How do we give us a h do we give us a hug Okay, we'll get started momentarily as soon as we get one more council member.

Okay, it is 704.

I'm calling this meeting of the San Lando City Council to order.

And we'll lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please stand if you're able to.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

Madam Clerk, would you please take roll?

Councilmember Bolt.

Sorry, Council Albert Bolt.

Present.

Thank you.

Council Member Simon.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Viveros Walton.

Present.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Aguilar.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bowen.

Sorry, there you go.

Present.

Thank you.

And Mayor Gonzalez.

Present.

Thank you.

So before we get to date.

I'd like to acknowledge the lunar new year is being celebrated by many in our community at this time.

It marks the beginning of the lunar calendar and is observed across numerous cultures present here in San Landro and in countries like China, Vietnam, Korea, and others.

And we extend our best wishes to all that are celebrating.

And we recognize the cultural significance of this holiday to many of our residents.

So may you have a healthy and prosperous new year.

Tonight we have the appointment and swearing in of two new members under agenda 10A.

Shaylani Alex to the Arts Culture and Library Commission and Victor Crevocheza to the Community Police Review Board.

I'd like to move these items up to Section 4 recognitions in the interest of time if there are no objections.

Looking down Council Rule, don't see any objections, so it will be adjusted accordingly in our agenda.

Please see the City Council handbook and city council meeting rules of decorum for more information.

Madam Clerk, your announcement.

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 open, 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, we will check item three.

Was there anything to report out of closed session?

No reportable action, Mr.

Mayor.

But direction was given to staff.

So at this point in time, we'll move to item number four.

We don't have any recognitions, but this is where we will take our item 10A motion to appoint representatives to boards and commissions.

Acting city clerk.

This is your item.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yes, the night before you we do have the uh motion to appoint Shaylani Alex to the Arts Culture and Library Commission and also Victor Crovocheza to fill a vacancy on the community police review board.

Okay, at this point in time, uh I will take a motion.

Vice Mayor.

So moved, and I'll second the item.

Uh this nomination occurred before, and this is just a final action to appoint it for a minute order, so we can move straight to a vote.

Please vote.

All votes are in.

And the motion carries unanimously.

At this point in time, would you please, Madam Clerk, uh conduct our swearing in?

Sheelani, if you join me.

So we're going to stop basically writing.

I do solemnly swear.

I do solemnly swear.

That I will support and defend.

I'll support and defend the constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States.

And the constitution of the state of California.

And the constitution of the state of California.

Against all enemies.

Against all enemies.

Foreign and domestic.

Foreign and domestic.

That I will bear true faith and allegiance.

To the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States.

And the Constitution of the State of California.

And the Constitution of the State of California.

That I take this obligation freely.

Without any mental reservation.

Without any mental reservation.

For purpose of evasion.

Or purpose of evasion.

And that I will well and faithfully discharge.

And I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter.

The duties upon which I'm about to enter.

Congratulations.

And thank you.

Thank you for your service.

We appreciate you stepping forward.

At this point in time, we got a consent calendar.

Are there any items?

Are there any council members that would like to pull an item from our consent calendar?

Seeing none, we will take a public comment on the consent calendar this time.

Mayor, we have not received any public comment cards on this item, but we do have one hand raised online.

Please proceed online.

The first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council members.

I'm gonna try to wind my way back over to the agenda here in my.

Oh, here we are.

Uh so I wanted to comment on uh two of the items, and that would be the uh the contract for city branding, and that looks like it's uh 5B, and then also the purchase of five uh vehicles for the police department.

And that's item uh 5D.

Uh I just, you know, I I want to raise the general question about uh the the problem of our our city having um uh you know uh structural debt.

Uh we're not doing doing well on the balance sheet.

Um the branding um contract looks like it's 150,000.

Uh I'm not a marketing person.

I suppose that money would get back to us at some point, but I just you know it's just sort of makes me wonder, really?

150,000 to to pump up our brand.

And then for item 5D, are we just buying new police cars because that's what we always do?

Like what happened to the old police cars?

Do we wreck them?

Are they not workable anymore?

I know you know, there are a lot of miles go on, a lot of time, a lot of wear and tear.

Uh, I know they are well maintained.

Uh, you know, our police department can't do without the vehicles, but like, can't we stretch our, you know, our vehicle budget a little farther?

It seems like every year we're we're we're buying uh multiple vehicles for a lot of money.

And then the other thing is I I would want to make sure that these are electric vehicles or at least hybrid vehicles.

Um, you know, if we're gonna do uh do right by the by the planet.

So that you know that one's 450,000.

Uh together, you know, 600,000 is the better part of a million.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Mike Katz Lakave.

Good evening, honorable mayor, city council members and staff.

Um, it's time for the city of San Leandro and its elected leaders to stop using the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

When advertisers decided to stop using the social media platform because their ads were showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech.

The owner sued the advertisers in November 2024.

You could be forgiven for not noticing the change that anything you posted on the platform would be used to train his own artificial intelligence platform, which, by the way, went on to be the preferred method for producing non-consensual sexualized images of women and children.

And perhaps you didn't care that the social media platform's owner spent nearly 300 million to get the current administration elected on inauguration day.

Two Nazi salutes by the social media platform owner.

Should have caught your attention.

And when he joined the current administration as the leader of Doge, perhaps you didn't feel the impact of the careless and haphazard approach to gutting the people and finances of critical government services.

Now the owner of the platform, formerly known as Twitter, is spreading conspiracy theories, inviting white supremacists great, including the white supremacists great replacement theory that has led to the demonization of immigrants.

So why are the city of San Leandro and the C San Leader Police and some of our elected leaders still using this platform?

Why are the mayor and some members of the council still using it?

Continued per use of the platform says a lot, and it's not good.

It's long past time to act in a way that reflects the values that you've all previously put forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more hands raised online.

Okay, so we'll close public comment, both online and in person.

Coming back to councilmember Aguilar.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to move the consent.

So, motion by Councilmember Aguilar to adopt the consent calendar.

Do I have a second?

I will second the consent calendar.

So with that, any further discussion?

Seeing none, please vote.

All votes are in.

And the motion carries unanimously.

Okay.

Next we'll move to our city manager announcement.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Good evening, council members and community members.

It is my pleasure to announce that this week the police department welcomed two new police officers.

First, we have Officer Javier Almos and Aaron Gonzalez.

Officer Almos attended the 26 week Contra Costa County Basic Police Academy and graduated this past Friday, February 13th.

Officer Gonzalez previously served as a police services technician with the department.

And this they will now begin their 18-week field training program.

So please join me in welcoming them to the San Leandro Police Department.

That concludes my announcements.

Thank you for that.

Good news.

We'll now move to public comment.

This is the opportunity for the public to comment on items that are not on our agenda.

So if it's on the agenda, please wait until that item is called.

So for items that are not on our agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council.

Now is the opportunity to address City Council.

Madam Clerk.

Mayor, we've received eight cards here in the room, and we currently have one hand raised online.

Okay, online people.

This is the time to raise your hand because we're gonna start online and then we'll come in person.

So I'll give you 10 seconds.

And you're sure you have all your cards here.

You said you have eight, right?

Perfect.

So we are gonna be taking the eight cards after we take the hands online.

How many hands do we have online?

Mayor, we have two hands raised online.

Okay, so those are the two people that we will be recognizing.

And what are those names, please?

Douglas Spaulding and Mimi Dean.

Okay, Douglas and Mimi, we will take you first.

We will then close public comment online and we'll bring it into the room.

The first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Darn it, I was banking on you going the other way.

So I'd have a few minutes to collect my thoughts, but I can probably say what I wanted to say.

Um first I I wanna I want to give a shout out to two uh kind gestures in our city.

Um I hope others uh uh also made it over to uh as needed bakery for their their grand opening uh last weekend.

And and I really love the feature where you can buy, you know, pay it forward, buy a cup of coffee for somebody else and put it up on the board, which I did because I know I will once more walk into the library without my library without my uh wallet and want a cup of coffee, so I kind of paid for myself.

Uh the other one is uh I don't know how many people know about this wonderful program that uh human uh services has brought to our city.

Uh I signed up at the the Stan Leander Senior Center, and it's a it's a right share.

Um, it's an organization, I think it's called City Share, uh that's located in Pleasant, but they've contracted with our city.

And the benefit for me was I was able to get somebody to drive me to my surgery uh a couple Mondays ago, um, and save my mom the trouble of coming all the way from Walnut Creek and having to worry about whether she can really drive still drive or not.

So I encourage people to sign up and also I'm gonna sign up and volunteer to drive somebody else.

Um all right, moving on.

I wanted to uh again thank the city council uh profoundly for your vote on the uh rent stabilization ordinance.

And I would like to know, you know, when I know the rent registry is being worked on to make it uh feasible.

I'd like to kind of know when that comes into play.

And I want to know what the city plans are for advertising this new RSO, um, because in our continuing outreach through the housing platform of the big tent, we're finding that a lot of people don't know about it, they don't know the details.

There, a lot of people just got rent increases, some like upwards 10% that don't really go with what the old thank you so much.

Your time has elapsed.

Our next online speaker is Mimi Dean.

Hi, it's Mimi Dean.

Um, I just logged on because I just got out of my other meeting.

Is now the time for me to comment about um the issues with my colleague, Fred.

We're on non-agenda items.

So I don't know if it's on the agenda.

So somebody could cut me off now.

I won't waste your time.

Hold on just a second, please.

Okay, so this would be your time.

Please proceed.

Okay, thank you.

So I just wanted to say that you know, Fred Simon and I have been working at Oraloma for about a year now, and um I have found him to always be a kind and thoughtful and wonderful person.

And um, you know, I just am very sad that um this whole thing that's going on was done in an open public session rather than in a closed session, um, because that's really where it belonged.

Um, I am hoping that there has been some kind of verification of all the people in that report, because you know, I know mayor emeritis, Sheila Young, um, disputes what was written that she said, and if the mayor emeritis disputes it, it makes me feel like other people maybe were also misquoted or um something wasn't, you know, sources were not verified.

So I I really think it's important um to always check your sources.

That's what a good reporter does.

And um, so that one that's what I want to say about that.

And then the last thing I want to talk about is um the voting process that you guys use.

Um, I think it's really weird that Fred and Victor are not allowed to get to vote on their own discipline, but Suha is allowed to vote.

Now, if this was a court of law, neither the defendant nor the plaintiff would have any say.

The jury is the one who decides the other people.

So I just think it's really weird.

And I just think um, you know, in in we need transparency and we need fairness, and it just doesn't seem right that one's one person gets to vote, and then the other person doesn't get to vote also.

So either everybody should vote or no, or else the people that are involved in the case shouldn't vote.

Um, that's just my two cents, and um, thank you for listening.

Thank you so much.

Mayor, that concludes our online public comment.

Please proceed in personnel.

The first three speakers in the room are Bernard Ashcraft, David Anderson, and Nancy Raffalaff.

Bernard Ashcraft, David Anderson, and Nancy Raffaloff.

Oh, good evening.

Um, Mr.

Mayor, City Council, City Attorney, uh City Manager.

I'm here on behalf of the Bay Area Business Roundtable and the Big Tent organization.

We sent you a request to at the next council meeting to issue a resolution of apology for redlining.

The effects of redlining continue to replicate throughout our community today in the form of persistent wealth gaps, education disparities, and residential segregation patterns.

An official acknowledgement and apology would represent an important step forward, recognizing the pain and the economic harm inflicted on families exploded from our city was pure economic violence, educating current and future residents about this history, beginning a process of reconciliation and healing.

Demonstrating San Leandro's commitment to equity and justice.

Now's the time to do the right thing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are David Anderson, Nancy Raffaloff, and Karen Silva.

Good evening, Council.

Uh I like to speak on uh in support of the redlining resolution.

I think we should do something uh to show that we uh did not support that.

When I moved up here at San Leando, I was affected by that.

Cost me a hundred thousand dollars extra to get over that, but I think uh Mr.

Ashcraft said pretty much all that needs to be said, it's up to you guys to pick it up and take it from there, and also like to say uh uh as far as Fred and Victor, that uh as a call, the speaker called earlier.

I think this is something that could have been handled in-house, it didn't have to come out in the open.

And I hope that in the future that we would all respect one another and do these things behind the scenes, and all of this it's just a big mess right now.

It makes the city look terrible.

So I don't want to get too deep in it because I get emotional about it.

I think it was unfair the way it happened, and it shouldn't happen that way.

And I think all you guys need to sit back and think about it and see if it's another way that you can do this.

I know you have another meeting coming up on the actions that you're gonna be taking, and I think that you would do a lot of soul searching and consider you know what you're doing and how you're making the city look because it can happen to you guys just as well as it can happen to you and Victor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Nancy Rafalev, Karen Silva, and Carol Habercos.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm here tonight as a character witness for Fred Simon.

Fred is a hard-working community leader.

He's a family man, a son, a husband, and a father that always shows up for his family.

Fred is a humble leader in his community who tirelessly does everything he can do to improve the lives of his community.

Moving forward, I hope this council can find common ground and work for the best for Sam Lee Andrew.

That's all I have to say tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Karen Silva, Carol Habercross, and Rob Rich.

Hi, I'm Karen, and I'm here on behalf of Fred Simon, who I'm on the board for Washington Manor Homeowners Association.

And I'm just basically here to give my concern and respect to Fred for being a wonderful leader for our community as well as District 4, and to just be here as an advocate for him.

He's an advocate for our community and a well-known public servant who is consistently listens and is always there for every resident throughout San Leandro as well as Washington Manor.

Um, I'm really appalled the way the city handled this situation and to put Victor and to put Fred on the spot like this, and for this thing to keep going on year after year, month after month, it's an embarrassment.

And it also takes up time and money that could have been spent better on our community and on our residents.

So I hope that this kind of stuff was silenced quickly, and it should have been handled behind closed doors, and it really should have been handled in a better way.

So I just do want to give my respect to Fred and let you know that he is a wonderful community leader and a wonderful resident, as well as very supportive to every person throughout the community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Carol Habercos, Rob Rich, and Michael McGuire.

Good evening, City Council, Mayor, and staff.

Um, I'm here also.

I'm a resident of the city.

I'm very proud of the work the city and community is doing.

San Leandro is a city where kindness matters, the Stephen Taylor Memorial, the library's exhibitions, the passing of rent stabilization are just some of the few things that we've done here.

All city council members need to be treated with respect.

I have worked with and gone to events with both council members Simon and Aguilar, going back to the Bernie days.

Go Bernie.

Um, while I was with them, I never experienced or witnessed them disrespecting others.

As I read through news articles, city reports, and documents to try to find the evidence.

It's confusing.

Um the report writer builds city council taxpayers 134,000 for their work.

Melissa Wang, a San Leander resident documented three pages of analysis to tell the council of the worst errors identified in the report.

So we are better than this.

We need to move forward together, focus on the future and keep fighting for democracy in our city's future.

I do understand there's a video and transcript of council member Simon's interview with the investigator, which will be on the city website soon.

And I look forward to learning more about this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Rob Rich, Michael McGuire, and Anthony Tahada.

Mr.

Mayor, Ms.

Vice Mayor, members of the council.

I realize this may be politically incorrect, but I like and respect each of you.

That goes for you as well, Ms.

City Manager.

And I'm sure Mr.

City Attorney, you're nice too, but we haven't met yet.

To be honest, I was hoping that since it's been almost a month since the council voted to accept the findings of the independent investigative reports and agreed that there should be disciplinary action.

That by now we would have begun the process of healing and moving on.

Yet I keep hearing about errors made by the consultants in their reports finding gender bias.

No doubt there are some errors.

Constructive criticism is important.

It can help drive improvement, but let's not miss the forest for the trees.

You know what I see when I read those reports?

I see something that looks a lot like me.

I see a lot of my own subconscious sexism.

And you know how I usually recognize my sexism.

Friends, colleagues, and family point it out to me.

And it doesn't always go well for them at first, but when I finally get it, I try to be accountable and improve.

I've also heard restorative justice mentioned recently.

I think that's great.

So I'm here as an ally, and this is my restorative justice challenge.

If a group of women tell you that you've engaged in a pattern of sexist behavior after you've found fault with them, next, try to find the truth in what they're saying, because it's in there, I promise.

And then finish up by trying to be accountable and improve so that we can finally please move on.

Thank you.

The next two speakers are Michael McGuire and Anthony Tajada.

Hi there.

I agree with what was said earlier on red lighting, and I think we should put that on the agenda before too much more time passes.

And I just want to share two examples for recent history on apologies that waited too long.

And one was our federal government waiting till 1998 to apologize to the Japanese Americans for their internment during World War II, 46 years later.

And this is after it had literally become a textbook case of injustice for school kids in their textbooks.

The other was at Australia, which gave the world the briefest demand in the recent history of protests.

The sorry movement wanted to get that country's federal government to utter that one word to the aborigines who had been mistreated in many ways, including their children being seized.

