Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, it is 7.01 and I'm calling this meeting of the San Leandro City Council to order.

It is Monday, February 2nd, 2026.

Please join me in our Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation under God,

invisible with liberty and justice for all.

So we've got on our next item, please take roll.

Madam Clerk.

Council Member Aguilar.

Present.

Council Member Azevedo.

Present.

Council Member Bolt.

Present.

Council Member Simon.

Present.

Vice Mayor Viveros Walton.

Present.

Present.

Council Member Bowen.

Present.

And Mayor Gonzalez. Present.

The City of San Lando conducts orderly meetings

So let's try that again.

The City of San Lando conducts orderly meetings

to fulfill its mandate.

Discriminatory statements or conduct that would potentially

violate the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964

and or

the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.

California Penal Code

sections 403 or 415 are per se disruptive to a meeting and will not be tolerated. Please see

the City Council Handbook and the City Council Meeting Rules of Decorum for more information.

Madam Clerk, your announcement please. If you would like to make a public comment during the

meeting, you can do so in person or via Zoom. If you are present at the meeting, please complete

a speaker card and submit it to the City Clerk before the item is presented. If you wish to

participate in public comment via Zoom, you can use the raise your hand tool when the item is called.

During the public comment session, speakers will be invited to speak and will have a set time to

share their comments. A countdown timer will appear for their convenience and when the time is up,

the microphone will be muted. All raised hands outside of public comment will be lowered to

avoid confusion. Once public comment is opened, hands may be raised to speak. There will be a 30

minute window for public comments, which will take place under item 7, public comments, as per the

published agenda. After this time is up, the council will proceed with the rest of the meeting's agenda.

If you have not had the opportunity to speak during the initial 30 minute period,

there will be another chance to do so after item 12, city council reports.

At this point in time, I do not believe we had a closed session today.

Therefore, there is no report for closed session.

But we do have recognitions.

Today we will proclaim February 2026 as Black History Month here in the city of San Leandro.

Tatiana, would you please come up?

Where are you?

a little bit of intro so we know that tiana is a longtime resident of san leandro so we're

especially grateful that you're here today a local business owner for the dc dance center

which empowers community youth

through inclusive arts education.

And I know you've been involved in all sorts of activities

supporting our Cherry Festival.

I think you even did Leadership San Leandro, is that right?

So I mean, actively involved in our community

and so thank you for all that you do.

Thank you for being here to receive this.

So now I'll just read the proclamation

and give you a chance to say a few words.

whereas african americans have made significant political contributions to the artistic economic

educational literary political religious scientific technological advancements and many more

in the united states and whereas the observance of black history month calls our attention

to the continued need for community action to end racism,

to extend mercy, and develop equity for everyone.

And whereas, we honor the men and women of the African American descent,

including past generations who advocated for the ending of slavery

and the enactment of civil rights laws,

going on to educators who have answered free people's call for a free mind,

and to ongoing efforts to press towards a brighter and more equitable future for everyone.

And whereas the city of St. Landro continues to work toward becoming an ever more inclusive community

in which all residents are respected and recognized for their contributions to our community,

our state, our country, and the world, regardless of the color of their skin.

Now, therefore, I, Juan González III, mayor of the city of San Leandro, do hereby proclaim

February 2026 as Black History Month in the city of San Leandro, and encourage the public

to join us in commemorating this important occasion in recognition of the numerous contributions

made by black and African-American communities here locally, nationally, and globally.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I am deeply honored.

Thank you to the city of San Diego and Mayor Juan Gonzalez.

I am truly happy to be here today.

I grew up at D.C. Dance Center at the age of five.

I stepped in and I was welcomed with warm arms under the director, Debbie Cabral.

and I grew up dancing all the way up until high school and she instilled the

love of dance and the passion of dance and she saw in me leadership and as I

grew older she put me in a mentorship and a leadership position and I am truly

thankful for her in 2021 I bought the business and I've been running the

business since then and just like Miss Debbie I want to keep DC Dance Center a warm and embracing

studio and community for everyone black and brown students DC Dance Center has always stood in

diversity and inclusion and I want to keep that going so thank you so much to the city of San

Liango for recognizing me I've been putting in a lot of work and a lot of effort into the studio

and into the community and I love giving back I'm very passionate about youth and

the work that I do so again thank you so much to the city and to the mayor and

I'm gonna keep this proclamation forever and again I am truly honored I'm glad I

can represent black people and black youth and I am a voice for the city of

Thank you guys so much.

Consent calendar.

Are there any requests by council members to pull an item?

If not, I will go to public comment.

Seeing none, let's go to public comment on the consent calendar.

Mayor, we've received one comment card on the consent calendar,

and there's one hand raised on Zoom.

Please proceed.

In person.

The in-person commenter is Mike McGuire.

Hi there.

I'm referring more to item 5A than the other ones on the consent calendar.

People point out it cost something to set up a rent stabilization program,

and I just wanted to give some comparative figures for what we do,

we as individuals and we as a city, do spend money on.

One guesstimate for what the yearly rent stabilization fees would be is $50 each per unit.

Can you hold on for just a second?

And I'm just trying to make sure that your comment

is aligned to the item.

So just give me just one second, please.

I just want to make sure that you're focused purely

on the registry software, correct?

Right.

OK.

Keep the comment focused to the registry software.

OK.

OK.

All right.

So anyway, some just comparisons to things

we can spend money on as individuals or the city.

If we are paying the average rent in San Leandro,

we are paying $19,200 a year.

That's $1,600 a month times 12.

In terms of other things the city could be doing,

even if we borrowed money to get the program started for software,

the only year where, I'm sorry, I'm trying to edit as I go along, I'm fumbling here.

So we are talking about money to buy software. We do spend, however, $33 million on the fire

department, $14 million for other city computer operations. Of the IT budget, some $9.8 million

is for services, and IT annually pays out double the total cost of the proposed rent stabilization

software, just in its category other. I'm sure there are good things in that category, but just

the miscellaneous IT spends a lot of money. And then there's other city departments, 2.7 million

for HR, 5.7 million for recreation. We consider that money pretty well spent. So I'm just saying,

keep what we're spending to get rent stabilization going and the software in particular in context.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That is our only in-person comment term.

Okay, so we are closing public comment in person and we will open public comment online.

The first online speaker is Alvaro Ramos.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. So I wanted to comment on item 5B. And I wanted to start by saying that I definitely want the driving experience and the pedestrian experience to be improved just as much as the next person. And I think that rectangular rapid flashing beacons help.

So I want to be clear that I'm not speaking against that, but I am speaking in opposition to the pedestrian hybrid beacons, which as far as I know are also known as high-intensity activated crosswalk or HAWC signals.

These specific beacons, I don't find them intuitive and I find them very confusing.

I'll give you an example.

I was driving in Berkeley on Ashby Avenue up to Highway 13.

There is one HAWC signal on that road.

I was in my car. I had the sun visor to block the sun. And then it also blocked the visibility of the Hawk signal, unfortunately.

And then once I saw the signal instructions, they were poor because they were too small and they were hard to read.

And I had my glasses on. And I think that as a driver trying to drive safely to avoid accidents,

I found that the signal provided poor communication of what action I needed to do when I got to the intersection.

And I think that these are reasons that make Hawk signals ineffective and dangerous.

The design of our signals and signs calls into question the human factor in engineering of traffic management.

Drivers and pedestrians have to make quick decision making.

Therefore, people need to have shorter reaction times.

So my advice for council and for public works is to keep it simple and use the most reliable and traditional methods that have been proven to prevent accidents. Use a traditional stop sign or traffic signal. Red, yellow, green is much preferable than Hawk signals.

Thank you. Your time has elapsed. The next speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Good evening, council members.

I'd like to speak on items 5A and 5D.

Let's start with these.

Thank you, Mayor Gonzalez, for filling the two empty at large seats on the Arts Library and Culture Commission, as well as the Community Police Review Board.

the CPRB seat has been really not filled for months and months.

And it's important that we have full commissions and that we get the benefit of a citizen input.

I also want to talk about the registry program for a moment.

This is the foundation of the larger housing stabilization program we're in the midst of implementing.

And while there are many estimates of 7,000 plus renters and whatnot, we don't have solid data.

So this is really important information that will help us to refine the program as it goes forward.

The one thing I am wondering about is it's supposed to be self-reporting, landlords report, and there's a penalty if you do not.

But I think it might be even more effective if there was some kind of tenant portal where tenant could, you know, just make a call and say, hey, I want to make sure that my landlord is registered in the program so that my, you know, my unit that I'm renting has the benefit of the rent stabilization ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Willow.

Hi, this is Willow Idlewild. I am speaking today from my capacity as the president of

SDU Estates. We want to express our gratitude for putting the crosswalk in at Arbor and Dutton.

As a car-free advocate, I would love to see even more radical ways of highlighting pedestrians and

bicyclists, but this is really going to make it much easier for us going to and from the Safeway

and to and from some of the businesses at Dutton and Bancroft. So just wanted to express some

appreciation. That's it from me. Thanks. Thank you. The next speaker is Rachel Radin.

Hello. Thank you so much for letting me speak today. My name is Rachel Radin.

And I, too, as the previous caller said, I'm very excited about the potential for these crosswalks to improve pedestrian and driver safety.

To speak to the earlier gentleman's comment regarding hawk lights specifically, I will say that as a pedestrian who walks frequently around San Leandro, the hawk light that's on Davis Street,

I have, without fail, never had an incident of any type of safety concern.

Cars are always stopping, very respectful.

I find it's a really ideal type of situation, particularly when crossing a street like East 14th that's extremely busy.

Even with crosswalks that are unlit, people very rarely have ever stopped.

So I just want to reiterate my excitement for the possibility of these hawk lights coming about.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more raised hands online.

So we will close public comment online, come back to the council to see if there is any discussion or a motion.

Councilmember Aguilar.

I'd like to move the consent calendar.

I've got a motion from Councilmember Aguilar.

Councilmember Azvedo.

I'd like to second it.

So we've got a motion and a second.

No discussion.

Please vote.

all the votes are in and the motion carries unanimously thank you this time we go to our

sixth item i do not believe we would a city manager or city attorney reports but i'll turn left right

that is good then let's move on to general public comment so we're taking public comment on items

that you wish to address us on that are not on our agenda this would not be do not come and talk

about items that are on the agenda here we talk about items that are within the subject matter

jurisdiction of this council but not agendized today so at this point in time how many cards

do we have? Mayor, we've received

three cards.

Okay.

And how many hands online?

Two hands raised.

Thank you. Let's proceed in person.

The first

three in-person speakers

are Karen

Silva,

Nancy Raffalaf,

and Ginny Madsen.

Karen, are you here?

Hi, City Council and Mayor.

I'm sorry I'm not a polished public speaker.

This is on behalf of Councilmember Fred Simon, representing Washington Manor.

I'm speaking personally to say that Fred is someone who shows up and does the work.

He reads the material, asks thoughtful questions, and genuinely listens to each of his community

members.

Even when conversations are different or opinions differ, his leadership doesn't make headlines,

but builds trust and stability throughout the city.

What I admire most about Fred is he is a devoted family man, a neighbor, and an upstanding

community member.

Whenever I call on him, he answers.

He follows up and returns a call and always keeps his word, something I find that doesn't

exist very much throughout the council or throughout the city leadership.

He treats people with respect, fairness, and a steady moral compass.

Those values guide his decisions and commitment to doing what is right.

It's always heartfelt.

He speaks from the heart.

Public service takes resilience, humility, and a real sense of responsibility to others.

He brings that daily.

He authentically cares deeply about this community and its residents and shows that throughout

his consistency and his sincerity.

