Can you take the roll, please?

Casey?

Here.

Here.

Ortiz.

Present.

Vice Chair Kamin.

Here.

And Chair Foley.

Here.

You have a quorum.

Thank you.

We're all here.

How about that?

We don't have anything to review on the work plan, no consent.

So we're gonna just jump right into the committee reports on citywide planning activities, semi-annual status report.

And here one of the presenters is running down the steps.

Please do not trip and fall.

Hi, good afternoon, Wisemara and committee members.

Manira Sandhir, Deputy Director for Planning with PVCE.

And we'll be doing a presentation on this item.

I'm joined by my esteemed colleagues, Division Manager Martina Davis and Principal Planner Jared Ferguson, who will walk you through our citywide planning activity semi semi-annual status report.

With that, I'll turn it over to Jared.

Thanks, Vanera.

So first to get started, as we always do, just quick overview of our citywide planning team.

So the citywide planning team is our long-range planning group within our planning division.

Within citywide planning, we have five teams focused on specialized areas.

So we have our general plan and data analytics team that focuses on regular updates to our general plan as well as processing privately initiated general plan amendments.

We have our housing policy and housing element team that focuses on housing policy and implementing our housing element.

So over the citywide planning team, we have a total of 19 positions with one current vacancy, which we're looking to fill.

So first to kind of go in a little bit to our team work plans and our team work plans, both what we've are currently uh completed since our last update, and then also the work in progress until uh for the next fiscal year and then upcoming work in the next fiscal year.

So our general plan team completed our five-year development forecast in February, and this is the key forecast which uh assists the budget office in estimating our construction related taxes for revenue purposes for the city's uh capital improvement program.

Have several significant um projects uh in progress.

So, of course, our general plan for your review, which is uh a collaboration with our housing team.

Um, and I'll talk more about that in the next slide.

Um, currently planned for full completion in December of 2027.

Um, we have a lot of work um in the next fiscal year as well after the conclusion of the task force process.

The team has uh multiple privately initiated general plan amendments that generally take place in the fall, so will be completed by December.

Um general plan annual report for the 2025 calendar year will be coming to you in June.

Um, and the team is also engaged in efforts to update our council policy 5-1, which is our transportation policy.

And then looking into the next fiscal year on work that the team will be starting.

Um, looking to start work on our tri-element update.

So this is updating three other elements of our general plan, um, both updating the open space and safety element of our general plan, and then looking to complete for the first time our environmental justice element, which is a new required element per the state.

Looking at adopting minimum densities, both downtown and then for our mixed-use neighborhood designation, completing the next version of our five-year forecast and the next calendar year and the next general plan annual update.

So to talk a little bit more about the general plan four-year review, which has been consuming a lot of our team's work in the last fiscal year since our last update on the citywide activities.

So obviously, the focus of our four-year review is really on housing, implementing key parts of our housing element and also preparing ourselves for the next housing element.

So we're looking at ways to increase residential capacity within the city, our work around missing middle housing, and then also looking at strategies to improve urban village implementation.

We have three task force meetings remaining.

We started in October.

So we're coming into the home stretch for the task force process.

We'll have the vote of the planning commission at the end of June, and then look to come to the full city council in August with the framework of the general plan four-year review update that is coming out of that.

We've scheduled our four open houses.

We've actually had two so far to date.

We have another one coming up on Wednesday evening at the Bascombe Community Center, and then one next Monday as well to round out the four open houses.

So going into the next fiscal year after that August City Council meeting, we would be looking to start the environmental review and then also start to actually draft the general plan text amendments as well as draft any ordin um related ordinance changes and additional outreach as necessary.

But we do anticipate that work to take up or subsume a lot of the team's efforts as we look to implement what the framework agreed upon in that general plan process.

So next, getting into the housing team.

So the work uh completed since our last update.

Um we had a big um uh body of work thrown at us uh with Senate Bill 79.

Um so we did uh you know a pretty robust analysis of that and provided a report to the city council um collaborating with our ordinance team.

Um in January, we completed a housing element uh item related to our zoning code around group homes in the single family neighborhoods, single family zoning, I should say.

Um, and then also completed our annual housing element annual report and an update on our housing catalyst teamwork plan in March.

Um work underway.

As I as I said, the housing team is collaborating with the general plan team on the general plan four-year review.

Um we'll be looking to restart work soon on our development fee framework, which is part of our housing element program.

Um, and then we have a uh zoning code update around reasonable accommodation.

Um other work in progress.

We have our ongoing um data tracking and also state law work, which is is always something we could be doing more work around, but um following closely each year the the major body of changes around um housing law.

Um we'll be looking to finish up uh the downtown ministerial approval ordinance um definitely by December, if not not sooner.

Um so we're already undergoing that work right now.

And then as we look uh work to the next fiscal year of work, we uh we'll be starting.

We'll be going back and updating our council outreach policy 6-30.

Um so this this will be a pretty important one that we'll be working on in the next year.

And then um in the next calendar year, there's some housing element work to look at expanding uh our density bonus ordinance and then our annual update on the housing element progress.

Um, and I'll pass it to Martina.

Thank you, Jared.

Moving on to the ordinance and policy update team.

Uh, I won't read all of these in the interest of time, but I'll highlight a couple.

Um so we did complete our SB 79 industrial hub exclusion in March.

Uh that was a very fast track.

I think we're the first city to get one of those ordinances to HCD housing and community development for review.

It is currently under review by the state, and we are waiting to hear back from them.

Um, in progress, we uh you will see in June updated standard permit conditions and excuse me, findings is really what it is.

That was a housing element action item.

We have to bring our findings into compliance with state law.

Uh, we have another package of other state law updates.

We're kind of packaging those together, um, various minor changes.

Uh I'll note that last year when we were here, we had actually talked about work workload and we had left that as a placeholder because we kind of knew the state was going to do uh more uh changes on us, and and it sure enough, we did actually have to uh carve some time out this year for a state law maintenance update.

Um we are working with the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs on the downtown digital wayfinding program and the ordnance changes um needed for that.

Uh, we're working on some SB79 uh walking path analysis, and then I'll highlight um it is not upcoming.

We are now working on the vape shop zoning update.

We're starting to do some of that policy work around that with hopes that to get that to you back in uh fall of this year.

Um, after fall of this year, the team's really gonna kind of shift to focus on ordinances that are being driven by the housing um, excuse me, the four-year review that will drive a number of uh pretty major changes to the zoning ordinance based on the changes we're proposing to the general plan.

All right, urban villages.

Um so we have three villages in progress, Alum Rock East, which we plan to get back to council in fall.

We're gonna have one more round of outreach.

Um, we are just out at Viva Kayate a couple weeks ago is a very successful.

So a lot of people we'd seen before, which was actually really nice.

Um we are trying to work on finishing up that five wounds urban village plan, same schedule fall.

We're working with VTA on that, um, particularly around the design standards right around the five wounds church.

Um, and Saratoga Urban Village Plan, we are working on it.

It is on a slower time frame now due to it being um tied to the four-year review for reasons of CEQA.

So that would not return to council until fall of 2027.

We are planning some community touch points this summer.

And then my last team I'll speak to is transit-oriented communities.

Um we this team is really focused on compliance with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's transit-oriented communities policy.

They are tying compliance with this to a lot of transportation and other kind of planning related funding moving forward.

Um, we have received some grant funding for this.

We are trying to finalize our grant agreements.

In the meantime, before that grant funding kicks in, the team is taking advantage of some of the overlap in that work and other policy work we have.

So that team is um working on the downtown minimum densities that we were directed to do as part of that SB79 direction we received in January.

Um that overlaps with uh TOC because we actually do have to do minimum densities in kind of similar geographic area for that policy.

And with that, I will turn it back over to Jared.

All right, thanks, Martina.

So um we talked a lot about our um uh work in the next fiscal year, but I think uh the important thing to highlight on our citywide work plan is thinking long-term about what are the big big priorities as we look to the next five or seven years, and so not losing sight of those big things that we need to accomplish and make sure that we're on time with.

So um, in we're completing our general plan four-year review work.

Um, we started in the spring, and we will be looking to complete that in by December of 2027.

Um, and then we'll also be looking later this fall to start work on the tri-element update.

All of those elements are required by state law.

Um as we wrap up that general plan four-year review process, that will really be the time when we'll need to actually start working on the next housing element.

We anticipate it taking us at least kind of a three-year window, so we would be complete by June of 2030, which gives us a six-month kind of buffer before the the statutory deadline of January of 2031.

Um, and then as we kind of complete our um next housing element, um, sort of thinking through if if there is a place for us to do a comprehensive update of our general plan, it would really be right after the housing element was done.

And so thinking that that's when we would want to start start that process.

Again, these are all very um you know, significant bodies of work um that have very specific timelines, and so I think we just want to keep these um kind of milestones and big projects in mind as we continue to do um planning work related to our work plan.

And so getting into our our next fiscal year, all those things that I that Martina and I talked about, um our current work plan exceeds our current staffing capacity.

Um so this next slide um illustrates uh what our uh total um workload is over the next fiscal year.

So all of the the projects um are categorized or by size of hours.

Um everything in orange are those mandatory work items.

So you'll see in there are the general plan four-year review, taking up a quite significant portion in the next fiscal year, um, looking at completing the neighborhood urban villages, um, which is again um required as a part of our housing element as a part of our general plan work.

So based upon our current projections for this project scope, we're looking at 126% of that capacity.

So this is all the work that we've committed to in the next year.

So getting into each of those sections.

So the mandatory portion of that work is about 90%.

So again, these are items that are required either directly or indirectly by state law or the result of state law or things that were required to do by law.