A tent city had been set up in front of parliament in 1972, and it was the world's longest running protest site when I was able to join it briefly in 1999.

The apology from the nation's leaders finally came in 2007, 10 years after even a federal commission had called for them to make one.

Let's be a little quicker than those two governments were in recognizing redlining as bad effects and saying we're sorry.

They hadn't always agreed on everything, but it was a wonderful example of being gracious for someone uh who was leaving us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The last speaker is Anthony Tejada.

Good evening, Council members, mayor, and city manager.

Uh my name is Anthony Tejada.

I'm the current chair for the Planning Commission, Board of Zoning Adjustments.

I've been with the commission for about six plus years now.

Um, also serve on the Washington Manor Homeowners Association, the board there.

Uh, been a member for three years.

Throughout that entire time, I've had plenty of interaction with Fred Simon.

So I can speak to Fred's character, um, his nature, um, him being an upstanding citizen, uh, and ultimately providing a betterment of service for the community at large.

Uh, I've never had any sort of instances where there's been a direct or indirect uh sort of sexism or biasm, bias in that regard towards gender that I've witnessed.

Um, moreover, some of the uh speakers previously had mentioned this, but I mean we can go to the recent Sailing Android Times and articles and facts that have been cited there.

Melissa Wong from the letters to the editor from a few uh weeks back, uh time stamped a session on 120, the 120 city council meeting, uh 227 30 through 23130.

Uh, you can you can read up there, you can watch that and go through the inconsistencies, the flaws with the report that are noted.

Um, really just seeing this as a sum of 134,000 that went towards a report where the end result really is not factual.

Um, there are inconsistencies again that were left as a as a finished product.

So, are we any better?

Are we any are we any better served than where we could have been if this was handled in-house internal?

Um, I really think structured collaborative partnering here as a council can go a lot, can go a long way.

Um, if we discuss the matter, find commonalities between what can happen and what could be done to improve the situation.

That's the only way we're gonna get better.

And that's the only way our image is going to improve.

Not by hiring outside resources that we pay lump sum money to and get a finished product that we receive.

Thank you, sir.

Your time has elapsed.

Mayor, that concludes all of our in-room comment cards.

So we'll close public comment at this point in time.

We will proceed with our next agenda item, which is our uh typically public hearings, but we don't have a public hearing today.

So it will be our one and only presentation for today.

It's a presentation on the current residential development market conditions and feasibility for Q residential development projects in San Leandro.

And for this item, we've got economic development manager Katie Bowman to kick us off.

Welcome.

Good evening, mayor and council.

Uh we're here tonight in the item.

San Leandro has a substantial type line uh pipeline of entitled housing, as you may know.

And and we've demonstrated over the years through a number of different measures, a commitment to streamlining housing approvals and improving feasibility of housing.

And tonight we have Will Sol Holt of Cosmont Realty, uh, who's good who uh through the housing work plan uh has done an analysis of our residential market, and he's gonna help shed some light on the current state of house of the housing market in San Leandro and why some of these projects have not moved into the construction phase.

And uh with that, I'll hand over to Will and we'll be available.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor, Council members, staff.

Will so hold, Cosmo Realty.

Uh, my background is uh been with the company for almost 20 years now.

I'm a licensed uh broker of the state of California, do property sales, acquisitions, leasing, structure a lot of transactions between the public sector and private sector, negotiate a lot of deals where uh public entities are leasing properties for uh residential development, etc.

Uh I was retained and brought on to uh as introduced, look at kind of your pipeline of entitled projects in the city, look at the existing housing stock, look at what's going on in the community, and and look at why are certain projects stuck, et cetera.

For a brief premier, looking at development feasibility, obviously developers uh elect to do a uh and pursue real estate development to generate profit, right?

They don't usually do it for fun, some do, but for the most part it's to to generate profit uh and profit is uh developed obviously when development value exceeds development costs, typically relies on investors uh putting in their equity and lenders putting in debt.

So you've got to give both those parties satisfied uh with sufficient returns to see a product come to fruition.

Generally speaking, if if a product's not projected to generate a substantial enough profit, developers won't do it, or they'll look to do uh development elsewhere in other markets.

With respect to measuring returns, this is how you get to gauge what's going on in your community uh and how developers look at things.

They look at as a cap rate, a cap rate is a return, a measurement of return on investment.

Uh the cap rate is the cash return divided by the value.

Basically, if you've got something that you buy for $100 and you get $10 back from that on an annual basis.

If you paid 10 $100 a hundred dollars in cash, you got $10 cash back.

Uh, that would be a 10% cap rate or a 10 cap is how they call it.

The next measurement is return on cost, very similarly.

Uh, it's actually how much uh the value is relative to the cost.

So if a development is worth 110 million dollars, but it costs 100 million dollars to put into service or to construct, that would yield a 10% return on cost.

And you use those two numbers together to evaluate projects.

This uh you can have fun at your own time, I'm sure, but this looks at uh different yields, different cap rates, and how they change over time.

Uh the cap rate is a return for risk, as well as in the scheme of investment.

Uh, that top line there is hotels, riskiest investments, they require the highest cap rate returns.

Uh, the bottom is multifamily, the brown line on the bottom there is multifamily, generally speaking, the uh most stable, most consistent, uh, and therefore demanding the lowest cap rate or rate of return relative to other real estate investments.

The gray bars you've got there are the 10-year T note, very stable, safe investment conceptually, and the dashed line is CPI.

So the point of this chart is these things change as perceived risks and returns weigh and bear out in the market.

What happens when cap rate changes?

It's a substantial uh increase or decrease in value.

On the left hand side, you've got the purchasing power of a thousand dollars a month as a mortgage.

Probably pretty familiar with how that purchasing power goes down as interest rates go up.

Similarly, as cap rates go up, the value and asset go down pretty substantially.

And I'll dig into that a little bit more in here in just a second.

At the highest level, uh increases in rent generate more cash, increased value through that cap rate formula.

Uh increases in vacancy, reduce the cash return, reduce the value.

Increases in interest rate, increase borrowing costs, reduce cash return, reduce the value.

Uh the the simple example here of a cap rate is if a property was worth a million dollars uh and had net income based on a or based on net income at a four cap, which was not uncommon a few years ago, that would be worth 25 million dollars.

The same property in today's market at a five cap, let's say, will be worth 20 million dollars.

So a five million D uh $5 million decrease in value, 25% decrease with no change in income conceptually.

Uh, and so you can have pretty substantial variations in value as the market fluctuates.

With respect to your local market, we did look at a lot of markets, uh, very high-level points here based on reviewing the other markets.

You've got very limited four and five-star higher quality product in the market, really central Callends, your uh kind of your flagship property at this point, it's just stabilizing right now.

You do have higher rents at Central Cowan than you see in some of the other markets.

Uh but we'll see what happens and plays out as the central Cowend is leased up.

Uh other markets are seeing downward pressures in rent, that's important to note, and so you actually do see reductions in rent as new inventory is brought on, areas like Oakland, East Oakland, things like that.

Uh, and so you can actually see the rents decrease as more inventory becomes available in the market.

And the vacancy rate for that higher four and five star product in the city uh is expected to be slightly higher than other markets.

We'll see what happens.

This is really based on Central Calend.

We'll really want to see that product stabilize in the future.

And we look to four and five-star product, that's really new product in the market.

If you're coming to develop a new building, you're really looking at what's going on in that four and five-star market.

Not as concerned about the one to three-star market if you're looking to develop ground up.

Uh, generally speaking, multifamily development in the last few years has been uh constrained by shifts in the capital market.

That's that uh increases in cap rates, reducing value, uh increases in interest rates, as you saw the Fed just recently began lowering interest rates again on an overnight lending rate.

Over time, that does kind of trickle out and trickle through the economy and reduce cap rates over time.

We're starting to see that slowly.

Uh, there is some general concern in the market about construction cost inflation, uncertainty, but generally speaking, the capital markets uh are still pretty conservative, pretty hesitant, hesitant to lend money for new product, new projects.

Uh we looked at three specific projects uh in the city that are entitled.

The first one Maximus Project, the second one town hall square, and then the third one, 1388 Bancroft.

Uh just a quick summary of these on the left-hand side, you've got maximus, very large project, almost six acres, uh 687 units, uh, keynote or key metrics, 120 dwelling units an acre.

That is similar in density to Town Hall Square, a much smaller project, given a smaller footprint, 180 units total, but again, at that 120 dwelling units per acre.

Both projects uh proposed to be parked with subterranean parking, which is very expensive.

Uh, with respect to building heights, maximus at five stories, town hall square at seven.

Those are generally speaking, uh, is possible to construct that height with the uh lowest uh cost of construction with call it stick or type three construction, generally wood construction.

Uh, and then on the right-hand side, 1388 Baumcroft, uh three stories, 42 dwelling units, much lower density, right?

32 dwelling, 33 dwelling units per acre.

That one's surface park.

With respect to feasibility, maximum, we see that as uh it's gonna require substantial improvements in the market fundamentals to have that make sense, just given the scale, the lack of a proven market uh in this local area.

So we would expect to require pretty substantial improvements in the market before that would get built.

Uh Town Hall Square, we think that's really dependent on Central Cowan, the performance of Central Cowan next door.

Central Callen leases up uh successfully, then you might uh see financing and uh support from a lender investor community at Town Hall Square, and then 1388 Boncroft Bancroft, excuse me.

Uh we expect that to be financially feasible as we say here today, just that construction type, lower cost of construction, the surface parking costs much less per unit than subterranean parking.

So we say that that we would expect to be financially feasible in the near term.

Overall, uh, we do think the city is attractive market for future development.

Uh, but the the market for the new uh product has yet to be fully proven out.

And again, I go back to Central Cowan.

I think that's a bellwether uh for future development in the city to the extent that that leases up successfully and that proves to be viable.

Uh in the market, you might see further investment in the near term.

The city does have uh some opportunity to have an impact on development, different and the financial feasibility of development, especially if projects are on the bubble as we move uh as cap rates come down a little bit.

You know, there's a lot of a lot of power and even small movements in the cap rate.

But if a project is on the bubble and you want to see something happen sooner than later, things like inclusionary housing, impact fees, development standards, uh rent stabilization ordinances, all those types of things come into play in the eyes of the investor and can make a uh developer and investor team say have a go-no go decision.

They might look somewhere else, uh given the opportunity.

But you do have these these levers that you can pull on.

At the end of the day, though, even seemingly small changes in the broad market can have a huge impact on financial feasibility.

If you see the whole market swing, cap rates come down from five to four, rents go up, construction costs stabilize.

We would expect to see additional investment uh and movement forward with some of those entitled projects.

At the end of the day, developing a new project is a very risky proposition, especially in unproven markets.

Uh, everybody's not everybody, but many people see developers as the big, bad, greedy profit takers.

It's a at the end of the day, it's a very risky line of business, putting 100 million dollars in assets in the ground in many cases, sometimes more, sometimes less.

But ultimately, in a very uh highly leveraged environment, a very risky proposition to take.

So they're in most cases conservative with their investments that want to have some certainty as to what's going on in the near term in the future.

With that, happy to answer any questions you might have.

Okay, so we'll start with questions.

Actually, let's take public comment first because there's no action that's gonna be required by us.

So let's take public comment on this item.

Then we'll come back from questions, dialogue, et cetera.

What public comment do we have on this item?

Mayor, we have not received any comment cards, and there is one hand raised online.

Okay, last chance in person.

Seeing none, we close public comment in person, and we'll move to public comment online.

Douglas Balding, you may unmute yourself.

Well, I thank you.

Uh, very interesting analysis.

Um it does uh raise certain questions in my mind.

I I did hear that little stab at the RSO.

We just uh we just passed, because I think there is a uh a school of thought out there that you know strict rate rent stabilization is is not something that uh financiers are too interested in marrying up to in a municipality.

Uh but uh but I'll go back to the top of your first slide, right?

The the um the paradigm we're working off here is that you know, like uh uh these buildings, these financiers, they're you know, they're not gonna do it unless there's a unless there's a profit.

And okay, that that makes sense.

You know, it's we we're in a capitalist system that that all makes sense.

Some stuff does get built.

I'd be curious to know kind of what is the leasing uh success so far at Central Cryen, and uh, you know, what's the projection there?

Uh uh, you know, the the problem for uh from the housing advocate standpoint is that those units are very expensive.

They're the even the right the low uh market value below market value units are uh pretty pretty unaffordable.

You have to have a a kind of a primo salary to be able to do that.

So what I'm wondering is, you know, what what if we shifted the paradigm so that the motivation was not um necessarily to make a profit, but just to provide as much housing as we can for our community.

I think it's very important that we maintain uh the housing stock that we have, hence the housing protections are very important for potential tenants.

Um, but also, you know, as the city ever looked into um social housing, is the city willing to finance uh maybe it would not be the the blockbuster development, but something something smaller that that we could afford, could save up for, could get grants for and and the like.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

That concludes our comments from online.

Okay, so a close public comment and come back to council members for discussion, questions.

Use your time as you'd like, beginning with council member Bowen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um if we could go to I think the second to last slide on the findings.

Um yes, thank you.

Um I I know you spoke about it briefly, but the um the question I have is what is what if anything, can we as the city council and the city do to help to incentivize and nudge these um uh developments um into action?

And from what I heard is that Central Cowan is the ball other and we want it to be fully leased, and that would indicate that this is a market and a community that um welcomes large developments and this would be uh ultimately um uh um uh I can't think of the word I'm having a uh Brian Funk.

Um uh they can make money uh profitable for developers.

Um is there anything that we have control over in your opinion in looking at this, because it sounds like you're saying we have to wait and see, and there's not much right now.

And with the third development, 1388, that I think has to do with the fact that the buyer or the developers working with because it's being done through the school district, that's a that's a very different developer than let's say the Maximus project.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

I think uh with respect to uh I think it's 1388 uh Bancroft.

I'm apologize if I'm mispronouncing that.

Uh we looked at that before the school district was a buyer.

Uh, and so the conclusions would be the same, uh, just based on the cost of construction and the fact that you've got service parking.

It's fairly simple and efficient building.

Uh in fact, if you look at uh one of the metrics up here is efficiency, uh average square foot unit unit efficiency.

Generally speaking, smaller units yield more revenue per square foot.

It costs more to build a studio is an example is more expensive on a per square foot basis than a two-bedroom because you've got you have a kitchen, you've got conceptually the same if you got one bathroom or two bathrooms with a two-bedroom.

Um but with respect to the building efficiency, that one's at 71%.

So that means net to gross.

Uh the gross building is let's say a thousand square feet, you've got 70 uh 70 square feet of leasable space if you're 71% efficient.

So you don't have to build the extra square footage.

You can rent out more of the square footage that you build.

So that's a more efficient construction type.

That's with respect to that one uh property type.

With respect to uh what can you do?

Central Cowan, um at this point, um I would you know crudely say it's a marketing exercise at this point.

It's how is there something that you can do?

Talk to the building owners or something that you could do to help help them lease up and stabilize?

I don't have uh in insight onto their leasing program or anything like that.

Uh, all I can see is uh how long they've been leasing, what it looks like their leasing activity is.

These things take time to lease up.

Um ultimately it'll be, I would expect a year or two down the road, where uh if they are able to stabilize at or below, let's say 10% uh vacancy rate, then other developers will go, okay.

There's a proven market that we're able to establish and lease up.

They'll look at the the rent rates they're able to achieve and say, yes, that does or doesn't make sense for them.

Other developers aren't necessarily as worried about the profitability of that project per se because every development is unique, but they are interested in what is that building able to achieve on a rent per square foot basis, what is it able to achieve on a vacancy uh rate, those types of things.

With respect to projects that aren't out of the ground yet, the kind of the levers that you have, they're not as powerful necessarily as fundamentals in the market.

Uh, you know, if suddenly uh investments or properties were trading at a three cap instead of a five cap, that would be a fundamental shift in the market, and that same property would have a lot more value uh given market standards.

The things that you do have though, uh it would be things like inclusionary housing.

You've got an inclusionary housing policy uh in the city, and I'm not here to opine on right or wrong, just to tell you that uh when a developer can look at City A or City B or City C and they say, I want to invest uh in A B or C with a city without an inclusionary housing policy might be more of more interest in terms of investment.

They might so it might support a lower cap rate.

These policies in effect uh add risk or cost and so result in a higher rate of return required.

Uh and these things matter from a uh on a pretty minute scale in the scheme of if you're looking at a developer needing to get a six and a half percent return on cost.

So if they invest a hundred million, they need six and a half million dollars uh in cost in profit back.

And I'm sorry, do I?

No, okay, thank you.

Um cut me off any time, please.

Uh that uh some investors might say, I'm only willing to do it at a 6.6 or 6.7.

I mean, that's how how precise some of this investment measurement is because it's a leverage transaction, and so that 6.5% return on a leverage basis can be much more substantial.

So small changes can make big differences.

Inclusionary housing policy is an example, impact fees.

What we're seeing some cities do for some product type is say you don't have to pay your impact fees up front developer.

