectations

relative to the work that we do in partnership. What that means is we're looking at a new way

on how we can effectively evaluate our time on us. I think the one thing that's really important

to understand in the development review process is that there are so many different components

and so many different aspects,

but it's hard to just look at it and say,

well, this is how we're doing,

to have a single indicator that provides an insight

into how well we're effectively managing our process.

We do publish standardized timelines

across all of the development review partners,

and so we're looking at a new process

that sort of measures timeliness

in a manner of days added by the city.

So understandably, we don't own the entire process

when somebody tells you it took them a year to get a permit.

We didn't have it for a whole year and then just gave it back approved.

There's a back and forth.

It's a relationship where we work with developers.

A project may get submitted back to the city two, three, four, even up to six, seven, eight times

as we work through many of the issues that are there.

So what we're trying to do is build a measure that allows us to look at that comprehensive process

across all of the development service partners and say,

how many days did we go beyond the expected timelines?

so we can give an indication of what impact we're having on housing

development beyond sort of what we've published out there so as you can see

there's a couple of example projects here as I said we've had enhanced process

around many of the affordable projects I just realized my apologies oh let's get

over the wrong one. So let me just go to this one here. So a number of examples that we're

displaying. So as I said, we've had great success in modifying our process on the affordable side.

And you can see we've actually reduced the anticipated number of days that we would see

on this project. So the key line here is that second line that says days subtracted or added

by the city compared to our project timelines. So in the three examples we've provided,

we've come in under expectations so we've moved faster than our published

timelines and again that's largely driven by that enhanced process you can

also see that on the team market rates we are over so we've added days to that

process 14 days and 35 days but again that's across all of those process when

you look at the bottom line here that looks at the total business days for

entire project so for the Sealy project the building a we added 14 days to a 272 day process

on the second one on the Aquino we added 35 days to an almost 200 day process

so this is a new way for us to measure this in the past when you've looked at some of the score

cards that we've presented to city council they focused in on one particular part of the process

whether it's whether we're meeting our expectations on first comments or time to issuance.

This is intended to give a general measure across the entire development review process,

so you can see how we do over time. Goals 2.2 and 2.3. So really the goal here, again,

as we look at process improvements largely revolve around CEQA. There's a considerable amount of work

coming as a result of the changes to CEQA that have been put forward by the state, and we're

still trying to really understand what those are, but there's still more work that we can

do internally to improve our process.

The first is looking at standard conditions of approval within the secret process.

That work is underway and we'll be beginning outreach with the development community in

January.

Again, this is about bringing transparency and consistency so developers have insight

going into the process and understand what conditions may be imposed.

Secondly, goal 2.3 is to conduct an initial analysis of projects affected by AB 130.

We have an initial screen.

We have actually had projects come in that are looking to use AB 130 now.

Again, this provides a statutory exemption from the CEQRA process for infill housing.

There are additional requirements around some of these aspects that we are still sort of

understanding.

We believe there will be follow-up bills related to this as well.

So it's a little bit of a shift exam.

So right now we're looking at the process and understanding those projects that are currently on the books.

Does it benefit them to transition their process into AB130, or do they stick with the existing process if they're far enough through it?

So that's work that's currently underway as well.

Goal 2.4.

So this is work around our fee estimator that's been an ongoing body of work to try and give

additional transparency and visibility into the fees that are charged. Now this is really focused

primarily on service fees. So when we think about plan review fees and issuance fees,

it will go into, as we branch into multifamily housing, it is going into looking at some of the

other fees that are applicable as far as affordable housing parks and taxes obviously

so many of those fees those major impact fees are affected by what's the condition of the project

whether or not they're providing park space whether they're providing affordable housing

and so that varies so we're really focused on the service fees that we provide it's important

noting that fees are probably one of the most complex parts of a complex business.

Largely, as a cost recovery department across all of development services,

we've broken down all of the tasks that we do on development projects on an hourly basis.

And then the variability of different projects on different sites means that it gets very complex

very quickly. So it's really hard to create a calculator that just says, oh, this is your

project these will be your fees. So the approach with the estimator is to

demonstrate fees that have been charged to similar projects so we can give

people a range. The reason that that's important is often when people are

considering for large multifamily development kind of what the fees are

going to be is early in their process when they're judging feasibility on the

project so the intent is to give them more of that transparency. To give you a

a look into how that is when they see it up close. This is an example of what the development

fee estimator looks like. We're adding the new multifamily construction right now. We

started this work with ADUs initially, and then we continued it with commercial and industrial

tenant improvements. But it gives a range of projects that are very similar and gives

a breakdown of the different fee amounts, looks at the total combined fee across everything,

and then breaks it down by the application fee, the issuance fee,

and then the fees coming from other departments as well.

And with that, I will hand it to Eric.

Thanks, Chris.

I'll just go through some brief slides here regarding linking land to capital,

building on sort of the work we did last week on the cost of development study,

better understanding some of the challenges to bringing more projects out of the ground

getting more units started and so a lot of this work here is really focused on

how do we address those challenges identified within the cost of

development study and how do we bring this forward and in an intentional way

knowing that the city has some limited capacity to really influence the

projects in the market rate side as well as on the affordable side knowing that

some of the challenges exists outside of city control and so this first provides

Just a quick update, as we had mentioned, cost of development study last week really

identified what is the areas of challenges for both market rate and affordable.

Where are some opportunities that through existing work that the team is doing where

we can take advantage of pushing some of those letters.

And then coming on January 27th, where we're going to have a host of opportunities to really

get into the details as we bring forth updates to the IHO, the incentive programs, as well

as a few other complementary initiatives to look at it as a package of public

policy considerations for us to review. So first on the market rate side as

found from the cost of the Obama study like obviously townhomes, stack flats

those pencil out quite well. It is the towers and the more density projects

that really have a challenge and where you're seeing sort of the scale of

challenges. On the affordable housing side there's been a lot of policy

considerations over the past really emphasizing smaller units and the flip

side of that is the challenges that we spend a whole lot of money on a much

smaller units or overall cost structure comparative to other neighboring

municipalities is much higher and as we'll also consider coming on January

27th an expansion of the existing downtown incentive programs to look at

ways to move forward with office to residential conversions and what are

some targeted interventions there where the city can push a few levers to get

some key projects particularly within the downtown to move forward and so some

other quick wins here just to go through briefly here 3.2 and 3.3 you know

obviously the multifamily housing incentive program which we brought

forward in December had pre underwritten four or five projects those got into

construction so we're able to really see the impact of that incentive program

getting over 1,400 units into construction and over 200 of them being affordable units and how

do we learn to just evolve that program as well as make improvements as which you'll see come

