Please call the role.

Kameh, Campos.

President Tordillos.

Here.

Cohen.

Ortiz.

Present.

Walkhi.

Here.

Duan.

Here.

Kendallas.

Here.

Casey.

Foley.

Mayhan.

Here.

You have a quorum.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right.

We are continuing on with neighborhood services, and I believe I'm handing it over to Jill.

Yes, good morning, Mayor and City Council members.

I am Jill Bourne city librarian.

I'm here with my colleagues, Eric Sullivan, Director of Housing Department, John Cesarelli, Director of Parks, Recreation, Neighborhood Services, Rachel Roberts, the Assistant Director of Planning, Building, and Code Enforcement, and Angel Rios, our deputy city manager.

We are here to present the overview of the fiscal year twenty six twenty-seven proposed operating budget of the neighborhood services city service area.

Collectively, this CSA is responsible for such elevated and critical outcomes as providing community spaces, equitable access to opportunity, vibrant public life, and housing security.

Oh.

Through our wide variety of core services, the departments in the city service area are uniquely integral to our residents' quality of life.

While the foundations of a city include buildings and streets and infrastructure, the foundations of community are found in connection, inclusion, and opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive, both individually and together.

In the neighborhood services CSA, residents learn to read, to Zumba, to swim, to 3D print, to upskill for their next job, or even to apply online.

They grow with nutrition with therapeutics, fresh air, and opportunities for youth to lead the way.

And they thrive by maintaining their neighborhoods or simply finally having a room of one's own.

The programs provided by the CSA create the net of services that engage and support our residents, creating meaning and authentic connection from shared knowledge, shared spaces, and shared experiences.

The CSA dashboard demonstrates continued improvement in park condition assessments, positive directions on code enforcement, and maintaining high performance in library services and occupancy of temporary and interim housing solutions.

Yet some positive changes to the housing and code enforcement budgets, both of which have additional funding budgeted in other city service areas.

The long-term goal is for San Jose residents to enjoy a city with clean public spaces and well-maintained private property.

To achieve this goal, we are addressing three problems.

First, blight on private property.

Code enforcement is pursuing strategies to address complaints more rapidly and effectively.

Second, graffiti.

We will add graffiti as one of the objects detected by our limited deployment of AI object detection cameras.

And third, illegal dumping.

Beautify San Jose and environmental services staff are pursuing strategies to increase usage of legal waste disposal methods and enforce against illegal dumpers.

The CSA priorities for service delivery going into fiscal year 26-27 include stewardship of public spaces, encampment management and cleanup services, high-quality library access collections and programs.

Continuing contracted veterinary services and care for animals through animal care and services programs, continuing to implement recommendations from code enforcement's operational assessment, and continuing to optimize the shelter system management.

Okay, significant actions in the proposed budget include following the transition of animal care services to PRS department.

We are also making an additional investment in low-cost spay neuter services at the animal care center.

Assuming the passage of the proposed transit occupancy tax, there will be no major impacts to park maintenance, which therefore allows new investments in fire prevention in Alam Rock Park and open spaces.

Savings will be entailed in the optimization of the beautify SJ program.

There is a reduction to the rec preschool program.

Salary savings associated with the temporary closure of the Biblioteca Latinoamericana branch library for an upcoming renovation.

We also have reductions of positions that would result in the closure of public access in the California Room Special Collection space at the Dr.

Martin Luther King Junior Library.

Elimination of a vacant management level position in the library's data analytics unit, enhanced building inspection services for vacant or dangerous buildings downtown, an increase to staffing for homelessness response, and a decrease to funding for interim housing solutions.

The proposed budget sustains park maintenance, recreational programming, aquatics, scholarships, and nutritional programs.

It preserves open hours at branch library locations, assuming the passage of the upcoming transit occupancy tax.

It extends the family friend and neighbor caregiver support program for one year.

It allows for completion of the code enforcement operational assessment transformation work plan.

It expands the contracted veterinary services at the animal care center and the trap neuter and release program.

It continues community-based grants for beautification, use safety and engagement, and it improves synchronization between outreach and shelter bed placement.

And with that, we thank you for your time, and we are here to answer your questions.

Great.

Thank you for the overview.

Just as a reminder, the study sessions are first and foremost an opportunity for council to dig in and understand the city manager's proposed operating budget.

I do see we have some members of the public here.

We will at the end of these two sections try to save enough time to get in a round of public comment before 12 30.

Then we have a break and then we pick up with additional study session materials and conversation.

Just on the California room, then I'll turn to colleagues.

Jill, can you help us understand what?

I know I uh my office and I'm sure others have received a number of concerned inquiries.

What is the proposal specifically?

The proposal in the operating budget is simply to reduce the positions that are associated with the opening doors of the California room space, right?

And managing the collection, providing public services.

If approved, the library is has already started working with staff and will work with our users to figure out whether there are alternative access opportunities for accessing the collections.

It is a significant service reduction.

I think the difference between this reduction and any other proposed library reduction is that this room is part of a larger library space that will remain open, the Dr.

King Library.

A branch means that the branch is closed and there's no alternative options that we could develop.

So we will need to, we will need to work out you know options for how we could access the collection.

Okay, and when you say that, for example, are you saying there would be a as we navigate a difficult budget year and you're you're kind of offering up you and you know obviously the city manager's team trade-offs here for the council to consider in this in this scenario?

How likely is it that someone would be able to access say via an appointment?

Is there an alternative access method?

No, no, I'm sorry, sir.

We're in the middle of a hearing.

This is not a time for public comment.

It's very important.

Sorry, sir.

This is not a time for public comment.

Sir, I'm sorry, this is not public comment.

Excuse me, this is not public comment.

You saw the problem with that.

What do you do?

What way do you follow?

You're giving credit for reorganization.

Sorry, you're gonna have to I'm I'm sorry, sir.

This is not public comment, you're gonna have to leave the chamber.

Okay, Jill, why don't we try to continue if we can?

I'm sorry for the disruption, everyone.

So certain service options that do exist with a special collection, are the potential for making an appointment.

That that option is already in use at the King Library.

For some services, and so appointment-based services is a possibility, as well as simple retrieval services are are conducted commonly for uh closed special collections and libraries.

Can you guys hear me?

I don't so um both so we'll be looking at uh the appointment services, retrieval options.

I think that um one thing to understand it as we work through this, there are very likely, you know, experiences had in the California room, the service of the staff that that will will not be able to be replicated.

Um but there but the access to the materials is something that we're gonna try to uh come up with multiple ways to preserve.

Okay.

Well, thanks.

I assume colleagues may have followed questions, but I appreciate that greater detail.

Um I have a few other questions, but I'm gonna turn to colleagues, and then if if my questions aren't asked, I'll I'll wrap up with them.

So let's go to Vice Mayor Foley.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation, and and Mayor, thank you for starting off with that question.

That's on my list too, but so if if I could follow up on it, Jill, when it if the budget is approved as uh recommended, the California room will be closed, and you'll be coming up with a plan on how to allow access to it.

Is that my understanding?

Generally, yes, okay.

I mean, I think the the collections are not just in the room.

There's many collections that are actually in in separate storage spaces within the building.

So so access to the collections is a priority, and then um staff service would be also something we're trying to consider.

Okay.

I think I think it's important to note that the California room is only open 38 hours currently.

It's not open the full 78 seven hours that the King Library is open.

So that's another sort of restricting factor.

Okay.

So when you do develop this plan for access, will you be involving the community?

Those people, individuals who are interested in access and the concerns about the restriction on access?

Yes, absolutely.

I think, you know, one thing I would say is we've been it's extremely enheartening to see the interest in the community.

And this is a service that is incredibly important at the library.

So, you know, we are always looking for ways to actually add to it, do it better.

And so this would be an opportunity to engage around what is the highest value service from that space and and be able to, you know, come up with different options for how to meet that need with a reduced staffing component.

Understand, thank you.

And I will say that this budget depends on the TOT trans the transfer tax measure passing.

The current budget preserves the library hours in our branches.

Uh particularly of particular interest to me is the Sunday hours, which is fabulous.

But there will be the community should be aware that we have more cuts that will come, particularly related to the libraries, if the ballot measure doesn't pass.

So that's as someone who's a strong advocate for the libraries, I'm very concerned about the implications of that.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yes, this um action does not result in any layoffs, whereas the closure of branch hours would um be very challenging to do without layoffs and closing the public to the public.

Thank you.

As equally important to our community as the libraries is our community centers.

Uh many seniors take advantage of our community centers, many students uh young people take advantage of our community centers.

It's uh good uh a lot of uh we have many of us have meetings held at our community centers, and much of that is retaining, except um there are two programs in well, one program in particular that is being cut, and this John, this question is for you is that we're eliminating uh 4.58 positions for our preschool programs because of low enrollment.

And and while I I don't disagree, I think it's important when we're looking at budgets and a time of uh budget cuts that we need to assess those programs that are being successful and those that are not.

But there are two on that list that are being closed.

Uh Willow Glen and Cambrian that are just on the margins of reaching the numbers that you like for to keep the program open.

My question for you is and there are others with lower ones, but this is a question to consider for all.

Have you looked at consolidating the programs to uh to bring the students into one larger space?

Uh was that a consideration or doesn't achieve what need we need to achieve?

It wasn't a particular consideration, but that's partly because this is part of a longer term strategy, anyways.

Um as you may be aware, uh, all public schools now must provide transitional kindergarten.

So that's our space.

That's the space we're in here.

That's a big part of why enrollments dropping because it's free to them.

You have to pay for our service.

It's also full day of care.

We can't do that.

Ours is part-time, just a few days a week, a few hours a day.

So we think this is a business line we should be transitioning out of as a city.

So that's what you're seeing here.

Yeah, and I I don't disagree with that, knowing what is required of the school districts now, the TK program, and how that uh really cuts into any preschool programs and actually pre-preschool private preschool programs too uh that that will affect the program.

Yeah, if I can programs.

Also, um, you know, those TK kids in public schools count as enrollment, so they get paid for those students being there.

So to the degree we compete with our public schools, we're we're taking that funding away from that school.

Right.

Under understood.

Very, very, very true.

The other uh component of the uh budget.

I'm I am the uh city council liaison to the senior commission, and the senior commission uh uh submitted an MBA, and one of their concerns was the elimination of the senior health and wellness program.

It's a cost of three hundred thousand, and and I'm just gonna throw it out to my colleagues right now that this is a program that is important to me, so I'm gonna have to find 300,000 in the budget.

I haven't found it yet, but I am looking.

So my my question for you is uh last year in the budget, the program was eliminated, but we brought back it was 600,000, and we brought back half of it 300,000 last year with the understanding that we would not have the funding this year.

I'm not sure that the nonprofits who benefit from this, this money goes to senior programs at many nonprofits.

Some they all have uh very special targeted populations that they deal with.

UI Kai, the Japanese population as an example.

So they all have different different needs.

I I understand the reason for it.

Is there any magic number in your budget where I can find 300,000?

And if so, you don't need to tell me now because my colleagues may want the same 300,000, but maybe we can I just want to put it out there that I'm as a senior commission council person, I want to express their concerns and and mine too, because we need to make sure that we keep our senior programs going.

Um the other thing I will note is that our community community centers are used quite a bit by our seniors, the fitness centers, the gyms, playing pickleball, uh, the senior nutrition program, and I don't see cuts to those programs either, and that's really really important.

Um shoot, I only have two minutes left.

Okay, I'm gonna have to jump through any other questions I have.

I think that might be it, because I know everyone else will be focused on other areas.

Uh other than uh our parks are really important.

You mentioned, Jill, you mentioned the butt that the maintenance will continue on, uh, and it's important that we maintain with our limited budget our parks as much as possible.

And with that, I will um call it a morning as far as this issue is concerned and allow my colleagues to jump into the areas that are ish of issues to them, and I'm sure they're of concern to me, but that's all the time I have left.

Thank you.

Thanks, Vice Mayor.

We'll go to Councilmember Cohen.

Thank you.

And thank you for the presentation and for the work to keep our neighborhood services.

Um I want to just start by highlighting the um million dollars in there for Alan Rock maintenance.

I think that's I'm glad that we were able to find some source of funding to continue to do the important work to keep that part safe park safe and accessible.

I I always get feedback from folks who are concerned about the look of the park, the the maintenance of the vegetation.

Obviously, it's a challenge, and I tell them how challenging it is, but uh I'm glad that we we have that in the budget.

Um we we kind of get you a year ago, we were I was here fighting for a couple of after of drop-in programs for our youth, which you know obviously there was a hope that we could find other ways to do it.

One of the things that concerns me when we sit in these meetings and we have a proposal to cut something with this idea that well, after we cut it, we will then figure out a way.

Is that often we don't figure out that way?

So I I want to be a little more clear as we move through the budget process about and some of these things, what our methods might be or what we're gonna be able to do whether it comes to libraries or parks when we make cuts like this.

Um unfortunately, you know, we lost that program uh in the in for the youth at the youth centers in my district, and unfortunately, what happens is after time passes, we kind of get used to those lower levels of service, and don't necessarily think about I hope that we will think in the future as we may have better budget times about some of the things that we have been losing during these times and keep track and maybe bring some things back because I don't like the idea that we, you know, each of us fights for the thing we want, but we know we're not gonna necessarily be able to get it because of the current budget times, but then we move on and don't necessarily revisit those in the future.

So I'm just kind of throwing that out there.

Um but back to the library question now.

We're all hearing about the California room, and I think the California room is great.

And I but I want to make a distinction between two two elements of the California room.

One is curated um displays and things like as a as sort of a drop-in place to look at the history of our community, and the other is the collections side of things.

Presumably the collections, no matter where that what collections they are and what room they're part of, should always be available to people to have access to.

Is that true?

That is the priority to make those available.

And so I think that when we talk about coming up with a um sort of a mitigating plan, it would be focusing on the collection access first.

Um, I do think it's important to know that the the um it's not you know, the collection isn't necessarily totally self-serve.

It's a pretty, you know, there's a lot of deep research that happens, the materials are older, they require some oversight sometimes.

Um so it isn't just like looking up a fiction title and going to the shelves by yourself and getting it, right?

So there will be some challenges to uh realizing any kind of total restoration of services.

I think it's important to note that if we could have done it without the staff, we would have already, right?

So it's uh but but I think that the items that are available um and can be accessible that those would be the first to be able to make accessible through retrieval or through appointment.

Okay, so so the idea I I had heard the idea of having appointments for people to be able to say uh to schedule some time with someone to be able to go look at collections that need some assistance, and and then again the appointment you know option is already in use at King in some areas, so that's that's certainly an option.

I I know that it does not work for everybody.

And it's not the California room that's the only collection that requires appointments to view to view, right?

This library already handles that for other collections, or is this no?

So there's um you can make appointments around certain you know, research topics and those types of things for to work with a specific librarian.

So we could be able to in our partnership with San Jose State University as well.

So we would be able to potentially work this in that manner, okay.

Yeah, I think that the question was asked earlier about working with the community to understand the needs.

I think that is an important step now that this proposal is being discussed, um, is being able to understand from them what are the top services and how and what are and then we can understand what our options are.

Right.

Because we're hearing from a lot of people who value these collections and want to continue to have access to them.

Um, this was this was kind of became an all or nothing situation, right?

How many staff do we currently have assigned to the California room?

There are um two, or sorry, four staff.

Four test staff.

So was it and then there's a fifth staff person staff position that is um from a different funding source is being retained.

Okay.

Was there was there some in-between access level that was considered as part of this, or was it did it have to sort of was it only possible to do a sort of an all or nothing at current levels or or close it?

I mean, part of the budget um proposal process is to propose programs in total, and so it is a it is a fully um sort of self- you know, enclosed section of our general fund.

So it's its own program budget.

So doing a partial reduction would mean having to restore some part of that funding for the staffing, right?

Right, I understand.

I mean, so so just to be clear from the the public understands too.

What we're the exercise was here was every department being asked to find ways to tighten the budgets under difficult circumstances without you know, in the ways that were as minimally impactful, seem to be minimally impactful as possible.

So the exercise was to find programs like this and decide that this was in order to prioritize the hours of the library in some of the more uh higher use areas.

This was a decision that was made.

But anyway, uh is that is that we're gonna be able to do that.

Yeah, I mean, I think after after several consecutive years of of reductions in the general fund, you know, we've reduced other programs like our adult literacy program.

You know, there are there isn't one proposal in the library's list that wouldn't be impactful.

Like the maker mobile or something that we have the maker spaceship was reduced, which we two to three last year also went through, and now again, as we say, we get used to these things into being missing, and we have to keep in our mind that we've reduced many services over the last couple years.

And and yeah, and that's why I was saying earlier the only the only difference between this service and like say closing a branch, like closing you know Mount Pleasant or something, right?

Would be that this is part of a larger building with more staff, so there's opportunities for us to figure out other ways to access materials, right?

It is not, you know, the the plan to close the building was not something we had, you know, we're planning for or close the the space.

So there is no like you know, really fleshed out plan for how to access the materials yet.

Right.

So and now to piggyback on uh Vice Mayor Foley's comments about the potential for the TOT tax not to pass and then having further contingency budgets.

I know Jim, maybe it's a question for you.

We're kind of glossing over that as part of these hearings and assuming the budget with this revenue coming in.

I'm just want to make sure to understand the opportunity we will have to make those more difficult decisions rather than have them sort of become automatic without having had this full discussion that we're having on all these other uh areas of the budget right now.

Yeah, I think that's uh you know, this is uh a time certainly to ask those those questions we do have.

So I think the process will be if it looks like that ballot measure is not gonna be passing, we would be bringing forward a manager's budget addendum to recommend the accessing of the contingency plan to be able to uh make sure that we have a balanced budget.

You know, as we said, like we'll we'll do one one final check to make sure that this is our you know, our our best uh recommendation to the to the council, but we would expect most of that list to remain in intact.

And then given the size of the shortfall that we've been dealing with and the cuts over a number of years, like you know, a large reduction like the um the library hours reduction.

I I would be surprised that we were able to pull that one back because the dollar amount that we would need to close if that TOT measure didn't didn't didn't pass.

So certainly welcome to ask any questions on that uh contingency plan as part of these hearings.

Yeah, I mean I I feel like we're kind of not spending our time at these hearings talking about that where that'll be the more severe set of cuts that we kind of are not talking about.

Um, you know, without say being able to sit here and say, hey, I have an alternative to cut another four million from here instead of Sunday hours.

It's the it's easy for me to say that I will fight for that, but I just feel like we're not having that full opportunity here at any point to have that conversation on what will happen in the worst case scenario.

So I uh anyway, I just I'll just bring that up.

Um I think our city management will be.

So and that's a fair point.

And a lot of the services that are on the contingency plan do fall within the neighborhood services CSA today and public safety.

Uh, there is some strategic support as well that will be coming up today.

So today is got the absolute bulk of the proposals on the contingency plan, because as we described um last Wednesday, we tried to stay away from them in our main budget balancing strategy, and at one point they were in our budget balancing strategy, we were able to push them, you know, to the contingency plan.

We'd like to push them off the contingency plan altogether, but again, the dollars uh are really tough after going through the cuts we've been through.

So um absolutely great point.

So council is encouraged to ask any questions about those as well today.

Maybe I'll maybe I'll come back to it, but I'll just I'll just make the close my comments now by saying that um it it makes sense.

Obviously, we try very hard in all of our budget process to avoid public-facing cuts.

If we get to this point, that's where the public the severe public-facing cuts will occur, and I just want to make sure that we're understanding all the trade-offs of that as part of this discussion today.

So thank you.

Yeah.

Thanks for the comment.

Let's go to Councilmember Condelas.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um no, I I thank you, Jill.

Um and uh the the uh entire CSA for your work on on ultimately a a proposed budget that for the most part does exactly what the the March message directed, and that's uh um kind of a holistic approach at uh not hurting and or protecting those most vulnerable in our community, whether it's youth or older adults.

Um I did um the first department I I did have a question for was for uh PRNS with regards to the park make parks maintenance redistricting um and uh citywide sports program and lease management lease management.

I've I've received several emails uh from folks in my district who are concerned with uh this action uh specifically on its impact to Arcadia.

Um and John, I was I was hoping maybe you can elaborate a little bit on on what this um uh uh transition from this full site operations model to um to the the citywide integration would mean to the Arcadia site, and if you could speak to that, that would be that'd be good.

Sure, thank you.

Um so the consolidation obviously it's a budget reduction action.

Um specifically the impacts to Arcadia are we won't be directly managing it the way we do today.

So today um we manage the leagues and the teams, the concessions, and of course all the maintenance.

We will still do maintenance.

It'll be a little a tier down from probably what we're able to do.

Um we are trying to figure out a way to add a little extra once once the budget sort of settles and we know what we're left with.

Um and we're gonna put it into the reservation system.

So it'll be like any other sports field that you reserve, you go online uh or things like that, or we have uh a process for reserving fields for leagues that we do twice a year.

I think you're familiar with so it'll be like other fields in that sense.

Got it.

And then how how how would um I guess the prioritization for like little league groups, um, specifically in East San Jose, where we have a lack of uh little league fields, um, how would that play into this this question and specifically like pri the prioritization of East San Jose, uh little league ball clubs as opposed to you know those from out of the area, out of the city, even.

Sure.

So when we when we transition over into our normal sports field reservation system, that one is um is a process where all the leagues come together and we sort through all the different fields in the city.

We do this twice a year, where everybody negotiates with themselves versus us because they're all kind of competing for similar time and space.

That process prioritizes first those underserved areas um and then moves on to adults and then moves on to people from outside leagues from outside of the city.

So there is a prioritization that favors underserved and local first.

Oh, so that that's already happening.

It's not happening at Arcadia because we don't manage it that way.

It's how it's gonna happen at Arcadia though, once we switch into the new system.

That's the way it happens on all our other sports fields.

Okay, so this prioritization conversation is gonna be happening now that it's going into the citywide portfolio.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that that system forces the prioritization.

It the system's already there, so they'll just be forced into that system.

Okay, great.

And then um, can you speak to the you know the the partial offset of revenue in the first year?

Is that what you mentioned about yeah.

Well, so the the partial offset is just because uh we still have some tournaments and things that we booked, so this cut doesn't actually go into effect till January 1st, 2027.

So that you're seeing a partial revenue figure there uh based on the reservation system.

We're predicting over the course of a normal year could be a hundred thousand dollars, maybe more.

We'll have to see.

We just don't know with this facility.

You may recall this facility came online during the pandemic, yeah.

Um and so we kind of struggled for the business model here and and how to optimize it, and because we were struggling so much, we decided to try a different tact, which is what we're doing here.

Got it.

Okay, yeah.