You can wait until you have a certificate of occupancy.

And what that does is that takes a pretty substantial component uh anywhere from one to many percent of the development costs, takes it from the front end of a project, which is very expensive money, equity that requires a large rate of return and puts it at the end of the project.

So that developer doesn't need to finance that return for two years, doesn't need to finance that cost for two years.

That's an example.

Uh rent stabilization is an example.

Um obviously you've got a in the state of California, you've got a policy uh and developments that are uh newer than 15 years, the first 15 years are exempt.

From a developer's perspective, that 15 years is potentially a short time frame.

You know, you're looking at what happens down the road.

Uh in the development world, if I was going to try and lease a piece of property for residents of real estate, generally speaking, you'd expect a developer.

I would expect a developer to be looking at 60 years at a minimum from a lease perspective.

And so that's the kind of time frame potentially that they're looking at.

So all those things come into play.

Uh, it doesn't mean that you can't have it, it just means that uh developers may require a premium to invest in that in that market.

So, I have follow-ups, but I time is up, so I can loop back around.

Thank you.

At this point, we'll go to Councilman Braguette.

Uh thank you, Aaron.

Thank you for the presentation.

Mike Mike, I have three questions.

Um, you touched on Central Calend.

Uh, where are we at with Central Calend being leased?

What's the percentage of occupancy?

Sure.

I can tell you what I've seen at least.

Um we use uh a company uh service provider called CoStar.

Uh they do a lot of residential, familiar with it.

Uh their their math is that it's about 44% vacant or something like that, 41, 44, I can't remember.

But that's been static for the last six or eight months.

When I go to their website, I would peg it at about 25% vacancy based on the units that they've got listed as available.

That's said that could be holding back units.

Um, and so the the greatest intelligence is the building owner, the building manager.

Uh and so I I don't have information beyond that.

Um, but I don't know if there's anybody else who's got insight into it.

But generally speaking, um it's a good building.

You've got a great retail tenant on the ground floor.

People like to live in spaces like that.

Uh it's got good access to public transit, it's in a neat area, and so I think it has the opportunity to be very successful.

Sometimes um buildings like that, the management will uh be slow to lease up.

They're okay with higher vacancy rates potentially to achieve the rent levels that they like to achieve.

So they might release units slowly.

Uh, but ultimately at a certain point, you've got to lease up the building, generate income.

And so we'll see what happens uh over the next year or two.

But that's the information I've got, is somewhere between 25 and 40 percent.

Thank you for answering that.

And my other question is with regards to you you mentioned um building community partnerships with the city and the developer, uh, you know, but you have other aspects like NIMBY's, YIMBE's.

Um, we have um PLA agreements, and you know, with the central Calend, we had uh, you know, issue with CEQA um and not being fully labor uh amenable and then you know settlement ensued.

Um so how how what was that?

What does that partnership look like with the city and developer?

And I would also include in community, sure.

Uh a lot there to unpack.

Certainly there are um development is not always a friendly game in this in the scheme of um not everybody wants to have development exit.

I completely understand that on a personal basis.

Uh so there is YMB, there is NIMBY for sure.

Um sophisticated savvy developers will understand their community and try and develop a project that's conscientious of what's going on around them.

Uh and then they scale and in a manner that makes sense.

Uh with respect to things like PLAs, prevailing wage, uh, and the notion of a publicly deliberate housing.

What I've seen from my personal professional career and experience in dealing with projects that do have prevailing wage, things like that.

They are uh an order of magnitude more expensive to construct typically.

Uh, say 25% for a stick stick build construction.

This is uh recently looked at a project they could have built with steel and concrete instead of wood and have the same price point basically, uh, which you reason in my mind that's a better product to be built with steel and concrete um and a higher quality product, but from a development perspective, it's just one more hurdle to achieve feasibility.

So in a really good market, yeah, it can make sense, can support it.

If you're in a higher rent market, uh downtown San Francisco, San Diego, places like that, uh, and especially if you're constructing high-rise development, you know, type one uh over seven stories, nine stories up, um, there's less of a premium, less of an impact.

And so you can um pay prevailing wage labor easier, it's easier to make that financially feasible.

But for the type of construction, uh like Bancroft, uh, even Central Cowan in a typical market that would be stick build, you'd have a pretty substantial premium, even with PLA.

Gotcha.

Thank you for that.

And then my last question is uh I know you had some good projects on here.

I know Maximus is kind of still on hiatus or hold.

Um what about bridge housing on Washington?

Was that due to is that still in fruition or did they ever get financing?

Yeah, I'm afraid I I'm not familiar with it.

I've I'm I know a little bit of it, but yeah, I think they're pointing at Avalante, sorry.

Oh, um, yes.

So that project is fully entitled, but it is short on financing, so they're looking at public financing options that they would be eligible for, and it's, I think um what we've seen in our market feasibility analyses is that affordable housing projects are also struggling to pencil at this time, based on demand for limited public funds.

So that doesn't that that doesn't mean that it's not happening, it's just on hold.

Yeah, all of these projects are essentially on hold pending financing of some kind, either private, you know, bank financing or public financing if it's an affordable project.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Those are my questions.

Councilmember Simon, please.

Thank you for the presentation.

Much of what I'm seeing are rental developments.

And you know, we've had rent stabilization ordinance.

We hear people struggling to pay rents, and long-term renting is not the greatest option as you get older.

What type of projects do we have for home ownership?

Do you have any information you can share about home ownership in San Leandro?

Yeah, uh, not specific to San Leandro, other than anecdotal information about some of the development types I've heard proposed.

What the projects I've heard propose are similar to what we see throughout the state, which is townhome development, for sale townhomes.

Those currently uh and of late, last few years have yielded the highest residual land values, meaning they're um they can pay the most for the land, uh, and people who are developing townhomes will pay more than any other land use is an example.

Part of that's a function of uh the cost of constructing a townhome is relatively low, right?

It's two story, three-story, stick constructed wood construction again.

So it's pretty simple construction.

Uh because it's for sale product, people will pay a premium relative on a per square foot basis relative to for rent.

So when you look at a for rent product, you've got to generally speaking you apply a that cap rate to it and you convert that rent into a present value dollar.

And so when cap rates went up, the value per square foot of rental product relative to for sale product, the four sale for rent product went down in value, the for sale product went continue to go up with the market.

Uh and so you see for sale product generally speaking, as a townhome development that's typically 22, 24 dwelling units per acre.

Uh the hindrance on, if you ask a developer, the hindrance on doing a condo construction uh is often attributed to the warranty process, the builder's warranty, the 10-year builder's warranty.

You have it on the town home as well as an issue.

Uh, but that's what a lot of them cite.

Uh some developers will actually develop a building, rent it out for 10 years, and then sell it, they'll condo map it, construct it in the mindset and the quality that they're gonna sell it in the future.

Uh so they'll rent it out for 10 years, uh, and then sell it.

But generally speaking, uh the for sale segment that we see is either single-family home uh or town home, unless again in your you're in the extreme markets like a San Diego, San Francisco, where they are constructing condominiums, high-rise condominiums.

Okay, but for here in San Leandro, I guess my question is why don't we have any townhome projects that are on the horizon?

I I would expect it's probably an entitlement question at that point.

I can take that will.

Thank you.

So we I think for the townhouse projects, they are more financially feasible than the other product types, but um, we don't have significant amounts of open land where you could get the scale needed for a project.

So we've had the two DR Horton for sale projects, Poppy Lane and Maple Lane, that both were very successful, and I think there's strong interest in that product type.

Um we've you know also seen interest in the the Kaiser property off the 880 for that style of development, um, but we don't have any active applications in currently.

Um so I think it's more of a you know a supply of land issue here.

We have we have um, you know, we're a very built-out city.

Um, so we do have some key projects and some key opportunity sites that that product type could work for.

Um, but I think that's the main reason you're not seeing substantial townhome development.

Have we considered um looking at our zoning such that we could change some of the commercial, particularly along shopping corridors, such as the marina, um, the marina shopping district, the um Marina Square, excuse me, along that area where I think people would be interested to live.

Have we considered that to bring in more home ownership?

Because I think that's really important in San Leandro to give people the opportunity to stay in their homes rather than face the rent situation 20 years down the line.

Yeah, it's a good point.

Most of our commercial zones do allow for that type of product with uh with approvals from from the planning commission.

I think it's still a parcel size issue where a lot of the parcels, you know, are not substantial enough, and in our shopping centers like Marina Square are still thriving.

So um, but we're definitely looking at all opportunities to create housing opportunities.

Okay.

Another question is uh existing commercial developments such as in the district that I'm in, district four, the greenhouse marketplace.

Have we looked at reimagining these commercial centers to become mixed use such that we can have shopping and living at the same time from existing standpoint?

Yeah, I haven't personally looked at that one specifically, but definitely uh one of the one of the big trends, at least for larger properties, is to uh convert parking areas, parking fields into residential development.

Uh certainly that's done at a uh multifamily scale.

And in some cases, we are seeing townhomes as an example being built next to uh existing shopping malls and we have a couple major anchor tenants that are uh going away.

Uh with respect to parcel size, you know, generally speaking, at least a few acres is desired to have any kind of critical mass for it to make sense for a developer to come in and do that uh because it is often an exercise of entitlement zoning, the NIMBY's the Yimbys, uh dealing with all that.

So there's certain scale that they look for.

I will say there is uh increasing uh so that the town hall market is kind of kind of tapering off a little bit.

That's it's kind of losing some of its steam.

That said, there is uh there is still a lot of momentum.

I do see a lot of office park conversion as an example when office uh came out of favor post-COVID, going back to this.

Uh so we had COVID, people started working from home.

Uh you see the yellow line there, that's the cap rate on office.

People go, oh, I don't want office.

So when cap rates go up relative to other product types, you see that spread increasing over the red line retail, uh kind of 24 25.

That means people are saying you have to pay me more to buy an office building.

A lot of there was a lot of office vacancy.

That's the vacancies decreasing a little bit, but what we're seeing and actively dealing with are uh in many municipalities, uh entitlement applications to convert two-story office buildings, surface parked office buildings to town home development.

It's a really common thing.

I think we'll continue to see that on that note.

Um, see some developers come up with new product type that also satisfies some of the affordable housing.

And so they'll have like a three-story townhome with a junior ADU on the first floor, uh, kind of behind the garage, we'll have an apartment unit uh that the homeowner can own, rent it out, so it's a good way to actually increase housing supply both for sale uh and for rent product.

Uh and so there's some new products coming online, there's some opportunity like it speaks to what's what's available from a zoning perspective and a land use perspective and uh and a parcel size perspective.

There are opportunities though, especially as you see um retail, any any place that's got kind of struggling retail in the center that's got struggling retail, once you hit a critical mass of vacancy, then those options really start to come into play for an owner, or people will start making the phone call to the owner.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bolt, please.

Yes.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Um, I really do like when you when you come and speak to us.

I remember when you came on the planning commission, because honestly, it's it's kind of like taking our medicine, right?

Um, around some things that we choose to put in action.

For instance, when we talk about uh how fast it takes to get through planning, right?

Um all developers want a smooth, quick, easy process, check the box, I'm done.

Um then through different bodies, we create these kind of speed bumps to try and level it out and make sure something's not just gliding through with no protections or you know, infrastructure needs libraries, parks, like everything's gotta be built up with this so there's more money involved.

Um, when we talk about Central Callon, do you feel that if that were to be built and then across the street, the town hall that and they're successful, that that maybe Maximus could get to that point?

Do you think that type of funding can come in at that point?

Because that's the big one that we'd really want, right?

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

Yeah, I uh so if Central Cowan proves out and uh Town Hall Square gets built, that's uh a very different paradigm.

It gets built stabilized and occupied.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think you're probably looking at five, six plus years for something like that to happen, would be my guess.

Uh and who knows where the market is at that point.

If we get back to a market where uh, you know, kind of pre-right going into COVID, uh, you see the cap rates from 2010, you know, post uh post-recession, the the brown line there uh kept going down, right?

And so that is cap rates going down.

That is more and more people willing to uh pay more and more for a given asset.

And so if you're in that and type of environment again, those types of things become very feasible.

Um proving out the market with both Central Cowan and Town Hall Square.

That's a it's a nice depth of units, if you will.

Uh, I think Maximus is has the potential to be very efficient project given its scale.

Uh but uh it's it's such a large project that it requires a substantial investment.

There's a lot of people putting money on the table.

That's an investor profile that's pretty serious uh about certainty uh and not taking uh a ton of risk or minimizing as much risk as possible.

And it's it's real estate development, it's a very risky game.

Uh but yeah, something like that uh becomes comes into play.

I don't think it's a forsaken project by any means.

Yeah, that that makes sense, right?

The smaller the project, the less the risk, right?

The bigger the project, the more the risk.

Uh last thing I'll say is we continue to lose the battle um when we speak about PLAs and uh prevailing wage.

Um I know what it's not your intention, sir, but when we say it's premium money, um, that's just a standard of living that we ask a standard wage area standard wage.

And it's it's a hundred percent not you.

It's just the developers and the way they've chosen to speak on this issue of an area standard wage, is all of a sudden some premium wage that oh my gosh, if we pay this premium wage, we're tanked, and you know what we should do, we should go pay this low, you know, we should find the low wage out there so that we can really make some money.

Because when Calan's done, they did pay uh you know area standard wages or uh premium wage, and it's gonna make money.

We know it's gonna make money.

So I appreciate you again.

It is like taking some medicine, but sometimes I gotta spit the medicine out.

I talk straight.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I I am uh I'm a fan of prevailing wage labor, don't get me wrong.

I just yeah, speaking speaking the economics of it, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Bunn.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, one of the last things that uh you mentioned was around with Central Callahan, it being a marketing exercise, which I thought was really appropriate because that was one of my notes.

Um it's funny we could talk about market in two different ways, but what what I'm hearing, and the one first follow up question is around the comparison to the other jurisdictions, recognizing that it is like with these cap rates and the market, um the just economic landscape the way it is, um, people are just much more hesitant, right?

Like affordable housing is they're finding it difficult to get funding across the board, it's difficult.

Um, is are we different than other cities in the area that you're comparing us to, or is this just a outlook of where we're at right now, so that we can be realistic about what to expect and how to prepare for when things hopefully change for the better.

Yeah, thank you, council member.

I uh first say with respect to affordable housing, I put that in entirely different bucket given the funding mechanism and the the cost of construction that is a whole nother game relative to the market uh market rate development.

Um, and in that development, generally speaking, it's funded by uh tax credits, as you might be familiar with.

Generally speaking, it's funded by low-income housing tax credits, uh, and those tax credits support pretty high cost of construction.

It's just a complex capital stack.

That's it.

With respect to where you are and your peers and and other areas of the market, um, I would say that um you certainly it my sense is you've had some areas around you that uh got a lot of investment in the last 10 years, uh, and have got a thousand charts can pull up here in our spare time after hours, but um, I would say you're you're you're probably not the first place that's gonna get investment, uh, but you and you wouldn't be the last.

I think you've got a uh authentic downtown.

I think you've got a lot of good stuff going for you, right?

You're close to public transit uh that's uh that brings access to a lot of markets.

There are a lot of people that don't want to live uh in a higher density area, and you've got a nice scale uh sense of scale for a lot of people uh in the authentic downtown.

Again, I point to Central Cowan, I say a marketing exercise because it's built, right?

There's nothing about the building that feasibly you can change, right?

You can't change the unit configurations at this point.

There's and not to say that it's not the right ratio of unit sizes and unit mix.

I'm sure they did their homework and that I'm sure it's um very well-run operation.

I say market exercise because it's there now.

You got to get the people there, right?

And it's maybe it's awareness, maybe it's uh other factors, but uh I I think it's a um uh a good building, good opportunity, good area.

I think you got a lot of things going for you.

Uh, as the markets improve, you may not be the first place that people invest, uh, but I think that you're a good opportunity for investment, and obviously, people entitled projects that were um well thought out uh and planning for pretty good, I mean like maximus, that's a very serious scale project.

You know, and so people put a lot of money into something uh to see it through.

Uh and they didn't do so uh thinking that it wasn't gonna happen.

So I would say it's gonna happen.

Uh you gotta give it time, prove it, let the market prove itself out.

Great.

And I mean, I I I want to sit with that positive, I think message you actually just gave is that what we mean we may not be the first place that people want to invest, but people are willing to and would want to, and I think the other piece of it for us as a community is not just marketing central calendar and the fact that it is a great complex in the downtown, and I walk past that almost on a daily basis, and there's a lot of energy and excitement around there, but for the city in general, that it is a really great community to live in.

And I love what you talked about with scale and neighborhoods, because we are centrally located.

We have four out of eight of our elementary schools or dual language immersion programs.

These are the things that families like young families want to look for and want to be able to move into a community, um, and be able to have, and and that is not something that many communities have, and so I think there's a lot in San Leandro that um we have to um market better so that people recognize and even for the developers to say yes, like while right now it might not be the best time to invest because of ROI, there we should set ourselves up for when it gets better to have these um uh more creative um uh what did we call them new product types, you know, consider zoning opportunities, prepare ourselves for when we do get into a better place where there's gonna be more money out there.