So updating our housing element every year, providing that annual report is maybe a minor example of that.

And then all of the work strategies contained in our housing element as well.

So that's 90%, and then looking at the city priority work.

So this is other important policy work that either staff has you know recommended through these updates or has been most likely directed by council to complete.

So and these are you know important work.

So the no walking pass for Senate Bill 79 is a is an example of that.

Um, you know, updating our transportation policy 5-1, which isn't required, but is sort of an indirect requirement of some of the changes around CEQA and state law.

Um so it's it's a lot of important work and what that will mean for us.

I'll pass it to Martina and to look over the out years.

Okay, so we showed you what this looks like in the next next fiscal year, but um this is what it looks like in the out fiscal years based on just what we know right now.

Um what we know right now is 126% committed this year, and we've already identified um 101%, so basically 100% committed next year.

Now, what happens in reality, right?

Um, the projects that 126% is means things get delayed into the next fiscal year.

Um we also have new requests through the budget to add additional work.

Um we know that the state will likely continue to give us new state mandates.

We feel pretty confident that we're going to have to continue to address state mandates.

Um, and then there's always a body of city initiated work that we want to do, um, and that tends to be stuff that helps businesses, um, kind of helps the smaller guys.

Um there's there's a never-ending well of ideas there of our our own policy work we could be doing.

Um, and this is all kind of underneath it, this major um work items Jared's discussed that that are taking priority.

So, what might we do about it?

We did receive direction in this budget to look at our citywide planning fee and evaluate other funding sources.

Um, I'll just speak very briefly on that fee.

So the team is funded about six about 60 percent, 70 percent by the the fee.

Um the fee at right now is not adequate to sustain current staffing.

Um, so we absolutely do need to look at increasing it simply to keep our current staffing levels on the team.

Um, so what we're gonna do is we are going to figure out what that number is and then also see if we were to raise it to accommodate the increased workload, what would that be?

Um, something else that's important to note is based on the legal framework that created the fee, the types of work it pays for cannot be a hundred percent funded by the fee.

Um, so any increase in that fee would likely need to come with an increased appropriation from the general fund or something else to match that legal framework of splitting the work between developers and the existing community.

So we will get back to you with the budget on that.

Um, I think light at the end of the tunnel, but given the state of the fee right now, we are uh very cautious around assuming that we would be able to reasonably propose an increase that would get us all the way up to the increased workload, but um we're still evaluating that.

So, as I mentioned, the next steps is uh we are gonna do that deeper evaluation as part of the budget process and propose um a fee update, most likely.

Um that's yeah, that's basically it.

There will have to be some um trade-offs if we want to add the new work, um, or we'll need to just delay that into future fiscal years.

And that concludes our presentation.

Thank you.

That's that's a lot.

You have a lot that you're working on.

Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Yes, we have one card for Lillian.

Please make your way down to the podium.

You will have two minutes to speak.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name's Lillian Koenig.

I'm representing myself, but I do sit on the senior commission as a district three representative.

And I'm going to comment a little bit on what was presented here today.

You spoke about annual housing element reports updates, citywide plans of action.

But really, I'm here to discuss seniors and uh the envision San Jose.

Um talking about you spoke about data tracking.

Um, I wonder if you actually track seniors and how they live in middle housing, affordable housing, lists of housing that seniors live in, and how you quantify their income with their quality of life in housing.

Um and when you talk about data tracking, I know you're overworked, but I wonder how much uh the seniors is included in that.

And then you mentioned your task force, open house.

I think you said this Wednesday on the 29th at Bascom was was when you're having another one.

I wouldn't have even known because I'm supposed to chair and I am chairing the subcommittee for housing on the senior uh committee.

Um and I did not know about the other task force open houses, so I'd like to attend that one.

I would have liked to have known where I could have found that because stakeholders in the community are seniors.

We are very important in our community.

Um we do a lot for the community.

We are involved with our housing, and we'd like to be able to stay in San Jose and contribute to the community.

So if you could just comment on that, thank you.

Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Thank you.

Turning to uh my colleagues, Councilmember Mulcahy, you're up first.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um thanks uh for the briefing that we had on this item, and you know, really where I've kind of been focused and my head has been at is around you know, just the capacity issue that you're facing.

And you know, a week ago we were in the study session and I asked the question about you know, our sort of our everyday fee-based program and how we're gonna deal with um dealing with everything else that we get no funding for the the unfunded mandates.

So there'll be a theme to just a few questions here and open to anybody.

Um and I know you know, we our IGR team um you know is tied to a number of things that that is in your world, but I mean, we are definitely not alone as you know the San Jose department dealing with this issue of having to deal with our everyday permits that come through the door, and how do we plan for and implement state mandates?

So you know, are we working across city you know, partnerships, city to city, statewide with collective IGR teams on you know, not just everything that's come to us now, but we just looked at a chart moving forward, you know, with a question mark, unfunded mandates question mark, and we all know there are gonna be more.

Um so even if we don't get resources as part of um this advocacy work, we have to be on record at how much trouble this is causing, not just San Jose, but every city in the state.

Um that where we are with our own IGR team and what's happening statewide with advocacy around this, really to just sort of defend ourselves uh to you know, lots of policies coming down the line.

Yes, definitely a council member.

Um it's something, you know, I think in embedded in our current program is around local control, is still a priority.

Um and I'd have to look if we have specific language around you know, recouping costs, but it's something we've we've been engaged on for a number of years, particularly through the League of California cities.

I know it's something that they're very attuned to, because all cities, not just San Jose are experienced this, like you're saying.

Um I know it's something when we've had individual meetings with you know various um legislators and their their teams were talking about bills.

It's just talking with them about the potential impact even if we agree with the policy approach, is that the timelines that they give us are are not reasonable for when we can implement.

You know, you look at SB 79, it was something that we raised when we were advocating on that.

Is that six months isn't enough time, you know, it takes effect January 1st, and even if you give till July 1st, cities can't, you know, work in that amount of time to accommodate it.

So it's something that we've we've continued to engage on.

I think there's probably ways we could think about how you know we perhaps you know collaborate even further with cities, maybe big cities in terms of how we could, you know, um make our voice heard, you know, a little bit louder, um, because I don't think it's it's something that has been well received in terms of of that, you know, not necessarily criticism, but you know, sort of um critique, right, of of some of these policy changes is that there's no resources associated with them.

Anyone else?

I mean, I mean, I think we're beyond polite at this being needing to be polite.

I mean, this is causing tremendous.

I mean, we're at 130 percent rounding up of capacity, and how much of that percentage is coming from policies that we have no funding for.

So I don't know, Minera, if you wanted to comment on it too.

Yes, absolutely, um, council member.

I think we are coordinating closely with IGR as well to identify opportunities where we can perhaps guide this kind of legislation that comes forward.

I know in the past our approach is usually that we try to work with these legislators and shape the bill in a way that you know in can have a positive influence on our policy work, such as for SB 79, uh, preserving the industrial lands.

I think that was something that we actively advocated for and were able to add to the build.

But I think it's it is also important to to draw a line when something isn't appropriate and be opposed.

So I think we're continue working closely with IGR to identify those opportunities and perhaps shape this next uh version of bills coming through the state.

Um just curious on that idea of um consolidating some efforts right now.

I mean, we just had a conversation about a general plan amendment that you know may be coming before us that it may be better and might help our own capacity by waiting for the general plan to be approved, you know, the four-year plan to be approved.

Are we sort of looking at that relative to our capacity to make that suggestion?

Hey, Mr.

Developer, why don't you wait until the GP review, an early consideration is not going to catch you up on any time frame that wouldn't otherwise be addressed by the four-year review?

Yeah, absolutely.

We're always looking at you know customer service, and it's like what what are the various pathways that you could take to get to what you want and and sort of communicating what those pathways are, what those options are and what the timelines are and what the associated costs are.

And we're doing that even if we're not even if they're not asking the question.

Yes, absolutely.

I think we're always thinking through, you know, within what might be within our work plan, what policy changes might be coming that would enable a faster pathway for you, especially when we're talking about housing, what options are there, what state laws could you consider?

I think those are all things that we're we're constantly evaluating in order to provide good customer service to people who are coming in to to it with interest in developing.

I think in the presentation it was just um sort of pointed out that as part of the budget, you know, that you know, this body would have to be sort of prioritizing moving forward.

Have you considered suggestions of what to deprioritize as a as a PBCE organization and things to be specifically considering to get us within our capacity range?

I mean, I I would always hope that we're always going to be trying to achieve over a hundred percent, but a hundred and thirty percent is you know um working against us, which by the way, is also something that we should be talking to state legislators about and you know, governor's office and everybody else about this fact that you know, as these mandates come down, they're sort of counterintuitive because we're not even able to get to the real work that's our everyday work to get things built in San Jose.

So are we gonna see a deprioritization list from you?

What we can't do.

We we're certainly exploring trade-offs at this point, council members.

So through the budget process, we will be evaluating what are the items that perhaps can be pushed out to future fiscal years versus being done this year.

Um but again, it is it is a tough conversation, and I you know, between with the budget process being so extensive, sometimes can get lost in the middle.

I don't know if Director Burke.

Chris is like why not?

I'll just you know jump in for a second.

Um so uh as with last year's budget, um, there will be an MBA that comes out that talks about all the council referrals that we will typically, and as with last year, we attached a separate document to the sort of listed out the specifics that are in the citywide work plan because it does require uh a more direct approach to prioritization.

So in that we'll we'll have a recommendation.

It requires council to agree with that.

Um so it will be through that budget process.

And again, you know, the budget documents are a thousand pages.

