I would like to call to order this city council meeting for the afternoon of February 24th.

Tony, would you please call the role?

Kameh.

Campos.

Tordillos.

Here.

Cohen.

Here.

Ortiz.

Mulcahi.

Here.

Here.

Candelas?

Here.

Casey.

Foley.

Mayhem.

Great.

Thank you.

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

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you and welcome to everyone.

I also understand we are being visited by students from Homestead High School.

Hey guys, thanks for being here.

We appreciate your visit and your civic engagement.

I hope uh hope you learned something today.

Thanks for being here.

All right.

We are on to our invocation.

And today's invocation will be provided by Yunus Chun, Executive Director of the Korean American Community Services, and Council Member Campos will tell us more.

Thank you, Mayor.

This month, our communities celebrated Lunar New Year and the beginning of the year of the horse in 2026.

The year of the horse represents strength, passion, and freedom.

These qualities reflect our collective resilience and our ability to overcome any challenge we face.

Lunar New Year is also a sacred time for reflection, a moment to honor the achievements of our ancestors while embracing the promise of renewal.

To lead us in this reflection, I'm honored to invite Yunus Chang to provide our Lunar New Year invocation.

As executive director of the Korean American Community Services Organization, Eunice has served the Bay Area's diverse and most vulnerable populations for over 15 years.

We are grateful for her dedication to service and her commitment to preserving and passing down her family's cultural traditions to future generations.

Today we celebrate the resilience it took to reach this moment and the joy that we find in standing together in solidarity.

Eunice will share a few words followed by a musical performance featuring the PD and Janggu, traditional Korean instruments.

Eunice, thank you so much for joining us today.

The floor is yours.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Mayor Mehan and Councilmember Campus and fellow council members and many community leaders in this room for this meaningful invitation and for recognizing Luna New Year as an official city holiday.

For Koreans, the Korean Luna New Year is a time to honor our ancestors, express gratitude to our editors, and begin the new year with the reflection and hope.

Families gather to share Toku, a traditional rice cake soup that symbolizes a fresh start and wishes for health and good fortune in the year ahead.

For many immigrants, this holiday carries deeper meaning.

By recognizing Luna New Year, San Jose affirms that our cultures and identities belong and reflects the city's commitment to inclusion for people of all backgrounds.

Thank you again for this meaningful opportunity to uplift our shared value through today's invocation.

As the only nonprofit organization providing Korean hot lunches to seniors in San Jose and Santa Clay County, along with many fighter community services.

Korean American Community Services committed to partnering with the city to help build a future looted in collaboration, equity, and share the prosperity for everyone in San Jose.

Thank you again.

Happy Duna New Year.

That was so beautiful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Campos for organizing today's invitation.

Again, that was Yunus Chan and the Korean American Community Services Organization.

We're on to our ceremonial items.

Counselor Campos, once again, if you would join me at the podium, we will recognize the Pajama Plus project.

A nonprofit dedicated to ensuring children have the essential items they need to feel safe, comfortable, and secure at bedtime.

I first met Libby and Pally in the Basking Ridge community during my first national night out as District 2 council member.

When they shared the story of Pajama Plus Project, I was deeply moved by their mission.

We often take for granted something as simple as fresh, clean pajamas, but every child deserves to end their day feeling comfortable and cared for.

Unfortunately, there are far too many children in San Jose who lack access to pajamas and other basic necessities.

This is why I am so proud to have organizations like Pajama Plus in our city, working to help our youth truly thrive, our community working together to remove the barriers they face.

In 2025 alone, the Pajama Plus Project collected and donated a thousand pairs of pajamas and other essentials.

These gifts do more than provide warmth.

They empower our children and have a profound impact on their physical and emotional well-being.

Libby and Pally are we are incredibly grateful for your service.

Congratulations on a successful 2025 drive.

I look forward to supporting the next one, and it is my uh honor to provide the commendation alongside the mayor and our council colleagues to the Pajama Plus Project for your dedication to our children and for fostering a culture of generosity and compassion in San Jose.

Next, we will hear from uh the co-founder of the Pajama Plus Project.

Thank you.

Thank you both for having us.

Um it really is an honor.

Libby and I have been volunteering to give pajamas, new pajamas and books to kids in need since my baby who just is gonna turn 20 was born.

Um, three years ago, we started our own 501c3 because we saw that Santa Clara County needed us here and not all of our Northern California.

So, as Councilmember Campbell said, we our mission is simple new pajamas, books, socks, and underwear to children in need.

And we rely entirely on donations.

We've partnered with our neighborhood association, Basking Ridge Neighborhood Association in the past.

Look forward to doing that again.

And I'm so excited there's a group of high school students here because really we started with helping children help other children.

So last week we took a big donation to Rebecca's children in Gilroy, and it was only because of donations from schools like Harker and Apostles and other local communities.

We are focused on a back-to-school drive and for their event on August 1st.

So if you're looking for ways to help, just look at our website.

But thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Campos and Mayor.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

That way we'll get a full ship in the way.

Thank you for the work you do.

All right, Councilmore Mulcay, if you join me here at the podium, we will be recognizing SJ Sharkey.

All right, as Sharky's making his way down, I'm gonna make a few opening remarks, and then we're gonna invite a representative from the Sharks, Chris Shea, to speak on Sharky's behalf.

An octopus has got his tongue today.

If you could make your way down here in the interest of time, because I know Sharkey wants to get a picture with everybody on the council today.

So since bursting onto the ice in 1992, Sharky's become the larger than life, teal-hearted face of our hometown heroes, the San Jose Sharks.

Whether stuck up in the rafters, playfully sparring with rivals, or stealing the spotlight at NHL events, Sharkey has made Sharks hockey as entertaining off the puck as it is on the ice.

Known as the hardest working fish in sports, Sharkey makes more than 450 community appearances each year, supporting local schools, charities, and countless initiatives through the Sharks Foundation.

From birthday parties and bar mitzvahs to weddings and proms, Sharky has left a lasting impression on generations of San Joseans.

Sharky is essential to our city's culture, identity, and community.

In 2025, Sharky reeled in two of the highest honors in mascot history.

Induction into the mascot Hall of Fame and recognition as NHL mascot of the year.

Show that hardware, Sharky.

And cementing Sharky's place as one of the most iconic and beloved mascots in all of professional sports.

Sharky is the only, is only the third NHL mascot ever to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Through decades of showmanship and mischief, Sharky has become the beacon of Sharks hockey and a beloved ambassador of goodwill, bringing joy, laughter, and a little bit of trouble to all of us.

Sharky, thank you for everything you do.

San Jose's lucky to call you one of our own.

Thank you very much for this honor, this condemnation.

Mr.

Mayor, Council members, we are eternally grateful at Shark Sports and Entertainment.

I think the council member really captured the spirit of Sharky.

Sharky doesn't think anybody at Shark Sports and Entertainment can speak for Sharky, but we're going to give it a try.

We're eternally grateful for this honor for Sharky and all the work he's done.

I think it's appropriate to be able to mention that Sharky has been at different times.

He has visited countless bar mitzvahs.

He's walked all kinds of rides down the aisle.

He's been the best fish, he has been the fish of honor.

He has been the flower fish at weddings.

He'll do just about everything to be a great ambassador for the city of San Jose.

So it's an honor to have Sharkey represent San Jose around the North American world, and we're grateful for this honor.

Thank you very much, Council Mayor.

Thank you.

And I know Sharky, in the interest of time, I don't usually read the commendations or proclamations, but I will say on behalf of the city council and the city of San Jose, I'm glad to commend you for decades of mischief, magic, and memories, and for your enduring contributions to the cultural vitality of the city of San Jose.

Give it up for Sharky one more time.

Let's do a big photo.

Thanks, Sharky.

Keep up the good work.

All right, thank you all.

We're on to orders of the day.

Uh I will at um Councilman Ortiz's request take item 3.4 last.

That's the public hearing on the status of the city's vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts and obstacles in the hiring process pursuant to California government code 3502.3.

So we'll take that last today.

Are there any other requested changes to the printed agenda?

No ads or drops.

Okay.

We are moving on to the closed session report.

Susanna.

They're the mayor and councilman closed session, but there's nothing to report at at this time.

Great.

Thank you, Susanna.

Okay.

Next is the consent calendar.

I believe we have a we're going to be pulling at him 2.8, and Councilman Mulcay plans to recuse himself.

Thank you, Mayor.

I recuse myself from item 2.8 on today's consent calendar as ATT as a source of income as a tenant and my retail building.

You may all not be aware that under a new rule from the FPPC, regulation 187073A allows us to stay in chambers on recusals on items on the consent agenda.

So this item will need to be heard and voted on separately from the balance of the consent agenda.

I am uh I'll be voting on the balance, but I'll stay in the room for 2.8.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember, for the recusal and uh disclaimer there.

And so we will uh first I'd like to entertain a motion on item 2.8 if we have one.

Second.

Great.

Tony, do we have public comment on item 2.8?

No, I just have a card for the consent overall.

Great.

Why don't we vote on 2.8 and then we'll come back to the remainder.

Motion passes 10 to 0 with one recusal.

Great, thank you.

Colleagues, does anyone have a request to pull any other items for discussion?

I'm not seeing any hands.

Entertain a motion on consent as a whole.

Thank you.

Tony, sounds like you have public comment.

Yes, Brian Darby, come on down.

Good afternoon, thank you.

I just sent an email to everybody, not dissent, but last night, and I hope that you're looking at it.

It's basically your passing on the consent calendar a lot of expenditure items, making sure that every dollar counts.

Thank you.

Back to council.

Great, thank you.

I don't see any hands.

Let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you.

We're on to item 3.1 report of the city manager.

Thank you very much, Mayor.

I do have a report today.

Today I would like to recognize the planning, building, and code enforcement departments, or PBCE as we like to call them.

Their building division for their excellent work in creating innovative programs that align with my foundational strategic support focus area of delivering excellent customer service to meet our custom communities' needs.

The department, under PBC's leadership of Chris Burton, is finding ways to make our building services more convenient, easier, and customer friendly.

First, the building division recently launched Pop-Up Permits, which is a unique event series held in neighborhood libraries and community centers across the city.

At the pop-up permits, residents can receive advice from building inspectors and permit specialists on their future plans for their homes.

At the first pop-up permit events at Seven Trees Branch Library in October 2025, Camden Community Center in November 2025, and Almaden Branch Library in January of this year.

Hundreds of customers took advantage of the program asking questions about tree removal, getting real-time feedback on home renovation plans, advice on building accessory dwelling units, otherwise known as ADUs, and more.

The events occur on weekends, feature month multilingual staff, and help those needing assistance with online permitting and in some cases issuing permits on the spot, making city services more accessible.

The next pop-up permit event will be on Saturday, March 21st from 10 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

at the Barriessa Community Center.

Our community can learn about future events through the PBCE website under San Jose pop-up permits webpage, the PBC newsletter, a toolkit is sent to the City Council office for the event taking place in their council district and through the city's social media channels.

Further advancing our commitment to efficiency and exceptional customer service, in addition to the pop-up permit events, the building division welcomed a new class of best prepared designers on February 13th.

The city's best prepared designer program is unique to San Jose as it allows trained building professionals to bypass the standard plan review process for smaller residential projects.

By having trained building professionals take full responsibility for building code compliance, this helps our residents get their projects built more quickly.

City staff maintains a list of qualified best prepared designers on the city's PBC website, making it easier for homeowners to partner with professionals who understand the city's permitting process.

Since 2023, I'm proud to share that 250 projects have successfully passed final inspection through this program, a true reflection of our staff's dedication, expertise, and exceptional customer service to our community.

Continuing their strong commitment to service, the building division, which is one of four city partners serving in the Development Services Permit Center, plays a critical role in delivering results for our community.

In 2025 alone, the team issued nearly 25,000 building permits, moving projects forward efficiently while maintaining the highest standards of safety and quality.

I want to thank the incredible city staff who provide outstanding support to our community, whether here it's or at City Hall, rather here at City Hall, excuse me, or in our neighborhoods, we are strengthening our trust with the community and ensuring every resident and business owner has the help they need to build and grow in San Jose.

We have some very special employees from our planning building and code enforcement department in the audience.

I would like you all to stand to be recognized and to be celebrated for your efforts.

Please stand.

And you'll get a round of applause from our council.

Excellent work.

Thank you.

And that concludes my report.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks, Jennifer, and thanks to everyone from PVC.

Really appreciate you going out and meeting people where they are.

It's awesome.

Thank you all.

All right.

We are on to item 3.3, annual summary of upcoming labor negotiations.

Am I turning to Lee?

Who am I?

No, that'll be a wrong, but there's no presentation.

Okay.

Oh, we have nothing on this.

We have no presentation on this.

No, okay.

So we will move on then.

No, you can just accept the staff.

Oh, I see.

It's a staff report.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

Okay.

Uh Tony, do we have public comment?

I have no cards for this.

Okay, going back to the council.

Do we have a motion?

Approval.

Thank you.

Second.

Great.

Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you.

Ronda Item 5.1 funding agreement with affirmed housing for round eight affordable housing and sustainable communities grant funds.

I believe we also didn't have a staff presentation on this item.

Tony, do we have public comment?

I have no cards for this item.

Great.

Coming back to the council.

Council Rodwan.

Thank you, Mayor.

The recommended the recommended scope modified modification are intended to improve the efficiency, safety, and traffic flow.

A lot of these either came from our constituents who have their concern and we're, you know, advising our city staff to look at these changes.

Providing an adequate space for buses will reduce congestion, prevent lane conflicts, and enhance roadway safety.

Adjust the sidewalk tree zone may help achieve this balance.

As you well know on Santa Clara Street, when you're driving down on Santa Clara Street, the bus tend to veer taken over both lanes, which causes vehicle to move to left or right, possible, you know, collusion, and it's which is, I don't think it's safe for any citizen who driving down on Santa Clara Lane.

Optimizing bus stop spacing will improve transit reliability and corridor performance while maintain reasonable rider access.

New and upgraded bus stops require clear ongoing maintenance responsibility.

Bust off amenities have historically required significant upkeep due to their wear, vandalism, and extended occupancy.

A formal agreement with Santa Clara Valley Trans Transportation Authority prior to construction will ensure long-term maintenance is properly assigned.

Proactive community outreach will help minimize disruption, address concern early, and support successful project implementation.

With this, I move to accept my memorandum.

Second.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Alright, we've a motion of second, which includes Councilmore Duan's memo and we'll go to Councilmember Tordillas.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just had a couple questions for staff.

I'm not sure if we have someone from DOT who can answer.

I was curious just because I know this is a complicated project, it stretches multiple miles, goes to I think four or five different council districts.

Where we are in the design process and just making sure that you know we're not getting ahead of ourselves here in terms of being a little bit too prescriptive in terms of what we're asking for.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember John Russell, Director of Transportation.

Yeah, what we're acting on today is just the accepting of the grant, and it's a unique state grant that actually couples the support for affordable housing with the transportation facilities that support that.

So it's a nice unique grant.

Today we're just accepting both of those for work.

To answer your question, where we are with the project, it's currently in a conceptual planning phase, even though we've been at this a couple of years.

Now we've been meeting with all five council districts and numerous meetings with the community to write size what the project is going to be because King Road is varied from all the way from Tully up to Barry Esset.

It is different in every section, so we're having to uh accommodate what we need to balance all the modes within each one of those sections.

So each part is probably gonna be a little bit different, but it's really in conceptual planning phase, and everything that was in Councilmember DeWan's memo is in consideration.

What we'll that we've been working on.

Sounds good.

Yeah, as long as your department is okay with uh the language, and offer here, then that's right.

Recommend acceptance of the funding.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

And Councilmember Committee.

Thank you so much.

Um, just to follow along with Councilmember Tordillos.

Um, some of the items here are very prescriptive, and so I'm wondering is the acceptance of the grant contingent upon uh, you know, like including this in whatever project scope.

I mean, I I I'm just wondering in terms of this is allowing acceptance of the grant as well as uh items A through D.

I mean, I could see D we have control over because obviously we want comprehensive and proactive community, but a lot of these other items uh are not directly under our control.

So I'm just curious as to how we can uh either decouple or whether or not we're held to the uh recommendation in the memo.

Thank you again.

And while the memo is descriptive, it does uh describe a lot of things that we would that council member would like to see and council may vote on.

All of those things are still in consideration.

We're working with VTA on the elements of the memo that are that are described that VTA would need to do that that is something that we don't have complete control over, but it is something that we're collaborating with VTA in terms of the bus facilities within that corridor.

Um, so while descriptive, I think it's still informative for us that those are the same things that we've been working on.

So I think we're okay with all of that as the memo is written.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

All right, seeing no further hands, Tony, let's vote.

Thank you, John.

Motion passes unanimous unanimously.

Great, thank you.

We are on to item 8.1, establishment of the Alameda Business Improvement District and approval to levy assessments in the Alameda Business Improvement District for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 through 2026.

I have a script I need to work through here.

All right.

So item 8.1 is the public hearing on the establishment of the Alameda Business Improvement District and the levy of assessments in the bid for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 through 2026.

This item was deferred from February 3rd to today.

Before I open the public hearing, has the clerk received any written protests from affected businesses in the proposed bid, including any protests received on February 3rd.

No written protests have been received from businesses in the proposed BID.

Great, thank you.

At this, so as Tony just said, no written protests have been received from businesses in the proposed bid at this time.

We will open the public hearing for public comment.

I have no cards for this item.

Okay.

We will now close the public hearing.

Since the business owners have supported the establishment of the Alameda Business Improvement District and the proposed levy of assessments, I will now ask the council to consider approval of the ordinance establishing the bid and adoption of the resolution levying assessments in the bid for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 through 2026.

I'll now entertain a motion.

Oh, I'll make a motion.

So moved.

Yes, you can.

Do we have a second?

I heard a second.

Great.

Councilor Mulcahy, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, just wanted to take a moment and talk a little bit about um, you know, why we looked for that pause and the deferral on this item.

Totally committed to the BID.

We just needed a bit more time uh to work through some uh technical uh considerations.

And so over the past few weeks, our teams work with city departments to corporate feedback we heard from current business license holders within the proposed boundaries, which were broader and more expansive than the city's typical BID.

If my colleagues support this item today, by taking the pause, we will have successfully addressed the concerns raised from a small number of formal objections that had been submitted.

With the changes outlined in staff's memo, the Alameda bid will now have a more defendable, predictable, and stable source of income.

I want to thank city staff for their partnership and thoughtful input to help ensure the successful implementation of this new business improvement district.

I want to thank the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs Director Jen Baker and her team, including Vic Farley, who I know is probably listening from afar today, Sal Alvarez, and Blague Zalalich, Director Maria Oberg, and the finance team, senior deputy city attorney, Karen Morabito, the Board of Directors of the Alameda Business Association who got us started on this in the first place, and their president Doug Cookerly.

And finally, two tireless business owners and advocates in the community, Catherine Pendleton and Annie Gahian.

The supplemental memorandum serves to remove home-based businesses from the BID, but moving forward, I don't know if we have reps from the Alameda Business Association here today.

I think the fact that we know that there's 500 home-based businesses in this broader area.

The business association has the opportunity to create interest and energy around this for them to become members through a voluntary uh program.

So I want to make sure they keep that on the table and consider moving forward.

The Alameda has exciting months ahead with its proximity to major SJ 26 events at SAP, including the NCAAs and NVIDIA and Nvidia's GTC.

Its first revenue cycles for the new C bid, which we earlier approved and is now in action, and this BID generating about $500,000 for the district, and a massive two-mile roadway resurfacing and restriping of the Alameda from the Caltrain Bridge all the way to Highway 880.

There is serious momentum building, and this confluence of enhancements will surely lead to great things for the Alameda.

With that, I move, I've already moved, but hopefully my colleagues will consider approving this today.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thanks.

Appreciate your comments and all your work getting this bid up and running.

Sorry, my script called for the uh called for the motion at the end there.

Um okay, I don't see any other hands.

We've got a motion and a second.

Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you.

All right, we are on to item 8.2.

Establishment of the Story Road Business Improvement District.

I do not have a script for this item.

Tony, do we have public comment?

Yes, I have two cards.

Um, Sean Johnson and Kathy Wynne.

Please come on down.

You have two minutes.

Um, come to the microphone.

You don't have to speak in the order that you were called.

Again, that's Sean and Kathy.

Good afternoon.

Um, I just received the letter from the city about uh project, and uh I have been in that area about more than 10 years.

And the most concern for us, that is safety to do the business.

And I am happy that the city have the project for us, but the main reason I have seen there in the homeless community.

They come and go, come and go, even city try a lot of time, cut them away.

And when the project is end, they come back.

Just the area, like us.

I know they are human beings do.