So I appreciate some of the positives that are coming out of this.

Yeah, thank you, Councilman.

I can add uh yeah, continue to be a place that people want to live, right?

Services, as you talk about schools, police, libraries, parks, quality of the roadway, quality of the built environment.

Uh, and that reminds me uh on the comment too, I'd say um the it is good to have balance and oversight in my mind.

The uh when you build a development, it's a fairly permanent structure, right?

And so any concession that's given is gonna be there for a long time.

Thank you.

Okay, so I will close this out.

Just a couple of uh clarifications.

So we think of cap rate, we think about the rate of return that investors require for the perceived risk at that time.

Is that a good summary?

Yeah, that's yeah, absolutely.

Perfect.

Let's go to page five of the presentation.

Because what we see is that the perceived risk changes through time, depending on what's happening out in the world.

If you're in the middle of a chaotic recession, the expectations, the risk perceived as high.

If you're in the middle of COVID, the risk goes up, etc.

So I want to look at people that invested in 2019 or 2020.

So they paid a lot for a property that two years later wasn't worth nearly as much.

Is that generally what that chart shows?

Yes, many, many investors, absolutely.

So people just investing in real estate isn't just a mindless game where you make lots of money.

Certainly.

And I would add uh you've got the 10-year T note on there.

Conceptually, that's a risk-free investment.

Uh, and so it it is a choice of an investor, right?

Cap rates fluctuate the spread over that risless investment is the perceived risk for sure.

The the tenure T note is can I put my money somewhere else and make almost as much money without taking the risk?

So as those alternative investments exist, an investor will say, uh, I'm not willing to pay that 2020 for cap because I can put it in a T bill, T note for that, right?

And so that's why that cap rate goes up as well.

So alternative investment.

So and we saw that, for instance, in San Francisco with hotels.

So people invested in hotels.

2017, 2018, and they literally turned the keys back into the bank and said, all the equity that I poured into this property I am walking away from.

So to be clear, it's possible in this development world in the real estate world to lose a lot of money.

Absolutely.

And so that that's why we we talk about risk because it's not all upside.

So I do want to worry about a little bit about construction costs.

Um at the time of COVID, there was a large spike in the cost of materials, then those material costs started coming back down.

Then there were questions about tariffs driving up costs.

What's big picture the state of the world right now?

If I look back five years ago versus today, are things much higher?

Are they approximately have they leveled out to approximately the same?

What can you say?

Yeah, uh substantially higher.

That's how I'd characterize it.

Uh looking at a parking garage is an example a month ago, and uh the cost per stall was about $70,000.

That's something that would have been $35,000, $40,000 five years ago.

Uh and so is you know, it's a general proxy.

Uh every product is unique, but generally speaking, things are very expensive.

Uh and people, you know, we all see that on a daily basis, and that's true in the construction uh materials cost as well for sure.

One more note on the, you know, you talk about hotels, talk about people buying in 2020.

The commercial market and financing commercial properties is very different from a single family home or or uh even a one to four unit property, in that those properties, single family home, one-to-four unit, you can get a loan for 30 years and have a 30 year fixed loan.

In the commercial market, the typical uh loan duration is five to seven years.

You might have a long amortization period, uh, but it the bank's only gonna say, I'm gonna lend you the money for five years, seven years, ten years if you're lucky.

Uh and so if you're buying uh, let's say in 2015 and getting a five-year loan, and you've got a refinance or seven-year loan, you've got to refinance in 2022, you could be in tough shape, and that's why people are handing in the keys because they can't get the next loan.

So they have to give up their equity.

Um the last thing that I wanted to dig into a little bit, um when the cap rates change, is that sufficient to drive a tax valuation change?

Uh property tax valuation?

Property tax valuation change.

So state of California Prop 13, property tax gets reassessed uh at the time of sale, generally speaking.

If there's uh if there's an owner who passes away, you might get a reassessment then as well.

But generally speaking, you're only going to go up two percent per year, uh, regardless of the value of the property itself.

But my question really goes to suppose that you bought a property in 2020, and the cap rate has gone up, which drives value down.

Is that sufficient to go to the assessor's office and say, hey, my 25 million dollar property is only worth 20 million.

Absolutely.

Yeah, people can contest their assessment at that point.

And are those, if if you know, are those temporary adjustments, or is that your new tax basis?

To my knowledge, that's your new tax basis.

Okay.

Okay, that's all I've got.

Well, thank you very much for your presentation for addressing all of our questions.

At this point in time, we will move on to our next item.

Our next item, we did, by the way, already cover 10A, which was the swearing in.

I'm looking to see if Mr.

Victor came.

No, we will swear him in at another time.

So for item 10B, uh, we've got a uh an item with respect to what sort of direction we give staff in its work with a consultant to conduct a per um a poll regarding potential revenue measures.

This is item 10B.

We've got Deputy City Manager Destin Clausen.

I'm sorry, Deputy City Managers Dustin Clausen and Eric Engelbart here to present this item.

Although we only have Eric standing there in front right now.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members and members of the public joining us in person or online.

Thank you for the opportunity to present tonight.

Uh, as announced just a moment ago, we'll be discussing our next steps in potential revenue measures.

Just to get us grounded in how we got here tonight in this conversation before us, as you recall about a year ago last February, during the council annual planning retreat, uh the council directed staff to explore the possibility of revenue measures that could potentially appear on that on the upcoming November 26th ballot.

Then fast forward to last June as part of the budget adoption process.

At that time, staff did propose a general fund allocation of $500,000 to further explore the viability of such tax measures that could appear in the November 26th ballot.

At the time, council did not include that funding request in the adopted budget, though council did direct staff to return again once year-end fund balance estimates were available.

Those estimates were subsequently provided to city council.

Then fast forward to December of 2025.

So the item was reconsidered by the city council at the very next subsequent meeting of December 15th, at which time the council directed us to move forward with this process.

And more specifically, uh to proceed with um, you know, community outreach and a feasibility survey, also referred to as a poll, a poll.

Just to tip a little bit of an overview of what that polling entails, you can see the methodology up on the screen before you.

Uh typically this is gonna be about a 20 to 25 minute internet or telephone interview, and the pollster is seeking to capture feedback from uh 600 total registered voters who are likely to vote in the November 2026 election, uh, a top-line report with aggregated findings that would then be developed.

And then um it is important to note that within that 20 to 25 minute total time frame, we really only have the polls only has about time for two potential measures to be scientifically surveyed.

Uh right here you can kind of see there's about there's as we all know here living in California, there's lots of different taxes that exist that people pay in different communities among all those wide array of taxes that exist.

Uh there's five here that we want to drill down a bit further on as a potential menu of options for uh that we could consider for polling, and of course, keeping in mind that there's really only two of these that there's really sufficient time to explore in great detail.

And we'll go with them through them one through five in a few moments.

So, starting at the top with the the business license tax, um many of us are familiar with this.

If you go into a local uh business here in the community, you often see that business license hanging on the wall.

Our current tax is calculated using a flat rate based on the business type and the number of employees.

And under our current business license tax structure, this past fiscal year that just closed on June 30th, we received about 6.9 million dollars of general fund revenue.

So that is an important source of ongoing revenue to our city.

Also worth noting, most tax most agencies and public and cities here in Alameda County and across the Bay Area have business license taxes.

Also worth noting that if we were to move forward with the polling of this particular measure, which we'll soon hear about more in terms of our staff recommendation, there's a what different ways in which that tax modification or modernization could be structured.

Giving an example here, taking an assumption, and because there's so many wide ranges of different ways it could be structured, but just as an example, using a rate of about a dollar and a quarter per thousand dollars of gross receipts that a business takes in in a given year.

I think it's worth noting too.

This is also assuming that a consolidation of the business types that are currently laid out in our business license tax schedule, and also including a reduction in the tax for local small businesses well to kind of offset or mitigate some of the impacts to the business community, particularly for those small business owners.

Um it's also worth noting too this structure, it generally mirrors what I would consider an ongoing trend we're seeing in a lot of agencies.

Just using example of Union City, just down the road from us, they successfully move forward with a tax structured similar to this back at in the November 2024 election.

Um the other uh benefit of this type of tax is that it's a simple majority of voter approval threshold requirement, which we'll soon see, and some other taxes have a much higher threshold requirement.

I think it's also worth noting though that just the inherently volatile nature of these taxes, they are they then do tend to align with the overall business cycle and the broader macroeconomy.

So that's just a variable to be mindful of, and also just this last bullet point, and you'll hear information on all these taxes that we were not able to identify uh any past polling regarding such a change in recent history.

Next tax we'll be talking about is uh the parcel tax.

Many of us are familiar with this.

The city does not currently have any such specific parcel taxes that in effect right now, although, for example, there are some other special districts like this the school district that does have parcel taxes that appear on local sandlander voter rolls or uh excuse me, tax bills each year.

Um, some of our analysis of the parcel tax option, um, we were making some assumptions as we always have to do with any analysis, but that there are various structures available.

Typically, one would see in the cities that have these in effect.

There's either like a flat rate per parcel or flat rate per square foot of parcel area, and there can also be certain further granularity between like residential or commercial properties.

Um, and then you can see it's just just kind of back of a napkin estimate we have there, you could potentially generate between five to seven million dollars annually off of a given tax.

It would also be worth noting that it does the challenge with parcel taxes though, and this is by virtue of proposition 13 from 1978 is that it requires a two-thirds supermajority yes vote for approval.

And for contacts, it's an exceedingly that is a very difficult threshold to surpass in general.

Also, it's worth noting back in 2024 as part of our polling work, a parcel tax did approve poll at an approval rate of 57.9% by informed likely November 2024 voters.

So while that's well in excess of a simple majority, it still does not you know exceed that 66.7% threshold.

Uh also worth discussing is that utility tax modification.

Uh some of you most of us are familiar with this.

Anyone who's gotten a cell phone bill, you know, a water bill, cable bill, you'll always notice there's those line items at the bottom to describe what makes up the totality of that that uh monthly bill, and you'll often see those line items from various government agencies.

So we already have such a tax in effect here in San Leandro, it's the rate, the rate of the tax typically ranges between five and a half to six percent approximately.

And currently, just this last fiscal year again that ended this past June 30th, we received over a little over 14 million dollars in revenue from that tax.

Again, showing this is a very not insignificant source of important general fund money we're already receiving.

Uh as part of our analysis of a potential um modification of this, we look at a 3.4% increase, which could generate approximately six to seven million dollars annually.

Uh, the trade-off of that, though, is it would be important to note if we were to move forward with such a 3.4% increase, it could create a much you know, notably higher rate than most other cities have in the area.

Um the opposite of that, though, of course, is one of the other benefits of this tax is that it's a simple majority 50% plus one approval threshold.

And for context, back in 2024, uh we did test this as part of the polling work that took place then, and we noted it was about a little over 46% support, which from a just a perspective of the pollster, that is typically considered not viable at that level, knowing that typically with many of these polls, there's often a commonly seen or observed a drop off in that percentage of support when we actually get to voting day.

And you can imagine that when people, you know, in the abstract or on the phone with a pollster many, many months before an election, or maybe interested or signify their supportive of it in concept, but then on the actual election day when they're pulling the lever, they may revisit that prior feedback they gave, and that's why you typically see a bit of a drop-off in those percentages between the poll and election day.

Uh, this next item, district sales tax.

Most of us should be familiar with this.

Anyone who's you know done any shopping here in San Landro or many other cities in Alameda County is familiar with that 10.75% that you pay at the register.

Um, it is hypothetically possible for the city to seek a further increase to that existing sales tax rate, but it's important to note that uh the state there is what's generally known as a statewide cap, or people informally refer to it as a statewide cap, which of these local, basically they call it the district tax limit, which is capped at two percent of the two 10.75.

And so essentially what that means is we're already at the cap right now.

And so if the city were to want to move forward with a further sales tax increase, we would actually have to get authorization from the state legislature of California.

So that would mean you'd have to find a member of our delegation to carry a bill for us, get it through the both houses of the legislature and signed into law by the governor, and that's a long way away.

So we're wrapping up here.

I know we're short on time.

Uh vacancy tax.

Um, this is uh kind of the last one we're gonna cover here.

Uh thus far, Oakland is the only city in the United States that staff could identify whether such a tax like fully implemented without significant risk.

The one area exception to that I would explain is San Francisco voters authorized such a tax a few years back, but it's already it's presently in suspense due to court action.

And then similarly, uh Berkeley has a tax that was uh passed by voters, which is but essentially structured and mirrored the same way as the San Francisco tax, and so that one is perceived as very vulnerable as well.

Um, either in either case, and using the Oakland model, uh, the administration of that tax is quite complex, it requires an appeal process.

For context, the city of Oakland actually has 3.5 full-time dedicated or FTE full-time dedicated positions working on this like all day, every day.

That is their sole job.

Um, that being said, there they're the costs of that program do are fully offset by the revenues derived from it.

That's also a simple 50% plus one approval if it's a general fund structure.

And then back in 2020, we did do what we call classify some informal polling associated with this.

As I mentioned earlier, we really only have time to do two primary uh full scientific surveys of measures, but that we could do an additional third kind of an informal poll question at the very end, and we could do that again.

Uh, just a update on our timeline.

You can see it there, the column on the left here was the timeline we presented back in December.

And you can see generally speaking, we're on track with that.

We've made a few updates since that time based on current information.

Happy to drill down that further as part of the QA.

Um, just to wrap things up here, our recommendation kind of tying all this together.

Staff is recommending that we would that you all direct us to proceed forward with testing through a scientific survey, the business license tax modernization, as well as the parcel tax option, with the kind of what I would classify as this additional more informal question related to the viability of vacancy tax.

And with that, that concludes our presentation and staff are here and happy to answer questions or hear your feedback.

Okay, so we'll begin with Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Um I have a question regarding uh the business license tax.

When was the last time that was updated?

Or when did we last update the business license tax?

It's been quite some time.

I don't have that uh year in front of me, but I can certainly get it in.

10 years, five, five, longer than that.

Longer than 15 years.

Yes, okay.

Um, and what's the cost to put this on the ballot?

Uh city clerk, you don't happen to recall any estimates on the cost of adding a measure to the ballot, you know, from prior elections.

Yes, thank you.

Uh acting city clerk Sarah Bunting here.

The costs to add a measure to an election are not significant because most of the costs are on a per voter basis, so it's a few thousand dollars additional when you're adding it to an existing election.

Um, by a few thousand dollars, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, but it's budgeted for thank you.

Um, that's my only question for now.

The rest are comments.

So thank you.

So go to Councilmember Bowen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Eric for the presentation.

Um a few questions.

I earlier I had asked um, okay.

I'll start with what I think the um the more information we get, the better, the more informed we can be.

So I appreciate that.

And I'm a big fan of surveys, so I I understand um why we're doing this.

I you know was concerned because polling still does cost money, and I forget what how much it was that we had um we're spending on this one.

I think it was like in the 70,000, maybe 73,000.

This is the number I remember my head.

So um, while it may not cost as much to put on the ballot, what would be additional costs?

Because we have um an allegation of or allocation of a potential 500,000 to further explore viability.

What would what are some of the other costs that we would have to incur if we were to actually go forward with any sort of measure?

Sure, so certainly just to provide some context.

If the council tonight were direct us to continue proceeding forward.

So we already have for context, we already have funds sufficient funds budgeted to uh, you know, conduct the polling work.

So that's already already been taken care of, as well as some strategic consulting support.

But there's other areas where that would be proceeding in the future.

If we proceeded, as we have done in past, um, revenue measure cycles in prior years and in recent years over the last decade or so, typically, um, and it's a typically best practice as well to do a fair amount of public outreach, of course, and community listening, and some of the costs associated with that can be pretty related to the production of like mailers.

You probably most of us have seen as we get near election season, you get those mailers in the mail with information, nonpartisan, um, just informational items explaining what would be appearing on the on the ballot and explaining that to voters to oftentimes who also manage some kind of an online poll, etc.

and things like that.

So those are the those are the primary costs associated or primary things that have additional costs.

Thank you, Eric.

And I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves because this is really just about the what to survey on that we've already said that we wanted to be able to send out to the community.

I do remember there being a lot of pushback from the community the last time we had sent out mailers because we realized I think stamps are very, very expensive now.

Um, the other question I wanted to ask about, I know we've talked about it, and I just wanted to be able to share with the public as well.

I had previously asked for an exploration into any other possible um taxes that we could potentially ask about basically in an effort to try to find money anywhere somewhere.

Um, and I had mentioned um possibly looking into taxes on um what's you know can be called some taxes, alcohol, cannabis, sort of that type of thing.

Can you just share briefly um uh what you were able to find on that?

Sure.

Uh thank you for this question.

Uh, just at a high level, some of the challenge, I think that would that we identified with with such a potential tax included um just you kind of gonna running down the list of those kind of use types that you had just identified a moment ago.