Obviously, this is this is one of the the troubling um uh recommendations just for me specifically, especially uh you know, knowing that we're gonna be trading away conditions um and or you know willing to forego, you know, a a what what many consider a pristine field, little league field, sports field, whatever, whoever uses it.

Um but uh, you know, again, I guess I understand the the fiscal situation that our city's in, so uh it's necessary, but um, but you know, I I wanted to make make my thoughts known given how much I've received from uh folks in my district, specifically little league parents on this.

Um thank you, John.

The next area I want to quickly uh touch on is um uh sorry John I you're not done yet.

Uh um the Alum Rock um uh uh wildfire, I guess, risk reduction and the vegetation management strategy.

Um curious if if we're if we're also like exploring and/or prioritizing um, you know, uh cap and invest dollars and/or programs like that, specifically for our uh wildfire urban interface areas like this folks around.

I this may not be even your your uh portfolio.

Yeah, not familiar with using cap investment.

I mean, it would it would be wise, I guess, to the administration to if we are uh seeking a million dollars from the general fund to be able to bolster this, that we are actually prioritizing this as part of our legislative strategy to see if if we can prioritize, you know, bolstering our wildfire hardening, if you will, given that we are taking a million dollars from our general fund uh and investing in this much needed, and all of us won't disagree with this.

Uh, but if we're doing that, we should also be prioritizing the the pot of money available for such actions in the state.

And so uh just throwing that out there, and I hope we would uh prioritize that in Sacramento in the next two months of the legislative session.

We do you uh just so you know, uh I'm not familiar with that particular funding source, but we can get familiar with it.

Okay, but we do we do pursue grants.

In fact, I believe last week on consent we had a grant, another four or five million for resilience accord.

That's working with the conservation corps.

Some of that work is the fire suppression work and things like that.

That's all grant funded through the state and things like that.

So we do pursue grants for this area of work.

Got it.

Thank you, John.

Uh okay, uh, real quick, I'll I'll pivot to um uh the California room.

I mean, that's uh that's a hot topic, Jill.

So this is this is to you uh, you know, uh I I appreciate the comment on the retrieval system to actually have some sort of like um have something available for the calor California room, some some some of those assets for for those researching, but um uh you know the the whole point of research essentially is you know you may not know exactly what you're looking for at all times and um uh you know sometimes successful reach research does come from serendipitous findings of resources that you casually come across come across.

And so I know there was a comment that you mentioned about um uh maybe maybe seeing a reduced staffing component of maybe I know it's only open 38 hours a week, but thinking creatively as of maybe you know, not not to do a strictly um uh retrieval-based system, but maybe it's open partial and and I don't know if if all three employees or 2.9 employees are necessary to do that, but to even have it open on a on a more reduced uh fashion, would uh what it would help anybody to know, you know, hey, it's not open every day, but for the if you want if you want a drop-in hours, it's open, you know, once twice a week from nine to noon.

I don't know.

Just thought thinking thinking about that uh given I know how important uh roaming the halls of of the library were when I was an undergrad, and uh, you know, having to do research for whatever whatever class it was, whether it was Terry Christensen's or otherwise.

I think we can we'll we'll take that back and we can do an MBA on a cost estimate if there's another alternative to that at a lower cost buyback.

Again, I'm not sure what the offset would be to that, but we can certainly explore that option and give you uh something to uh think about there.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And then uh uh that that's it for now.

Thank you all.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, council member.

Let's go to Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh first I just want to thank the leadership uh and staff of this CSA for their dedication to our residents and just ongoing efforts to provide a safe and clean neighborhood with access to parks, community centers, and libraries, uh, and housing for all of our residents.

The CSA is probably one of the most uh CSAs that I frequent um with emails and and phone calls.

Um I know that I talked to housing, San Jose, PewDiePie, code enforcement, and PRNS probably weekly, maybe more than weekly.

Uh probably more than staff would like.

Um, but you know, I represent East San Jose, and we have a lot of a lot of needs.

So sorry, not sorry, but I appreciate all of your your hard work.

Um thank thank you so much.

Uh, you know, many of our most vulnerable residents uh rely on these services, specifically the services provided by the CSA to survive in our city.

You know, given we're one of the most expensive regions uh in the nation, uh, you know, many individuals find you know recreation in our parks, in our libraries.

They receive, you know, the only reason why they're able to receive uh uh housing is is through affordable housing or through rental assistance.

Um, and so any cuts to the CSA uh need to be made uh carefully and with a full understanding of the consequences that it will it will have.

Um, one of the organizations that um has contacted my office with concerns uh about receiving less funds this year is POSU, the Portuguese organization for social services and opportunities.

And just to clarify, this organization serves um uh people outside of the Portuguese community, but the their initial founding was focused on helping um recent Portuguese immigrants um become successful and receive services in this city.

They've told me that they are gonna be receiving less funds for their frozen meal delivery program, which delivers meals to homebound seniors, many who rely on the program for food on a daily basis.

Post was also said to me that they'll have to shutter the program if they do receive reduced funds.

And so I just wanted to ask um Eric, our housing director, you know, how that decision was made, um, you know, uh just the level of impact they they their understanding of the level of impact it will have on the community, um, and and you know, if there are any other options that could be done uh in lieu of cutting this program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Ortiz.

So, yes, so POSO in the past years, I'll give some quick contacts.

Uh, their funding had a one-time spike last year exceeding $700,000, as we were able to balance off some of the other cuts the organization had received from other departments in order to expand the continuing program.

This year, their rate is just about $360,000 in total funding.

So it does come down from that one-time source, but it is consistent with years prior to the one-time funding we were to provide last year.

We do know there will be a reduction in total meals being served, so it's total individuals, and we've been in constant contact with Polso to figure out how best to manage that and how to mitigate those costs, as well as working with them to identify some other potential sources of funding, like the health trust who had historically funded POSO, and then Pulso lost that funding as the health trust went through some changes.

So we're working with them to help try to find and leverage some of the CDBG dollars.

I will note CDBG, like all of our federal resources.

You know, we still have continuing challenges with HUD, they still have yet to approve a single one of our annual action plans since 2024.

There's lots of ongoing litigation uh and challenges.

So we're being uh more conservative and making sure that all audits, all measures, all performances are well checked.

This program has exceeded and met its expectations year over year.

So it's less for concern.

Now it's more about how can we help identify some alternate resources and working with the organization to limit the impacts to seniors receiving foods.

Well, I really really appreciate that, Eric, so that it's not just a no, but how can we lean in and see how we could find you guys um some other funding that's really um going above and beyond the call of duty?

So thank you for that.

Just a clarifying question, and maybe Angel is better to answer this because Eric, you weren't on the on the team yet.

I think it was last year, um uh Angel, that we worked because they were also going to receive less funds.

So, were those because what I thought was we were making them whole last year, uh, because what they told me is they were receiving reduced funds.

And so was that just one-time funding, or were they getting the the same consistent amount of funds that they had the previous year?

Yeah, yeah, thanks, council member.

Um, so it so it was one-time funding, and that that's also part of the challenge.

Here is that uh last year that was a proposed reduction.

Uh we were able to find we were able to mitigate that issue and extend and find funding for one additional year.

The idea was that over the course of that year, uh, you know, it would give the organization an opportunity to find some alternative funding.

Uh I don't think that has happened.

Uh, you know, just given kind of the economy given given the situation, but that that was uh one time funding that made them whole last year.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Well, I know that you know this is a an organization that serves both district five and district three.

So please keep us updated in these conversations.

I know that we we both care a lot about this.

Um another another important topic, park maintenance.

And I want to acknowledge the leadership of PRNS and their their team.

Uh this is a very very much a major priority for my area.

Our individuals on the east side use parks at a high rate, and that's probably why we see um our infrastructure deteriorate um also at a at a at a fast rate.

And so I want to I want to just acknowledge that I've been leaning in with PRNS, we've been having monthly meetings.

My my team's been going out taking pictures, we put together work plans.

Um, our our city staff have been leaning in, and though we still have a lot, a lot of work to do, you know.

I I still don't believe, you know, our parks are in a good state in my district.

I want to acknowledge that staff is meeting my team halfway and and we're doing what we can with our level of uh uh support.

Um, and so thank thank you to to leadership and team.

That being said, I do see that there's going to be a over a million dollars of cuts to to park maintenance.

What should we expect to see, you know, areas like you know, kind of like our more under-resourced areas.

How how should we expect to see our parks impacted by this decision?

And I know that we're gonna be doing redistricting of the park maintenance.

Um, is that is that should we see any repry from that?

And then also I know that we also contract a lot of these services.

Have we looked at like if there's any benefit to bring in some of these services in-house and how that may you know allow us to accomplish more with less money?

Thank you.

Sorry, I know that was like three questions.

Sorry, thanks.

Uh I'll start with the redistricting one, that's pretty straightforward.

That that is designed for optimization.

So that should result in better results, not the same, not less, but better.

Um, in your district specifically, I'd say the one, so as a general rule, the park system should be as it is today.

There are no major cuts to the park maintenance.

Um, but more specifically to council member Candeles's line of questioning about Arcadia, we might see something there, but also PAL, which is in your district.

We're shifting some of the maintenance staff or combining them with the staff over at Emmerprooch.

So there's still a crew there uh to pay attention and do the maintenance, but there could be some drop off there.

Not sure, but we always like to keep the sports fields as good as we can since people are running around on them.

Um, and then uh the third question was the contracting out of parts.

Oh, yes, contracting out.

So we have looked at that issue before.

We contract out, I think over 100 parks already.

Wow.

For maintenance, it's all the smaller ones.

Pretty much a lot most of the ones under two acres are probably under a contract, and particularly the really small ones are, but we would also uh I mean like to bring them in-house, not not to contract more.

Fair enough, but so uh I think I'd still be able to answer that question with my answer, which is that uh as part of this uh budget process, it was at least accepted to do an audit on parks maintenance.

So that's an area we could ask Joe to pay attention to.

Okay, what's the trade-offs, what's the cost, those kind of things.

So okay, no, great.

Well, I'm looking forward to that conversation.

Um, and I know that you know that's not just a district five issue, a lot of our districts have concerns.

Beautify SJ, only have one minute.

This is also another uh uh you know team that I'm I'm emailing every week.

I want to thank them for their hard work.

They're definitely multiple times they're going out there cleaning up encampment mass, illegal dumping in my district.

You know, we have a lot of it, and so in spite of you know, complaints from constituents, uh, because it seems like some of these encampments are residual and they just keep coming.

I I just really want to thank you know the team because I know you're working, I know you're working because you know you sent me the email saying we've cleaned this up with the pictures, and and I just want to uh appreciate that.

I do see there's cuts to that as well.

And you know, you know, just like park maintenance, my my district already has concerns with, you know, not because of lack of trying from staff, but there's concerns about the quality of cleanliness in our in our neighborhoods.

How should we expect to be impacted by these cuts?

So I don't I I don't expect these cuts to uh make anything worse in terms of the streets or where encampments are.

Um part of part of what we're doing here is really optimization.

So hardly any FTE are being lost from that program as a part of this.

It's mostly money, and most of that money was used to pay other vendors, outside vendors, picking up tens of tons of trash.

Um, so think of like a Columbus park.

We have to have other people helping us do that and the heavy equipment to haul all that stuff away and all those vehicles.

Well, as as you've heard us talk about, uh Coyote Meadows is really the last major encampment in the city.

Um, and so we're transitioning from um a very big effort over the last year and a half of cleaning out the waterways, right?

Uh in particular Coyote Creek, um, and establishing these no encampment zones.

Yeah.

So we're gonna shift about 10 FTE that we're doing things like abatements, they're gonna be in the no encampment zones, patrolling, keep people out, making sure they're not re-encamped.

Okay.

That doesn't help as much on the street, though, where I think you're seeing a lot of the issues.

A lot of those encampments, they're coming to my district.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this was a uh, you know, as a result we were concerned about as we were starting these programs, saying, Well, okay, we're gonna push them all out of the creeks, where are they gonna go?

Now more than a thousand of them went inside.

Um, and most of the people down at Coyote Meadows are coming inside.

Um, but as you're seeing, some people don't.

And we have, I know we have some MBAs where we've talked about some different things, both in Blight and other things, around well, what are things we can do?

Um, what are options we might have?

Um we are adding, for example, using some opioid money, uh, helping fund part of a position to be working alongside trust and other folks in the encampments that are suffering with addiction issues, and how how do we move them forward?

Because I think a lot of what you're seeing is related to that is related to that issue, addictions.

And so that's a very difficult problem.

And I don't know if Eric wants to comment at all about what the county is or isn't doing because my what we understand is the safety nets are falling away, they're not they're not being built or kept.

We're losing safety nets as a result of the cuts in the county.

So I don't have a great answer for you what that future looks like, but as far as the no encampment zones and the straightforward work of abatement and all that, all that will continue.

Well, thank you.

Appreciate that.

And I'm out of time, but just want to just uh comment that I am interested in the conversation regarding the California room.

Um no time to ask questions, but uh hopefully we could follow up on that.

Thank you.

Thanks, Council Member.

Uh let's go to Council Member Tordillos next.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, staff, for the presentation and all of the work that's gone into this uh CSA so far.

I want to start by just re-apping the concerns that everyone else has raised about the cuts to the California room.

I'm curious, Jill, if uh throughout this process we've seen if there's any possibility to, you know, collaborate with San Jose State uh in managing the California room or even bringing in volunteers from groups with an existing relationship with the city like History San Jose.

Um so the the partnership with San Jose State, there are four special collections in the same area, and they manage three of them.

The California is the largest, and and my understanding is get them the most traffic.

Um so we can certainly talk with them about that.

I don't um I was I think I was saying earlier that I don't believe that that they necessarily have the capacity to to take over the service if we were reducing staffing.

But we can certainly talk about that.

And I think that um, you know, there are many partner organizations that work, um, such as History San Jose, others that we work with that we'll definitely be talking with about this question of what is the most meaningful service to be able to provide.

Thank you, that just wanna kind of up level some of the comments from my colleagues and some of the things that we've heard from the public that uh, you know, beyond just retrieval or access to the collection, there's a lot of kind of peripheral services and benefit from actually having open access to the California room, being able to interact with staff there.

So I'm hopeful that we'll be able to find some sort of intermediary.

I would be interested as uh council members uh Kendallus and Cohen said about looking at and evaluating any potential reduced service for the California room as opposed to an outright closure of public access without an appointment.

Uh and then also on the topic of libraries, I think it's somewhat fortuitous that the uh renovation plan for biblioteca is aligning with, you know, the current uh budget crunch uh and the reduction of service there being a fairly minimal impact of residents given it was going to be closed anyway.

I would be curious.

You know, we've heard a lot from residents who are wondering if there's going to be any sort of stopgap service uh provided in Guadalupe, Washington during the time that biblioteca is under construction.

Do you know if there's any room in the budget, any planning that your team has done on kind of service over the next two years there in some form?

So we're looking at partnering with the neighboring community center and others potentially around some limited collection access.

So we'll we'll be talking to your office about that as we move forward.

Um I mean I would notice if we wanted to do a separate service, it would require staff time.

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh, and then I had a question on the family friends and neighbor caregiver support network.

I was mentioning here that we'll be continuing that program for one more year.

Do we have a sense given that we know we have a significant deficit to close next year as well?

The likelihood that this program will be able to actually sustain beyond next year.

My understanding is the funding is a one-time funding source, so it is not it would not be scheduled to be sustained beyond the year without additional funds being identified.

I think we're we're asking for it to be extended again with a non-general fund funding source, so it's not affecting the general fund right now to so we can evaluate that program and another program that's provided by CDBG, a boost program, and to see what the most cost-effective way is to provide that services and also with an outside uh nonprofit provider that we're also uh evaluating.

So uh it's giving us a little extra runway to figure out uh how to how to provide that service in the most cost-effective manner.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I do get a little nervous when I see kind of extensions of one-time funding, you know, year by year continuations of some of these programs at the same time as we're making permanent service cuts.

So I want to make sure that we're balancing those, you know, where possible, seeing if maybe it is possible to lean more into preserving service that is intended to be ongoing as opposed to just you know perpetuating existing programs out a single year.

Agree.

Yeah, absolutely.

If we if we continue to do that, that's what causes us to have a structural deficit.

Thank you.

And then one final question for Rachel.

I see in the uh summary slide uh that we are targeting completion of implementation of the code enforcement operational assessment transformation work plan.

And we've heard a lot about this one.

I know if we look at the metrics from the CSA code enforcement is one that has struggled, I think, relative to some of the others, in terms of on-time resolutions in terms of favorable outcomes here.

Um we've heard a lot uh over the past year about uh kind of this work plan.

I'm curious if you could speak just briefly into what scope of work we're hoping to with this line item around completing implementation of that work plan.

Thank you for the question.

So, as we just did provide an annual report at NSC, which highlighted um a number of initiatives that we've been able to complete this year as part of that work plan.

Um, we definitely have uh several items that um are near completion and and others that will remain ongoing.

Um, so going into the next fiscal year, we're currently working on um developing that work plan coming into next fiscal fiscal year.

So you'll see a continuation of many of those initiatives that are already underway, such as the chronic um offender resolution enforcement program, expanding our enhanced vacant building instortment program in the downtown, our escalating enforcement policy that staff is working towards you know, looking at um best management practices going into uh next fiscal year as well as making sure that we're uh managing to that process so that staff is um working through the cases much much more efficiently, and then also um we'll be we're onboarding actually today is their first day, our community engagement supervisor.

Um, and so a lot of our work next year will um shift some of the focus to our customers um internally and externally to improve um our service delivery to them and meet their um specific needs that we haven't been able to um get uh you know do as well in the past.

Um, and so that's that will be the majority of the focus for next year.

Thank you for that overview.

I know this is a complicated and challenging area, you know, code perennially understaffed, uh so I appreciate you providing the overview.

Um that's all my questions for this area.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let's go to Council Member Kamei.

Thank you so much for all your work.

This is really a critical uh CSA.

Not that the others aren't, but um I agree with council member uh Ortiz that you know this touches our most vulnerable communities.

So uh thank you for all your work.

Uh I'm gonna spend my time talking about the contingency plan.

As the liaison to the library and education uh commission, the library is gonna get hit the hardest.

You know, we we get to we are uh um target to have 25.7 FTEs eliminated that's half of what is needed in terms of the dollar the um the FTEs in that area, um and I think and I think that we can let that happen, and so you know I want to encourage my colleagues to think about uh June and you know what are we doing because uh council member Cohen uh was current is correct.

We haven't had uh you know a chance to really talk about it and talk about what is at stake, and if you go to our attachment E, it's very clear what's at stake.

You know, I know we're gonna get into public safety later on, but you know, the uh the police department has done quite a bit with the automated license plate readers.

I mean, it's been a tool that they've been able to use that's gonna be uh you know, um reduced.

Uh other positions are also reduced.

And so I think that uh we need to, and I want to thank staff for being very thoughtful in terms of bringing this contingency plan, but it's also really real that if it, you know, I mean, if things don't turn our way, it's not gonna be good.

I think that you know, libraries are an area that uh, you know, for those who um don't have access to a lot of books at home, uh really need it, you know, places where people can feel safe and um and learn uh I think that we provide a tremendous service by having Sunday library hours, and I don't want to see that eliminated.

Same thing with all of the different areas um that that we provide.

PRNS provides so many different uh programs that will also need to be eliminated.

So I think that we need to talk about it.

We need to make it real, not just for ourselves, but for our community.

Uh we definitely don't want to reduce ours or eliminate the California room, but it gets worse.

It really gets worse.

So I think that we need to um think about what each and every one of us, here today or out there listening, uh, is gonna do.

So um I I certainly want to encourage everyone to think about revenue generation.

This is a way of generating that revenue.

I would go further and say, hey, we need to other sort of pathways for revenue generation.

And uh everyone knows my issue with uh large oversized vehicles of any type.

And I would say, hey, you know, I'm gonna look to the city attorney to see how we can increase citations, especially when they're repeated or what have you, uh, in certain areas.

I don't know why I have trucks in my area, but I have a lot of trucks in my area that behave badly or the people behave badly and put them in where they're not supposed to.

Uh, and you know, like I know that last year we talked about including uh increasing code enforcement fines.

I would say make it hurt, because you know, I think that we have been very, very lenient.

Uh, and so I know we're gonna talk about um uh fees and charges later on, but I also think that we need to find ways to increase revenue to be able to pay for the enforcement that is needed out there.

So um, you know, and and and just kind of thinking about, well, you know, what other ways can we generate revenue?

You know, I really love the the other day when we talked about co-location and and what are the things that we can do in some of our spaces.

Uh we have uh the ability to uh think about how we can do things differently, and so um this revenue generation I think is something that we need to spend more time on because as I look at what's gonna happen if uh if measure A doesn't pass, it's not gonna be good.

And like I said, the brunt of it is gonna be at the library, and um I know that I will do everything I can to um uh avoid that.

Um, in terms of the senior services, I know John you talked about you know the uh the preschool the um uh day daycare and uh eliminating that that makes a lot of sense to me.

But I also think that we have an aging population, and as we have more and more seniors, I know in my district I have so many seniors who are homebound, and I think that uh it is something that we need to think about as our community, the senior community needs us as well.

So I would agree with uh uh Vice Mayor Foley in terms of finding ways to uh work together as our um population um uh gets older.

So I don't have great answers other than you know encouraging people to do something about June.

And uh and I think that it it's gonna take all of us, it really is.

I don't think that people are paying as much attention and and and we need definitely uh to let people know about what is at stake because if you look at the contingency plan, there is a lot at stake.

So I um I just wanna highlight that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, so I'm gonna bounce around a little bit.

I'll start with you, Eric, if that's okay.

Um, so uh I'm curious about our work around the arena hotel on the Alameda.

You've laid out some plans there, making sure that we are fully resourced and staffed to continue that work um through the development phase.

Can you comment on that for us and talk about a little bit of the transition there?

Yes, thank you, Councilman.

So on the arena hotel, so the Rita Hotel will continue to operate on the new partnership with the housing authority to transition more individuals into permanent housing, so it's it's on a track to just speed up the population turnover at the site.

Simultaneously is that transition is occurring.

We just completed the RFP process.

We'll be announcing awards later this week for a new developer at the site and have alerted HCD about the new developer.

They should get back to us by next week or the end of this month at the latest on approval for that new redeveloper for the site.

That redevelopment is gonna take two paths given that we have a short time window of five years or less to get the redevelopment going.

It'll look at potential conversion of the site as is to SROs to meet our requirements regarding the provision of permit supportive housing units at the site, and then in the back lot behind it, look to do more of a mixed income tower.

Uh so that was one of the proposals for marketing conversations through the RP process.

So the entire campus site will get much more of a mixed income redevelopment at it.