So is that when we do the project to make the area safety for us to do business?

Does the city have any plans to settle them so they no longer come back to us?

Uh on the project, they talk about levy, the tax money collected from us at the small business for um security, for um advertisement, for some um, like uh plan uh, I don't think we need all of that.

We need more skill, more clear area, and the traffic area sometimes is really bad.

So I would like to hear more about what is the city plan if we contribute the tax to improve the area.

That's all my concern.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good morning or good afternoon, Mayor and members of the city council.

My name is Sean Johnson.

I'm here representing the property owners at 931 Remlard Court, which houses first students' bus operations.

Thank you for the opportunity today.

The issue raised most consistently by business owners in our district of security.

We have experienced reoccurring incidents of vandalism, arson, and employees have have at times faced threats and harassment from individuals in the encampments along Coyote Creek near Story Road.

We understand that this is a difficult challenge, but it must be the first action of the Story Road Business Improvement District because without it, other efforts will be fruitless.

We are asking for continued attention to this and coordinated response that addresses safety for both the business community and the broader neighborhood.

We also want to flag the condition of Remlard Court, which has deteriorated to the point of being a safety concern for vehicles, employees, and visitors.

The road also serves as an access point to the Coyote Creek Trail, which is a valued community asset.

Improvements here would benefit not just local businesses, but trail users and the public at large.

And we respectfully ask that the Remlard Court be considered in the city's infrastructure planning.

We appreciate your time in the matter.

Thank you very much.

Back to council.

Great, thank you.

Uh just as we come back to the council, I want to just acknowledge the public comments regarding Remillard, story roads, some of the public safety challenges and the large number of homeless individuals in that area.

We are aware, as you probably know, we have uh stood up a lot of shelter in the city in recent years and made a lot of progress.

The city does have plans this year over the coming months to uh commence a significant amount of outreach and engagement in the coyote meadow and former jungle areas, was called along Remillard, with a plan to offer people interim housing and ultimately decommission that encampment and protect the waterway there.

There is a long-term plan to do that.

I won't share specific dates, that's up to city staff, but I just wanted you to share that that is part of the roadmap for this year, and we're very aware of the concerning and frankly, to your point, deteriorating situation in the neighborhood there.

So there will be action taken by the city this year.

And I am sorry for the many challenges you and other small businesses and property owners in that area have faced.

So just didn't want you to think it was not very much on our radar, and I appreciate you coming.

Uh, let me turn to Councilmember DeWan to say more.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, speakers.

Um, bringing up your concerns.

Um, I will work with both our beautify SJ or police department to improve that area.

And I'm well aware of it because I'm I drive by there every single day as well.

And thank you, staff, and thank you to the Story Road Business Association.

By having this BID, we'll maintain marketing promotion, keeping the area cleaner and safer.

And um I urge that um my council members support.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilman.

Was that a motion?

Yeah, with that I move uh to accept for approval.

Great.

Thank you.

I don't see any other hands.

Tony, this was for receiving public comment.

Did we I apologize?

Not clear here.

I think we need to accept the report, which we've just taken on a motion on.

Great.

This is just accepting the report.

That's what I thought.

Okay.

So we've got the correct motion.

We got all the public comment, I assume.

Okay, so then we're ready to vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay.

Thank you all.

We're on to item 8.3 actions related to the East Santa Clara Senior Affordable Housing Development located at 700 East St.

John Street.

We have a brief presentation, and I'll turn it over to Eric Sullivan, director of our housing department.

Okay, thank you.

So Eric Soliman, Director of Housing.

I'll give a brief presentation here on 8.3 and 8.4, which are both funding projects out of our latest requests for proposals and financing developments for extremely low-income and low-income households.

So the first one here on 8.3 is with our partnership with Eden Housing.

So this project, similar to the structure of our entire RP process, where the city's now coming in as last dollars for projects that are ready to move forward.

The project has already been awarded.

Uh tax credits under the 9% tax credit program.

It has funding from both the county and the housing authority.

And this project is going to advance our work around funding ELI units with 68 new affordable units between 30% AMI and 60% AMI.

In addition to this 100% affordable housing project, it also has project-based vouchers from the housing authority, and our overall subsidy per unit is far lower than prior projects because this project benefits from the HUD 202 section program because it is targeting seniors as well as the Bay Area Housing Innovation Funds.

We were able to drive down what our per unit subsidy is, thereby expanding the total amount of units we're able to subsidize with our current dollars.

This project is part of the overall master plan for the rebuild of the East Santa Clara site.

So you'll see the next project coming up at 8.4.

That's the next phase of this project.

And so this is going to advance the creation of additional affordable housing within this area of district three.

In addition, you can quickly see here the overall master plan for this site, and this will add a senior housing component to the development for deeply affordable units.

This is just a quick rendering of what the building would look like as the teams worked collectively across the city, the county, the housing authority, Bay Area Innovation Fund, and HUD 202 funds in order to get to a capital stack that's going to advance the project.

And city dollars are coming in as the gap financing for moving the development forward.

This just quickly outlines where we are on the overall capital stack for this initiative.

With the 9% low-income housing tax credits, you'll see the federal tax credit equity is significantly larger than what we see in most projects that have more of the 4% set-aside funds.

This is a quick breakdown of one bedroom and two-bedroom units.

This is primarily for seniors.

So these are just smaller one-bedroom units, consistent with the work that we do for advancing senior housing within the city.

Then overall, we this reflects kind of strong collaborations that we continue to do with the county, bringing in the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund, and then leveraging our dollars with both HUD and the Santa Clara County Housing Authority.

And that's the current project for 8.3.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Tony, do we have public comment?

I have no comments for this item.

Okay, coming back to the council.

We'll go to Councilmember Tordillos first.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, staff for the presentation.

Excited to see the city partnering with our peer agencies to get some more deeply affordable housing for our seniors across the finish line.

I think both this building and the project we'll be voting on momentarily are really attractive projects.

Excited about the overall master plan for this site.

Uh getting some more density on Santa Clara to support the East Village.

So excited to support this project, and uh I move the staff approval of the staff recommendation.

Great.

Thank you both.

Tony, let's vote.

Looks like we got everybody.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great, thank you.

Alright.

Moving right along, we are on to item 8.4, actions related to the Trillium Senior Apartments Housing Development located at 675 East Santa Clara Street.

Eric, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

So Eric Soliman, Director of Housing.

So as I mentioned prior, this development.

Okay, so this development, as I mentioned prior, is the continuing expansion of the East Santa Clara Master Plan.

So this project is in partnership with Santa Clara County Housing Authority.

Again, pulling from our existing uh rolling RFP, so another project being funded again, low AMIs, 30 to 50 percent AMI.

This project also already has awarded 9% tax credits, and so we are now putting in the gap financing funds in order to bring it to fruition.

Overall, this partnership represents again county, city, and housing authority, and our public subsidy to this is a bit higher in terms of our city contribution to this because we don't have those HUD funds or Bay Area Innovation Funds that drive down sort of our overall contributions, but overall, this maintains to be a good investment for expanding out this development area.

So, in continuing on with the work that we do is part of the master plan.

Also, again, continuing on within D3, this side will be more of a family side rather than the target.

This will continue sort of the development within the site, complementing the work that 8.3 did with Eden Housing for Seniors.

This would add additional senior housing to the site.

Again, this you can see in the prior slide for 8.3 was sort of to the left.

Now this is further to the right, so building out the other component of the East Santa Clara Master Plan, bringing deeply affordable units, and with each of the building types and conscriptions, sort of having a unique look, but nonetheless a part of the global master redevelopment for this site.

Our overall city contribution to this is uh notated here that just about 9 million dollars.

With again, since it has 9% local housing tax credits, you're seeing that federal tax credit equity subsidy doing more of the work in this financing of the deal as opposed to the 4% credits.

Overall, here's the breakdown again 35 one bedroom units overall that we're establishing at the site, 62 overall, with some more two bedroom dispersions throughout the development.

This reflects a continuing partnership between the county and the housing authority, and staff brings this forward for recommendation for approval.

Great.

Thank you, Eric.

Tony, do we have a public comment?

I have no cards for this item.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Coming back to the council.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

Seeing no further hands, Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great, thank you.

Eric, we're keeping you in the box.

Item 8.5.

Lower income voucher and equity program.

Well, turn it back to you.

So Eric Sullivan, Director of Housing.

So now bringing forth the lower income voucher equity program.

This program is a new tool that we're deploying for the department to advance our work around expanding affordable housing.

This initial project is targeted to test run how this program can potentially be applied to a broader array of initiatives.

We're going to bring it forward for this first asset, but what we're looking to approve here is just the structure of the program.

And I'll quickly just go through the structure of those.

So first, as part of our work under the focus area for building more housing 3.4, we wanted to provide alternative financing programs to preserve and expand housing at all income levels.

This is one of those tools that we're bringing forward through what's called a master leasing concept.

What master leasing does is that it creates an opportunity for us to step into, in this case, a distressed asset, where we're able to provide what functions as through the master leasing, a voucher.

We're subsidizing the rents for the units to bring them down to affordability scale.

And that affordability scale will start at about 80% AMI.

The goal and the structure of this is where we're going to be working with the private sector to look at a market rate building that is in distress that presents opportunity to buy down affordability with an intent to apply this tool in a way that is unique, crafting a new program as alternative financing to look at ways in which we can take advantage of some of the distressed assets, particularly in this case within downtown, to advance our affordable housing and overall housing goals.

And so by stabilizing the stress asset within downtown, we're able to create a broader array of stabilization within the marketplace.

With the number of units and buildings that have been in distress over the last couple of years, we're creating challenges with overall valuations within downtown.

This presents an opportunity for us to achieve two competing goals here.

One is advance our work around affordable housing.

Two is create more activation within the downtown by applying an opportunity to address a distress asset, bring individuals into it, and provide a preference for public employees, creating a higher opportunity to ensure that we're able to reactivate the asset, reattract capital to the asset, and advance our goals around building a more solvent and active downtown.

So the lower income voucher equity program is a new tool that's going to advance this work in order to ensure that we can address, as we've seen with the prior two projects, we're investing and continuing those investments in lower AMI scale, and we're advancing the work that we do at the higher end of the AMI scale while still targeting some of our work around advancing how we provide housing to public sector employees as a preference.

The goal here is by applying this tool and using it in different sites, beginning this initial site, we're able to advance some of the work that we're doing and attracting capital to the downtown.

And so what this initial program is going to do, and what we've modeled out as part of this comprehensive public-private partnership is to bring just about 11.2 million dollars over a term of multiple years in the project to buy down the rents.

It's just a preference that we're opening it up to our public sector to provide a good high quality housing option in our downtown space near a lot of our public sector employments, including here at City Hall.

And so, what the initial design here is, this chart just quickly shows, and I'll just highlight a few of these things.

Since this is coming in initially as effectively a per unit subsidy voucher, we are expending the funds over multiple years.

Compared to our prior two deals, 8.3 and 8.4, where we just provide sort of upfront funds that come in at construction and flip over into perm, this is different because it's already a built asset.

We're just buying down at a subsidy level over the years' term based on performance and the leasing up of the units.

And so our overall per unit subsidy tends to be significantly lower than the prior deals because we're utilizing a different tool and you're providing this as additional capital inlay into a publicly financed market rate building.

In addition, the goal here is to buy down the rents for certain levels.

Our baseline target is roughly 80%, and we'll make adjustments to it over the years, but the target here is we want to step up individuals throughout that term.

And as we've done some initial surveys of eligible classifications in the city, VTA, the county, and other public sector employees, we think there is a strong demand side for this program that could hopefully lease up the building in order to create stabilization.

Upon exit, and this is the equity side of this, is that we'll not only capture the full investment, but also additional funding on top.

That is the optimum kind of structure for this.

So we're able to make an investment, create some affordability, recapture our funds, plus a little bit of interest.

And that's the overall structure of this and stepping into and looking at alternative ways to try to stabilize our downtown assets.

And then also potentially utilize this tool for other areas throughout the city.

And so that's the quick overview of the lower income voucher equity program.

I'm happy to take your questions.

Thank you, Eric.

Appreciate the detailed presentation and the creative tool that you and the team have designed.

Let's go to public comment first, Tony.

Brian Kurtz, please come on down.

Good afternoon, members of Council Brian Kurtz, CEO of the San Jose Downtown Association.

Debated coming and speaking alone because I uh I saw the what happened over the last two council items that were housing related.

But I'm here several weeks ago.

I was standing before you urging approval of multiple housing incentive programs in downtown, and at that time I spoke about the need to create housing across the spectrum of affordability in downtown.

And I'm here partly to stay true to my word, number one, but also number two to thank you and thank uh Eric Sullivan, our housing director for coming up with very creative housing incentive policies and housing policies that are going to stabilize not only the downtown market but a very particular asset, whether achieved through formal unit designations and allocations or through marketing and advertising, pushing housing towards especially housing at these affordability levels towards public employees is a net benefit for downtown.

Having a public employees live where they work is as a tremendous value add.

It strengthens connections, it shortens commutes, supports local businesses, and reinforces a sense of shared investment in place.

Once again, thanking Director Solivon and all of you for your support of this initiative, and I'm excited to continue supporting additional housing development in downtown in partnership with each and every one of you.

So thank you.

Back to council.

Great, thank you.

Councilmember Duan.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Housing costs are a major barrier to recruiting and retaining employees in San Jose.

Councilmember Casey have proposed reserving 50 units to support the San Jose Police Department.

But affordability, affordability challenges also affect the San Jose Fire Department and teachers serving our local public schools.

Expanding the eligibility beyond police officers would support workforce stability, improve in the recruitment, competitiveness, and straighten overall community continuity, which essential workers are able to live in the city they serve.

It improves service delivery, strengthen neighborhood connection, and promote long-term community investment.

Stable housing for public servants enhance overall community well-being across all districts, supporting the staff recommendation and council member Casey memorandum, along with expanding eligibility, would help address recruitment retention challenges, strengthen public safety, support our teacher and fire personnel, and advance housing equity for essential worker.

With that, I motion for acceptance of my memorandum.

Second, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Councilmember Tordillos.

Thank you, Mayor.

I want to start my comments by just thanking the housing department in particular, Eric, for the creative thinking around how we can simultaneously stabilize, you know, a distressed asset in the downtown while also providing a low-cost pathway to getting some more income restricted housing in our downtown for public employees.

You know, this council has made clear many times that any future vision for downtown has to include a lot of new housing.

And I think both the staff memo and today's presentation highlight the risk that allowing this distressed asset to uh you know have its debt be written off at below market values could have a broader destabilizing impact to our residential market downtown, uh lead to decreased valuations, decreased tax revenue down the line, and higher construction costs as uh new investment into the downtown becomes more difficult.

And I think that this proposal rises to meet that challenge and that the proposed uh public employee preference system also is a creative approach to solving the parking challenges that were cited with this particular building, which is great to see.

Uh, and I think one critical thing to point out just so that the public is aware, uh, to highlight from the staff presentation is that the city under this model is expected to get back all of our investment, all of the subsidy that we pay out here, with potentially some uh profit on top of that, uh, meaning that those dollars can then be reinvested back into additional housing projects in the future.

Uh so stepping beyond the specifics of this project, just want to commend the administration on the innovative thinking, uh, the willingness to pursue public-private partnerships, and also to just rethink the city's role in financing some of these projects.

You know, here we're stepping into a role that might be more traditionally the domain of private equity, uh, but we can see some of the public benefits that we're getting by having the city invest into these mixed income projects.

Uh and the other thing that I'll note here is that unlike the two affordable projects that came before this, which saw kind of more traditional loans where the city's investment ends up getting tied up over the course of several decades, uh, that here we expect the city to recoup its investment pretty quickly, again, allowing the funds to be revolved and reinvested into other housing projects.

Uh so thank you for the creative thinking here, and I hope that uh staff can continue to look at novel ways to use financing as a tool to advance the sitting's housing goals.

I did have two quick questions for Eric.

The first was just around this notion of eligibility.

Uh, Councilmember Duan's memo talks about expanding eligibility to the fire department and to our local teachers.

Uh, but could you just comment on that, Eric, and confirm?

Like, this is already open to all public employees.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

It is already open to all public employees.

So if council wants to provide you know preferences within that group, again, we're hopeful we get lots of applications and interest in this.

We can certainly accommodate that.

Sounds good.

My second question was just about uh you mentioned in the staff presentation uh that this is a preference, it is not a set aside.

I had some minor concerns about the specific language in uh councilmember Casey's memo about having 50 units for the exclusive use by uh SJPD personnel.

Do you think that that language works in this context, or is there something else that would be kind of more conducive to your efforts to get people into this building as quickly as possible?

I think the language of preference of specificity and keeping out of the lane of designation set aside, uh, and other adjectives that put units to the side that then create challenges around taxation and sort of uh issues around fair housing would be ideal if we stay within the lanes of preference.

It creates flexibility, it allows for us to execute on intent of each of the council initiatives, and it ensures that as we're administering this new tool and this new pilot program, we're able to adjust to where market conditions may or may not be.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I guess also just to highlight folks, since the city's stepping in here and essentially uh our subsidy is the delta between whatever the rent that we're charging to tenants and the rent that we've negotiated with the property owner here.

If we you know we end up having restrictions that keep the units vacant for longer, you know, it increases the amount that the city has to actually pay as part of its master lease, kind of diminishing how much we can actually then invest into the subsidies itself.

So I will uh propose a friendly amendment here just to revisit the language uh in the underlying memo from uh councilmember Casey.

Uh, would you be open to instead encouraging uh outreach and coordination with SJPD to you know get awareness of this program uh in front of our police department as part of our recruitment and retention efforts, but without any specific set aside of 50 units, so what?

What I'm hearing from you is this merely an outreach to the police department?

Can I suggest as if I understood you correctly, Eric?

A preference is okay, a set aside is not legally, and if we need the city attorney to weigh in, we can.

But is that your recommendation?

That's correct.

If we make clear it is not a set-aside allocation exclusively, which is how it's written for legal reasons, we can discuss, but that a preference would be meaning if a under at least the memo from Councilor Casey, if you have a hundred people applying and one is a San Jose police officer, they would automatically presumably they qualify qualify under all the other terms, they would they would get preference.

Correct.

Yes, the language of preference is what would is we're targeting for this, not set aside, not designations, not holding, not anything on the I'll turn to the maker of the motion and then the seconder, but would you like more clarification from the city attorney or do you want to do you want to respond?

And I guess I'm sort of interceding here to suggest that be the friendly amendment.

Is that okay?

I just want to make sure I'm reflected staff's recommendation.

So Councilmember DeWan, do you want to get more information or do you have you want to weigh in on that?

I would like a little more information.

Great.

Why don't we ask the city attorney to give us more context?

See how we can.

Uh excuse me.

Um Director Sullivan is correct, and we have worked with him and his department with regards to this particular item.

Preference is uh legally uh sufficient and it will not raise any risks.

Uh if we have the same factors that would apply for any public employee to become uh uh tenants of this unit as long as we don't have any data that supports a disparate impact on some that doesn't say that's on any particular uh protected class, then there wouldn't be an issue at all that we see, and also senior deputy city attorney Gabriel Rodriguez is here, and if there's any additional information, he can also he's been working with the department on this.

I don't know if that I'm not sure that was exactly a question other than confirming what the director had uh told you.

Okay.

I'm gonna allow um council member.

For sure.

Councilmember Casey.

So yeah, Eric, if you could explain the difference or if there is an issue between saying specify versus preference.

In my interpretation and talking with uh Gabe in the city attorney's office, specifying preference are uh synonyms.

They're similar.

Uh they're not uh one does not create a designation.

I'll just add Gabe here just to confirm to make sure I'm not counsel uh on that interpretation.

Yeah, we spoke about this prior to coming down here.

Gabriel Rodriguez, senior deputy city attorney.

Uh preference is more legally salient in this case, set aside, does potentially get into some fair housing implications.

We looked into the other legal issues.

Uh preference is a safer distinction in this case that doesn't run into the same legal implications, and not to mention the business ones that um uh Mr.

Sullivan mentioned earlier.

So I'm a little confused.

So specify and preference are synonyms, but the preference is to use preference.

Can I interject again?

My understanding it's not just the word specify, it's combined with exclusive use.

If we could use the language in the memo and just I just want to make sure we have clear legal guidance from our city attorney and team on what language we can use that that gets as close to council member casey's goal as possible, but doesn't open us to legal risk.

Yeah, I'm not clear on what the legal implications are of exclusive use because you've I think you said, Right.

If I may uh I think it's just the words for exclusive use are too close to the idea of a set aside, and so perhaps instead of exclusive use, it could just be preference because preferential use because I think that we are okay with that.

I don't think we run in a file of any concerns over fair housing issues.

