Please call the role.

Kameh Campos.

President Tordillos.

Here.

Cohen.

Ortiz.

Present.

Walkhi.

Here.

Duan.

Here.

Candeles.

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 2627 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.

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.

And like community, this CSA is more than the sum of its parts.

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

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 and 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 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.

And so, but you know, closing taking a cut from another location, 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.

Very important for the popularity for that.

Sorry, sir.

This is not a time for public comment.

Okay, prior to that, or I'm sorry, this is not public comment.

I don't know where what the key is.

Excuse me, this is not public comment.

Okay.

What do you do?

What way you call your 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.

Um, 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 day services is a possibility as well as simple retrieval services are are conducted commonly for us 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 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 follow-up 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 the 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 um separate storage spaces within the building.

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 and I will say that 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 that 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 a lot of uh we have many of us have meetings held at our community centers, and much of that is retaining, except 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 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 enrollment's 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.

Yeah, if I can note that.

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 submitted an MBA, and one of their concerns was the elimination of the senior health and wellness program.

It's a cost of 300,000, 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 con 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 with 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 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 won't want the same 300,000.

But maybe we could I just want to put it out there that I'm as a senior commission council person, I wanna 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 that but that the maintenance will continue on.

Um, 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 uh 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 Councilmore 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 Allen 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 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 know 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 um 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 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, too.

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

There are um two or sorry, four staff.

Four to staff.

So was it was there?

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 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 to be clear from 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, is that is that we're gonna 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 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 and the 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 the 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 don't know Jim maybe this 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 areas of the budget right now.

Yeah I think that's uh you know this is uh a time certainly to ask those the those questions we do have so I think the process will be if it looks like that ballot measure is not going to 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 like 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 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 and 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 anyway I just I'll just bring that up I think our city manager will 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 and 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 and 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 are 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 council condellus.

Thank you Mayor um no I I thank you Jill 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 a um kind of a holistic approach at a 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 uh 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 uh 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.

Um 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 uh 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 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 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 they 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 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 oh I'm sorry, John, 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 uh 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 um to see if if we can prioritize, you know, bolstering our wildfire hardening, if you will, um 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 um uh 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 I'm not familiar with that particular funding source, but we can get familiar with it.

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 of core.

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 Cali for California room, some some some of those assets for for those researching.

But um, 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 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, uh, specifically the services provided by this CSA to survive in a 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.

Postos 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 in lieu of cutting this program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

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 in sort of 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 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, Councilmember.

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 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 are 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 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.

Is there are no major cuts to the park maintenance?

Um, but more specifically to Councilmember Candelas' 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, we're combining them with the staff over at Emmerproush 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 oh, yes, contracting out.

So we have looked at that issue before.

We contract out, I think over a hundred parks already.

Wow.

For maintenance, it's all the smaller ones.

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.

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.

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 County Meadows is really the last major encampment in the city.

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

Uh in particular Coyote Creek, 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.

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 they're 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-upping 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 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 for that.

Just want to 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 Kendall 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 residence given it was gonna 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 uh 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, would notice if we wanted to do a separate service, it would require staff time.

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

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 of single year.

Agree.

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

Thank you.

And I have one final question for Rachel.

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

Now 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 do with this line item around completing implementation of that work plan.

Thank you for the question.

Um, 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 instort front 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 fixable year as well as making sure that we're uh managing um to that process so that staff is um working through the cases much much more efficiently, and then also 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 internally and externally to improve our service delivery to them and meet their um specific needs that um 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 Kameh.

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.

That's half of what is needed in terms of the dollar the FTEs in that area.

And I think and I think that we can't let that happen.

And so, you know, I want to encourage my colleagues to think about June.

And you know, what are we doing?

Because Councilmember Cohen was correct.

We haven't had 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 that that we provide.

Pure and as 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, uh, especially when they're repeated or what have you 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 want to 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 Irena 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 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 develop 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 permanent 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 market 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 the 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 around Deeredon.