Um this stuff often tends to get lost if it's in an MBA.

So we'll certainly uh make sure that we're making that aware through our one-on-ones with council members just to highlight kind of what's included in the list.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Before I go on, I just wanted to ask the question that was asked of you, and that is when can you tell us when the next town hall meetings around the general plan with the task force are and where yes, absolutely.

So the next open house will be at the Bascombe Community Center this Wednesday starting at 6 p.m.

And then we also have another open house Monday, May 4th at 6 p.m.

at the Shirikawa Community Center.

So those are the remaining two open houses.

Wonderful.

Thank you for for answering that question.

I appreciate that, Jared.

Councilmember Ortiz.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I know I I said I didn't have any questions, but my apologies.

Some things came up when you guys were presenting.

You know, I've gotten quite a bit of interviews, I mean uh uh emails from um, you know, business leaders and community advocates who are I guess upset at our approach to the general plan um utilizing the project uh uh sorry the planning commission um as the de facto uh uh committee.

Um have you guys received similar critiques um I th I think we've received mixed reviews.

I mean I think there's also been folks who who have viewed it positively as well.

Um so I think it's something that we want to take a look at and evaluate at the end.

I I could see the positive Fero City staff, it's less work reaching out, appointing individuals, but um when it comes to residents, I feel like we're not really getting a diverse set of input because you know, for example, business leaders who are working every day, they don't have time to be on the planning commission um uh uh for the for the most part, but could sign up to something a little bit more shorter or uh less uh demanding, I guess, time time uh demanding, like the planning commission more or the committee.

Um and so I I'm and then another thing is you know, I was thinking like, okay, well, you can't go.

Maybe I can invite you to an open house, but I only see there's four open houses, and I guess the one for East San Jose was already done during Viva Calle, which I think is very problematic because a lot of times the people who come to Viva Calle aren't from my district, they're residents from all over um the city.

And then there's like, what about seniors who may not go to Viva Calle uh because they can't ride a bike, you know, but they would go to an open house.

So I just wanted to ask what what were the thought process behind choosing Viva Calle as the um one open house for for East San Jose.

Um so that that was a thought process um we went through with um with the our our engagement consultant trying to think through ways in order to try to engage the community creatively.

Um, you know, sometimes the open houses, you know, we actually I think got more people through Viva Calle than we got through um, but were they district five residents or the East San Jose residents?

That's I don't have the data.

I know um but you know uh this was our our outreach program, you know, was something that we we discussed with the the city council, you know, in August, and it was sort of trying to balance between the timeline, you know, um given to us um and thinking through how we could complete it um by by June of of this year, and so um you know that was what we could accommodate kind of with with that timeline.

Um so but I mean engagement isn't is very important and happy to kind of talk with you in your office if there are other ways, you know, that we could um try to augment that work.

Happy to to think through that through the and so are these the only four uh open houses that we're gonna have.

There, yes, for four open houses.

That that was again kind of what our um outreach and engagement plan was that was was shared with the city council.

Um I just feel like a lot of these decisions were made from the perspective of making it easier for staff and staff capacity and not based on the needs of our constituents, which should always be our guiding star.

I mean, we're a city, that's who pays taxes, and yes, I'm sure it was a lot easier to appoint the planning commission de facto in regard instead of appointing, for example, seniors or you know, local youth advocates or or things like that.

And so I just wanted to raise that.

You know, obviously we do this every you know, every cycle, and so for the next time around, we're obviously too far in this process, but hopefully we're mindful of that um moving moving forward.

Um and uh okay, then I'm probably what I'm gonna do is I'm going to send out an email and do some outreach for the May 4th meeting at the Vietnamese um American Culture Center since that's somewhat near my district.

we do this every you know every cycle and so for the next time around we're obviously too far in this process but hopefully we're mindful of that um moving moving forward um and uh okay then i'm probably what I'm gonna do is I'm going to send out an email and do some outreach for the May 4th meeting at the Vietnamese um American culture center since that's somewhat near my my district and so um I'm gonna work with you guys to gather all those details so that I could include that in a in a uh overall communication again just to reiterate too council member we have been having meetings with some of the individual neighborhood or leadership groups in districts um and we've kind of been working closely with those council offices so happy to work with you and and attend other you know community with anyone in district five no I mean I'm saying we're happy to attend meetings that that you know so if I do my own you're saying or something like that if there are existing neighborhood meetings or if you plan something yes or like a neighborhood association okay that's good I I appreciate that thank you that's all my questions thank you council member Kamei thank you so much for the report and um I just want to say that that's one of the things that's been really good in terms of working with the staff and the office uh in terms of I'm gonna have a they're coming to the D1 leadership group uh which is a group of all the neighborhood association so I'm sure that if you have different uh sort of entities that would like to know what's going on with the general plan uh it's a good way of keeping them sort of up to date and this will be the second time Jared comes so you know he's taking all the hits and uh you know answering questions and you know just letting people know what it's about I think it's uh very helpful um you know as I look at the uh slide on the 90 percent mandatory 90 percent capacity um for them for the mandatory work over the years I mean if if you watch the trends it's a little more a little more a little more now it's taking almost the entire pie and I don't see it getting less right so we are going to come to a time and I don't know like how did it get so bad um uh every city because I sit on the um Santa Clara County Cities Association every city is feeling the squeeze and um I I don't know exactly uh in terms of of how we're going to better address it but as we start moving to I using all of your capacity for this other important work community work does not get done and so I think that something's got to give and I you know like I I don't I don't want to say that hey all of this stuff is being done to us but guess what all of this stuff is being done to us and um I'm not sure and I guess it's a conversation with Igr and and others but but the cities are in fact feeling the whole weight of all of the um mandates unfunded mandates right because you only had limited number of dollars so I think that you know this is something that at some point we're gonna have to have a more a really serious conversation as to you know when you get to a hundred percent what are you gonna do right I mean it's it it you we're already at 90 so I I I kind of am worried about how aggressively it has really sort of increased and uh and as we continue on that trajectory it's not gonna get better so um something to to sort of think about and something for us to see what what are the what where are we gonna find relief because this is not sustainable I guess I also want to um mention let's see here it was one more thing you know of the um leftover capacity um it's hard to choose amongst the city priority work that we already have so I don't know I I think there may be I don't know if there's going to be a way to push some of the mandatory work and stretch that out you know um and and it's not to say that we're not gonna do it but you know there's only so much that you are able to do right and uh and so I'm just sort of like wondering as you're looking at this is there any of those mandatory things that we can kind of like stretch out ask for more time or whatever.

I don't know I don't know I think there needs to be some kind of way to find relief yeah I mean I think that's constantly part of our evaluation process as well I mean just as an example not from this year but I think you know the work on the trielements was something that we did we did kind of push out I think this was communicated one of our past updates you know but but now we're sort of we are pushing against some of those statutory deadlines and so you know where where we can try to do some flexibility in the mandatory we we do but it it it it we usually have deadlines that we have to comply with that are challenging and I I think we're um you know contemplating some of those priorities but like you said a lot of those there's very few that would be easy to sort of shift or move in terms of of timeline.

But but now we're sort of we are pushing against some of those statutory deadlines, and so you know, where where we can try to do some flexibility in the mandatory, we we do, but it it it it we usually have deadlines that we have to comply with that are challenging, and I I think we're um you know contemplating some of those priorities, but like you said, a lot of those, there's very few that would be easy to sort of shift or move in terms of of timeline.

Yeah, I'd like to add um probably the largest single non-mandatory, and I'll say non-mandatory in quotes project is transit-oriented communities policy.

Um, that is one that it's not mandatory, but it is in the sense that MTC is still um tying significant transportation funding to that policy.

Um, if that policy was not tied to significant transportation funding, it's not likely something the city would be engaging in.

Um so that's an area we are exploring and maybe an area um to kind of continue to press on that tie between that funding and that policy work because that is a very, very large ask from MTC.

It's a significant, and although they are putting funding to it, um, if you notice the funding is only covering looking at 26 of the 54 stations, and that's just one component of the policy.

So I'll just mention that's an area that we're really exploring what maybe we could do to free up some capacity in that one.

But it is challenging because of that that funding tie.

Yeah.

I guess what I was thinking of is is there a way to do some uh work ahead of when some of these mandates have the designated timelines so that we can work with whoever it is that we need to work with to push it out.

Because I'm not worried about the stuff in the blue.

I'm worried about the stuff in the orange, right?

And if that's taking 90% of your capacity, then that means that you know it's pretty much all of the stuff that you're doing, just about, right?

So uh so I'm I'm sort of thinking strategically thinking about how certain elements can be moved over a year or so.

So instead of moving our stuff, we move their stuff.

So anyway, something to think about and to strategize whether or not it's possible.

Um some people say, Oh, it's impossible, you gotta do it.

Well, yeah, you gotta do it, but you know, I think you can work with them to see if they could squeeze it.

We could squeeze them to push it out.

Council member, I just want to add to that point.

Um, because I think the one thing that we don't talk about in this conversation is the implementation and enforcement by the state around many of these housing laws.

So the interactions with HCD and other state agencies in part drives the way that we work on these things.

So when you look at those out years, the fact that we're laying down a foundation for our next housing element now, which isn't due until January of 2031, is all about that enforcement angle that comes on the back end, and that's true, not just for the housing element and builders remedy, but sort of everything else.

So, you know, we're still under scrutiny for the actions we took related to SB 79, which is something that's you know core to our general plan is the preservation of employment lands, and we think there's a reasonable case in the in the law, and yet we're back and forth with state agencies on their interpretation, which disagrees with ours.