And the work just coming back briefly to the housing authority partnership by transitioning more individuals through the site, we're gonna get a lot more throughput, a lot more change.

And this stays as we've seen with the model at Pacific Mortar Inn, the time period for stays at arena will be shortened to four to six months.

So very short with a lot of changeover, creating more opportunity that as we do the rehab, we'll be able to kind of control inflows and outflows of the population.

Okay, so switching to the development cycle on that, just curious.

Um, you know, we're about ready to start digging a tunnel, you know, by sort of coordinated with the timing you just laid out, like in 2028 for BART, and it's within that, you know, sort of area of around Deerodon.

Are we coordinating well with BART Silicon Valley and and that group to make sure that we can build what we actually intend to build?

Yes, and that's part of the consideration is that went into the RFP is looking looking to use stacked modular or mass timber type product that's lighter and weight that allows for higher density without having the impact on total weight of the project that would impact sort of that VTA line going off underneath the bit.

So we incorporated that into our considerations as we're working in partnership with BART and VTA.

Okay, so just getting back to the original question, which is we are staffed and ready to go on all of this you've just laid out.

Um let me switch to larger encampments.

This may um involve others.

I want to pick up on what my colleague Peter Ortiz was asking.

I think, you know, by geography and proximity or by the physical layout of some of our districts, some are more attractive than others for where some of our unhoused will go.

Um I understand we sort of have made a very clear statement and you know, budget di budget uh writings to date about the end of larger encampments, but are we resourced and staffed up to make sure that we are um you know protecting especially those areas where we've you know cleared larger encampments before and maybe um said a little bit differently, we have Caltrans, who is right now uh abating all along 280, for example.

So while we've been asking our other partners in this community to be helpful in this regard, I'm hoping that this is not hurtful to us in our efforts.

So can we talk about that a little bit and are we resourced to be able to continue to be proactive in this way?

Sure.

Um so first of all, uh being down on the waterways, we added more abatement teams.

So we currently have five teams that do abatements.

That'll go down to three teams, but we'll still have three teams.

Um, and then those that were doing those waterway abatements shift into the no encampment zones, so they're meant to help protect those areas.

Now I'll just caveat that with saying we've been struggling with some of these no encampment zones, partly because we're focused more on abatement and and less so on the no encampment zones.

But um, you know, this has been an experiment for us.

There's not many cities that are doing this.

In fact, Caltrans is doing it because we did the experiment, and they said, okay, maybe we'll try it.

But as you heard Councilmember Ortiz talking earlier about some of the impacts he's seeing, it's coming from things like that as well, right?

They're dispersed and then they're trying their own version of a no encampment zone, keeping them out of those spaces, but that forces them out onto the street of the neighborhood, which is a whole different problem set to try to resolve.

And it's not as easy because just a person walking around, you know, pushing a shopping cart or something like that is not is doesn't require an abatement.

That's not uh that's not an encampment.

Um that's just an individual walking around.

So this is a challenge for us as a city to try to resolve.

I don't have great answers for you on how we can make all that work, but we will have more people focused on the no encampment zones that we did set up uh going into the next fiscal year.

Great.

I I mean I would just say sort of anecdotally that you know, since Coyote um has been abated, we've had more reports of private property encroachment.

Um, so I know we're working on something with the Three Creeks Trail, for example, to get rights of entry signed off by all private property owners on Three Creeks Trail.

I just think we got to work creatively on how we you know continue to, you know, especially work with our private property owners.

Um, all right.

I'm uh running against the clock here, a couple of other things.

So just comment on the California room.

I just want to, you know, thank my colleagues for asking uh and making creative suggestions.

Um, one of the things my council colleague Tordillas brought up is partnerships.

I'd like to take that maybe a little step further.

I agree with all of that, but the other partnership I'm thinking of is look, my family is an underwriter of the California room, and one of the things that's you know, it's sort of built has been built on contributed revenue over the years, and how we don't have a foundation that specifically helps to support that facility and how we're relying on staffing it with city general fund resources seems to me like a missed opportunity.

Um as we approach the 250th celebration of the city of San Jose in 2027, it almost feels like a slap in the face to be cutting the availability of the California room.

Um having said that, I also think it's a little slap in the face that collectively our community hasn't come forward to figure out a way to support that room in a more robust kind of belt and suspenders way.

So as we have colleagues in the audience today from History San Jose, PAC SJ, and you know, likely others, I think it's gonna be really important that part of this partnership work is how can we do more than just save it for this year?

Let's save it for the future and build upon what we've already set forward there.

And that could include partners at SJSU.

We got all kinds of grant writers in all of those organizations.

I can't imagine we couldn't put together a powerful program around why it would be important to invest in and sustain the California room at the Martin Luther King Library.

So I'll get off the soapbox there, but I want us to be thinking long-term creatively, not just short term, how we're gonna fill the hole.

Um I like the fact that we have 50,000 in the budget for park concerns into 311.

What worries me, though, is our responsiveness to being able to react to that and whether we are sort of staffed to be able to take what we know is gonna be more direct input.

And let me just give a couple of examples.

Um, you know, this weekend, the busiest day of the Rose Gardens year, the gate to the main entry to the beautiful Rose Garden, which is on the top five list of what to do in San Jose on every search engine you go to, and the gate is locked.

So, you know, to me that's a no-brainer that we gotta be prepared.

It's like locking the front door at the Super Bowl.

We gotta be better prepared to handle that.

So is you know our community's uh answer?

There, their only call can be to me, in a text or a phone call, or to the 311 if that's what we're encouraging.

Is that the kind of thing that we hope to prevent by having uh park concerns kind of applied into 311 app?

Yeah, no, that's news to me sitting here.

Um I wasn't aware uh that that happened.

That's typically done by contract, um so we'd have to look into what what mistake was made, you know, unlocking and locking bathrooms and gates and things like that tends not to be staff uh direct staff work.

But certainly we would want to avoid those things in general.

Um we are excited about uh park maintenance being in 311.

This is something we've been trying for years.

I don't know that we can handle the volume that comes out of it.

Um that's something we're gonna find out.

What we do know, as we talked with you about a study session not too long ago, we're not resources in the park system to maintain them in the way people would like, the way our public will like or the way you would like, or even the way we would like.

So if there's suddenly a big jump in volume, are we in a position to handle that?

We aren't.

Um I will point out we did uh put recently um uh encampment management on there.

So if you look on the 311 app now, we just put it on the last week or two.

There's a button there for that.

We'll be looking at those statistics as well.

Do we will we get overwhelmed or not?

We don't know.

Um, but the idea is to have it as easy as possible for people to report things.

In my mind, at least that if if that volume goes up in an unexpected way, at least it's pointing out to us that there's even more to this than we realize, um, and there's a bigger conversation to have if it's overwhelming.

Yeah, I mean, I just see some improvements to staffing at Appy Hollow, Prush Park, and others, and you know, not that we're um competing, but I'm gonna say it out loud.

We have 4,000 people who come to the Rose Garden on a weekend, and I have to do a specific BD to get a park ranger and and a rec leader on the weekends, and clearly something happened this weekend where a gate doesn't get open, but the reality is is that we have a gem there that is a regional draw.

We had 225 volunteers to show up for trimming the rose bushes in preparation for Mother's Day graduation season and prom season.

And, you know, I ask people to put up their hands, where are they from?

There's 40% of these people that are coming from outside the city of San Jose to give back to our rose Garden park.

So I I'd like us to be thinking a little differently around the prioritization of the attraction of the Rose Garden because it is right up there on the same list as the Winchester Mystery House and you know, all the others that you can think of.

So I'll just leave it at that, but thank you very much.

Councilmember, if I can just comment on the ones that you uh used as examples, all of those drive a lot of revenue.

And those so those additions are all revenue based.

They're no that's not general fund new money or anything.

It's you raise the ticket price, those kind of things is a lot harder to generate money out of the rose garden.

It's it's more of an open public park.

There are some permits and things like that, but um it's not going to generate the kind of revenue the zoo would or places like that.

I hear you about that, but I would just say that you know, we've been talking about doing something in that regard around supporting the foundation with a QR code.

When we have 4,000 people that come through there with smiles on their faces, there's an opportunity to capture some revenue that could go back into the work that's happening at the Rose Garden through a foundation of some sort.

Thank you, John.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let's go now to Councilmember Campos.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you uh to all my colleagues for the conversation this morning.

I am happy to hear that the study session has everyone's attention, and especially on the contingency plan, because really that's that's where I'm seeing some of the most severe and painful cuts in our city.

And so I'm glad that we're being um, you know, just very clear-eyed uh about where we're at.

Um, I wanted to um share in the reflection that council member Cohen mentioned about when we're looking at these kinds of cuts, how we're also looking at preserving the what's being cut for the future, because uh a lot of the really important work in our community that we might be cutting this year needs to have a way for us to bring it back.

I think that uh during the recession, there were a lot of programs cuts that we have yet to see come back, and so um, you know, the next CSA that we're gonna hear about is about public safety, and as we work to intervene and prevent youth violence, this warrants more resources, not less.

Um, Vice Mayor Foley raised questions about the proposed cuts to the uh PRS pre-K program, and I agree with her comments that we should be learning about what's working and what's not.

And so, um the fact of the matter is with our TK program coming online, it is raising some real concerns for families being able to access um care for their families.

For those of you who don't know, the TK program is not guaranteed full day because it is school district by school district operated, but parents need choice, especially working parents, and we know that in the ages of zero to three, that's where the least amount of options are currently available, and so as we look at potentially making these cuts in our preschool program, we should think about how we can preserve the spaces so that child care isn't more expensive in a year or two, because we um couldn't afford to keep it this year, but the PRS model um can better serve the needs of our families if we design it that way.

Right now, what it's demonstrating is that it's not meeting the needs of the families, who it intends to serve, and so how can we create a better ad to the ecosystem in this year as we are looking at uh this potential cut because child care is critical if we want to make San Jose more affordable, which is very important to our residents and our families.

And speaking of affordability, um, it makes sense to be talking about how we're measuring and addressing homelessness because when we are not looking at the fact that our state city is still the number one city in America for youth homelessness year after year, that is what we should all be committed to addressing.

And especially when our MBAs from our youth commission and our senior commission are both noting housing as uh part of their top three concerns for the youth uh priority.

It is number two affordability, homelessness, and housing and cons uh housing insecurity for our seniors, it's priority two, safe and affordable housing.

And so we're hearing a lot of conversation about how we're managing visible homelessness, but we're not talking about how we're actually working to solve and end youth homelessness.

Our youth are asking for more investment in workforce development programs, not less.

And so we need to think about how we are investing in the social infrastructure that is going to help put people out of poverty, that is going to help uplift our neighborhoods, that is going to help keep our neighborhoods safe and secure for future generations.

And so, with that, I do have a few questions to staff because in the March budget message, um, there was an amendment to include the following direction to the extent feasible programs such as the following should be prioritized.

Library hours and investments, high impact youth serving programs such as ROC, after school, uh recreation camps, Saturday nights, the best program.

So, can staff please explain why the budget includes cuts to these high impact youth serving programs, including reducing the best grant funding by 200,000.

Sure, thanks.

Um, so with uh with pre-K, we don't see that as a high impact service.

This is a half day four days a week.

The best program?

I thought you were asking about all the ones you were talking about.

Just specifically about the best.

So best that's not uh that's really not much of a cut.

Um, it's the elimination of our we have a emergency fund uh that we use for crisis management when we have to respond to a crisis.

That's for example, say uh a young person is shot and killed.

Um, we want to mobilize the neighborhood around that issue and try to bring the temperature down, uh, particularly if we're worried about things like retaliation.

Um, however, that doesn't happen every day, thankfully, or even every month, thankfully, but it's a fund that we can let go of as a budget cut because if something comes up, we know we can work with the budget office to make sure we have funding to support the neighborhood in that crisis.

Um, and then that's offset because we shifted uh out of the beautiful SJ optimization uh that I've been talking about, we shifted a community coordinator over to youth intervention services to help with the safe school campus initiative.

So that's an investment in uh that group versus a reduction.

Okay, and on the on the note of other programs that you know we're we're talking about all of program, and I'm curious to hear from Eric if staff can quantify a return on investment from the OLIF program.

Do we have concrete evidence, not just anecdotes, that the all of program is helping fill vacant storefronts, materially reduced crime rates, or increase the city revenue in any way?

So I'll speak thank you, Councilman.

I'll speak to briefly about the OLIF program.

I think uh, you if you want to start.

Okay, yeah.

And then I'll about the program.

So overall Olive was the goal was intended to sort of keep vehicles in motion.

Um that was the sort of intended outcome, and on that matter of keeping vehicles in motion, it has successfully achieved that.

We're working with the housing department is working with the Department of Transportation to better strategize around how do we connect our outreach workers to that work in order to improve transitions of more individuals into shelter and to housing, and then I'll pass it off to the Yeah, I was I was gonna say after last week's um study session, I know DOT is working on an info memo to talk about all of and then kind of the pivot to the OCEP program.

Um, but DOT is here for any specifical programmatic questions about operations.

I will say from an economic development's perspective, we haven't been able to quantify it.

I would say the all the program was pretty critical in us um not only return retaining a handful of of fairly big industrial businesses within the city of San Jose that were contemplating leaving, but also helping expand a number of them who had um expansion opportunities, and we're pretty close to pulling the trigger on additional square footage outside the city.

Um but because we were able to kind of clear some of those areas and improve safety in some of the industrial areas, chose to ultimately expand here, which was pretty important, but we haven't been able to quantify that yet from like an actual uh revenue or growth perspective yet.

Thank you, Lee.

I appreciate that response in Eric as well.

Um, we have only been funding the Children Youth Master Plan for a year, and we're choosing to cut it.

And some may say that we don't have enough data to demonstrate its success, but we also don't have enough data to demonstrate the success of Olive.

And so I know that our residents want to see the Children Youth Master Plan funded at a million dollars to demonstrate our commitment to our future, and it's it's important that we are you know exercising the values of equity and how we are moving forward our budget because it really is um important that we are looking at how the next generation of San Joseans are going to be living if we are not investing in what they need today, and so I uh have one more question for staff.

Um, how much is proposed for homelessness prevention and how does that compare to investments in previous years?

So thank you, Councilman, for the question.

For homelessness investment, what's proposed is just a percentage, which is 10 percent of current measure E revenues, which is about 4.5 million in the current proposed budget.

So that fluctuates based on the performance of the overall measure E program.

There is also as part of the work we're doing with the county to collaborate on a series of series of homelessness-related initiatives, including prevention.

We're looking at ways to uh identify additional funding to go into the system.

Well, that's part and parcel to the conversation around the county also stepping in to take over some operations at two of our sides, so we have sort of a trade-off of increased investment on the prevention side and some decreased uh cost in our overall shelter operations.

So combined, we will look to likely be well above that existing budgeted 4.5 million uh by the end of the year as we're moving forward with this collaboration with the county.

Thank you, Eric.

I appreciate that.

And I'll just wrap up again with this because I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best public investments we can make are those that we're making early on to support people as they develop as they grow in our city.

So I I hope that my colleagues are hearing the the really difficult reality that we have to face, and the fact that those who have been most under-resourced will bear the brunt of the contingency plan if that's where we have to go.

But we really shouldn't be in a contingency place in the first place where we're having to look at these difficult cuts.

Those are the core services that matter to our residents, our community members, our our educators, um, and so it we have some some difficult uh questions to ask ourselves.

Thank you.

Thanks, council member.

I appreciate your comments.

I do want to turn to our city manager to uh maybe just clarify for the record a few points on children youth master.

Yeah, I just want to make sure, just so there's no confusion.

When we originally uh when the framework for the children youth master plan came out, we used um ARPA funding.

Um, how much was that?

About a million dollars, correct?

If I by memory's correct, yes, a million dollars.

1.2.

What?

1.2 million.

Oh, 1.2 million, a little bit more than that.

And we carried that money over um to do some of these demonstration sites and things like that this last year, and this year our proposal is to invest another 500,000.

Unfortunately, um, there is no one, there is no ongoing funding for the children and youth master plan.

This has always been one-time funded, and the goal in the future would be to get some sort of ongoing uh money, so it's sustainable, but it keeps each year because it's one-time funding, it keeps dropping out, and then we have to re-add it.

Um so I just want to make sure that people understand how that funding has worked.

Um, but you know, I think the goal in the future is to get some sort of ongoing funding source in there.

Jennifer, if I could just clarify my intention with that comment, because I appreciate your um point of information.

The the value that I was suggesting is exactly that.

We are having to fight every year to keep children youth master plan funded at a million dollars.

There are other parts that we are funding through our general fund dollars that we are not blinking an eye about, and so that's what I'm asking my colleagues to consider.

Yes, thank you.

Very well uh well said and understand.

Okay, thank you both.

Um, it is it is a good note though that when we create a new framework, if the council adopts a framework without any commitment of ongoing funding, that puts us in this position every year.

Um I'm glad we have 500,000 currently in this budget and do hope that we can grow that in the future, including with philanthropic dollars.

Um, other points.

Uh I have a couple of questions.

Also, just note I I appreciate colleagues' advocacy and that we're in a tough budget position.

Um I will note when we did priority setting early in the year, I did ask colleagues to identify explicit trade-offs and cuts that they would be willing to make.

And I was uh had a very short list, not sure there was anything on it.

So I know it's not never a fun conversation, but for those who would like to see the budget restructured, I'd like to ask um colleagues to actually put that out explicitly and be very clear about what they uh want to drop from the budget.

Um in terms of a couple of topics covered in the CSA, and Eric, can I start with you on interim housing?

I understand we're making cuts across the board.

I was personally disappointed to see the proposed cut to our navigation hub at Taylor Street, though I understand it, enables us to realize a little over one million dollars in ongoing operating costs, uh, which means we don't have to make cuts elsewhere.

So that's an explicit trade-off.

Can you just share with us though?

And I think it's important for the public because we ran this experiment.

This was our first safe sleeping site slash navigation hub.

Can you share a little bit about how the site actually performed in terms of number of people who pass through the site, average length of stay, and what we've what we've learned and whether or not this would be a tool that we might use again because we built some infrastructure out there.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, for the question.

So overall, the site performed well with as in its intended use as a navigation hub, which means temporary stays.

So during the period of operations, and it'll still operate through December, but to date, over 200 in individuals transitioned through the site.

A lot of those came from our big encampment clearings at Columbus Park, uh now at Coyote, uh a few from Coyote Meadows, but also a lot within our downtown uh clearing as well.

So it got a lot of turnover and transition a fair amount of individuals from the navigation hub to the motels and our interim housing sites.

The capital costs for building out the site were more than anticipated.

This probably was as we had said at the outset and looking at different models to pilot with safe sleeping being one a paid parking lot probably would be more optimal.

Um, but nonetheless, we were able to kind of build out the site and bring some permanent power through our partnership with Mount Lush and Public Works that's gonna allow for this site to have an intended useful purpose uh going forward after we demobilize the safe sleeping site.

In addition, the average stays were about three to four weeks, so we got really good turn.

So with over 200 individuals at the bed, even though our per-bed supportive services cost was about on par with similarly size sites, the per head costs were substantially less because we were able to mobilize a lot of people through the site and transition them into other uh motel or tiny home beds within uh the shelter portfolio, okay.

Okay.

So the operating costs are comparable, you said, to our other interim sites.

On a per bed as in bed basis, on a per head as how many people use that bed much more efficient.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, I mean, if anything, we need more capacity because we see and we've heard from other colleagues, we've still got people without anywhere to go who are walking through neighborhoods, impacting residents, small businesses, and themselves are suffering.

So it is disappointing to see a space that on an operating basis is certainly not any more expensive that um is is going to it's it looks like if if the proposals adopted, not be in operation for the coming fiscal year.

But it does sound like when open it served its purpose, and over 200 people move through.

So can you speak?

Uh we've talked a lot about throughput.

Unfortunately, we do know that we don't have the resources to have a city operated bed for lack of a better term.

We know we have safe parking, safe sleeping, motels, modular, et cetera, but we don't have enough resources to have a city-run bed for every single person who needs one.

What kind of throughput trends are you seeing?

So the throughput trends, particularly for the navigation hub were excellent.

Uh again, as I mentioned, over 200.

As we're seeing throughput throughout the other parts of the system, there are certainly some challenges.

Uh, some of those challenges include individuals who are at the motels who don't want to transition to a tiny home, folks who are at tiny homes that don't want to transition to permanent housing.

So we're gonna have to make some policy decisions, and that's part of the work that's captured in our focus area problem set as we look to standardize and optimize the operations of the system.

We're also gonna have to look at ways in which to push more individuals in through that transition.

Yeah, thanks.

Can you share?

So, when so you just described that we have folks in the interim system in a um modular tiny home, if you will, um a quick build unit or a motel converted motel room who do not want to graduate to permanent housing when it's available.

Can you tell us a little more about that phenomenon and what's driving it?

Yeah, just up to maybe 20% of individuals are refusing that transition to permanent housing.

This is not just a city problem.

Uh counties experiencing similar challenges.

That transition to permanent housing also comes with you know paying rent and also needing to abide by some of the rules within a permanent housing.

And so we're looking at and exploring what are some of the more creative ways we can better either prepare, incentivize, or to push individuals to taking that permanent housing option because the system is designed for temporary stays.

The navigation hub is very much at the other end of that, like very high velocity turnover.

PMI arena will experience similar velocity turnovers, and if individuals are staying within the system, it is prohibiting other individuals from taking up that bed.

Yeah, and I know something Sacramento's exploring that we're also going to at least take a look at.

Is the notion that at some point if permanent housing is available and you're not taking it, is it possible for us to charge rent?

Are there other mechanisms we have or other?

I mean, I guess we could exit someone from the site, which is not ideal.

We don't want people back out on the streets, but obviously the system is designed for throughput.

Sounds like 80% of the folks are willing to do that, but any other levers we have in those cases?

So we're gonna explore some other policy considerations and working with our service providers on a standardizing sort of document for all operations throughout what is effectively a public housing portfolio throughout the system, 22 sites over 2200 beds, over 1800 units.

It's a big system, so it has to have velocity of turn.

And if we're not able to do that, then we have to figure out what are the three areas of change we can make.

One policy change uh as an option of last resort, exiting individuals from the program who turn down their option to move through the system.

Two, what are the areas of support and services that we can expand or provide to ensure that they are ready for the moves?

Maybe that's clarity in some of our rules and regulations, maybe that's added services.

We're gonna explore some options there.

Then, three, in addition to policy changes and programmatic changes, where are we ensuring we're messaging from the start in terms of expectation setting for the utilization of the site as just as it was intended, which is interim.

This is temporary, you have to move on.

You're taking the bet of someone else.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you, Eric.