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 considerations that went into the RFP is looking looking to use stacked modular or mass timber time 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 a bit.

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

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.

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 in you know budget 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 a 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.

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 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 suggestion.

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 um kind of belt and suspenders way.

So as we have colleagues in the audience today from History San Jose, PACSJ, and you know, likely others, I think it's going to 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 going to fill the hole.

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 going to be more direct input.

And let me just give a couple of examples.

And the gate is locked.

To me, that's a no-brainer that we got to be prepared.

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

We got to 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 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 that 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 or 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.

It's 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 gonna generate the kind of revenue the zoo 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.

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 Councilmember 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 PRNS 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 PRNS 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, 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, 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.

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.

So 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.

Um 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 olive 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 uh 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 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 OSEP program, 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 of program was pretty critical in us 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 expansion opportunities, and we're pretty close to pulling the trigger on additional square footage outside the city, but because we were able to kind of clear some of those areas and improve safety in the 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 and 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 um 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% 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, but 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 costs in our overall shelter operations.

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

Thank you, Eric.

I appreciate that.

And 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 underresourced 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, Councilmember.

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 it?

About a million dollars, correct?

Five my 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 and 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, 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, couple 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 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, 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, now at Coyote, a few from Coyote Memo's, 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 uh a paid parking lot, probably would be more optimal, 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.

Um 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.

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 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?

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.

Again, as I mentioned, over 200.

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

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 you just described that we have folks in the interim system in a um modular tiny home, if you will, 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 the 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 1,800 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 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.

Jim, let me turn to you quickly here.

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 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 leave 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.

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 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.

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.

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, 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 um 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 can 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?

There's a anyway, that's just a little bit for you, Rick.

Thank you, Mayor.

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 Olive 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.

Um, 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.

Uh, 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 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 fifty-five 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.

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 services, the programs that the various departments provide to the city.

Go ahead and click.

Similarly, for the police department are 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 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.

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 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 um 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, um, 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, um, 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 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, 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 council member 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 seven 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 um, 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's a possibility I know that there is still funding for the walking beats 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, Councilmember, for that question.

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 three uh 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 uh yield my time.

I just I'd like to just add in there again, our still our intention is this is like a 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?

13.

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, it is 15.

So, 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 a hundred percent.

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 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.

Uh, 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.

And 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.

I've 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 is well actually three schools, um, Painter and Shepherd, uh Painter is an elementary school, Shepherd is a middle school.

Uh, they're 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 be next on the list to assign, but I wanted to raise this as a as a concern.

And also next year, both Adelante One and Adelante 2 are going to 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 if 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 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 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's for for Jim then.

Um when will we be able to have another look?

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

I want to make sure it's front and 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 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, uh 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'd 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 overarching 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.

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, Skylar, 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.

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?

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 is 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 have 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 arson is 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, 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.

Um 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 uh 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 history, a sense of place.

I thank Councilmember Tordillos for commenting about the serendipity 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.

Um I have Serge.

Jonathan, come on down.

Hi, I'm Christa Van Lann.

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 uh 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 Candellas, 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 Mulcahi, 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 6.

Um, and I too am deeply concerned about the potential loss in the California room.

Um, 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 things I've heard here today.

First, and the presentation was the key uh 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.

Um, that the staff that's there is a really the key um 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 neighborhood library branches, it's a specialized irreplaceable research resource.

Um, it's been 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.

The California Room is also a repository for historic materials.

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.

Uh good afternoon, uh, honorable mayor, city council, and city manager.

My name is Jonathan Francisco Borga.

By day 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.

Um, it 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 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, 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's 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 approved 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 names the name starts with 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.

We respectfully ask 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, not a static collection, one that's um that could be compared to the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Arcus, the way one of the commentators said it.

We do not want to see it packed up and put away.

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 Janel Erdonias 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.

Pointing out the significant investment in the OLIP 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 one thirty, and we'll be continuing on with public safety comments from the council.

Thank you all.