So, you know, I I do agree that there's always an opportunity to consider how we balance the work, but I think we're very mindful of those interactions as well.

Well, thank you for your work.

Of course, the housing element leads a lot of the discussion and takes a lot of time, and you're trying to get a jump on it by doing by starting that work now, but that does have an impact.

Councilmember Casey.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, there's some frustration in my district around the four-year review process, but I did want to acknowledge that you guys have been available, and we did try to set up meetings for you to have individual calls and meetings with folks.

So I do appreciate you guys um extending graciously that offer.

But there is also some frustration with I guess the actual format of the open houses.

So if you could just kind of describe, is it just displays that are set up, or is there a staff presentation?

Because and I'll tell you why there is a perception that although we are implementing state level laws that we may be going above and beyond what's required.

And so a lot of folks, particularly in my district, that although the cows out of the barn in terms of single family housing zoning still want to protect to the extent that they can the sanctity of that type of lifestyle, and the perception is that you guys may be going above and beyond the call of duty and acknowledging that there is a conflict of interest, you guys have to meet your arena numbers.

So if you're given an opportunity, and not to say that this is actually what you guys are doing, but the idea that maybe you guys are running with these state mandates to make your job easier potentially.

Yeah, thanks, Councilmember.

So just the first on the format of the open houses.

So there are displays, but each display has multiple planners at them.

And each station is meant to sort of encompass one uh aspect of the four-year review.

So we have one, for example, on the urban village process, you know, and how we're we're looking at trying to strategize to improve the implementation of that.

And so each individual or group of individuals, when they stop by, can have a conversation with the planner, and they kind of describe, you know, they can read the boards, they can have a conversation about, you know, here's what we're proposing, and they can have kind of a dialogue on what do you think, you know.

And there's usually opportunities on each board.

Um, you know you can share your feedback verbally with that planner.

You can put a comment on a board.

There's usually questions posed, uh poised on you know each each board.

Um so that that's kind of the style, and then there's also um some general information ones as well, like what is a general plan?

You know, why do we have to have a general plan?

Um and so it's it's really designed to be more interactive than just having like a single presentation.

Um and and there's kind of multiple opportunities to provide input and have a direct dialogue.

I think we really find that those conversations in kind of smaller groups and one-on-one is really more meaningful um in terms of of getting feedback.

Um so that's how we've chosen to do it this way.

You know, I mean think we're constantly adapting and sort of evolving um in terms of how we solicit input, but we found that that this format is is pretty pretty good.

Um, but like I said, open to to feedback.

Um the second question.

Um, so there's uh and this is you could spend a lot of time discussing this, but um so there's various state laws that have changed or modified single family zoning around what you can do on a single family property, whether or not that's duplexes or or lot splits through SB9 or more recent laws where you can do potentially up to 10 units on single family lots.

Um those are those are kind of the the baseline, but we also have a program in our general plan um that says we're supposed to look at four to ten units.

And so um that kind of was written before these state laws, but we still have an obligation to kind of consider how we would implement that strategy.

And so where our recommendations are coming from is to try to fulfill um what was promised in in the housing element.

And so, you know, it it there's not a a hard line of like this is bare minimum versus exceeding it.

It it's sort of uh, you know, it it's an iterative process to sort of figure out what what would fit within that program, and this is you know our proposal to meet that.

Um, any of the units resulting, it isn't anything that we're officially counting towards our arena, but we have an obligation to at least propose um to city council that you know um consideration of four to ten units.

So um hopefully that enters your question.

But it is, you know, it it's we have this sort of obligation built in to sort of look at how we would exceed it slightly from from what the bare minimum is.

Yeah, no, and uh, and even though I have a background in this, it's still not necessarily clear, and I don't think it's clear to the layman person or the average person, and I think figuring out a way to clear that up would be helpful.

I think there's still some frustration.

Um, and again, the perception that you guys are going above and beyond what the state is mandating us to do.

Councilmember, I just want to expand on what Jared had to say just a little bit because I think it goes beyond sort of an obligation to study this.

I think we do see a myriad of state laws, and the implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent throughout the city, and I think that will only increase as the state continues to pass additional housing laws that impact all of our zoning districts, not just single family, but particularly, and I think you know, certainly the most recent round with uh SB 79 combined with some of these other things, we're gonna see significant impacts in our neighborhoods.

Now, we have very much of the belief that planning is a local action, right?

Is that our staff are on the ground, they on this understand the city and that we have the opportunity to uh you know work for the best outcomes for our community because we understand it and we're not using that broad brush approach across the entire state.

Um and so you know, in part what we're also trying to do is use this opportunity to create sort of boundaries within that.

We have the opportunity to create a market outcome that the market might find more appealing that actually sits better with our neighborhoods than somebody coming through and trying to lie layer an SB9 project with additional ADUs and you know, no parking, is that when we keep the control local within our planning, um, we have the opportunity to get better outcomes for our community and for our residents.

So I think that's an important component as well.

It's important too to socialize that to the community.

I don't think that messaging is is getting through.

I think it's important to actually encapsulate it that way.

I think they'd be happy to hear that.

Thank you.

Would you care to make a motion to accept the report, Councilman?

Motion to accept the report, Vice Mayor.

Okay.

Thank you for the presentation.

And obviously, we we had a lot of questions.

This is a big report, and and every time you come before us, we hear about the capacity issue.

And I think about that in relation to the fees study that and report that you're uh we're instructed to bring forward from in the March budget message.

Will that be available to be included in the fees and charges of the budget this year?

Is that the plan?

That is the plan, yes.

Okay.

I I think that's that's helpful.

I I also will remind my colleagues that it's not just the state mandates, whether they're funded or unfunded, and the majority of them are unfunded, but there's a lot of council direction that planning is given on any given Tuesday.

So when we come with a council idea that is affecting land use or development or anything real estate related, we have to keep in mind that we too are adding to the workload and staff.

Your job is to tell us when you just can't do it, or what will suffer, what can't be done.

If we're bringing something in that be can and we bring something in that we think is important, obviously, but we need you to say, well, okay, council member, you want that, that's great, and we're happy to do that for you.

You're always so very accommodating.

But we also need to know that this isn't going to be done, such as I'll give you an example, the CEQA study at Coyote Valley.

That was supposed to be done, but it's been pulled off and we're fine and we're moving forward, and I think we finally put that behind us.

But that's just an example of work that you were that was instructed to do, and but capacity resulted in taking it off the list of things to be done.

So we just have to know what the trade-offs are.

If we implement this thing and you say yes to it, what aren't you getting done, like the vape shops or or whatever it is, just just to keep that in mind.

Okay, um, that's the that's the end of that report.

Um uh let's vote.

Thank you for that.

Next is item team San Jose semi-annual status report.

We have a whole big group coming forward.

Let's see if they can stay in there 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Who's kicking us off?

I will kick us off.

Welcome, John.

Good afternoon, and uh thank you, Vice Mayor and committee members for your time today.

Very much appreciate it.

I'm John LaFortune, CEO of Team San Jose.

And today the team and I are here to present our mid-year 25-26 results and some information pertaining to some of our larger groups that we've already had in 26.

Very interesting information.

So let's kick it off with Ihab.

He's our CFO, and he's gonna give our numbers.

Thank you, John.

Good afternoon.

Um, we're gonna go through mid-year performance measures.

Uh results for Team San Jose.

Uh, we start to estimate it uh direct visitors spending.

We uh actually overachieved that goal by five million dollars.

Um the reason uh we have such significant variance.

We had um uh a group called uh OCP or open compute project that basically increased the number of days uh in the program and also exceeded attendance significantly.

Uh future hotel room nights, we are up by 17,000 room nights budget.

Uh theater occupancy were up five percent against budgets as well.

Uh gross operating revenues, 562,000 against budget.

Gross operating results were up by 2.3 million dollars against budget.

They're using for uh such significant variance for the gross operating results.

We had uh a large technology group that canceled, and um about two million dollars of that gross operating results belongs to that cancellation fee.

And um about 2 million dollars of that gross operating belongs to that cancellation fee.

Customer satisfaction, we're up by 5% against budget.

And I'll turn it to Ben.

Thank you, everybody.

Uh, for the record, Ben Roshke, vice president of research and strategic development.

Um, this is our mid-year report, but we did want to, as John mentioned, uh share some of the initial results for the major 2026 events um that we saw from hotel performance.

We'll start off with uh Super Bowl 60.

Um, as you can see, compared to Super Bowl 50, um, considerable growth in terms of the hotel performance.

Um, and when you have a large event like this, there's uh sort of two major components that make up people that come to the events in the hotels.

There's the contracted room blocks, which are we call the group rooms, and then there's the transient demand, which are the individual travelers that decide to come and attend this event.

If you look at what happened with Super Bowl, we had almost exactly to the number, same number of contracted room blocks as we did in 2016.

That 21% growth in occupancy was driven almost solely by transient demand, um, which really speaks to the importance of uh the strategy that the city took in launching the major um events to the concerts, the fan zones to draw folks in, and then the marketing that was executed to drive people to that.

Um, if you look at sort of this report that was done by CoSTAR to look at the tracking of how 2026 compared to 2016 in terms of room flow.

Um, just to orient everybody, they looked at San Francisco and then what they called the Levi's Stadium area, which was Santa Clara, the airport hotels in downtown of San Jose.

Um you can see that there are distinct patterns for each of those, um, with San Francisco's peaking around Friday this year.

Um, whereas San Jose, you can see that growth there from the transient throughout, but once we hit Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, um, the growth actually starts to enlarge down south.

Um, again, speaking to the impact that the major um activations and marketing had as we were able to capture more and more share.