Taking, for example, you know, tax on gun shops or ammo ammunition sales uh per feedback we receive from the police department.

We're not aware of any gun shops in San Landro selling firearms, so there'd be no revenue generated from that.

The only ammunition sales we're aware of is at the um the gun range over on Davis Street, which is owned by the Optimist Club, which is a philanthropic organization, our understanding, as well as the ammunition sold on site is for on the range use only.

So it's not like someone can walk in from the street and buy ammunition and walk away.

It's really just for use on the range.

As far as cannabis goes, we already have uh cannabis tax that's in effect that was passed by voters back in 2016.

And we're generating uh about a million dollars a year off that cannabis tax revenue already.

Uh, in addition to that, um, in as far as tobacco goes, tobacco use more broadly is already declining statewide.

Additionally, there's already quite a significant amount of tax on tobacco products in general in California.

My understanding is that a pack of cigarettes these days is 15, 16 dollars in some cases.

Um, and we're also not aware of any other cities here in the region that have a tax or what we call referred to as a syntax structured, such as what was proposed.

And so kind of taking the totality of that.

I think that's basically the preliminary feedback we were derived from our analysis.

Thank you.

We will proceed with Councilmember Aguilar.

Uh thank you, Mary Gonzales, and thank you, Eric, for this presentation.

My um in the recommendation, I didn't see a UUT tax, so why not a UUT tax when it's polling was just below?

But why not have that as a recommendation to sure?

Sure.

Councilmember, happy to address that.

Um, I think the challenge with all this um analyzing these various taxes is there's um you know that that constraint of really only having two that we can test.

And so it is there's you kind of have to, you know, write up the pro-cons list of any of them and look at them and the potential revenue that can be derived, et cetera.

And I'll share the reason the rational basis for why staff is recommending these particular two taxes, one and two, and particularly the parcel taxes that you know, we have heard from from members of the council uh in recent memory and for some number of years now about, you know, interest in a potential parcel tax.

I think just psychologically, there is also some just general awareness that members of the public are familiar with parcel taxes, many of them are already paying them for say the school district or other public agencies, and we also have a lot of uh polling data over the years related to that.

And so that's really what informed that that decision, why why that informed that recommendation and ultimately knowing how you know the council has the prerogative to direct us?

Gotcha.

And let's say um, I would suggest a UUT tax, and we conduct the study, comes back fairly well.

Would we would we go out for, I mean, would it be advised to go out for two a parcel tax and a UUT tax?

Are they both poll on the same election?

Uh by and large, I would say that that is not a recommendation of best practice.

There's this, I guess you could say for lack of a better term, they're you know potentially poison the well for lack of a better term, and then typically focus the resources on one particular tax type.

So, gotcha.

And what about a let's say, like a sugar tax on soda?

Uh so that is an interesting area.

Um, there is some complexity to that.

So for background on this, you may recall there's already a few cities in the Bay Area that have such taxes in effect.

I believe it's Albany, Berkeley, and San Francisco.

Don't quote me on that precisely.

But then following the adoption of those taxes in those cities, uh, there was um a lot of pushback, I would say, from the the grocery uh industry and their representatives and advocates in Sacramento.

And ultimately, there was a a state law that was passed by the state legislature and signed into law.

I'm forgetting the name of it, but it basically prohibits any additional the adoption of any additional grocery taxes, which includes soda in California.

And so that really put a freeze on it.

Now, fast forward to today, there has been some litigation related to that, and in particular vis-a-vis the applicability of that state law to charter cities.

But I would suggest at this point, it's a very there's open to challenge for sure.

And um also in terms of the actual revenue that could be generated it's not it's not something that would really given our broader fiscal challenges that we have here in the city it's not something we would recommend looking at.

Gotcha.

Thank you Eric Councilmember Simon please.

Thanks Eric for the presentation considering we are in a deficit of 300 million dollar range at our city which tax could bring in that kind of revenue.

Which tax could bring in like 300 million dollars that's what we need right is certainly true.

I would my short answer is none of the ones that we've evaluated would would achieve that that sum of money in a realistic timeframe.

I mean I almost in some ways you hear that expression like eating the elephant one bite at a time and so it would that comes to my mind when thinking about that given the just the this the sheer size of that need when you include all of our capital needs etc um to find to identify a tax that could achieve that kind of revenue I don't know you know the the amount of each ratepayer or taxpayer would have to pay to actually generate that much of you know cash flow.

I don't know that that would ever be viable in in a terms of one particular tax in a one election cycle that makes sense okay how much money will this bring in well it very it rarely varies depending on the tax type and the structure.

Now use an example I mean do you want me to highlight say the parcel tax for example so here let's go back to that.

So the parcel tax what we've kind of and again these are very high level estimates but you know we think there could potentially be five to seven million dollars annually that could be derived from that and also another question with parcel taxes is whether or not to include a sunset date on them in some cases polling has demonstrated in the past that when there's a sunset date like this parcel tax will only be in fact for X number of years and then will go away unless reauthorized by voters sometimes that will increase the likelihood of its passage as opposed to something that's an evergreen tax in perpetuity.

So yeah let me look and just if you could hold on a second uh we're gonna let the assistant city manager weigh in with a little bit more color and we'll come back to your next question.

Uh thank you mayor uh through the chair to council member Simon uh the budget deficit or budget need if you will is actually around fifteen million dollars over three years I think what you are referring to is the infrastructure need of the city which is well in the range of three hundred million dollars and that would require some sort of um to be very blunt no one revenue measure can chip away at that in the full entirety all at once uh there would need to be some sort of a targeted plan as to what types of infrastructure projects to address and a combination of revenue and bonds to be able to achieve that particular plan.

Is the city making do we have any plans?

Are we analyzing that how to chip away at that with a combination of bonds and revenue measures so that's a very good question council member Simon I would say that uh this is the perfect example of what comes first the chicken or the egg um we would need some clarity from council on what exactly the uh priority is when it comes to what revenue measure uh what what revenues a measure could uh generate and whether that would go toward the infrastructure need and if so what what parts of the entire infrastructure plan or if that goes toward uh other services that you generally would find in our operational budget.

And I wanted to chime in here as well.

Just um anecdotally, uh those types of of um taxes have not been have not been successful for uh agencies like ours.

They've they've uh seen more success uh with schools school districts, sometimes counties, uh, but cities by and large have not been successful in some of those larger parcel taxes or geo bonds, just for um conversation's sake.

Okay, and my last question for now is the vacancy tax.

I think you wanted to explore in your recommendation viability of it, but it sounded like from Oakland or other places, the expense matches the income.

So there's no net gain on it.

So if that's the case, why would we try it?

Actually, let me let me clarify that.

Um, and uh in hindsight, I could have been more clear on that explanation.

Um, so Oakland I think is probably the optimal, or really our only example right now, I think.

Um that we're guiding from, and we did have we did uh meet with staff from the city of Oakland to get more clarity on their structure, and it is actually generating a net positive revenue for them, to be clear.

So they have that 3.5 FTE staff to administer the program, but our understanding is it like five, five million a year, I think they're currently generating from it.

I think that's correct.

Yeah, and there's a structured with a flat, I think it's three thousand dollars or six thousand dollar rate.

I think there's there are two rates, it's either three or six, and it kind of depends on the type of the parcel.

Okay, so yeah, so there is a net positive revenue possibility from that.

But it's it's very because this is such an an emerging, I guess, tax type.

It's it's it's challenging to to generate revenue estimates for us locally, but it it certainly would be on the lower end of all the taxes we discussed tonight.

Okay, seeing no other questions, let me jump into a couple of my own.

Um, likely voter.

I don't know if we happen to have a good definition of what a likely voter is and what we consider, given that this will be a gubernatorial uh year, but not a presidential year.

How do we think about that?

If we know, yeah.

Um, our pollster uh Brian Godby is online.

Uh yes, uh Mr.

Mayor, thank you very much for the question.

Uh the way we do that is we look at the corresponding uh election type in the past to determine what the percentage turnout is.

Uh and that's not just to go back to 2022, which was the last gubernatorial election, because there was an incumbent, of course, in that election, so turnout was a little bit lower, but we look at the 2018 election, which was last time we had an open seat for governor, and that gives us a baseline uh to try to figure out what algorithm we're gonna use uh or what model we're gonna use to figure to get to achieve that specific percentage.

Uh so we would look at the number of elections that uh get us that same percentage.

We did that in the November 2024 election for the survey we conducted in the summer of 24 also, but that was for the presidential election.

So that's the way we do that.

Um, and it's probably in the range of 30, 30,000 voters, uh, but we'll have to do some more analysis to be specific.

And so do we just to kind of drill down a little bit, do we look at people that have voted in 60 percent of six and sixty percent of the last 10 elections, like three out of five voters or it's probably more like two.

It's either two of eight, uh, which is the model that we use most frequently, or three of eight, uh, depending on what the percentage actually was back in 2018.

And what we we also try to look at and say, is there gonna be a greater turnout?

Uh and something like Prop 50 from last November sort of surprised a lot of people that didn't think there would be that much turnout for a um off-year election.

So we need to also sort of look at what kind of uh intensity, it's a little more intangible that the election and interest in national affairs might drive uh turnout up.

But that's something we'll look at in this process.

That's perfect.

On the vacant property tax.

Um, did I hear correctly?

My remembering correctly, that this is something that San Francisco and Berkeley have tried.

Uh, correct.

So my and that's the one San Francisco is in suspense because of litigation.

Correct.

What is it about Oakland that has kept it from litigation?

If if you can distinguish between the two.

Sure.

My understanding based on like um cursory review of available information online is that the Oakland tax.

Uh well, the challenge that the successful challenge that's put the San Francisco tax in suspense.

It was primarily, well, there's a number of challenges, but one of them is from through the Ellis Act, which is existing state legislation that essentially prohibits from local municipalities from mandating rentals, property owners like dictating rental property or a must thou shall you know rent this out.

Um, and the San Francisco measure as well as the Berkeley measure, exclusively apply to residential property.

Both the San Francisco measure as well as the Berkeley measure also I understand have like a um it's it's not just like a simple flat rate.

There's essentially my understanding is that there's a lot of complexity to it.

And I think in the Berkeley measure, it's like each successive year that it stays vacant.

There can be an inflator to the tax.

Versus Oakland is a simpler structure.

There's as I understand it's just a flat rate of either three or six thousand a year, and it applies not only to residential property, it applies to commercial property, it applies to lots of different properties.

Technically, it actually could apply, it really applies to any vacant property, not just residential.

And so, generally speaking, again, I'm not an attorney, but generally speaking, the Oakland tax is considered safer for lack of a better term, versus the San Francisco is clearly at risk because the court has already, you know, disallowed its continued implementation, and then and the under my understanding from what I've read is that the Berkeley measure, because it's structured in very much the same way as the San Francisco is presumably going to be open to more challenge and uncertainty of its long term viability.

Thank you.

At this point, I'm going to move to public comment on this item.

Mayor, we have not received any comment cards on this item, but we do have two hands raised online.

Okay, so we'll close public comment in person and we will open public comment online.

The first speaker online is Douglas Spaulding.

Thank you.

Douglas Spaulding is uh Stan Leandro District One, and I'd just like to self-identify as a likely voter.

Um, you know, I I was just polled not not a few weeks ago about uh matters in San Leandro.

And uh it's the one that asked if I wanted to recall the mayor and did I want to recall my uh my council person, which I said no and no.

Uh and uh I I I misunderstood.

I I took it as the hand of John Sullivan following up on his threat uh after the first reading of the RSO that he was, you know, gonna get people to vote accordingly.

Uh I I subsequently found out it was a poll that was commissioned by the citizens' effort to uh pass a parcel tax.

So I imagine there may be some confusion among the electorate about you know who's doing what?

And I would want to make sure I'm sure you're thinking carefully about this, that that is acknowledged that there's another effort and that this is the city's effort.

And I support the city's effort.

Uh, you know, I I I we need more money.

There's the there's just no two ways about that.

I understand, you know, do one tax at a time.

I hope we pass it, and then I hope we go for the next one.

Uh, I also am a firm believer we need to, you know, cut our spending.

That's why I ask, you know, what you know what the replacement calendar on the police cars uh is it really like every year or not?

I think we have to ask those hard questions all of the time.

We're spending too much money.

Um, but I uh I guess I, you know, you you mentioned the the thing about um uh polling to see if people are in favor of sunsetting it.

Does that help drive up the number?

Uh I would ask about um senior exemptions.

I'm sure that's on your list.

Uh but you know, are there are there some other other kinds of questions we can ask to get at general questions of whether people are in favor of taxes, generally willing to do it or not?

I like the idea of the business tax.

I think it's progressive.

Sounds like it's a break for small business.

Thank you, sir.

Your time has elapsed.

Our next online speaker is Jeff Crop.

Hello, this is Jeff.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Um I don't think that polling is necessary.

I think that the cities need um sort of supersedes the need for polling, that you know you need to make some tax measures, and you just have to decide which ones.

I would suggest that the 24 um raising a six percent tax to a nine percent tax was too large, that all your hope was placed in one place, um, and it's people wouldn't vote for it.

I would suggest casting your net more broadly with more than two tax measures, all of which are of moderate increase that don't stand out from neighboring cities, and put your money and your time and your energy into educating the populace about why those moderate tax increases are necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next online speaker is San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.

Hi, everybody, good evening.

It's Emily Grego, president and CEO with the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.

I um I've been listening to this meeting, and a lot of the topics this evening are pretty much targeted towards business.

I mean, even the commercial development review really, you know, kind of reiterated why so many people were you know fighting for their businesses and why it's so hard to develop and all the all everything, all their costs going up and and whatnot.

And now we've got these taxes that are coming up that are you know geared towards business.

And I'm wondering if this parcel tax is also gonna include commercial properties.

Um there's so much that is targeted towards business, and business at this point is already the number one contributor to the city's budget from what I everything that I've understood.

And I know way back in 2010, we supported a sales tax because we thought the city, you know, really needed it during that um recession time, and we had hoped that there was going to be more marketing for the city, and let's get more people to come to city and let's build housing and invite more businesses, and we're we're barely scratching the surface on that, and that's been many, many years.

So this is a very interesting conversation this evening.

I um will certainly like to share all of this with our you know, our membership and whatnot.

And um yeah, probably have lots more discussions about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more raised hands online.

So we'll close public comment and then come back to council members for uh discussion.

And I'm happy to take a motion if we also if you just want to move what staff's recommendation is.

Uh I will go with councilmember Bowen.

Sorry, there you go.

Um yeah, I I was gonna say I'd like to just move the staff recommendation.

Okay.

Just looking down.

So I've got a second from council member uh bolt.

Okay, so now we've got a motion and second.

We can go into discussion of this item.

I will proceed with uh council member Simon.

A question on the type of questions we would ask in the polling.

Uh my understanding is I thought we were gonna ask what type of appetite the voters had for a tax, like how much money they would consider paying.

That goes back to my question about the amount of money we really need.

And and I and I understand we want to take small bites at this, small bites at this, but we continue to take small bites, and our infrastructure continues to degrade our roads, everything.

And is the 300 is going to be 500 million?

It's gonna be 600 million.

I mean it's just going to happen.

So I'm really concerned that we are not addressing the problems that we are facing, and we're just p passing the buck to the next council to deal with.

And we're not even asking, I think we should ask that question, because I thought that's what we were going to do.

Do people want to pay?

I'm just throwing a number out here.

300 bucks a year.

Do they want to pay 200 bucks a year, 400 bucks a year?

And then, you know, backing that out, you know, how many hundreds of million dollars can you get and telling people the real issues we're facing at our city.

I mean really our streets are falling apart and we are not keeping up with them.

That's my understanding.

We're just status quo and degrading.

I'm really concerned we're not we're not addressing the needs of our citizens.

Thank you, Councilmember Simon.

Um, I will I will address that a bit, uh, but also would like uh for our uh consultant to to speak up if I speak out of turn here.

Uh what we're planning to do is to go out and uh test uh parcel tax at uh multiple levels and different uh potential uh um fundaments to whether it's a per square foot or uh a um buy a thousand dollars uh assessed value, uh, but looking at what would be viable for us, um, because we can go out and you know, ask for 10 million, 100 million, whatever it is, and if voters tell us no, then we know, you know, what what's viable, what's not uh based on their appetite, but we will do it at multiple levels so we can we can see what people's appetites are for uh attacks of that type and how much we can get.

And certainly if we were to find uh something that um, you know, let's say uh voters would approve something at at one level but not a another a higher level, then we would see what we could do, how we could use those funds best, use those resources to best address the the infrastructure needs of the community.

Okay, and then a follow-up would be in the previous dialogue.

I heard that the school districts are more successful than cities.

And I mean, what are can we learn something from the schools so that we can be successful so we can get those big uh revenue measures passed to really take care of our city?

And if so, what are they?

What are those lessons learned?

So uh thank you, Councilman, for that follow-up question.