Look, I don't think there'd be any fair housing issues.

If the way we hire, we hire across all boards, male, female.

We have in our hiring practices a very broad spectrum.

So I don't know how any fair housing issues would come into play there.

I think the issue here is the exclusive use language.

If this reads and my recommendation would be specify under the master lease agreement uh for use by San Jose Police Department.

I think and I defer to council removing just exclusiveness from this resolves the issue.

And again, I defer to the attorney on those.

Okay, we say instead of exclusive prioritizing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's just good.

Okay.

Yeah, I think that's legally justifiable.

And again, we're not we're not calling balls and strikes here.

Um talking about the exclusivity use is inserting a level of legal risk that would be greater than a preference, for instance.

But I think the suggestion from uh Mr.

Sullivan was was appropriate.

Sorry, Councilmember Casey.

So Councilmember Casey, if I understand correctly, you're suggesting, or maybe you were suggesting is to use the word prioritize, which is closer to a preference.

Um is that I see you nodding your head.

Yeah, that's fine.

In that case, I'll I'll change the language to prioritize on councilmember Casey memorandum and uh I accept that.

Yeah, thumbs up from the seconder.

And then let me just ask one quick follow-up question while we're on this, and technically, Councilmember Diaz will come back to you because I think you had the floor here.

With a prioritization or preference, but we'll use the word priority here.

Um, should we end up in a situation where there are folks who want the rooms and there are no more members of SJPD who would like the rooms at that time, is it the understanding of the council and staff that we would go ahead and take others?

So it's a it's a prioritization, it is not an exclusive use or set aside.

I see everybody nodding, so we will not leave the rooms empty waiting.

We will, it's a preference.

Okay.

All right.

So we have adjusted recommendation two in the memo from council member Casey to specify that 50 units under the master lease agreement will offer prioritization for San Jose or will prioritize members of the San Jose Police Department.

Is that personnel from the San Jose Police Department?

Is that effectively?

Okay, great.

Everybody's nodding.

I think they accepted it.

Councilmore today is thanks for raising the issue.

It's back to you if you have additional comments.

This updated language looks good to me, and I want to thank Council May Member Casey for considering uh you know including SJPD in this entire effort.

I feel like this makes sense as an incentive as we try to expand our recruiting efforts in SJPD.

Uh, I think if you look at where our recruits start in their salary bans, they'll be good candidates for this housing.

So thank you.

Excellent.

All right, thank you.

Councilmember Kamei.

Thank you.

I too wanna thank you so much uh to come up with some creative ways of um uh assisting uh the situation here with this is with the distressed property.

Um I had similar questions regarding the uh what is a set aside and what is a preference, uh, but I think that that has been resolved.

Uh I'm assuming this is going to be on a first come first serve basis.

Um some of the language in Councilmember Casey's uh memo indicated a a kind of like uh collaboration with SJPD recruitment and all of that.

I know it takes a long time, so in terms of how things move forward.

Yes, there is a preference, but in in efforts to move things forward, it would just be um sort of first come first serve.

Yes, uh in simpler terms, they got bibs on some units, right?

It's like it's we're gonna go through this process, collect applications, and as we look through the preference less, you know, we'll look to ensure we provide those preferences for SJPD officers, but it doesn't stop up the process, it keeps going and keeps moving forward in order to we can get to utilization of all the units.

Okay, thank you very much.

Great vice mayor.

Okay, I'm not gonna let this die.

I'm gonna try to let it die.

But I just want to be really clear that there are under the the current language that we're considering for the memos and the modification, the friendly amendment, that there is no fair housing violations that we are considering.

Yes, uh, insofar as I understand that we've moved to priority or preference, then that is sufficient.

Okay, that sounds like you're hedging a little bit.

Um, so it I I just want to be clear that the we are we have these units.

Uh first of all, thank you for the creativity in bringing this forward and figuring out a solution on how we can get 60% the rest of those units occupied in with a population that could really use our help.

And many of them are our employees, and they're not just police and fire, they are our federated employees too.

They're everyone who works at the city and ever and and the county for that matter.

So I uh really value the creativity and appreciate that, but uh also I'm very sensitive to fair housing violations and the set aside or the commitment or the agreement or the uh implication that that we're prioritizing anyone.

In effect, we're not.

In effect, we're saying we want it'd be great if we had 50 of these units for the police department, and that would be fabulous that they're occupied, but ultimately they're gonna be occupied by anyone who meets the criteria that we're setting forth, correct?

So we're not saying 10 units go to the teachers, 10 units go here, 10 units go here.

Correct.

We're not allocating any units to any particular bucket.

So if we get hopefully a thousand applications from eligible folks with these 200 units, we're gonna look at preference, okay?

Which ones are PDs?

Great, get them in, then go to the teachers and firefighters, to housing department staff, to staff in our federator, our MEC or camp employees.

So it's just allowing for things to go up above the list, but we keep going down the less in the administration of the program.

So in the way that you just stated those, you stated police at the top, then firefighters and then teachers.

If I'm a secretary and administrative assistant at the city of San Jose, where do I fall in that category?

You are still within the bucket of the less.

And again, this an execution of any preference from a wait list, it's about timeliness and criteria.

So first you got to hit all the criteria, Vice Mayor, as you mentioned.

So I check all the boxes.

If John Smith from the PD and Sally Sue uh from this reception uh desk uh hit all the criteria and we're down to our last set of units, then a preference may uh trigger applicability there.

But in managing so many properties in my history, preferences really get washed away because you're not stopping the leasing, it still has to go forward.

We're not holding the unit if the police officer can't get the deposit or doesn't put in all the paperwork, it still continues moving forward.

Okay, thank you.

I I appreciate that.

I'm just very sensitive to the set aside or the implied set aside of these units.

Uh frankly, there's many of our employees could afford uh would benefit from being there, and I don't want one employee group to have a priority over the other employee group, and I'm a little on a little nervous about this language, but I'll I'll support the motion and we'll see how it plays out, but I I wouldn't want the situation to be an executive assistant and a police officer or a firefighter or a teacher, let's say a teacher, because they're not our employees.

They belong to another school district, or they belong to a school district, that they get priority over our employee, and you're saying no.

What I'm saying is the execution of a preference does not put into the administration a holding of a unit for a police fire policeman or police person over a fire person over a receptionist.

It's a preference in the execution of the continuing leasing up of the units, okay.

And so it is not we're gonna hold and wait and make sure and give the extra time, it's not functioning like that.

Because if everything comes in at the same time and it's a it's a photo finish at the end, there's a preference that then make it triggered, but it is not a holding or a set aside.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, appreciate your comments.

We'll go to Councilmore Cohn.

Yeah, I'm still I'm still similarly to the Vice Mayor a little bit confused by some of the language here.

As I read the memo from uh Councilmember Casey, we would say there's the number 50 units in there, which I which is I'm not sure I understand how that would be implemented.

Is the idea that once there's 50, if if in fact 50 units get filled by police officers, the preference ends?

Is that how you would interpret this memo?

So we give preference to a police officer over another employee until 50 units are filled by police officers and then that preference goes away.

No, because that as you are articulated would be a set aside, not a preference.

The way the preference works is all the applications come in at the same time.

We preference those that are all completed.

So let's say there are two employees from different sects of the public employment.

If all of their work and all of their paperwork and everything is done at the same time, then a preference will get triggered.

Okay.

If we don't hold for one, not holding it.

Right, it's not holding for 50.

But the so the number the the wording that the the specificity of 50 units is kind of immaterial and really shouldn't continue to be part of the language here.

It's about preference of firefighter of police officers over other eligible parts of employees.

Since specify and preference are synonyms, it's we're saying the same thing.

We're building a preference within the preference.

I understand.

It's just the language of the 50 units in the actual motion that I'm I'm asking about and whether that is material or meaningful.

It sounds like it's not, and if it's not, it shouldn't be there.

We're saying there's a preference for police officers that has nothing to do with the number 50.

That number 50 can't be enforced in any way.

Again, since we're building preferences within preferences, whether that's 50 or 100 or 10 or 5, it's not materially relevant to the administration and execution of the program.

It is merely a target.

Hey, let's try to get that's how I receive it.

Okay, I'll I'll leave that part of it then.

The second part is the memo from Councilmember DeWan expands scope and eligibility of the program to include fire department personnel teachers.

As I understand it, that was already in uh in there, and this is not changing anything in any way.

This doesn't necessarily ask for prioritization for those, just to include them in the pool of people, which is already true.

Correct.

So the only preference that this motion would have is for police officers.

Correct.

Okay, I just wanted to clarify.

Yes, that is my understanding.

Unless that's correct.

I because I heard you say, because it would go police first and fire, then that's not what's this being said.

What's being said is police and then everyone else within a pool.

My articulation of police fire is if they all met the same, they all completed all their paperwork at the same time and then now we're choosing preferences, that's when this comes into effect.

It is not a holding, it is not a, so there's some paperwork outstanding over here for police.

So we're gonna hold it.

Nope, we're not doing that, we're just gonna keep going.

Yeah, it just concerns me that if we say if if the if that comes down to a teacher versus, like as mentioned, teacher versus a city employee.

And again, I you know, not to pass judgment on income levels, but you know, an income level of a firefighter is often higher than the income level of a of a parks employee, for example.

We I I'm not convinced that we should have an order, except that the order should be based on when they apply and when they qualify.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, but the motion as it stands, based on what's written down and I understand to be the motion, I just we should be clear, and I would encourage colleagues to be really clear in writing these recommendations and working with staff, including the city attorney before submitting memos, is a preference for police officers if they have applied.

They're effectively top of the list for units that are available.

Right, and similar to my, yes, uh, so it's a myticulation below.

Again, if we get to uh photo finish and completion of all the work, that preference is then trigger, but it's not a I understand that in practice it's unlikely to be very relevant, but it is the policy is a policy.

We're either passing, send a policy here or we're not.

So I just want us to all be clear.

Well, now we agree with it.

We should be clear on what we're voting on.

Okay, we're gonna continue with Councilmore Casey.

So a couple points here.

First, I want to touch on the set aside and why the set asides are bad.

Is it because of the fair housing implications you guys mentioned?

Because how does fair housing get triggered when RPD's hiring practices are intended to reflect our society?

So who's getting the preference and why would fair housing be triggered?

So the fair housing implications here in broad general terms.

And again, we're talking through very specified components within fair housing.

And I also know that fair housing as a law is a reactive law, meaning it's not automatic and chair where someone has to bring the claim, right?

And then you say, okay, was there a fair housing violation?

It's very reactive in mode in its federal constitution.

I can speak to California specific and just as federal uh construction and my practice in other areas throughout the country.

So in this case, by setting aside different groups or putting designations or putting preferential treatments to particular groups, that raises concerns, and in order to address those concerns, we stay within the language of preference so we don't run afoul.

I think as Vice Mayor Foley has represented that we're prioritizing creating any form of uh specific utility of the public resources for particular groups.

But those groups would be based on racial terms, right?

This isn't you can't if you give police officers preferential treatment somehow that triggers fair housing because you're giving police officers, it's because you would be giving certain races or classes beneath that preferential treatment, right?

This is where fair housing gets to be very vague and subjective, and why the general counsel is to let's just stay clear of having to delve into the specificity of execution on their both federal and then state uh law and just stay within the lane of preference.

What about we're giving our own employees theoretically, preferential treatment, right?

So San Jose PD, there are employees, so wouldn't that change the calculus in terms of whether it's fair housing is applicable or not?

Uh no, council member, because they're not a protected class, which is what the fair housing laws are designed to protect.

Uh so it's essentially this is a policy decision being made by the city of San Jose to create this housing for public employees, preference for police officers because of the recruitment issues, uh, and inability to fill those vacancies.

That's one of the policy reasons behind having a preference for them, but just by the virtue of the fact that it's for public employee preference would not run afoul at all of the fair housing laws.

Well, I guess I'm still not clear on how it's triggering the fair housing laws.

I think it's a little bit uh the city attorney's office being extremely paranoid about making sure that we don't um do anything accidentally to trigger fair housing law concerns, and so what we would like to do is make sure that we have uh preferential um and or I'm I'm fine with the word prioritization, just so that we don't as we step into this role of landlord, we don't actually do anything that won't run our foul of it.

Yeah, but again, give me an example.

We we say we're gonna put aside 50 units for police officers and we hire or we we put it aside for 50 officers.

What would trigger the fair housing law?

We actually go through it and we there's 15 that happen to be Hispanic, 15 that happen to be black, 15 to happen to be white, or even I don't know, however you the calculus you want to do it.

What triggers the fair housing law?

There'd have to be a challenge brought against the city for some um decisions that are made that are having a disparate impact on protected classes.

But the fact that our hiring practices are intended to reflect our society and police officers' department, I mean in the PD, like how would that trigger?

I don't understand how it would be triggered.

It isn't the hiring practices that would be challenged, it would be the housing decisions that would be challenged uh potentially.

Seems very attenuated risk.

Which is why we are um endorsing the use of the word power division.

I think we're good with that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Let me go back to council member Tordias.

Thank you.

I mean, it's clear that this is a new program.

I think there's a lot for us to wrap our uh minds around as we go about implementing this.

Question for Eric.

Would it be possible as uh the lease up continues here to get a report back at some point in terms of how all of this is ended up playing out, how many of the units went to public uh employees versus the general population, and then I don't know if we would be able to get into the granularity of which agencies, which departments, whether they were city employees, teachers, uh, you know, VTA workers.

Would it be possible to get some of that data reported back to council in the future?

Yes.

So part of this new tool is we're piloting this out and trying different ways of thinking about addressing these varieties of needs in populations to be served, we're gonna be getting monthly reporting as we're leasing up through this period, so we can certainly come back and provide some additional data.

Thank you.

Okay, let's go to the vice mayor.

Okay.

I I'm very concerned about the the policy that we potentially are adopting.

To be clear, federal there's fair housing laws in the that are federally government protected.

There's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, familial status.

We cannot say because you're a police officer, you get a job here.

If we are supplanting someone who is disabled, who have who is uh or a religious or origin, then the c the the state also has fair housing restrictions against bias against marital status, sexual orientation, gender expression, etc.

etc.

There's a lot.

So I feel we're that what you already had was really good policy, and now we're trying to complicate it and may and expose ourselves a little bit, not a little bit, I'm concerned a lot, to future lawsuits from someone who may be applying for a unit, but but they're applying and and it's a not someone from a protected class under the fair housing laws, that that person gets the j the unit where the other per because they're of the occupation that they have, when the other person who is a protected class doesn't get the unit.

And I'm very concerned about how we're exposed uh exposing ourselves to that.

I know some of you know this about my background, but I'm a mortgage broker, more g and and a real estate broker by profession, and I take fair housing tests all the time.

So this is really serious to me.

When I do a loan for someone, I have to comply with lots of fair housing laws.

So I'm sadly not going to be able to support this, so I will actually propose a substitute motion, and that is that we adopt the staff uh memo.

Second.

Vice Mayor, could I ask is maybe a so we have a substitute motion with a second.

I wonder if we might adopt the staff recommendation, which is your motion, but refer to the city ask the city attorney to come back with a legal opinion and the opportunity to maybe amend the program at a future date based on legal advice.

That's I I would include that.

Yeah, that's fine.

Okay, so the substitute motion is to adopt the staff recommendation without the single signature memos.

Right.

And request that direct, sorry, direct the city attorney to return to the council with a legal interpretation.

Legal interpretation of fairer housing law and whether or not the proposals, which you know could involve some discussion and collaboration with the council members who wrote the memos, might run afoul of uh the law and and kind of what the guidance would be on on to what extent we could do something like this.

Yes.

And then that would create an opportunity for us to come back to council and maybe add the program in if it if it felt like there was a way to do that that was legal, legally sound.

Yes, and and potentially not saying we would.

Federal fair housing, but also state fair housing laws and any fair law uh fair housing laws.

And and thank you, that's a a good amendment.

It's not I I think the the staff recommendation is very broad as it should be and really the goal is to occupy these 60 percent of the units with uh people who are having difficulty qualifying elsewhere and who may be our employees and very likely to be our employees so it the program is a really good opportunity for us to house some folks that are uh might have a be having difficulty in this very expensive area so uh but I'm I was as I've stated before I'm very concerned about the fair housing um in uh issues and how it affects this and our rental and I don't just don't want to open us to open us up to any lawsuits so thank you.

Vice Mayor Foley I want to confirm that the hypothetical that you gave is the analysis that we would conduct which is on the housing decision aspect of it the person who may have otherwise been passed over for housing uh relative to a member of PD and FD.

So I did want to confirm that would be the hypothetical we use in our analysis to look at disparate impact in the fair housing context.

Great thank you.

Yeah but let me just add since I suggested the analysis I would like the city attorney's office to meet with the council members who have brought forward an idea perhaps a little belatedly here.

These memos did come in yesterday and today and I think it's it's hard to set policy in this kind of legal environment without more analysis behind it.

But I'd like the city attorney's office to understand the intention of the council members who as I understand it I think we probably all agree are trying to help our workforce have access to housing in an environment where it is hard to hire and retain city workers.

So that's a great intention I think we've raised some relevant questions that I would agree have not been satisfactorily answered today.

So I would not limit ourselves to one hypothetical I would like to understand the intention of the council members and do enough analysis to tell us if there's a way at getting at some version of what they're intending that is legal or if they want to continue to if they want to bring that back and propose it again what should the council be aware of as the legal risk.

So I just I would like a slightly broader analysis of this question.

It may not be that their exact proposal is the right one but I think there's a bit of conversation that needs to happen.

Just as would any of us write memos on something relevant to a city department under the city manager's uh management uh we often spend a bit of time going back and forth with our memo kind of kind of working things through with them to understand the implications uh when it comes to implementation so same same idea um okay I and I assume city attorney that makes sense you're good with that great okay would that come back to us as some sort of informational memo that then the council members could pick up and use if they want to go back to rules and bring something to the council yes we could do that or put it on uh as a public discussion item as well whatever you whatever the council prefers I think an informational memo that then allows the council members to come back to rules and bring this back to council is probably the right process.

Okay.

I understand that then to be the motion from the maker of the substitute in the second or council or come the the current uh motion on the floor is staff's recommendation so we would still have a preference with public employees which still considers police fire teachers anyone who is a public employee correct that is my understanding of the motion.

Great thank you.

Thanks for the clarification.

Council Member DeWan.

Thank you I just want to clarify that the city attorney when changed from to prioritization instead of uh specific that we satisfy the parameter without having lawsuit and then my memorandum did not specifically, you know, put you know very specific units at all.

So I think we have to look at the fact that the the attorney already changed it to prioritize.

They're okay with it.

My memorandum did not hold the 50 units.

So I think it would have been a a good vote, and I encourage you all to vote on that as well.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

And I I appreciate the intention.

I do think when I as I look at your recommendations in your memo, we have the staff rec, so that is in the motion.

We have the memo from Councilmember Casey, which I think has raised some legal questions that we've struggled to get a clear legal opinion on.

I think probably due to just kind of the late nature of this coming forward.

And then number three is actually included in the staff rec already.

So two of your three recs are in the motion on the in the substitute motion.

I think it's just recommendation two that uh requires a deeper legal analysis, at least for as I'm sensing many of us to feel comfortable with moving forward.

Okay, uh, I don't see any other hands up if we've put this to rest for now.

Maybe we have maybe we haven't.

Why don't we vote on the substitute and find out?

Motion passes eight to three.

Eight to three.

Once it pops up, I'll say who voted no, because I can't see it until it pops up on the screen.

Are you able to get that?

Okay, with Ortiz, DeWan, and Casey voting no.

Okay, thank you.

So we'll get a legal opinion and hopefully have an opportunity to revisit this question uh council soon, but the underlying staff recommendation is passed.

Thank you.

Okay.

That was item 8.5, meaning we are now on to item 10.2.

This is the administrative hearing on the appeal of the planning director's approval and environmental appeal of a site development permit located at 2334 Lundy Avenue.

We have a staff presentation, and then I will uh read a little bit of a script here.

So Chris, I think I'm turning it over to you.

Yes, you are, ma'am.

Thank you so much.

Uh Chris Burton, director of planning building code enforcement.

I'm joined today by uh David Keon, uh, our principal planner for uh environmental review.

And the project before us today is an appeal of the site development permit uh for the project located at 2334 Lundy Avenue.

The wrong one.

Um one moment, please.

Sorry.

So the project is a site development permit um for the construction of an approximately 132,000 square foot tilt-up industrial building uh with an approximately 10,000 square foot incidental office on a six and a half acre site uh up in North San Jose.

Uh, the project includes the demolition of the existing 130,000 square foot building and removal of 152 trees.

Uh the operation is proposed to be 24-7 with access from Lundy Avenue and Trade Zone.