January 27th to the underwriting of certain other projects that we've done for the downtown

incentive and then the next phase of the multifamily housing improvement program then for 3.4 where do

look at creating more preservation opportunities. I'll address this in

upcoming sessions about some of our key strategies and tools that we will look

to bring to the table for both market rate and affordable projects that will

need some ongoing stabilization to preserve the units and open up new

opportunities. And then how do we continue to look and assess our ongoing sort of

impacts around some of these investments that we have made and now I'll put it

back to Rosalind to wrap up the presentation

thank you Eric so just in summary we just wanted to let you know what's ahead

moving forward so obviously the City Council priority setting process starts

at the first of the year and then will be the initiation of the city's annual budget process

with the passage in june and that concludes staff presentation thank you so much

thank you that's a lot of information and and very helpful and it really

comes on the after the completion of the study session we had last week regarding the cost of

development and the different types and what pencils out and what what doesn't

pencil out so I look forward to the the all thing housing all things housing on

January 27th to hear what staff recommendations going to be on IHO for

example incentives and other other recommendations that you might make to

help move the needle and get more construction going in all parts of our

our city with that let's turn to members of the public do we have anyone here who

was to speak yes we have two requests to speak Lillian and Blair please make your

way down to the podium

Vice mayor Foley and staff on 3.4 which says provides alternative financing programs to

preserve housing at all income levels and when I looked at that I thought to myself okay what

does it mean to preserve housing at all income levels does it mean low income

middle income high income how do you stabilize housing for people that are in

it according to what is considered affordable or how do you stabilize

housing for people at different income levels when housing continues to rise in

this city so when you have your inter department teams discussing different

issues on housing affordable housing and financing how do you address 3.4 thank you thank you next

speaker hi Claire Buechman a lot of information on that item thank you I listened to about half of the

study session you had on December 8th on this subject it was nice to hear it was nice to be

here today and just hear Chris Burton talking about you know transparency with

fee issues and stuff I've been here for 10 years and there was just a nice

familiarity that with the subject matter that I don't quite have yet in San Diego

that I'm trying to better learn and that they have really good ideas that their

construction costs are much lower in San Diego and they're working they've

developed an ADU guideline process and how to they can be built well and within reasonable

regulatory frameworks of the city and I that's just awesome thinking to me they have a bit of

trouble with the fee structure I think you guys just have a bit more understanding how to talk

about fee issues and it's nice to hear and be around that for me my biggest concerns are how

again, do we deal with low and extremely low and very low income housing concerns?

I've heard you've been developing some shelter ideas which have been helpful,

but that has to be brought in with extremely low income housing also.

And I've heard at the previous meeting on this that you are making those attempts.

You are working on that.

Thank you.

to hear that language more regularly here in this process would be great and

that would be building our comprehensive whole thank you back to committee thank

you councilmember Ortiz thank you madam chair I just want to thank staff for

this presentation and just for the amount of work that has gone in to

standing up the focus area model 2.0. I appreciate the clear effort that went

into creating all this infrastructure as well as the near-term goal structure all

of which is set up to make better to set up to make us make better decisions and

course correct as we continue to address this critical issue. All the items today

presented felt really positive and it's encouraging to see the many forward

looking initiatives that the city is prioritizing right now. These are important steps for modernizing

our land use framework and improving our entire development pipeline. Still, a lot of what

we worked on today seems like it's more focused on creating that infrastructure for improvements

and not necessarily how we're going to get there. So my main question is about our capacity

to deliver given budget constraints time constraints we're anticipating next year how confident

are we that we can actually implement all of these initiatives at the pace and scale

outlined.

Thank you councilmember I think that's something that we're acutely aware of and constantly

monitoring. Certainly with the land use goals, a lot of those things are work that we were

anticipating. As you'll recall, we've been in front of the CED committee with policy work plan

and how we're tracking against those projects. So we have a pretty good sense of where capacity

sits relative to those projects. I think with relation to how we're sort of working through

processing? That's a great question. It's a balancing act. It's always a balancing act.

Obviously, we're largely fee-funded. And so when development is slower, which it is right now,

we have to be really cognizant of what resources we have. And in fact, there's usually a delay

when development picks up and we have to hire people to come into positions that we're usually

tracking behind. It's something that we try and kind of put some foresight to. It's something

why we're looking across that whole pipeline so we can understand what's moving through the process

at any given moment but there's always a risk and and we're always trying to balance that

i think part of the work that we're doing on really understanding what those impacts are

is important so we can give that information to the committee to the city council

to understand sort of where we sit right we know that this is where our staffing levels are at

and hopefully you know you'll see direct correlations to sort of what impact we're

we're having on the development process.

The other nuance that's in there that isn't always as immediately apparent is that we

often need to prioritize around certain things.

So as I mentioned, we've been prioritizing around affordable development, getting through

the building permit process.

Now, the reason we do that, and Eric could probably speak more eloquently to it, is that

once they complete their entitlement process, there's a very tight turnaround because of

their funding requirements to actually pull a building permit.

And what we realized is in the past that was putting an increased amount of pressure on

our process because these are developments that we absolutely want to help.

We certainly don't want to put them at risk of losing funding.

So we needed to come up with a model that would support that and get them through the

process quickly.

It's a very intensive process.

It takes a whole team from different departments, different sub-trades, where we align them

and we sort of ultimately say, you know, we make the developer accountable for their timeline,

and we say if you can meet your timeline, we can meet ours,

and make sure that it fits within that window.

The problem is that it's dedicating resources towards those projects

and pulls them away from others.

And so where you see that time reduced on affordable,

you see that slight increase on market rate.

And the same is true when we talk about different types of housing

and different types of projects.

So, you know, at times we will focus on affordable housing

or even multifamily projects or key economic development projects, and that will have an

impact somewhere else, whether it's single family homeowners, whether it's other types

of development.

So that's a balance.

It's a judgment call.

It's really managing closely to where the work is coming from, what the pressures and

timelines are, and how we then meet at least minimum levels of service for all of our customers

to make sure that all projects are moving and hopefully not negatively impacting their

outcomes.

And I'll just add, so on the financing side, so what is presented in the plan are achievable

goals. The challenge will be not its execution, but its effectiveness and impact, because

there's so many different levers that we don't control when we look at the financing of projects.

There's ever-increasing costs of financing now, despite FMO and CTV rates coming down,

10-year treasury costs, which is the real driver of mortgage rates and debt financing,

are screeching back up towards 5%.

The cost of materials with ongoing tariff issues continues to arrive

and premiums being added across the site.

And then the ever-increasing trending upward cost of land.

So as we look to size the various different programs

that the levers we're going to produce,

the challenge will always be getting the best underwriting we can

to ensure that the target we're trying to hit

and what we're going to push forward actually gets to effectiveness.

Great, thank you. Appreciate both of those answers.

And that was going to be my follow-up question.

How are we going to be prioritizing and making trade-offs if needed?

I don't know if either you are aware of an article that was just published this week in Strong Towns

in regards to Oakland recently cutting like a big piece of red tape and expediting permits.

Have you looked at what the city of Oakland is doing?