There is an inherent uh distinction between the thr the voter thresholds that are applicable to school districts versus those that are applicable to cities.

Uh school districts that are the current law is that it's fifty five fifty-five percent uh majority to pass a parcel tax for school infrastructure as opposed to a city or municipality like San Leandro, it's a sixty-six point seven percent threshold, and that is a quite significant difference in terms of the ability to achieve those thresholds at an election.

Okay.

Feedback I've heard from the community is a lot of people can afford it, they can afford 20 bucks a month, whatever the number is.

But the issue, I mean, totally transparent is trust.

Do they trust that the city is going to spend their money efficiently and effectively?

And I think we have to get that message out that yes, we will, that yes, we have programs in place to administer, to monitor, to track, to be transparent.

I think that's a big barrier that it's being spoken out in the community, um, but until we address it head on, uh I don't I'm really concerned we're not gonna make progress.

Okay, seeing no other um no one else pumping uh having punched in, I'll just offer a couple of comments.

I do all support staff recommendations, so thank you for the motion.

Um, I do think that there is uh something to be emphasized in this notion of um the residents of voters must have confidence in how we use that money.

They have to know that we're being efficient with it, then I have to know that we are not telling them what we're gonna do something and then spend it on something else.

I think it's very, very important that we be mindful about executing against what we promise to do.

Um with that, let's have a vote.

We've got a motion from councilmember.

Uh Bowen with a second from Council Member Bolt to adopt staff recommendation.

And the motion carries unanimously.

How do we give us a hug Okay, so I'm calling us back to session.

The time is nine twenty-one.

Let us proceed with our next agendized item, which is ten C.

A council discussion discussion discussion regarding how we deal with the vacant with a district two vacancy.

So we've got City Attorney Chris Cooper Taylor who will introduce this item.

Thank you.

Good evening, America Gonzalez, members of the city council.

I'll be providing a brief report this evening on this item.

Next slide, please.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to.

There you go.

Thank you.

I I know we are, um, I want to be cognizant of time.

Um, and extend this meeting to ten thirty.

I'd be happy to do that.

That's a motion.

I'll second it.

Let's let's just vote on that item.

So we've got a motion, a second.

Let's vote.

That's to extend our meeting to ten thirty.

No.

Okay, so thank you for that.

We'll try not to interrupt your presentation.

Let's keep the dialogue going.

Please proceed.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so as the council's aware, Council Member Azevedo submitted a letter to the City Council indicating that he was retiring and vacating his seat on February tenth, twenty twenty-six.

Uh, for a council member from and for District Two.

Next slide, please.

In terms of process, there are no um legal requirements laid out that the count that requires the council follow a specific process in terms of interviews, however, um, the city has historically conducted an application and interview process in the past.

This process must occur publicly and can occur at regular or special city council meetings.

Next slide, please.

Staff has uh generated a recommendation for a proposed process for council consideration with the following timeline that is uh laid out on the screen.

This would uh include making applications available for interested candidates uh on February 23rd, 25th.

Those applications would be due March 9th, 10th.

That would be the application window.

The week of March 23rd, uh we would propose that the city council conduct a special meeting to interview applicants and uh consider making an appointment if an appointment uh is not made the week of March 23rd, um staff would recommend returning to attempt to make an appointment at the April 6th regular meeting or call a special meeting some point between April uh before April 11th to make an appointment.

Next slide, please following appointment uh the city council is required to hold a special election uh that would be consolidated with the general municipal municipal election November 2026.

Um the appointed council member would hold office until uh that election occurs and someone is elected in that elect um for the remainder of the term, and the person that is elected in November 2026 would hold that seat until uh the remainder of the vacated term which expires December 2028.

Next slide, please.

Should the city council be unable to make an appointment and the seat remains vacant, that would just result in the council operating with six members until uh an election occurs in November of 2026 to uh for someone to be elected to fulfill the remainder of that term.

And uh the I do want to just note that the uh person elected at that point would be eligible for the remaining two years of the unexpired term, and then uh under the city's charter, could then do two full terms after that, assuming that they remain within that district, and uh with that that concludes my presentation.

I'm certainly glad to answer any questions.

Okay, so we will take questions on this item before going to public comment and then discussion.

Questions, please.

Councilmember Bolt.

Thank you.

I appreciate the presentation.

I'm I want to really understand this because it's saying this the city council shall, and from all my great years of lawyership, I understand shall and should are two different things, and a shall is a mandate.

But then if you go down further, um to if no appointment is made.

How if we're saying we shall do it, how are we giving ourselves the out to not be able to do it?

Uh yeah, council member both um, that's a great question.

It I think the only the way you interpret it reasonably is that um the city shall make an effort to fill the vacancy, and then there's that additional language that acknowledges that if the city council is unable to reach a consensus, which you know would be four votes, then um the city is required to just fill it by special election, but that within that 60-day period, that's the window uh to consider it, and once you're outside of that, it's there's no more opportunity.

I it just the light just went on with when you said four votes.

So being that we're a sixth council, it's a supermajority to get one person in, where if we can't decide, if four of us can't decide on one person, there comes the moment when we we were unable to reach that point in time.

We were unable to reach the shallow.

But we can't be held liable, correct?

If we go down that route.

That's correct.

Like we can't be sued like, oh, you didn't do it.

Now district two has to.

I'm I'm really struggling with not giving district two representation in this, but I also want to make sure we're doing the right thing.

That's correct.

There's not legal liability for that.

Thank you.

Councilman, or Vice Mayor Vivotoswalt.

Thank you.

Um I also had that question, so appreciate you asking that.

Um I just want to drill down in terms of uh towards the end of the presentation, is that um if the position is not filled, then the council shall call a special election, which would be could be consolidated with the November 2026 election.

Um my question is, do we have to have a process to appoint, or can we just make a decision to uh leave the position vacant and just take it to the November election?

Um I think the language in the charter saying shall, um the earlier language suggests there should there is some effort required um of the council to at least try to come to consensus.

Um versus just making a decision to not take make any effort whatsoever, so we have to put uh I just want to be crystal clear.

Um so what you're saying is that we do have to put a process in place to search for uh through an appointment process, not necessarily a process, but there needs to be some opportunity where the council has a discussion about making appointments.

So it doesn't have to be an application process.

The council could just you know, um say we want to bring bring your best candidates to the table.

Um, you know, so it but it doesn't so it doesn't have to follow the process that's been followed in the past, but there does need to be some effort by the council, whatever the council chooses to at least consider an appointment.

Thank you.

Um what is the so we just got a number from a previous item?

What is the cost to place the district two seat on the on the election on the November 2026 election?

Is it the same as um I'll defer well I'll do this?

Yeah, it's gonna be the acting city manager on this, a city clerk on this.

I'll defer to the city clerk.

Would you have that number handy?

The question was to place to have the election in November where we add the district two seat, the incremental cost associated with adding that to the election.

Thank you for restating the question, mayor.

The way that the election costs are calculated, the bulk of the election cost is on a per voter basis.

So adding an additional um position or an additional measure doesn't do a whole lot to the total election figure.

I don't have that number directly in front of me right now, but I can say that adding an additional position would scale it up a little.

So in terms of magnitude, we're looking at 30,000, 10,000, 50,000.

Apologies, I don't have that number.

We're gonna let city um city manager weigh in on this as well.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I also don't have the number, but I wanted to just add a point of clarification due to the fact that this electioneer is an at-large electionear where the mayor's seat is also um on the the on the ballot, the same voters would be voting.

Versus if it wasn't, it was only by district, and this district wasn't a part of the vote, then you may run into that issue.

So it is it's an incremental change in cost.

Okay.

Um, those are all my questions.

I do have some comments to make that I'll save until the end, but or until the next portion of our conversation.

Coming to Councilmember Aguilar.

Thank you, America's also.

My question is, would we go through the same process that we did for uh the district one election?

And that's something that we are going to decide.

We don't legally have to, correct?

There's no legal requirement to follow any particular process, it's up to the council that council can utilize a process it's utilized in the past or may decide it wants to try something different.

Gotcha.

Okay, that's that's my question.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bowen, please.

Thank you.

Um, uh I think I understood Councilmember Baris Folson's question and the response, the one uh in terms of voters in the special election in November.

One thing that I wanted to clarify is if in June, the voters do vote to pass uh by district elections, meaning only district two residents would vote for the candidate.

So only that district would see that candidate's name on their ballot, just like a district five would only see the district five candidate, right?

So in terms of cost, it wouldn't necessarily increase it even incrementally necessarily because it would be a smaller number than what it would have been in the past elections.

But this is I just want to let's get the city the acting city clerk on this, because the total costs that we pay as a city, let's hypothesize $500,000.

That's based on the total number of San Leandrons that vote.

So it'd be 30,000 voters, 40,000, whatever that number is.

And so maybe in that particular election, it's gonna be a much smaller number, district two.

But our fee is not based on district two, it'll be based on our total count.

Is that is that what you said?

That's a TBD.

Thank you, Mayor.

That um is correct.

Our costs are charged on a per registered voter rate.

And when you are just electing from a district, then we're paying for the costs of the voters in that district.

So, yes, we're paying the full election cost as um city manager noted, this is a full at-large election.

We're gonna be paying the big expensive election costs this cycle because all of our registered voters will be factored into that for the district two portion, and we don't have these numbers yet because this is our first transition into the district elections, but going forward the council district elections will be theoretically a little less expensive.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then again, the shall language around this.

You mentioned that there is uh no specific process we necessarily need to follow.

We can decide that um to follow what we did last time with the district one appointment or not.

Um is it not technical that if we were to have a discussion on whether to appoint that would be our and and we can't decide whether or not we want to actually go through an appointment process, would that qualify as our effort to fill the vacancy by an appointment, or do we have to agree to have an appointment process?

City attorney, yeah.

I think that just a discussion generally is probably insufficient.

I think there should be there needs to at least be some consideration of maybe a poll of candidates or a candidate or or a universe of candidates versus just some nebulous discussion that um doesn't isn't really ever gonna materialize into anything.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Simon, please.

On your your slide for the process appointment, the staff recommendation, it seems pretty straightforward, similar to what you did we've done previously recently.

Uh my question is so we can move as efficiently as possible through this, the basic question is the application or where does it define what the criteria is for being a council member?

Whether it's experience, whether it's education, where is that defined and how is that disseminated to the applicants?

Um, I mean, in terms of the legal requirements, it's gonna be that you know someone be from the district um and you know meet all the other requirements and be an elector, so on and so forth.

Um, you know, in terms of who the it's the council can decide who it thinks is otherwise qualified um to fill that position, and if the council wants to provide direction on what that application says or you know, some level of detail in that regard, that's that's up to the council.

Is there a defined experience and education requirement for a council member?

No.

That's my question.

Thank you.

The only other uh question that hasn't been asked yet, I think deals with duration of time to a special election.

Is there a window of time within which a special election must be called?

I know we've concluded that we can do it in November, but I'm trying to figure out I guess why that's the case.

And if you want to just research it, we'll do that, and you can come back later, that's fine too.

I'll come back to you.

Okay, yeah, I don't want you to guess.

So at this point in time, let's go to public comment on this item.

Mayor, we have received two comment cards on this item, and there are three hands raised online.

Okay, that's uh open a public comment in person.

Okay, our in-comment in-person commenters are Leo Sheridan and Ed Hernandez.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and staff.

I'm here tonight to advocate for you to consider an appointment process in district two.

Our district has already endured, endured a year and a half of underrepresentation under the cloud of a criminal investigation of the former council member.

Another nine months is not fair to the constituents of district two.

Crime and blight throughout Bayfair and the transit hub, shuttered storefronts and the lucky shopping center, and it continues up and down East 14th Street.

We deserve better in our area.

Our constituents deserve better, and they deserve an advocate to advocate for those needs now, not nine months from now.

It's time to say enough to the distractions and get this council back to business.

Please consider an appointment process to allow for District 2 to have a voice, just as the other districts have.

Our St.

Landra School Board has shown us in recent years that an appointment process is not an unsurmountable hurdle and shows the value of providing representation to their constituents.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Ed Hernandez.

Good evening, council, staff, city manager, everybody else for being here this evening.

So just my point is to focus on the appointment process now.

District 2 has gone without meaningful representation due to the former council members' prolonged legal issues and inability to perform his duties.

As we know, February 11th, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and making false statements, admitting he accepted bribes, including a trip to Vietnam and funded round funds routed through an LLC in exchange for favor in a housing company.

This conduct defrauded the public and broke the trust residents' place in the representative.

As a result, District 2 has effectively had no active accountable voice at the dice for a long period of time.

An appointment is the fastest and most responsible way to restore representation and ensure District 2 residents like me are no longer disadvantaged.

Acting now provides stability, fairness, and continuity while still allowing voters to choose their long-term representative in November.

Delaying further would continue the harm already experienced by District 2 and lease thousands of residents without equitable representation.

I've decided to speak up that we need to act now.

Some people might not lock it, but I've been at that diet, so we need to make sure we have leaders that we can count on, trust, and not break that trust.

There's a lot to rebuild in our community.

We need to do it now.

And you might not like it, but it's overdue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, that concludes the comment cards we've received.

So we close public comment in person and we open public comment online.

Our first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Thank you.

I'm gonna strike a slightly different tone.

Uh I'd like to begin by thanking former council member Brian Azevedo for his years of service.

And while recent events are unfortunate for he and his family, uh, in my mind, they don't outweigh the good he's done our city.

Uh I'm gonna spare you my uh campaign speech.

I'm not a resident of District 2.

Uh, but I think it's gonna be unfortunate to see a campaign that's you know running on the Bash Bryan uh platform.

I um I I encourage you to think maybe a little uh outside the box.

I uh what I don't want to see is I don't want to see uh a duel at high noon in front of City Hall between Ed Hernandez and Joe Sheridan.

Let's avoid that one.

But I'm wondering like couldn't couldn't this be part of a special election in June?

Is there not time for candidates to file and do everything and get it done?

That to me that would be the most democratic way to replace um uh Brian Azevedo.

Um I don't mind the process.

In fact, I like the process that brought us uh councilwomanis Walton.

Uh I'm I'm thrilled that she's my representative.

Um, I didn't know of her until Selena recommended uh her to me, but um, you know, like it's it's been fantastic.

And let's just keep improving.

Uh Dylan Bolt was a great uh ad to the city council, and I'm looking for another uh another upgrade policy.

So let's let's really uh, you know, kind of beat the bushes and think creatively about possibilities.

Let's scan those uh commissions and boards we have.

Uh let's encourage people that we think are good candidates.

It would be great if we get a good field of candidates and there can be a um a competitive uh applicational process, uh, and then you council members can make uh the best possible decision, not only for district two, but for the rest of the city as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is James Aguilar.

Good evening, council members.

My name is James Aguilar.

I'm a resident of District 2.

Uh, I just wanted to hop on and advocate for an appointment process.

That's pretty much it.

Um, and the reality is that district two cannot wait and really shouldn't wait.

It's not fair to wait nine odd months for representation.

Um, it's my hope that the process that you choose this evening will be a short and expedient one, but also consider it uh considerate and transparent.

District two definitely deserves representation, not an absent vacant seat, um, even between now and the new election.

And so all I ask is transparency and thoughtfulness in this evening.

This in this evening's discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Alvaro Ramos.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

So I just wanted to say that I um uh really appreciated uh uh the ideas shared by uh Doug Spalding.

Uh, especially uh June 26th election.

Um, but I will say, whichever way the council goes on this, I want to say that if um if you do end up doing things, I don't know how you would do them, but um, if you end up holding public hearings that you please let members of district two know.

Um so I mean, for example, I'm just mentioning like communication.

Uh I don't think it's enough to hope to do a you know full wielding campaign of district two, but communication, for example, at by putting up some official city flyers at the local schools in district two, uh, like San Lantro High School and Jefferson Elementary School, um, and maybe at um at the main library or a uh community center, even though they're like slightly outside of district two, um, and also um put something on social media so that people are aware and they can engage in the process and comment and share their feedback.

I think that would be very helpful uh to this process.

Uh that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more hands raised online.

So we close public comment and come back to council for deliberation.

Councilmember Simon, please.

Yeah, I'm interested that we recommend that we appoint the process.

We appoint the position.

I think that district two should have representation and they should have it quickly.

I think there are issues that need attention in all of our districts.

It needs attention, and I can't see that area having a void of no person until November.

So I really believe we're yeah, or December or January.

That's way too long.

So we have to get someone in there.

They deserve it.

If I live there, I would want it.

And that's just fair.

That's only fair to those residents.

So I recommend we proceed with the appointment process and we do it as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Um, I do also want to make the comment and why I asked the question about experience in education was the last go-around we did this.

We had people with different, very different backgrounds.

And afterwards, and I'm just gonna throw it out there because it is public information, the investigation report, you know, criticizes some of us council members based upon our personal or our um merit-based decisions on how we decide on people.

And I think we cannot go there.

We cannot do this again.

We just have to respect each other's votes, expect respect each other's opinions on council and not attack each other.