Uh and the project included the construction of a new eight-foot high masonry sound wall uh near the loading dock.

So, as with all projects, we reviewed this for conformance and consistency with the uh envisioned 2040 general plan uh and the designation that it has within that plan of transit employment center.

Uh, we reviewed it for consistency with the light industrial zoning district as well as our citywide design guidelines, city council policy 6-30 on public outreach, uh, and also um for conformance with the California Environmental Quality Act.

So, for that I'm just gonna hand over to David to talk through our environmental review process.

Um good afternoon, Mayor and members of the city council.

David Keon, principal planner on the city's environmental review team.

I'm just gonna briefly discuss the environmental review for this proposed warehouse building.

Um this staff prepared a mitigated negative declaration, an initial study for this project, and it was circulated for public review for 20 days in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act.

Um, this initial study evaluated air quality from construction and operation, including truck operations.

It also evaluated noise from operations and construction and operations, and um transportation, including vehicle miles traveled.

In addition, there was also a study of track transportation operations that it was independent of the California Environmental Quality Act.

Um this and pursuant to CEQA, there was public notice provided.

There was a community meeting, and that community meeting there were people that were that were interested were asked to provide their contact information if they wanted to receive notification when the initial study publicly circulated.

At least 23 people did contact staff and when the initial study was circulated, these people were notified that this was available for public review back in September 2025.

And staff has responded to those comments and published those prior to the director's hearing.

As with all of our development projects, uh staff follows Council Policy 6-30 on public outreach, which involves the posting of an on-site sign on the project site.

As David mentioned, we held a community meeting back in April of last year where we had approximately 30 members of the public attend that meeting to provide different comments, specifically around traffic circulation, pollution, noise, and public safety.

We held the public hearing on the project, which was a director's hearing on December 3rd, and for that hearing notices were mailed out to a thousand foot radius, and the project was then subsequently appealed on December 5th.

So as noted, just briefly that we oh, excuse me.

Yeah, we held the director's hearing on December 3rd, and just noting the comments that were made.

And so with that, staff is recommending that uh city council uh consider the appeal of the director's approval of the site development permit and a separate appeal on the environmental uh determination of a mitigated negative declaration.

Staff is recommending that the city council adopt a resolution denying the environmental appeal and upholding the planning director's reliance on the initial study and the mitigated negative declaration for the project.

Um, and then in addition, uh staff is recommending that the city council adopt a resolution denying the permit appeal and approving subject to conditions of the site development permit to allow the construction of the 132,000 square foot building.

And with that, staff is available for questions.

I believe the applicant the appellant uh for both the permit appeal and the sequel appeal are here, and the applicant is here as well.

Okay, thank you.

So, first we're gonna meet our obligations under the city's sunshine resolution.

So I'd start by um I will start by disclosing that my staff met with representatives of the applicant overtoner properties, Jennifer Friedman, and Armando Gomez.

I'm aware my office was made aware of a few other disclosures council members need to make.

I'll start with those and then see if there are any others.

Councilmember Ortiz.

I also met with the applicant as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Mayor.

I also met with the applicant.

Okay.

Councilman Condellus.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

I did want to disclose that I met with the applicant on this project as well.

Great, thank you, Councilman Kameh.

Yes, I also wanted to disclose that I met with the applicant and Amanda Gomez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh I'd also like to disclose that I met with the applicant Overton properties and their consultant.

Thank you.

Councilman Cohn.

Yes, I'd like to disclose I met with the applicant and their consultant on this project.

Great.

Am I missing anyone?

Council Member Tordillos.

Uh yes, I also met with the project applicant and their consultant.

Great.

And Councilmember Casey.

I also met with the applicant and the project consultant.

Okay, thank you.

We got everybody there.

All right.

So, um city attorney, I'm gonna just confirm that I have the right understanding here.

We have multiple appellants.

We have one applicant.

I know the applicant is being given a total of up to five minutes.

Uh, what is the guidance for the appellants?

The appellants would each get five minutes.

They also have a representative, and so they could choose to have the representative present on all of their behalf.

Okay.

Well then we will um start with the appellants.

And if they have a representative, that person may come forward or each of the believe there are four pellets, appellants.

Yeah, I I have one who submitted a card.

Okay, Tony, take over.

That's um, but if anybody else is here representing the appellants who did not submit a card, this is also your time to line up.

Okay, Yu Zia Zheng.

I may be mispronouncing that.

Yeah, but this is not general public comment to be clear.

She actually wrote appellant on her card.

Perfect.

Yes, or the representative for appellant.

You're welcome to come over.

Appellants do not need to submit a card, but I did appreciate that I got one.

Yeah, thank you for that.

If we have others, please other appellants.

Please make your way down now if you would like to speak.

Okay.

Hello.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor and the Council members.

So Andrew, our uh HOA manager who submitted the appeal uh didn't come, so I will represent the residents leaving directly near the proposed projects.

And we are not here to oppose development.

We understand the city needs job and economic growth.

What we are asking is simple when uh 132 uh K square foot 24 hour track warehouse with 16 loading decks is placed directly near to our home and uh school roads, it deserved a highest level of environmental review, not the lowest.

Under the CEQA, if there is sufficient evidence of projects may cause significant impact, and environmental impact reports is required.

We believe that standard is clearly met here.

First, there were notice problem, many of the closet residents never receive an effective notice, and we know that the KB home near us, and also their leave less than 100 feet were not yet in the database, and the staff says that because they are not in the database, so it's okay for them to not notify, notify them.

And some neighbors never received postcards, and the nearby school identified in the report as sensitive recipients, they were not notified because staff believed that they feel just outside the hundred radius, so the small number of the comments should not be treated as the lack of concern.

Many of many of us impact residents simply didn't know about this project before this project has been approved.

And I'm here to represent over 220 homes, and we have a list of signature with over hundreds of people, and second, the key technical material, including the the noise appendix, were not available during the public review period.

Residents later discover this, and they require we require time to reveal it, but the request was not clearly act on, and we believe that public review only works if the study are available when the comments are due, not after we filed the appeal.

And now I want to focus on the traffic and safety as well, because there's one of the most serious real world concerns to us.

More than 220 households share the single out light onto Lindy Avenue, and we are a closed community, which is state in the report as well, but they didn't do any further analysis on that.

That same short role is also used for track, and there is no alternative road, no backup exit, and no emergency shoulders.

This segment has one lane, each direction, no back length and no shoulders, family, children, and heavy tracks were all shared the same way, day and night, because this one is a 24 hour projects.

But delay numbers does not reflect real neighborhood safety.

They do not show what happens when a truck block the only exit or when emergency access is needed.

And as a mom of allergy kids, we definitely need the emergency exit.

It's really important to us.

And when my kid is small, like one year old, we call the ambulance, and the ambulance came like in eight minutes.

It saved my kids' life.

And I believe that if this one is a close community with a very very thin line, we need to consider that, and we need to do more analysis.

Thank you, I truly believe that.

The next appellate.

My family and my wife and I, and also a three-year-old are living in a three-story home directly across the street and facing to the proposed track court at 2434 long the place.

So here I mainly want to talk about the noise and the sleep impact.

So the noise report uses a 24-hour average, and says that with an eight-foot wall, the noise at the residential boundary will be just under the 55 dBA standard.

But I believe the report never clearly explains some of the very basic things.

Like, for example, how many nighttime peak events would happen, including the backup beepers, the coupling, the airbreak releases, assumed each hour, and whether they have made any adjustments for these impulsive noises at late night, and uh most importantly, how they modeled the second and the third floor bedrooms compared with the eight-foot wall.

So most of us in the community uh sleep on the second and third floor, directly facing what would be the 24-7 truck loading area.

We don't wake up for the 24-hour averages, we wake up for one loud noise at 2 a.m.

Um, and like many of our neighbors, we have uh three-year-old, and uh I cannot imagine how we can handle if the child just wake up every night.

So um these concerns made me believe that this nighttime noises and the sleep disturbance will be significant for us, which uh will require a uh environmental impact uh report level analysis.

So here I respectfully ask for you to grant the PELs, and uh uh require a full EIR level noise study that's clearly disclose the uh all the lacking evidence and assumptions that is currently in this report.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, dear mayor and the council members.

My name is Caroline, and I'm a parent raising young children in the neighborhood across this project.

As you can see, this is our community, and this is the project.

It's very, very close to us.

It's just a road, a little difference from us.

So it's it is very close, and there it's had very big impact to uh to our community.

And uh in our community, we have a lot of children uh in our community.

Um most of us usually go outside uh in the evening when they are after school, and uh uh uh most of them will play uh because we don't have any playground in our community.

Uh so uh a lot of children will play uh on the road and full uh if the project here will approve, it will um impact a lot to our community, and we will uh have a lot of trouble uh with case if uh a lot of security issues and it is very dangerous to us.

And by the way, uh I don't think they have um a very uh good air quality and uh diesel health risk for us.

Um and I don't think uh I don't know how many tracks per day uh could assume and what share of them uh uh have a deal t diesel uh there and for how long tracks uh assumed to add the queue and also because they are 24 hours a day and all year um and I think it is very dangerous to our family to our case, uh, especially in the evening.

So uh I respect uh respectfully ask you to grant the appeals and require a transparent EIR level health uh health risk analysts before approving a 24-hour track facility next to our homes and the case.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other appellants?

I believe there's two more, but I don't know if they're here.

I see nobody coming, so back to you.

We also have the applicant, but I think we may have an appellate.

Are you the applicant or an appellant?

Okay, you also are entitled to up to five minutes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Sorry, what?

We don't have to think you might go one minute.

Okay, no problem, thank you.

Um good afternoon, council members and Mayor Mayhan and Jennifer Friedman, and with Overton Moore properties.

We're the owner and developer of 2334 Lundy Avenue.

We are here today uh to tell you a little bit more about our project.

And as you know, uh, you can flip to the first or do I have the can.

Oh, thank you.

Perfect.

Um as we've pointed out, uh, this project is uh at the northwest border of San Jose and adjacent across the street on Lundy is Milpitas, where Milpitas had uh previously had industrial uses.

They rezoned it about 10 years ago, and in the interim, KB Homes and Toll Brothers have primarily built townhomes across the street on Lundy Place.

Um in fact, some of them moved in as recently as about a year ago at the end of 2024, those are the appellants of this project today.

We bought this project because it's an old data center site and it has a lot of power for today's modern standards uh for warehouse distribution uses.

So we don't expect this to be a location where we have heavy truck use.

We're really assuming that it's gonna be advanced manufacturing uses, similar to projects that we have elsewhere in Fremont.

This would be our second development in the city of San Jose, and we've developed about six million square feet, entitled and developed six million square feet in Northern California to date.

Um as you can see, the project's been vacant uh for about three years.

It was an old RD office building.

We're gonna recreate um a new light manufacturing building.

We again, this is consistent as you heard from Chris.

Uh, it's consistent with the San Jose General Plan with the Transit Employment Center.

It's gonna bring a lot of jobs to the area.

We expect that this location uh will bring 80 to 125 new high-tech jobs.

These are engineers, these are folks that are doing assembly manufacturing again because this project has about twice as much power as a typical warehouse distribution building.

We also estimate that the taxes in year one uh with the property tax reset will increase the San Jose General Fund by about $800,000 and will result in 11.5 million dollars over the next 20 years.

As part of the project, uh the improvements that we're required to make that will improve safety for the city.

We're gonna spend about a million dollars on modifying the traffic signals at the intersection of Lundy and Trade Zone Boulevard, which is a very uh heavy used intersection.

We're gonna be creating protected bike lanes along Trade Zone Boulevard and replacing the sidewalks along Trade Zone and Lundy.

We've done a lot of community outreach over the last few the last year, in addition to reaching out to the neighbors, the HOAs, we met with community members uh on last Thursday night.

We held um an open forum for any community members who wanted to come and speak with us.

I'll be completely honest that the HOA member um uh managers have been completely unresponsive.

I've emailed and called both of them at least 10 times.

So we're trying to be good neighbors and communicate as much as possible, and it's been really difficult to have meaningful conversations with them.

We do understand the concerns.

We also have some folks here um who have supported us on the project.

Again, local businesses who don't appreciate that it's currently uh, you know, a building that's been vandalized, that we've had our security guard assaulted there, we've had homeless encampments and fires inside the building.

Um we are trying to mitigate our impact on the neighbors.

So we've oriented the building with the sound wall, we've oriented all of the office and parking to be away from the Lundy exit.

We expect Trade Zone Boulevard will be the primary point of ingress and egress.

Okay.

Um I will just let you know that the consultants uh that the city engaged to do traffic analysis and the noise study are here today.

If you have any specific questions for them, and I do think it's worth noting that all of these neighbors to the west of us did sign and see buyer disclosures when they bought those properties that indicated they were adjacent to industrial land that would be operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

That's all I've got, unless you guys have any questions.

Thank you.

We uh may come back to you for questions when we get to council discussion.

Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you to the appellants for also coming to speak.

We're going to now turn to any other public comment that would be limited to two minutes per speaker.

Tony, do we have any public comment cards?

Um, yes, I have uh 31 comment cards.

31, okay.

Um, this one's written really faint, but the last name is J-I-N-Gin.

I can't read the first name.

Um, come on down.

By the way, when you when you get called, you don't have to speak in the order that you're called.

It's whoever's first.

That's right.

Yes.

Sorry to interrupt.

Uh, my general rule of thumb is once we hit 30 on an item, we go to one minute.

Otherwise, we will, so we're gonna we're gonna do one minute going forward.

Okay.

Thank you for the rest of the meeting.

So you have one minute.

So the first person, first name, it might be Caroline, but the last name is Jin.

JP Lanois, um, Rakesh.

Come on down.

Um Guan Peng, I think is what it says.

It's the handwriting's a little faint.

And then um, last name Sun, first name starts with a B.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Hi everyone, dear mayor and the city councils.

I'm Lemuel Kida's resident.

So my home is located at 539 Londie Places.

Right opposed the operative side of the like three two, three, three, four longly place project.

It's less than 100 feet away.

So I'm here wanna just bring up this AB 98 bill.

We know this bill was um taking effect on January 1st, 2026, which sets a statewide standards for the logistics and warehouse facilities located near homes and schools.

It costs for the minimum setbacks, often around like 300 feet.

We don't see that being discussed in this project, and there's no like clear documentation to see whether the project is uh eligible for the exemption for AB 98, and so for this 300 feet is between the loading area and residence.

Uh, we need the buffers, and the sound wall is only eight feet, and our ceiling is like nine feet.

We don't think the eight feet sound wall is good enough.

And time next speaker.

Uh hi.

Um, this is Winjin.

I live also living in 539 place.

This address is very important.

That was my fiance speaking over there.

This address is very important because if you look at the maps, this is directly across the um the site development site, and also we also live directly just one street across the uh exit that the trucks uh warehouses gonna be using.

So um we've already talked about the noise concerns that was extensively covered, and we also want to mention that um some of the uh benefits that was claimed.

Uh there was like local businesses, we need to consider where do these people live.

Do they live here?

Do either do they stay here in the night?

Do they stay here for seven?

Because we as residents live right across the street, we can say yes to that.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call um Sheng and Yin Sheng.

Go ahead.

Uh good afternoon uh council members and mayor.

My name is Andrei Karobanov.

I'm a resident of nearby uh residence as well, and I respectfully ask you to support this environmental appeal.

The city's response given to residents fails to adequately address the very real health impacts this project will impose on surrounding communities.

Uh 122,000 square foot warehouse with only 10,000 square foot of office uh uh usage combined with heavy traffic and removal of 120 trees will increase air pollution, noise, and heat in the area, already filled with industrial use under CEQA.

If there is evidence that the project may cause significant environmental harm, the city must prepare a full environmental impact report.

In this case, the initial study does not fully examine the combined air quality, health, and heat impact, especially after removing of so many mature trees.

So our communities deserve a deeper review and struggle.

Thank you, that's your time.

Next speaker.

I'd also like to call by Wang W A N G.

Come on down.

Hi, everyone.

So uh my name is Gwenpo, and I also nearby the neighborhood.

So my question is like uh when you're with a freeway track, right?

And ongoing construction.

No, we are talking about like I don't know, 24 hours, and also 16 dark truck warehouse on top of that.

And so CUQ doesn't just look at look at the project one by one.

It's asked like what happened when you put everything together all the time, right?

So that's a community community impact question.

From a resident point of view, it doesn't matter.

Like if each project on paper is just under the limit.

What matters most for our case and our families end up leaving uh primitive noise, pollutant high traffic uh credit.

So I'm asking you to grant the appeal and require a real community uh community uh impact analysis.

Yeah, yeah.

And then another thing is like a quality of life and the light in here.

So think about like way it's our buy room, before we black lights.

You had 2 a.m.

on the morning.

So what trucks are moving?

That's our fall sleep house and the basic quality of life.

So that matters a lot for us.

Thank you, next speaker.

And as our clerk grids names, we can have speakers line up here on the stairs.

I'm gonna I'm trying to type what I can read on the cards so we can display it because I don't think I'm pronouncing things correctly.

Yeah, let me start.

Uh good afternoon, Mayor and the City Council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Uh I'm here to respectfully urge you not to approve the proposed truck warehouse project.

Um because this site was an old data center.

Um, maybe you can instead consider attracting and approve a new data center for this site.

Because uh truck warehouse should be located near those uh traffic hub, either the ramp of some uh interstate highway, not in this center, between two AD and uh 680.

Traffic on the Loundy Avenue and uh to the trade alone and the Montague is already very heavy.

Um so adding this uh extra truck traffic will be a lot of burden.

Uh also there's all the noise and the um lightning pollutions.

Uh, this decision I think will shape our community for decades, so we must choose the option that brings long-term economic value instead of this short-term quality uh, Dora and Shannon come on down, and I'm about to display some names.

Um for those people who maybe I didn't pronounce your name correctly.

But Dora and Shannon.

Okay, Dora and Shannon are not coming down.

Umre Caravanov, Jing Xiao Zheng, Zhang Di Liu.

Okay.

If you submitted a card for 10.2, just start lining up because you guys are I'm apparently not saying the names correctly, or you're not understanding.

Please, if you submitted a card for 10.2, somebody come down to the microphone, line up and say your name at the microphone.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the city council.

My name is Canado Diaz, and I'm speaking on behalf of Carpenter's Local 405 and working families across San Jose and the surrounding Bay Area in strong support of the proposed redevelopment of 2334 Lundy Avenue.

This site is designated as a transit employment center under the envisioned San Jose 2040 general plan.

That designation exists to support intensive job growth and in areas with strong access to transit and infrastructure.

More importantly, this project transforms a long vacant outdated property into a modern productive economic asset at a time when San Jose needs job creation and new sources of revenue.

This development delivers both.

The project also represents a commitment of good quality jobs.

Developments like this provide living wages, healthcare benefits, and apprenticeship pathways for local workers.

Overton Moore properties has a strong track route of delivering successful projects, and their investment reflects confidence in San Jose's future.

For these reasons, we respectfully urge your approval of this project.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, so as a resident of Mulpedis, I'm asking for support of the redevelopment of 2334 Lundy Avenue.

This project represents a real opportunity to bring good jobs back to an area that has sat underuse for too long.

Revitalizing this property will help attract businesses and create quality employment close to home.

I support this project and the opportunities it can bring to our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Uh good afternoon, council.

Um, as someone who lives in Milpitas, I also support the redevelopment of 2334 Lundy Avenue.

This project is a step towards turning the underused property into something productive for our community, bringing jobs closer to home.

Um it all it will also support local and economic growth.

Uh I am supporting.

I hope you all support this project moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi guys.

As a Milpitas resident, I'm here to express my support for the redevelopment of 2334 Lundy Avenue.

I think it's a meaningful chance to bring back jobs to a space that hasn't been fully utilized.

Improvements like this can strengthen local families by providing work opportunities, and that's why I'm in favor of the project and what it represents for the area.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello.

My name's Sicole, and as a Milpitas resident, I support the redevelopment plan for the 2334 Lundy Avenue.

This proposal offers a real chance to revitalize a site that has been sitting idle and turn it into something beneficial.

Projects like this can create jobs and support working families in our region, and I'm glad to see this opportunity for our community.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, my name is Ron.

Um I want to share my support for this redevelopment project.

Um, has potential bring new jobs to the um area as needed for some time.

Um also investing in spaces um like this help strengthen our community and also our local workforce.

Uh definitely I support this and uh the benefits it could bring to our community.

Thanks.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, my name is Alison and I'm proud to express my support for Overton Moore's project at two three three four Lundy Avenue.

Although I am a Melpedis resident, I'm excited to see this investment at the San Jose Melpedis border.