That culminated um on Sunday with an incredibly large capture down south, whereas um up north it went backwards a little bit compared to 2016.

Um in total, uh Super Bowl helped to propel February from a hotel revenue standpoint to be the best February that the city has ever had any year.

Um moving into March, uh we NVIDIA's referred to their GTC conference as the Super Bowl for AI, and it certainly performs like it from a hotel perspective.

Uh we had incredibly strong occupancy, uh, 90% over the course of the event with the peak nights of it, um, basically selling out the city in the upper 90s, and really strong revenue per available room.

Um an incredibly strong week.

And then for our second major 2026 event, um, it flowed perfectly into March Madness, which typically the week after NVIDIA is a little bit of a downturn as everybody's recovering and moving moving on and moving out, but we flowed right into March Madness, had very strong results year over year.

And these two weeks coupled with strong overall performance in March, um means that we not only had the best March on record, we had our second best performing um month ever in hotel revenue perspective for March.

So very positive results, and we're looking forward to continuing into the rest of the big 2026 events.

I'm gonna turn it over to Matthew to talk about sales.

Good afternoon.

Always good to be with you.

I'm Matthew Martinicci, Vice President of Sales and Destination Services.

So at the mid-year mark, um, we have some really positive numbers to show how we build our future with citywide business.

And in our world, we define a citywide as 500 rooms or more on peak, a multi-property lead, not as self-contained.

So far through the end through December, we have booked 12 of these events, which is an increase of 140% over the same time last year, the same booking window.

For the room nights associated with those groups, we're at 58,394, which is an increase of 99.9%.

I wish we could have squeezed out that extra point one, um, but we'll keep working on that.

Um, but very good growth.

Um, the leads represented in this window are slightly down, and a lead is just an opportunity, whether it's worth 1,000 or 5,000 room nights.

And the room nights associated are down 10% because the groups themselves are smaller.

Now I am happy to report that in the three months that have ensued since December, we have caught up and we're slightly above in the number of leads and the number of room nights.

So we've been working really hard to get out and find new opportunities.

Then associations, 9,100 room nights, and then everything that is not corporate or association goes into Smurf, which are all sorts of these niche groups.

Everything that is not corporate or association goes into Smurf.

On the uh on the next slide here, I mentioned how we've been able to really increase the amount of leads, and we are doing more customer events, more travel, more engagement than we have ever done before.

67 different events in the course of the 12 month fiscal year.

For business trends, any business needs to, if you're healthy, you need to keep good customers that are repeat, and you need to go find new groups.

And so through uh through the halfway mark uh of the 35 groups that we have booked into the convention center, 18 of those are first-time customers for us.

So a very, very high percentage.

And in room nights of the 70,000 room nights that those groups represent, 31,000 room nights are first time groups.

So very, very healthy percentages.

And then one other metric we look at are the show dates, which are not the move in and the move out dates for an event, but the dates where an event actually takes place.

And uh, you know, that has grown steadily.

Um, and particularly of note when you look, we've gone from uh 74 show days in 2024, that jumped to 91 last year, and that would have been higher except for a couple of cancellations.

We're at 93 right now for 2026.

I'm really hoping we can get to 100.

Um, and then looking forward when all the excitement of SJ26 has passed us, looking forward into 2027.

We have 61 days confirmed right now.

That compares to 28 a year ago for 2026.

So very, very strong forward growth.

Uh, we're all going to be here after the sporting events have left.

So and then the last thing, and I think there is a correlation, there's a connection here.

We are the first city in the United States to launch a citywide contract for hotel rooms.

And so what that means is when a group needs five hotels to sign for us, they only they don't have to ask their legal department to sign five contracts.

They don't have to negotiate five times.

They have all of the verbiage is in one contract, and then all that's required is a two-page addendum with the rates and the block for an individual for each participating hotel.

So the what this does also, it saves them a tremendous amount of time and headache.

It also gives the attendee brand preference because many people when they travel, they want to stay at a Hilton or they want to stay at a Marriott and get their points.

Whereas if you go to another city and you stay at a big Marriott, your Bonvoy members will be happy, but everybody else might not be.

Here you get to pick your brand, whether it's the Hyatt Place, the Signia, the Marriott, the Hilton, the Weston, the Holiday Inn, all of those people can pick their brand.

So no less than Merritt's and Cvent have said they have not seen a contract like this anywhere in the United States.

So we're really very excited about it.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

For the record, Laura Shimeluski, vice president of marketing and communication for Team San Jose.

This first slide you're looking at, it shows our advertising performance for the first half of the fiscal year.

It's critically important that you remember that this advertising is focused on conversion.

It's focused on driving revenue and not awareness.

We have removed any barriers.

So our local audiences in the outskirts of San Jose and in the Bay Area see it as well.

We also pick production partners who can report production that is not a multiplier, but our actual dollars that are influenced by this campaign.

So happy to report in the first six months.

So happy to report in the first six months 22 almost 22 million incremental dollars and over 33,000 hotel rooms.

Next slide, please.

Online for social media, you see our growth continues.

This is especially critically important going into all the festivities of 2026.

You can see Instagram, especially and TikTok are performing the best.

This was year over year, but I want to give you some numbers on what we saw the first week in February.

From February 1st to February 8th, we saw over 800,000 views.

This is versus about a hundred thousand, we average monthly.

PR for the first half of the fiscal year looked really good.

We had almost 200 million viewers for an ad value of 1.3 million dollars.

Next slide, please.

But really important was our positioning as San Jose is one of the best in the world destinations in national media.

And that we don't have a relationship with the writer on.

So we are proud to say in both Readers Digest and Veranda, we had company that included Mexico City, Milan, Boston, Chicago, Beijing, and Boston.

The Vogue article, a writer we've been working with for several years.

We're um happy to note she got in the Children's Discovery Museum, Santana Row, the Winchester Mystery House, and Japan Town, among many others.

Next slide, please.

I also wanted to report on the Fly Stay and Play campaign.

As you might remember, this was a partnership with the Sports Authority and with the airport.

Happy to report that the campaign itself drew over 100,000 people into San Jose during the whole run, not just during Super Bowl, but also affected 130 hotel room nights, 100, 700 searches, and um 53 airline bookings.

Next slide, please.

I'm honored to sit next to my partner Carrie, and we did an um co-op partnership in an effort to first to show everybody visiting us for our sporting events that there is so much to see and do around and during the sporting events.

You'll notice the shared visual branding through a generous donation for the Office of Cultural Affairs.

Team San Jose's team developed the strategy.

We identified media vendors, we brokered those um purchases.

We developed the creative and the copy with these great partners, monitored their performance, and generated performance reporting all in an effort to show them how digital media can help them grow important marketing channels that they may not have considered before.

I'm happy to say it's a great hit, it's continuing, and um look forward to seeing many more of those signs on digital social media.

Next slide, please, and I refer to John.

Thank you.

Thank you, Laura.

And just to wrap up our presentation, I just wanted to invite everybody to our next uh biannual sum of hospitality.

Uh fondly recalled bash, and that's coming up on June 4th.

I'd love for you all to attend.

Uh last bash, we had 224 attendees, um, all local businesses, hotels, business associations, and small restaurants and bars and so forth.

So it grew 47%, one bash over the next.

So very high profile, and thank you all, and love to see you there.

Wonderful.

Thank you all for your presentation.

Uh it's exciting to see those numbers, and I look forward to seeing the final numbers of 2026 after we go through the whole sports cycle and event cycle that we have this year.

No members of the public, don't see anyone up there.

Then I'll turn to members of the council and council member Kamei.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for the report.

And I also want to thank you for the briefings.

Um, they're always really um helpful.

And you know, one of the things I mentioned uh in terms of as you're looking at uh the final report is I know you we always report on what has been booked.

It'd be interesting to see what are the actuals.

Um, and I know you probably won't have them right away, but as a comparison to see you know how things are trending, and it's just good information to be able to uh take a look at if you're able to obtain that.

Uh the other thing I wanted to say is that uh the idea of having one contract and making it as easy as possible.

Uh, I think is a wonderful thing.

Uh as you go through any of your processes, if there are ways of making it uh uh easy to um to do, uh I think that that's absolutely wonderful.

It's just a great idea to be able to have one contract, the addendum, and and and make it simple.

So I want to commend you for that because I think that those are the things that are gonna make a difference to the um the person who um has to you know do all that kind of work.

So I wanted to recognize that.

And with that, I just want to move acceptance of the semi-annual uh status report.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second.

Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um thanks for the report, gang.

Um I just you congratulations on the citywide contract.

I know that that has been something we've been working on for a very long time.

Um, and just know that that's such a valuable tool for you as you're you know, kind of working the system to bring those citywides, which are just so invaluable to us.

Um I can't read my writing here, give me just a second.

Um talk about the the capture of the transient.

I mean, do you uh uh especially with respect to the Super Bowl period of time?

Um I know that's always been our hardest group, you know, set to get after.

Is that in the spending, the specific spending, the partnership between all of the groups that were sort of focused on SJ26?

What's the secret recipe to that?

And I think it's tied directly to that sort of uptick on the weekend, especially coming in and out of Super Bowl.

Yeah, I think I mean I think there are a couple different things that we could probably directly attribute that growth to.

Um was if you uh comparing 2016 to 2026.

We really didn't, as a city, invest in any kind of activations that we could then have Laura piggyback marketing off of to help steal the share as it came through.

I think we're also seeing this is the second time this events happened with this particular configuration with the stadium in Santa Clara, you know, still the vast majority of hotel rooms in San Francisco.