And he's one of the few people in this community I find that is extremely sincere.

Our city is better because of leaders like Fred.

I'm grateful for his service, character, and his continued commitment to this community.

And as you can tell, everyone in Washington Manor loves Fred.

So I'm just speaking heartfelt how I feel about him.

He's an amazing man.

So thank you.

Thank you.

The next two speakers in the room are Nancy Raffaloff and Jenny Madsen.

Yeah.

Go ahead and pull it down just a little.

That's fine.

There you go.

Thanks.

Good evening, everyone.

Fred Simon, I'm talking about Fred Simon, is an honorable and respectful family man.

Fred goes out of his way to help his community.

This investigation is a witch hunt filled with heresy, misinformation, and errors in the report.

What strikes me the most is you couldn't work out your differences amongst yourselves.

You wasted $135,000 with a false report.

This clearly is a biased character assassination to a good and honest, caring man, respectful to all.

At a recent Oraloma meeting, Sheila Young pointed out a false statement involving her and Fred, which is in your report.

Again, it's a shame that the city's complaint resolution procedure couldn't resolve this before it became so costly for the city.

I hope the rest of you never have to face this.

Thank you.

The next speakers from the room are Jenny Madsen and Lawrence Abbott.

So my name's Jenny Madsen, and this may not start out sounding like I'm talking on topic, but I am.

So I spent, actually I've spent several weeks of my life over the past five years sitting in Department of Water Resources meetings.

There was three days of them this week, and hundreds of people came out and spoke about the importance of the science,

what the science is telling us,

and that we need to keep the flows in the rivers

or we will all suffer.

This is basically for the Bay Delta plan.

And at the end of this,

there were a handful of, let's say,

paid representatives for nut growers

in the southern San Joaquin Valley that were there

who spoke, oh, no, we can't do this.

But Newsom is very much in favor of the voluntary agreements.

He wants to let them figure it out.

And the people do not believe this,

but all the commissioners stood up there and looked out and said,

well, we really can't go with what the people want.

We have to do what the politics are telling us.

And all I want to say now,

because I have a problem with that investigative report,

I do not think it was unbiased.

But you can fool some of the people all of the time.

You can fool all of the people some of the time.

But you cannot fool all the people all the time.

And you guys need to, the city needs to remember that when they do studies.

Because too many, I've done so many in my time in San Leandro,

and the questions are just written so that you get the answers you want.

and I'm not the only one that thinks this way so that's why I said that I hope you guys can

stand together because this is important it's a tough job but what you're doing is important

thank you the next speaker is Lawrence Abbott

good evening hi my name is Lawrence and mine also might start off sounding like it it's not

applicable that it is so I just wanted to say that I'm a proud union member I represent my

Teamsters Local 70 union on the Alameda Labor Council the AFL-CIO and I've been an off and on

again political organizer with the labor council and a lot of people don't really know what a union

is a union is just working people standing together and then you know they're standing

together for a purpose for power for a balance of power with their employer and the reason i bring

that up is because that's sort of at the root of fairness for workers because employers can be

incredibly powerful and workers typically aren't. And I love San Leandro's slogan, a city where

kindness matters. Kindness and fairness go together for me. So when I think of renters, first of all,

they really do need that balance of power. And when I think of you folks on this board,

when I think of fairness and I think of kindness, I think that you guys have the ability to work

together. I remember hearing from one of you how important it was for you guys to try to reach

consensus on important issues. And I was terribly disappointed at the last city council meeting,

where it was almost unanimous, but one of the primary people that always talks about working

together and reaching consensus voted the opposite way. And I see a similar thing happening now,

with certain people on this council being picked on. Well, as a political organizer,

we vet all the candidates that we support. We've supported three candidates here. I've walked door

to door with my union, with Teamsters Local 70, with other laborers, we vet them very carefully

and make sure there's not a bone of gender bias in these people. And I know what's really going

on. It's political. It's terrible. It's the antithesis to fairness. It's the antithesis

to kindness. Please, we can do better. Thank you. That concludes the cards from in the room, Mayor.

So we'll close in person. Pull the comment and move online, please.

The first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Good evening, council members.

Greeting from Summit Medical Center, where I just set off the alarm because I shifted to my hospital bed.

This is my second time in a hospital.

On Thursday, I was at San Leander Hospital after my dog took me down, tripped me with her tether, and I face planted on the curb of my own sidewalk.

And I just wanted to say I am so happy that we still have San Leander Hospital open in town.

And I want to just call attention to the wisdom of the many people who work to keep it open under the aegis of Alameda Health Systems.

And that includes, from the very beginning, Stephen Cassidy and right up to current day, Ed Hernandez.

And if you ever have a chance, I was in the emergency room, or if you stay overnight, and you talk to the people that work there,

you'll find that there's a great pride among people who work at Sandley Under Hospital.

Second thing is I wanted to just one more time celebrate the commemoration of Stephen Taylor's

Sanctuary Life Park last weekend. And really, it was an amazing, an amazing event that once again

underscored this community that has arisen from the tragedy of Stephen Taylor's death.

And especially if you didn't get to stay until like the latter part of it, you know, our own students at the Social Justice Academy of San Leandro High, you know, they really showed out.

One of the things about Stephen is he loved music. And so like the culture that they brought to the event, both in terms of singing, dancing and spoken word and just their spirit.

It was amazing. We're very lucky to live in this community with multiple generations of people.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next speaker is Melissa Wong.

Hi there. Good evening. I'm speaking on the investigation into Councilmember Bowen's

complaint. I'm aware that public comments are deemed opinions from the public. Concerning

this situation, it isn't about opinions. It's about facts or the lack of. More than a few

people who are mentioned in the report have publicly refuted statements in it. Many other

examples were missing basic research or even logic. A $135,000 investigation heavily leaned

on the former city manager, mentioning her 78 times, over 25 more times than the second witness.

Yet if for allegation alleged, the conduct would have occurred after November 2024. The city manager

had already been settled in Florida with no more official capacity in San Leandro. Actually, half of

witnesses the investigator charged time for had not been in any official San Leandro capacity for

at least one year, if not more than two full years. The investigator already interviewed a dozen

witnesses and waited four months to interview Council Member Aguilar and Simon, then went back

to the former city manager one last time before ending her interviews. These are the facts you

can see in the report, the investigator failed to interview a facilitator that would have witnessed

alleged misconduct in an often mentioned planning session, an example of lack of basic research

and logic. I am perplexed how the investigation was done to fairly review the allegations

and ask the counsel to make sure you have facts before you take any additional steps. Thank you.

thank you the next speaker is mimi dean

hi there this is mimi dean and i serve on the oro loma sanitary district with council member

simon i have to say that i have known uh council member simon for quite a while now

and he is in the words of mayor emeritus shila young a decent man

I I feel like the report that you guys approved and recognized at your last meeting was totally full of innuendo and baseless accusations against not only Simon, but also Aguilar.

You know, I don't know how you guys decided that that report was acceptable.

um you know when we have someone like mayor emeritus young um saying say you know saying

that she didn't say these things that you guys have in the report that says a lot to me because

i believe mayor young so i just think that you guys need to do a little bit of soul searching

here and you need to realize that um you know this was not the this was not the place for this

kind of report. And I hope that you're going to do what's right for our communities.

And you're going to take another look at this and you are going to realize that Fred Simon is a very

decent man. And neither he nor Victor Aguilar deserve this kind of treatment from our beautiful

city of San Leandro. And I want to say thank you very much. And I concur with Mr. Spalding,

about the beautiful celebration we had down at the marina

for steven taylor thank you so much for listening bye-bye

thank you the next speaker is ed hernandez

hey good evening mayor council and staff thank you for the opportunity to speak

on jan 13th i submitted a formal written request asking for clarification and

review the residency and domicile requirements for serving on this

council i have not yet received a response i

understand staff may be managing the heavy workload however the issue goes directly to the integrity of

district-based representation and the public deserves clarity the city council member handbook

and california government code are clear council members must reside in the district they represent

for the duration of their term government code 244 defines domicile as a place where a person

actually lives and intends to remain in government code 36502 requires continued residency and voter

registration and district term throughout that term.

A council member's primary residence in their district, and mine as well, has been recently sold.

That same council member was absent from the recent meeting on rent stabilization,

residential rent caps, a major policy decision affecting thousands of residents,

and they were also scheduled to participate remotely in the upcoming meeting of an appointed body.

None of these facts alone determine eligibility, but together,

they make it reasonable to ask the city to confirm continued compliance residency and domicile requirements.

I respectfully ask the acting city clerk and city attorney to review the matter and provide guidance to the council and the public where the residency and domestic requirements continue to be met and what process the city follows when their primary residence has been sold.

This is not about assumptions or conclusions.

It's about transparency, continuity, and public trust.

Thank you for your time and for your commitment to accountable governments.

Good evening.

Good night.

Thank you.

that is the last hand we have raised on my mayor so we have we will close public comment at this

point in time and we'll move on in our agenda we don't have public hearings or presentations today

in our first item under action items is a second reading to adopt ordinance number 2026001 to amend

the san leno municipal code to add chapter 4-46 to establish residential rent stabilization

Community Director, Development Director Tom Liao

is here. There you are. Thank you, Mayor and City Council.

So as the Mayor noted, we are here today for the second reading of the Residential

Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Before we get that, I did want to just provide a

kind of brief update based on some comments from the first reading. There were a few

members of the public mentioning, the public noticing, and them not receiving

that. So I just wanted to address that for you all. As you know,

housing protections has been public priority and publicly noted since 2023 and rent registry and

rent stabilization have risen to the top with the priority list through the council the last couple

years but I did at least want to provide you all the assurance from the city side that we have

at least maintained a wide and consistent outreach process since a noticing process since 2023 so

going back to that time we have had seven rules committee meetings we've been agendized for seven

and rules committee meetings.

We have been agendized for eight council meetings.

We have had four citywide community meetings.

And we have had six stakeholder-related meetings,

particularly for interested parties

like the providers and the tenants.

And so I wanted to share that with all those public events

or those public meetings, the majority

have been noticed bilingually in Spanish and Chinese.

We have used our growing and extensive database

of providers, tenants, and advocates,

and individuals throughout all of those meetings.

I wanted to also note that we've done flyers and notices

that have also been posted, both on social media,

the city housing website, at community facilities

such as the library and community center,

as well as in community service organization locations

as well.

And I would say in critical junctures

throughout this process, we've also

gone through the media with press releases and publications in the local

paper as well for this item so I think it's been a very public item but also

said we did some extensive work thanks some recommendations in the rules

committee last summer with some of that outreach to look into areas where Asian

and Spanish speaking populations frequent such as shopping areas and

businesses so I just want to mention that thank you for the opportunity and I'm

going to hand that back to the mayor so at this point in time are there any

questions for director leao before we go to public comment on this item seeing

none let's move to public comment how many cards do we have and hands raised

mayor we currently have 21 cards submitted and there are three hands

raised online okay let's see please if you're going to speak online please

raise your hand because there's only three we're going to take those first

four this is a call in for the people online five

okay last call for people online because we're gonna start with online public

comment okay so if you can take a screenshot and those will be our online

public commenters and please proceed online then it will come to the 20 some

people in person. The first online speaker is Douglas Spalding. Thank you so much. Council

members, you're on the verge of a significant and important victory for the working people

of San Leandro, do not delay this decision. Delaying the decision may mean we just never

get around to it. And we've come so far and you have worked so hard and staff has expertly gotten

us to this point. Now, we've been warned by the landlord lobby that you pass it and the sky is

falling. We've been told that this ordinance is extreme, that it will have disaster outcomes.