But we just can't do it.

We can't afford it.

Our city does does not deserve to go through this again.

So um as the city attorney said there are no experience or education requirements.

I'd recommend anyone who wants to apply apply.

Anybody don't feel intimidated because someone has a master's degree or I have a master's degree personally, but that doesn't make me any better than anyone else.

So anyone apply.

I really really encourage more civic involvement, more people coming to these council meetings because someone really good may come out of this.

So I'd like to make a motion to proceed with the um recommendation from that slide to move as quickly as possible.

Okay, so I've got a motion by councilmember Simon to proceed with an appointment process.

And with the next slide, an appointment process.

Uh Councilmember Aguilar.

Uh thank you, Mayor Gonzalez.

I I will second that motion with regards to the appointment process.

And just like council member Simon had mentioned, you know, there's job descriptions for certain jobs.

Shall serve on this council.

And I I think, you know, we vet out the candidates.

A lot of us kind of look for different backgrounds.

Not all of us are going to agree on the same on the same candidate.

So I think last time we had a uh ad hoc committee that vetted out candidates and presented them to the council.

So I you know, I thought that worked out pretty well.

Uh I think there was some candid conversation about, you know, who who we who we would support.

Um, and I think there was there were a lot of great candidates that applied.

Uh, and so I think that we should move expeditiously as possible to like um our public speakers had mentioned with regards to having representation within that district.

Um I think this is something that we we you know we owe to the community that we need to move forward with this uh appointment process.

Vice Mayor, please.

Thank you.

At the beginning of the year, um, I made a commitment to my colleagues and to the public that I would make the implicit explicit.

Um, and so today we are faced where we are today because we are addressing illegal actions from a former council member, um, a colleague of ours that did this while we're presenting all of us and all of them, and also the city staff who work in the city of San Leandro.

So I want to apologize because no one has apologized yet.

Um I know the mayor has uh made his his video, but I do want to take this time to apologize to the residents of San Leandro, the voters of Sal Leandro, city staff, city leaders, businesses, and everyone who has who needs to trust what we do and how we do it.

Well, those actions were not taken by this body, accountability does not stop with that individual.

But as elected officials, we are accountable for the systems that we oversee and the trust that is placed in us.

Trust is built slowly and lost quickly, but I think we can restore it through consistent and visible action.

So, what I want to propose is um, I want to ensure that we take the time to assess candidates to have people apply, as the only member of this council who was appointed and then had to run in the subsequent general election, and even as a person who has been involved in local government for 17 years, um it was a big it was a big uh mountain to climb.

And I would want this process to bring someone in who wants to be of service because ultimately leadership is not tested when things go right, but it is moments like this that our leadership is tested, where we don't necessarily opt for speed, but we look for qualified qualified candidates who want to serve.

So I want to take all the time that we can and not move it so quickly so as not to discourage people who may not think of themselves in this role, um, to think of themselves in this role.

And this is not about delaying a decision, but it's about strengthening our legitimacy as a body.

When a seat opens up unexpectedly.

Um I think that the most democratic response is to let the public weigh in and to let the public vote and to let the public and all the various stakeholders go through a vetting process that we all have gone through as elected members of this council.

I think that an appointment process inherently advantages those with existing access and networks and name and name recognition.

And as a former appointed member of this council, and then elected, I I think I have a unique perspective and perception of how this process goes.

I think an open election creates equal footing for all interesting candidates, interested candidates, and it allows a community to meet, question, and evaluate candidates on positions that are important to them and on issues that are important to them.

I know that we have to go through a process to do a process to appoint.

I want to be really thoughtful about who serves with us.

I do want to address a couple of rebuttals to some of the points made by my colleagues and also some members of the public.

I think that our effectiveness is measured by our outcomes and not necessarily only by our head count.

And I think that a smaller council at this particular time will force us to communicate clearly, transparently, and objectively to ensure that we that we uh move forward.

My time is up, and I will go to the next go around to make sure that all my colleagues have a time to speak.

Thank you, Councilmember Bowen.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I want to echo some of the things that Councilmember Speedy Viviros um mentioned.

Obviously, we're talking about the appointment process, but it is really important to acknowledge how we got here.

And I'm sure we all have friends, families, colleagues that live in District 2.

I certainly do, and I would, you know, I want to uplift some of the frustrations that people have felt that while council member or former council member um Azevedo did many things to help the community, certainly in the past year, year and a half, it has been very difficult for some of the residents to feel um heard and for their um uh interests to be amplified on the council, and so I recognize how important it is to have that representation.

Also want to remind the community and this council that while we have to live in our district and represent our district in that manner, we represent the whole city and work for the whole city and think about all of the residents in the city.

Um, having gone through the last appointment process that feels like just yesterday.

Um I want to make sure that we do not rush that it is um really intentional and the we have a process in place from the previous appointment.

We have a more robust questionnaire than the one that had been previously used prior to um the last appointment process.

So I would want us to at least at the minimum do those things.

We did have a large number of applicants, and we did have to have an ad hoc committee in order to be able to reduce that number for um time and efficiency sake.

Um I don't want to cut corners in that way.

When we go through an election process on a regular basis, we knock on doors, we speak at meetings, we share what our qualifications are.

Um we want to give any person who wants to run for um this appointment or for the seat an opportunity to do so.

The idea of doing uh a turnaround in a week or two weeks for a full application is is a very tall order.

Um I think about how many times somebody has to be asked to consider running for office, especially for women and people of color, and that is um something that we want to take into consideration so that we are not uh filling the seat for the sake of just filling the seat, but that we are actually appointing someone to represent the district that the district would also want them to be represented by.

We'll continue with council member Bolt.

Yes, thank you.

Um as the one council member who wasn't a part of the process, uh I want to commend you all for finding Spade, our vice mayor, because without that process that we went through, we may not have you.

So that's a good job by this council and the mayor and the former who who Pete who was in my chair and Brian as well.

Um did was it a 60-day uh process that time too?

So I've asked the question of the city manager.

She's literally pulled up a slide as we speak.

Okay, thank you.

So we gave the direction, if I remember correctly, at our first January meeting.

Yeah, so on January 2nd, we gave the direction saying, okay, let's initiate a process.

Uh we were looking to see if we could find the date at which the applications became available.

We don't have that, but we do have is that on the 5th of February, based on the number of applications that we had received, we set up an ad hoc committee to go through the applications that we had received.

My vague recollection is that we spent approximately the same amount of time as that which is proposed here, namely about two weeks.

Between here's the application, you've got two weeks to fill it out, turn it in.

Um, and then after that, we did interviews in the subsequent week after the formation of the committee.

Two weeks later, we had a special uh council meeting for the nomination of the appointment.

Okay, so that so we satisfied, I know we were struggling that we had to do it within 60 days, and I think that you know we actually had a couple of go rounds, and so we we pretty much reached the very end of when we needed to do it because council members um Rainess's uh seat became empty on the first.

And so as we counted through the days, we had to have it done by March 2nd, I think it was.

So that's the difference.

Is it there was a greater time in when she resigned to win Brian and then she was no she gave us notice?

Sorry to interrupt you.

Okay, but she worked with us, she told us what was gonna happen.

We negotiated with her effectively.

Would you mind please waiting because of the holidays are coming?

It's gonna be very difficult.

We didn't want to find ourselves in a kind of, I'll call it a non-compliance position.

So she worked with us.

So that could alleviate the thought that oh, we're really jamming this one through, and we kind of had some time to think about it, and now we're I don't want to say behind the poll because we're gonna go through the same process.

Um I do feel uh as a commenter said, and I agree that we do represent the whole city and and yes, we all get calls from all different districts um because we have relationships in all different districts.

We all had to run citywide.

Everybody up here had to run citywide, so we knocked on all kinds of doors, and and so somebody may be come more comfortable um with that idea, and and but I still do believe um a high percentage of our focus is based on some of the needs that are in our district.

So like when I come in and I talk about like I bit my tongue not pulling one of the uh item fives just to say thank you for putting up the the outdoor gym at the marina.

Like that's something that our uh area has spoke about, and oh, can we fix this?

Oh, how can we um how can we benefit in in our district from some of these things?

So, so I really do believe the district two uh should have someone in that seat.

And I caution us from thinking this is um although it may have been a mountain really high to climb for you, Spade.

Uh look at where we're at now, and us finding you should be the evidence we need to continue forward and give district two what they need.

I do struggle with I know what you're saying, and then we talked about even how you have to run in such a short how many elections you literally have to go through in such a short period of time and raise money, and geez, that's that does that's a lot.

But gosh dang it, look what we got out of it.

So I don't want to miss that opportunity to find the next uh spay day out there.

Okay, just very quickly on my part.

I do want to just confirm something.

If we consolidated to the June election, the individual who was elected in June would still need to be re-elected in November, or would that satisfy the need for the next two two and four months or whatever?

Two and six months.

No, that would be it.

That would be it, thank you.

Okay.

Uh coming back to councilmore uh to Vice Mayor Vivera Swanton.

My apologies.

Thank you.

I just wanted to um address some of the points, comments that were made during my appointment.

When I was first appointed uh appointed, um I made I had a conversation with everyone on that council.

Um and I told them that I would I told all of you, um, and as uh council member bolt on boarded onto the council, I also had the same conversation around um that I would give you a call if I had a tough conversation to have with you and that you would not find out from the dais um if I had a concern or anything that um I I would essentially give you a heads up.

Um and I've kept that promise.

Um I also told everyone on that council that made that appointment that bygones would be bygones, whatever happened in that appointment process, and I've kept that promise as well.

So um I don't want to relitigate what happened at that appointment process about qualifications or not, um, because it was um it was tough to sit in that audience and hearing some of the comments coming from here.

So I'm I don't want to go through that again.

So I think we should just look forward.

Um I would like to explore um a June election and see what is the kind of timeline for that.

Do we have a scenario planning for a June election?

Please.

Uh you know, I I don't know that we've looked at that.

I think there are some challenges.

Um, you know, my understanding is that we are trend potentially transitioning to um by district voting in June.

So if the election happens then, you know, um I think you'd have to look at an at-large and then you you create some other issues.

Um there's potentially a cost impact.

Um, you know, consolidating with the the general is general you know, again, I'll defer to the acting city clerk, but I think consulting with general is generally gonna be significantly cheaper.

Um, so there is that component as well.

But I do think you run into some of those challenges just with that transition.

Right.

I hadn't thought about the um this person would have to run an at-large election rather than a district election if they were to do a June versus a November.

Okay.

Um I would like to dig into the timeline because it sounds like that is the process that we have to legally go through.

Um, Mayor, if I'm speaking out of turn, I I don't know if you have thought of a like a process for the council, like an ad hoc or um, I don't want to speak out of turn.

Um, if you have already put some thought into what that process could look like.

So, so let me just kind of give you some some reactions historically when we look at appointments to commissions and when we look for just let's just start there.

We get a disproportionate number of applicants from districts one and five, period.

I mean that's just the truth, that's factually true.

Um, I do not anticipate that we will get 12 or 14, whatever that number was of applicants for this position.

Um obviously I'd be gleeful if we did, but I would anticipate something more on the order of five or six, and so correspondingly I would not anticipate having an ad hoc committee just because that would be within the realm of what we could interview and handle in one session.

Okay, um a couple of things that I would want to make sure that we include in um I would like to, and just in terms of process, um, would like in the appointment page to have linked presentations to all of our financial presentations because whoever gets appointed will come into the role having to make very difficult financial decisions as a body.

So I I want to um as a person who uh prepared for an appointment process, I you know looked at a bunch of documents, but I had to dig through the all of that.

Um but being that this person will have to make budget type uh decisions, I would like to have like a like an index of council reports, council presentations specifically focusing on the financial picture that we're facing.

Um I think that's really important.

Um also just in terms of um the application process, um, I thought it was um, I thought it was uh a good exercise for myself to go through that questionnaire and really think through what my positions were.

Um, but I would also like to point out that I also noticed that some members of the body did not read all the applications.

So um asking me questions about things that were on there.

Um, and so I I just really want to, I know that I put a lot of time, all the applicants put a lot of time in.

So if we are gonna make a questionnaire like that, where we really want to dig into their positions that we take the time to read all of it and enter in dialogue with that document.

Um in addition to that, um, just wanna, is there any wiggle room in this timeline?

I guess it depends on whether we call a special meeting.

I just I just I'm really concerned about a February 23rd or 25th making an application available.

I'm just and my time is up, so I'll I don't have any time to yield, so I'll just put my mic back off.

Let's give you an extra minute so you can just share your answer.

So to clarify, our deadline is final final, final, final this April 11th.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay.

And so what I think I heard from you is just a request that council have the commitment to recognize that we may need some special meetings to go through this appointment process to have plenty of time.

Okay.

So at this point in time, there was I think one, I'll call it actionable ask, because how we would be modify or or adjust the motion.

And that was that in particular during this process that we make accessible the primary financial documents that we are contemplating.

I think presumably associated with our council retreat, for example.

Was that kind of a good framework?

Um so that those would be in a what I'll call a simplified way, i.e., they can find them, but if we could just say as part of wherever the application is, we could also include a link to that.

I think that's the request.

I'm gonna go to the motion maker, which I believe was council member Simon.

Are you comfortable with that as a requirement?

And then I'll come to city manager to see if it's practical, but would you be fine with that uh being something that's um as part of your motion?

Yes, and on the city manager.

Sorry, thank you.

Oops, you should be in there.

Yes, depending on the city manager's response.

If she's comfortable, then subject to her comfort level.

And the seconder, would you feel comfortable with that being made more easily available by being at the application site?

Council member I get.

Yes, yes, okay.

So I mean, there's there's a willingness to have it, and given the the description by vice mayor, is that something that can be associated to where the application would be placed and would slow down our timeline.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh, just before I actually answer the question, just for clarity, because I'm I'm hearing two different things, but I want to understand.

I'm hearing Vice Mayor Leveras Walta say Walton say all financial information council reports and and finance committee, but I'm hearing you say things ready for the retreat.

Yeah, I think we've got just to make very clear.

Please proceed, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Um it um it doesn't have to be all the reports from finance and all of that, but I I do want to uh ensure that every applicant understands that we will be as soon as they get appointed by this deadline.

Um we're gonna turn around and start making budget decisions.

So there has to be some sort of like maybe even a question added to it, like maybe so I'm is it the financial presentation from the council retreat?

That would be the most updated, right?

That is correct.

And the retreat is on March 6th, and that information most likely will be ready February 30th, which would be behind the dates of when the applications are out.

So someone could apply before this information is available.

I will say just to give you reference what happened last time.

I don't have exactly when the applications were made available, but as the mayor said last time, we were well in December when we were preparing for this in January because we did have the heads up.

So we're we're kind of out of sync on this one.

Um, but I did see when we started getting applications.

So we the first application we received on January 10th, 2024.

The last application we received was on January 29th, 2024.

So that timeline itself is bigger than than this one, and again, I don't know when the applications were made available, that's just when we started getting them in.

Uh I would also like to include a link to the city budget that we adopted last year.

I'm it's any viable candidate should be able to find these documents, but I wanted to make it accessible for anyone who may not be familiar with our website.

Okay.

We're just gonna make it easier for them.

Uh with that description, do you feel comfortable city manager?

Yes, we would put on the application page, the city budget, and the retreat documentation once it is available to the public.

And one thing that happened with uh the with the appointment for district one is we actually told people, if I remember correctly, that we would be putting up more information.

I don't remember what we put up, but it might have been the questionnaire for that matter.

We but in the middle of the appointment process, we added something, we shared more information.

I just don't remember what it was.

So with that in mind, yes, please.

The other thing I would add is, and I I thank the vice mayor for pointing out the need for extra meetings is that last time, yes, there was an ad hoc committee meeting, and there was an ad hoc um committee that met outside of council meetings, but the council also needed two meetings to make a decision.

So there was a first meeting when we thought a decision would be made, it wasn't made, so there had to be a second meeting that we did not plan for at the beginning of the process.

I would say that this time we need to make sure that there's room for that to be the situation again.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Bowen.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You did have you're not in my queue here, so councilmember Simon, he has been in queue, sorry.

I was into you to be on the queue.

I think you were both in Q.

Just letting you know what was in Q.

My apologies.

You are both in cue.

Councilmember Simon, please.

Um, well, one thing I'd like to address, and I'm not getting into the legal issues of Brian Enzevito, but I do want to thank Brian for his service, his years of service for his work that he's given to the community, for example, meals during COVID, so many cleanups events, and he's really personally helped a lot of people.

So I just wanted to put that out there.

Um I do also want to point out that we have a lot of like actual, I'm gonna call it real work to do, like fixing our streets, like attending to our services, our libraries, all these things we have to do.

We're going through investigations to filling vacancies to so much administrative time that I really believe our city and our public needs us to focus on like going efficiently on this.

We will find a qualified candidate just like we did our vice mayor and free up our staff because this is going to take staff time away from getting other work done.

So with that, I'd like to call the question.