I think there's some savviness from the repeat visitors, perhaps, around what the pattern is of the events, somewhat that helped to bring naturally some things south as the game day got closer.

But um, I think directly related to us having these sort of, you know, whether it was the massive concerts out in front of City Hall, the incredible activations over at San Pedro Square, all the different points of activation that we had allowed us to go out and utilizing Laura's ad tech, go after those folks and steal that share into San Jose and South around those events and giving people something else to do besides just the big game.

If I may add as well, when we first in 2016, we had just that week launched our first consumer brand, real consumer brand.

We didn't have any money behind it.

Now we've got 10 years behind it.

We've got hundreds of thousands of social media followers.

We have a city that's committed to giving us money to invest in destination marketing.

We have all partners who decided to row in the same direction.

We have a 74% repeat visitation rate for all of the people we've been inviting here for the past 10 years.

I think what you're seeing is the results of absolutely all the events that happened and that we celebrated, but the channels we had to get that to let people know about it, um, I think served us very, very well.

I mean, you know, some of us were around 10 years ago for the last Super Bowl, um, and the reality is the thing that I see that is most valuable, not just more resources committed, but the fact that all of these organizations were actually working in lockstep, you know, starting with our own city hall, all the way down through TSJ, Sports Authority, you know, you name it, every organization, you know, was working um in concert.

I I'm wondering on the notion of the investment, the ROI, does and and maybe Rosalind, you may know this.

Is there a plan, you know, sort of after SJ26, all of the events, maybe even through I think the last major one is um CrossFit.

You know, can we really sort of look directly at how much real dough we've put into these efforts and what that ROI is, and and do it in a way that you know we can actually break it down and understand it.

So, you know, there's some sort of criticism on you know the the public spend, you know, how do we calculate that?

But to really come back and understand so that the next time that we have to have a conversation about this, that we have real data that we can pull from because we know it works.

Thank you, Councilmember Rosalyn Huey, Deputy City Manager.

Um, yes, that is our plan.

Um we are very fortunate that the sports authority it has commissioned uh a comprehensive economic impact report for all of the major events this year.

So we'll be using that data and working to calculate what really is the the actual return on investment from from the uh city's dollars that has been going into 2026.

And I'll just remind you this is just the beginning.

We're not stopping with 2026.

We are building our muscle going into 2027 for those celebrations um and beyond.

So we'll be needing this data to inform our work in the months and years ahead.

Thanks.

Um thanks, Rosalind.

Appreciate that.

Um, just to clarify for my colleague um councilmember Kamei, I think the question that she may have been asking is what's the yield on future bookings.

Um what do we, you know, when we're you guys speak this language every day, you see 160,000, or what are the numbers.

What are we hoping we get from that and what is our kind of goal around that yield to keep that business, you know, and convert it.

I'm looking at you, Matthew.

I thought you were um we're despite any of the positive numbers we've shown, we still have room and considerable room to grow to the numbers that we want to get to.

Um we do audits of the major events that we bring to the city.

Like right now, we're in the process of doing an audit on Nvidia, just to you know, to make sure that the contracts in in some cases we are understated and there are more rooms because with with some of these groups, there's a certain percent that's given to the group, and then the rest of the hotel sells out on what we would call maybe transient guests, and we know that the only reason that they happen to be in town on these dates is to attend that particular event.

So we have had some very productive meetings with the properties in the last four to six months to agree to do these audits to say uh, you know, OCP is another group that the entire city is sold out while they're here, but the blocks wouldn't themselves sell the city out.

So we're doing these audits now to everyone's benefit, including the group, to put a true measurement on what they actually bring to the city.

So most groups have what we would call an attrition clause, which is a minimum commitment of the block in the cases like these major groups that we're talking about, they always exceed that number.

Does that answer the question?

Does that help?

And then we true it up.

I mean, I think it would be helpful, like in future reports, like if you're gonna show us a you know, future you know, future bookings that we also have an opportunity to see side of the same time last year what we ultimately captured from that number.

I just think again, it's that notion that I always remind us if we're speaking in you know convention center speak or what have you, sometimes it's hard to really understand the magnitude of what those numbers mean.

So it'd be great to just to continue to refine that education for especially for this group, and then as it goes to our council colleagues, because ultimately we're the ones that are you know having to make a decision about whether or not we're gonna put more resources into marketing the city or to boosting the visitors, you know, bureau budget.

And if we can see ROI, we can see and know what those numbers are.

I just want to I can't overstate how important it is to continue to take every opportunity to educate this body as to the value of what these numbers mean.

If if I can real quick, just um to contextualize a little bit.

Um I believe last calendar year we had in the neighborhood of 117,000 consumed rooms, right?

So to put Matthew's future sales in perspective, that's about 82,000 in six months for this year and future years compared to about 117,000 that occurred in the last calendar year, if that's helpful for scale.

We can figure a way, we keep many reports as you would imagine.

One of them is just pace, and we do true it up.

If if a group cancels, we take the rooms off the books, for example.

So we can figure a way to incorporate what actualized looking backwards, because that is at the end of the day the number we're growing off of, not just what we contracted, but what was actually consumed.

Okay, I'm running out of time.

I just want to say it's super favorable what you've reported.

I look forward to the next one.

And it wasn't a criticism as much as it is just that continued effort to try to make sure that we're all communicating and understanding what the script says.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Seeing no further hands, I believe we have a motion and a second.

Let's vote.

Thank you all for the good numbers and the report.

Appreciate it.

Moving on to 2026 major events status report, which should Team San Jose's report will lead nicely into this one, I believe.

I have to go.

Thanks for having us here.

Um I think we can switch slides.

Um, just as a refresher, since it's been a minute since we were here, um, with SJ26, um, we focused on three major goals.

One is economic benefits from these major sports events that are taking place in and around San Jose.

The other one is build civic pride um through having events in downtown San Jose and throughout San Jose as well.

Um, and really set San Jose up for the next iterations of itself around the experience economy.

So those have been our guiding principles.

Um, in order to accomplish this, we've really focused around like what can we do to have big events in San Jose, and that's centered around having concerts and big fanfest um in downtown San Jose.

I'm happy to report um Super Bowl was a very, very big success for us from a foot traffic perspective.

Um we started out with the Invisible Skies um project with Elizabeth Turk that took place right outside of City Hall was a great event.

I was able to take part in it.

I think we had over 2,000 people that attended the event.

So it was a great way not only to start things out, but to also integrate with existing events that happen in San Jose that are beyond sports.

We followed that up with um opening night, uh Media Day at the convention center.

Um very, very successful event from an operational perspective.

It was great to have that event directly here in San Jose.

Um SJ26 put on a drone show after that event in Discovery Meadow.

Um the foot traffic data that we've seen, there were about 7500 people that crossed through that area um for the drone show.

Um, so very, very successful for us from a foot traffic perspective that was free to anyone who also wanted to attend that event.

Um we had a series of events that took place throughout the Super Bowl week, including things um at Creekside.

Um we had the Fitz and Wits podcast that took place there.

So plenty of other events throughout the week in San Jose.

Um we started out with our first big concert um Friday, right outside of City Hall here with Kaylani.

We like to say Global Hero Local Superstar.

Um she performed her first concert since winning two Grammys right here in San Jose.

So I think that was a big feather in our cap to have.

We had 12,000 people that attended the concert, and I think it did a great job of featuring San Jose.

You could see City Hall, you could see everything that was great about San Jose, and I think it really helped to set the tone for what was going to happen in San Jose during the Super Bowl.

Um we followed that up on Saturday with um DJ Dom Dala, um an electronic digital um musician.

There were 15,000 tickets that were sold for that event.

Um, and I would say for both of those events, there are a couple of big things that we accomplished.

One, we set aside tickets um just for local residents to purchase, and we also tried to keep the ticket prices low for local residents to be able to purchase tickets.

So if you look at things in San Francisco, Chris Stapleton, I think the cheapest ticket was $600.

Um, and we didn't want to have that happen here in San Jose.

We wanted again to provide a great experience here for San Joseans.

Um we also had our fanfest that took place inside of San Pedro Square.

Um, this turned out to be wildly successful.

If you asked some of the merchants the days before the fanfest started, they were actually asking us if we were gonna compensate them from some of their staff because they didn't believe that we'd actually have enough people there in San Pedro Square to justify this.

We wildly exceeded the numbers that we expected to have for our fanfest.

We had over 48,000 unique visitors throughout San Pedro Square over the three days of our fans fest.

So it was great.

It was free to the public, tons of free family fun activities for people to experience here in San Jose.

We also had another drone show Friday night of Super Bowl and Discovery Meadow, also very, very successful for us.

We have projection mapping also going on on the side of the Sabrato building during two nights of the Super Bowl.

So I think we really fulfilled upon the mission that we wanted to have, and we're seeing the numbers starting to come in.

We have some anecdotal data from some of the businesses in San Pedro Square experiencing record nights of revenue, dramatic increases in revenue.

So the goal of increasing economic prosperity seems to have come to fruition from everything that we've done, and the foot traffic numbers seem exceedingly high for what our goals were.

So it felt really great for us to set our strategy, execute on the strategy, and see some exciting results that have already come in from the data.

I'll turn the corner here in March Madness, and John Poach from the Sports Authority will give the overview on March Madness.

March Madness, as you know, was the NCAA men's regional basketball tournament.

A very difficult bid to win.

It's done in four year cycles, and we lost our last one due to the pandemic.

So they don't give you a makeup.

So we're thrilled to bring it back.

It's the eighth time we've had the NCAA men's regional basketball tournament.

And if you remember, we also had the 1999 women's final four.

So we're we're thrilled to be able to host this.