Overton Moore has a strong track record in Milpitas where they revitalize an obsolete site off of Melpitas Boulevard and work closely with neighbors and local businesses throughout the process.

They are a collaborative community-minded developer, and I'm confident they will be a valuable addition to the San Jose business community.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello, City Council.

I am uh Tyler Rost with Red Top Electric.

I'm supporting the local IBW, local 332, electricians, and we are heavily supporting this project.

It's gonna bring many, many project um uh construction jobs to this site, and we are excited, and we support Lundy, and we support the Overton Moore Company.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, my name is uh Albert Elkhorn.

Um I'm a Milpitas resident, and I'm also the vice president of the Milpitas Chamber of Commerce.

I want to express that I'm out here to show my support for this project, and I hope it uh gets approved and moves along quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Name is Larry Suradella, good afternoon, council and city staff.

I'm totally uh supportive of the Overton Moore project.

I was a planning commissioner and approve the townhouses quite a few years ago, knowing that there was a warehouse there.

And umore has done some really great projects, so I hope you will support them.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

There you go.

Okay, uh, good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

Um we live in the city of Santa Clara, but also part uh operate a lot in the Santa Clara County, and we operate a business within the city of San Jose and work with this work in the city of San Jose with a lot of the unions, and we're very pro-business.

Uh we uh support this project to help modernize the city by replacing outdated buildings with productive, well-planned development.

So for these reasons, uh, we ask you that you deny the appeals and uphold the planning director's approval for the project.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Sir, sir.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

Um, I am currently a Santa Clara County resident and also an independent small business owner off um here in San Jose area.

I'm here to support the 23 uh 34 Lundy Avenue project and ask you to respectfully deny the um appeals and upholding the planning uh director's approval.

Um I believe that this project is um a great use of space.

The redevelopment of the current property, um, as we heard, could bring a lot of opportunity and jobs with a lot of uh the ability to strengthen the other business um ecosystem in the area, so different vendors and service providers.

Um we also uh appreciate that the city has uh constructed their um reviews of the different noise and sound um constraints that many are concerned about.

Um, and we thank you for your time.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

Uh my name is Joseph Pam, and I'm a resident of San Jose in Santa Clara County.

I'm here to support the 2334 Lundy Avenue project, uh, and to ask you to uh uphold the planning director's approval.

Uh I believe the project is smart reinvestment in the existing employment area.

It replaces older underutilized buildings with a modern industrial facility that is already developed and appropriate for the type of use.

This supports local jobs and keeps economic activity here in North San Jose.

Um, the city's environmental review process makes sense here.

The project was evaluated through the initial study and mitigated negative declaration with conditions and mitigations identified.

Nothing the appeal changes the base effect that this is a redevelopment project where impacts can be addressed with enforceable requirements, and then third, that the there are concrete protections built into the project.

Um there's a sound wall and then the thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

So uh good afternoon again.

Um, sir, I believe you're the appellate.

Yeah.

We've already closed the appellant portion of the hearing, and we've heard from the members of the public.

Is oh, okay, and I'll speak again.

You can you can you can't speak again.

Okay, thank you.

Do we have any other public comments on this issue?

I have five cards I called, but they didn't come up, so I'm going to real quick share them in case um, in case they see their name, like if I didn't say it correctly.

But these are the five cards I have left that didn't come down.

So if that's one of you and you want to come down and speak, back to council.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Uh thank you for all of those public comments and thank you for the staff presentation.

I'll go to council member Collin.

Thank you.

Um I want to thank everyone for coming out and and uh expressing their concerns and support for the project.

This um is an old site that's been dilapidated and run down and vacant for many years and has been a safety and security issue for the people who are nearby that site.

And so I want to thank Overton Moore properties for the uh for the work to try to revitalize and bring jobs back to a um an important industrial part of our city.

So the north, this area around trade zone is a manufacturing center for San Jose between Broca and Trade Zone, between Ringwood and uh basically the BART tracks is a large industrial area with a lot of um manufacturing um buildings, RD buildings, um uh tech companies right across the street from this is the large new uh stack infrastructure data center that's being built right now.

Um, and this site, I mean I'll just ask Chris for clarification.

How how long has this site been zoned for this type of use?

Probably dating way back before any of our times.

Yeah, I'd have to go back and look, but yeah, uh certainly since it was an orchard, then it became industrial.

This area has been anticipated to be continual use for uh this type of use.

Um I want to thank the uh the the um developers for working to try to figure out how to best route any traffic that might result on the site as far away from the residential that came in much later due to uh um Milpeda's rezoning what also was industrial land across the street from this site and um was re as was repurposed for housing.

Um this will help kind of one of the last pieces of the puzzle in making sure that this part of the city has vibrant RD or manufacturing.

Um so I um feel definitely um feel for the residents who are nearby, but the residents certainly were aware of the land around them when the site when when that housing was both built and occupied, um and I think um, you know, having a site that is uh occupied and used 24 hours a day, up to 24 hours a day, may or may not, depending on the uh the app the uses of the site, um, will keep that community actually safer and cleaner than it is now with a vacant building.

I know that they've had to hire security uh on the site, and I know that the church across the street tells me that they've witnessed things happening on that property um and are looking forward to having a property that is actually um uh utilized again in order to make sure that that area is uh safe and and um clean for everyone.

Um I'm um also encouraged by the improvements that will be made along the roads both on both uh Lundy Place and Trade Zone.

Um it'll fit in nicely with the work that's about to be done by Zet SAC infrastructure on the other side of Lundy, adding separated bike lanes and other uh modes of transportation to help make the make the area safer for for transportation.

Um, as I mentioned, right behind this property next to the sheet metal workers um training center is the bar are the BART tracks where the BART train runs by, there's light rail a quarter of a mile away down the street.

It really is a great location for um for job center here in San Jose with a lot of ways to get there.

Um so I appreciate the the um the site.

I believe that um the developers are working to make sure that um there are minimal impacts on the community around it.

Um the goal here is for advanced manufacturing, not warehouse.

Obviously, the site is zoned for either, um, but advanced manufacturing is not 24 hours of truck through a warehouse.

We hope our preference in this city is not to build warehouses on on valuable property like this, but to build manufacturing and RD, and I know that's the intent of this development.

Um so with that I will um move to deny the uh the uh appeal.

Okay, thank you, Council.

We have a motion and a second.

I don't see any other hands.

Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay.

Thank you, Tony.

Run item 10.3.

This is the administrative hearing on the appeal of the planning director's approval and plan development permit amendment located at 1123 Coleman Avenue.

We have a staff presentation, and then again we will um offer disclosures under the city's sunshine resolution.

Chris.

Thank you, Mayor.

So as noted, this is an environmental appeal and a permit appeal on uh our decision on the addendum to the airport west stadium uh Great O'Sproject EIR and a planned development permit amendment.

Um just to orient everybody on the site.

Um, so this is PayPal Park on the southernly side of Coleman Avenue between Earthquakes Way and New Hall Drive.

Um, as noted, Pay A Power Park already exists on this site, it's zoned uh um planned development.

So it has a planned development zoning, and then it has a general plan land use designation of combined industrial commercial.

Um the project proposed is to uh make amendments to the existing approvals to allow uh 15 concerts per year to be held uh between Monday and Sunday between 9 a.m.

and 11 p.m.

Um but really the focus of the project is to amend the condition of approval and the mitigation measures that allowed amplified sound to face south away from the airport.

So in the original approval, all the sound was faced towards the airport.

Um the project has been reviewed for consistency with the general plan with the municipal code, the appropriate plan development zoning, as well as council policy 6-30 and the California Environmental Quality Act.

Excuse me.

So as uh analyze the project uh and the concerts uh associated with this project were deemed consistent with the general plan and the zoning.

As noted, the original plan development zoning did allow up to 15 concerts per year.

This is really just a focus on the direction of uh noise as it relates to those concerts and the replacement of the mitigation measures through the CEQA process.

Um a project-specific noise study was prepared to evaluate the actual concert noise impacts on residents in the neighborhood south of the stadium as a part of our review.

David.

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the city council.

Again, David Keon, principal planner on the city's environmental review team.

Um, just want to briefly highlight here.

So there was an environmental impact report that was prepared for development of this stadium and that was adopted by city council back in March 2010.

Um, this EIR did consider that there would be concerts at the stadium, and it did evaluate noise for concerts going facing north and also south towards residents.

This EIR also determined that there would be a significant and unavoidable impact to the concert noise on residents adjacent and south of the site because of concert noise, even with the implementation of a mitigation measure requiring concerts to face north, it would still be above city thresholds and would still be considered significant and unavoidable.

In other words, because the concerts would have would not be able to have noise reduced below the significance thresholds, even with the proposed mitigation.

Um, a statement of overriding consideration was required, and the city council adopted that back in March 2010.

Fast forward, the stadium is built and has been operated as an earthquake stadium since that time.

So currently, you know, the current proposal is the stadium operator wants to now allow the concerts that were evaluated in the EIR and also adopted as part of the plant development zoning.

Um, however, the project proponent does want to modify the mitigation measure that was in the EIR that said that concert speakers shall face north.

And to do that, there was a noise study that was performed in order to evaluate compared with the noise levels assumed in the original EIR.

Um, so what happened was that that analysis came back and found that noise levels would actually be less than what was assumed in the EIR, but still significant and unavoidable.

So even with the switch in direction, it'll still be significant and unavoidable, but was still being less than what was assumed, the maximum levels assumed in the EIR.

Therefore, the revised mitigation measure is proposed that would have monitoring in order to have real-time feedback in order to review the noise.

Um, however, even with this mitigation measure, the significant avoidable impact still remains.

The purpose of doing an addendum to the EIR rather than a supplementary AR is because with this analysis, this change in the mitigation measure, replacement of the mitigation measure would not result in any new significant impacts than what were previously identified, nor an increase in one of the significant impacts identified.

Because the noise levels are at or less than what was originally identified in EIR.

This is not raised to the level of requiring a supplemental EIR under CEQA.

So the project was approved at director's hearing on November 19th of last year.

Members of the public provided testimony both for and against the project's supporters cited the economic benefits, the ability to host uh more significant events and the strengthening of the city's position as a regional destination while opposition expressed concerns about noise impacts to the adjacent neighborhoods and questioned the adequacy of the noise monitoring and mitigation that was included in the project.

The project was approved at director's hearing and then subsequently appeals were uh filed with the uh department on November 24th and on December 1st the environmental appeal raised the following issues around uh proposed change to the mitigation measures um the city's noise study being flawed replacement mitigation measures um that needed to be revised to implement measures and the proposed constants conflicting with the economic development priorities of the city and while the permit appeal raised two main issues which is that the permit relied on a defective environmental review and the permit doesn't link performance to constant noise levels and enforcement just to briefly touch on uh staff's analysis um so as David mentioned the addendum really addressed uh all of the uh issues related to noise um and that the consulates and their replacement mitigation do not result in new significant impacts nor in an increase to the severity of the previously identified significant impacts as outlined in the EIR additionally uh in response to comments raised um staff did work with the applicant um and there were a number of conversations that were held to um make some changes to the replacement mitigation that included identifying uh minimum noise threshold for the first two concerts so we can determine a baseline noise level um to require biannual noise reports during the first two years um instead of annual reports um and then if hourly average or daily average noise levels at residence receptors are exceeded um the noise consultant should provide recommendations for subsequent concerts to reduce the noise impacts um and uh address those conditions um to ambient noise levels as a result uh staff is recommending that the city council adopt the resolution denying the environmental appeal and upholding the planning director's reliance on the addendum uh as well as adopting a resolution denying the permit appeal and approving subject conditions uh the plan development permit amendment that would allow the changes to the 15 concerts a year at the stadium and with that we have uh both a representative for the appellants and the applicant here to speak great thank you Chris before we get to that uh per city sunshine resolutions um I don't have a disclosure but let me turn to colleagues do any of my council colleagues need to disclose disclose meetings with the applicants or appellants I'm aware of a few councilmember thank you mayor um our office has met with the applicant and their consultant on this item and our office has corresponded with the appellant on this item great it looks like we may have just about everybody so why don't I just go down the line council member Tordios.

I've also met with the applicant and their team great council records yeah thank you mayor given my open door policy I also met with the applicant of this project thank you great thank you I also met with the applicant and their consultant on this project.

Thank you council member none from vice mayor none from me council member Cohen.

I met with the applicant and consultant thank you.

I met with the applicant and consult.

Met with the applicant and consultant I do met with the applicant and consultant.

Thank you council member okay that satisfies our disclosure thank you city attorney so we have as I understand it one representative for the appellants so we will uh hear from that representative now for up to five minutes.

Sure.

Slots so for 10 minutes okay all right.

Connie, let me know what's 10 minutes.

Let me just check with the city attorney.

I believe it's up to five minutes per appeal, and there are two separate decisions here being appealed.

Is that the logic?

Yes, okay.

So two five-minute timers.

Okay.

Good to go.

Also known as 10 minutes.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Mayor and members of the city council, greetings.

My name is Matthew Bright, and I am a neighbor speaking on behalf of the New Hall Neighborhood Association.

Our neighborhood is two to three thousand people living in a mix of pre-war single family, mid-century apartment housing, and infill apartments and townhomes.

Our rental and owner occupied homes are nearly all below the county's median home value.

Compared to other areas of San Jose, we are already disproportionately impacted by cumulative noise generated by San Jose Airport, Union Pacific freight trains, VART construction, and Interstate 880.

I'm also a fan of live music, and I get it, many of you are hungry, maybe even hangry for big beefy concerts in San Jose.

But every one of us knows the truth.

Eating raw or undercooked meat is a great way to get sick.

So let's discuss why you can and should send this proposal back to the kitchen.

Let's summarize what's at stake here.

We're here pleading with you today because our city's planning department, all great professionals, made a series of mistakes, and you are the last line of defense to correct these.

What's before you now is the result of a flawed EIR process and a flawed permit that ignore lessons from California Supreme Court precedent, ignore the substance of what was discussed in the 2010 council meeting that approved the original EIR and permit, and ignore feasible mitigation measures that could even lower impacts below the threshold of significance, all accompanied by a shockingly one-sided monitoring plan that abdicates the city's responsibilities to accurately monitor the effectiveness of mitigation measures.

Please ignore the false choices.

We can agree that the process was flawed and conditions need to be revised while aiming to host concerts as soon as possible.

In contrast, by rushing appeal or rushing to approval, the worst case path could result in more than a year's delay on a final decision, plus potential appeals and potential costs for the city of San Jose.

Council can tell you more about that in closed session if needed.

The appellant could have invited decision makers, that's you, to hear the concert simulation that they trumpeted and will trumpet today as a gold standard for data collection.

You could have taken the perspective of a trace elementary school third grader and decided for yourself if the 11 p.m.

noise levels were reasonable when feasible alternatives exist.

But you weren't given that opportunity.

Planning could have brought the parties together, and planning could have had actual two-way conversations with the neighborhood, but they didn't.

You have the power to address these errors.

When I stood here 16 years ago, I said two things.

Economic development is a good thing.

That's why I spent eight years supporting it on the San Jose Arena Authority Board.

And development needs to happen in the right way.

At the same time, the applicant was crystal clear to all decision makers that concerts would be directed away from homes.

That was the selling point, and it worked.

The project was approved with that mitigation.

Just in case you weren't in the room in 2010, the city's closed captioning law can help.

What were the highlights?

Speakers point away from the neighborhood.

Performance standard on the neighborhood side not exceeded by more than two decibels.

We want to pick the right measure that really describes the issue.

The proposal before you fails in all aspects.

Instead of the 2010 planning director's multiple interjections that neighborhood noise levels would rise by more no more than two decibels, the proposal in front of you says three to four decibels DNL and up to eight decibels under LEQ.

This is a major change.

Even though the 2010 council decided, based on planning director promises of an in-neighborhood performance standard that accurately represents in-neighborhood conditions, today's proposal ignores that.

Quite possibly for the legally impermissible reason of cost savings when superior, reasonable, and feasible monitoring alternatives exist.

CEQA is deservedly criticized for delaying housing, but the case in front of you is where CEQA actually shines and can make a positive impact on current and future residential uses in our neighborhood.

Let's consider the 1986 California Supreme Court precedent that's similar enough to inform our thinking.

It involves a stadium that was constructed, or in our case, operated, substantially different than the originally planned.

In their case, the orientation of the stadium itself changed.

In our case, the orientation of concerts changed.

The court concluded that the proper course of action is a subsequent or supplemental EIR, not the addendum in front of you today.

While the addendum is reserved for minor technical changes, pulling the rug on the primary mitigation measure that secured the support of the 2010 council is not a minor technical change.

The proper course of action is a subsequent or supplemental EAR.

Our city failed to do that.

Let's be clear about something.

In 2010, the council was presented with two choices: forbid concerts entirely or leave the door open to concerts only toward the airport.

Based on the simulated data available at that time, there was no option to achieve a less than significant impact.

Amazingly, thanks to the applicants's own gold standard data, we have an option today, and it's the exact same mitigation measure that we had before.

This revelation is new.

Staff has not presented it, but Seeker requires its analysis as a supplemental or subsequent EIR.

This hasn't been done, but now we know we can do better, and we must.

We have so little time to discuss something so complex, so to summarize, 2010 was simple.

All concerts toward the airport.

Even then, a significant impact.

Planning director, no more than two decibels.

The second column is the feasible mitigation measure that was not considered.

And we know that it's feasible because it's been the approved mitigation measure for the last 15 years.

In light of the gold studded standard study touted by the applicant, staff should have reanalyzed this measure and found that it could actually achieve mitigation below the threshold of significance.

This is the way CEQA is meant to work.

Yet, in violation of state law, it's not what's presented to you today.

Instead, staff takes a flawed take it or leave it regime that assumes the only possibility is to continue a significant environmental impact where only 7% of permitted concerts in the first two years and exactly zero after that have any independent monitoring at all.

Instead, the regulated entity monitors themselves.

How is that acceptable?

So let's dig into the monitoring proposal.

Imagine the CHP asks you to submit a report once a year, listing all the times that exceeded the speed limit.

Sure, they'll measure your first two drives, and you're fully aware of that, but after that, no more patrols, no more radar.

You only yourself report.

Of course, the purpose of this report is to calculate your fines and determine whether your license is at risk.

Be honest with yourself.

What would you do?

How many of us are ready to submit a multi-page confession detailing each offense, knowing we'd face consequences, including the loss of our driving privileges?

We all remember our AB 1234 training mentioning that even the appearance of a conflict of interest should be avoided.

Do we allow convenience stores to submit annual reports stating that they were sol that whether they sold alcohol to minors in the last 12 months?

Of course not.

That would let the Fox guard the hen house, and even a virtuous Fox today could be replaced by a less virtuous fox holding the exact same permit with the exact same privileges at any time.

Despite staff's empty boilerplate response, there's nothing in the proposed monitoring measure that stops self-interest from undermining the monitoring program.

Starting from concert three, there's absolutely nothing that requires any ongoing independent monitoring or even periodic recalibration as background noise conditions change.

That fails our city's obligation under CEQA, fails the 2010 council who counted on this government to achieve balance, and fails the neighborhood.

Now, how does San Jose feel about data?

San Jose says it's a city of innovation.

San Jose says it loves to use data to measure impact, enhance accountability, and influence outcomes.

This is the polar opposite of planning's proposal.

Santa Clara, one-tenth our size, understands data.

They provide real-time, in-neighborhood, publicly accessible noise monitoring that eliminates unnecessary delays in reporting and potential action.

Public availability of data likely results in fewer unfounded complaints.

Crucially, the program monitors the actual noise performance standard, specifically in neighborhood noise levels that the city is obligated to monitor.

The San Jose proposal fails on all three counts.

As confirmed by Santa Clara monitoring contracts, costs are modest in the range of 25,000 per year, which makes real-time monitoring both a reasonable and feasible monitoring measure that is superior to the proposal on the table.

That is sufficient to require the city to adopt it, at the applicant's expense to address what everyone agrees is a significant impact under CEQA.

When complaints inevitably arrive to code enforcement or your offices, how will anyone know who is right without data?

How will anyone be able to take action if the data, which by the way is immediately known at the conclusion of each event, is delayed for six months or a year?

A cynic would say the process is designed to achieve willful ignorance, but the alternative is not merely theoretical, it's literally demonstrated five miles down the road.

Truly ask yourself: is this good regulation?

Is this fair to everyone?

You have the power to set permit conditions unencumbered by the 2010 council that had no idea what would be proposed today.

And you have the power to insist that the city comply with the letter and spirit of state law.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Let's be clear about the options you have.

You don't have to kill concerts, and we're not asking you to.

You have all the power, including the power to insist on changes that are absolutely necessary to achieve balance in this very, very lopsided power dynamic.