Is there a second on calling the question?

Council, okay.

So we've got a motion and a second on calling the question.

Unfortunately, we're not able to discuss, so I cannot discuss this.

Uh please vote.

All votes are in, and the motion carries with four yeses and two no votes from Mayor Gonzalez and Councilmember Bowen.

My apologies to you, Councilmember Bowen.

Um, at this point in time, let um let's vote on the motion.

All votes are in.

And the motion carries unanimously.

Okay, let's proceed to item number 11.

Council request to schedule agenda items.

Do we need to read these individually, or just the fact that you know them and they have been submitted?

Okay, would you like to read them, please?

Council member.

Oh, Council Member Simon.

Okay, so councilmember Simon, can you read yours into the record?

Yes, I have I have five of them.

Uh the first one is a resolution acknowledging and apologizing for the city's role in historical red lighting practices and their lasting impacts on the community to include but not limited to acknowledges that the practices were morally wrong, violated the principles of equal justice and human dignity, and created lasting harm that continues to affect San Leandro residents today.

Formally apologize to the residents, families, and communities of color who were harmed, examine the ongoing impacts of redlining and historical housing, discrimination through comprehensive study and community engagement, and implement reconciliation measures to take direct action to counteract the harm that was done to the communities of color who were harmed.

And I like to add that, and this is just a portion of the resolution, and to give you some background, Bernard Aftcraft has taken a very nice draft of this resolution that I think we as council can work on.

Or I would work with Bernard on finalizing this and bringing this to the planning work session on March the 6th.

So that's that's the first one.

The second resolution is to reverse the Simon and Aguilar 2024 censure resolution and issue a formal apology for the city's July 18th, 2025 court filing, and November 20th, 2025 court ruling with an asterisk.

The city's council members were engaging in conduct that is protected by the First Amendment.

The asterisk is mileage reimbursement and medical coverage topics were allowed to continue in court, though defensible per city was not part of the 2024 censure.

I'd like to add that to the March 6, 2026 council retreat.

The third item is that council meetings are only on the first and third Mondays of the month, starting at 5 p.m.

with closed session only at the end if needed.

Only if additional closed session meetings are needed, it may be held the second Monday of the month.

This will save staff time and money, which is less meetings, and in the meetings at a reasonable hour to prevent staff, public, and council burnout.

As we see, we regularly go beyond 10 p.m.

as of tonight.

Fourth one is adding a new pedestrian bridge.

Oh, excuse me.

And that uh first and third Monday, that would be added to the council retreat.

Uh the fourth one is adding a new pedestrian bridge to cross San Lorenzo Creek near Kramer and Budge Streets and rehabilitate an existing pedestrian bridge across San Lorenzo Creek near Vining Drive and Hirbron Court in partnership with Alameda County and other jurisdictions.

This improves safety for kids going to school and relieves traffic congestion.

And that would be on the planning workshop as well, March 6th.

And the last one, and extremely important, as all these are, but this one here will save us a lot of time and just fairness and equity.

Council approval prior to use of an outside investigator, double hearsay and witnesses and city lawsuits are prohibited, city manager and and city attorney report policy violations and make recommendations to change unjust policies, and that all parties in the investigation must sign an oath of confidentiality and release reports to the public requires unanimous council approval.

That would also be added to the March 6th council retreat.

Those are my five.

Vice Mayor, please.

Thank you.

I did not submit it.

Am I able to read it into the record?

It's it's not an item that I would like to, it's not a specific item for consideration, but I do want to offer a framing for our retreat to include as one of our pillars.

Um fiscal responsibility and equity as we had, as we look at our priorities and our five pillars.

I want to ensure that as we are presented with a very difficult uh financial picture that we will be seeing and that we know we're gonna face that we are facing.

I just want to um include that frame or that filter or that screen.

I'm gonna I'm gonna say that really belongs under 12, because it's not an actual request for for an item.

I don't see any others, and so I will give you the ones that I have submitted.

Uh the first one, and these are consistent, I think, with things that I had submitted last year for the multifamily units.

I'd like to see an ordinance consistent with California law adopted by San Leandro within San Leandro for multifamily unit smoking ban currently in place for Alameda County to be adopted here within the city, as the current ordinance only covers unincorporated parts of Alameda County.

Number two.

And here I'm not sure the current status of our ordinance, but assuming that it hasn't already happened by ordinance and consistent with California law.

Limit the time that boats or other floating objects can be attached to docks within the city of San Leandro to 30 minutes, and to impose a similar time limit for use of boat launches.

Limit the time that boats can reside within the waters of San Leandro to 48 hours, except for those located at an operational and licensed marina.

Number three, drones as first responders.

By city council resolution, I'd like to adopt a pilot program under which we test the use of drones as first responders.

This should involve at least one vehicle available for launch to be located relatively centrally within the city of San Leandro.

Number four, inclusionary housing modification.

I would like to request an ordinance update to policy change regarding the percentage of affordable housing units required within a multifamily building built in a high priority construction zone, e.g., downtown, and for that to be a reduction.

Number four, increased trained traffic enforcement.

I'd like a resolution by the council such that in FY 2027, we double the number of trained traffic enforcement patrol officers.

So it's purely a matter of training them so that they're available and they uh we don't run into, oh, we don't have officers to do that.

Um I know I sent these to you, city manager.

Do you think I am missing one?

I think I got them all.

I actually see a couple more to limit the number of units owned, housing units owned by corporations by ordinance and in accordance with California law.

Limit the number of residential structures within the city of San Leandro owned by a single corporation or its affiliates.

The phrase residential structure shall be defined as consisting of condos, single family residences, duplexes, triplexes, and four plexus.

The limit shall be three.

Uh and then the last one that I have is minimum expenditure on roads.

So by city council resolution.

Adopt a city council policy with respect to road repair maintenance and replacement jointly roads such that the fiscal year 26 general fund budgeted amount for roads shall serve as the minimum budgeted amount for roads in the future years adjusted by inflation.

Number two, to the extent that the previous year's minimum budgeted amount is not expended, the unspent amount shall be added to the above, shall be added, i.e., above and beyond the then current year inflation adjusted MBA.

That's why we write this so that we don't have to know it from just reading it out loud.

In addition to this minimum budgeted amount, 50% of any fiscal year and surplus unrelated to unspent budget for road repair maintenance and replacement shall be added to the minimum budget amount in subsequent fifth school years.

And number four, any funding received from grants, gifts, one-time awards, etc.

shall be additive to the minimum budgeted amount for roads, i.e., supplantation is not permitted.

I think that's all the ones I sent to you.

Okay, thank you.

So with that, we have reached our adjournment time.

I'd like to adjourn in memory of Jesse Jackson, who for many of us was a formidable civil rights advocate for many years.

Was with Dr.

King when Dr.

King was shot and carried that trauma as he continued to advocate relentlessly for decades thereafter.

Councilmember Aguilar, did you want to add on to that?

Um, I believe we missed item.

We've missed item 12 because we've run out of time.

I'd like to make a motion to extend to 11.

1045.

Motion to extend.

Let's see until 1045.

Please vote.

Motion by Aguilar Second Simon.

By Simon.

All votes are in, and the motion carries with four yeses and two no's from Mayor Gonzalez and Councilmember Bolt.

Okay, so at this point in time before adjourning, let's go to item number 12.

Or number uh item number 12.

Yes.

Please proceed, Councilmember Aguilar.

Uh thank you, Mayor Galls Mayor Gonzalez.

I think I had a couple of things.

I just wanted to um uh address the recent public statement made by our mayor regarding council member Brian Acevedo.

I just wanted to be clear that I don't condone my colleagues' actions.

Public trust is sacred, and when it's broken, there must be accountability.

Nobody is above law.

However, I will take um issue with the tone and framing of the mayor's statement.

As mayor San Leandro, you are the spokesperson for this entire council.

That role demands leadership restraint and fairness, especially in moments like this.

What I heard went beyond informing the public.

It felt like a personal rebuke delivered after a resignation had already taken place and after the guilty plea already had been entered.

Accountability was already in motion.

Continuing to publicly underscore condemnation at that point felt unnecessary and punitive.

We can stand firmly for ethics without engaging in public shaming.

We can defend the integrity of the city without appearing to single out and power on.

Our code of ethics applies to all of us, including how we speak to one another.

Leadership is not just about calling out wrongdoing, it's about modeling professionalism and measure judgment, even when emotions are high.

I do not condone what occurred, but I also do not condone kicking someone while they are down.

Our residents deserve accountability and they deserve dignity in how we conduct ourselves.

Um I also wanted to take the moment to speak from my heart about colleague, um, former colleague Brian Acevedo.

Brian was more than a council member, he was a hands-on community survey during the pandemic.

When so many families were struggling, he was out there rolling up sleeves, passing out food, organizing it, supporting community cleanups, and showing up for food drives across our neighborhoods.

He didn't just talk about service, he lived it.

He even opened his own home to help provide hot meals to those in need.

That kind of commitment comes from a genuine love for community.

I am truly grateful to have served alongside him on the council here in San Leandro.

His energy, accessibility, and wellness, willingness to step in and help will be remembered by many residents whose lives he touched directly.

While this chapter closes, I want to acknowledge the positive impact he made and the dedication he showed to public service.

That work mattered.

I wanted to wish Brian well in his retirement and his future endeavors, and uh thank him for his service uh that he gave to the community.

I also wanted to announce that I've been appointed to the National League of Cities 2026 Information Technology and Communications Federal Advocacy Committee.

This is a one-year term.

Uh, I will help shape NLC's federal advocacy agenda and policy priorities on key issues, including broadband access, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.

And lastly, on February 11th, I attended the 1,144th meeting for mosquito abatement.

We appointed Robert Beattie to our board to serve a term until 2020 2030.

We purchased a 2026 Electric Polars Pro XD, which costs 36,000.

And then we supported a resolution 1144-1 and support of mail relief suppression uh technologies, and I have no West Now virus to report.

That's my report.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bowen, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, two things I wanted to acknowledge lunar new year.

I know you just started the meeting with that, but um we celebrate today is actually the beginning of lunar new year, and we celebrate with lots of family and friends.

And so I want to acknowledge the large number of people in the Bay Area, one in three, I think, residents in Alameda County R A and H PI, and a significant number of them are celebrating this lunar new year, and in April there will be another new year for um other countries in Asia.

Um, the other thing that I want to um uplift since I was um unable to share my thoughts on the previous election, so I'll just share um in general that when we um are when there is a time crunch for something like our special um the appointment process so that we can work backwards from it to give as much opportunity as we can for the community to be able to engage in it and and to be able to give the most time for the community and then we on our end can hold those special meetings at the end.

I had a list of the dates that would be possible for us to do so, and I saw, and I can share that with you all.

Um I would hope that in the future, especially when we're having a discussion to be intentional about really building out this council and to move forward.

That uh my council colleagues would have the decency to just let me finish my comments.

Um that would be really appreciated so that we can actually move forward.

Vice mayor, please.

Thank you.

I I just wanted uh, I don't just um I wanted to apologize to both the mayor and to council member Bowen because the mayor did not get a chance to speak on the council appointment because it is his practice that he speaks last.

And um I made the mistake of voting yes, thinking it was on the actual motion, and I forgot that we were voting on calling the question.

So I want to apologize, mayor um for being one of the four votes that um did not allow you to even speak once on the appointment process.

So um I'm sorry.

That's the end of my comment.

Councilmember Simon.

Yes.

Um February, as we know was Black History Month, and uh I want to talk a little bit about that.

I haven't had much of an opportunity, so I'll take it tonight.

Um, first thing I'd like to do is recognize uh a very uh momentous meeting uh that was held at the big tent by Bernard Ashcraft, where our very own Janelle Cameron was recognized, as well as Angela Everett and some other strong black leaders in our community.

And I'd like to read something um from Janelle's award.

Your vision, professionalism, and tireless efforts have strengthened our community, enhanced city services, and fostered collaboration across all departments.

And I wholeheartedly support that.

Also, our chief Angela Averett, she received award as well.

Her professionalism, integrity, and vision have strengthened the bonds between law enforcement, law enforcement, and citizens we serve.

Congratulations, Chief Averett.

Uh also the Stephen Taylor Sanctity of Life Pavilion wasn't able to speak there.

However, I will share a few thoughts.

Uh, one thing I'd like to reiterate, and this was in the Stephen Taylor Syncity of Life resolution, that African Americans are three times, three times as likely as whites to be killed by the police, and that people with mental health issues are 16 times more likely to be killed than other civilians.

And that really brings the power to the Stephen Taylor Sanctuary of Life pavilion, so we could recognize the sanctity of life.

And the concept of that, giving you some history and background, I did a visit to the African American Museum in Washington, DC.

And if anyone hasn't had a chance to visit, you have to visit that museum.

It's absolutely incredible.

And the artwork that was done, the sculpture at our pavilion here in San Leandro, is Smithsonian quality.

It's that good here in San Leandro.

So thank you, staff and the consultant for putting that together.

Also the redlining resolution that we saw that I presented tonight that was drafted by Bernard Ashcraft.

Again, we really need to recognize what occurred here in San Leandro.

And we need to apologize and make corrective steps to reconcile the harm that was done.

And with that, I wanted to share a few photos, if I could, because a picture is worth in this case a million words.

And I think it's important for us council to see this as well as whoever's watching this video now or watch it later.

I took this photograph at the Museum of Us in San Diego in Balboa Park.

Again, another wonderful museum you have to visit if you haven't seen it.

And I came across this exhibit and it showed the wealth gaps in in America between blacks particularly and whites.

And next picture, please.

And this just goes to explain a little bit more about the difference in the piles of cash.

And I I counted the different stacks of cash.

And it's actually a factor of 10.

There's 3.1 stacks of cash for blacks, 33 stacks for whites.

And it just shows how the net worth is changed.

The middle class Americans, the largest asset is the value of their home.

And again, here we go, right back to redlining, like we're talking about.

If we weren't redlined, blacks would have 33, I mean 10 times his amount of equity.

So I just wanted to raise that to your attention.

And again, the next slide will show this.

Again, just you can see the massive disparity between the different races, and we really have to do something to correct that.

And the lastly, I would like to say on this topic, is we really have to go back to comprehensive reform to our city's discipline policy as well as our investigative policy.

We really have to ensure that we are following our code of ethics and fairness and justice, which is not there at this time, but we can correct it.

We can't move forward in a positive direction.

So with my last few seconds here, I do want to share a meeting that I attended today.

I'm the alternate for the East Bay Discharges Authority.

This is where Brian Azavito was the permanent that I did attend today.

Very good meeting, East Bay Dischargers with these big storms coming out.

This highlights some of the projects that we're working on in San Leandro is point-to-sale program where we're planning on having people fix their laterals, their sewer laterals to their homes at time of sale.

That reduces the amount of storm flow that goes into our sewer system.

So it improves the efficiency of our treatment plant by keeping all the stormwater out.

That's a big one.

There's also something called a cargill brine project.

If you've ever driven down in the South Bay alongside 84, the Dumbarton Bridge, you see all the salt ponds.

There's massive amounts of salt buildup and brine buildup down there, 60 years of harvesting salt, and they have to find a way to dispose of it.

This is going to help Ebda and help San Leandro to bring revenue to us to our plant, where they're planning on pumping up that brine, that salt, through an existing shell pipeline, a gas oil gas pipeline, and discharging it near our San Leandro Marina to our discharge into the middle of the bay.

This is a great opportunity for us at EBDA, which we are a part of in San Leandro to bring in more revenue here to our area.

And lastly, I'd like to share that.

So your time is up.

I'd like at least one minute.

So we've got uh things that I'd like to uplift.

On the 21st, there is a blood drive, and we encourage folks to share the gift of life.

That's at the Barbara Lee Center beginning beginning at 8 a.m.

You can sign up with uh uh Red Cross.

Secondly, I'd like to thank the Vietnamese American Community Center of the East Bay for their promotion of lunar new year, and then highlight the city's uh celebration of lunar new year at the library.

Also on this Saturday, February 21st, we encourage folks to attend.

The event runs from one o'clock to three o'clock.

Uh lastly, I want to just celebrate the work done by the Alameda County Housing Authority.

In the City of San Lander, we don't have our own housing authority.

We partner with the county.

And one of the most powerful county programs is the family self-sufficiency program.

Uh they invited us as council members to attend this uh past weekend, seven days ago, and it was just a powerful event where we were able to see how the kindness of mentors has helped people who are stuck in poverty to set goals, pursue those goals, have someone nudge them along, pick them up when they stumbled, with a number of people then becoming homeowners, getting promotions at work, and just to see the powerful support around housing in our community and the collaboration with the county.

I'm grateful for everything that we do in partnership because it's hard to do things alone, and so thank you to Alameda County for the housing authority there.

So with that, it is time to adjourn.

And again, we are adjourning in memory of Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jesse Jackson.

So let's take a just a couple of seconds here to reflect on his legacy.

So thank you for your indulgence.

It is 10 46 and we are adjourned.