Following the Super Bowl, we had to let our merchants and retailers in San Pedro Square know this would not be the scale of the Super Bowl, right?

It's a regional basketball tournament.

And the fact that we didn't know the participants until Sunday before Thursday.

Uh so we had three teams nowhere near the West in Purdue, Arkansas, and Texas, but we did have Arizona.

Um the experience of Super Bowl, let our merchants and retailers know that this is for real, and that our goal is simply to help promote your businesses.

So we're thrilled that we sold NCAA issues zero comps, 46,500 tickets in attendance for all three games of the regionals.

Uh we did a free concert in San Pedro Square.

Our games were on Thursday, two semis and a final on Saturday.

So we wanted Friday to be the activation day.

And uh we did a free featuring global basketball superstar, Shaquille L'Enneal, DJ Diesel, and he couldn't have been more kind with our sponsors and fans.

And the concert was free.

Uh, when you say free, over 15,000 claimed tickets, a little over 3,700 attended.

Um special thank you to Captain Torres, Sergeant Depp of helping us put together the security perimeter.

It was quite expensive because we hired a private security firm as well.

But as I my staff told me, $30,000 equals zero incidents.

Uh, because we had incidents in the Super Bowl.

And so uh we may have gone overboard on security, but for our San Pedro Square restaurants and merchants, and then those intendants, everything went as smooth and have to thank Captain Torres and PD.

As far as uh other creative, we partner with Office of Cultural Affairs.

So uh Carrie and her imagination uh created a special free throw, a digital display on the SAP Center during the games where fans can walk up and have themselves on a digital image shot on the screens of the SAP Center as they did a free throw challenge.

So just show the creativity that we have in San Jose, and then we're more than a game.

It's about the whole experience.

So I like to thank the council members and our city leaders who took part in a mini press conference between the semifinals on Thursday.

Overall, a hotel per uh occupancy uh was was very well.

Uh the transient pickup was better than I expected uh since three of the teams were were not local.

And uh overall, I just thought it was a great activation, San Pedro Square.

We went Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday initiating this City of San Jose event zone ordinance, uh, which much more participated this time than Super Bowl.

And so uh it was a great event, I thought for us to activate the NCAA basketball at San Pedro Square in downtown.

Thanks, John.

Um, just a brief recap here, high level um of what worked well.

Um great activations in downtown San Jose.

Um I think the other thing that was really interesting is as we sort of served as a catalyst, we started to see a lot of other events that were taking place throughout San Jose.

So it was a great way for us to sort of set a template and let other places throughout San Jose see how they could replicate things.

So other watch parties, other types of Super Bowl parties and things like that held at various hotels and parks throughout San Jose.

A really great collaboration with the Office of Cultural Affairs.

If you've seen the Hometown Heroes exhibition that's right outside of here, I think it's absolutely fantastic.

I thought it was going to be just some pictures and frames on the wall.

I went down to see it and I was absolutely blown away with what they had done.

It looks absolutely fantastic.

And then they continued that through the rest of the sporting events.

So if you saw what they did on the site of SAP, it was a great collaboration with San Jose State University.

It was a great integration with digital technology as well.

So I think these are the type of things that really make these events feel special, other than just putting on a concert and having a sporting event here in San Jose.

And it allows us to use these sporting events really as a way to drive traffic for people to experience more of San Jose and come back again and again and again.

Lots and lots of interest around doing that.

We had an entertainment zone both for Super Bowl as well as for March Madness in San Pedro Square.

Great collaboration across state, local, and federal and private entities to make sure that these events are safe.

I think in the emergency management center, I went in there on Sunday of Super Bowl.

I think we had 72 different agencies that were in there.

So you can imagine the type of collaboration it makes it takes to make those events safe.

And really great early data that we're seeing back.

We'll have a full economic report later on in the year on these events.

And I'll I'll just pause there.

Thank you for that tremendous report.

It was such an exciting time, and and I know there's more excitement to come.

Do we have any members of the public?

No public comments.

No members of the public.

Kudos.

We've been waiting for a report.

I know we're gonna have to wait till the end of the year.

That John, you've uh you're obtaining getting a report from an expert on all of the events for this year, but man was Super Bowl successful, all the activations downtown, the energy of people who live all over the city who came downtown who don't normally go to downtown.

The reports from the uh restaurant tours downtown uh was just stupendous.

Truly an amazing achievement.

And and I know it's always compared to what happened 10 years earlier, and I wasn't around in that capacity, this capacity 10 years ago, but uh from all the numbers, everything was improved, and and the just kudos to everyone, all the work that you've done, and it it's just amazing what this city can do.

It's not a sleepy little town, it's a sleepy little town who can really put on a good party for a lot of people and and make it safe.

I've been to this report at VTA from a different standpoint.

I've been to it through the interoperability committee where they they're the radio uh connectors, and I've heard re uh updates from the EOC.

So to hear it from sort of the top about all of the overarching numbers and excitement, it's really uh I'm I'm just so proud to be a part of it, be a part of San Jose, and thank you so much for all of your efforts.

With that, I have to run for another meeting, and I'm gonna turn everything over to Councilmember Kamei.

But thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Uh let's see.

As we do the switch here, if you give me just a moment.

Okay.

Uh well, I don't have any requests to speak hands up, but um, you know, now that you have raised the bar, you know, it's uh it's wonderful what you know, people are still talking about it.

They really are.

The the Invisible Skies was something that many people, you know, just came.

They didn't know what it was, and they're still talking about it.

So I um and I I attended uh the Kalani concert, and I haven't been to a concert in a long time, and I thought, oh, what do I what what is there to expect?

And it was wonderful.

People enjoyed themselves.

Uh there were a lot of the smaller vendors, and and just the atmosphere was really a lot of fun.

And so I know that we learned a lot from the um the uh uh Super Bowl to the March Madness, and you know, there were tweaks made.

Uh I'm sure you learned something from March Madness.

And you know, one of the things that I was curious about, and I know that you know, as we move forward towards what we've not done in the past, which is FIFA, one of the things that Councilmember Ortiz and I talked about back in November was to have this particular meeting of the community economic development committee to look at the um to incorporate some of the outreach efforts because we know that the audience may be a broader audience.

Uh and so I was a little bit disappointed that there wasn't that outreach information back to us as was asked for by council in our November uh memo.

So I'm just wondering, you know, ahead of FIFA.

I understand from uh the administration that we are going to get a supplemental memo, but I think it's important for us to look at outreach.

Look at, you know, um this is gonna be a very different demographic, more international uh in scope.

Not that the other two were not, but you know, it's at a level of six weeks.

I don't know.

So I'm I'm just curious as to um you know what can we expect as we move uh it forward.

Well, as uh team Jen Baker, director of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, um, one of the talking points that Team San Jose had shared was a particularly exceptional bash event this year.

Yes.

And I think the opportunity to repeat that in June looking forward, um, and and look at some of the different ways that businesses will be impacted over a longer duration of of six weeks of programming is really important with the Super Bowl NVIDIA and um and March Madness, those were you know more finite duration, and so a company's working capital um could be expended in bursts in different ways versus uh six weeks of uh burn time on one's capital.

Um and so thinking about how we support the business community and that that outreach moving forward is important.

Yeah, I I I am hoping that there's uh more targeted outreach.

The thing is that we don't know what was done with Super Bowl and FIFA in terms of any particular targeted outreach.

And so I'm kind of um hoping that as we're looking at these six weeks that are coming up, you know.

I mean, I would I would ask, you know, in terms of how are we going to uh sort of like push that information out so that um you know whether it's residents, business owners, workers, visitors know what their rights are, what's available in terms of city resources in partnership with even Santa Clara County because I know this was a huge effort with so many other partners all around.

Uh, and uh, you know, I just want to give greater visibility to that, that um whatever can be done can be pushed out from our offices, you know, our council offices as well, so that the community knows hey, you know, things are gonna be fine, these are the things that are available, and um and and we could be helpful with that.

We could be much more helpful with that.

And Councilmember Bay could just add, and thank you for that point.

And um, yes, staff, we will be issuing a supplemental memo before we go to city council with this item on May 12th, but I did want to share um what we have been doing in terms of partnering um with agencies, including uh the Immigrant and Protection and Empowerment Network, also known as IPEN.

Um they're really our key partner, and that network is made up of a host of different uh jurisdictions and other organizations to help push that word out to our community to make sure that our residents and quite frankly visitors coming into our community know their rights and can feel safe.

Um and also we're of course working very closely with the rapid response network in the county as well.

So we will detail the those outreach um method uh in the supplemental memo, talking about what was what worked well for Super Bowl and March Madness and plans moving forward for FIFA.

Yeah, no, that's terrific because I think that this is gonna be huge.

I mean, six weeks is a long time, uh, and anything could happen, right?

So, you know, I think that it would be good for our community to also know that uh these uh resources are available should you need them or you know what is happening.

Uh I'm gonna turn now to um Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um I don't know if I misunderstood uh maybe a portion of what was missing from what you were saying was also how do you get like business associations and businesses involved and all of that.

And I think um like the toolkit is available.

I think it would be good to make sure that all the council offices are pushing that out.

I know you know we were doing it.

We had the benefit of having a lot of events kind of in and around the our district, so we were pretty proactive doing that.

But I think that, and then also the app, the SJ26 app, I know has a lot of resources for the community on it so they can see schedules of what's happening.

So maybe sort of pushing that out, you know, again to the council offices as well would be helpful.

Um, I just had my light on because I wanted to just recognize you know, there's another example of the teamwork that we've seen, not just you know, your organizations, but you know, you two specifically, um, who both brought so much to bear, and uh it was a little bit of an experiment that just could not have been more impactful.