And I want to address those for a moment. There have been many fallacious claims. One is that

this rent stabilization ordinance is going to harm those mom and pop landlords. And really,

that's kind of undercut by the exemptions in the ordinance itself for the golden duplex,

for ADUs, for smaller units.

You know, if you've got eight or more units,

you're not a mom and pop, you're a business.

And that's fine.

There's nothing wrong with being a business, but come on.

We've been told that there will be no new construction.

And, well, that's true,

but it's not due to this rent stabilization ordinance.

It's due to the highest costs of construction

all over the place, not just in San Leandro.

And we also know that, you know, when construction happens, it's not going to be, you know, beholden to this, that that has an exemption to self under the Costa Hawkins Act. So that one's kind of a straw, straw argument.

we've been told that okay landlords are going to stop doing maintenance they're going the units

will depreciate in value they're going to take them off that come on that doesn't make sense

either because they're just devaluing their investments so please this is good for the city

let's thank you your time has elapsed the next speaker is gordon galvin

good evening mayor and council members thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is

gordon galvin and i'm a small housing provider in san leandro someone who invests in maintains

and relies on rental income to keep my property safe and habitable i support tenant protections

but i'm deeply concerned that this proposed rent control ordinance particularly the three percent

cap or 65% of CPI could have unintended consequences that actually hurt both tenants and small

landlords. Let's talk about what that means in real numbers. According to recent CPI data,

U.S. inflation has been running around 2.7% annually. Under your proposed formula, 65%

of 2.7 is roughly 1.75 percent. In simple terms, even if costs go up nearly 3 percent,

a landlord could only increase rent by 1.75 percent. That may sound modest, but for small

housing providers, costs don't rise in neat 2.7 percent increments. Insurance premiums, property

taxes, utility expenses, roofing, plumbing, earthquake, retrofitting, pest control. Many of

these increases far more than CPI, sometimes double or triple CPI in a single year.

So when you factor in maintenance, emergency repairs, city compliance costs, and state laws,

the real cost of owning and operating safe housing often exceeds the CPI rate.

By locking allowable rent increases by tying them to the 65% of CPI, this ordinance would

force landlords to continue absorbing costs year after year. So I'm not here to block protections,

but to push for a reasonable compromise, eliminate the 65% of CPI restriction. That's what the vice

mayor suggested at the first reading of this. And it didn't get any traction. It didn't get

any debate because the city attorney said that... Thank you, sir. Your time has elapsed.

The next speaker is Eva.

Hi, my name is Eva Poon.

I was at the previous hearing, and I felt that many of the council members actually disagreed with this 65% of CPI.

I'm also a housing provider, and I also am against it.

And many of you feel that it's unusually strict to landlords. I urge you to make the right decision, not the easy decision. Yes, you're going to have to pretty much go back to the drawing board as mentioned by the previous speaker.

But I do think that maybe a 5% cap is much easier to calculate for both myself and my tenants, much easier to explain.

Many of my tenants are non-English speakers, so this would be much easier to calculate, and it would just be much easier for pretty much everyone involved.

The way the ordinance is currently structured, I feel that many housing providers are incentivized to increase the rent as much and as soon as possible before it takes effect in 2027, which is something that I really don't want to do to my tenants.

we're a small housing provider and we've kept our rents low and pretty much haven't increased it

in the past couple of years and we want to continue doing that but if we lose our ability

to increase our rents in the future then we have no choice but to do that right now

so city council please do not pass this ordinance please don't hurt my tenants please don't hurt my

fellow housing providers and please rewrite this to be much less confusing for everybody involved.

Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Jim Prola.

Hello, counsel. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I remember last time I told you that

it was in the paper that 82% of retired seniors in the Bay Area rely on Social Security as their

main source of income. But Social Security percent increases does not actually cover

retired seniors' actual cost of living because the rent increases have gone up much higher.

And the cost of living increases doesn't measure the pharmaceutical costs and the medical costs that they're going to be subjected to in the next, in fact, in this year and in the next few years.

So I think it's important to keep the 65% in there or the 0.65% in there, along with the 3%, whichever is lower, because the seniors cost of living is much higher than what is given to them by Social Security.

Um, like I say, the medical care is going to go up, uh, by, I don't know how many percentages.

It's already put a lot of them, uh, into positions where they can't afford to even

get their medical insurance anymore, because that's not measured adequately for seniors

and retirees and the social security costs of living.

I was a small landlord and I know the deductions and the tax breaks you get.

And believe me, it's considerable.

I think you need to go with what is that you passed the first time.

And if it doesn't work, you definitely have an ability to change it later on.

So treat the seniors like you would treat your own parents if they were only relying on Social Security.

Thank you. The next speaker is Alvaro Ramos.

Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. So I am again calling in support of the rent stabilization ordinance,

and I've been reading the room. There are a few perspectives that I have on it. First,

there is prosperity at all costs, even if it means a high cost of living. And the result that we have

is high inequality, unbridled growth, and unrestrained productivity. The problem is that

hoarding wealth does not circulate in the society. When the economy goes bust, the bottom falls out

and the rest goes with it. Society collapses without regulation. And then we've tried the

incremental approach. It is not far reaching because it accommodates the market. There is

nothing empowering about households making painful choices between do you pay for housing,

Do you pay for health care? Do you pay for energy utilities or for food?

All of which have increased in price, and that is a failure to invest in the futures of the next generation.

Both approaches have failed to satisfy the ambitions of the rich and meet the needs of the poor.

And we're living in a cost-of-living emergency.

That's what we're in right now, accelerated by a tyrannical federal government.

People without spending power cannot drive market growth.

Governments need to deliver resilience so that the market prospers.

That's stability to weather the storm.

We are here to prevent market failure and to mitigate the negative effects if that happens.

Fairness is what this is about.

It's about reducing inequality for everyone.

In this way, fair housing is stable for property owners and renters.

And I feel like for some reason we've forgotten about the tax cuts and the benefit cuts that have come along from the budget bill that we had last year.

Those are benefits as well, those tax cuts.

That's it.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Mimi Dean.

hey it's Mimi Dean again and I'd like to say I agree with the last two speakers

especially about all the benefits that property owners get um you know when our taxes come around

and um also I'd like to agree with uh Jim Prola about the whole social security thing right because

social security recipients are not getting um increases these big increases every year

so um you guys probably don't know this about me but i am a little mom and pop landlord i did not

um anticipate this happening but life changes made it happen and i um i have a couple of women

that have been living with me for a really long time and i have to say that it's really important

to me to have wonderful, good people that live with me. And I know that I could count on them

just like they can count on me. I have to say that as a property owner, I feel like I am so lucky

and I don't feel like I need to be greedy and keep asking the people that I live with to keep

giving me more and more money. I feel like I'm the one that's getting the asset, right?

Like when the mortgage gets paid off, I'm the one that has something tangible that I can touch, that I can call my own, that I can leave to my to my heirs.

Right. Like the person that's paying the rent isn't getting those things.

They're getting a place to live, but they're not getting some permanent, you know, generational wealth that they can pass down.

So I think it's really important to remember that us landlords, we're getting some really great stuff.

We're having other people help us pay for our property that we will then pass down to our heirs.

I would like to say that I'd like the city council to do the right thing and stand by the tenants of San Leandro and promote this red stabilization ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

That concludes the six hands that were raised during the close.

So we're closing public comment online.

Please proceed in person.

The first three speakers are John Sullivan,

Athena Stanford, and Kate Halfon.

Good evening, Mayor Gonzalez and members of the Council.

I'm John Sullivan, and tonight I'm going to be wearing two hats.

number one is way back in the 1960s I lived and worked here in San Leandro as a real estate broker

and then later a housing provider I always had a stake in our city and your actions voting for

extreme rent control it turns away investors to our city and we're not able to develop the housing

that we really need to be built in San Leandro.

And of course, causing real estate tax revenues,

the lifeblood of our city, to fall.

So it will cause backlash when really

with the voters later on when they realize that.

Now the second hat, I and other home providers,

housing providers, I know too well

that it costs a small fortune to renovate and upgrade our older apartments here in San

Leandro.

Our apartments were built way back in the 1940s to the 1960s.

By your action depriving us of funds for those older complexes, for remodeling them

and so forth, it will eventually lead to some blighted areas if we're not able to do that.

Obviously, as happens so often in severe rent control areas, that affects the vibrant housing areas of San Diego that we're so proud of too.

So the bottom line, please pay attention to the long-term effects.

To continue this upgrading, etc., we need to hold somewhere towards our state rent control regulations.

Dropping maybe down to 5% may work.

but we will we must delay the next three speakers are athena stanford kate halfen and evelyn

olivera

good evening mayor council members thank you for allowing me to speak my name is

This is my first time ever at a City Council meeting to speak.

Sorry.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Athena Stanford, and I am here on behalf of Golden State Trailer Park, located

at 1511 150th Avenue.

If any of you have ever driven up and down 150th Avenue, you've certainly driven by this

property.

I'm sorry to say it is an eyesore.

It is certainly not a good mark on our city.

And I grew up here, by the way.

So I am here to ask you to please,

please reconsider some of the provisions

in your rent control ordinance.

Specifically, we need to do capital improvements at our park.

And if you doubt what I say, feel free to stop by.

We have 18 spaces.

I believe we're probably the smallest trailer park in the city of San Leandro.

We have 18 spaces.

Currently six are occupied.

Five are paying rent.

One is not.

We desperately need to upgrade the park.

We're not able to rent the spaces.

So currently our community is suffering by not having this affordable housing.

We cannot rent these spaces until we upgrade our electrical,

our electrical our plumbing our sewer new fencing and paving so um in relation to the

maximum on the rent control amount let me just say that in eight years we have only raised our rent

102 dollars in eight years we've not had the money to do the upgrading that we desperately wanted to

do and we're now at a critical point. My property owner that I represent, he is losing money.

I have his tax return, $7,000 out of his own pocket. He is a low income immigrant senior.

He has no more money. Thank you. Your time has elapsed.

The next three speakers are Kate Halfon, Evelyn Olivera, and Anthony Adessi.

Good evening.

My name is Kate Halfon and I am the broker and owner of Welcome Home Property Management.

Thank you for taking the time tonight to hear our concerns.

I'm here in opposition to the proposed rent stabilization ordinance because the rent cap

is too restrictive and ultimately unsustainable.

For over 20 years, I've managed properties for small landlords who typically own just one home or a small multi-unit property.

These are not large corporations.

They keep rents modest and address issues responsibly as they arise.

I've seen firsthand how extreme rent control pushes owners to sell, often removing those homes from the rental market and making the housing shortage worse.

For example, we manage a small multi-unit property in Berkeley where tenants pay anywhere from $863 to $2,500 for identical units.

With these extreme rent control measures, tenants paying $863 today will still be paying under $1,000 in 2040, an unsustainable model that creates huge disparities.

in san leandro another small complex saw tenants unable to pay rent for over a year during covid

with no way for the owners to recover those losses over six years rent increased just 3.55

percent while pg and e rose 12.4 percent water 9.7 and garbage 15.4 not including taxes or

maintenance. Insurance is requiring a much needed electrical update and the bid is close to $250,000.

Continuing to place the burden on small landlords will only worsen the crisis.

People mention generational wealth but as these older properties pass down to the next generation

the property taxes are reset and their costs increase drastically and I've seen those

those children have be forced to sell those properties and they leave the rental market

I encourage you to work with those of us your time has elapsed the next three speakers are

Evelyn Olivera Anthony Adesi and Jenny Madsen

hi everybody good evening my name is Evelyn Olivera and I am a renter I'm a government

an employee and a union leader here in the Bay Area.