Um Jim, let me turn to you quickly here.

Uh the proposed budget estimates 14.2 million in ongoing savings.

Uh, the largest of which comes from strengthening our partnership with the county, which has agreed to cover the cost of operating two interim housing sites as we shift the system into coordinated entry.

And then in addition, I don't think this is captured, but I'll let you answer this.

Um the state is actively debating hap round seven at I believe the assembly came in at 500 million.

Big city mayors were advocating for one billion, which is where the allocation has been the last six years, I believe.

Uh well, actually, last year it was zeroed out, but um can you just give us an update on both the county partnership in terms of what's reflected in the budget there, and then uh what if any what whether or not those HAP dollars are included?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Mayor.

Uh yeah, so I think the um the the conversation with the county is on ongoing for the interim house.

We don't have an agreement yet, but we do expect to bring that forward uh uh later on in the fiscal year.

I'll uh we can speak to more to that.

For the HAP seven, you are correct, that is not currently in our interim housing forecast.

Um, you know, to the extent that that you know comes in, um, we will be including that and how our interim forecast works for our interim housing forecast works is that we look at any funding source that we think that we can count on, that's what first funds our interim housing program.

Uh, and so really the general fund contribution is the funding of the last resort.

So I do expect us to continue to advocate pretty strongly for the HAP continuation.

That's a critical funding source for us, not just for interim housing, but some for some of our outreach services too.

Um, so we're definitely expecting some some strong advocacy there.

Great.

Well, that's just a reminder for colleagues.

Two opportunities to advocate one to our partners at the county around coordinated entry, better integrating our systems and picking up those savings and the county support and then advocating to our state leaders for HAP dollars, which as you all know are the flexible dollars we've been getting virtually every year that's helped us to build and operate interim solutions and helped reduce the impact on our budget because we know our state government has a responsibility to play along with the city and county in addressing this crisis of homelessness.

Uh, so I just want to encourage colleagues to do some of that advocacy.

And then just quickly, John Cicerelli, just shifting to you quickly on BSJ optimization.

Can you just walk us through in a little more?

I think you you spoke to this, but wanted to ask how you uh determined which abatement resources could be shifted while ensuring that we have enough operational capacity to respond to council directed priorities, including the no encampment zones we've established and our obligations along the waterways.

Sure.

Um so the main source of the shifting comes from reducing from five abatement teams to three.

Um those were waterway abatement teams, and so we're we're moving away from that work in as a general rule, so that gives us the opportunity to redistribute.

Um we're also able to uh redistribute some folks into the illegal dumping work.

Um, in fact, we've got some MBAs about graffiti and blight, um, that you guys can read where we're talking about some other pilot programs, including looking at multifamily um and things like that um uh multifamily sites to uh to work closer with.

Um we added a person uh more specifically to focus on the personal property issue and impounding that property and returning that property as a priority.

And uh as I mentioned earlier, we were able to actually help our youth intervention services by shifting a person over there.

So you could see we're moving around 1520 FTEs.

A lot of that, the most of that is focused on the no encampment zones.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sounds good.

And then finally, just on our Vs.

So I do think we made quite a bit of progress last year on RVs.

We saw the number of oversized vehicles go down by about 50 percent in a year, which is an impressive impact.

It's, as we all know, a major driver of resident uh concerns around safety and cleanliness on our streets, and we still have a long way to go with with many hundred oversized vehicles out in our neighborhoods.

So as you update the operating model, can you just comment a little bit on how you all are thinking about vehicles that are coming into compliance and how long how often they're circulating, whether or not they're simply um, you know, are we collecting data on repeat engagements?

And how do we understand if conditions on our streets are improving rather than just shuffling vehicles around?

I there's a anyway.

That's just a little bit for you, Rick.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh great questions all.

Uh afternoon.

Good morning, everyone.

Rick Scott assistant director DOT.

Uh, what we found, kind of as Lee had mentioned when this all of program uh initiated.

We had a lot of long-standing kind of long stretches of roadway that were just kind of unusable to our public.

Um so over the last year and a half or so, most of those have been disrupted.

And what we're seeing is a little bit of a change in behavior, and as a result, we're kind of changing our strategy.

And that's I think what you're referring to with OSIP and others have mentioned as well.

Um, we have more vehicles moving more frequently, uh, and we also are able to get out there more often and respond more quickly instead of an annual data set that we collect.

So, what we're learning uh as we get to these areas is that the majority of vehicles, once we mark them, uh move and they move within compliance so that they leave the area.

Uh we don't know exactly where they go, but they do kind of leave that immediate vicinity.

Um, but we have a lot to learn.

This program has only really been in in process since February, so that's kind of a relatively new program in that time.

We've uh we've investigated about 1,200 vehicles and uh resulted, I think in about 55 toes.

Um so it is promising, and we're sort of beginning to shift our our priority to more of a reactive, uh not so much reactive, but kind of a more nimble approach with the OSA program and fewer larger all of engagements.

Well, that's progress.

Thanks, Rick.

Okay, appreciate the update.

Thank you.

All right.

That concludes the discussion around neighborhood services, at least for now.

I know we will come back to many of these topics as our budget process progresses.

Why don't we do this?

Um, I want to thank staff.

Let's go on to public safety and we'll get the presentation.

I don't know how much council discussion we'll get to.

I do want to save the last 15 minutes or so of this segment for public comment because we've had folks who have been waiting patiently.

So let's let's go ahead and transition.

Thank you all very much.

We'll move on to public safety and at least get the presentation.

Um, so I think that's a good one.

Good morning.

Uh good morning.

Uh I'm Paul Joseph, Chief of Police.

I'm joined here uh by the fire chief Robert Sopian and the director of the Office of Emergency Management, Ray Reardon, and also representing, although I don't see him, the independent police auditor, Eddie Aubrey, as part of the public safety CSA.

The uh the four the four different uh elements of the CSA are responsible.

The fire department is responsible for emergency response and fire prevention.

Uh the police department primarily responds to calls for service and patrol support.

Uh we work crime prevention and community education.

We provide investigative services and regulatory services to the city.

The Office of Emergency Management is responsible for citywide emergency management and independent police auditor provides independent police oversight.

The program samples, you can see there are varied.

If you'd like me, I can go through them, but I think they're in the packet that you have.

Would you like me to tick them all off here?

I know you kind of want probably have more time for questions rather than me reading off this PowerPoint.

Yeah, I think we can read the PowerPoint if you want to share any kind of general trends, insights, things you want to highlight, feel free.

Okay.

These are just these are some of the uh services, the programs that the various departments provide to the city.

Go ahead and click.

Very important, obviously, is our our dashboard on how we're doing, how we're performing in these various areas.

Uh the fire department is looking at their response responses, response times, the quality of their fire protection and prevention, which is which is showing improvement.

Um similarly for the police department are um response times to various emergencies, which is holding steady, I'll say, not quite where we'd like it to be in terms of time, but uh not declining either.

Um in a positive sense, the public surveys indicate that our community does feel that the quality of police protection is good and increasing.

Um, and then for resident, uh the office of emergency management measures, the resident household emergency preparedness.

How many people are prepared to in their own home to respond to some sort of uh you know earthquake or large disaster?

Um the various adopted the the adopted and versus forecast budgets uh as you see here.

Uh there's decreases in several of them, uh the independent police auditors staying relatively the same.

And for us, there's sort of some offsetting costs.

Go ahead.

Uh our long-term goals is that the San Jose residents live in a community with responsive emergency services, safe streets and roads.

Um there's there's four problem areas emergency and crisis response uh for both police and fire, and you know, we're we're both lean, you know, staffed with lean numbers of persons.

Uh high call volumes cause both police and fire to really um you know struggle to be as responsive as we'd like, but I think both departments obviously are doing a tremendous job with with what we've got.

Um crime reduction.

I'm proud to say that our crime stats are definitely trending in the right direction with a few exceptions, and I think some of those exceptions have more to do with the consequences for an arrest rather than whether or not we're actually making those arrests.

Um youth violence prevention and intervention.

Um there's some limited coordination across schools, the CBOs and public safety agencies, which could sometimes delay our identification of at-risk youth, but again, I think this is an area of emphasis for the city overall, and we do a good job here.

And then finally, traffic safety, which again is sort of a combination of enforcement, education, and uh engineering.

So our priorities in our service delivery for us is respond to calls for service of essential emergency services in a safe, efficient manner, continue a regional all hazard emergency management planning training and exercises, audit police misconduct complaints to ensure we have a good process in place, effectively investigating crimes and prosecuting suspects when we make arrests, using technology wherever possible, and then conducting after action reviews of major events.

So the various proposals here, we're the one large ask that we're making uh we think ultimately is going to be a cost savings.

We're seeking some software that's gonna allow us to write reports not only quicker but more thoroughly and more uh comprehensively, and we think that ultimately that's gonna result in a savings to the city, although there's some capital outlay at the beginning.

We spend a tremendous amount of time writing reports.

It's it's a necessary and uh unavoidable part of the policing process, but we believe if we can do it more quickly, that we'll save a lot of overtime.

Um we're reducing some units, reducing some positions in units that are that these positions are currently unstaffed at the present time.

Um we had hoped to open our training center sometime this year.

It's almost completed, uh, but oh uh deferring the opening of that training center will save us significant amount of money this year.

Um similarly, the fire station is uh gonna delay opening a new firehouse and reconfigure some of their wildland engine staffing um and cut some emergency medical service staffing and then for uh the Office of Emergency Management not purchase some software that they were hoping to buy if that if that's correct, Ray.

Okay, thank you.

So in summary, we want to obviously continue our high-level uh fire suppression rescue, emergency medical and other services, uh, continue maintaining the safety of our residents by keeping crime low, um, continue to provide quality police response to calls for service, maintain our visible patrol, continue projects that address the direct needs of the public after a disaster, improve our support for the most vulnerable populations, and work with our volunteers like our CERT folks and continue to provide civilian oversight of the police misconduct complaint process to ensure that it's thorough, fair, and objective.

The outcomes ultimately are safer San Jose, resilient communities that are prepared for emergencies, and uh that's that's a high level view, obviously, and I'm sure that uh I know that you've all studied this uh very thoroughly, and we'll have some more pointed questions for all of us here, which we are ready to answer.

Awesome.

Thanks for the overview, Chief.

Uh, I'm sure everybody's done the reading.

Let's uh take questions for the next 15 minutes or so, and then we'll make sure we get in some public comment, and I'll start with Councilmember DeWan.

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

I know in the budget we're cutting the the walking beats, which the captains in in Lincoln district use heavily to remove um or assist our unshelter residents and RVs and and many other function.

Is there a possibility within the realm of your budget to reinstitute because the need in District 7 to use that walking beat is enormous?

The walking beats, I agree with you, are really important.

They're a great tool for both uh crime reduction and community engagement.

Unfortunately, they're also really costly.

Um the council some years back authorized 16 full-time employees to do that, and unfortunately, we just as you know, we're part of the nationwide staffing recruitment and retention pro uh crisis.

We're just unable to hire those folks.

So, you know, I don't think there's a painless cut in our budget that we're that we're proposing.

Um, you know, if there are specific crime problems that need to be addressed in any part of the city, um we could still use some overtime to address them.

It's just I think this is a big chunk of funding that um I believe is just while it's important, I think they're all important, it's not quite as essential as some of the other things in the budget, which is why we made that proposal.

Is there a possibility I I know that there is still funding for the walking beats in in downtown now?

How do we be able to split that services across to D7 when we need it?

Well, I'm not sure that we're splitting up that money.

I mean, my understanding is that we're gonna continue the downtown walking beats just because it's probably the most natural and effective area to use a walking beat, it's dense, it's um you know densely populated, dense with resident uh with businesses rather.

Um but like I said, if there are specific crime issues or quality of life type issues that need to be addressed in a particular any area of the city, we can always either use our patrol force, our special operations division, or authorize some overtime to address those.

But I don't think there's a plan.

We haven't proposed a plan anyway to split up the downtown walking beat money throughout the city.

Thank you, Chief.

I have a question for the fire chief regarding station 32.

I know that through the um MBA number six, I believe, um, that we able to maneuver moving um medics from District um one and then a little bit from District seven in order to temporary open station 32.

But that's uh temporary opening from October 1st of 2026 through June 30th of 2028.

Are you looking into some way to permanently staff that station 32 after this temporary um adjustment?

Good morning, uh Robert Sapian Fire Chief.

Uh thank you, council member, for that question.

Uh uh as you saw on slide number eight, uh, the department achieves about 4.7 million dollars in savings by deferring the opening of fire station 32.

Uh however, uh, as mentioned previously, uh, we have long understood that fire station 32's response area uh is a high priority station uh based upon response time performance and call volume analysis that has been uh sort of uh true for for many years.

Um you are correct.

Uh city manager's budget addendum number five uh does provide uh a funding stream uh to allow us to operate out of station 32 for two years.

That plan uh would eliminate rescue medics 26 and 3 and uh take that savings and apply it to staffing of station 32 on an overtime basis until that 2028 uh time period.

Uh of course uh we would like to see station 32 operating fully.

Uh however, uh given our our budget reduction target, we do have to come up with those savings somehow.

I do think this is um this plan articulated in in the budget addendum number five is very sound in terms of the impact it will have operationally uh in the area.

Uh it so happens that that the fire station 32 response area uh is surrounded by the lowest performing um stations in terms of response time.

That is largely due to call volume.

So it will it will go uh a long way towards reinforcing our performance.

Thank you for that.

I I just want to make sure that in your future uh vision to fully fund station 32 um after you know June 30th of 2028 to continue that operation uh fully staffed to station 32.

Thank you very much and I yield my time.

I just I'd like to just add in there again.

I'm still our intention is this is like I um I'm calling it uh a temporary fix.

Um if our budget situation did improve, it would be a high priority for uh me as city manager to bring forward the recommendation to staff that properly, and so in that uh vein we are only um defunding those other positions, we're not eliminating them just to show the temporary nature of this uh way we're staffing it.

But I am pleased with the chief in figuring out a way to get it open, even though it's not how we originally would like it to be and not where it will be long term.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Councilmember Tony.

How many comment cards do you have?

Thirteen.

Okay.

So we'll go to Councilmember Ortiz, who may have our last word before the break.

We'll become we will be continuing with public safety after, so we're not we're not cutting this off, we're just taking a break.

I'm sorry, council member.

It is 15.

15, okay.

Yeah, council member.

All right, thank you so much, Mayor.

Um public safety is a major priority for me.

I want to thank our leadership staff leadership uh in the box and just all of our public safety professionals, whether you're in fire or police or just uh uh professional office uh um staff member.

I just want to thank you for your service.

If we don't have public safety, we don't have a city, and so just want to thank all of our our hardworking uh staff members who are who are out there.

Um I think that you know our investment we are seeing uh return, uh, especially with uh our uh increase of solve rates for murder now reaching 100%.

You know, we've sent a message that if you act up in San Jose, we will be her um holding you accountable.

Um and I I do believe that uh you know East San Jose is becoming safer uh since we over the last several years, and I want to thank Paul Joseph for his leadership uh as well, of course, um, and all of our uh rank and file, both in fire and police, and of course our fire chief as well for your support.

Um but we do we do still have concerns.

I know that you know we were recently uh named the safest city uh in in the country, um, and we should be proud of that.

But in East San Jose, that may not be the experience we are um seeing on the ground every day may not be what um my colleagues are seeing, and so I take my role uh very seriously on raising some of the concerns that I hear uh uh on the dais.

One thing um our small businesses I know are struggling greatly, especially with vandalism, break-ins, and robberies.

Um we have had um strong consequences when we are able to uh catch those individuals, but uh any way in which we can be more pre proactive instead of reactive is always better.

And I know it's difficult, things are easier said than done, but I just wanted to make sure I I stated that.

Um, then another thing, and I know I'm working with our police captain, uh, Captain Zuniga.

I want to give him a shout out.

If he's definitely answered several late night calls from my office, and I want to thank him for that.

Uh, but one thing we're trying to crack is public safety for our parks.

And I know that the city of San Jose used to have a uh actual division for parks.

Uh I remember because I was a knucklehead hanging out in parks, and police used to pull up.

And so unfortunately, um we don't see that anymore.

Uh and right now in my district, we have kind of like a rolling gambling league that's doing gambling, they're drinking, they're playing volleyball.

Uh, and I get emails from my constituents saying, hey, I don't feel safe bringing my kids to to the park.

Uh, and I know it's hard, you know, given we already are thinly staffed, you know, in in some of our neighborhoods, you get two calls that wipes out all of our patrol officers, and then they have to triage and you know, okay, is gambling the same level of priority as a robbery or as a as a you know assault.

Uh, you know, obviously not, but still, this is a public safety concern that isn't going away, and I hope that we can lean in to make sure that we are having uh these concerns solved.

Um, I do want to just mention one specific concern that I have.

Um, I have two schools in my district.

Um, one well, actually, three schools, um, Painter and Shepherd, uh, Painter is an elementary school, Shepherd is a middle school.

Uh, they are on the same site.

Um, and my stepson goes to school at Shepherd.

We drop him off every day, and I'll be honest with you.

Some of these parents are driving a little crazy in the morning.

You know, I don't know if they've had their coffee or not, but it's a little dangerous uh um for our kids.

And I saw that um, you know, we are gonna be making a cut towards our crossing guards program, and I don't even know if you know these schools would have been next on the list to assign, but I wanted to raise this as a concern.

And also next year, both Adelante One and Adelante 2 are gonna be consolidating, and so we are gonna have a super school at the old Fisher site, and we're already getting concerns from parents in regards to drop-off and pickup, and that there's gonna be you know potential vulnerabilities for student safety and and just safety in the overall region.

Um I know that you know public safety is an important topic, and it's hard to have this conversation.

Have we fully reviewed like any sort of pilot projects that we're doing?

Is there anything that we could potentially put on pause to just make sure that, you know, I feel like a low a low-hanging fruit for us should be making sure that students can make it to and from school at a in a safe manner, and we're doing that, but they could always be safer.

And so I wanted to ask the chief have we combed through the budget?

Is there anything that like okay, we can put a pause on until next year in order to you know provide this this resource to some of the families?

Council member, I I share your concern with the crossing guards.

Obviously, it's a super popular program, and and the safety of you know children crossing crossing the street is paramount for us as well.

Um, you know, we've tried to come up with an approach, uh, working with the budget office that balances these cuts, you know, across the department as much as possible.

You know, there are cuts to police officer positions as well, which I'm you know, nobody's nobody's happy about.

But I mean, these are some of the the difficult decisions we've had to make.

And so um the cuts primarily to whether it's to a police officer or to these crossing guards, these are not people that are currently uh working right now, but they're vacant but budgeted positions.

So we're hoping that that minimizes you know the impact to public safety generally within the city.

Of course, we would like to fill you know every budgeted but unfilled position and have as many of of all these things as we could.

Um, but I mean, I think I think what we've come up with, the recommendation that we're making to the council, obviously, ultimately it's it's your decision is what we think is a balanced approach to having to make some difficult decisions in a tough budget year, but that still maintains the highest level of public safety that that we can produce.

I appreciate that.

And yeah, and I know thankfully, you know, nobody's in these positions, and so it's not gonna be as as big a cut, but I know parents, they're focused on their kiddos, and so uh and I get a lot of uh comments from Alan Rock School District, you know, uh principals and and um and teachers about their their concerns.

I wanted to just ask, I see that we're gonna be doing a pilot, an AI pilot for um assistance on filling out police reports.

Can you just walk us through the importance of that?

And you know, I don't know, can't I can we reduce this pilot?

Is there any way to do any cost cuts and maybe do a smaller implementation of it in order to get some crossing guards uh on the payroll?

So the cost of the software is is relatively high, but we again we believe that it's not only going to um result in better, more complete, thorough, accurate reports, but it's gonna cut down significantly the amount of time that it takes to office for officers to write those reports.

You know, obviously everything we do has to be documented, those documents have to be thorough, comprehensive, and complete.

They have to stand up in court.

Um so officers spend hours and hours at the end of their shift, unfortunately, writing these reports because they're mostly going from call to call during their 10 hour shift and really can't stop to write.

So we think that while the cost is high on the front end, the savings will be significantly higher on the back end.

Now, I wish that the timing of that was more simultaneous so that the cost savings we would realize from less report writing could maybe go to save some of these uh positions that we that we need to eliminate now.

But it but I think I think ultimately it will catch up, it just won't be as as smooth and simultaneous as probably we would all like.

Okay.

Um okay, I guess this question is for for Jim then.

Um, when will we be able to have another look?

You know, I I don't want to get this to let this conversation go.

I want to make sure it's front in mind for for the council.

When will we be able to have another look at the budget to potentially you know fund these these crossing guards?

I know you know part of one of the reasons why we're introducing this AI pilot is to see if we could I guess reduce the amount of overtime, I'm assuming.

Um, when when when do when is the next time we're gonna be able to review this to potentially see if we could allocate resources to that?

Think of the question.

You know, I think one of the the best times will be as part of the 27-28 proposed budget cycle.

I think we'll have you know some information, one on how we're performing budgetarily in the then current fiscal year of 2627 and the look ahead into the next year.

We'll have some early information on how some of our uh continued implementation of the police overtime controls are going.

Um and so I think there's certainly opportunity there for council to give direction as part of that process.

Okay, so pretty much a whole nother year then.

So the next budget cycle then.

Barring some significant improvement in the economy and in the very near term.

I mean, if we get new information, like hey, we're really wrong and there's more resources that are out there, we've always come forward with an MBA to say, hey, there's more money on the table.

Let's put it on on the table.

Um, we don't see that right at the moment, though.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I don't know how much you know uh crossing guard with cost, but I'm I put in a budget uh uh assessment to see if I could fund one but or or two, but we'll see, and maybe given we only have 200,000 um per district, or if that um it may kind of be unrealistic.

And then um uh uh finally, I know that chief, you were talking about AI.

I've been having a over-arching conversation with city staff about like guidelines for the for the usage.

Are we gonna be looking at best practices, guardrails?

I don't know.

You know, God forbid, like, you know, sometimes AI completes sentences that they think, oh, you meant to say this, but you didn't.

How do we make sure that stuff stuff like that doesn't happen and misinformation may end up in a report?

Those are significant concerns, and so I I think obviously we'll have guardrails in place.

The report, the report writing software that's marketed out there, doesn't allow the report to be written entirely by AI and then submitted by the officer.

The officer has to go through and check, make sure that the report is accurate.

Obviously, the officer is responsible for the report is submitted for the report that he sub he or she submits.

There is a supervisor that signs off on every single report generated by a San Jose police officer.

And there are various other safeguards built into the software to ensure that that review is really occurring, that they're not just you know hitting uh generate and then send.