I've not seen that article specifically I've not heard of anything out of Oakland

we do typically follow what other cities are doing I meet with my peers in other

major cities Lisa Joyner our building official also meets with other building

officials throughout all the other major cities in California so we'll definitely

follow up and find out what they have going on okay great happy to send you

the article as well appreciate it thank you thank you

Councilmember Casey. Thank you Madam Chair. Chris on the pipeline timelines

what type of staff or tech investment is required so we're not doing manual

pulls for information? So there is additional investment we need to do

around our system and just sort of building the reports I think right now

we're trying to ensure that we have alignment across all of the development

services partners. If I tell you one building permit project, in fact one of the examples,

when you look in the permit system, which is called AMANDA, for all of the different

folders associated with that project, there's over 30 folders across the multiple different

departments that work on it. And they all use different nomenclature or statuses. And

so what we're trying to do is find some alignment so we can pull consistent reports from technology.

In the meantime, we have an analyst position in PVCE that was an ad delete from another

position to really focus on how we look across our whole development pipeline and really

understand all of those different areas.

It's a position that we only recently filled.

It is supporting this work right now on kind of a manual basis as we continue to do the

alignment between the departments and then ultimately we can make the changes to technology

to automate a lot of this.

Okay. You kind of alluded to it, but is there a standard repeatable KPI process that we're considering for the end-to-end pipeline process that you'll come back to that we can review?

I think part of the challenge on just standardizing is just the volume and

diversity of development that we're dealing with. Obviously for the reports

here we're looking at multifamily projects 20 units or above and even that

alone is a pretty diverse subset and when you look at the sort of complexities

and the differentiation between different projects to sort of really kind

of standardize that improvement process it's something that we do look at and as

the development services partners which is those core partners are planning

building public works and fire as the permitting agencies but then we're

supported by housing parks and a number of other departments as well we're sort

of consistently looking at for those opportunities it's not one that we've

discovered yet but we'll continue to keep working on it I mean we don't

necessarily have to reinvent the wheel so there's no one in the United States

that's cracked its nut or even gotten any better at it not that I've seen not

I'm aware of. I think what we're trying to do is strive to come to a sort of days added measure.

I've not seen it done elsewhere, but as we dig into this work, we actually see that there's a

ton of benefit to that beyond what you see in just those line items. It's giving us the ability

to look internally and sort of use those retrospectives across a number of projects

to understand what happened. So like I said, when we look at the sort of the project that had 45

days added. There were eight rounds of submittal on that project. So it gives us that opportunity

to turn around and say, okay, what drove that? What caused that issue? Is it on our side?

Did new requirements come up, which is something we always try and avoid? Is there something

that the developer missed that we can educate them on or inform them on earlier? So what

are the things that we can do to really compress that timeline? Because the one thing that

affects any project timeline across any process, whether it's planning, building, fire, or

public works is the number of resubmittals as soon as you resubmittal

you're into another cycle so we're always looking at that process looking

at past projects so we can do those reflections and understand where we can

improve

doesn't really answer my question so in direct answer not that I've seen okay

right on going to the AB 130 what is touched on about it wasn't clear to me

decision framework to decide whether you're going to use the city's process versus the state's

streamlining process so again the city's process is really focused on a minister so the state

process ab 130 is about streamlining just the secret process so um obviously there's a tremendous

advantage to projects being able to use that there are some additional requirements around

tribal consultation that does sort of impact the timeline for individual projects and we're still

sort of working to fully understand how that will lay out over time. The advantage of the

city's process is not just CEQA, it also moves you through a non-public hearing process. So

it's combined, it doesn't have those requirements around tribal consultation, there's much more we

can do with that. So we started to roll that out in growth areas and approved urban villages.

We did do our first project in District 1. It was successful, right? It was a really straightforward

process I think the developer appreciated the clarity it's quick it's

still not as quick as we'd love it obviously I think that project had

multiple rounds of review again I think there were three rounds so that stretches

it out over I think seven or eight months end to end but it takes out a lot

of that uncertainty around the secret process and around the public hearing

process so that's really the opportunity we're looking at to expand and staff

makes that decision the applicant can't decide which one they want I mean we

consult with the applicant on that if it's if I mean if somebody wanted to go

to a public hearing process we would happily take them to it thank you

councilmember would you like to make a motion to accept the report yes ma'am

motion to accept the report great seeing no other hands let's vote

Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I really look forward to January 27th where we really have a lot more detail and things to support or not. We'll see. Thank you. Hopefully to move development forward.

okay next item is the last item on our agenda and that is the second focus group that comes

to CED which is growing our economy rosen i think you're going to kick this one off too

thank you chair i am and since i've already provided much of the background in terms of

of our work on focus areas 2.0.

I will skip those slides and just jump right into

a summary of how we're organized to grow our economy

for this focus area.

I'm gonna start on slide five.

Thank you, Caitlin.

So this slide shows a summary of how we're organized

for the logic model for the growing our economy focus area.

Our work is grounded in our long-term goal

cultivate an ecosystem for thriving businesses and resident prosperity we have four problem areas

which are business development and workforce preparedness infrastructure readiness downtown

and neighborhood business district investment and sports and entertainment district development

and each of these three problem areas contain both near-term long-term goals for this fiscal year

So in the next slide, again, the work is modeled in five community indicators,

which we aspire to influence for the long term.

They include jobs, revenue, downtown vibrancy, small businesses, and income inequality.

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

External conditions, including housing and construction costs, regulatory mandates, and broader economic trends, affect these investment decisions.

Still, the city remains focused on advancing growth and opportunity.

The way we are meeting the moment is to emphasize our comparative advantages to inform business

engagements, prepare our workforce, and drive infrastructure readiness opportunities to

grow employment and jobs for our residents.

Downtown and neighborhood business district investments will advance community placemaking

activities and sports and entertainment district formation planning.

Now I'm going to turn the presentation over to Jen Baker, our Director of the City Manager's

Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs.

All right.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee.

Jen Baker, Director of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs.

Here to follow our housing colleagues who are presenting four problem areas across ten goals,

We have four focus areas across 23 goals to try to run through together this afternoon.

So I'll kick us off looking at business development and workforce preparedness.

As a broad overarching statement, we're seeing continued interest in activity across some

key sectors.

And so the team is engaged in learning about these sectors and figuring out how and where

we can lean into them accordingly. In 2025, 2026 so far, we've seen 1,300 jobs created

and across a handful of different industries. So we'll continue to work on how those

industries and jobs and opportunity are manifesting in our processes.

So in goal one and goal two, we have engaged employers to connect them, creating jobs

and customized business outreach activities with priority sectors.

Where we're seeing particular interest is in AI analytics,

GPUs and CPUs, server systems, robotics,

and really where AI meets the physical environment.

Some of those interactions are being facilitated

through the Startup AI Initiative

and then otherwise through industry outreach.

For Goal 1.2, one of the areas where we saw a big win

this year and where I would like to see us continue to develop our outreach is that our

business development team was present at Semicon West.

Here we go.

Thank you, Caitlin.

Click and speak at the same time.

Semicon West in Phoenix, Arizona.

So this is the first time in a number of years that the BD team has participated in an outreach

outbound campaign that required a little bit of travel and collaboration with GoBiz and the state

of California to really put San Jose and Silicon Valley out in front of other peer industry

leaders. So I think when you're part of a community that is really good at something and known for

something, stretching that muscle and really focusing on outward business and traction

is something that we have to continue to recycle and reinvest in.