So thanks to John and Tommy for stepping forward for San Jose.

Wonderful.

And would you like to make a motion to accept the case?

I'll move to access the report and cross-reference it to San Jose City Council.

Very good.

Uh, there's a motion and a second.

Um let's vote.

That motion passes with two absent.

Very good.

Okay, and the last item that we have is item number four economic strategy work plan annual report.

Thank you very much.

Uh good afternoon, Councilmember Kamei and members of the committee.

Jen Baker, director of the city manager's office of economic development and cultural affairs.

And I'm here today to present the economic strategy work plan annual report and request your acceptance of the progress.

Um, this reflects uh the first technically nine months of implementation of the FY 2025-2027 strategy.

This work plan was approved as part of the FY 2025-2026 budget process and was designed to focus our efforts on five core areas business attraction and retention, small business ecosystem support, downtown recovery, expansion of the experience economy, and connecting residents to economic opportunity.

In total, the plan includes five objectives and 22 goals with year one now nearing completion with rounding the bend in quarter four.

At a high level, eight of the goals are complete, 12 are on track, and two are we're still working on leaning into.

So over 90% of the work plan is progressing as intended.

So happy to report that.

Across the board, we're seeing strong movement in our job support and retention activity and revenue generation, the small business support systems, downtown activity event activation, as we've just heard a lot about, and workforce placement.

Um, where we're seeing some challenges and where we're staying focused is primarily around office recovery and daytime downtown activity, which continue to lag along with national trends.

Uh a few highlights that will illustrate where we have the strongest momentum across the work plan.

Um we added or supported or retained 3,573 jobs.

Um this was up to um December, so July through December, and sales tax revenue up nine million dollars for the four months December to or January to December of this past year.

So strong sales tax revenue increase.

And we've supported key company investments across advanced manufacturing in clean tech.

Um of these projects include have included Rose Batteries, um, netgear, lucid motors, and EV charging infrastructure, where we have supported on both planning and certificate of occupancy, um, ribbon cuttings to bring awareness to these milestones for companies.

Um, and then also uh starting this fiscal year or this calendar year rather, um, there have been a number of announcements that we'll look at reporting out at year end.

So lots to look forward to.

This reflects a strong foundation of business retention paired with targeted growth in innovative sectors.

In parallel, we're making strategic progress in large energy development, which we know is one of our competitive advantages in the city.

Two Equinix facilities are new, and are now energized, and you can see a number of team members at the ribbon cutting at Equinix.

These are anticipated to generate 800,000 in near-term utility tax revenue, scaling to roughly 4 million annually.

And this is a key insight for us in that access to power is one of the most important site selection drivers across the country, and we're well positioned to continue to compete in that space.

So that will be informing our focus areas moving forward.

We currently see more business openings than closures, which is a positive sign.

And the business improvement districts, which have been a capacity building exercise over the past two years, are advancing very positively.

So in the start to this year, we've established or advanced five business improvement districts, bringing over $760,000 annually to be reinvested in the communities that are committing that money.

These districts are critical critical, they create self-sustaining economic infrastructure at the neighborhood level and really give community members the power of decision to create sustainable solutions for their neighborhood community and businesses.

The work is about more than recovery, it's about building long-term resilience and local wealth creation.

You can see listed the business corridors that have been have advanced bids, and the East Village bid is still in progress.

So that was one of the work plan areas where you'll see a yellow across the work plan status charts, and that is based on the public polling for positive downtown sentiment.

Daily foot traffic has increased 9.3% and 6.6% in the first two quarters.

And major events, as we know, the Super Bowl activations and NVIDIA GTC are helping drive activity.

We're seeing strong gains in activation and perception, particularly in evenings and event-driven periods.

But we know we need to make that activity sticky and work to achieve long-term daytime activation and foot traffic that much more.

Oops, got a talk and click at the same time.

In the experience economy, we've facilitated 535 event days, and that was at the end of December, exceeding our annual goal, and that was only at the mid-year point for implementation.

So you're going to see a tremendous amount of activity that our existing staff and cultural affairs has really hustled to put together this year.

So 100 or 100, 1.85 million attendees, which is phenomenal, and the Super Super Bowl activations alone bringing in over 450,000 visitors downtown.

So we know when we activate public space with compelling programming that people will show up and show up at scale.

And so figuring out how to again make this a sustainable recurrence and bring this quality of life and activation into our daytime more regularly is important to us looking forward.

And that brings me to looking ahead.

Oops, double click.

So there are three uh areas that I would like to highlight for us in repositioning for long-term competitiveness.

And the areas are business attraction and retention, which we know is a cornerstone of business development, uh small business ecosystem and experience economy.

So under business attraction and retention, um, we're committed to executing against the um the March budget messaging to build out a three to five year business development strategy.

I'm particularly excited about that component because I know there are a lot of competitive advantages that we can showcase and really bring the brand and the talent and the amenities of San Jose to a broader audience.

So we'll look at foreign direct investment, how we're um how we're telling the story of local talent and also developable land as part of that commitment to the business development strategy.

We'll continue to target industrial and RD growth where we see the most considerable subscription of real estate, and so going with where the momentum is right now will be a good focus for us.

Leaning into the target industries that will research that much more.

Likewise, we know that supporting office recovery and business to business firm activity that aligns with that industry growth will be an important strategy to activate downtown.

Um then likewise aligning with state level efforts.

So Go Biz on the California level is also directing attentions to their business development outreach.

We're seeing California on the um on the international and national stage more than in the past at some of the industry outreach events that align with our competencies.

So where possible, we want to also contribute to that inertia and put forth the San Jose brand.

For the small business ecosystem, strengthening the full economic ecosystem is a priority for us.

We want to expand and sustain the business improvement district capacity.

So it hasn't been enough just to stand up the bids.

Um there are other communities that would like to also form a bid, and and once they're activated, we want to make sure that their capacity to execute on their budget and deliver for community is sustained.

So we're committed to uh to bid support and technical assistance capacity building.

Um we definitely want to encourage more local spending, so opportunities as we've seen through the SJ26 events where people are bringing their expendable income to our small businesses and neighborhoods, and then likewise advancing the east side revitalization framework that was also called out in the March budget message.

And lastly, uh experience economy, we want to build off of the SJ26 momentum.

There have been a lot of lessons learned, and um deliverables on the policy level, like for entertainment zones, where we now have vehicles to be able to invite the community to activate, um and we will continue to work on those types of interdepartmental policy tools that help us help us help the business community celebrate.

We want to expand civic engagement and partnerships, support major upcoming milestones.

We know we have the 250th anniversary of the city and the 70th anniversary of the sister city strategy that is will be forthcoming in the next year, and um and we heard quite a bit about convention center activation, and so what are the ways that we can facilitate optimization of the facility and continue to partner with um team San Jose looking forward across all the strategies um we want to become more proactive, data-driven, and and partnership data informed and partnership driven.

Um, and to close after this first year of implementation, we're seeing strong execution across the priorities, measurable economic gains, and growing momentum in key sectors.

So we'll look forward to putting more into the activities that that we're invested in.

Um, with that, I'd like to respectfully recommend acceptance of the report and invite any questions.

Thank you so much.

Um there any public comment?

No public comment.

I'll turn it back to the committee.

Um comments or questions from the committee.

Councilmember Mulcahy.

I have a question, but I'll move to approve the report.

Um, one of the things that um constantly comes up is this retention of our industrial base, right?

We've got to keep it for jobs growth.

And you know, just I'm sure if the entire council was up here, everybody's got chunks of that in their district that you'd just rather see something get built there versus these blighted areas just sort of languish.

I have three little chunky areas in my district that I think about, you know, Campbell Avenue, some pockets of Lincoln Avenue, Center Road in District Seven, where you've got sort of unqualified property owners who can't afford to actually hold on to their properties, and yet we're holding on to those properties, you know, for another use other than industrial.

You know, investment to those kinds of areas specifically.

Is that a fair question?

You know what I'm asking?

I believe so.

Um, so one of the aspects of the our focus areas looking forward would be um identifying are there a public-private partnerships, CDFIs, alternative forms of capital that could be leveraged as tools to improve properties.

Um, in the past, there was the redevelopment authority, which doesn't exist anymore, um, and and that created some inroads, and then also left some challenges to manage.

Um but we we are interested in in looking at what sorts of tools could help jog loose some of the properties that are um that seem to be stuck for any number of reasons.

I I mean I just would say that having that inventory, you know, on a list somewhere for your team to know if there is an investor looking to to you know do something.

You know, again, we have lots of people in this community that are owning properties that don't have the capacity to redevelop and they're sort of being held for a certain type of of use type on those properties, and we have a lot of blight as a result of it.

So it'd just be interesting, I think, to look at how we create an inventory list of those what I would call opportunities to connect developers to those sites.

Thank you.

And uh council member, if I may, um this is a really interesting time to be having that conversation and that we're in the four-year general plan cycle.

And so evaluating um, you know, where we are in terms of jobs creation capacity, how jobs are matching up with um with housing and and residency and population and really how all of those things impact the str our structural deficit.

So are there ways forward um where land use zoning requirements can be either honored or altered in ways that um that have us pacing ideally population growth with B2B sales tax, property valuation on the business side that are helping us create a balanced budget?

Great.

Well, thank you so much.

Uh I don't have any other hands, so uh let's vote that motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Uh and now we're on open forum.

Is there anyone who'd like to speak on open forum?

We have no public comment.

Okay.

Well, then we are adjourned at three twenty-eight PM.

Thank you so much.