I fully suspect that the applicant and staff will report that their work was complete and flawless.

Based on what you've heard today, you now know that this is wrong.

The process is flawed under the law.

Proposed permit conditions where you have substantial policy discretion are so weak as to be insulting to the idea of good governance.

We can have great concerts at PayPal Park and we'll reap the economic rewards.

Just as uh I stated right from the spot 16 years ago, the development simply needs to happen in the right way.

That's where you come in.

I urge you to send this raw chicken back to the kitchen and insist on a meal that's fit to eat.

We'll enjoy it all together and enjoy concerts together as one San Jose community.

The municipal code clearly gives you that responsibility, and it's essential that you take it.

Thank you for all you do to make San Jose a great place to live, and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Back to Council.

Thank you for your time and your testimony there.

Why don't we go now to the applicant for up to five minutes?

There we go.

There we go.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mahan, members of the council.

My name is Eric Schaenauer, and I represent the San Jose Earthquakes on this application.

We're joined in the audience by Jared Shawley, the president of the earthquakes, and Jed Metty, this chief operating officer of the earthquakes.

We're all available for questions at any point.

We'd like to thank the staff for all of their hard work to get us to this point in the process, and we'd like to thank the community for their thoughtful and respectful engagement on the process.

At the end of the day, we hope that the council will uphold the director's approval of our permit to allow live music concerts at PayPal Park.

It's important to know that live concerts have always been part of the plan.

On the top of the page here is the Mercury News article from 2010 from the council approval that clearly states that the stadium would be used for up to 15 concerts per year.

And on the bottom of the page is the text of the approved PD zoning by council, where you can see that concerts are explicitly listed as a conditional use with a subsequent PD permit and noise assessment, which is what's been completed and is before you today.

Back in that 2010 article, the city projected that the stadium would result in sixty-two million dollars of overall economic benefit.

In more recent years, the earthquakes have commissioned sports economics to prepare an economic analysis of actual events at the stadium.

And in 2024 calendar year, there were 60 events held at the stadium of different types, none of them live concerts, and that resulted in direct spending of 76 million dollars, total economic impact of 11 million dollars, and supporting up to 950 full-time equivalent jobs.

With regard to live music itself, Oxford Economics of the Oxford University created a very extensive analysis of the live music concert industry in the United States on behalf of live nation.

And what they determined is that for every $100 a patron spends on a music concert, they spend an additional $335 in the economy for restaurants, lodging, rental cars, whatever it may be.

So the benefit to the city and the downtown area is significant.

Whoops, let's see.

One other change that's happening is the soccer uh schedule is going to flip.

So MLS soccer, instead of playing over the summer, will now play over the winter.

It's anticipated that the NWSL may make this same change.

What that will mean is that PayPal Park will have no regularly scheduled soccer in the prime summer months between late May and late July.

So it's a perfect opportunity to take advantage of our weather and have outdoor concerts in a time where the stadium will not be used and realize economic benefit throughout the summer.

That said, noise is an issue that must be considered.

So the city required a very extensive noise evaluation for this current uh round of review.

It involved in the picture, you can see setting up an actual live music concert sound system and playing music of all types listed on the bottom, banda music, pop pop music, heavy metal, rap, to ensure that the noise being measured in the neighborhood is representative of accurately of what a live music concert would be like.

This map from the noise study shows the red dots where the noise measuring equipment was placed throughout the New Hall neighborhood and other places in the in the area so that the sound could be measured accurately from different vantage points.

And the study and the staff review resulted in the following conditions of approval.

One, the speaker volume will be restricted to a certain decibel level to ensure that the sound in the neighborhood achieves what was uh what was approved in the original uh EIR.

Secondly, there will be follow-up noise studies that actually measure real concerts-the first two concerts out in the neighborhood, and those reports will be supplied to the city.

Secondly, there will be noise measuring equipment within the stadium at every single concert, so that and those will be provided to the city on a regular basis, and lastly, good neighbor communications with New Hall is mandated by our original approval, and that is through a quarterly meeting that the Eric for speaking on behalf of the applicant.

We are now on to uh the more general public comment, which we've now limited to one minute for speaker.

Tony, do you have comment cards?

Yes.

Um, I have about 20 cards.

Dev Davis, come on down, Robin R.

John.

Last name starts with P.

Frank Guerrero, Stacey Napolitanos.

We'll start with you guys.

First person, the microphone can go ahead and start speaking.

Good afternoon.

I'm Deb Davis, former council member for District 6, but here as a private citizen today.

I'm also here as a Quakes fan and season ticket holder.

PayPal Park is a great venue, as many of you know for soccer, and the Quakes organization provides a superior and fun experience at every game for their fans.

They are a great community partner in addition to that, and they have great traffic flow, parking, and security.

It's all dialed in for their events.

So I am confident that they can successfully apply this operational knowledge for concerts to make them both fun and safe.

And I hope that you will please deny the appeal and approve the planned development permit amendment for 15 concerts per year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, mayor, city council staff, Robin Reynolds from New Hall neighborhood.

Couple real quick things that's omitted.

When the stadium was approved, it was supposed to have a sound dampening wrap.

After three years, it got ignored, it went away.

Ten soccer fields for youth, that's still out there pending.

This should not, we're not against a good concert system.

What was used, I worked in arenas before.

That system, make every concert that goes, use that same sound system.

It's about eight channels of those speakers shy.

Let's try two.

Come back and revisit it.

It took, we worked very well with the Quakes on the PA system.

It took years to just to get the PA where I wasn't standing up for the national anthem because it was so clear in my house, and I'm almost by the Alameda.

Past where the sound system is.

So it's not against the Quakes, it's not against concerts.

We gotta do it right.

Thank you, that's your time.

Next speaker.

Mia, I'd also like to call Mia Napolitano and Peggy Thurman.

And I should just clarify, once we go to one minute, we usually keep it at one minute for the rest of the meeting.

Hey, good uh afternoon, it's team mayor and council members.

Uh, my name is Frank Guerrero, and I'm here to ask you for your support in upholding the permit already approved for PayPal Park to hold concerts.

I've been a proud San Jose for over 30 years after having moved from Los Angeles to the capital of Silicon Valley.

After moving to San Jose in the 1990s, I attended the very first concert at SAP Center.

James Taylor, for those of you who are curious.

Uh, but I found myself having constantly to go up north to San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, um, uh to continue my passion for concert going.

Uh my app my options in San Jose were limited.

Um, every year, I hope this changes, but it never does.

Um, if Santa Clara can do it for 70,000 people, we in San Jose can do it for a fraction of that.

So uh holding concerts at PayPal Park is yet another step in continuing to raise San Jose's visibility to the world that we are the capital of Silicon Valley, attracting more well-known performers to a modern outside venue.

Uh, we'll obviously contribute to city economics.

Thank you, next speaker.

Mayor and members of the council.

Papal Park is already a world-class venue, home to the San Zuri earthquakes and a gathering place for our community.

By allowing concerts, we can elevate its status as a true sports and entertainment destination.

This is especially important as it is a true sports entertainment uh destination to submit proposals to secure major sporting events for our city.

The ability to host concerts in conjunction with these events will enhance the overall experience for attendee, attract more visitors, and showcase San Jose as a vibrant, multifaceted facility.

So this permit is the final step in the process that began with council when they approved the statement 2010.

With concerts always always envisioned as part of the purpose.

The city's thorough noise study has confirmed that concerts can be held at PayPal, adhering to the noise policies, ensuring minimal disruption to the surrounding neighborhoods.

So I urge you to approve this investment, approve the permit to make it a sports and entertainment destination.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Also, Alina Aaron, come on down and Brian Katz.

Good afternoon.

My name is Stacey Napolitano, and I'm a district district six residents.

Live music brings energy and connection to a city, and concerts at PayPal Park would give neighbors more opportunities to gather.

Since the stadium was first approved, concerts have always been part of the original vision.

And what the recent noise study shows that we can uh operate within the established policies.

That gives me confidence that we can balance our neighborhood concerns while adding more vibrancy to our city.

With the Bay Area coming off of the Super Bowl and getting ready for the World Cup, we have a unique opportunity to label San Jose as an entertainment hub of the Bay Area.

Approving this uh permit helps us build momentum, attract visitors, and showcase our city on a big stage.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Mia Napolitano, and I'm a music-loving San Jose native.

I regularly attend concerts with friends, but I'm ashamed to admit I've never been to one in San Jose.

Instead, I go to venues in Santa Clara, Mountain View, San Francisco.

And that means my money and the money of other young people is being spent elsewhere other than our city.

Bringing more concerts to San Jose would give young residents like myself a reason to stay local and invest in our community.

It creates energy, culture, and safe spaces downtown for people to gather and connect before and after concerts.

If we want young people to live, work, and stay here long term, we need to create these kind of experiences that make them excited about this city.

I really urge you to approve this permit.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, I'd also like to call Brandy Chastine, Zach Waldron, and Leah Tennisgetter.

Good afternoon.

My name is Peggy Thurman.

I am a small business owner here in the community.

When concerts and events come to our area, the economic impact goes far beyond the venue.

People come early, eat at local restaurants, shop at nearby stores, and explore the area.

For small businesses, that increases the visitors, that increase in visitors can make a real difference, helping us cover costs, support local jobs, and stay competitive.

Supporting concerts at PayPal Park means supporting the small businesses that keep this community vibrant.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Alina Aaron, and I'm actually here on behalf of NUVO Hospitality.

Some of the venues that you come to all the time, Playback Coffee, Hella Good, Press Room, Dr.

Funk, O'Clarities, and Five Points.

And we are in support of the concerts being held at PayPal as evident over this last weekend, which was a very quiet Saturday night until the earthquakes got out.

We had a really spike in our numbers and sales, and I believe that the 15 added events at the stadium would really impact us as well as assist in making San Jose that destination city that we all know it can be.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, Brian Kurtz, SJDA again.

You may be asking why I am here speaking on behalf of the downtown association weighing in when PayPal Park is not technically in downtown.

The answer is simple.

This strengthens strengthens the city's entertainment ecosystem, which directly impacts and supports downtown San Jose.

Much like the last speaker was just saying, indirectly expanding live music, strengthens a cultural identity that we are working to build a creative, energetic destination city.

And I say this not only as a downtown advocate but as a resident and a live music fan.

Live music creates that connection vibrancy and a shared civic pride.

When people open the Ticketmaster app or bands in town and compare our market to that smaller city just north of us, the difference in live in live music and shows is obvious.

Adding 15 concerts is a meaningful step towards closing that gap and growing our entertainment economy.

And to be clear, we do not just want these concerts to happen.

We want them integrated into the broader downtown San Jose experience.

It's up to you to approve these and thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call down Ron Lindo and John Urban.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council.

My name is Brandi Chastain.

I am a San Jose native born and bred.

I am a co-founder of a nonprofit here in San Jose, and I'm part owner and founder of Bay AFC, who uses and occupies PayPal Park.

My purpose today is multi-faceted, but one specifically is about community, and it is about raising kids and families in a place that is wholesome, has a lot of activity, understands that art and sports and community mean a tremendous amount.

And I have polled some of my neighbors in the Rose Garden area, and they are very excited.

The Labarans, the Caputos, the Savinis, among some of my neighbors have said, let's go for it.

Concerts are awesome.

I also feel the same way.

I think art and sport inspire, allow us to dream.

We are a community of innovators and ideators, and bringing something like this to our community will really influence us in a positive way.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Leah Tennisgetter, president and CEO of our Chamber of Commerce.

I'm here in support of upholding the planning director's previous approval and allowing 15 concerts at PayPal Park.

This is a balanced decision.

The environmental review anticipated concerts as we've heard.

The city added clear and forcible mitigation, particularly around noise monitoring and performance standards.

It is an economic development opportunity.

Each concert, as has been stated, brings thousands of people to downtown to dine in our local restaurants, support small businesses, book hotel rooms.

This is a competitive region.

If people are not, if we're not hosting these events, they're going elsewhere.

PayPal Park is already a community gathering space.

Allowing 15 concerts enables us to really activate this asset in our backyard.

I respectfully urge you to uphold the planning director's decision.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, I'll select to call my last two cards, Clyde Hoffman and Ruth Shicata.

Good afternoon, mailing counselor members.

My name is Zach Waldron of Taylor by Design, a local event producer here in San Jose.

And I'm here to voice my support for the request to host concerts at PayPal Park.

By activating this venue for live music, we aren't just filling seats.

We're creating a vital ripple effect that fills hotels, boosts revenue for local small businesses, and generates essential tax revenue that stays right here in our community.

In an increasingly competitive region, San Jose must continue to compete as a premier destination for live entertainment to ensure we provide jobs for residents and keep our economy vibrant.

To do that properly, we need venues like PayPal Park that offer not only premier hospitality and a high-end user experience, but also proven expertise in creating a safe environment with large-scale crowd management.

I hired you to approve this request and help us continue building San Jose reputation as a world-class cultural hub.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is John Urban, New Hall Neighborhood Association.

Council members, how would you like to have a concert venue adjacent to your neighborhood 150 feet away?

Would you trust the venue to regulate their decibel level?

I'm asking the council to ask the applicant if it could permanently install several decibel monitors at the wall at our neighborhood.

This is a tens of millions dollar organization.

They can afford it.

This would be go a long way to maintain a good neighborhood status.

This would introduce science into a difference of opinion.

This eliminates opinion.

He said, she said.

The Santa Clara Stadium has noise monitoring with a public site for all of us.

Thank you, Dr.

Time.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

Mayor Mahan.

Council members.

I had two really good minutes, but I'll shorten it to one.

Hopefully, it sticks together.

I'll just speak for personal experience.

Um, I'm Rob Lindo, and I um I'm the VP of Casino Matrix, which is in D6, nearby this venue.

I live downtown, and also I am the chair of the sports and entertainment committee for the San Jose Chamber of Commerce.

So with those three roles, I could tell you that one, this kind of venue is crucial to us becoming a sports and entertainment destination that we need to be.

I thought the commenter earlier, the one who said that without this kind of venue, people who live here and that we want to attract to our region for jobs and our economic development are going to be looking elsewhere.

So I think that's an important thing to note that we've already seen as a downtown resident.

I could tell you that when we see these events happening in these spaces, it makes a big impact.

And as the manager of Casino Matrix, which is right nearby, I can also tell you that when these events happen, it adds to our economic development.

So I hope that you uphold the planning commissioner's record.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Well, council, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Uh, my name is Clyde Hoffman.

I'm a resident living within a thousand feet of uh the PayPal Park.

Um, you've heard a lot of good reasons today why to approve this, right?

One thing that I haven't heard though is um as per the permit, they have to the park has to file a report after each concert event.

And per the permit, they have up to 12 months after the concert to file that report.

Uh, in in the the interest of transparency and open access to the residents, I would ask that you use your power to modify the approved permit to reduce that 12-month period to something much more timely so that we get access to that information.

Uh the second point is that um uh other people have alluded to the stadium in the nearby city.

Um, different uh from the proposal that is approved here.

Uh, the other stadium nearby actually includes real-time uh publicly accessible noise monitoring for events around Levi Stadium that anyone can access.

And so I would encourage you to use your power to modify the um permit to include a similar measure.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mahan, and members of the city council.

My name is Ruth Shikata.

I am the vice president of government and external affairs for the Bay Area Host Committee.

Our aim is to bring world-class sporting events such as Super Bowl 60 to drive lasting economic, cultural, and social impact.

An event like Super Bowl 60 showcases the best of the Bay Area, and by all accounts was an enormous success.

San Jose was a large part of that success.

San Jose brought its own flavor and character to Super Bowl week through music, entertainment, and community and pride.

I think that's why the action before you today is important.

The ability to bring up to 15 concerts a year to PayPal Park will further activate and elevate it as an important sports and entertainment venue to showcase San Jose.

Concerts will bring with it additional positive economic impact for San Jose for small businesses and for the downtown.

From our perspective, the more first-class multiple use venues the Bay Area and San Jose has to offer, such as PayPal and SAP, the more attractive and competitive our entire region becomes to host not only large scale.

Thank you, that's your time.

Back to council.

Thank you, Tony.

Thank you to everyone who spoke during public comment.

Let me turn to council.

Sorry, let me turn to council member Mulcahy, in whose district the stadium is.

Too many M's there, Mayor.

Thank you so much.

And just thank you to everybody who came out to speak today, and especially to our New Hall neighbors, John Robin, Matthew, and Clyde.

You know, when Matthew first spoke about sort of where New Hall is, I just want to refresh New Hall is sort of in the neighborhood adjacent to an expanding Santa Clara University, right in the city of Santa Clara.

It's on the you know other side of the sound wall from Caltrain, the airport, and of course, you know, PayPal, which you know came online in 2015.

And oh, by the way, at some point, BART will daylight just on the other side of this neighborhood as it heads into the city of Santa Clara.

And now we're talking about concerts, and I think the staff and and folks did a good job of sort of demystifying the fact that concerts have always been contemplated.

Um, and you know, the process is now in front of us as to how to make that make that happen.

Um, I also want to acknowledge the earthquakes.

Um, who you know, I know have been for many years working with some of the the speakers on the appellant side that you've heard from today, um, you know, being really consistent about the community outreach and the community engagement.

And the one thing I will say is from the New Hall neighborhood, you know, and you even heard it today.

There's no there's not an absolute no, there's an openness and an understanding that they recognize that PayPal Park is a great asset for the city, and they have come forward with with ideas not just in this situation but on other management related issues to the impacts of PayPal Park over the last number of years, and I I believe on both sides that that will continue to happen.

Um, so I I want to also acknowledge the fact that um the earthquakes have brought us other uh great options like Bay FC, made that possible to be here in the city of San Jose, and I um you know recognize that this is an impact to our neighbors on um you know in the new New Hall neighborhood, but we we have to recognize that this has also been subject to a process, and I appreciate the the report from our staff, uh, relative to the EIR as it as it is today.

Um there's no question this is gonna have an economic impact on our city in a very positive way.

Concerts will add a whole other element to you know our ability to create an experience economy, which many of us are working hard to do.

Um, you know, the sound consultant, there are some holes poked at the sound study that was done, and I would say, just coming from some of my background uh in the kind of entertainment side of my life, um, have talked to a number of consultants who recognize this as a world-class consultant, and um I believe that you know the the sound study is solid and and what it's telling us.

Um so I want to turn to uh the report, and maybe Chris and company you could help me answer a couple of things.

Um the recommendations that you've made relative to the study, both the first two concerts of the year that are in the southwest facing configuration, and then the decibel level check at the sound board or in the venue, if you will.

That gets compiled by the earthquake's consultant and then submitted.

What is your expectation?

I want to be clear.

Someone talked I know Mr.

Hoffman talked about you know the the timing of when that would be received.

When is that due to the PBCE?

Good afternoon, Consumer McKay.

So the revised where there has been an agreement with the consultant to update the proposed revised mitigation measure, and that would include the reports for the first.

Let me just bring it up.

The ongoing concert noise mitigation, I mean reporting would be for the first, let's just find it just a second.

It's right here.

The report shall be submitted for every six months after the first two for the first two years, and then after the first two years, then annually after that time period.

So for the first two years that concerts start, it would be every six months.

Is it fair to say that the the area that we're really trying to drill down on are the impacts of those first two concerts measured with the decibel measurement in the venue that is really focused on the new hall neighborhood, right?

There's four nodes.

I think one we'll talk about, which I think we should remove, but there's three that are that are acutely connected to the new hall neighborhood.

And you know, is it is it fair to ask, is it possible to ask that that report we can kind of curtail that timeline of when that report is submitted specifically on the decibel level measurement in the building and the two concerts where we're really trying to understand the impact at New Hall?

Like if we said we want that within a hundred and twenty days, is that something that we could potentially do?

We may not have the consultant here to answer that specifically.

Yeah, council member, that is something that you know from a staff perspective, I would say is doable, but it also requests that the applicant is here, and also so the applicant also has the noise consultant that is present to also respond.

So I would defer to the noise consultant.

So does the applicant want to come down and address the question?

So uh the question is you know, I don't want to wait until the whole season is over and then have this longer period of time for a report to come back.

When we're what we're really trying to do is understand the new hall impact.

Yeah.

Just so that there's no confusion on these conditions.

I just want to summarize what the conditions are as we understand them.

Thank you.

So, first of all, the current staff recommendation is that we have that the the a consultant has to actually measure sound in the new hall neighborhood for the first two concerts held by different artists.

So that's at the beginning.

And what that will do is validate that their measurements for this current study they did and their recommendations are accurate.

So it sets the baseline of what decibel the speakers have to be at to meet the standard.

So then the second layer, which I think you're referring to, is the facility is responsible for measuring the uh decibel level at the soundboard, 135 feet from the stage for the duration of the concert event, and then provide those reports to the city.