So we'll we'll get more into that as we get closer to the time, but but we share your concerns and we'll be right now.

I know our officers will we'll use it correctly.

Just you know, never know when mistakes happen.

Thank you.

Thanks, council member.

Appreciate the questions.

Okay.

Before our pause, we've got uh nearly 20 minutes.

Tony, let's go to public comment.

We're gonna need to limit to 90 seconds per speaker, I think.

One minute can we okay?

One minute, is that all we have time for?

Okay, we'll have to do one minute.

I was trying to give people more time.

Go ahead.

Um, I'll leave it to you.

Go ahead.

So you have one minute.

Um, when I call your name, please come down to the podium.

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

Um, please speak clearly into the microphone.

Um, Greg, come on down, Scott, Gail, Skyler, and Ovin to start with, and then I'll add more names as we go.

You can come down in any order and first one.

Yeah, in any order.

Yeah, first one down, go ahead and begin.

Yes, come come on up to the podium here.

The timer starts once you begin speaking.

Welcome.

So only 90 seconds, huh?

Uh our clerk has said one minute.

Shoot.

Okay, I'm Gail Frank.

Good morning.

Um, I'm here to urge you to keep open the California room at MLK library.

Um, I belong to multiple historic organizations and museums, and use the California room for material for newsletter articles, saving historic buildings, research, and learning more about our local history.

Today I'm dressed in this late 1800s outfit to demonstrate how organizations such as uh portraits of the past, which I belong to, and as part of History San Jose, relies on the California room.

In our one hour presentations, we portray Santa Clara County characters that were significant or infamous, and everything in between.

In the California room, we search old newspapers, books, city directories, and photos to help us present in an inaccurate clothing, interesting portrayals of these characters.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Um April and Krista.

Come on down.

Hello, I'm Greg Smisted.

Uh what I've learned from this session is that these problems are much larger than the California history room, which I've already submitted, uh written comments about uh the general fund uh shortfall.

I've seen 55 to 65 million.

Uh and that this will persist through the uh 2030 uh 2031 cycle.

So this as has been said is is a larger problem, but the only thing that I can really think of is to look at what other cities are doing.

And that's really my question to both the staff and to the council members is to collaborate as much as possible with some of these things that I'm reading that other cities are doing.

I know that the mayors get together, but maybe even staff and council members that are analogous.

And I'm reading uh different measures in cities like uh San Francisco, Vacaville, Sacramento, uh, and others.

And so that's my comment is as much collaboration to find solutions because I see that the budget is uh thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

In 1887, uh arsenous burned down Chinatown.

In 1933.

The last hanging in California took place in St.

James Park.

And 6,000 Japanese in San Jose lost their homes and were deported and went through San Jose State a few hundred yards from here.

That kind of history you find in the California room.

And we live in an era where we're getting rid of history that we don't like.

So don't be part of that.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Kay, come on down.

Good morning.

I'm happy to hear as much concern for the California room as I personally have.

I'm just here to speak on behalf of Hillbrook School, a high school next to St.

James Park, where we take students to the California Room to do research projects and social impact projects, social entrepreneurship type stuff.

It's been an invaluable resource, and I, although I know maybe a professional historian could you know use it on a reserve basis or by appointment, it just functionally won't work the way it currently does without the ability to drop in and look at materials and experience the discovery of working with real physical archives, and that's just not an experience you can replace the staff that we would lose.

Some of them have been there for over a decade.

They know the place like the back of their hand, they know the city like the back of their hand, and you're just not gonna have the level of service and educational value if you close it to the public.

Thank you, next speaker.

Jean and Larry also come on down.

Go ahead.

Hello, I'm Aaron from Hillbrook School.

This past year, my class took on a real challenge of figuring out why the South First District is struggling and what could actually bring it back to life.

The actual piece that changed the way I see the city was the California Room.

We went to the MLK Library, and Michael from the California Room helped us dig into archives.

And we found a sofa that most people don't know exists.

Events, life, a place for people that don't fit anywhere else.

And we learned that foot traffic follows culture.

My project is moving towards an implementation phase, helping the city make informed decisions based on real pedestrian data so San Jose can invest in the right places and see a return.

The California room was instrumental to making that work happen.

And you can't make smart investments in a city's future without understanding its past.

The California room is where that understanding lives.

On behalf of Hillbrook students and every K-12 student who relies on the space, I'm asking you to preserve public access to the California room.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good morning and thank you.

I'm April Halberstadt.

I am a writer, historian, and I am a visiting scholar for the history department.

I rely heavily on the California Room, but I don't want you to think the California Room doesn't give back.

And so I'm here to introduce you in absentia to Maria Brand, who turned 90.

She was an immigrant with a fifth grade education.

She spent decades, decades at the California Room to help produce this book.

This one goes to Anthony Tordill's, the mayor got his some months ago.

There is a copy for each of the council offices.

It's meant to be used as reference for a forgotten minority majority in San Jose.

So thank you all.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Jean Dresden.

I'm usually here to talk about parks, but I'm here to talk about the California room.

It's important to us because it provides a sense of research when you have access to the actual materials, you can find things that you never expected you would find.

Also, I would like to point out that it's much more than just books there.

There are lots of actual archival materials that would be difficult to transport remotely.

The planning department uses the California room for access to historic permits, aerials, and old planning reports.

And they send businesses over there to research their properties and just determine whether or not they are conforming and to save the cost of having to pay for planner time.

Thank you.

That's your time.

I have Serge Jonathan come on down.

Hi, I'm Christa Van Land.

I'm an architectural historian and I live in district one.

I'm here to urge you to keep the California room open to the public.

I was in there twice over the last couple weeks.

The first time I got access to maps I never knew existed with the help of the staff.

The second time I sat in there for four hours looking at various materials that I wouldn't have been able to find had I gone to a desk and asked for material and had it brought to me in a separate room.

Councilmember Candelas, you seem to really understand the purpose of a research room.

Councilmember Tordillos, you had a lot of good ideas for how we could work around some of these problems, and Councilmember Mulcay, you also had excellent ideas.

I'm happy to hear these responses from the council.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, my name is Kay.

I live in district six, and I too am deeply concerned about the potential loss in the California room.

This is really a unique city resource.

It is a one-of-a-kind research facility and really should be one of the last things that we think about eliminating.

A couple of things I've heard here today.

First, and the presentation was the key point of this is to eliminate the staff.

And then follow-on was to not hear any specific plan about how that expertise would be covered.

That the staff that's there is a really the key resource because they are the ones that know what material exists in the collection.

This is not just a collection that sits on shelves.

It's a research center, and that staff is key to the success of the people who use the facility.

So it is not something that's interchangeable with the neighborhood library branches.

It's a specialized irreplaceable research resource.

Thank you, that's your time.

Next speaker.

Jimmy and Brendan come on down.

Larry Ames, longtime park advocate, but here today to talk about the California room.

I hope you got our letter.

San Jose is a historic city, the oldest in California, but that fact does not seem to be generally right appreciated.

I live in one of the older neighborhoods of town.

We are, in fact, this weekend we are celebrating its centennial with a street party.

We know our streets' history in part from the research done in the California room.

If the collection is closed, other streets would not be able to follow in our footsteps.

I myself have already donated one item and I'm negotiating with them to donate some more.

If the place is closed, would that even be possible?

The California room doesn't have to be open all day, every day, but it does need somebody there to take care and protect the collections and to make it accessible.

I hope you can find some time to preserve our access to our exploring our history.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, uh honorable mayor, city council, and city manager.

My name is Jonathan Francisco Borga.

Baday I work at the San Jose Public Library Foundation.

I also have the privilege of serving as the vice chair of the arts commission, but I'm speaking uh for myself today.

And I do feel really moved by the room.

I had a slightly different message, but um being nimble.

To that, I do think if there's a will, if there's a way to preserve our California room, it clearly has a pretty sizable uh impact on our community.

And then other than that, you know, I just really wanted to uh urge you all to support the recommended budget on behalf of the library in an imperfect situation and in a major deficit.

It is at least impactful in that it won't cut program library hours or staff, which is uh great uh and should be applauded to some degree.

And then I'll end quickly in just saying, you know, thank you.

That that doesn't always happen here, you all are navigating uh incredibly difficult situations and I and I want to thank you for your advocacy of the library and ask that you continue to show up in these spaces because we need you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Jerry May and Mike Sodergren, come on down.

Thank you, everybody.

Um, my name is Jimmy Kogura.

I currently serve on the Historic Landmarks Commission for San Jose.

I'm also on the board of directors for the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

I just want to be here in support of the California, um, the California room, and just to have it open to uh access.

I think that's the main thing, having access at any time.

Uh one of my fondest memories of traveling was going to the New York Public Museum, walking around, looking over and seeing like the actual winning the poo.

Um, I think one thing that we can be like serve here in San Jose and uh like be like we're on a precipice of culture and like finding ourselves here in San Jose, and I think losing access to the history of it in this room can do a big detriment.

So just want to thank you for it.

Sounds like everyone's in support of this.

So let's get this done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

I'm here on behalf of the men and women of San Jose Firefighters Local 230.

We are extremely concerned with the current public safety budget proposal because it reduces emergency response capacity while residents are being asked to pay more for service.

The proposal defers fire station 32 for two years by eliminating 14 sworn vacant positions, including fire captains, engineers, and firefighters.

This also comes on the top of indefinite deferral of truck 32.

It in total, it delays 28 FTE positions and resources that voters approve through Measure T funding in 2018 to improve emergency and response infrastructure and public safety coverage in San Jose.

At the same time, the manager's budget amendment proposes closing medic rescue three and rescue medic 26 in order to open station 32.

That does not increase staffing levels, it simply shifts existing resource from one part of the city to another while projected revenue loss of nearly one million.

Thank you, next speaker.

And I have a card whose name's the name starts with a G, but I can't read the rest of it.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon.

I'm also representing the San Jose firefighters.

Uh, we're also concerned about the elimination of three engineer positions at station 24.

After the Eaton Palisades fire, the city publicly committed to enhancing our wildfire preparedness.

This proposal moves in the opposite direction by reducing our capabilities.

Instead of removing these three positions, we should be adding type three capability into the system while maintaining the current staffing model at station 24.

We could strategically place a type 3 at station 6, station 37, or even station 32 if it opens, allowing the city to expand wildfire response capability without reducing existing resources.

Respectfully asked the council to prioritize opening station 32 with new staffing, protect protect our rescue medics, and maintain our wildfire response capability.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, I'm usually speaking to you about preserving our historic places that tell our history and our story and our culture.

Today I'm talking about the place where we get much of the information for that.

And because of where we live, I feel like I have to make this comment.

The decision that we're making today is a test of our belief in the unique value of human beings versus search algorithms and engines that cannot feel.

The greatest value of repositories of information is it's a place to find truth, all of it, the good and the bad.

Lots of comments about this place being an active research environment, um, not a static collection.

One that's um that could be compared to the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is the way one of the commentators said it.

We do not want to see it packed up and put away.

Thank you.

I've called all of the cards.

If you do not hear your name, um, this is the time to line up.

Um hello, Mayor and council members.

My name is Janelle Ardonius with the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits and co-convener of the real coalition.

We urge this council to make equitable, equitable budget choices that promote affordability and community stability.

Therefore, we ask that you don't make significant cuts to youth violence prevention and intervention services such as BEST, including early prevention dollars.

Early prevention is really key to successful violence prevention strategy.

Furthermore, we are disappointed to see a lack of continued investment in trust, which has become a proven community-based crisis response model and a statewide and national best practice, and is eligible for opioid settlement funds.

Lastly, we appreciate the comments from Council Member Campos pointing out the significant investment in the olive program that could be better used for funding programs that support our older adults, youth and families, and homeless prevention investment.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you to all of our public speakers.

We are taking a break.

We will resume at 1 30 and we'll be continuing on with public safety comments from the council.

Thank you all.

All right.

Welcome back.

We're gonna resume our council study session on the budget, the proposed budget.

And uh we were in the midst of the public safety discussion.

And uh if you're ready, Councilman Condelas, we'll resume with your comments.

Alright, cool.

Yeah, um uh thank you, uh Mayor.

Um, okay, so jumping right into it.

I I guess um obviously wanted to thank the chief for your for your overview, but uh I guess my my first line of questions go to the other chief, the the fire chief, um, specifically on the community paramedicine pilot.

Um, and you know, you know, it's it's you know, for me being able to uh lean in and see how we can be nimble and in strategic as a city is obviously something that I think is important, especially when it comes to long-term cost savings.

Um, but you know, one of the questions I have on this on this this program is um what what kind of program metrics are we actually looking at with regards to that evaluation that's gonna happen at the conclusion of the pilot.

And I was hoping you could speak on that and see what uh success looks like with this with this uh proposed uh program.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Yes, community paramedicine um is a pilot uh proposed by the department.

Um the funding uh stream is from uh the opioid settlement funds.

Uh what we hope to achieve is a variety of uh things that aren't currently achieved through the 911 system.

Uh ultimately uh we look to invest more time in assessing uh patient needs or 911 caller needs, uh especially in those cases where there are matters such as addiction, perhaps uh repeat 911 users who aren't getting the benefit uh that they need through visits to the emergency rooms, um, and uh certainly uh folks who have uh struggles in terms of taking care of themselves and who might be a danger to themselves.

So, in terms of metrics that we're looking for, we are going to start with some some very basic um metrics that would include uh our uh reach.

So, in other words, how many uh of each uh uh circumstance are we running into out there in the field?

Uh certainly keeping track of how many times we're able to provide definitive pathways to care, um, certainly tracking repeat 911 users and seeing if we can reduce those numbers towards you know ultimately getting folks the care that they need.

Um, and so that'll be generally the type of metric that we're looking to to capture.

Okay, and then um, you know, I think um essentially like that diversion of calls from uh from our our police department is is that something that we're also going to be looking at obviously if somebody's calling 911 for somebody who's has a substance or behavioral health issue challenge.

Uh I mean, where how are we going to be able to diff differentiate and/or divert calls that that are more paramedicine focused as opposed to uh you know uh somebody from with a law enforcement background?

Yeah, uh on the outset as we as we develop the parameters of the pilot, we'll be engaging with partners, especially law enforcement in terms of uh being able to triage 911 calls and get them on the right pathway.

And so currently there are some 911 calls that are police only responses, but they may have perhaps a mental health aspect or or uh a substance addiction type aspect where there is a uh either a borderline or actually um you know substantial need for some level of medical care, and so what we'll be doing on the fire department side is we'll be implementing uh new protocols into our triage system where we will be able to capture those types of calls uh and send the appropriate unit.

In this case, we're we're hoping that that community paramedicine unit would be the appropriate unit so that we can really understand what the patient needs are at that point.

Got it, okay.

Um, like I said, this is an opportunity, and I just want to make sure that we're uh setting this program up for success to be able to do what we wanted to do and ultimately address some of our you know high utilizer populations that do that, uh, that utilize the 911 response system as their de facto health care system.

Um and so uh, you know, I I I'm curious to like you know, that I I do have uh some um some some concerns that you know it's gonna take a while for us to even ramp this program up.

I mean, we we invested in uh what was it, trust a couple years ago.

It took us you know six months to set that program up for folks to know how to divert or who to properly call.

And but from this program, I know it's gonna be more so our um our dispatchers who are gonna be able to uh ID based on the call that's coming in to be able to deploy this paramedicine team to be able to address, correct?

Yes, okay.

Um, and then um the the next area that I've I've gotten several concerns from.

Um, you know, we actually had a phone call about this last last week.

Um so this you know, this is not the new is is with regards to um the fire station 24's operations, and you know, I've had a lot of villagers, you know, older adults who live uh in adjacent neighborhoods to the hillside, and they they did express some some concerns with you know given the limited access and narrow slash steep terrains uh uh by these proposed type three engines and the unintentional negative operational impacts uh uh of the these uh the terrain in my district, especially adjacent to the villages.

Um can you can you speak a little bit to this chief to their concerns?

Yeah, so the station 20 propos or 24 proposal, excuse me, um uh would place a type three fire engine where currently a type six fire engine exists.

Now both type threes and type sixes are uh configured for wildland firefighting, uh you may know the type three uh most familiarly uh as the primary unit that Calfire operates from.

So it carries uh 500 gallons of water, um, has a 500 gallon per minute pump, has a complement of hose, uh has seating for four personnel.

Um the difference, as you point out, it is it is uh somewhat larger than the type six, uh has more capability, but is also physically in size larger.

Uh knowing the area around the villages, there uh are no concerns that we have right now relative to access.

Certainly, as you move up Quimby Road, you have some very steep terrain up there that that neither of those apparatus frankly do well on on the steepest parts of those slopes.

Um, but in terms of access, uh I I think we actually do better uh by way of the capability of the type three apparatus.

Okay, okay.

That I mean that's a reassuring.

Uh uh, what about the escape slash evacuation, escape slash evacuation routes identified in the villages that have the back road of Bierboina that's like uh formerly a utility road?

Does that would is that still still the case even for our type three, Rick?

I'm sorry to interrupt, uh we should have uh access to all of those areas, and it it's important to understand that we will still have type six capability responding to larger vegetation fires throughout the city.

And so if there are areas that we discover either by roads that are washed out or or existing narrow uh tracks that that we will still have the type sixes.

Um the the other truth is that today's type six is a very stout vehicle and the and the road uh the the wheel uh base is not much different at all than the type three, and so they'd be very similar in terms of what what access roads they can trouble.

Okay, that's reassuring.

Um and uh lastly, so you can you confidently say there's there's gonna be little um chance to a delayed response with this staffing or operational change.

Uh I think the type three is an enhanced service relative to the type six.

That's my that's my professional uh view on this.

Um in fact uh going back to uh our our previous recommendation for station 11 at the villages was to enhance wildfire capabilities there, and and this is a uh incremental step in that direction.

Okay, great.

No, thank you.

Thank you for that reassurance.

I look, I was out, I was out um at the villages maybe a month ago with uh with the hiking club uh that um we were doing some vegetation clearing and uh digging in some steps into this the hill because seniors can't get up these really really steep hills, and so that's one of the primary concerns that I had given given the sensitivities around um you know wildfire risk and you know even the my previous question with the with the previous CSA on on our vegetation vegetation management investments that we're making.

And so I I appreciate you answering my questions, Chief, and uh appreciate uh the work of the CSA in its entirety.

Thank you guys.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let's go now to Councilmember Campos.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you, staff for the presentation.

Um I appreciate your work in this very important CSA.

And um I do have a few questions and comments about the proposed um expenditure for the AI report writing tool.

One thing that I noticed is that we are um looking at deferring the police training center by two years, and it's roughly um at the same cost as the AI reporting writing tool.

Um, as you may know, the police training center is what is standing in the way of being open, being able to open the South substation, and it is a priority for District 2 and South San Jose residents that we get um access to that substation so that our residents can um you know feel better connected to our police uh department and resources, and so um well I'll start with some comments first because um you know looking at at the AI deployment through the budget process before as a council we have an established citywide framework for AI procurement, oversight, accountability, transparency, data governance, and performance evaluation.

I want to better understand the department's rationale around reducing administrative uh burden and overtime pressures because I do understand that this is um why we're we're moving in this direction to free up um staff time, and you know, the budget actions are difficult to separate from policy when they effectively operationalize new technology frameworks across the city.

Um I have been made aware that we have an AI policy, and I've asked for it twice from staff and have yet to receive it.

And so before moving forward with operational AI expansion, I am trying to better understand what governance standards currently exist and whether there is a broader citywide AI strategy that's under development and what role council is gonna have in shaping those standards before additional deployment occurs.

And so, um, just asking for more specificity and the expected operational benefit of this investment.

How many office hours are projected to be saved and how does that translate into deployable service capacity?

So there's quite a few issues you touched on there.

First of all, let me just say that uh we agree with you.

We would love to have the South Substation open as a functioning substation, and that was what it was intended for when it was built.

It's unfortunately never uh really realized that uh capability.

I would disagree in that the I wouldn't say that the only thing standing in the way of operationalizing the substation is the training center.

Um there's actually more costs associated with it than that, just to transfer all our our uh people down there to make that an operating substation, but certainly that is a goal at some point.

Um, in terms of the two costs being similar, yeah, I would agree that what the cost we're deferring um is similar to the cost of the initial um outlay for the software, but we believe, and I and I can't give you exact hours, but we believe that the the um software program for the report writing is going to be a money saver, like tremendously in the long run.

So, each you know, again, officers are are moving call to call to call and have very little time, often during their shifts to write reports.

Yet report writing is an essential part of their duties.

They can't not do it.

In fact, the duty manual states that they've got to complete their reports at the end of their shift, and so often they're spending two, three, four hours after a shift, which is incredibly costly.

The software that we're looking at, which which will not be implemented without you know your full understanding of what those guardrails are going to be, working with our IT department and our city attorney's office and anyone involved to make sure that you know we're not um work what the goal here is to generate reports that are accurate, thorough, comprehensive, um, and make sure that uh you know the public can trust in those documents.

They're gonna go to court, they're gonna be vetted there.

We have to make sure that these reports are are accurate.

Um so you will have an overview of all of that.

And while I can't give you an exact dollar savings amount, I'll just just sort of anecdotally tell you that one quick trial we did uh an officer told me that a domestic violence report that would have taken him two to three hours took him about 15 minutes to write.

So I can't say that that's the type of savings or the proportional savings for every single instance, but I think if it's anything even remotely like that, the initial investment in this software will pay off in you know tremendously.

Thank you, Chief.

Um, and what make uh mechanisms are in place to help us ensure that AI generated content is reviewed by officers for accuracy and fairness.

So again, not everything is written out yet, but the the software programs that are available all require the officer to review and make changes.

Like they'll put bugs in it where if you don't catch it, it won't allow it to be sent.

You know, it'll there's there's safeguards in place there.

Ultimately, every officer is responsible for the report that he or she submits as being accurate, whether they're writing it by hand from scratch as they do well as but from scratch as they do now, uh, or whether it is the result of a software-generated template as a starting point.

Um, a lot of the early forms of this type of software listened only to audio from a body worn camera, so that's where there would sometimes be fill in the blanks by the algorithm that weren't always accurate, but some of the newer versions take into account the video feed from the body worn camera as well, which has reduced the errors, reduced the inaccuracies, and that's really what sped up the whole process of the report writing.

Because now the officer is not correcting a bunch of mistakes, they're starting with a template that's far more accurate.

So, again, accuracy is every bit as important to us, if not more important than saving money, but we think there's a tremendous cost savings here.

Thank you.

And then um, what measurable outcomes should council expect to see over the next 12 months and how will the department report back to council on whether this tool is being used as intended?

I'm not sure we'll have measurables for you within 12 months because we still need to go out to RFP and and all the rest.