So I mentioned some of the priority sectors,

but through participation with industry events is where we're creating leads,

where we're creating a follow-up loop, and business facilitation.

So business facilitation for us, and this is kind of a meld between goal 1 and goal 2,

or 1.1 and 1.2, can take place in a lot of different ways.

So, for example, as part of our participation in Semi and SemiCon West, through industry circles, we're meeting companies.

We're learning on the ground from them where they're facing challenges with their growth and where we can help from the city aspect to accelerate that growth and make sure that they decide that they want to build their business here.

And sometimes what that looks like is finding a city tool.

Sometimes it is interdepartmental collaboration where a company may be experiencing a slow-up in realizing their built environment,

and we can reach across departments and understand if there is a challenge and what that challenge looks like

and how we can commit to a timeline so that industry can predictably grow.

In my tenure here, I've been contacted by a handful of companies who are seeking to realize their growth,

and we've been able to engage on behalf of the BD team and corporate outreach.

Goal 1.3 is really looking at the methodology for how we're counting the difference between retention, expansion, and business attraction.

So before our team counts anything as a win, we want to make sure that we've had a fundamental role in helping to achieve the output of that win.

So whether that is jobs creation, an accelerated permitting process, an expanded footprint, and eventually an expanded tax base,

we're making sure that we're logging, that we're defining what the pivotal moments are to achieve that win

and how our team was instrumental in moving something forward.

And that could also be through outbound outreach where we generated our own lead and were able to see that to cultivation.

This is really complementary to the target and focusing efforts also.

Kaylin's going to click so I can talk and read.

So our reflections on methodology also help us focus in on where we can be effective with the industry outreach.

So if the majority of our work in any moment in time is retention or expansion, how can we organize some team energy towards facilitating those processes?

And then at the same time, zoom back and see what the market environment is telling us and where we can otherwise work on business attraction or refocus our efforts there.

We are working on procuring some tools, some software tools that will help us specifically with business attraction,

and those will also likely help us be able to define and account for our methodology and outreach.

Goals 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 are grounded in workforce preparedness.

So council put before us the task of working to pilot workforce opportunities for unstably

housed residents.

To date, you can see the statistics, 69 unstably housed clients have enrolled in the pilot

workforce development program, and there's an ongoing case management partnership with

community-based organizations to help us continue to pursue that goal.

One finding and one reflection is that the majority of clients enrolling are opportunity youth aged 18 to 24.

Goal 1.5 and 1.6, or we'll go to 1.5 first, intends to launch trainings and training modules for AI-related skills.

So we hear a lot from industry that people who are outside of industry or not currently employed,

when they do reenter industry, they need to have a baseline of AI literacy.

And so the Work to Future team has collaborated and leaned into growing their skills training

opportunities with 50 new related trainings launched and 31 clients enrolled so far.

So we're making good headwind towards that goal and engaging with clients in new skill sets.

Goal 1.6 is looking at how we as an organization are using AI tools internally.

So how are we assessing job matching opportunities, success rates, and longevity and workforce pathway building through AI tools and how we're monitoring our efforts?

So we're on track to be implementing some new inward-facing AI improvement tools by March 2026.

Focus area or goal two is infrastructure readiness.

And if you look at our industrial vacancy rate, we have sustained as a city a very low industrial vacancy rate over the course of recent years.

And so the more infrastructure we have ready, the more we're able to accommodate industry and industrial land use cases in particular.

So infrastructure readiness is particularly important.

and the city in the summertime had the amazing announcement of the PGE power agreement

and the opportunity to build energy infrastructure out.

Just that announcement in and of itself yielded a ton of interest from community

and that translates into goals 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.

So, goal 2.1 is that three data centers or large energy projects should receive permanent

power from PGE by 2026.

Goal 2.2 signals that there should be two additional data center projects in the pipeline

for review by 2026, June 2026, and five new data center or large energy projects in the

planning and entitlement phase by June 2026.

So you'll see in the sort of stoplight system,

we have a yellow and a green and a yellow respectively.

And part of this retrospective and logic model learning process

invites us to understand really why that's happening, right?

There's a lot of interest in power.

And really, it's examining the capabilities

of the companies who would like to have power.

It's acknowledging that there is a lot of speculation

and speculative positioning for investment

to actually realize companies

to be able to consume that power.

So what we've seen is that there are 19 data centers

and large energy projects in the development pipeline

as of September 2025.

And that is in the pipeline,

a subset of a larger body of interested parties

with whom the team has been working to really understand the breadth of their capabilities

and sort of the seriousness of the inquiry.

Three out of 17 data center and large energy projects have progressed to a next stage between

June and September of this year.

So that's a strong sign, all things data center industry included.

And what that looks like in terms of projected tax revenue for the city in 2026 and 2027

is about $2.1 million through those three projects that would be reinvested in our ability to

grow a budget.

Rule 2.4 looks at standing up the regional wastewater facility activation and staging

development for that site.

So we were pleased to bring to council on November 18th the authorization which you

approved for staff to negotiate and execute an exclusive negotiating agreement with Prologis

see 159 acres of the regional wastewater facility entering into a negotiation for planning phases

to operationalize that site.

So that was a great step forward and one we will look to be a strong steward of as we

close out this year and start the next year.

2.5, which is complementary, is realizing the LS Power Utility Permit by June 2026.

As we engage in that process, we'll be looking to bring a memo and resolution to Council,

but we're still on track to see those permits advanced.

I understand that the CPUC will be looking at a decision a little bit later, closer to

March. Heading back to downtown and neighborhood districts, this is an area

where we will see council particularly briefed and needing to engage because

for each business improvement district that we bring to council there are four

separate actions. So we're particularly excited in this quarter to be presenting

to you the Alameda Business Improvement District bid and the Alum Rock Santa Clara Business

Improvement District.

You'll be reviewing those through your memo tomorrow.

We've seen an uptick in downtown foot traffic.

We've seen an uptick in sales receipts in downtown, which has been positive.

We want to see that trajectory continue.

continuing to empower the business districts and to lean into our downtown

manager role will help facilitate that activity. We're also continuing to gauge

in place-making efforts and and seeing a trend in in summertime convention center

activities which I know you've been briefed out on through Team San Jose and

otherwise. 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 goals all look continue to look at downtown business opportunities.

Three companies so far have engaged in utilizing the downtown office leasing incentive program

since October last year. We're continuing to work to try to identify companies who are hungry for

office space and want to be located downtown. There have been a couple new lease renewal

commitments secured, two specifically, and three additional business attraction

opportunities that have landed in San Jose through Lucid Motors, Papi and Claro, and VTA's

security office. There were three placemaking initiatives also completed and three ongoing,

and then a host of 2026 major sporting events that will be a driver for bringing people to the community

and really representing the best that San Jose can put forward.

And our downtown manager has recently engaged in some walking tours where over the course of years

and most recently, there is a positive perception of change about in downtown.

And so we want to see that continue and would like to see through Christmas in the Park and other activities how perception and activation of downtown can grow and how we can improve those experiences.