We can uh because uh your request is can that be shortened less than a year and less than six months?

And the answer is we think that it we want it to be as real time as possible, but logistically we can do it monthly, so that would work out fine.

You have to remember we're we run a soccer stadium, so um having to run a report down every week gets a little cumbersome for us as well as for city staff who have to receive it and report it.

So we think monthly reporting would be a reasonable compromise.

Okay, thank you.

Um let's I'm gonna try to take a shot at um sort of amending the recommendation.

Um I'd like to move to approve item 10.3, denying both the environmental and permit appeal, approving the plan development permit amendment with the following revisions to staff's mitigation measure language NOI 6.1A, removing location LT4 from the parameters.

LT4 is beyond the airport, it is across the Guadalupe River, across Highway 87, beyond a sound wall, it just seems irrelevant to what we're really after here.

So let's remove LT1, L sorry, LT4, which would leave us with three LTs, and I think you have those.

The specialist report should come to CED, the Community and Economic Development Committee, in addition to coming to BBCE, and it should be placed on the consent calendar where if we wanted to pull it off and talk about it, we could.

And then in year two, that we would repeat the same study one time, not twice, with the same modified parameters removing LT4 for the first show only with speakers facing southwest.

So year one, you're doing two, year two, you're doing one, and the specialist report again uh in that you know for that second year would come to CED as well, and then I may need a little help with modifying the language relative to the monthly reporting that Mr.

Schaenauer just recommended, because I'm not looking at the language, I just want to make sure we place it in the right spot, so the language right now is the report should be submitted every six months for the first two years and then annually starting 24 months after the approval of the plan development poem amendment to allow contents.

So you just change that to monthly.

Right.

We just heard from the applicant that that's doable, and then I think in terms of um when it comes to you know you and then how it gets to CED, I think would be based on the full report that comes.

Let me think about that one for a sec.

So there's the initial baseline setting that would come to CED, and so then uh, you know, PVC would receive monthly reporting on uh the soundboard noise levels, and so is the expectation that that would also come to CED on an aggregated basis.

Not monthly, thank you very much.

No, I'm just checking.

So yeah, so we could either bring that on a six month or annual basis, it's something that I think it would show.

I think it should come to CED at the end of the season.

Okay, and yeah we have to.

We can line that up that's totally you're gonna get information monthly.

CED will get the information at the end of the season yep and and we will uh bring that forward as a consent item okay so do I need to reiterate or does do it does everybody understand what I've put forward we have a second I'll I'll leave it to I think I followed I'll leave it to colleagues if they want to ask any clarifying questions on the motion not seeing any let me go now to vice mayor did you have a comment as well and I'm sorry were you were you done council member I can always come back we can always come back to you sorry vice mayor thank you thank you for the presentation thank you for all of the public comments both from the new hall community and from the earthquakes and thank you to the earthquakes for vesting your time and talent and your success at uh PayPal Park I think this is really an exciting opportunity but I have some questions about the noise as well and and so I was happy to second the motion because I I do think more timely reporting is important and I I just want to play with those times a little bit when is it I guess this is to you council member Mulcahi when is it that you would think CED would receive the first report at the end of the season when is the season end.

It's a good question I don't know that we that we know the answer to the question of the season the essentially and maybe the applicant can talk about this the intention is that you know you're not doing concerts when you're playing soccer right so it's really that crux of the summertime you know probably ending before the fall right so what what I would suggest is that initially uh CED receive the first report closer to the first one being generated so within 90 days let's say so say the first concert is May 1st second concerts May 15th 90 days after that or 60 days I I'm not I'm not married to the time frame but I think waiting to the end of the season is too long to get any information if we can if we can are having monthly reports then we would have the information we need I know we're trying to avoid CED seeing it the reports every month but I'd like to have at least the initial report as the chair of CED the initial report sooner than later.

I'm open to allowing that to happen um because what we're again trying to really drill down on are the first two concerts of a certain setup and I think you know it'd be hard for us to pick a date but say you know within um you know the first reasonable meeting of CED after the information is received by the planning department following those two concerts it thank you and then another one at the end of the year at the end of the season.

Yeah is that doable from a staff perspective yeah I mean assuming that there's not a considerable amount of analysis they're expecting from us we're just gonna forward the report to the committee.

Yeah it's it's just a report I don't think it's it's not uh well we're adding it to our work plan technically so that would come well I'm just talking out loud I'm thinking out loud and that's dangerous thing so we're gonna be getting the same report that PBCE is getting as my expectation.

Yeah.

So uh well he said consent so 45 days or so after the initial after the reports as soon as possible with as soon as can be scheduled into a CED meeting.

Does that work?

That does work, yes.

Yeah, that works for me.

Okay.

I was just gonna note that you know the the likely bulk of concert activity is going to be in the summertime, late May to early August.

There is no CED in July, right?

So it's really certainly the first meeting in August, first CED in August would capture a bulk of what happened over the summer.

I just throw that out there.

So we have every other meeting, every other month meetings now, so I'm not sure if that meeting is August or if it's September, but it could be easily the first one after July.

Yeah, thanks, Eric.

Okay, that's it for me.

Okay, any other comments?

We're good with the motion, it looks like okay.

Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously with Campos absent.

Okay.

Thank you all.

Uh thank you, Chris and team.

Thank you to everyone who came and spoke.

We're onto our next item.

I moved um item 3.4 to the end of the meeting.

So we are now going to move to our public hearing on the status of the city's vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts and obstacles in the hiring process pursuant to California government code 3502.

And I believe I have a script to read.

And if I could just ask folks to exit quietly, we would appreciate it.

We've got to continue with our meeting.

This is a public hearing on the status of the city's vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts and obstacles in the hiring process, pursuant to government code section 3502.3.

The public hearing is now open.

We understand that city staff plans to limit their presentation to approximately 10 minutes in each of the city's recognized employee organizations was asked to do the same.

We will first hear from the city's human resources department, and then we will hear from our recognized employee organizations.

So let me go to Aram to kick us off.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Aram Kyumjan.

I'm the director of human resources and the city manager's Office of Employee Relations.

And joining me for tonight's presentation to my left is Kim Jackson, Assistant Director of Human Resources, Lynn Lee, who uh oversees our employment services division and hiring, and Randy Perry, who manages our recruitment and workforce development team.

As the mayor mentioned, tonight is a public hearing regarding the city's vacancy rate.

This is pursuant to a law that went into effect last year, and last year was the very first time this presentation was done.

At that time, the room was practically empty.

So I welcome the fact that there are so many members of the City of San Jose workforce here with us tonight.

Last year I had the pleasure of reporting a vacancy rate below 10%.

It was at 9.95%.

And at the time I remarked how impressive that was for a city of this size.

And I was a little nervous as to how we would be to that number because it was quite low for a city of our size, but the human resources department is formidable.

That figure by almost a percentage point to end 2025 with a 9.06 vacancy rate.

Now, a couple of things about this number.

This is the number we ended up the year with.

During the course of the year, however, we dipped below 9.

We were at 8.63 at the middle of the year at the end of the calendar year in June 2025.

We were at 8.79 in November.

Uh the reason there was a slowdown at the end is because of some of the financial uncertainty the city's facing.

So we actually did not have a hiring cohort right before the holidays, and that brought us just above the 9%.

Now this chart shows that we are on a trajectory of decreasing the vacancy rate.

It's a four-year trajectory.

So this is not a blip, it's rather a pattern and an intentional effort on the city's part to really bring down this number.

And what is impressive about it is not just the fact that we are narrowing this bridge, but that we're doing it while overcoming attrition and uh a steady increase in the number of positions the city has.

So for this number to be bridged, we have to hire above all the separations that the city faces, plus any new vacancies that it creates, and only then does the needle begin to move.

The one thing that this chart does not capture is the additional work that goes into promotions.

There were 514 promotions citywide last year, which create their own vacancies that need to be backfilled, and over 650 seasonal hires in departments like parks, recreation, and neighborhood services that also took tremendous staff time.

Now, if we compare our vacancies to other agencies in the area, you can really see the difference.

Among the larger cities, only San Diego has a rate below 10%, and with every other agency, it goes not only above 10% but uh almost double our number.

Uh one agency that's missing up here is Sacramento.

We got the uh the rates very late.

They report a little differently from us, but it's 13 to 14 percent, depending on how they how you slice their numbers.

We are obligated to report on bargaining units that have over 20% vacancy rates.

Now, this uh affects two of our bargaining units, however, it's because they are smaller in size, so a small number of vacancies can have outsized effect in terms of percentage.

Uh in actuality, um IBEW had over 20% at the time that we are reporting our rates, which was as of December 31st.

However, a single hire in the new year has brought them down below 20% already.

With the Park Rangers Association, there are less than seven vacancies accounting for the percentage.

The reason that there are challenges among IBW has to do with the electrician classification.

There is a reported and substantiated nationwide shortage of electricians.

Also, there's a very competitive market in the area in the private sector.

Finally, we have very specialized uh requirements for industrial electricians due to the high voltages that they deal with.

Now, the mitigation efforts have already resulted in some gains.

Uh, the number of electrician vacancies have gone down from 12 to 8 over the course of the year.

But the main success that we've achieved this year is after many great setbacks, we won recent approval by the electrical alliance of Silicon Valley to start working toward a curriculum for an apprenticeship that's going to create a pipeline into this class.

We are also developing a customized recruitment campaign that Randy will speak about in a moment.

As far as the park rangers are concerned, we actually increased vacancies due to internal promotions to higher classification, one is it's considered public safety.

Therefore, it has to undergo extensive background investigations in the park ranger series.

But the bigger problem is that there's one academy that's operated by the county uh per year, which makes hiring a great challenge.

So what we've done is we have uh reconfigured the trainee classification and we've adjusted the salary in order to create a feeder pipeline into this class, and we are developing a custom recruitment for this class as well.

Now, the custom recruitments that I'm talking about are really part of a broader expansion of our digital recruitment infrastructure that is one of the major initiatives we've undertaken in our department, thanks to support from the city manager's office and funding from this council.

Randy.

Thanks, Rob.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members.

I guess evening now.

I'm Randy Perry.

I am the division manager of our recruitment and workforce development team in human resources.

So we are currently partnering with a full service marketing agency to design a targeted recruitment campaign.

We're focusing on the hardest to fill classifications, including our park rangers, our electricians, which we already discussed, also including our building inspectors, our engineers, and other departments who are here experiencing some of our higher vacancy rates in the city.

A key component of this work is the development of a hiring-focused micro site that will showcase open positions and clearly communicate the value of a career in public service with the City of San Jose.

This micro site will allow people to see the highlights and of the incredible benefits of working for the City of San Jose while providing a seamless way for them to access recruitment and hiring information online.

On the slide, you can see some of our current outreach efforts, including our in the loop social media campaign, which highlights different departments and career pathways across our city.

In the top left corner, you'll see a mock-up of a future recruitment campaign concept.

These ideas and creative concepts are still being refined, and we're building a high-quality visual library of photos and videos of our city employees to support a broader campaign that we plan to launch later this spring.

This enhanced digital strategy is going to strengthen the significant outreach efforts that are already underway that we're already working on to meet our employees where they are, online, on campus, and in our community.

Online through our expanded social media campaigns and our premium LinkedIn recruiter license on campus at local high schools, community and technical colleges and universities, just like the tour that came by earlier in the council meeting today.

Our team organizes things like field trips to City Hall, class presentations, employee panels and applied learning projects, where students work on real city challenges, and then these experiences allow them to see themselves in public service early in their educational journey.

And then out in the community, we continue to build trust and visibility through in-person engagement, especially with our job seekers who may not access the city through digital platforms.

This year, our second annual career expo at the Mexican Heritage Plaza welcomed more than 500 community members who connected directly with our recruiters and our department representatives to learn about opportunities, benefits, and the hiring process.

While we strengthen our recruitment efforts, we are also equally focused on preserving institutional knowledge through employee retention strategies.

This year we launched two major initiatives around retention.

The first is our San Jose Training Portal, which is our new citywide learning management system.

This portal provides 24-7 access to training and professional development resources, including curated learning plans aligned to career pathways in the city.

Importantly, it expands equitable access to learning across our organization.

Employees no longer need to travel to in-person classes, wait for limited seats to become available, or rely on department specific offerings.

Whether an employee works out in the field, works a shift schedule, or works in an office, they now have consistent on-demand access to development opportunities.

The system also modernizes how we deliver, track, and report citywide training, creating greater consistency, transparency, and accountability across departments, while ensuring that all of our employees have a fair opportunity to grow and advance here at the city.

Secondly, in partnership with the city manager's Office of Employee Relations, we redesigned our supervisory training to focus specifically on the needs of our frontline supervisors.

Supervisors play a critical role in employee engagement, morale, and employee retention.

So this updated program will equip our supervisors with the practical tools to build healthy teams, strengthen leadership capacity, and support effective service delivery.

And then in addition, in addition, our citywide mentorship program continues to be one of our most impactful development initiatives here at the city.

This year we facilitated our highest ever 235 mentor mentee matches in the mentorship program.

Aram is now going to close us out to talk about benefits.

So the city also has a very competitive benefits program.

So in terms of uh concluding, we are dealing with very key changes in uh the notions of work right now.

There are very real shortages in the workforce due to a growing number of jobs.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics uh estimates that there are 28 billion more jobs uh in 2025 than there were in the year 2000, due to new industries like AI and drone technology and expanding industries like like healthcare and gaming.

Uh and the notion of work is changing due to the gig economy and changing demographics of the workforce.

So, how do we deal with those?

Uh, that will be the challenge that human resources will face over the next year, uh, particularly tackling some of the technological challenges coming our way with artificial intelligence and dealing with the impacts of AI, understanding how it's going to affect our workforce, how we're going to upskill and reskill the workforce, and how we're going to recruit uh new talents to the city of San Jose in order to build the workforce of the future.

And with that, we recommend accepting the staff report.

Thank you.

Thank you for the staff report.

I do want to acknowledge and congratulate the entire team.

I think it is uh city manager's leadership, HR, but also our employees' referrals, uh, on bringing down that vacancy rate.

The fact that we are leading the other big cities in the state is a testament to the to the collective work and important.

It's hard to deliver services if we don't have uh if we don't hire and retain good people.

So well done to everybody on that progress.

We're going to now hear from our employee uh organizations.

We, as I understand it, have a 10-minute presentation from a coalition of city unions followed by a 10-minute presentation by our International Association of Firefighters.

So if I don't know if that's accurate, but if it if it is to let you come on down to the box and then we'll figure out what the order is.

Or are we speaking at the podium?

At the podium, okay.

I'm sorry.

So we'll have uh it looks like we'll have IAFF first here at the podium.

And then we'll have our other um coalition of unions.

Good afternoon, thank you all.

My name is Brendan Buller, and I'm representing the San Jose Firefighters.

Okay.

All right.

Perfect, thank you.

As we alluded to, San Jose's vacancy rates about 9%.

The fire department's actually doing quite well.

We're at 7.5%, and I give credit to our administration for getting a number that low, and they continue to recruit.

However, I want to take this time to draw attention to our medic vacancy rate.

We have paramedic vacancy rate of about 23%, and it's been pretty steady at that number for about the past four to five years.

As you know, we have continuous staffing.

We have to have a paramedic on all 48 apparatus in our city.

Every single day, 365.

That workload disproportionately affects our paramedics who can't go home and get mandatory for overtime.

There are options available to increase recruitment of paramedics, and that's why I'm here.

Every firefighter that comes into the city of San Jose goes to the Firefighter Canada testing center.

So only way to get hired in San Jose.

We are one of a hundred and what is it, 76 departments that utilize this list.

So we need to have a targeted recruitment for these members that come through.

The FTCT list last year had a record number of paramedics.

It had over a thousand paramedics go through the door, take the two tests and be eligible to apply for the city of San Jose.

The highest number that they've ever had.

During you might have heard the narrative that the paramedic school is closed during COVID and we don't have paramedics in the system.

I would like to ask you to look into that narrative and question it for yourself.

In 2019, we had about 700 paramedics that were eligible to apply to the city of San Jose.

Yes, it went down during COVID, that's true, but our application rate actually went up during that time.

Since COVID in 2022, our recruitment numbers that were provided to me have fallen off of a cliff, while the number of eligible paramedics has steadily increased, again, to record levels.

And right now, our numbers are quite low.

This is a breakdown of the numbers.

The ones on the left were provided to me by the fire training center.

The ones to the right were not as easy to obtain.

I encourage you to ask the fire department what our number of actual applicants or paramedic is and why, according to the records I was able to get, we have 5% of eligible paramedics actually applying to San Jose.

We're the third largest city in this in the state.

We should have 50% of eligible people applying to our state.

I'd be happy with 25, but 5% is just too low.

We know exactly where they're gonna be.

Again, they have to take these tests.

We can go to every one of these locations.

Well, there's only these are the two Northern California, Livermore and Sacramento.

We can go there on these dates, we can put a table up, we can recruit directly.

We can get speaking time at these events to recruit not only firefighters, but especially paramedics.

We can actually host a test in San Jose free of charge.

FCTC will come down and host the San Jose specific written test just to apply here, free.

These are the job fairs that we need to go to to find paramedics.

We need to go to the FTCT, operate through Caljac job fairs.

The job fairs that are held locally are not gonna get firefighter paramedics.

FTCT also offers free online advertising.

They have Firestar Studios if we want to make really good recruitment videos.

When we do it, it works.

This is in 2023.

This is Carl Mickelson out of Engine 16.

The first weekend that this was out, he had 500 views.

It's still the most seen clip from FTCT at 1.2 million dollars.

So when we advertise, it works.

This has been three years.

We should definitely go back.

It's free advertisement.

And then I just want to end on a positive note.

This year, thank you, uh, supportive administration.

We're able to put our paramedics or sorry, our firefighter EMTs into paramedic school.

We currently have seven paramedics in uh sorry, seven EMTs in paramedic school sponsored by the fire department.

This program is coming back again, and I really um hope that we can support it again and get more paramedics on the street to protect all of us.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

All right.

Now I think we will hear from a coalition of our other city unions.

All right, good evening.

My name is Krista Delatore.

I am the union rep for IFPT Local 21.

We represent over a thousand employees here at the City of San Jose, and about 13,000 across the Bay Area.

Um I'm also joined by John Tucker, who is our MEF Astro 101 rep here at the City of San Jose.

I will let him introduce himself.

We're just going to start with some slideshow, and then John has some more comments to add.

So hopefully you can hear me.

All right, I think we can go on to the next slide.

Oh, I clicked that my apologies.

All right.

So I think it's helpful to give a bigger picture of what our staffing levels have looked like.

We've seen a lot of improvements in the last three to four years.

A lot of that was thanks to reinvent reinvigorated investments into our wages, our benefits, and general working conditions, and a lot of those wins were accomplished by our coalition bargaining campaign in 2023.

But if we take a look at where we've come from pre-great recession levels, we still happen to remain one of the most thinly staffed big cities in California.

So I know the city just presented on how our vacancies compare to other major or other major agencies, but other helpful context to consider is what is our staff per resident ratio.

So if you look at the chart on the right, you can see that LA, Long Beach, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, they're all outpacing us as far as the amount of staff they actually have.

So we budget for fewer full-time positions, and we we you know we we got these numbers straight from our operating budgets and from the operating budgets of the other agencies on this list as well.

So you know, we love that we're improving our vacancy numbers, but we also have to be mindful that the the bigger question is do we have enough positions even budgeted in the first place?

Um so spoke on this a little bit earlier, but our last union contract in 2023 for AFSME 101 and IFPT Local21, we've seen our our positions become a lot more competitive.

Um we had over 800 vacancies in 2022 leading into our 2023 negotiate negotiations.

Um as of December of last year, we you know, the budgeted vacancy number is a lot lower than that.

Um so this is a clear sign to us that the lower vacancy rates are directly correlated to better recruitment and retention efforts.

Uh, you know, and anecdotally, when we speak to people at new employee orientations, a lot of folks say, hey, we were, you know, we were reading the news, we know what kind of wage increases that the city started offering.

Um the parental leave, eight weeks has been a very attractive incentive for people, and we hear about these things from our people when they come to the city of San Jose.

And you know, um, I want to give props to the city's OER team and HR team for investing in some better hiring and recruitment tactics.

Um, but we know that those things can't be successful if we don't have the competitive wages and benefits to accompany them.

Um, we know that we still have classifications with pretty significant vacancies, and this is across the entire city, so not just for local 21 here.

Um, I know the police officer vacancy rate is pretty high at 64%.

Um, but we have over, you know, we have analysts and senior analysts that have over 30 vacancies.

This is a pretty broad classification that a lot of it's like it's an entryway position for many folks who end up spending their careers at the city of San Jose.