Been living in San Leandro,

will be my 30 year anniversary this year.

I have followed this process from the beginning

and I'm here to say something simple and important.

I believe in you.

You did not come into public service for comfort or applause.

You came because you understand the leadership

means standing for people.

Even when the stance is tested by pressure,

money, and threats. Right now the pressure is loud. Lobbyists are skilled at making their

interests sound inevitable. Resistance feels risky, but volume is not authority and money is

not morality. Legitimacy comes from ethics and powers come from resolve. You have already shown

both. Every time you stand firm, you strengthen the public's trust. Every time you refuse

intimidation, you prove that this council answers to the community and not to fear.

Most of the people relying on your courage aren't in this room. They don't have lobbyists.

They don't make threats, but they are watching and they are counting on you all to hold the line

where they cannot. Pressure fades. Integrity lasts. History doesn't remember who pushed hardest.

It remembers who stood steady. So continue without fear. You are not alone. Your ethics are seen.

Your resolve matters. Please stand firm. Thank you. Good evening.

thank you the next three speakers are anthony adesi jenny madsen and emily rich

okay good evening mayor and city council members i actually agree 100 with the previous speaker

i think that this is a big decision that is going to affect the way that san leandro

operates for a very, very long time. I think the easy thing to do would be to continue with the

second reading and pass this ordinance in its current form. I think the hard thing to do,

which a couple of council members were trying to do last time, would be to stand up and say,

hey, we got this far, but it would be tragic to continue with the ordinance in its current form.

I see two fatal flaws in this ordinance, one being the start or the base year of 2025.

This will become a legal and documentation headache for the city.

What about leases that were renewed where tenants agreed for another 12 or 24 months

rent to keep their housing stable and maybe higher than the increase that would have been

allowed in the ordinance?

Who's going to govern that?

How is that going to flow through?

What about landlords like myself that replaced a roof, all new double-pane windows, and added new safety railings so the children don't fall through them last year with an increase that funded that capital improvement?

How is that going to be maintained?

How are those disputes going to be governed?

More importantly, when you have such a strong ordinance put in place, it puts landlords against tenants instead of working together.

Today, when a shower has a minor leak,

instead of repairing it in the cheapest, most possible way,

we replace it because we know if we're operating negatively,

we can make the money back if we have to.

Good landlords are not the problem here.

Good tenants aren't the problem here,

but the ordinance in its current form will have a lasting effect

and probably will be the most important thing you guys pass in your tenure here.

so please do the right thing and say let's revisit this and get it correct

thank you your time has elapsed the next three speakers are jenny madsen

emily rich and jimmy jimmy kelly

so i'm back again you all know that i've been coming and talking to you about this for

well, for as long as you've been on the council in some cases,

longer than that, because I've been talking to Tom Leow about this since 2014.

I'm stunned that people still haven't read the ordinance.

They don't know what this ordinance actually covers.

They don't know what covers, doesn't cover mobile homes.

I wrote a rather long thing

and put it in the e-comment

but I figured it out

there is regardless of how many units

a landlord owns

the difference in annual rent

that they will collect

if the percentage of CPI

is taken out of the RSO

is truly negligible

there is simply no reason

to amend the rent increase

in the rent stabilization ordinance you passed in January 12th.

Because, look, part of it is I've been working on this since 2023 really hard, like on a regular basis.

But part of it is, is I see if you push this down the road any farther, it's not going to happen.

And I think you all know that.

I think you'll lose resolve.

I think you'll lose the sense that you're building something.

and that would be a mistake because you are building something.

I don't know how to point out to landlords that they get to deduct all of the operating expenses

for managing, conserving, and maintaining the rental property fully in the year they are incurred.

This includes all of the things that they say are going up.

The landlords have a great thing,

And this ordinance is going to allow them to review and make a request for a fair return on investment, which will be reviewed properly.

The next three speakers are Emily Rich, Jimmy Kelly, and Craig Williams.

Hi, Emily Rich.

rent control in the u.s. started as emergency wartime measures in the 1910s and the 1940s

to combat profiteering enabled by housing shortages these first generation controls

covered roughly 80 percent of rental housing strictly froze rents and were largely abandoned

after world war ii due to housing booms that eased prices but in the 1970s inflation and

housing shortages led to a resurgence of rent control in our major cities. Experts agree that

developers have failed to create adequate housing for the past five decades, causing housing costs

to rise precipitously. Given this market failure, many cities have enacted policies that permit

inflation-indexed increases, allow landlords to reset rents on vacant units, and permit landlords

to apply for exemptions.

In 1995, the California legislature,

persuaded by the landlord lobby,

limited the scope of any rent stabilization in the state.

State rent stabilization ordinances

must exempt any housing built after 1995,

single-family homes and condominiums.

As city staff has pointed out,

because of this largesse,

only about a quarter of San Leandro's rental housing units

will even be subject to any ordinance

the council enacts. And yet the landlord lobby claims the sky is falling. Although many landlords

and landlord representatives claim they love their tenants and do not raise their rents annually,

as staff's presentation showed, median rents in the area have increased by 82 percent in the last

15 years, while CPI has increased only by 44 percent. Obviously somebody has been raising

somebody's rent. Please approve the second reading of the proposed ordinance.

Thank you. The next three speakers are Jimmy Kelly, Craig Williams, and Jennifer Rizzo.

Brothers and sisters of the community, of the council and staff, I want to say that in the 20

years since I retired, the rents had eaten up my income. I used to be able to pay my rent with just

my retirement from the Postal Service, and over the years, I could pay for the food and utilities.

But yet, I did not take my Social Security right away because I didn't want to use that money until

I really needed it, and now I do. But even with Social Security, I can't make it. I have to dip

into my savings to live here. The problem is rents are out of control. This is not rent control. This

is just trying to give us stabilization. I'm a union member. I'm a retired letter carrier,

a retired teacher. I also work as a current musician and as a sales rep. I'll probably

work till I die, but hopefully in the meantime, I won't have to exhaust my life savings.

When I pay my taxes, I get a renter's check, big, big 50 bucks a year. That's what you get for being

a renter. I don't know if any of you are renters, but I bet you get bigger deductions on your income

tax. You investors, you'll make your money. You got Prop 13. You got Contra Costa. What do we get?

We get 50 bucks. Yeah, renters. Your deductions, you get your interest deductions, you get all

kinds of benefits. Meanwhile, as a tenant, I'm paying off your mortgage. Now, I want to thank

the city council for the almost unanimous decision with the exception of one. I hope in the case of

unity that our mayor says he stands for, he will join the rest of you and support this because

that's what we need. We need unity. We need to respect renters and we need representation.

If you want a little bit of kindness, stay with us, stay with your guns and support the people,

the renters in this community who pay off your landlord's bills. Thank you.

Thank you. The next speakers are Craig Williams, Jennifer Rizzo, Rob Rich.

Hi, my name is Craig Williams. I'm a resident and a tenant advocate. I want to show the city council this chart.

This is a chart of what happened to housing after the 2008 recession, the Great Recession.

Housing starts dropped by 80%.

Construction jobs were down by 2,500,000 jobs.

So that was the first part of the crisis that started.

The second part, which people usually aren't aware of, is that because of that, there was a lot of collusion within the industry.

The top builders in the country 25 years ago controlled 30% of housing.

Now they control over 50%.

And the strategy is not to build.

to make more profit by not building.

You know, it's a supply and demand issue.

And so when people talk about,

well, you're going to have rent control

and it's going to de-emphasize investment.

Well, in fact, that's not what the builders want.

The builders want to limit production

in order to maximize profits.

And also the third thing is the tech boom.

With the tech boom, you know, housing prices went up.

Karina Lopez, several occasions, said, you know, we created five times as many jobs as we did housing.

One other point I'd like to make is that, you know, as homeowners, as it turns out,

we make our wealth is 40 times what renter's wealth is.

So show a little ten of this.

Thank you. Your time has elapsed.

The next speakers are Jennifer Rizzo, Rob Ridge, Carol Habercross.

Good evening. My name is Jennifer Rizzo, and I'm with the California Apartment Association.

We respectfully oppose this proposal to enact additional rent control measures in San Leandro.

The proposed rent control formula of 65% of CPI or 3%, whichever is lower, is significantly more restrictive than the existing state law.

At the first reading, several council members raised concerns about this rent cap formula, and those concerns are valid.

As we know, rent control has unintended consequences.

When rent caps are set too low, they discourage investment, reduce maintenance and reinvestment, and ultimately tighten the housing supply.

That reduced supply harms residents, especially the working families and the seniors, by making rental housing harder to find and more expensive.

And there's no evidence that rents in San Leandro are increasing at a rate that warrants this level of government intervention.

San Leandro already has a rent review board,

and according to their own annual report,

it received only 28 inquiries,

many of which were just questions and required no follow-up.

There were zero cases, zero hearings,

and the report states, quote,

the city has experienced a decrease in cases

since the adoption of the Assembly Bill 1482,

thus demonstrating that the current state rent control law

is already working here.

the proposed rent control ordinance also undermines the san leandro housing goals

san leandro fell significantly short of its prior rena goals particularly for very low low and

moderate income housing and the city's new housing element emphasizes the preserving of existing

housing and incentivizing new development yet this ordinance undermines these goals precisely

when the supply is needed.

So we respectfully ask you to vote no

on this costly and ill-timed.

Thank you. Your time has elapsed.

The next three speakers are Rob Rich,

Carol Haberkoss, and David Stark.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Ms. Vice Mayor,

members of the council.

I'm Rob Rich, and I'm lucky enough

to live here in San Leandro.

I'm speaking tonight in support

of the rent stabilization ordinance before you.

While I was hoping that the first reading

would have passed unanimously,

I understand and respect the concerns.

I am thankful that it passed with only one no vote.

I urge each of you to vote yes

on the second reading tonight

and then review its impacts carefully

over the next year.

If you decide that there needs to be any tweaks

to improve it, please make them at that time.

It has been a long road leading to tonight,

yet more work remains

enacting just cause protections and revisiting our mobile home park rent stabilization ordinance

i've been reflecting on how we arrived at this moment a quarter century ago the council created

what turned out to be a toothless rent review board followed about a decade ago by a tenant

relocation ordinance the majority decided that was enough and then a corporate landlord purchased a

low income a local mobile home park jacking up rents and kicking out long-term low-income residents

An octogenarian, John Bush, decided enough was enough.

He made what John Lewis calls good trouble.

Initiating a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, he was evicted, arrested, and jailed.

Along the way, he inspired many who worked on both this and the Mobile Home Park ordinance,

including folks like Ginny Madsen and Carol Habercross.

On this day, I'm thankful for John Bush's courage, vision, and sacrifice.

for the diverse coalition of renters, including mobile home park renters,

community organizations like the Big Tent,

and ordinary residents who push this issue forward.

I'm thankful for the work of staff.

I'm especially thankful for your leadership.

Tonight, I'm respectfully requesting that you approve the second reading of this ordinance.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Carol Haberkos, David Stark, and Chris Longoria.

good evening city council mayor and staff this is a very emotional time i think for a lot of us

right now as we are on you know this is going to make or break renters basically first of all i

want to thank tom lau thank tom lau he's done so much work he's been there all the way hard work

step-by-step support so i really want to thank him for all the work you've done

and i respect all the city council for your votes and thank you for passing the first reading and i'm

i'm expecting everyone to pass also vote for on the second reading and i respect you all for your

diligence and compassion always i have total respect for you all so i'm a renter that's not

covered by this ordinance. However, I care about this for all the renters in San Leandro

that need the stability and fairness of this ordinance. I do believe there would be more

renters here, but there is fear of retaliation. And I think that's why a lot of renters are not

coming to these meetings. These housing providers want our city council not to pass this ordinance.

the housing providers want our city to stay with ab 1482 with a cap of 10 rent increases for

renters they think it's okay to raise the rents that high 10 percent what was the increase in

social security this year 2.8 percent what is the minimum wage in san leandro 16.90 an hour

it's wrong to have this high rent rent you know hike that will happen the rent stabilization

ordinance is reasonable necessary and justified it has passed the first read your time has elapsed

the next three speakers are david stark chris longoria and bill espinola

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council and City staff.