There were a couple of learnings to highlight.

One is the removal of some of the insurance, some of the more onerous insurance requirements

in the Downtown Leasing Incentive Program.

So we're hoping that that will invite more interest, but that includes free parking for

certain percentage of square footage leased and also a fee relief for new

businesses and engaged in the downtown footprint.

For goals 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6, we're really looking at neighborhood districts and shared

prosperity and placemaking.

So I perhaps preempted this a little bit with my announcements on the bids and otherwise

business district and downtown activation when I was speaking to slide one.

But we will look forward to bringing the two bid administrative processes to tomorrow for Alam Rock and the Alameda business district, or business corridors, business districts to be.

And then I'm happy to share that the Small Business Advisory Committee has recently evaluated an approach to two business startup or two business grant opportunities, one for startups and one for neighborhoods, that will launch in January 2026.

So those are exciting things for our small business community to be looking forward to.

we'll continue to do outreach to neighborhoods and business districts we acknowledge that not

all of the districts across the city have business improvement districts or necessarily

business associations that have the same level of capacity to engage and so part of the exercise

that our small business team works on is building capacity so that so that our community organizations

can reach a milestone of being able to organize as a district and be a magnet for community

engagement, for retail and placemaking experience.

So capacity building also should be part of the win and part of what we acknowledge both

in our learnings but as an output of staff invested time.

Moving on to goal four, which is sport and entertainment district planning.

Just on the acknowledgment and council's direction for staff to engage in sport and entertainment

district planning, there has been a flurry of inquiry and curiosity across community

and across prospective developers and prospective partners.

So just the very mention and our direction to be looking into what an entertainment district

could look like in our midst has created some strong interest.

I think the excitement is that there's an opportunity to invest in a new facility or

a group of facilities that create an economy for us and grow on the strong support for

sports and entertainment that already exists here.

And in building out an economy or exploring that opportunity for growth, you know, that

can be a catalytic momentum builder for downtown and more broadly for San Jose.

What that's looked like in terms of process, we have goal 4.1 and goal 4.2, looking at

two different explorations of potential ways forward and potential venues of focus.

4.1 is team investment and consultant investment in what a sports and entertainment district can look like in downtown.

Some of the inputs into that process have included staff and council members going to

Atlanta on a study trip to see a really strong sports and entertainment district realized

in another geography, and bringing that information and that concept back to San Jose for our

own distillation of what we think could work here and what different interest areas are.

There have been a few workgroup sessions hosted with primary stakeholders, including the

Sharks, with Council's investment in the AMA with the Sharks.

They're a primary stakeholder with whom we want to be grounded and want to be inviting

ideas and concepts as we think about what a broader district could look like here.

It was interesting to me that this is two separate studies, right? The Entertainment District

as a concept and exploration, and then the Convention Center as its own standalone concept

and expansion opportunity. And with the city's ownership of the Convention Center,

land, it makes sense that we would look at that in a separate tranche.

So staff is excited to receive readouts from the consulting teams on each of those studies

as we close out the year.

When we do receive that feedback, we'll need a bit of time to synthesize the studies to

evaluate some of the opportunities and data sets and then present to you some of our learnings.

4.1, and this is a nice milestone for community, is the advancement of administrative guidelines

for entertainment zones. So we do have activated entertainment zones, and they're a little

bit tiny on your slide, but you can see the eight different zones for which we have activation.

There was a nice milestone and adjustment to this entertainment zone policy through which

the state of California and their liquor license policy was clarified. So there is a barrier,

a potential barrier removed to temporary outdoor alcohol sales, which enables our

entertainment zone activations. So we'll be looking to promote and launch opportunities

for community to stand up their own entertainment zone activations and do that with our Office

of Cultural Affairs so we can make sure that safe and permitted events are inviting community

participation. 4.4 and 4.5 look across eight cultural let's see here so 4.4 and 4.5 are looking

at the ways that we're activating special events in 2025 and 2026. Staff has already facilitated

hundreds of events this year, 64% of our annual goal of 485 event days.

Some of those events include city dance, rock and roll marathon,

Viva Calle, some of the ones that are multi-D events that you would recognize.

And there are additional events that were very specifically curated and designed

to be in parallel with the SJ26 activations.

So City Dance will be back,

and a number of other opportunities

for community to come out

through city-sponsored events and activations.

And you can see on the slide

what some of those art and culture

interactive installations will look like.

Let's see here.

With that, I think, you know, that 23 goals is a lot to hum by, hum through in roughly

20 minutes.

And there are a lot more details, particularly around the SJ26 activations, that I'm happy

to dive into.

But it looks like we have one more, which is external partners and economic impact for major sporting events and a goal of capturing activity through SJ26.

So we're working with partners on quantifying what SJ26 yield and investment will look like.

Happy to see that the teams have now been named for FIFA World Cup

and some other milestones around which communities can start to build some momentum.

And we will continue to work and refine both with the data sets we believe will be coming out of the Bay Area Host Committee

and then information that we know we can glean from our downtown association and also from Team San Jose to be measuring the impact of the 2026 investments.

So with that, 23 goals in a flyby and happy to respond to thoughts and questions.

Thank you. That's a lot. 23 goals. There's a lot going on to build our, improve our economic

status in the city and how we're going to improve and support small businesses and development and

infrastructure. It's the first focus group we saw today on housing and development fits nicely with

the development or the focus group of improving economic development within the city.

They go hand in hand.

We build more.

We lower the cost of housing.

We bring more people here, and we can activate more spaces.

With that, let's go to members of the public.

Do we have anybody who's wished to speak?

Yes.

Blair, please make your way down to the podium.

Hi, thank you.

Blair Beekman, thanks a lot for this item.

Downtown issues were talked about.

There's been a lot of good talk at San Jose's downtown.

It's had good revitalization lately.

Congratulations on that effort.

I'm not so much for the pavilion in St. James Park as other people.

I hope it can be looked at possibly as part of its choices right now to look for another location if possible.

But an overall congratulations in what just how we're trying to get by and make it through to the next stages of our lives.

I think in 2027 or so, we're all hopeful of what can be developing by then.

I hope we are looking at new economic models and bringing back concepts from pre-COVID days that we're just starting to talk about more, just more than just a system of tax and spend on people.

And that if we start building social programs, that the everyday community has to then pay taxes for those programs.

We can be creating different models towards that future

that people can be taken care of and they don't have to suffer

for it, which is kind of the one, two of our lives.

Good luck how we can work on such things.

I hope you can be doing good work with San Diego,

talking with them, always keeping in contact.

They mention you guys sometimes and I just see good connections

and how in working on issues, working around the same issues.

And thanks for your time.

Back to the committee.

Did you have a comment too?

Yes.

Can you fill out a card and then come on down?

You have two minutes.

The yellow.

Yeah, why don't you come and comment,

and then you can fill out your card as you leave.

No, come over here to the microphone

and go ahead and make your statement

and then fill out the card.

Good afternoon. I'm a little nervous.

My name is Daniel Rita.

I have a company's name called Daniel Rita's Beauty Intoxication.