Um we have planning and engineering classifications that need a little bit more attention, as well as maintenance and park workers, code enforcement, dispatchers, IT positions, and there's there's many others as well.

Um, so you know, we part of the way that we address issues like or with specific classifications is by looking at if there can be any equity adjustments, but again, just looking at how we can make those broader investments in our employees' contracts.

Um, so we also want to talk a little bit about turnover rates.

Um, they've improved compared to 2022 levels.

Um, and we we want to continue to improve that because institutional knowledge is the name of the game.

Anytime that we we look at the annual report, we look at resident satisfaction rates, and we know that when we have lower retention rates and when we have lower vacancy rates, sorry, higher retention rates um and lower vacancy rates, we know that uh there're just better community satisfaction with our surfaces.

So we want to, you know, this this also signifies to us that we need to have continued investment in our employees.

It can't just be a one-time infusement and then expect that these are just gains that are gonna be held over time um all right so to keep making progress San Jose will need to keep up with the region so we know our comparator agencies like Santa Clara County um San Mateo County Cupertino Mountain View and other public agencies have already negotiated wage increases in the coming years and also they've negotiated their benefits packages so we have we have to keep up with what the market is doing right now.

We need to continue look at what is a competitive wage package to make sure that we can continue to keep our or drive the vacancy rate even further down.

One important consideration is that we lag behind on pensional pay due to the city's unique five percent non-pensional wage adjustment that was implemented in 2018.

We're the only agency in the state that does this and what that means is our workforce realizes less money once they retire and you know the the people that are getting the most out of our retirement system are the people who have spent the longest time here at the city of San Jose 20 years, 30 years these are people that have dedicated their careers.

So you know that is something that we've been talking about for many many years at this point and we would love to see that converted so that we can offer um a more attractive retirement package for our members.

And no other public agencies oh I already said this but yeah they don't they do not consider or they don't offer non-penchable wages um as part of their compensation packages um and I know we've you know what the unfunded liability is that is declining year by year and if you look over the next 10 15 years the city's share into the pension system is going to be less and less and less due to you know the the deals that were brokered over the pension system in 2013 so what this means is we have more money freed up to invest in staff.

More of our tier two people are uh expected to pay a bigger portion into the pension system than our tier one people um so we I know sometimes unfunded liability is discussed as this boogeyman um but we are the costs are going down year by year and so it's just a helpful reminder that we've we've already made big changes to the pension system and we want to make sure that we can take a look at how we can reinvest in our employees um so that is my presentation and I'm gonna kick it over to John Tucker now.

Hi good evening mayor and council.

Every vacancy represents delayed services it represents longer response times it represents work redistributed to already stretched employees and it represents residents of course waiting longer for access to services.

Recruitment and retention are not accidental outcomes and they're the direct result of policy decisions that are made right here in this room and when the council signals that staffing stability is a priority we see those results and when the council signals instability or uncertainty or shifting priorities the workforce responds to that as well.

And today we want to talk a bit about trajectory we have already but where we're headed and we want to talk about what improved why it improved and whether the current set of signals supports long-term workforce stability or undermines it and because of the choices being made right now in this budget process will determine whether the gains of the last three years are sustained or reversed.

The Office of Employee Relations pointed out presented improving vacancy numbers notwithstanding uh the qualifiers that my colleague Christa pointed out about having already a thinly staffed city compared to those other agencies but we do have approximately 91% of city positions which are filled and turnovers declined to roughly 9% which is significant a significant improvement but the context matters those improvements did not happen by accident they followed a deliberate effort um uh by the employees in this room uh and here with uh in human resources and OER, and they followed public pressure to prioritize filling these vacancies.

They followed wage adjustments across the board, wage adjustments in in targeted areas, and they followed a clear message from council that staffing levels were not sustainable and needed to improve.

And so when staffing became a governing priority, vacancies declined.

And that's not theoretical, it's observable, we can see that.

And the lesson here is not that the problem fixed itself, we can all we know kind of dust our hands off and go on to the next thing.

The lesson is that that policy direction produces those outcomes.

And so when we invest in recruitment and retention, the numbers improve.

Are those signals still being sent?

Because recruitment is the lagging indicator.

Retention is fragile and stability is not permanent unless it's reinforced, and that's the trajectory question before this council.

So we want to talk about those signals a little bit, which is because while these vacancy numbers improved, the signals being sent today are different from the ones that produce the improvement.

And so let's look at them.

On one hand, we're discussing or approving $325 million in upgrades to the SAP Center without a clearly identified funding path for that.

Potentially relying on a TO transit occupancy tax projected at maybe 11 million a year, which would probably not make a big dent in that obligation of that scale.

We hosted the Super Bowl.

San Francisco has published what it spent, Santa Clara has published what it spent.

San Jose, which is the largest city in the region, does not yet have a clear public number that we're aware of.

We're preparing for the World Cup for March Madness and everything else that SJ 26 is envisioning.

We've also seen substantial city resources dedicated to large downtown concerts, RAVE, entertainment events.

And these events bring visibility, but they also require staffing, public safety deployment, traffic control overtime, logistical costs, fees for or fee waivers as it may be.

And so at the same time, portions of the SAP upgrades include luxury suites, premium clubs, executive amenities that most working families, including the city's own workforce, are never going to see or access.

Those are policy choices.

A recent city, as you all know from a couple years ago, found that hundreds of millions of dollars in homelessness-related spending cannot be fully accounted for or tracked with any real precision.

And so that's a credibility issue.

And on one side of the ledger, we see large capital commitments, opaque event spending, luxury infrastructure investments, and audit findings raising fiscal accountability concerns.

On the other side, we have heard about hiring freezes right before the holidays, we got a notice about hiring freezes and potential layoffs.

We've seen authorized positions reduced further.

We've rolled back flexible workplace policies, work from home policies without publicly presenting the data that justified that shift.

And those are all policy choices, and the workforce sees both of those columns.

They see major commitments without funding clarity, and they see event spending without transparent totals.

Luxury build-outs, fiscal audits raising questions, and at the same time, they're told to prepare for constraint and belt tightening.

The destabilization in the competitive labor market produces attrition, and now layering in the service reality of that.

The city's own survey indicates that emergency response times have declined.

During the Super Bowl, when San Jose was presenting itself on a national stage, there were seven shootings downtown.

That's not about optics, this is about balance.

Residents don't get to experience the ribbon cuttings, they experience whether someone answers the phone when they're calling, they experience whether services arrive when needed, and servants' service performance is staffing dependent.

Staffing stability depends on consistent credible signals.

And right now, the signals are very mixed for most of us in this room.

So shifting from budget signals to resident experience with these vacancies, the city's annual report tells us what residents value.

Library services are among the highest rated services in San Jose.

Nearly 72% of residents rate library services as good or excellent.

Residents specifically rate the hours that local branches are open, and that matters because hours are staffing.

In the last fiscal year, libraries were open nearly 60,000 hours.

We had approximately 3.8 to 4 million visits system wide.

There are roughly 396 FTEs at library positions serving nearly 770,000 registered borrowers.

A couple of years ago, when we expanded Sunday hours or at multiple branches, staff were stretched to make that happen.

Some left.

We would welcome expanded access.

Residents clearly want it, but access is not abstract.

Access requires people, and this dynamic isn't limited, of course, to libraries.

The city's survey indicates that emergency response times have declined, as I mentioned, 311 satisfaction has not met target levels, development timelines fluctuate, which are not isolated.

Performance problems, they're capacity indicators for the people in this room.

Residents experience staffing levels directly.

They experience whether someone answers the phone, they experience when an inspector arrives, they experience whether a permit is processed on time, they experience whether emergency response arrives quickly in their most desperate hour.

Service quality in a city of this size is staffing dependent, particularly given our low staffing ratios per residence.

The staffing stability stability depends on credible, consistent policy signals.

If workforce instability increases, service metrics will follow.

Not immediately but inevitably.

And so we have some information about what the workforce is telling you.

We conducted a bargaining survey of all of our members, and the feedback was clear.

Nearly 70% said that more flexibility or remote hybrid options would help them do their jobs better.

Almost 70%.

And that includes classifications who don't currently have the ability to work from home, whether it be two or one days now.

So flexibility was ranked above more staff, above better training, above administrative responsiveness, wages ranked higher overall, of course, which is not surprising, living in the most expensive place in the world.

But work from home protections ranked high as well.

Excuse me.

More than half of respondents rated telework protections a 10 out of 10 priority.

And now let's look at the city's own flexible workplace policy.

The city adapted remote work to do this, and this is what it says in the policy when it was passed years and years ago.

Increase productivity by reducing commute time, support work-life balance, reduce the workforce carbon footprint, decrease traffic congestion, increase employee job satisfaction, attract and retain employees, protect employee health and safety, and ensure continuity of government service during emergencies.

These are not union talking points.

Again, these are the city's words.

So here's the question.

Our question to you is what changed.

What is the data showing that productivity declined?

Where is the analysis showing carbon reduction goals are no longer relevant, or where is the evidence showing retention is stronger with less flexibility?

We haven't been presented with that data.

Instead, what we've heard is anecdotal evidence in Silicon Valley in a competitive labor market.

Policy should not be driven by anecdotes, it should be driven by data.

We previously raised concerns about this work from home issue, and one of the responses that we heard centered on caregiving, and there was an implication from management and others that employees with children or elder care responsibility should not be working remotely because remotely because caregiving could interfere with productivity.

But let's connect back to the data, the data, which is the city's own written policy states that remote work increases productivity by reducing commute time and allowing employees to spend more time on job duties.

The policy also explicitly states that employees were working working remotely are expected to have adequate child care and elder care arrangements.

That expectation has always existed, and nothing about the flexible workplace framework allowed employees to substitute caregiving for their jobs.

But caregiving is not a binary condition.

It's not having a newborn in your arms at all times.

For many employees, it means being physically present in the home.

It means being in the house with a teenager who doesn't need constant supervision but requires an adult presence.

It means being nearby for an aging parent who may need assistance intermittently.

Presence is not a distraction, presence is stability for residents and employees alike.

And for many employees, remote work increases focus because it removes that commute time, traffic stress, office interruptions, you name it.

So again, the question for us is not philosophical, it's evidentiary.

If productivity declined, show us the data.

If retention improved under flexible work, explain why that tool is being weakened.

Because the written policy itself recognizes that flexibility.

The workforce is simply asking for consistency between stated goals and actual practice.

Forty-one percent of our survey respondents have dependent care needs.

60% of those say caregiving affects their schedule often or very often.

37% are spending $1,500 or more per month on care.

Flexibility is not a luxury.

It's a workforce stabilization tool.

And let's not ignore the financial reality of it, which is that when employees work from home, the city reduces utility usage, facility strain, water usage, parking demand, reduced overhead.

Employees absorb those costs at home if they have done so in the past.

So again, what changed?

What happened last summer that the city had to reduce the remote work option for thousands of employees?

Because the written policy says remote work increases all those things and decreases carbon footprint and congestion and everything else.

So if that's no longer true, again, show us the data.

If that's still not true, then explain the rollback.

And if this is not about preference, it's about credibility.

Finally, let's talk about compensation.

Our survey results were not ambiguous.

Across the board, wage increases ranked as the highest priority, and adjusting pay to match current market rates ranked immediately behind it, which isn't surprising.

San Jose is one of the most expensive regions.

Housing costs are extraordinary.

Child care costs are extraordinary.

Basic cost of living continues to rise faster than many of our wage structures, and members are acutely aware of what neighboring municipalities pay.

We routinely hear from employees that they can earn more elsewhere, and that's not speculation, that's just the reality of this labor market.

When we talk about retention, compensation can't be separated from that flexibility.

They operate together.

And we want to be very clear about something which is when urgency exists, this council has demonstrated the ability to act quick and decisively on compensation matters.

And that tells us something important.

It tells us that when retention is framed as ursans, as urgent solutions materialize.

So the question before you now is whether that urgency applies broadly across the workforce or selectively, because the analysts, librarians, environmental specialists, inspectors, planners, 911 dispatchers, admin staff, and so many more are not secondary contributors.

They are the operating core of the city.

And we know recruitment is difficult.

Retention is cheaper than replacement, stability is cheaper than churn, and the gains made over the last three years can erode quickly if market misalignment widens and if the city doesn't remain competitive.

And so to finish our presentation, we began by acknowledging that the vacancy numbers have improved.

We applaud that effort.

They improved because staffing became a governing priority for this council, and that's the lesson we believe.

Workforce stability is not accidental, it's the result of deliberate, consistent policy choices, and right now those signals are very mixed.

On one side, major capital improvements, event spending, luxury infrastructure upgrades to stadiums, unresolved fiscal transparency questions.

On the other side, hiring freezes, layoffs, rollbacks, compensation pressure, and a competitive labor market.

And that tension is incredibly real for these folks, and especially as we go into our collective bargaining process over the coming months.

So this is the challenge.

If staffing stability is truly a governing priority, then policy direction, budget alignment, and workforce signals must be consistent with that claim.

Not temporary, not rhetorically, but structurally.

Because recruitment is a lagging indicator, instability today becomes vacancies tomorrow.

And once that trend reverses, as you know, it's far more expensive to fix.

The workforce is watching closely, they're watching how flexible workplace policy is handled, they're watching how AI is introduced, they're watching how compensation is addressed, they're watching how fiscal transparency is managed, and they're making decisions accordingly.

In a region like this, everyone has options, and the question before the council is simple.

Will San Jose operate as a stable, competitive public employer in one of the most demanding labor markets in the country, or will the signals to continue to create that uncertainty we discussed?

Will we rest on our laurels as the city's presentation seems to suggest that we have done a great job and that potentially the worst is behind us, or make the gains of the last three years very real and keep those going?

So the trajectory is in your hands, and we appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you to everyone who uh presented today, both uh city staff and our uh bargaining units, our unions who participated.

Let me turn to colleagues.

Um I don't see any hands up, so we may be heading toward open forum.

I did just want to note, I appreciate all the presentations.

Jennifer, I think it would be helpful to the extent that you and team have capacity for us to um be able to follow up on any of the data points that were shared today and and anything that you think is important for the council or our workforce to know to add more context to some of the things highlighted today.

I do want everyone to know that um of the 2026 events, the vast majority have been fundraised by the sports authority from local employers.

So I don't want folks to think that the parties downtown are being put on uh with dollars that could otherwise be going to employ our our workforce here.

I do think that's an important example of a clarification.

Um I'd also note I know my colleagues and I are very much committed to staffing and also quite acutely aware of the low staffing ratios we have in San Jose.

It is a major source of frustration for all of us and our residents as I know it is for um all of you who would like to have more colleagues to carry out these services.

Um our biggest challenge is the funding available in the general fund.

Um do want to note that while uh pension reform eventually will put us on a path to having more dollars available, unfortunately from uh a few years ago when we were at 17% of our general fund going to pay off the unfunded liability.

This year it's 19%.

So we have not yet quite hit that point where more dollars are available each year, although I know it's gonna be a wonderful thing when we get there where less and less of our general fund is being consumed.

So I think there are a few areas that would just be helpful for us all to have the context and data.

So all of us, including our workforce, are starting from the same uh set of facts.

Uh, but I really appreciate the opportunity to hear from everyone on um recruitment, vacancies, and other other kind of factors related to the workforce.

We are, and I appreciate that so many work, so many of our employees sat through uh a couple hours of the meeting and we're here uh to participate.

I think we do have a couple of colleagues who want to chime in.

So we'll do that and then we'll move to open forum and we'll go to Councilmember Kamei.

Thank you so much.

I'd like to thank everyone for their presentations.

I thought it was very interesting in the coalition's presentation on the um uh turnover rates, how they've compared from when we started, which I think is is pretty good.

And uh, you know, in terms of trying to uh either maintain or I mean it looks like the last three years they've kind of been uh sort of leveled off, but it's lower than it had previously been, and uh that really helps when you have uh good retention.

I'm assuming, and I I guess I would ask uh Krista uh a little bit about the uh retention during uh the last three years.

Can we ask questions?

What do you have some questions?

Yeah, just I'm just asking what she presented on the slide.

On the on the slide, the turnover rates have improved uh since 22.

Thank you.

Um the retention percentage, I think is now around 9%.

I think that's what was in the slide.

So we have seen a considerable improvement, and we have been able to retain more of our workforce, which is essential for our um institutional knowledge.

You know, I think some of the complaints that we know from the community are really that we, you know, there's a if there's a high turnover rate, they might be getting a new person they're talking to, even like if they're you know applying for a permit, it might become very frustrating if they're having to encounter a new person.

Um so, anyways, yeah, massive improvements, and we we do attribute that to the gains that were made and that council ultimately voted on for our 2023 contract.

Hope that answers your question.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thanks, Councilmember.

We'll go now to Councilmember Condela.

No, thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to take a brief moment to thank um our bargaining units for for their presentation and their commentary, especially um all the all our our employees who came out uh to uh voice you know their thoughts and and to be here um in support of of the bargaining units given the budget discussions that are forthcoming.

I just look forward to working alongside our colleagues, uh, our workforce and the administration initially were fully staffed uh to be able to provide services for ultimately for our city.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Uh let's go to Councilmember Ortiz.

Yeah, I just also want to thank uh well, thank you, Mayor, but I also want to thank both our staff who gave the presentation.

I know a lot of work went into that, um, as well as all of our members of our bargaining units, the individuals who keep this uh city running, and who truly are the the backbone of our our uh services, the fact that you're here during your busy schedule, um that says a lot, and it also tells us that this is an extremely important uh issue that everyone here on this dice.

I know we do, but we should um take uh uh very very seriously and and despite you know there's disagreements here uh on the council, as I'm sure there's disagreements out there in the community on how we should approach these issues.

I do think that um and uh the the council in partnership with the administration and our bargaining units have been moving this city in the right direction, seeing that staff vacancy rate uh come down, seeing our retention rate uh improve and and knowing that you know our vote on the last um uh contract um was was huge for for our workers and I think uh made uh uh great contributions uh to both the retention rate and staff vacancy rate uh improving.

And so I look forward to ongoing discussions.

We know this budget year is gonna be a tough one, you know.

We're um we're gonna be forced to make some tough decisions, but uh just know that I prioritize all of you.

I think everybody here on this council prioritizes all of you.

The city can't run without you, and we just thank you so much for your time.

Thanks, council member.

Those are I think fitting words to close out the item.

Um, although I just realized this was a hearing, but I don't know, Tony, if we have public comment on this.

If you have some cards, why don't we go to public comment?

Okay.

And then we'll go to open forum, which is for anything not here.

Uh yes, if there is a staff report attached, I'm sorry.

Yeah, so we'll take uh why don't we take public comment and then we'll come back for action.

Okay, Carlos and Brian.

Come on down.

And we're at one minute um due to an earlier time restriction.

Can you do it for the just with this up?

Um you don't get much of an opportunity to do this, so um to all of the city workers, everybody.

I'd rather do a zoom tonight.

Thank you very much.

This is just from somebody who drives through, works here, and used to live here for 30 years.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for all you do and you too.

Okay.

Thank you, next speaker.

Can you convey the 15 minutes?

Evening, council.

My name is Carlos Murillo.

I'm an engineer at the airport.

I'm glad that HR is doing their part with fares and outreach.

But in my opinion, the biggest contributor to the decrease in staff vacancy citywide is the people behind me who are willing to fight for better pay during our last contract negotiation.

Hold your signs up, everybody.

Better benefits and pay have helped close the gap with compar comparative cities.

Based on the evidence, this clearly helps attract and keep staff.

I hope council can help our city continue to move in the right direction by investing in quality services for our community.

Thank you.

Back to council.

Thank you.

Thank you all again for being here.

Tony, we're going to open forum.

Do we have any members of the public?

Oh, I'm sorry, to come back for action.

I forgot.

I thought it was closing the hearing.

Yes.

Move approval.

Second.

Great.

I don't see any other comments.

Tony, let's vote.

Thanks for catching that.

I'll go ahead and call um open forum, Brian.

Come on down.

And motion passes 10 to 0 with Campos absent.

Okay.

Now, open forum.

Brian, you have one minute.

Thank you.

Um, I sent an email.

I think everybody got it.

I had to send it to the city clerk.

I think we have at the beginning of our um all these meetings.

We have the Pledge of Allegiance, and then we have the ceremonial items.

I think those are the most important.

We have flag waving, flag waving, flag raisings.

We have acknowledged one population that cross cuts across all um demographics is people who are victim of crime.

I'd like a day where people who deal with crime as victims, as people who know victims, it's acknowledged, and they feel that support because often they don't.

It's a pretty detailed email, so I hope that you would look at it.

Thank you.

Have a good evening.

Back to council.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks all.

We're adjourned.