I'm David Stark representing the Bay East Association of Realtors.

Your vote on this ordinance during the January 12th hearing didn't tell the whole story.

It was clear that some council members had and may still have serious concerns about this ordinance.

Example, concerns about capping rents at 65% of CPI.

Perhaps after reflecting on it, you also have concerns about unintended consequences.

We've been working on this issue for a long time, and I understand that you want to be done with it.

However, please be thoughtful.

If you know that an ordinance will be approved, and if you know that this ordinance will take effect January 1, 2027, you have time to be thoughtful.

You have time to reconsider the CPI limit.

You have time to reconsider a strong and clear exemption for mom-and-pop housing providers

and a clear exemption for single-family homes and condos.

You have time to identify a legitimate funding mechanism for this ordinance.

You have time to be thoughtful.

please take time to adopt an ordinance that not only feels good to you but makes sense as well

thank you thank you the next three speakers are chris longoria bill espinola antoine no

good evening mayor city council miss cameron counselor i would like to acknowledge the

ohlone people whose territory of hawkin we occupy i am a 40-year resident and renter of san leandro

I am one of thousands of renters here in San Leandro that are also voters.

I urge you to vote yes on this second reading of this urgently needed rent ordinance.

I recently attended the MLK event as well as a Stephen Taylor dedication.

Some of you were in attendance.

Gratitude for showing up.

both events had many renters in attendance they were there to support their children who were

performing for us as well as the youth at san leandro high social justice academy who continue

to hold it down for our lovely city a city where kindness matters the diversity at both events

really shows the change of our city,

the rich culture that now exists.

Our youth are leading us for a better San Leandro

as their parents work two jobs in order to pay the rent.

I want to thank you, dear relative,

our dear relative, Jenny Mattson,

for her dedication to this rental issue

for over a decade.

Gratitude, Jenny.

I, Chris Urban Res Life Longoria,

along with 53 community members that I met at both of those events

whom are renters and who also are afraid of retaliation

that would not show up but they are supportive.

Also I have the support of the California Native Vote Projects.

They stand in solidarity with this rent ordinance

and an approval of this second reading.

I urge you to move forward with this ordinance

so that we can move forward.

The next three speakers are Bill Espinola, Tuan Ngo, and Mike McGuire.

Good evening. My name is Bill Espinola.

I'm president of the Bayes Association of Realtors, and I'm also a San Leandro resident.

My family's been involved and lived in San Leandro for many years.

I went to San Leandro High, bank prop, went through the Halcyon Elementary School.

Been involved and lived in San Leandro for a long time.

I'm also a housing provider, a mom and pop housing provider.

Before I got into real estate, I was a blue collar worker.

I was in the automotive trades.

I was a proud union member, 1546.

So not all of us housing providers are what you would say corporate landlords.

Last time I was here, I spoke about the 65% CPI.

That's not enough.

I know rents are high in San Leandro and in the Bay Area.

We live in a high-cost area.

Cost of maintenance is expensive.

As a housing provider, I know what it costs to replace a roof.

I know what it costs to have my insurance canceled.

Very expensive and having to go find new insurance.

Our housing stock here in San Leandro, 40s and 50s, high maintenance.

I mean, it's just the way it is.

I would urge you to vote this ordinance down.

Let's come back with a more balanced ordinance,

something that works for the mom and pops as well.

So I think we could do better.

I hope you guys will consider that.

Again, the CPI, I feel, is just not enough

to keep our properties properly maintained.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Michael, I'm sorry, Tuan, no, Mike McGuire, and Lawrence Abbott.

I have been working with the community over public safety, housing, a number of issues, locally and also countywide.

and I've talked to hundreds of regular working immigrants, a lot of blue collars, a lot of Asians

who are fearful retaliation and don't want to appear in a public space in front of government

officials. But consistently, the people who immigrated here to provide, many of them provide

housing, and I organize them during the eviction moratorium to appear with you by the hundreds

and across the county.

Many of them do not speak English, yet they provide housing.

They don't own the homes.

What they do is they save up, borrow from their family for a down payment,

and that allowed them to make a monthly mortgage and provide labor

that go into the essential service of housing.

They're fixing plumbing one leaky pipe at a time.

They're in crawl spaces, fixing and troubleshooting electrical wiring.

When it's raining, they're out on the roof.

They make sacrifices every weekend, long hour days during weekdays.

When there's a plumbing stoppage, they are there to fix it.

That's why they have equity, because it's wet labor on weekends, on weekdays, from people who don't speak English.

And when you did the eviction moratorium, it was labor theft.

When you pass extreme policy, it is labor theft.

They cannot keep up with inflation.

65% of inflation means every year,

35% below inflation in perpetuity.

When you know drywall went up

and plywood went up 300% during the pandemic.

And insurance went up 100%.

Yet you decide to pass something so extreme that it takes away labor from the working class, the middle class.

Thank you. Your time has elapsed.

The next three speakers are Michael McGuire, Lawrence Abbott, and Kay Lee Figueroa.

I think immigrants get ripped off by landlords a lot more than immigrant landlords get ripped off by anybody.

um

well you're a fucking

excuse me

everybody stop

everybody stop

everybody stop

so it's gotten a little

bit chippy in here

right a little bit of I hear

some chortling on one side

and some snappy back on the other side

and we need to keep

it professional

okay

So consider this our first warning.

Let's start with you at two minutes.

So let's get you started again

so you can get your cadence and all of that.

Immigrants read two.

They don't only own.

And I'd say what we're seeing here tonight

is let's come up with any possible excuse

to stall this bill that we've been working on for two years.

Let's pretend we cannot operate a pocket calculator

and figure out what 65% of the CPI is.

I could show anyone how to do that if it's really a problem.

People can calculate rent increases just fine.

You know, they just, when there's a limit on it,

is where their calculator seems to break.

A little bit of math here.

The 65% figure comes from the percent of the CPI

that does not already count housing.

You don't want to double count it.

You don't want to count the rent increase that just,

the housing increase that just happened when you figure out how much you can go up next year

as a percent of that you'd be double counting if you did that that said if you want to pick a round

number i'm fine with it but the 65 is not a mysterious number it's the non-housing part of

the cpi uh there is a claim that there are rent controls extreme people who don't want something

reasonable to pass, something that just lets people plan their lives like normal people,

say, oh my God, it's extreme if you limit anybody any way in what they would like to

do otherwise.

Give me just a second here.

What we're trying to do is have rents go up at about the same rate as retiree Social

Security does.

That hardly strikes me as extreme.

Extreme would be rolling back rents to where they were before all those rents got jacked up just before the pandemic.

And windfall profits were made by landlords.

And it would be putting the people evicted then who were current in their rent, but landlords just wanted more, back in their apartments.

We are not doing anything extreme.

We are just trying to keep things steady with inflation.

Thank you.

Your time is up.

The next three speakers are Lawrence Abbott, Kay Lee Figueroa, and Kathleen Parsons.

Thank you so much.

I want to say that so many people have already said exactly what I want to say, so I won't repeat it.

But, of course, you know that I'm for this rent stabilization.

The one thing that I didn't say is to really thank staff.

I know staff worked really hard on this, and this will make a huge difference.

I appreciate you all so much.

Thanks.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Kaylee Figueroa, Kathleen Parsons, and Vanessa.

Boy, hardly know where to start here.

I will start off, though, with one of my own personal stories, okay?

Let's look at the last 10 years.

In the last 10 years, my rent has gone up $600.

In the last 10 years, my Social Security minus my Medicare Part B expenses came to $49.

Okay?

How am I supposed to keep up with these outrageous rent increases?

If I didn't also have a pension, I would be homeless.

because I could not afford the rent with just one or just the other.

It's the equivalent of having two jobs.

And even though I'm not working,

these landlords, and I sent an email to the city.

People have said this many times this evening.

They get all kinds of tax write-offs.

You will see they even get double dipping tax write-offs.

where even if they get tax write-offs for their utilities

and they pass the costs of that along to the tenants,

they get both.

What do I get?

The state gives me a lousy $35 at the end of the year

for being a tenant?

I mean, you know, what, I could go to Starbucks with that money?

I mean, and then these, right,

and these landlords are talking about,

Oh, you know, what they want to do is then criticize the amount of money for a rent registry,

but yet they're all willing to spend a ton of money to have recalls on council members

that are maybe not enough in their pockets.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Kathleen Parsons, Vanessa, and Tyler Gonzalez.

Hi. I'm kind of in the same situation as the last speaker.

Last week, I got my third annual increase of rent, which was the maximum of approximately 7.8%.

If I get the one next year, which I assume I will,

I will now be spending my entire Social Security check on my rent.

Luckily, I have a small pension from UC.

However, Medicaid costs went up, not Medicaid,

Medicare costs went up this year.

And that ate up all but $30 of the 2.8% that they gave us.

My insurance premiums went up 150%.

for my Medicare Advantage plan, it's still very low cost because I have it through the University of California retirees.

But it still went up 150%.

In March, I'm facing the increase that PG&E is going to put on everyone because they're now separating the cost of the electricity you use

and the cost of generating that electricity.

And because I use very little electricity, I'm going to end up paying $24 more,

which is what they're going to charge everybody for the generation cost.

After hearing some of the speakers tonight,

I think what I have decided is that I'm not welcoming San Leandro anymore

because I don't own property and I don't have a family.

and

I think that it's probably time for me to move

despite the fact that I've lived here since 2009

when I moved down here from Oakland

to take care of my mother.

And I'm just kind of sad.

Thank you.

The next two speakers are Vanessa and Tyler Gonzalez.

If you can move to the side by the mic.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

So I'm not a landlord.

I'm actually a resident of San Leandro, gosh, for over 20 years.

So I come here to speak on behalf of those residents.

I cannot be here because we work really hard.

We have to come home late to pay for our kids.

And this program will require a loan from our general fund that we simply cannot afford.

I urge you tonight not to pass the rent civilization ordinance.

Instead, I moved that the council table this proposal for at least the next year.

Your first moral obligation is to the financial stability of San Leandro.

And as it turns out, you cannot provide safe neighborhoods or paved streets with moral stances that ignored the hard math.

It's an abdication of your primary duty, which is budget responsibility.

The city is currently facing a multi-million dollar deficit in committing to a general fund loan, which is what the council is planning to use to start this program.

It's a violation of your duty to maintain fiscal stability until the deficit is closed.

I therefore ask that the next year you first prioritize an in-depth fiscal impact report that specifically analyzes the risk to the general fund if the fee revenue proposed underperforms.

performs. Second, provide an economic study of the impact that this rapid change will have on

the deterioration of available rental housing that could potentially create slum conditions

caused by the low caps. I formally request that the council direct the city manager

to provide a sustainable forecast before approving new departments, given that the current data

is insufficient to prove the program won't drain emergency services, and the city has not met the

and approved required to justify a more restrictive local ordinance when the existing administrative

remedies thank you your time has elapsed the next speaker is tyler gonzalez

good evening mayor gonzalez and council members i wanted to thank you guys for your time as well

as the housing providers my name is tyler gonzalez and i'm a stanley san leandro resident

and a former tenant. I am standing here tonight to urge a no vote on this ordinance because it

has shifted from a balanced proposal to one that is mathematically unfeasible.