I was featured on NBC about 10 years ago,

10 years and a month ago, for Bay Area Proud.

We had a lot of controversy that happened over the past 10 years.

For example, I was sliced three times while defending somebody

at a photo shoot doing Stoli vodka.

And we had a lot of different beneficial

situations that happened coming out of like how the previous comment was with COVID.

I'm trying to get my stuff back together

with doing Daniel Rita's Beauty Intoxication.

I had a background with tech

part of the MasterCard building here on North 3rd Street, 152, with the church that's also there,

which also went for my T-Mobile phone number, which ended with 0520.

I was arrested on the first of the month, and I had, with Uber and with my last name being Rita,

with taxi service with auto, with auto, um, automobiles part way of Disney. Um, we had,

we had stuff that wound up going through tech, like me being Daniel Rita's beauty intoxication

with the tie down with being Joe Biden on this microphone. And I'm not just trying to be two,

two turntables and a microphone or being on the episode of season two or season two,

episode seven of Looking in Berkeley. I'm trying to get my stuff back together. I'm tired of not

having a voice within the system, and it's being played as it's a karaoke situation where it's been

a before he cheats, and I got sliced three times. They're also doing illegal injections, as well as

putting it into a bondage situation. My salon would be Bishop's right here as part of me being

an adult entertainer.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Just, this is more, actually your comments were more for open forum than for this particular

topic.

I'm sorry, we don't actually engage in conversation during the public forum time, but if you could

turn into a card to to the clerk then someone can get in touch with you if

that I'm going to turn to my colleagues councilmember Casey

thank you vice mayor just had a question point of clarification for those slide

12 I think it was said that there were 19 data centers and it said three of 17

data centers. I was just wondering what the discrepancy was there with the explanation.

I think and I can invite my colleague Erica to come down and differentiate but I

believe it has to do with data centers versus data center and large load.

Hi good afternoon Erica Graffo assistant to the city manager in the office of economic development.

the reason why is because we had 17 at the start of june and then by the end of september we had 19.

okay okay thank you yeah so three of the 17 that we started in june by the time we got to september

three of the 17 had progressed by the end of september we had two new entries okay right on

thank you that's it for me okay council member ortiz

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank staff for this thorough presentation and for the work you're doing to position

our city as a long-term economic growth area, especially as we prepare for the major opportunities

coming in 2026.

With that being said, I do have a few questions with a focus on how these efforts translate

into tangible, equitable benefits for our local neighborhoods and small businesses.

I appreciate the work to position our city competitively for data centers as well as

large energy products, but these developments can also be resource intensive and don't

always translate into broad job creation.

As these projects move forward, what community benefit expectations such as workforce pipelines,

local hiring, or neighborhood investments are being considered so these projects deliver

value beyond projected tax revenue?

Well, connecting workforce to any of our business attraction projects is an important

priority.

Our Work to Future team has a really strong track record of being able to connect people

into training programs and introduce them into longer-term workforce pathways across

industries.

So I think as we continue to see industry growth, continue to engage in workforce, that the

opportunity to introduce someone into a job where they can grow skills, where they can

grow a career, and find that via livable wage and beyond livable wage career is stronger

as we grow stronger industry.

Is there conversations, I think you mentioned, what, 19 or potentially 19 data centers that

are going through the pipeline.

Are there conversations in regards to where these employees are going to come?

Can we have conversations in regards to connecting these organizations with Work2Future?

There are.

So as part of the Work2Future train-up program and the AI training programs that are being stood up,

I think there's both the build-out of facilities, which creates near-term construction jobs,

which we're working on being able to measure.

And that can be across a number of skills and traded skills,

people skills, and then bridging across to traded sector

where actual AI and facility engagement skills are necessary.

So I think it's, you know,

there's a matrix of transcending from building out a facility and then having the complementary

workforce to be able to activate a facility. And when I say facility, I'm not, you know,

data centers tend to produce fewer jobs, but in the ecosystem surrounding data centers

are any number of jobs that can be created across advanced manufacturing, app development,

and other opportunities where workforce skills building is necessary.

Councilmember, sorry, I apologize.

If I just may ask.

Who's that?

Manuel Teneva, Deputy City Manager.

If I'm going to ask Erica to come down as well,

I do want to note that each of these projects, when we look at 19,

there are different stages of development.

Some are way ahead than other ones.

I do want to highlight, though, that as part of our agreement with PG&E,

we also have an item related to workforce development.

I was hoping Erica could add some detail to that.

of work workforce development but you also talked about community but community benefits sure if you

could touch on both yeah so you know as we know data centers they're not really a jobs play really

it's a revenue generator for the city and it doesn't take a lot of expenditures so what we

see is one of one of the benefits of data centers is really the utility taxes

that we get so the city makes about 5% on gross receipts for energy bills and

data centers use a lot of energy and so for a given data center fully ramped up

you know the city could be generating between three and six or more million

dollars of annual general fund unrestricted general fund every year and

so while that's maybe not your kind of typical community benefit we see that as

an opportunity to reinvest in things like public safety and libraries and parks and roads and all

of those things. Appreciate that. What about the the aspect of the job? So obviously there's we're

gonna have to build these data centers and that also involves a workforce. How are we gonna make

sure that you know young people that are interested in the trades whether it's looking at apprenticeship

programs or you know local hire aspects of these projects. How are we gonna keep that money? Because

think a lot of times when cities talk about economic development they leave

out the whole point of creating these jobs for local individuals in order to

keep the finances and money local and so are we having since it's 19 different

ones I know they're not all in the same package but what are we doing to make

sure that as we you know change the trajectory of our city to exploring and

incentivizing more more data centers that more residents are able to benefit

Yeah, I mean, I think construction jobs in general are good for the trades, and I'll

maybe even take it a little bit further.

The data centers obviously are attracting good, high-paying union jobs, but if we also

take a step back and we think about the electrical infrastructure that's then required to be

built in order to serve those data centers, you're talking about transmission lines and

distribution lines and substations, all of those really great electrician jobs.

So when we kind of take it back to when we brought this new partnership with PG&E to

council in March, you may remember that IBEW spoke very much in favor of this partnership

because with a closer partnership with PG&E, that's more data centers being built, that's

more electrical infrastructure being built, and that means more jobs for those types of

jobs, for those types of workers.

Okay.