Um, but I think ultimately what you should see is was there a you know a corresponding reduction in overtime costs for report writing?

And I I feel very confident that you will see that.

Okay.

Um I guess my one last question is how uh these and anticipated outcomes are comparing to other unmet needs in other city departments.

Can you be more specific?

So you know, we know that public safety remains a top concern for our residents, and so um how was the improvement here?

Is it going to help some of the other unmet needs that we're seeing in other city departments?

Um, homelessness, for example, is it able to help us with those outcomes?

I'm not exactly sure how to answer your question.

I mean, I think what what we're trying to do here is improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of operating the police department.

If that helps the overall city effort to meet every need of the city and every department's need of the city, um then obviously that would be a terrific outcome.

I'm not sure I can I'm not sure I can speak to that.

Maybe um also just putting aside the overtime, because sometimes obviously the report writing happens on regular time.

To the extent that the officers can uh do their report writing much more quickly and efficiently, that will free up officers' time.

And maybe that's to your point, council member, to do other activities in support of the safety of all the communities working with youth, doing community policing, uh working on homeless matters, uh, what have you, anything that's neighborhood quality of life, it would ultimately help impact that, not just the overtime piece, because of course that's important, but also their ability to move on to another call and and improve our response times to 911 calls and pro especially the priority one calls.

So I think that's it's it's also it's more than overtime.

Thank you.

Jennifer, that that is um exactly what what I was trying to ask.

So I appreciate you articulating that because as we are working on giving more time back to our officers to do things like street patrol, um, you know, ultimately, I I'm not against us using technology to better improve our outcomes.

Um and I also um don't want it to be the only solution that we're looking at because when we look at other programs, other cities have implemented, for example, Oakland ceasefire program, that is a program that really ensures people to people connection that we are able to better identify the lim the individuals who are most likely to be impacted and involved by gun violence and making sure that they have peer support networks, ways to um ensure that they have options so that violence isn't the only um way to address whatever it is that they're going through.

And so um, you know, just going back to to the original um point that I made is as we're looking at um ways that we're spending and just wanting to make sure that we're also finding ways to um give people the services that they need, whether it's access to the substation or whether it's making sure that um we are proving providing that safe climate in our neighborhoods and our schools, um in our communities overall.

So thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let's go now to Councilman Cohen.

Thank you.

Thank you for the uh the um CSA update.

And um I just have a couple of comments and one question.

Um I'm I'm gratified to see the uh attempt to use AI to make report writing better.

We've been I've been asking for as you know for six years during these budget deliberations why we spend so much on overtime, and this is one of the reasons that we spend so much in overtime is the time it takes for officers after their shift to write reports that we're paying them the overtime rate.

Um so if this speeds that up and reduces that cost, it will be a move in the right direction.

Uh it that there's no doubt that this tool um should be helpful in that regard.

So it's not necessarily because we'll be redeploying people, but because people can go home, be back with their families, not spend so much time on overtime, and we can have um accurate reports.

I tell and tell a story about my physician when I had my physical last year, he walked back in the room and said, because he told me, is it okay if I use AI to record this read this uh appointment?

And he walked right back in after, said, Hey, look at look, and he showed me the chart report from the appointment and how it captured everything, and he goes back through, rereads it to make sure it didn't miss something or didn't do record something incorrectly.

But the amount of detail that's in that report and the amount of information that's now collected and charted because AI is hearing the report and documenting it and giving a first draft saved a huge amount of time for him, and I'm sure that'll be true for our officers.

So I, you know, I think we ought to be embracing some of this technology.

This isn't the kind of technology that reduces our workforce or to take the place of other jobs or does oversight or things that will actually harm our employees.

This is something that should complement them.

So I'm I'm happy about that.

Um I did want to ask a question about crossing guards.

I know that many of us are interested in that.

Um I I want to understand a little bit better.

What is it that's being proposed in the cuts?

What I know there was a freeze during the year on hiring crossing guards for priority locations, and my understanding was that freeze has been lifted and we're beginning to try to fill some positions again.

Is that correct or are we still frozen on filling positions?

Councilman Coe and Jennifer Shembry, deputy city manager.

Um, we have approved those positions for filling, so if they're not posted, they should be posted shortly.

Okay, so so it's it's not quite like we're stopping where we are today.

We're going back to filling some previously budgeted positions, but we may not be expanding to new locations for now in the current budget.

Is that the cuts that we're that we're talking about?

Correct.

I believe that's the right way to say.

I think that when you look at the amount of expenditures that was expended in 24-25, we were we were below what the budget amount was.

So really, this is really more um, you know, reflecting the budget amount to be close to what the actuals would likely be, given that there are vacancies, even absent the hiring freeze, there are always vacancies for these hard-to-fill positions as well as um just the the normal the normal challenges of doing that program.

Okay, I just wanted to confirm it.

I know you and I talked about this last week, but I mean I know there's a priority school in my district that's been waiting, and I've assured them now that we're back to hiring and filling positions for those priority schools that are already on the list.

Um, so just wanted to make sure it was confirmed publicly that that's the case.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let me go to Vice Mayor Foley.

Okay, before I get into crossing guards and work on that line of questioning, first I want to thank both chiefs and all of those, all of you involved in this the CSA for the work that you do.

It's extremely important, and it's probably the subject that we get asked about most often in our districts when we're out at town halls or when we have office hours is public safety, firefighting, etc.

So I truly value all the work that you do and the responsiveness of the police force and our firefighters both both were out in force at my big event a couple weeks ago, and I am grateful for the time that they spent there, but also the work you do, reading to the kids next door and the library situation or every everything else.

I just am so grateful for police and fire.

Um before I get into crossing guards, just one thing about AI and the report writing.

The way we always hear that our we have the most thinly staffed police department in the country.

And the only way that we're able to be as effective and efficient in law enforcement is by capitalizing the use of technology.

So the use of technology is expanded with the use of a AI and report writing.

I see that as an absolutely important tool.

If they're we're taking officers off the street or they're using their overtime, which is increasing cost, two to four hours of overtime every day to write a report, that's a ridiculous use of their time.

They should be out on the streets fighting crime.

So I'm all for it.

Of course, do we need guardrails?

Of course.

Do we need to have a way to implement it and oversee it?

Absolutely.

But moving forward with it, we we also must go in that direction.

Um regarding crossing guards, uh I'm the vision zero council member, and I know we all think about pedestrian safety up here, but we've also recently just had uh several schools closed or uh slated to be closed in three in my district in particular, and in um two in one district and one in the other school district.

So the concerns that parents have, and frankly I have too, is are we eliminating any crossing guards from those schools just because they're being closed?

Because we have to understand or know what the traffic pattern is, the pedestrian pattern is going to be for those students who are going, for example, from Terrell over to Carson and how they're gonna get there.

If they're going to walk, then they have to cross major streets to get there, and so will crossing guards be available.

So earlier we heard, so so this is what I'm thinking about in relation to the crossing guards.

We heard earlier that the 5.79 positions that are being cut are vacant currently.

Are these it would be helpful to know where these positions are that we're cutting from, which schools or which areas, because if it's just important to know that as we look at the whole piece of crossing guards.

The other thing is it's very difficult to analyze what the need of the crossing guards will be at these new enlarged schools, either at downtown or in my district or other parts of the city, because we don't know what those patterns are going to be.

We don't know how the students are going to walk.

We don't know if the parents, I think council member Ortiz talked about how crazy parents are driving.

I yeah, okay, I will.

I was a crossing guard near a neighborhood, you know, as council member crossing guard, parents running right past me.

It's crazy.

Yeah, I know.

We all know that.

Sorry, parents, you all know it too.

Um so the qu we we don't have good data yet until the schools reopen and patterns start to emerge.

So, first I'd like to know what if you do you have a list of the schools or the areas?

I don't know if you have them, Chief, but I it these were been long-term vacancies, and we have 11 authorized intersections, but 10 of them have not been staffed for quite a long time.

Is my understanding?

You can correct me if I'm wrong, Chief.

This would cut half of those vacant positions, so it says it cut them all.

Um, so we can certainly get you the list of all of those intersections that are not been staffed that were authorized, but we they have they because of the vacancies, the you know perpetual vacancies, they haven't been, they haven't been staffed in quite a long time, if ever.

Is that correct, Chief?

That's my understanding.

And this is something that you know we can evaluate over time if you know if it turns out that there are higher.

So we're cutting positions, and and the reason it comes out to a sort of a weird number of 5.79 is these are all part-time employees, they're not 40 hour a week employees.

So if it turns out that there is a higher need location, you know, at some point in the future, you know, we can move guards around or whatnot.

But uh, but we can give you we can send you the list of all the authorized locations and the ones that are unstaffed, if you'd like.

Thanks.

Okay, Jim.

Okay.

Actually, so um, this is one of the areas I was going to try to look for funding to keep these crossing guard positions open, but I think we really need to do more analysis of the closed schools and the traffic patterns and assess it at a later date to understand if crossing guards are needed, how many, where they might be needed.

So rather than try and look in the budget for the 300,000, I think it is.

I think I'd rather see and uh Jennifer, maybe you can offer the best way.

How can we revisit this in September or so to determine if we need to do something with crossing guards?

Yeah, I would recommend.

I think that I mean, obviously the lot of the council members have concerns about this, and and we understand the concern and share in that.

I think probably I'd say October, we should cut we should deliver you an information memo and have the police department analyze what those traffic patterns are, and we can have our school crossing garden uh program leadership do that, and we can let you know what it looks like and give you an assessment.

And if we need to make adjustments to the budget, we can certainly say what that adjustment would look like at that point, and then the council could take a budget adjustment at some point, and we'd have to probably cut something else to be able to do that, but you at least should have a more informed understanding of what's happening out there based on the on the school closure.

But I would say probably October, so we can really see what's happening in August and September because you know it kind of settles down after those two months about what the normal patterns are, at least that's been my experience as a mother and dropping off as well.

Um but I'd say an information memo in October.

Is that sound good to you, Chief?

Would be good.

Okay, okay.

That's how that actually sounds good to me.

That will give us some information as to whether we need to take different action going forward.

Thank you.

That that's it for me.

Thanks, Vice Mayor.

Let's go now to Councilmember Kamehameha.

Thank you so much.

I um I want to just to add a little bit to what was just discussed in terms of the crossing guards is um you are gonna get what council member Ortiz talked about, which is these super schools, right, where they're trying to consolidate everyone, and maybe that might be an area to focus on to see if there are special needs in those um consolidated schools.

Um, so I just wanted to add that.

Um I'm gonna go back to the contingency plan and under public safety.

I know that uh the ALPR is suggested to be reduced.

Um, and it seems to have doubled in the ongoing basis, and I just wanted to get an understanding of what that means from the budget office.

Yeah, sure.

Uh Dean the question, the there are some of the ALPRs that are currently funded on a grant that expires on December 31st of this of this calendar year.

So the 420 is just six months worth of that cost, and then the eight eighty is the is the the annual amount.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then um, you know, it occurred to me that we will not have very much time uh between uh when we know uh how things are uh in June to when the budget is due to be passed.

And so, you know, I'm just wondering um will there be uh enough uh time and discussion in terms of should things not go the way we want them to go?

Like what is the what is the plan?

I mean, I know you have the contingency plan, but is that sort of an automatic or can we talk about it or how how do you think uh how do you envision it proceeding?

So I should we have to do anything?

Right.

I mean, it would be great, you know, to say, no, you know, we don't have to worry, but uh I'm just sort of thinking it's only like a month away, less than, less than.

So I'm just wondering like will we have more study sessions or talking about.

I mean, I want I just wonder uh uh is is there a plan to navigate that?

So I yeah, I was just gonna say we would have a couple of council sessions between the between June 2nd and the council adopting the budget.

Okay, so there will be the end of the fiscal year.

It would be rushed.

Very much hoping not to be in that position, right, Jennifer.

But we would we would make time during a council session if we have to reschedule a special meeting.

Generally, we're we're thinking it would be in a council meeting again hearing we still would want to look at that list one more time, but we would it would be at actual council action.

Nothing would be automatic about that contingency plan.

Okay, and we still, you know, as we continually get updated information on the budget, we want to evaluate that um again before we ask you to take action on that.

That's great.

So there'll be opportunity for conversation, and just because it's on there doesn't mean it's exactly, you know, a done deal and all of that.

So I think it's really important for us to have these discussions and know that should we have to go in any direction, there are consequences.

So I appreciate that.

Yeah, and I just it it does give just to to be very transparent, it does give a very good sense after cutting the budget for the last couple of years.

What's kind of next up for for having to cut because our we're such on a thin margin in our general fund?

So I definitely um we obviously hope that TOT passes, but we also need to be realistic about what the next level of cuts look like.

That doesn't mean that it'll be exactly that way, but those are kind of the magnitudes of kind of services that will be at stake.

Um so, but uh again, we'll continue to refine before we made our final recommendation to you.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks.

We're on to Councilmember Tordillos.

Thank you, Mayor, and staff.

Uh, just two quick questions here.

First one is again on the AI pilot.

I know we've had some you know astounding success with some of our early AI pilots, like speeding up our buses and other cases.

You know, we've looked at things, and it turns out the tech is not quite there yet.

Uh, you know, it sounds like we're gonna be doing an RFP for this.

Uh, do we have a sense of how you know how confident we are that the tech is mature enough to kind of realize these benefits?

Without saying definitively, because it is a pilot that we're going out to do, but we do feel that uh there have been some advances that are gonna make it worthwhile this time.

There was something we piloted previously that didn't really meet our expectations, but we're confident that there's products out there now that will.

Thank you for that.

I think as others have said, a lot of potential here would definitely be interested in some of the data that's been called out here, both trying to understand how much time are we actually saving on average reports, and then also what ends up happening to the officers bandwidth after that.

Are we actually realizing those overtime savings?

Are people being redeployed for other purposes?

I think all of that useful uh for council to make an ultimate decision on you know continuing this pilot in a future budget session.

Uh and then finally, just want to, you know, plus one all of council members or sorry, Vice Mayor Foley's comments on the crossing guard program.

Glad to hear that we are not, you know, cutting all of the vacant positions so that hopefully in the future we have the potential to fill some of these, get some more coverage out there, and then as you know, we see the impacts of our consolidated schools.

Uh, I think it will be good to adjust.

So glad to hear that there will be the info member come off coming in October.

So thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

I'm gonna try to just wrap up this section with a few quick questions.

Um, first is just this may be for Jennifer Shambri, just back to the uh top level focus area.

We know that public safety, the public's perception of safety is our north star.

Obviously, crime rates in the traditional sense are a very important input, but not necessarily the whole story.

Can you share a little bit about what we know right now about the public's the primary drivers of of the public's perception of safety in our city and how that information is shaping our strategies and investments across this focus area?

Sure, Jennifer Shambri, deputy city manager.

Um, so as you know, our uh resident uh safety perception has been increasing, um, and that's been very good news, and it's also been increasing in the downtown area.

We do ask um for the reasons, and it's kind of an open-ended question, and then we uh categorize them or lump them into a various categories.

Um, so that includes uh theft, uh homelessness, um, crime in the area.

Um, and so we're we're kind of seeing those things go back and forth.

Sometimes it's homeless, sometimes it's crime.

Um, and so I think that that uh I think all of our efforts across kind of all of the focus areas, um, look at those sorts of things and where we need to uh focus our efforts.

Okay, thanks.

Um and then along those lines, I wanted to ask a question or two on behavioral health response, which obviously is not the city's core competency, but is something that we need our partners at the county to really work with us to improve.

Um, and I appreciate that we are finding new ways to engage here, including the community paramedicine program we discussed, as well as the Harvard Bloomberg initiative, which is really focused on the subset of individuals who lack long-term stabilization and are kind of cycling between streets, emergency rooms, treatment, jail.

Can you share a little bit about what we're learning from our partnership with the county, where the system has the biggest gaps and is breaking down, and what kinds of interventions at the moment we think are most needed to help stabilize this group and with the acknowledgement of this kind of an ongoing learning process with our partners at the county.

Sure, and you you're specifically asking for alternate response or more along the lines of Bloomberg Harvard work.

Well, when if we know that a big driver of public safety concerns is untreated behavioral health issues, addiction and mental illness, other forms of mental illness, not just in downtown, though obviously certainly here, but also in other parts of the city.

And we're trying to engage the county in a new way.

Yes.

And thinking about different ways that the city can lean in, but also trying to make clear to them what's at stake in our community and how our shared constituents feel about these issues.

And I'm just, I'm curious what hypotheses we have as we head into this next fiscal year around what interventions we might be investing in or where we're expecting them to invest in that might move the needle here.

I'm hoping to see some progress in the coming fiscal year on this issue of untreated addiction and mental illness out on our streets in that intersection with public safety concerns and other issues.

So there are a couple things we're working on that I will share, but I think Lee wanted to jump in.

Sure.

Let me start with.

We actually met with the county on Friday just on this bucket.

And you know, one thing that I think we heard from the county loud and clear over the last year was stop coming us to us with solutions.

We have a complicated system over here.

We'd much rather you guys come to us with what is the problem you're trying to solve for?

Like what is the issue?

So I think you know, one of the things that hopefully you saw in the reducing unsheltered homelessness focused area was uh a very a very narrow focus on our high acuity individuals, um, specifically Eric and his team and Paul, everyone, like we've taken a subset of folks in the downtown and really been close with them over the course of you know the last few months of where the system is breaking down.

So we're gonna be coming forward and kind of presenting here's where the system is breaking down with these 60 individuals in the downtown.

Some are uh have very high uh substance abuse issues, others have a lot of behavioral and mental health issues.

We've identified kind of the voluntary treatment is a missing policy that the county does not have or believe they have from the state.

Involuntary, excuse me?

Involuntary.

Yeah, I'm sorry, yes, involuntary.

Yes, sorry.

Um, they do not believe they have that policy tool from the state.

I don't know if if we fully agree with that.

We believe that there's some things that they could exercise.

Um so we presented that to them Friday.

Uh we're gonna be having another meeting with them in June, kind of just how we move forward kind of um with this.

I think from our side, we've realized knowing where they are with their budget.

I think that uh involuntary or capacity inside a system is gonna be very difficult in this next year given where they are budgetarily.

So we will be really focusing on where do they believe they really don't have a tool from the state or where we believe that they do that they could exercise so we get through this year with actually being able to experiment with different things because there's four or five different avenues that they've presented to us, some of which I think we're very interested, others that we just don't believe moves the needle for the greater uh need that our community is expressing to us in these surveys, but also you know, half of the things that you guys have talked to us about this morning.

Yeah, I appreciate that update, and I'm glad to hear at the staff level you're continuing to engage in that conversation every month or so.

I think it's important that even if the commitment we get for the coming fiscal year is small, that there's something one or more concrete things, even if they're they're baby steps that we're actually taking together because this is a perennial issue.

It has not gotten appreciably better.

We've moved mountains on the city side to bring thousands of people indoors, but for those who can't benefit immediately or or are unable, you know, unwilling to come indoors.

Uh, we've got to have our our friends over at the county lean in.

I don't just I know we agree completely.

I'm just yeah, and I honestly I just would say I think like one thing that we need to do better as an administration with you, is we're constantly having these conversations, and sometimes we feel like we hit a brick wall.

Um, and then we have conversations like this and say, hey, we're really trying.

I think we need to pay in a better picture for all of you when we are running into roadblocks with the county, because I do think this is much more of a shared responsibility between staffs, but also electeds on our side and their side.

And so I think whether it's through the council focus area reports or just when specific programs come forward.

I think we can do a better job of being more transparent when we need your help and pushing as well.

Yeah, no, it's good.

I'm just asking the questions.

I think as we as we think about this focus area/slash in this case, CSA.

It's just important that we keep going back to first principles of what makes people feel unsafe.

And it's it's not always a violent or property crime.

We don't always have all the tools we need.

But I appreciate uh the administration leaning in there.

Look forward to continuing that conversation.

So I think we are in a position where we can move on to strategic support and updates from council appointees.

So why don't we take a moment?

Thank you to everyone who presented and took questions.

All right, we're ready to begin.

Excellent, let's do it.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mayhan Council members and members of the public, Calegatonic Chief Information Officer and Information Technology Director.

I'm joined by Aram Korumchian, Director of Human Resources and Employee Relations.

And we are here to present the strategic support CSA proposed budget.

Strategic support CSA includes essential services from the finance, human resources, public works, and information technology departments.

Core services include debt and treasury management, employee benefits, facility and fleet management, business solutions and San Jose 311 program.

Programs under CSA include payroll, accounts payable, accounting and procurement services provided by the finance department, medical benefits to recruitment and related hiring activities managed by the human resources department, facilities maintenance and capital program administration led by public works, and IT systems cybersecurity and network infrastructure managed by the information technology department.

Some of the track performance measures highlight the city as it continues to receive strong bond rating from credit agencies, demonstrating sound financial management and ensuring access to affordable borrowing when needed.

Through dedicated ongoing recruitment and retention initiatives, the human resources department continues to reduce staffing gaps while operating within healthy margin levels.

The San Jose 311 custom satisfaction continues to improve, reaching 66% relative to the 70% target with continuing improvements planned for next year.

The vehicle equipment availability remains strong at the 100% vehicle availability for a fifth consecutive year for public safety, an exceeding 97% availability for other staff.

The finance department budget increased by 0.5% to support software upgrades, including a new grant management system, cacheting system, cloud migration, and planned enhancements to financial management system.

The 19.1% information technology investment increase will enhance infrastructure resilience, strengthen cybersecurity capabilities, and drive greater efficiency.

And the 1.7% increase in public works budget reflect a modest increase in fleet staffing, which we will be highlighting in a later slide.

Strategic support services remain committed, remains committed to protecting and allocating resources in alignment with community needs, maintaining accurate financial reporting, and improving operational efficiency through effective business solutions.

Strategic priorities also include attracting and retaining highly qualified staff while continuing to reduce vacancy rate through expanding digital recruitment efforts, maintaining safe and reliable facilities and fleet assets, and leveraging innovative solutions and data informed decision-making capabilities to address service gaps in support of city priorities.

The following actions are included in the proposed budget: a one-time five million to refresh critical infrastructure equipment and use and end user devices to ensure availability efficiency and cybersecurity compliance.

The 500 allocation will replace the city's grants management legacy systems with a centralized platform that meets current compliance standards and tracking uh grants citywide.

The proposed $380,000 budget adds three mechanics to help reduce vehicle availability gaps for general fleet maintenance services as indicated on slide number four.

The 270,000 six thousand investment in San Jose 311 will increase the number of software licenses needed for staff access and supports HJ 311 integration with internal systems.

Finance will use 100,000 as a one-time funding to migrate the city's cashiering and payment processing system to a cloud-based solution, improving security, ensuring up-to-date functionality, and reducing IT support demands.