If we look at the initial draft from July 2025, the city originally proposed a flat 5% annual cap

and a program where capital improvements allowed a pass through to tenants. That original ordinance

recognize that owners need a predictable 5% to keep up with inflation and a way to recover the

cost to keep up with inflation and major repairs. But tonight, you've replaced that with a major cap

as low as 0.9% and no path throughs at all. When the cost of concrete, lumber, and labor is rising

at 5% or 10%, an $18 rent increase won't even cover a basic service call. This creates a dangerous

economic reality. The longer a tenant stays, the less a provider can afford to invest in that unit.

Because now that you have banned banking unused increases and eliminated the cost recovery that

was in the first draft, the only path to a financial survival is a vacancy. Why would you

pass a law that makes a long-term tenant a financial liability? You are creating a deferred

maintenance mandate where the math works better to let a unit decay until it's vacant so the rent

can finally be reset to market rent. By moving away from the 65% of CPI or 3% and repair passers

in the original draft, you are ensuring that our aging apartments becomes the slums of tomorrow.

Please protect the quality of our housing by rejecting this unsustainable proposal.

please vote no thank you this concludes our speaker cards in the room mayor so

we will close public comment then we'll come back to council members for any

clarifying questions or is there any discussion I'll just start there is there

any discussion anything that folks would like to speak about so there will be no

discussion is that what i'm hearing okay we'll go to council member aguilar uh thank you mayor

zolz and thank you staff for working on on this um and all the time that you put in and for the

folks to come out and um speak so passionately you know for and against i just want to my question

is for the city attorney and i think my with regards to our last meeting the first reading

there was a question asked whether or not if cpi was removed from the reading the first reading

that we would have to go back to a first reading was that true

city attorney uh thank you mayor yes under state law if the ordinance on the first reading is

altered, then

it cannot continue into a

second reading. It has to come back for a new first

reading. Okay.

Thank you. That's my question.

Thank you. Any other questions

or comments?

Okay. So by tradition,

the mayor always goes last. I promised

you that I would explain why I'm opposing

what we have here today,

and I'm going to do that. So first,

thanks to everyone who's come out and talked about the concerns that they have I have proposed through

time various ways that I think could address the challenges that we face in particular I've looked

for income testing as a method I've also discussed with the city attorney and with counsel how we

might be able to address the specific condition that seniors face and big picture without going

into the detailed advice, it's you can't and you can't.

So without, you know, when I see it in other cities

where I see housing projects that are dedicated

to certain groups of certain ages,

when I see housing that's dedicated

to certain sexual orientation,

I wonder how it is that we cannot design a process

that does address protected groups like seniors.

But that's neither here nor there because today that's not the choice in front of us.

The second thing is that I ran for mayor on a promise of balance.

I was very clear.

And if voters don't want that, if the landlords are unhappy with me or if the renters aren't happy with me, that's fine.

I won't be mayor.

But I ran on a platform of balance.

The state has a 10% cap.

and as I listened to the different arguments

and saw the evolution,

I remained focused on trying to find a solution

that didn't rely on the state.

And in fact, I proposed a 50% cut

on what operates in the state of California.

And as I'll talk about at the end of this,

that was actually supported

by some of our most progressive individuals in the city.

And so it's interesting to see how this discussion has changed through time.

I have heard that housing supply or housing, rents, etc.,

the housing market doesn't comport to economics.

There have been a number of public speakers who have come here and said that,

and I simply disagree with that.

Extensive studies in economics, all of my training,

all of my life experience, says that initially you might be able to fool the system, but through

time the basics of supply and demand always work. At the U.S. Mayor's Conference this last week,

we spoke specifically about the primary cause of housing challenges in the United States,

and it's all about supply. Knowing that from the very beginning, I was very supportive of

San Leonardo's efforts to become a pro-housing city by designation. I've been highly supportive

of housing. But I also recognize the need to compromise and that in the long run, what we

need is we need more housing in the city of San Leandro. We don't need to create economic uncertainty

for potential investors in our city. Are we a pro-business city or not a pro-business city?

And so it's very important to me that we come across with a balanced piece of legislation

that will not be characterized as extreme.

Lack of data.

So we've had a number of public speakers today

and in the past that support this legislation

who have said we lack data

and that's why we need to do this.

But for me, it's just the opposite.

And that's specifically why I proposed

and the council approved a rent registry

so that we can get the data

on which groups are experiencing what rent increases.

One of the things that I've heard over and over and over and over is that primarily for existing tenants that are paying their rent, landlords endeavor to specifically keep those rents highly moderated in terms of the rent increase.

As a young economist back in Boston, I didn't understand that because I thought, well, it's all about profit maximization.

but what I heard from a landlady was very simple. A good tenant that pays rent is far more valuable

than a new tenant that may or may not pay rent. And so having access to the data that tells us

what it is that the rent increases are for existing tenants, that's really important,

and that's why I led with that proposal. We then came to this concept. We had many people tell us,

well, it's all about evictions, that when people don't pay their rent, they're going to get evicted.

Well, that's the primary cause. It's not because the rent is too high. The evictions in Alameda

County Superior Court are driven by non-payment of rent. Not your $20 short, your $50 short,

your $100 short. It's non-payment of rent. And that was exacerbated by the eviction moratorium.

I'm going to continue and wrap up because I saved my time from last time. As I promised,

there is not a connection we have not seen the data that shows a connection between the rent

increases the rents in san leandro and that as a cause for homelessness so i can't agree with what

the language is in the resolution based on my experience in the point in time count a while back

and my point in time experience this time i do not believe that it is the rents in san leandro

that are causing homelessness.

There are many other causes, and we need to address those,

but it is not the rents that are being charged.

In the end, this does not increase housing supply.

That's what will lower rents.

Berkeley experiences, as they've built new housing,

that new housing has been expensive.

It's been nice.

Certain groups of people have moved into that housing,

decreasing the demand for the older housing stock,

and that has moderated rents in Berkeley.

So housing supply does work.

I am concerned that this is a taking, that this is a regulatory taking.

It is so extreme in nature that flat out I view that as a real legal risk.

And my job is as a fiduciary, I need to be mindful of that risk to the city.

Why do I think that it's extreme?

I called it extreme last time.

Why do I think that it's extreme?

I think that any regulation that says you can't even charge inflationary increases,

you can't help out tenants by not increasing their rent this year, just do it next year

and take that extra and apply it to next year as you help them out with a difficult time right now

in the absence of banking. No capital pass through. You have to go to a hearing and you

have to have someone who's not involved in the industry potentially make a determination whether

what you're doing is reasonable. Those sorts of things are very difficult, particularly in a world

where we don't really define fair return other than to say, if you have a profit and loss statement

and you're making a profit,

we're going to assume that that's a fair rate of return,

even if by objective evidence that's not the case.

In the end, the thing that I find, I guess,

most compelling or disturbing, I don't know what to call it,

is that a number of advocates have before identified

that something like a 5% was quite reasonable.

I heard, let's do 3% plus inflation from a tenant advocate.

We also had an email from a tenant advocate who literally wrote to us, 5% is reasonable because we have cost pass-throughs.

That's why it's reasonable.

But what's happened here is that as the number of votes for extreme rent control have increased, then the position of the advocates has changed.

And so the same people who said that 5% was reasonable then say, oh, guess what? It's not reasonable.

That's political power. And that doesn't bother me. That's the reality if people have different opinions.

But what I want to be clear about is that that's not based on data.

It's not based on an analysis.

It's based on what's the lowest number that we can get with the most votes.

And so with that, I struggle because I think that what I proposed initially was a good compromise.

It lowered the state cap by 50%.

It actually increased the visibility to data by implementing a rent registry so that we can make an informed choice.

The current approach costs us millions of dollars.

Millions of dollars.

What the city council voted for in its priority session was to give teeth, the most number of votes, was to give teeth to the rent registry.

if we had just given teeth to that rent registry to make it binding and impose a 5% cap,

we could do this a lot more inexpensively and get the data to see if we need to make further adjustments.

So that's why I'm opposing this tonight.

Council Member Bowen.

I apologize for going after you.

I realized that I had made a commitment to some constituents to share some of their perspective that I wanted to get across.

And I recognize that my colleagues on this council, we have been having this conversation for a very long time.

I really want to call out Council Member Renes, Selena Renes.

I remember we spoke in depth about this when she first got on the council as a passion of hers and how we could work together to try to further this.

And this was the first meeting I sat on on rules was to discuss this ordinance that had been sitting in rules for some time.

And then I recognized that this has been a long time coming.

And this decision is hard for everybody, as I think all decisions that we make on this council,

because we are really making decisions about trade-offs of how the things that we pass as

policy affect human lives and um what i want to share that i told a resident that i want to share

he's a housing provider in san leandro small housing provider um and he just wanted to say

you know sometimes in this process and i recognize um uh tom leal for you know the outreach and staff

that they've done on this for for a long time but there is a real feeling um whether or not it's um

when people join in on the conversation,

but that it can feel adversarial on both sides.

And just to recognize that the humanity

in all of the parties involved,

people own the homes that others are renting

and people are renting the homes that others own.

And it's really basic,

but I think that that's a really important piece of it.

And so the only other thing I will say about this

is the two things that I had asked for

throughout our rules committee meetings

and at the last meeting.

But the implementation piece is really important

and the outreach and education piece is really important.

So for all of the impacted stakeholders,

we've talked over the last two years

about many of the examples from Berkeley to Long Beach

to Hollywood about ways that they educate

and provide information to both the landlords

and to renters.

And then the second piece of that,

and obviously to do with language as well,

because we do have such a diverse population,

but also that second piece about the ordinance

coming back after a year of implementation

to understand whether or not it is effective

and what some of the consequences or impacts

are intended or not.

And then I know staff had mentioned

that it's already embedded into the ordinance,

but I will send over some measurables

that are included in the ordinance

that I want to make sure that we get data on afterwards

so that we can make sure that this policy is effective

and addresses many of the concerns that people do have.

Councilor Moribolt.

I'd like to move this item.

And Councilor Reguilar.

I'll second.

Okay. Seeing no further discussion, please vote.

All votes are in.

The motion passes with six yeses and one no.

Mayor Gonzalez voting no.

At this point, at this point, I'm going to move to item 10B, and we've got Chief Information

Technology Officer Michael Siner to introduce the item.

Okay, given the length of the presentation, why don't we take our break right now?

We're at the two-hour mark, and then we will come back.

So we will take a break for 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

we are going to proceed.

If we can take the discussions

outside,

we will continue with our business here in one

minute. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we are coming out of recess and we're going to continue with item 10B.

We've got presentation by Chief Information Technology Officer Michael Seiner.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

Tonight's update I'll be providing is on Project Elevate.

This is the city's multi-year effort to modernize our core internal systems.

These are systems that support payroll, human resources, finance, budgeting, and reporting across all city departments.

You might have also heard us refer to this project as Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP.

We also call it the Workday Project sometimes because Workday is our main software vendor.

Here's how I'll walk through tonight's update.

I'll start with the goals of Project Elevate and why this investment is needed.

Then I'll talk about what the community can expect, who's doing the work, where we are today,

and briefly touch on budget and a consultant amendment at the end.

And then I'll close with how we are managing this project overall.

a note on the consultant amendment i'll start out just so everybody knows we're not asking for any

funding related to that additional funding it's within the overall project budget

okay so project elevate goals three simple goals modernize improve and strengthen we're

modernizing the systems that support city operations,

we're improving accuracy, reliability, and data quality,

and ultimately, we're strengthening the foundation

that supports services to the community.