Appreciate that answer.

specifically interested in how we make sure that these jobs are coming from local local places as

well as if there is avenues for apprenticeships i'll take those conversations offline but i get

the greater picture of making sure obviously i'm one of the main advocates for union jobs i i

understand that but i also want to make sure that like local you know youth can get these job skills

trainings as well to to do these type of projects i i appreciate that and i'll just add as manuel

mentioned in our in our agreement with PG&E we do have a section about workforce development in

fact we just had a meeting with work to future and some folks from economic development as well as

with PG&E to see where we might be able to bring more resources to bear there's a whole power

pathways program that that the city partners with PG&E on in that vein as well that's that's great

thank you appreciate that um on slide 19 staff note plans to promote entertainment zones as a

tool for community-led events and to conduct outreach and education how will the staff uh

city staff work with respected respective council offices for each entertainment zone to coordinate

that outreach specifically like how will you ensure us as council offices are looped in early to

do outreach at the neighborhood level well staff invites a fluid dialogue with all of our council

members and so if there is a community inertia or ideas that a district and a community would like

to see reflected in an entertainment zone activation certainly let us know our special

events team is really eager to see this tool and this opportunity deployed across the city

and sj26 paints a great landscape for us to be able to do that and i'm happy to connect you and

your staff to team members and or connect community members may be reaching out to you

they may be reaching out to us to permit an event which they're doing regularly and with good

consistency on a daily or weekly basis. So as those opportunities arise, this is definitely a tool that

we will be briefing people out on so that they're aware of the full capacity of entertainment zones

as an opportunity. I appreciate that. And you mentioned 2026. Obviously, there's going to be a

lot of discussions regarding watch parties in various different areas. Is the city, and I know

that there has been funds raised in partnership with the sports authority and I know Tommy's

been working on that as well is there going to be real funds allocated for doing these

watch parties in other areas outside of downtown councilmember I'm happy to jump in to answer

that question we are absolutely committed to helping activations throughout the city

Obviously, downtown is a big focus.

All of our visitors are going to be primarily there.

But we know that residents in our neighborhoods

and our neighborhood business districts

also want to see some events.

And so we've previously committed a portion of that funding

to work with Nathan Olch and his team

and the Director's Alliance, SJ,

on transferring some of that funding to them

to help them with the activations that are being planned.

So the short answer is yes.

we know how much i cannot give you a definitive amount right now but um we are happy to keep you

and really the full council informed on our progress and what that funding commitment will be

i hear what you're saying rose and absolutely i think downtown is you know the destination place

where everyone's going but people will also go where you know if you build it they will come

and if we're not going to be intentional as a city to say like hey we're putting this funding aside

for this area we're we're going to put some funding aside okay this group is doing this work

all right the city is going to back it with this list of amount of resources then those those events

will never come to fruition and it's really honestly this is we're talking about 2026 but

it's next month and you know if we don't have some of these uh events um you know the vision

of them starting to materialize uh that opportunity is going to leave us so i'm hoping that in the

the next coming weeks we could start having some tangible conversations, concrete numbers

in order to properly move forward.

I see my lights blinking.

I guess the last one I would say is in regards to our business improvement districts, that's

obviously ones coming from my district next, actually this week I believe.

We're going to be voting on that and I think it's going to be coming back a few different

times as Victor mentioned.

I think getting it started, the business improvement district getting it started, that's one thing.

But also we have to understand, you know, these are a lot of these business owners,

especially if it's not a PBID, right, this is a business improvement district,

these are individuals who 24 hours a day are running their business.

Now they're going to have to, you know, run or I'm not sure what this entails, but oversee a bid.

Is the city providing any sort of training or support for these business associations that are starting these?

Because what I would hate is we get a bid started, and then, I don't know, business owners start fighting over money,

or I don't know, whatever could happen, and then it falls through.

So what are our thoughts on that?

Well, business districts don't happen by accident.

So there is quite a bit of capacity building that goes into what the organism can look like.

So there's a chemistry of a number of businesses engaging that helps make us believe that it's viable.

And through numbers and engagements by district participants, there can be shared ownership.

And I think that shared ownership creates a ton of empowerment for business owners,

not all of whom have the extra bandwidth to always contribute to the direction,

but through their own community networks, through their colleagues, maybe it's through their next door business neighbor who is engaged in the district.

Wanting to bring legitimacy to the business improvement district process has been the result of a lot of capacity building on the ground,

both by our staff but through our contracted partners who have facilitated the capacity building along the way.

And there are some communities who are not quite there in being able to realize a district.

So the ones that are coming to the table in the near term are really ones that have been invested in and have grown that capacity, which we'll want to see continue to support.

And the inertia behind those districts also is self-fulfilling.

So now they'll have an instrument and a mechanism whereby they can decide through their budget and through their planning how they want to reinvest in the community in ways that hopefully help them grow their business so that they can focus on the aspects of it that are most important to them.

Appreciate that.

I appreciate that, you know, provided context.

I'm aware of, you know, the business association in my district because I co-founded it.

And so I know the work that's been done.

Nathan Ulch has been doing a great job.

But then I also know that that contract is going to run out pretty soon.

And so unless, and I haven't heard, I don't know if there's been discussion,

but I don't know if we're going to continue to renew those contracts.

Personally, I think we should, but I know funding is always there.

And so I don't want to just go into a place where, all right, everything's set up.

Nathan or whoever the consultant is takes a step back,

and then things don't seem to go out the way we had planned for it to come to fruition.

And I'm only asking this because businesses are coming to me saying, especially the ones in my district, okay, we're going to get this bid, but we need more training.

They're asking for more training about how to manage that.

And who knows, if Nathan's going to provide a toolkit or some sort of training on that, great.

But that conversation needs to be done.

Thank you.

That's a great lead-in.

Staff is working both on a business toolkit and a guide for the business districts.

to help them with essentially a map and a pathway to continued success thank you

thank you councilmember comey

thank you um a lot has already been said so i'm just going to follow up on something that

councilmember ortiz asked about regarding funds or if any are going to be outside of downtown and

Obviously, the focus is downtown, and we all understand that.

Now, I'm curious to know whether it's going to be Nathan or this director's alliance that's going to determine who's going to get what and where,

because I know that in my area, over by the Cadillac-Winchester area, the Winchester Road Group, right, was being asked for money,

not for money to be coming their way.

So I'm just curious as to who's going to determine that and when it's going to be determined,

because we're already in December, pretty much gone.

so I'm just curious

thank you council members so

moving far in terms of activations in our neighborhood so to your point

Super Bowl is here all of our neighborhood activations

and all of our planning we had focused for FIFA World Cup

which now that we know what teams will be playing in the city

we have now the opportunity to do some better planning

around those countries the cultures the themes so

that work will now start in earnest we will continue to work with community

strong strategies and the Alliance because it's our understanding that

they've been formed and very they've been very active and shared their desire

to actually lead those activations in the neighborhood business districts the

grants will likely be made to those business improvement districts directly

but who's going to determine which ones?

Because I don't imagine it's going to be a lot of money for,

you know, outside of the downtown area.

And if, you know, there's just not that clarity to me to say

that, oh yes, you know, we have this pot of money,

we're going to invest it in maybe four places.

I don't know, I'm just making that up, right?

And, you know, like who's going to determine that?

Are they going to determine that?

Are you going to determine that?

Who's going to determine that, right?

Because I think that these are public dollars.

And if it's up to Nathan and the Directors Alliance,

they're asking us for money, right?

So I'm just a little bit curious

as to how it's all gonna happen.

Very good question.

Councilmember, we are going to work with the willing.

We're gonna just, that's pretty,

what we're gonna be working with,

meeting with those organizations,

those business improvement districts

that express the most interest

and are very well organized and have the partners that they need as well

to actually plan and execute those activations.