Two reduction from public works will reduce funds by 20% for unanticipated or emergency building repairs.

In addition, public works will not replace two to three vehicles in the coming year.

Duties have been absorbed by existing staff due to efficiencies realized through the new banking system.

The human resources and IT departments would reduce will reduce workforce development and support services staffing as part of the proposed budget.

In summary, strategic support services will continue focusing on maintaining strong financial stewardship of public resources, maintaining city facilities, equipment and vehicles to ensure safety and reliability, supporting a well-trained, engaged and service-oriented staff, and empowering employees through effective tools, innovation, and collaboration to deliver exceptional services.

This concludes our presentation and staff available for questions.

Great.

Thank you, Carl.

Appreciate it.

Sylvia, welcome to the team.

Thrilled to have you here.

Alright, colleagues, I'm not seeing anyone rush to raise their hands.

I'll go ahead and ask a question.

So, Kyle, after the investment we're making in 311, I assume we hope to see the customer satisfaction score go up.

What and on your mind, again, I'll frame it as a hypothesis.

What's the top one or two things that you think will have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction when it comes to 311?

And can you put a time frame on our delivery of one or both of those?

Absolutely.

Thank you, Mayor, for the question.

There are two things that's related to 311.

The application, which is the front end, and the back end, which actually delivered the service.

And while the investment that we're making here is primarily for the 311, we're also working through the customer experience initiative, which really looks at the operations and to see how we can make the intake of 311 seamless with delivery of the service also becomes integrated as part of the process.

And one of the things that's currently being worked on as we speak is the illegal or junk pickup.

And I believe in a couple weeks we'll come back to council to present that part of the CX experience project.

But the between in improvement to the front end, more integration and business process reviews, we're looking to see in improved delivery of services and therefore would result in a higher satisfaction for customers.

Okay.

I'll take that for now.

I may have some follow-ups at a future meeting, but that's good.

It's a good example.

Okay, Councilmember Kamehameha.

Okay, Mr.

Mayor, you touched the nerve there with the SJ 311.

I wasn't gonna say anything, but then I thought, oh no, the mayor started, so I I have to kind of like because I'm still I'm still receiving uh information from my residents that uh they report something, especially when it comes to some kind of vehicle or a vehicle being there three, four, five, six weeks, whatever, um, and they get the uh the response of oh, your item has been closed, right?

Um and is that still happening?

I mean, I you know, like it would seem a simple thing to fix, and maybe it's more complicated than I understand, but when someone reports, especially in the I hear it more when it comes to a vehicle, like a big truck, or I have big trucks in my district that are just behaving badly.

And um, and so I'm I'm just wondering, it doesn't it doesn't make sense to me that they're still receiving this response that says, Oh, your ticket has been closed, and it's like when do we is that still I mean, is that still the case, or am I just like that one?

So that is still taking place to some extent um in much more minimal ways than they were.

I I do want to go back so next week we will be forward uh in front of you with the customer experience work plan kind of a status update of where we are with that.

I do want to uh understand the importance of that and just at a high level kind of explain what Khaled just mentioned of large junk pickup.

So that was also something like vehicle concerns that got added on to 311 without us taking a step back and saying, well, what is the actual residence journey through reporting that we have city services you know within the city that are um you know oftentimes siloed, you know, within departments, but they're also because of how lean we are, they are built around efficiency for staff.

The most efficient way to get something from A to B for a staff person so that we can kind of move on to the next thing.

That doesn't mean that we've taken the time, like vehicle concerns before we put it up.

Okay, are they really reporting something that we can enforce?

Are we communicating them about like what we can enforce and describing city, you know, the city services that we do have?

So I think to Khaled's previous point, I think what you'll hear next week is a more uh intentional way around you know, vehicle concerns, junk pickup, and the other services that we want to migrate um from the existing 311 system over to the new, but also the services that we'll be adding in the next year is much more intentionality around what is that front door and what is the interaction with residents, and sometimes that is communicating to them on what we can do, um, and then a time frame that we'll be able to do it, and certainly with uh vehicle concerns, you know, a vast majority of those were sometimes uh vehicles that reported on that actually there was no enforceability to that at all, but we had a system in place that let residents report that.

So, what I would say, and um, you know, I'll be looking forward to what comes next week or whenever it does come to us.

Um, the whole idea of SJ 311 was to consolidate and give the resident or the person out in the community a sort of like one-stop shop to report things, right?

You know, when we ended up moving out all of the unhoused uh, you know, or the issues with the unhoused separately, and then you have to go through this menu of things.

You know, it took time to let people know about it.

You know, from a public information kind of point of view, people really like the idea of going to 311, having it as an app, having it in one place and being able to report whatever it is that they wanted to report, right?

And so I don't know if you're going to remove it or take it out or whatever.

I'm a little bit concerned, and I and I um uh had my staff send some information some uh a notice to um um uh Jennifer Shambri of, you know, if people can't report or complain or do whatever it is on the 311 app, I worry that they're gonna go back to 911, right?

And you know, it's sort of it takes time to get people accustomed to a new way.

And I don't know last year when we were talking about you know the transition of SJ 311 and that it may take one year, but you know, we allowed we gave authorization for a two-year transition.

Um I thought that we would at least find a way to be able to uh keep things together, not create something else that we would have to educate the community all over again on.

Hey, you got a complaint on this.

So I'm I'm just wondering, will you have everything out on the SJ 311 app so that people can kind of find ways to report there as opposed to going someplace else?

So that is the goal of 311 is to have the services where our residents um engage with and report that they are eventually all on 311.

311 is simply just a front door, whether it's the app, call center, or or any place else.

Versus now we only actually have the 20 city services on 311.

So a great majority of other things that are, you know, come in are through email to your offices, emails to our offices or various things, you know, directly to departments, which creates a bit of inefficiency, creates inefficiency for us, you know, within management and the rest of the organization that sometimes we don't have a clear picture on what that um resident is actually trying to solve for at times.

Um same with you, as you have a resident in your area, you may have different staff members getting different emails.

Um it also is very frustrating for the actual resident that has to engage six or seven different city staff at times, trying to figure out where to go.

So the intentionality and the vision for three one uh vision for SJ 311 is eventually everyone comes there to ask for that request to report something or figure out a City service that they need to access.

I I think that's great.

It's just that when it came to the whole issues of the unhoused, we pulled it out and put it separately so that they have to go through the menu uh to address if someone sees someone unhoused.

So I just I just wanted wanted to make sure that it just stays together when it comes to um abandoned vehicles or other vehicles or things like that and not as a separate thing, because then people won't know where to go.

Sure, and and report and encampment was added back to SJ 311 last week, so that is now on there and live.

I would just say for that it was important that it sat off to the side for a while, so as we did some of these larger encampments and really learned how the reporting parties um you know wanted to engage that we had flexibility and didn't limit ourselves through 301, but we did feel comfortable enough to add that back last week.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, council member.

I'm not seeing any other hands, indicate that the council is ready to move on to our next item.

Okay, next topic, all right.

Well, thank you all.

Appreciate it.

So let's see if we're next.

Okay, so if we have any questions on the point.

Got it.

Let's go to questions to appointees if we have any.

I'll wait a moment.

There's no presentation, but if there are questions directly to appointees, Councilman Condelas.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, um, you know, this is um, I guess uh to Tony and the city clerk's office.

I know we've been discussing about um having to conform to state law, and we do have an item uh coming to the rules committee later this week.

But um I guess uh for for the full councils, I guess, heads up, um, you know, uh we do we do have to provide uh that public commenting opportunity for for uh for Zoom participants or people who are not in person to conform with state law and so um you know uh as a as a um I get I guess how would you how would you say the the trials have been going and just uh at a real high level um conversations with your peers on this same topic in California, just we're all yours.

We're ready at the the same level we had before.

There is software out there that would make things quicker, easier, better.

We are requesting rebudgets um to maybe get some of that software.

But as is, we're we're actually testing it right now.

We're having a little glitch today, but I think we figured out the the problem.

Um we'll test it again tomorrow during council.

We we accidentally have two meetings scheduled at the same time, and it keeps wanting me to switch over to the other meetings, so that's user error.

Um, but we're we're ready to go.

We've got the the hybrid meeting guidelines.

Um I think the attorney's office is finalizing those today.

Um Neelam and I have been working on them back and forth back and forth.

Um we made some tweaks this morning.

So perfect.

Thank you, Tony.

I I we'll we'll discuss it a little bit more in detail in detail later this week.

But uh I just wanted to give you a shout out and appreciate your work on this um to try to you know get more folks involved in our in our public process and and you know, there's there's trade-offs because we know the the last time we were we were doing this, we it was it was not so pleasant, not because of San Joseans.

I firmly believe that, uh, but folks out of the era and out of the state even.

Um and then I guess my next question regard uh to one of our appointees is is to the um the customer experience transformation um investments that we're making um to the tune of uh 3.9 million this year, um in addition to I want to say a 2.9 million dollar balance that we currently have.

Um so it was was hoping the the administration can talk a little bit about what we're hoping to see and why we're prioritizing this funding all the way through 2029 given our fiscal situation.

Sure, I'm happy to help with that.

Um and you'll get um obviously a lot more next week when we come forward of the the 3.9 million.

Uh a great majority of that is actually for the the CRM licensing and software as well as the professional services and the technical service about migrating SJ 311 over to the new system, and then eventually SJ 311 will connect to the CRM and all the different departments so that we kind of do have all of the data in one area to be able to look at some of the metrics, performance, and to be able to kind of support all of the different functions behind that one front door.

Um so a great majority is for for technical work and software.

Um and I'm I'm looking at the uh at the proposed uh budget changes.

Um I guess descript description where where would it be able to delineate what's going to the actual licensees, what's going to obviously I think the we're in addition to this, we're adding um obviously a deputy director position to oversee this and an assistant to the city manager or senior executive analyst.

Uh but curious is where where we can see you know the costs of this, and obviously we want to, you know, it we want it to be an iterative process and we want to be able to see what's working, what's not working.

But um that that's what I I'd like to see, and curious to where where we can find that.

Sure, so that uh this budget wouldn't reflect a detailed budget like that.

That's something I can follow up with you offline on that we definitely have within the office, um, where it shows specifically what goes to 311 or the CRM, but a more detailed background than what you see on this budget write up.

Alright, thank you no thank you, thank you, Alila.

I appreciate that.

Obviously, we all want um that better interaction with our with our residents and that customer experience uh to be pleasant, and yes, our office does do constituent services along with everybody else's here, but um just you know, I I'm looking through every every pot of money that we are dedicating funding funding for.

Um, and uh and if if there's um you know savings to to be had and and questions to be asked, that's that's what and I mean I I will say uh you can obviously we'll hear more about it next week.

We really have looked at other cities about how they've stepped into this work, um, so that we can a properly phase it, b make sure we're kind of headed in a direction um in which we feel comfortable, but also kind of benchmark ourselves versus what we're spending versus those other cities, and so uh this budget you know has come down an awful lot, um, you know, versus where we wanted to go to be able to kind of do it within reality, but it is really, you know, overlaps with some of the service optimization stuff that you've all wanted because when we do have that friction or even you guys get so many emails on the the vehicle concern or someone that didn't you know uh you know their garbage was missed or anything else, it does require a lot of noise in the organization to fix those things.

So this is ultimately, yes, there's some one-time investments here, but it is about kind of the ongoing efficiencies that should help us save money in the long run.

No, I I appreciate that uh Lee.

Um and uh obviously um I think um we we are very we're hyper you know sensitive to any any expenditure and and you know whether it's looking to see where we can bolster our um uh our funding towards our immigrant in support services to other, I think that that's where that's where my my thinking is, but I appreciate you and and the uh the all the appointees' response.

Thanks.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Let's go to Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Susanna, city attorney question for you.

Actually, more of a just an observation in the budget around a deputy city attorney for the Muni Code.

I'm just wondering what what's the expectation around how that um sort of sort of rides shotgun with um you know code enforcement and that and any other actions that you're taking around that kind of enforcement?

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember, for the question.

Quite proud of the work that we're doing there.

Uh this um position was actually uh one time funded last fiscal year, and so we appreciate the uh city manager's support in making that a permanent position.

Uh that the this is our single full prosecutor that um dovetails nicely with a lot of the more significant problematic properties in the city, uh, multi-family housing drug abatement problems, um, a lot of police cases that we get information from, and then we build cases around, and then we proactively file against them.

It's the position that gets the receivers appointed or seeks to get receivers appointed to take over the property.

And um as as we've uh launching a more proactive community justice based effort uh to kind of kind of lead a lot of those plans.

That's what this uh civil prosecutor would be doing.

And is there any other work that you're doing in the office related to interaction with code enforcement?

Yes.

So we have two um our two attorneys that serve as our municipal prosecutors, and so they will take the cases into the superior court and actually prosecute violations of our city code.

We have attorneys that advise code enforcement, um, and then we have uh well, we have a number of attorneys that actually work with code enforcement depending on what in particular uh is the discipline that the cases that are presented to us.

What what I'm hoping to do is um engage more proactively to try to bring some cases over and and take action and then uh build the cases from our office.

Thank you.

Um Tony, just a question for you.

Um council member Condelis was bringing up about you know, coming August, we'll have to be available uh remotely.

Um I don't remember in the budget seeing any technology related to that.

Um I would imagine there is some consideration.

Is there a plan for that?

And did I just miss it in the budget?

It's not in the budget.

We just found the software two weeks ago.

Um we are working with finance to rebudget our excess funds.

We're trying to see if we can get it approved.

The current software we right now have works for it.

The software we're looking at enhances, makes it better, makes it easier for us.

It makes it better for the people in person as well.

We love it, it's very exciting.

But the way the way we currently have it with Zoom and everything is it will work.

And if I know you, you're sort of tied into clerks across the state.

I would hope that we're not the only one using that software.

Oh no, the the new software is there's a waiting list.

Because they're the only provider of it that's SB 707 compliant.

Um, so although he said he would rush it for us if we could get something, but we're working on that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Okay.

Oh, Vice Mayor, please.

Well, we have one council appointee up here who is here present.

I just wanted to acknowledge Joel Royce as our city auditor and someone who always is there to give us a briefing, and uh I just want to acknowledge your efficiency and professionalism.

Yes, and Eddie Albury too is our other uh council appointee that are in the audience, but we're not bringing for you.

That doesn't mean that we don't love you.

It means we just don't have any questions for you.

Thank you.

Yeah, all right.

Thanks, Vice Mayor.

Okay, I don't see any other questions for appointees, which means we're going on to fees and charges.

And Jim, I think I'm turned over to you, or is it just for questions?

Just for questions.

We don't have a process.

Okay, so do we have questions on fees and charges?

Just to remind everybody, it's a separate whole document.

Nice and thick.

I'm pausing.

Oh, actually, I yeah, okay.

We'll go to councillor Kameh.

So I know that um when we do these annual um fees and charges, usually um most of the fees are um, you know, cost recovery and all of that.

Um earlier today I mentioned something about um citations, especially uh uh parking citations.

Um, does that does that fall outside of okay?

So we are able uh to, because I know that there's some uh fee, you know, some of these that we haven't really we just sort of incrementally bring them up, incrementally bring them up.

And I'm just wondering, um, you know, when have we like looked at it a little bit more deeply in terms of being able to charge more?

Well for the so for those costs where the city is providing a service to a defined customer.

We we capture uh the vast bulk of those in this fees and charges document.

The ones that are maybe outside of that would be the things for like your water bill or your sewer bill that's sort of handled through a separate ordinance and resolution.

Um the amount recovered for citations or fines is also handled through that's not really a fee for service, that's really just a uh a punishment kind of, and you're and you're you're paying a fine for violating some some rule or or law.

Um so those are normally handled through separate resolution also.

Um the amount I I don't know offhand the last time we did sort of a deep dive into the citation revenue individual amounts for things like parking tickets.

That's something something that we could look into.

Yeah, because I I think that you know, um uh earlier on when we covered transportation, you know, I mentioned um you know the potential of increasing the number of uh um parking enforcement officers, but you know, obviously if we're in a revenue crunch, we're not able to uh do very much.

And so I was just wondering, you know, if we were able to have a little bit more revenue, maybe next year.

Uh John could have a little bit more in terms of uh the ability to take a look even at um uh parking enforcement officers.

So um if it hasn't been looked at in some time, maybe that's something to think about in the future in terms of what seems appropriate, what have others done, you know, within our, you know, Santa Clara County or other cities or what have you, because you know, I think that we have to start thinking about revenue generation in multiple ways.

Thank you.

Thanks, Council.

Let's go to Councillor O'Cohn.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, um Councilmember Kamei for bringing that up.

I think it's important for us to also always be doing an analysis of how our fines and things compare to our peer jurisdictions around us.

I don't know that I've seen a report that says how do our citations compare to Oakland or San Francisco or other places, and it might be a good quick analysis for us to make some adjustments.

Um I was just gonna ask for a brief overview of what we're thinking on parking, um, just just so you know to have a little conversation about the parking.

I are we this includes increase in parking um parking rates, right?

So I know that this this affects does it affect just the parking meters affect garages too.

What is our overall vision this year for the changes in parking rates downtown?

Yeah, so the the parking rates so that it would not be a fees and charges, that's also a separate resolution, so that'll be coming forward as part of the budget adoption process.

Um the um we do in the proposal in the um in the transportation section, we are recommending an increase in the meter rates.

I think by two dollars an hour in the down the downtown.

John's there.

Oh, John, yeah.

John can help out.

There we got the expert here.

Jim was doing a great job.

John Russell uh director of department of transportation.

So they to answer the question on the parking revenue that proposed is increasing the rate by two dollars per hour in certain parking meters that are within about two blocks from parking garages.

Parking garages still have 90 minutes free for the first 90 minutes, and that doesn't change.

So we would be changing the rates and then all and then also changing the time.

Right now they end at 6 p.m.

We would be extending it to nine.

Okay, and then and uh we we've based some of these changes on what we see happening in other jurisdictions around us.

Is that the are we are we?

We can we compare that to other jurisdictions, whether they're nearby or some some other one, San Francisco.

How will we get the message out to residents?

I don't know, you know, the rates are one thing people will see them when they when they try to pay to park, but the after six o'clock thing, people if they just have a memory that it used to be free uh to park after six.

How are we gonna let people in the in the area know that this has changed?

Is there gonna be some publicity?

So this isn't the greatest way, but each one of your meters does have a very, very tiny little note on there that you have to have to look at.

So on top of that, we would be putting out information whether or not we're gonna put it on every meter or not, but we're definitely gonna have to let people know that that time frame is changed, and then the rates at certain meters is changed.

But they're they'll get that as soon as they try to pay for it, they're gonna see that rate pop up on the meter.

It's the time frame that'll change.

There are signs that are out there that give the time frame also.

So you don't have to look at the little meter, you can see the the uh sign on the on the roadway, but even those are probably not gonna be good enough for the change.

But we'll but we will be having to change.

We're gonna have to do some outreach to actually make sure people understand that.

And we're do we have a budget line item for actually updating the it'll it's included in our responsibility.

It's also we will help have to rely on some of our partners, downtown association, PBID, that sort of thing, because they are actually under contract to help us to get the word out on parking.

Okay and council newsletters.

I'm sorry, and council newsletters to make sure we tell all of our residents.

Right now it's just in the downtown area parts of 6.

Last month I was parking in Sacramento and I parked at 6 15 thinking it was still free and got a ticket because last year they did this there and I didn't know.

But I guess it's a question we have how people will find out.

Yeah, we're not we won't be changing anything outside of the downtown proper Japan Town, East Side, anything like that.

So it's just in that core downtown.

Okay, thank you.

And just a note.

Sorry, just a note on just to go back to fines just to not lose lose that in the 2425 budget.

We did increase uh parking violations by five dollars for uh violations for bike lanes, street sweeping zones, residential parking permit zones, and meter parking spots.

That was last year.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then back to the process here, this will come forward during the budget, but it's a separate item other than this particular fees and charges.

It'll we it will be, but it'll be wrapped into the entire budgeted option.

So I think the way we have the structure is the budget will be um approved.

Uh I think this fees and charges uh this resolution to increase the rates is tenorly scheduled for June 23rd, so it would happen right after the budget was adopted.

So a separate action separate from the budget.

Correct.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Let's go to Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Uh, have a few questions and comments uh about the fees.

I'm really happy to see the fee structure for the murals, particularly the the ones in on city properties that the cost is five hundred dollars for a mural versus what it was anticipated to be much higher than that.

We really want to help our citizens beautify their neighborhood.

Same thing with uh Caltrans.

We we were working on a Caltrans mural in my district, and received this huge quote from uh our department, and then now I see it's only $1,500.

So that's much more affordable for us to for this neighborhood to do the mural that they wanted to, even though Caltrans is difficult to get that permission from, but I'm glad to see that.

I know that was in your budget message, Mary Mayor, and I'm glad to see that.

Um I have a couple of questions regarding the ambulance transport fee, user fee.

It looks like so we budgeted 1.7 last year, and now we're modifying that budget to 800,000.

And same thing for the first responder fee, we're reducing that.

Can you tell me what's the complication in why how did we end how did we overshoot so much?

Thank you for the question, Vice Mayor.

I'll ask us the fire department to come down.

I think essentially as we're rolling out this new program, you know, getting a better handle on those that are able to pay through insurance has been sort of a work in in progress, but we'll have the the chief come and talk to that.

Okay.

Yeah, I was curious when we approve this, is how it was going to actually work.

So, Chief, maybe you can talk us through how someone calls for an ambulance, how we get their information and are able to build their insurance carrier.

Yeah, so for the thank you, Robert Sapian Fire Chief.

For the first part of your question, um uh I think we're gonna have to have at least a few years of experience to really understand the very complex payer mix that relates to insurances and what they pay and and all of that.

And so estimating what revenues will be, I think will be refined over time.

In terms of what's happening right now, uh 911 callers access our system as they always had.

Uh we arrive on scene as we always do.

Uh we do not refuse care, we do not condition care based on ability to pay or anything like that.

We simply, while we're on scene, request identification and insurance information.

If we're able to obtain it, then our third-party billing firm will make contact with that insurance provider and will attempt to uh to um gain remittance for the for the services provided.

Uh beyond that, uh customers will receive a statement basically saying that all that occurred, uh, but right now we're not doing balance billing or doing collections or anything like that.

Okay, so they well, they're in medical crisis, so it's not it's unlikely they have their Kaiser card sitting in their hand.

They're more likely very concerned about their health or their loved one is certainly too.

So uh so we don't necessarily collect the data there, although we try, and then we send a follow-up, do we send a follow-up bill to their home?