These systems may be at times invisible

to residents in the community,

but they directly influence how reliable city operations are

and how efficiently staff can respond to community needs.

so why is this investment needed the city's core internal systems were implement

implemented over 20 years ago they were designed for a very different time when paper forms manual

approvals and disconnected systems were common over time vendor support has become limited

and and staff have had to rely more and more on manual workarounds to keep things running

That increases staff effort, staff time, and operational risk as well.

In addition, limited integration between HR, payroll, and finance constrains reporting, analysis, and the city's ability to adapt.

This investment's about addressing those underlying challenges before they turn into major service issues.

So what is the city investing in?

In response, the city's invested in a modern integrated ERP platform.

This platform brings HR, payroll, and finance together into a single connected system, allowing for a standardized process aligned with best practices.

It also includes significant improvements in data and reporting.

So we're not just replacing software.

We're redesigning how work is done.

So what can the community and staff expect today?

Expectations have changed significantly over the last decade.

In 2026, today's workforce and community expect routine tasks to be completed digitally,

not through paper forms, mail, or manual follow-ups.

For example, employees expect to change direct deposit information online

instead of filling out paper forms.

and many workflows are expected to be handled on mobile devices as well.

These efficiencies benefit the entire community through stronger service capacity,

better use of staff time, and improved transparency and reporting.

So this slide has a lot.

It's our city project team.

This doesn't really represent everybody who's working on the project.

um the the highlights leadership and accountability um a lot of people involved uh beyond this even

so at the executive at the executive level assistant city manager michael ewan serves as

our project sponsor he helps ensure alignment with city priorities and supporting timely decisions

especially when trade-offs or escalations are needed

our human resources and finance directors are the primary business owners of this system

they define the requirements lead function key functional decisions and are accountable for

ensuring that the solution supports city operations from an it and delivery standpoint

cto myself and our project manager reggie john and the project management team coordinate overall

program across the systems, also across vendors, all the technical dependencies, including

integrations, data conversion, and security.

Change management and training leadership, that group focuses on preparing staff, supporting

adoption, and making sure people are ready to work in the new system, not just on day

one, but throughout the lifetime of the system.

it's also important to note this project includes dedicated full-time staff assigned

to the program as well as many additional smes or subject matter experts that contribute

so that's the city side we also have a very robust uh partner project team um so we're

supported by several partners each with a very clearly defined role workday is the software

provider. Cognizant is the primary implementation consultant. Barry Dunn is a consultant that has

been with us since the early days of this project in 2021. We'll talk about them with the amendment

at the end, but they provide independent project oversight, risk management, and change management

support. Their role is to help city validate progress, surface issues early, and maintain

alignment across all parties. We also have Robert Half supporting staff needs where specialized

expertise or additional capacity is required and Cognitive, not to be confused with Cognizant,

they provide specialized help on payroll. Can-Am is another software provider that's related to

cashiering and payments and finally this multi-partner approach reflects the scale and

complexity of the program allows the city to bring in the right expertise at the right time.

Okay, I'm going to go through a few slides on a roadmap. One slide how we got here and then

the next where we're going. This project, the key to this side, this project did not start with

implementation. It began several years ago with needs assessment and planning, followed by a formal

RFP, vendor selection, and contract negotiations. Implementation begin in October 2024 after all of

the initial groundwork was completed. And since then, the focus has been on planning, design,

configuration, and testing. So where we're headed, looking forward, 2026 is focused on

continued testing. The continued testing is taking place with the human resources,

human capital management, and payroll. We're also working on finance configurations,

and then moving into testing for the finance pieces, and then training and readiness.

Based on what we know today, the project is trending toward a July 2026 citywide operational

transition. We use that word operational transition. Sometimes we say go live, but

operational transition is a phrase that kind of insinuates that the work does not end at go live.

This is a continual improvement process, but we will be using this system for a long time,

And so the work isn't going to end at GoLive.

We are on target for this execution against that July 2026 date.

The roadmap is designed to ensure a stable citywide transition with HR payroll and core financial operations already at GoLive.

Next slide is a little bit of a deeper dive into our current status.

This shows three things.

what's largely complete, what we are actively working on, and what comes next. Because the

natural question right now at this time is, you know, how far along are we really? And, you know,

especially with items that are still in progress. So for HR and payroll, foundational configuration

is largely complete, and most testing is complete. It's a big step, payroll being the most

complicated, complex aspect of any government ERP solution. And payroll is the primary

remaining functional area for testing. We're in what's called parallel payroll testing right now,

where we test payroll in parallel with our existing system. We're using real data to

validate real world scenarios and and um payroll is actually in those final stages of testing as

we work towards full accuracy and just a note on payroll it's one of those areas where their

accuracy um approaching a hundred percent is needed um committing to a hundred percent accuracy

on anything is is a difficult thing to do but we're the way we like to explain it is we are

we need to approach 100% accuracy with payroll,

which is different than any other technology system.

That kind of accuracy usually isn't needed.

You can go live with 95% and then perfect over time.

It's a reasonable solution with a lot of technology, not with payroll.

So for finance, configuration and design are actively underway,

progressing as expected for this phase.

This work is moving through what we call structured confirmation sessions

and validation checkpoints.

so overall based on the milestones completed and testing currently underway the project is tracking

in line where we want to be where we expect to be at this point in the schedule having said that

the july remains the target there are four watch items that we came up with that still could affect

timing so those things that we're paying very close attention to are payroll testing finishing

and achieving the accuracy we're looking for.

Financial testing, so we'll be moving out of confirmation assessments

into unit testing and end-in testing for finance.

And then resource capacity and potential for operational disruptions

are all things that we worry about with a project like this

to try to keep it on track.

These are all tracked regularly and managed through a testing

and readiness plan.

This slide shows some highlights of our change management and training tasks, shows our Elevate Central, which opened in August 2025.

This is our, we're very proud of our space.

It's been very nice.

The team loves it.

It's great for training, change management.

It's a big bonus to have a space where everybody can work and collaborate and train together.

On the right, you can see our departmental champions doing user experience training in December.

These are champions are beyond the original project team.

In each department, we have champions that are helping with the project and promoting the project as well.

And then there's a little picture of our Project Elevate intranet site or SharePoint site.

Upcoming activities, we have in-person and teams training.

We're developing training videos and job aids.

And one thing to note about our Elevate Central, we are going to staff that for the go-live or operational transition.

So it will be a place where everybody can come.

All right.

I'm running a little bit behind.

I'll speed it up here.

Project budget.

All the work we've been assessing, configuration, design, testing, training, change management, and transition requires discipline planning and funding.

This slide shows the total budget council approved and how we're tracking across software implementation services, consulting, training, and other project costs.

Second table shows actual city staff labor costs for 24, 25, 26.

We include this for transparency because this is a big internal effort across HR, finance, IT, and other departments.

So it's a real part of the cost here.

Key takeaway is that we may remain within the approved multi-year budget and have sufficient capacity to complete the remaining work and support the transition to operation.

One important clarification, when you see remaining balances, work's not ending in July.

Some of the things, you know, that's just the operational transition point.

Software subscriptions extend beyond that and are covered in the project budget for 2027 as well.

All right.

Coming out of budget view, the practical takeaway is that we still have meaningful funding to finish the work

with approximately 3.3 million remaining.

We can maintain continuity through GLO Live

and the stabilization period.

That remaining capacity is intentional.

It supports final testing cycles, readiness activities,

post-GO Live activities,

and the oversight needed to make testing-driven decisions

as we approach the transition.

So next steps.

The action before council tonight

is to approve an amendment to the Barry Dunn contract in the amount of $98,800. It extends

support through December 31st, 2026, covering go-live and post-go-live activities, and it's

fully funded from the ERP budget already approved by council, and no additional appropriation is

requested. Just a little note, a couple notes on Barry Dunn and their role. We're working off an

original contract with them from 2021. They started as an advisory partner when we first

started investigating this, and then we used them to support. They did a great job on our ERP

planning, RFP development, vendor selection, and contract negotiations, and they're currently

providing independent oversight on the tail end of that contract from four years ago, and

this amendment is to keep them going through

the go live and beyond.

And with that, I'll answer any questions.

So thank you for your presentation.

I had to use the word presentation

without focusing on action items.

So just to clarify, in case there's any confusion,

this is an action item.

So we'll proceed to questions first,

and then we'll take public comment.

Councilmember Aguilar.

Thank you, Mayor Gonzalez.

Thank you, Michael, for the great presentation.

I know that's something that we've been advocating for for a while.

I don't have any other comment, but I'd like to move item 10b.

Okay, we'll get to that in just a little bit.

Any other questions at this time?

Seeing none, let's take, okay, Councilor Mervolt.

Yes, when you said moving towards 100%,

is there a threshold that you say, okay, we're good moving towards 100%,

or is it strictly just, I understand the concept,

like you can never be 100% and that would be really hard,

but I also do struggle with the vague moving towards,

you could be at 70 and now you're at 72.

Hey, we're moving towards 100%.

Yeah, 72 is not going to work.

Not good, okay, that's a start.

When we're talking about moving towards 100%,

we're talking in the 99s, you know.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

I figured that much, but I needed to ask.

Yeah, if we have a handful of errors that we have to correct in payroll,

it's very difficult to implement any kind of solution without dealing with one error.

But if we have to deal with a handful, that may be something that we have to deal with.

But we don't want dozens of errors.

At this point in time, we'll take public comment on this item.

Mayor, we have not received any comment cards

and there are no hands raised online.

So we'll close public comment.

Any further discussion?

Council member Acevedo, please.

Yes, I would like to second 10B.

Okay, so we've got a,

I will accept the prior motion from Council member Magillard

with a second from Council member Acevedo.

Seeing no further discussion, please vote.

All votes are in.

The motion passes unanimously.

So moving to item 10C.

This is to adopt a resolution to call for a special municipal election in June of this year

with respect to the district-based elections that we have talked about before.

Acting City Clerk, Sir Bunting.

Madam Clerk, we'll present here for a few minutes.

Thank you, Mayor.

My name is Sarah Bunting, Acting City Clerk for the City of San Leandro.

The item before you this evening calls for a special municipal election to place a measure on the ballot in June 2026.

The item implements prior city council direction from 2025 to transition to district-based elections for council members through a voter-approved charter amendment.

The resolution before you this evening accomplishes several items.

It calls for the special election for the purpose of submitting the proposed charter amendment to the voters.

It requests the Alameda County Services to consolidate and conduct the election.

It provides the ballot measure question and the city attorney's impartial analysis.

and it establishes the procedures and timelines for submitting written arguments in support of

or opposition to the measure, including authorizing the mayor or the vice mayor or other council

members to draft arguments. Following adoption of the resolution, information about submitting

measure arguments will be posted on the city's website. There are sufficient funds budgeted for

the special election, which we anticipate will be approximately $500,000. If approved by the voters,

this change will update the city charter so that the November 2026 election is the first with the

new voting system in place. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions. Okay. Having had

lots of discussion on this before.

I'm actually going to take public comment on this item

first.

Mayor, we've not received

any comment cards. There's one hand raised on

Zoom. Please proceed.

Online.

The first speaker is

Douglas Spalding.

Thanks,

City Clerk.

Thank you for your presentation.

I'm so happy to see

this coming forward.

And I hope that it's approved and goes to election in June and that we are able to have our first district elections in a very long time, if ever, in November.

It is a matter of state law.

It is a matter of equity.