I'm not saying it's a perfect process by the imagination,

but first and foremost is finding out who has capacity

and who is very willing and interested in working with us.

I guess the definition of working with us can be a little bit sort of too vague for me,

because when the Directors Alliance goes to a neighborhood association

and is asking for money, not saying, hey, we bring these resources,

we're going to do this, we're going to do that, whatever, right?

It's like, if you want in, $15,000.

So my question is, well, how is that the city helping the neighborhoods, right?

To me, it's not clear to me,

and I think that if they're making the determination,

they're doing the outreach, we should know.

We should know.

What exactly are they asking as partners?

So I just put that out there as something

that is coming up very, very quickly.

And if they're going to determine it, I'd like to know.

Yeah, absolutely.

We are very interested in working with each council member

in developing these activations with all

of the neighborhood partners who are interested.

Absolutely.

And notwithstanding the monetary investment, which I know is important and that people have an interest in,

on the staff side of things, what we've done is accumulated a set of tools whereby we hope that not,

that the events that take place across San Jose are not just ones that the city has said, you know,

there's going to be an activation here, there's going to be an activation there,

But we would love to invite community members who are interested in hosting a neighborhood or a community event.

Not all events are watch parties, although some of them will be very good and fun.

But there could be all sorts of activations around youth sports or other community interests or some of the countries who are coming to town and visit.

And so we have a toolkit.

We have branding materials through Team San Jose and otherwise, whereby our business community and neighborhoods, notwithstanding a city financial investment, can really grab hold of these tools.

and our events team is happy to help community members stand up the

activations and engagements that really all help us as San Jose celebrate sports

and entertainment and all of the amazing visitors who will be coming to town I

guess I'm gonna have to take this offline because I understand the

resources that you're providing the question that I have is similar to what

Councilmember Ortiz had originally asked about supporting the small businesses,

right? Some of them are not as sophisticated as some of the ones who've

been around for a long time and therefore they're trying to figure out

how they can be a part of this wonderful thing, right? And if Nathan and the

Directors Alliance are the only ones who are going to be out there doing this

thing, I want to know what are they doing, what are they offering, and what's

going to happen because right now all I know is that they're asking hey you want

to watch party it's going to cost you $15,000 and to me that's you know for a

small you know sort of startup that's not good that's not good and so and so I

don't want to wait until you know I someone figures out oh you know they're

going to determine who they're going to work with or how they're going to work

or whatever I think I think there needs to be clarity and if they're in charge I

I want to know because it's not, to me, it's just, it's like there are those who are going to be left behind because they don't know how to, you know, sort of manage all of this.

And so to be inclusive, I think, yeah, it's great working with the council offices, but I also think there needs to be clarity as to what the heck are they doing.

i don't disagree with what uh is being said but i'm not sure ced with this focus group is this is

the conversation right now this is a 2026 budget item that you're discussing and should come when

we're discussing 2026 sporting events and i think this comes to ced win in another two months maybe

I think our next status report will be in April, so it'll be in advance of FIFA World Cup.

Okay.

Very good.

I mean, the point is well taken.

Some of us don't have business districts, and we're not sure how we're going to benefit from a watch party.

So the conversation is important.

I'm just not sure it gets to the economic development part of this focus group.

as it wasn't heavily vested on 2026,

but it's an important conversation.

So I'm not sure the vehicle for continuing it on,

but if I could have a motion to accept this report.

Motion to accept.

Is there a second?

Then let's vote.

Thank you.

So that concludes our general, our regular meeting.

We now turn to open forum.

Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Yes, Lillian, Blair, and Daniel, please make your way down to the podium.

I'm just I'm just here to comment on aroma Dawson who passed away recently

and she was the chair of the Housing Commission and Mr. Mulcahy shaking his head I did not know her

personally but when I watched the Housing Commission there was a gentleman

on there I think he was the vice chair and he almost cried over it so I know

that housing is very very important in this city I'm a senior I'm on affordable

housing which is a misnomer as you know and I'm just here to comment on the

passing of miss roma dawson thank you thank you next speaker

so um so yeah uh i also am a part of uh badpuppy.com which uh is an adult entertainment

website we have a flag uh that's in bishops as i was telling you before that i was doing beauty

intoxicating rita's beauty intoxication um so the website got turned down they or they

they took it down about 20 years ago, but it's still being promoted. And over at Santa Cruz,

we had Show Your Pride. It was like a Gay Days over at Great America event. Without Kelly Rowland

on stage doing the Gavin Equal Rights for Marriage back in 2007, when Equal Rights for Marriage and

and commitment was being displayed. So I've had this situation. I was on Cobb Mountain.

My grandfather, William Costa, passed away. I used to work over at Ferry Street Station in

Martinez, underneath an Angie Martinez contract, which by the G-spot, or yeah, where Gulf

gas station is down the street. There's the Notorious, it's on Union, it's on Union.

There's like a mural on the wall, on the brick. It's with Notorious B.I.G. and Angie Martinez.

And my nickname is also Bucky. So it's like, hey Buck, I just want to move some things,

like in the lyric. So everyone's been wanting to move and trying to do a cha-cha slide and not

giving me my opportunity for me to do a court appearance for my property, my D3, my data,

my tech, what I went to school for, and what I've had to do for a sacrifice of the creed of the

American rights, the American dream. So on August 1st, I got injected.

They had my tech piece, which went for the property where I'm staying outside. My last name

is Rita, the church, NBC, Hoosier, take me to church. My lover's got humor. She slept at a funeral.

Thank you.

Your time is up.

Next speaker.

Hi, Blair Beekman.

Thanks for the meeting today.

I thought of worker rights advocacy for the previous speaker.

It sounds like he's needing those kind of services.

And maybe that can point him in the direction he needs, worker rights advocacy.

And counseling services can help show that direction, I think, also to mention.

There's, you know, just the church right across the street

from San Jose State as an idea.

They're really good, by the way, that church place.

It's on 8th or 9th or so.

I wanted to mention three items hopefully today.

One is you had a committee meeting, a special study session a week ago or so

on addressing neighborhood violence issues in San Jose.

It was with a tandem with the county, and it was nice.

I don't know if that was planned before the shooting incidents that happened

at the mall in the Santana Row area, the West Fair Mall.

I can't remember its name.

But what concerned me at that time was that there was a stampede of people who left

because of the gun violence.

And I think it's been noted that we worried about the stampede.

How do we talk to ourselves about how to be adults and have decorum during such a process?

It's difficult, but good luck in those efforts.

I wanted to mention the importance of working towards tech accountability

and the important concept that we have so much additional tech right now,

we can actually reduce the amount of tech and still have the same amount

of public safety health in local public neighborhoods, believe it or not.

Good luck on how to work on that.

And to conclude, the Bay UASI meeting just concluded last week.

I'm going to try to be positive.

It's important to be open to what they want to be planning for the future

and waiting for current federal funding dollars.

Thank you. Back to the committee.

Thank you. That concludes our meeting.

See you in February is our next meeting.

Have a nice holiday.

Thank you.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Good enough.