No, patients do not receive bills directly.

Just a letter saying we need this information in order to proceed.

Right.

And and to your to your or to collect.

Right.

To your point just a moment ago, this is really not different than than what has occurred on every other emergency medical call for as long as I can remember, because we do have an ambulance provider on scene that has been doing billing forever.

It's the same information that they would ask for on scene.

So that really is not not a different practice.

Okay, and and other cities that have this fee, how do they how are they doing it collecting?

Is there are there is their process similar to ours, or can we learn anything from other cities who do this?

Very similar.

In fact, the third-party billing process that we have is is widely adopted by by many agencies.

Uh the the payer mix, obviously, you're not going to get 100% of billable patients aren't going to be able to pay or aren't gonna have insurance to pay.

And so you do have uh regional uh experience based on that particular payer mix in that environment.

And so we're still learning about how remittance will occur in in our service area, and as I said, over time we'll we'll be more refined in how we budget that.

Great.

Thank thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you.

I I think the the lesson to learn is that when we have these opportunities that we think may be generating big dollars that we should really need to be very conservative in until we have a pattern established and we know that the funds are actually going to come in um in in a dependable way.

Um the other question I had is we have uh a lot of uh the fees and charges are in cat uh cost recovery categories, which to me means a hundred percent cost recovery, not 95 cents on the dollar.

So what stands in the way from moving all of the cost recovery to 100 percent, and then what's the impact of on the general fund for not being at 100%?

Sorry.

Yeah, so I I didn't quite catch the first part of the question.

Was this for all of all of the the fees or just for a particular category one?

Yeah, why is category one, you know, things that are should be cost recovery, or why are we having some of those fees be less than cost recovery?

I'll let you answer that, although I could answer it.

You might do a better job in general.

So I mean, yeah, there are I mean our our goal is to have category one B cost recovery.

It may be that in instances um it is, you know, after there's a couple instances it could it uh it occurs.

One, it's just the overall cost of the program is just to have that be borne by an individual customer might just be too much.

Um it also could be that after we've adjusted for the uh fees based on an update of the time it takes to complete the work for that that fee, the jump in the rate might be too much to swallow in the first year, and so we phase into that over a multiple year period.

Um but we have do have a pretty rigorous process where we go through like each individual fees and charge and we're saying, hey, let's get to 100%, or like it's not gonna work out, and we might not get all of the way there.

But um, but that is our approach for all of those fees.

You do that every year, Jim?

Every year, see, I learned something new.

Uh okay, thank you.

That answer that answers that question.

And and one other note is that I noticed that the inlu developer fees, many of those were reduced this year.

So I'm I was happy to see that.

I don't know what kind of economic impact that will have on the developers, but I noticed they were reduced like two cents or ten cents uh per square foot.

Not a huge, but it's uh it's a drop, and over a huge development, it might it might really add up to something.

I don't know.

But I just noticed that, and I think in a time when we're trying to build more housing, that's important.

That's that's it for me.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks, Vice Mayor.

It's good to Councilmember Condelas.

Thank you.

Um, Mayor, uh Vice Mayor, I appreciated your comments on the mural fee structure.

That would that those are the that that's the area that I quickly wanted to just ask.

Um has well I hope that OEDCA is able to go and do some outreach with our uh with our folks in the art community, whether it's the arts commission or anybody else to talk about this and uh just um hopefully uh bring this awareness because essentially it is a new fee, um, wherein otherwise the TOT would be 100% subsidizing this work.

Um so I I hope we're able to reach out to artists and talk to folks.

Uh I don't know, uh uh if you'd like to comment other carry.

Good afternoon, Carrie Adams Hapner, Office of Cultural Affairs.

Yes, absolutely, that's a great idea.

Thank you for bringing it up.

Yeah, I just uh don't want to um have a a meeting where we got a whole bunch of artists pissed off that they got to pay fees without knowing, so um that that's one thank you, Carrie.

That's that's pretty much it.

And then uh lastly, uh Jim, that there's in the subsequent paragraph of this there's a um the fee revenues from um gated events on public properties.

Uh there's a five percent gross gate receipts.

Do we not do we not have that uh fee or that uh that revenue uh for the time being given our um uh given the I guess the the exemption or the suspension of the gated event on public property fee that we have?

Correct.

So that's revenue that um we we don't have that revenue coming in.

That revenue's been suspended for as you can see for a long, long period of time.

I think is the impetus there is to sort of incentivize those types of events, and I know that I think back a number of of years.

Well, actually, it doesn't say that, but it it's not obvious through that paragraph.

But that that gate gated event on public property fee has been suspended for a long period of time and is extended for an additional year.

I think that's in place um to help those events uh make it more.

To make it yeah, I get it.

We were we're you know we we've had some some big time events and I I appreciate it, but curious as to like you know that that gross gate receipts fee in in general, and and I don't know if we if we still uh you know charge a five percent uh gate uh receipt uh for for revenues generated on on um on public property for these for these big time events.

I don't know if we do that or that suspended or what the future plan is for that.

We we do not um go yeah carry.

Yeah, that'd be called thank you.

Oh, Carrie, my bad.

I thought I thought this was for Jim.

Hi, thank you for the question.

So we suspended this fee maybe about 10 years ago.

And when we did collect it, it I would say it generated about $30,000, and then we reinvested it in our festival parade and celebration grant program.

So what we found is that we were essentially kind of re-granting money to the organizations that were giving us the fee, the revenue.

So you know, with escalating um, you know, cost controls around the city trying to incentivize outdoor special events.

We did suspend it.

Got it.

No, and the reason why I asked that, I mean, we've had some, you know, uh big time entertainment, like big time events that um you know have evolved since um I'm I'm assuming since the suspension of this, whenever it was, uh, just seeing so much the thousands of people um you know lining up to to participate in what what we're we're craving.

Granted, you know, it's a it's a balance.

We don't necessarily want to hinder that from happening, but uh if we see it as a strategic opportunity to generate revenue for for um for our city, that may be something that's worthwhile and something that that the administration should consider.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Fair points.

Great.

Thanks, council member.

Okay, I don't see any other hands.

So I think we'll move on from fees and charges to the proposed biannual capital budget and 27 through 31 capital improvement program.

What's that?

Jen Jennifer wants everyone to be clear, this is a separate document.

She is displaying it for all to see.

Um Jim, I do believe we have a presentation on this one.

So I'll turn it to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, correct, Mayor and City Council.

We do have a presentation.

So as Matt Matt Lesh, our public works director, and Jennifer Tell, our capital budget manager in the city manager's budget office, get settled in there.

We want to uh just have a couple remarks here.

You'll remember that last year was our first year for implementing a biennial capital budget and five year capital improvement program.

And so last year was the first year of a two-year budget, but of course, things change, of course, throughout the year, and we need to carry forward funds that need to finish our projects that are already in progress.

And so we are in our first mid-biannual update of that uh two-year capital budget process, and so really want to appreciate all the work the departments did and uh Jennifer Tell in leading us into sort of pioneering this this first mid mid-biannual update.

So we also, though, have a charter requirement to uh approve a five-year capital improvement program, and so that is also part of our presentation today.

So without further ado there, I will turn it over to Jennifer.

Thank you, Jim.

Uh thank you, Mayor and Council members.

Jennifer Tell, capital budget manager in the city manager's budget office.

Uh as Jim mentioned, I will provide an overview of the proposed capital budget and the funding sources for the five-year capital improvement program or CIP.

Then I will turn it over to Public Works Director Matt Lesh to discuss major project changes in this mid-biannial budget update.

There are 14 capital programs under that fall under the city's six city service areas or CSAs.

We will review the major project changes for the programs in each of the CSAs.

As noted in the overview of the proposed operating budget last week, next year's proposed budget reflects a $5.5 billion recommended spending plan across 152 funds.

This presentation is focusing on the 18% or $1.2 billion slice of the budget that is made up of the capital funds.

Here's a historical comparison of the five-year CIP over the last 10 years.

For fiscal years 27 to 31, the CIP totals 3.3 billion dollars.

The fiscal years 20 to 24 and 25 to 29 CIPs were the largest to date.

A large contributor to these CIPs was the Measure T bond passed by voters in November 2018, which authorized the city to issue up to $650 million in general obligation bonds for investments in emergency and disaster response facilities and infrastructure such as roads and flood and water quality protection.

In this proposed CIP, we see exhaustion of Measure T funds anticipated in fiscal year 2028-29.

So as Jim mentioned, new last year was the transition to a two-year presentation of the budget, the 2025 to 27 adopted biennial capital budget.

Given the long-term nature of planning for city infrastructure investments, the adopted biennial capital budget allowed the administration to highlight strategic investments planned to move forward in the first two years of the CIP.

However, as conditions are never static and funding for the current year must be carried forward into the following year.

Adjustments to the previously approved 2026-27 capital budget are necessary.

This proposed mid biannual capital budget update in CIP lays out the changes to the 26-27 budget previously included in the 2026 to 30 adopted CIP.

The changes focus on rebalancing the capital funds in response to adjustments and revenue assumptions such as new grants or updated tax revenue forecasts, addressing unexpected changes in project costs, and reallocating funding to address unexpected conditions or needs.

This proposed capital budget and CIP also extends the five-year CIP horizon to fiscal year 2030-31.

Of the 3.3 billion dollars in the total five-year CIP, 1.2 billion dollars is budgeted in 20627 for the proposed mid biannual update as compared to $670 million shown for 206 27 in the adopted biannual budget.

The proposed mid biannual budget for 2627 is substantially higher than presented in last year's adopted CIP, largely due to our process of carrying forward or rebudgeting unspent appropriations for multi-year capital projects.

Here is a breakdown of the funding source categories for the $3.3 billion five-year CIP.

We'll go into more depth for the top five categories listed here.

Revenue from other agencies is the largest source of funds in the capital improvement program, representing approximately $730 million funding, up 4% from the last adopted CIP.

The increase is largely attributable to increases in contributions from the local user agencies served by the regional wastewater facility.

The increase aligns contributions with the scope, timing, and cost of capital projects included in the proposed CIP.

Revenue from the state is higher due to recognizing additional gas tax and road rehabilitation funding based on updated forecasting.

Revenue from the federal government is down due to removal of a U.S.

Department of Transportation safe streets for all grant award that is not expected to move forward and the need to rebudget grant funds that are still eligible for reimbursement as part of the year-end cleanup process.

The next largest funding source is contributions, loans, and transfers between funds.

The largest transfers are from the sewer service and use charge fund to the water pollution control and sanitary sewer capital program.

Fees paid by the users of the sanitary sewer system are used for capital projects in these programs as well as operating costs.

The proposed CIP includes $61 million in contributions from the general fund with the largest allocations for fire apparatus replacement and replacement of the 911 dispatch backup generator.

The amount of general fund contributions in the proposed CIP is substantially lower than the last adopted CIP because we do not carry forward existing general fund appropriations for capital projects in the proposed CIP.

These will be included as part of the year-end cleanup process, which will likely increase the amount of general fund contributions.

The beginning fund balance is made up of money carried over from prior year allocations.

There are plans for most of this money pending the determination of a final scope for projects, final project locations, andor availability of future funding.

The amount of beginning fund balance in this proposed CIP is about 1% above what was included in the last adopted CIP, and this amount will increase as part of the year-in process when capital appropriations not spent this year return to fund balance.

The increase in beginning fund balance is largely due to the final issuance of Measure T bonds in 2025-26.

Those funds will be carried over until fully spent, which is anticipated in 2028-29.

Taxes, fees, and charges funding is up slightly from $572 million to $579 million.

Airport passenger facility charges are estimated to be down by about $15 million.

However, construction excise tax and building and structure construction tax are estimated to be up compared to the last adopted CIP due to anticipated construction of data centers.

Financing proceeds are anticipated to provide about $521 million in the proposed CIP, down $40% from the CIP adopted last year.

Similar to the last CIP, the largest use of financing is in the water pollution control capital program with $392 million of wastewater revenue notes and bomb proceeds for implementation of capital projects identified in the plant master plan.

The sanitary sewer capital program anticipates increasing its use of financing in this proposed CIP to support capacity improvement projects.

As mentioned earlier, the final issuance of measure T bonds was completed in the current fiscal year, so measure T financing proceeds drop to zero in the proposed CIP.

The airport has also deferred the $200 million short-term parking garage project beyond the five year horizon of the CIP, and that project would have been financed.

Those were the main funding sources for the capital program, so now we will talk about the expenditures or use of funds.

This chart shows where the $3.3 billion investments will be made by capital program.

The water pollution control and traffic capital programs together make up over 56% of the dollars in the CIP, followed by the airport and parks, both at 11%.

Now I will turn it over to Matt Lesh to discuss major project changes in this proposed CIP.

Good afternoon.

Matt Lesh, Director of Public Works.

The delivery of the CIP in preparation of the capital program is a team sport, and I'm the less than eloquent deliverer and spokesperson for the team.

Many of the representatives are in the audience here.

If you wanted to ask specific questions that are detailed in nature around their particular program, but I'm happy to help as best I can.

Next slide.

So in the first selection of the Measure T program, it's a $650 million bond that was passed in 2018.

It's largely, as Jennifer said, coming to its conclusion.

It was mostly focused on areas around public safety, but it also had a massive amount of paving in that program.

We have included in here some of the delta, so you'll see lists of projects that are deltas from last year's listed CIP in general.

So we have the emergency operations center HVAC replacement project at about $7 million, and other programs that are projects that are in flight.

We talked about earlier about fire station 32 as that gets to conclusion in fighter 30 station 36 that is in design.

We have many projects that are coming to conclusion, whether it's the hangar at the airport for the PD, whether it's the police training center and so forth.

Those things are all continuing on in the CIP.

On to the next program.

This is the developer assistance program.

It's one of the smaller programs in the CIP.

It largely focuses on undergrounding overhead utilities in coordination with PGE, Comcast, and ATT.

Those are done with all of our utility partners.

Rule 20B are projected, our projects funded through developer fees, and we have no major changes in this current cycle.

The next two slides, this is the utility and environmental services CSA.

We have the sanitary sewer system and the storm sewer system.

The sanitary system is a much larger portion of the CIP.

And so we have these two sections talking about the sanitary section, which is the sanitary services group, which is 2,000 miles of pipes in the Senate in the sanitary sewer system, and three other jurisdiction jurisdictions containing wastewater and regional to the wastewater regional wastewater facility.

The program priorities are preventing sanitary sewer overflows, managing the capital systems capacity and conditions, and rehabbing and upgrading aging infrastructure.

The projects of note in that area are adding in the Chesboro project, is a good example of a capacity increase project and replacing of aging infrastructure.

And then we also have the because of some master planning and reviewing of the existing systems, we were able to remove the Albut Alvin, Tully, and King project.

It's no longer needed as downstream improvements along Fontaine address those capacity needs.

On the storm system, which it represents the smaller section of it, just over 68 million dollars in the CIP, as about 1,100 miles of storm drains and 31 pump stations.

We have no major, a few minor ads to this group, which is some minor storm improvements, some large trash capture devices changing around the project descriptions and condition assessments.

For the wastewater pollution, they have some very small project.

They're very large projects, and they are guided by their plant master plan, which is updated in 2025.

It's roughly a 1.6 billion dollar program over 30 years with key updates to enhance the focus to project delivery, digester upgrades, and pump station improvements and laboratory enhancements.

Those are the changes that are listed here on that slide.

And then in the water utility system for the municipal water system, there are no major changes that are listed here as they're adopting to adapting to their new uh water resources administration and operation facility that opened last year.

And library that consists of excess the library CRP supports accessible high-quality library services, the funding supports collections, facilities maintenance, and capital improvements.

The recent investments in the building forward grant included, repairs to HVAC systems, boilers, flooring, and other essential buildings, and you see the adjustment there in the building forward grant with $6.7 million.

And the parks, community, and facilities group, which is also very large of $350 million.

The changes that you'll see here are the enhancements to Elliot Park, turf replacement at the Pat O'Malley Field, and the all-inclusive park in the Camden Park.

Finally, in public safety, not finally.

Next in public safety, CIP focuses on the delivery of the mostly on measure T projects.

We have 100 million dollars as allocated in this current cycle with the emergency medical services equipment enhancement changes of 1 million, the fire station privacy enhancements of about 600,000, and the fire station alarming system router replacement at about just under 500,000.

And the transportation and aviation services CSA.

We have the airport parking and traffic at the airport.

Is noted there's some minor changes there where they have the airport configuration updates, about 12 million dollars, the zero bus emission emission bus ads of about six just under six million dollars, and the short-term garages was removed of 200 uh 200 million dollar project.

The parking program, you've seen a lot of the investments in the downtown parking in recent years.

We had all of the elevator upgrades recently, and also facade improvements and uh digitization, a curb digitization pilot program.

So there's no major changes in this in this portion of the CIP this year.

Traffic, as we know, DOT has been doing a marvelous job with all the paving program over the last basically decade, and this year we have continued improvements and enhancements to the paving program of about just under 100 million dollars.

Um they have a speed safety system pilot of just under 10.

We have some EV changes and advancing the curb management, the advancing curb management program of three million dollars.

Finally, in the street strategic support CSA, that is the communication system that's the radio communication systems, the municipal improvements area, and the service yards.

We have no major changes in the radio communication systems in the CIP this year, in the changes to the CIP.

Municipal enhancements, we have some lighting improvements and upgrades at the convention center, and also some restroom upgrades, and then also we are beginning the project of dealing with the water intrusion here at City Hall.

And as a service yards, there's no major improvements in those programs there.

And that concludes our presentation.

We are eager for your questions.

Thank you for the presentation, Matt, and welcome, Jennifer.

Thanks for your presentation.

I don't see any council hands.

No questions on the capital budget.

Oh, I see them now.

Council member Tordillos.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I had one quick question.

Uh I was hoping we could get some more context on that HVAC replacement at the emergency operations center.

Kind of stood out as a big ticket item for what I thought was a pretty new building.

So was just hoping we could get a little bit more information.

Certainly.

That complex is new, as is the HVAC system.

That HVAC system is a very modern version of that system that's very complicated and complex.

Uh, we are in some disagreements with as it's installed for with by the contractor and by the design, and so um, but it's also a very critical facility that we need to have that is able to operate.

And so we've made the choice of going ahead and replacing that while we are engaging in further conversations with um the contractor and design firm on the prior implementation that we have there.

Thank you.

That makes sense.

I think given how critical that facility is makes sense that we would go ahead and do some of these repairs up front, but hopefully, the city is able to recoup some of those costs uh if this is fundamentally uh an error on the part of the contractor.

Thank you.

Good question and and good catch.

Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um Matt, I wanted to ask about the water intrusion remediation.

We have two million in here, but I think we all understand that's a much larger project than the two million.

Can you we first talk about the two, and then I want to talk about the longer-term portion of that?

So this begets the beginning of the project, because this will take us a little more than a year to develop the whole project.

Um we need to get the uh contract get going.

It will likely be a design build, but it might be a design bid build, and so we're still in this early stages.

So we need some seed money to begin that process, and then as that gets clearer, we have uh an evaluation of the building from our professional firm giving us an estimate of what they think the cost will be.

But as we get into the specifics in the design, we'll get clearer on what that final larger number is.

So rather than ask for all the money up front, it will take us about this year to get that whole plan put together and give us about a year's worth of time to figure out what specific funding mechanism will need for that larger number.

So this is sort of pre-scoping what the ultimate um program will be for.

Think about more design than pre-scope.

We're ahead of pre-scope, I think, because we have had the whole facility evaluated from tip to tail.

Um, and so I think we know what that scope is, but we need to get them actually putting pencils on paper and and doing some design work for us.

Okay.

So I'll um say it out loud.

Uh the concept that we've sort of talked about of, you know, we've got a major plaza out in front of our building.

Um, and I know I don't pretend to know about the waterproofing, but I do know a little bit of something about construction.

Um, it seems to me, I don't want us to ignore the idea that we have a major collector of concrete in front of this building.

That is, in my mind, must have some relationship to the um water intrusion in and around this campus.

It seems to me an opportunity to look at the plaza as a way to capture some of that, you know, rainwater that's coming down, not as much as we would all want, but it does, and look at ways that we could consider greening the front of the plaza, whether it be decommissioning the public art that's out there to utilize that space in a different way.

But nonetheless, we have a lot of acreage out there that could be a part of the solution, and I really would like to make sure that we add that to this pre-scoping notion technical consideration for how we address the waterproofing of the property.

Well, it's usually not prudent to uh contradict a council member in public, but um the roof the the roof deck actually has no challenge with the waterproofing, it actually is on the sides and it's groundwater mostly that's pulling in.

So, not the rain coming down, it's the majority of it is groundwater coming up from the outside from the bottom and from the sides, and so it's not necessarily the deck itself is actually sound, and it's mostly on the sides and along where the vertical faces meet the plaza itself.

That's not saying we can't look at greening, but that's not the reason for um where water is coming in, it's not the deck itself.

The deck is actually quite good.

Well, I can appreciate you disagreeing with me in public, but here's what I would just say.

I just think it would be helpful to, as you're talking to technical consultants, I would appreciate asking the question out loud to see if that could serve any purpose to this.

You know, that's a lot less expensive to me than some of the other work that's going to be done at the 40 plus million that we're going to be spending.

If there's a way to include a portion of that, you know, to um both you know aesthetically improve and and cool our facility at the same time capture more water that's going somewhere, and it's likely going into our basement at some or parking garage at some place.

So I just want to put it on the table as you're starting to spend this two million bucks getting into this process.

We will have an evaluation of greening up the plaza to see if it mitigates the uh cultural space gathering space that's on the plaza as it was currently designed.

We certainly will.

Thanks, ma'am.

Great.

That was a valuable interchange.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Uh, seeing no other hands from the council, I think this concludes this presentation, and we move to open session, which also means that we will not have a study session on Wednesday or Thursday.

So you can clear your calendars.

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

Yes, um Antonia or Antonia.

Antonio, can you come on down?

You need to come down for the microphone.

Oh, yeah, we bring a microphone up we can bring a microphone up to her.

We'll bring a microphone to you.

Um while Steven is running a microphone up to you, I want to let you know you have one minute.

Hi, my name's Antonia Martinez.

Um I live on Orlando in Cunningham.

I've been there for 50 years and um I do have a few concerns.

One of them is um it safe it has to do with safety and it starts on um it had to do with safety and it concerns sweep cleaning for starting on Ocala all the way to Adrin there is no schedule sweep cleaning days in that area that section and there's cars that been parked there over twenty five years and hasn't moved so um what would be the process on initiating sweep cleaning for that area another concern I have is um thank you ma'am that's your time Antonia I'll what I'll do is I'll pop up there after and we can chat a little bit okay awesome.

With that we stand adjourned