I know there's, you know, the romantic feelings some have for our kind of our form of government where you represent a district, but you're elected by all the members and whatnot.

And I think that St. Leander will continue to have that character. I believe even though these will be district elections that the council people that we elect in the future will continue to represent the city as a whole.

I'm not at all worried about fiefdoms or people, you know, gang piling or, you know, stacking up against the poor district over here or over there.

So bathing in the good feelings of item 10A,

I hope that you will also pass this item 10C.

Thank you very much.

And thanks to Robert Boulatau for making it happen.

Bye.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no further hands raised online.

So we'll close public comment.

Hi.

Council Member Azzavito, please.

I would like to move item 10C to adopt the resolution to call for a special municipal election to be held June 2nd, 2026, for submitting to the voters a proposed charter amendment measure.

And do we have a second? Council Member Aguilar.

Thank you, Mayor Gonzalez. I would second.

Okay. I've got a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote.

all votes are in the motion carries unanimously okay moving to item 11 have we had any submissions

okay city manager

good evening mayor council members yes we have had two

submissions from council member simon that he would like to share

i have two the first

submission is let's see here

I believe that we have a major flaw in our ethics and our discipline policies.

Ethics standards are principles and values that guide moral behavior, defining what is considered right or wrong conduct for individuals and organizations promoting integrity, fairness, and trust.

I do have a concern, and I would like to add this to the 3-7-26 Council Retreat that would prohibit the accuser from voting on the accused in the ethics and discipline policies.

The accuser should not judge the accused.

That's a fundamental tenet of justice.

That is a fair trial, requires an impartial judge and jury, free from personal bias or stake in the income.

to ensure evidence is weighed objectively.

That's my first item.

My second item is, first I'd like to give a shout out to staff

on their excellent job on the Stephen Tavor Sanctity of Life Pavilion.

it's very beautiful work that they've done especially with the limited budget that they had

there's a lot of planning and community outreach that happened up front that took away quite a bit

of budget so there were a few things that were left out so i'd like to propose some enhancements

to the stephen taylor sanctity of life pavilion and would like to add this to the 3726 council

retreat that would include stage street art which would be um essentially painted on the stage where

the Justice for Stephen Taylor and San Leandro High School group does many of their events.

And there's some similar art that's at the Albany Bowl in Albany.

And there's local artists that do this.

It's really beautiful art that recognize people that have lost their lives.

Not just Stephen Taylor, but there's even three San Leandro High School students that I understand

have lost their life in the past 10 years.

So there's others that we need to recognize in our community.

and I think that would be a beautiful way to recognize them

and cost-effective from the actual construction,

not construction, the painting would be cost-effective,

but there would be some staff time, of course,

would like for us to consider that,

as well as some signage, additional signage

to describe a bit more about the life of Stephen Taylor,

what this city has went through,

what we've accomplished to make our city a better place.

Those are my two. Thank you.

Thank you.

That would be it.

Okay, so we'll move to item number 12,

City Council reports, calendar, and announcements.

Yes.

You have one?

Please proceed.

I didn't submit an item,

but I was wondering when is the last day

to submit items for consideration

for the March planning retreat?

Is that?

City.

City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yes, Council Member,

I was actually working on my email

to all of you today.

The last day would be February 16th,

which is our last council meeting

before the packet for February 7th.

I'm sorry, for the March 7th retreat goes out.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, item number 12.

Councilor Moribohan.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to flag,

I know staff has been in communication

with Stop Waste.

At our last meeting on January 28th,

we had another presentation

on a proposed regulatory fee

that would add for a single-family home,

30 cents per account per month,

so less than $40 a month.

Multifamily would be $1.10,

commercial would be $1.10,

and debris boxes would be 25 cents per cubic yard

Brown Call Collection and this is just to cover some of the regulatory work that

stop-waste has to do it was passed by the board and will be on second reading

consent for our next meeting but I know that a stop-waste is gonna work to

ensure education and outreach around the fee and the presentation is very thorough

and I'm happy to share that with the rest of the council so that they know because it will be an

additional cost albeit a smaller cost but still something that is going to impact families or

homes and businesses secondly I attended the Cal City's community services policy committee meeting

I was appointed to the policy committee by the Cal City's president and I've been wanting to go on that policy committee for a long time and we actually had a really robust conversation about the work planned for the year and the policy work that Cal City's wants to do.

and I just wanted to share that the focus is on child care, youth and family services,

Parks and Rec, and senior services.

And one of the interesting things that we actually ended up doing

because housing and homelessness is so much part of all of the work around community services,

we actually removed it as a priority and then embedded it underneath each of the other areas

so that you were working with to refocus some of the policy work on areas that were not often uplifted,

but to also still include the housing and homelessness.

this. The last thing or the other thing I wanted to share is that the president of the National

League of Cities, I just received an email, did appoint me to the Human Development Committee.

So along the same lines, community services, and I'll attend that first meeting next month.

And then I think at the end of last meeting, I had and really appreciate and I don't know if it

or something already the mayor had been meaning to do,

but obviously recognizing

Renee Good and what happened.

And it's so sad that since that meeting,

we have yet another person that has been murdered by ICE.

And so much of what is going on,

and I know that there is a lot of activity right now

in preparation for the Super Bowl

because it has been established that ICE will also be here.

And just wanted to let the community know

that one of the best things they could do

is reach out to other members of the community

in their neighborhood because I can guarantee

that there are neighbors that are actively working

to find ways to organize and be of service.

And so to try to plug in, whether it's through the schools

or through the neighborhood association,

or if you want to reach out to me,

there is proactive activity.

And it's something that is definitely

on top of people's mind going into this weekend.

At this point, we'll go to Councilman Reguilar.

Thank you, Mayor Gonzalez.

I attended the ribbon cutting for the Stephen Taylor Memorial.

It was a great event, long overdue.

There were so many people there.

I stayed afterwards to listen to the San Leandro, the Social Justice Academy do performances.

But I was extremely disappointed.

And the fact that Council Member Simon was unable to participate since he was the one who actually spearheaded and brought this idea forth and not being able to speak at that event.

I've seen some email exchanges and just wanted to have him express his freedom to speak as a council member.

I'm trying to understand why he was not allowed to do so during that time.

I also like to recognize what is happening all over the world with ICE coming to our various states and targeting these major cities.

and Councilmember Bowen had talked about what happened in Minneapolis

and the lives that have been lost

and a lot of the folks that are being kidnapped

and taken into these so-called camps

and being held against their will, being kidnapped.

And there's a woman who was taken in in the city of Adelante,

where I grew up over this past weekend,

and to have folks come in and do that

and and kidnap these folks this is they need to stay out of our neighborhoods they need to stay

out of our towns um and i know super bowl weekend is coming uh on on sunday so we need to make sure

we're vigilant and have folks have access to resources to help um protect them to have any

questions that they may have to reach out to the city or to our our council members that's my

comment thank you thank you vice mayor we've got a swelton thank you I wanted

it to just one I wanted to confirm although I had sent an email to the

clerk that I will be absent from next Tuesday's meeting I have a work

commitment in Sacramento and I will not be able to join even join remotely so I

I will be absent from next Tuesday's meeting.

And just a note to the public,

next week the meeting is on a Tuesday, not on a Monday.

Correct?

Yes.

Correct.

So just FYI.

I also attended the SLEA board meeting

and wanted to update both the council and the community

that we are currently searching

for a new executive director for SLEA.

and we're in the process of interviewing candidates

and doing some of that vetting.

So hopefully we'll have some news soon.

I also attended the Stephen Taylor

Sanctity of Life event last weekend.

I want to thank staff for both staff

that kind of brought this vision to life.

also the community that envisioned this and I know that it was a labor of love for many many

people and involved and it was a very touching event and it was very very well done appreciate

staff's diligence and attention to detail that morning and and that is it for now thank you

you okay seeing no others I'll make my my announcements first February 17th will be

our date for submissions because of the the delay of the meeting date I also want to remind folks

in the city of San Leandro that we have the gleaning program as part of our sustainability

effort that's harvesting fruit from trees here in the city of San Leandro we need to continue to

have more volunteers to help with those picking efforts.

Great opportunity for Girl Scout troops, youth groups, et

cetera, to just get out there and harvest fruit that

can go directly to the food banks, food pantries here

in the city of San Leandro.

Also attended the Stephen Taylor Sanctity of Life Park.

I will clarify for the record, since there

seems to be a misunderstanding, that we do have a protocol

for who speaks at Ribbon Cuttings,

and that is the mayor and the council member

from the district.

As a matter of courtesy,

I asked council member Simon to cut the ribbon.

And so as you'll see in the photos,

he was literally the person who cut the ribbon

as a sign of respect for his efforts,

bringing those efforts forward.

Participated in the point in time count,

very powerful experience meeting with unhoused residents.

Our particular zone was south of the Senior Center down to the Ball Theater and over to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

Had the opportunity to work with city staff conducting interviews and grateful for all the people that were involved, including Madam Clerk.

Thank you for your efforts in supporting that.

we've got just an FYI you know Alameda County Transportation Commission that I

sit on and that Councilman Bowen represents supervisor Tam on there will

be work on San Leandro railroad crossings as part of the rail safety

improvement program and that will be happening in the first half of this year

unless there's there's some pivoting so just be aware start putting it in your

mind that there will be a weekend similar to what happened last year the year before where a major

intersection will be shut down so that the entire rail can be replaced and upgrades to the signal

arms etc take place and then the last thing that i'd offer is that i'm grateful to the residents

of san leandro for sending me to the u.s mayor's conference to represent you a lot was learned in

this session one of the more powerful sessions was a leadership development session where we sat

in with army cadets and we took the wisdom of what they're learning at west point and combined it

with the lived experience of mayors across the country to trade ideas about leadership leadership

development and alternative models of leadership so that was that was quite nice there were other

sessions that proved very useful and I think as the city manager will attest I was sending texts

and emails and just probing on how we are doing certain things it was nice to see continued focus

on AI continued to focus on security hearing from mayors in the Minnesota the state of Minnesota

about what's happening on the ground and hearing that in an unfiltered form not on X not on Facebook

not in CNN or MSNBC or Fox,

but hearing it directly from the people

that are experiencing those concerns.

That has led to some outreach

to both city attorney and city manager

as we continue to explore scenarios

about how we will handle things here

in the city of San Leandro

should things evolve in certain directions

that would be undesirable.

Significant attention was paid

to continued evolutions and technology,

particularly the impact of data centers

and exploring how different cities are approaching the benefits and challenges posed by data centers.

And I think that it's important to recognize that there's a balance.

In a city like San Leandro that has significant electricity supply connected to historical production, industrial production,

there may be an opportunity to avail ourselves of data centers and data center expansion.

I had an excellent opportunity to meet with our state senators and to see their commitment in particular around housing production and specific commitment to making sure that there are additional controls placed to ensure that constitutional liberties in the United States are protected.

the last thing that I'll leave with is that I'll end with is we have a variety of guest speakers

and one of the more interesting ones was a Trey Young from NBA basketball right he played for the

Hawks I think he's been traded to the Wizards recently and he had a telling quote if you're

doing it right you're going to get it from both sides and so I'm very grateful for the insight

that came from him and from others as they kind of help guide us as we make our decisions.

With all that being said, I will say that as I was driving out to the airport,

one of the things that I saw as we moved past the VA was a memorial that had been built to IC nurse Prattie.

Very powerful.

In the snow, flowers, and just acknowledgement of the tragedy.

so what I'd like to do is end our meeting tonight in honor of I see nurse

Freddie if you would take a moment of 10 seconds of silence

so it is a 947 and we are adjourned

Thank you.