All right.

Alright.

Well, Okay, so we are going to come to order.

The time is seven oh six.

Today is Monday, July sixth, and we are here at uh City Hall on East 14th.

At this point in time, I will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please rise if you're able to.

So I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it's one of the school.

Present.

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.

Then wait for public comment on that item to be called.

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

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

A countdown timer will appear for their convenience.

And when the time is up, the microphone will be muted.

All raised hands outside of public comment will be lowered to avoid confusion.

Once public comment is opened, hands may be raised to speak.

There will be a 30-minute window for public comments on items not on the agenda, which will take place under item seven public comments as per the published agenda.

After the 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.

So for item three on our agenda, we did meet in closed session to discuss two items.

No reportable action was taken, but direction was given for item four.

We don't have recognitions today, but we do have our consent calendar.

Do we have any amendments?

I.e.

council members, would you like to pull any item on our consent calendar?

If not, I will go to public comment.

Seeing none, let's initiate public comment on this item.

Mayor, we have received one comment card.

Uh apologies.

That would be incorrect.

One comment card.

And there are two hands raised online.

Please proceed in person.

Our in-person commenter is Jenny Madsen.

So hi, it's Jenny Madsen again, and I'm here tonight strictly to thank you and encourage you to vote the second reading through on the changes to the re rental stabilization ordinance, which gave tenants the freedom from having to pay the pass-through for the fee, the rental housing program fee.

This is important, it's not just me.

It's a lot of, in fact, it probably won't help me at all, but this is a big deal to most of the tenants in town.

And it was smart, it was big spirited.

It was forward linked thinking.

And I thank you for doing it and hope you can come through again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no more comment cards received for this item.

So we'll close public comment in person and we will open up public comment online.

Our first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Council.

Uh, I would like to comment briefly on three items on the consent agenda.

Uh and through the chair, I just would like to say how well you look, Jenny.

I love that sweater.

Uh with respect to item five J, uh, I want to thank the mayor for again appointing uh the at-large seat.

I hope that uh this appointment will stick.

The community police review board is uh like other boards and commission, serves a very important function uh in our city and really it it works best when it's fully fully uh you know full filled.

Uh with regards to item five C as needed bakery.

I love you.

You're the new meeting space.

If you want to meet with the mayor or other council members, that's where you meet up.

Uh I uh I agree with this uh decision uh that you're going to make to reduce the rent.

It makes the city a good landlord.

Um by the same token, I you know I know that the city needs money, so I I assume since as need is doing good business, am I correct to assume that that uh that you know the amount of their business license fee might go up as their revenues increase.

So everybody go down and buy some coffee.

And uh, like uh Ms.

Madsen, I I too would like to thank you, the council for your historic work on the rent stabilization ordinance and other housing platforms.

Uh I I think this is uh, you know, one of those kind of hidden costs that we we don't think about.

And I'm also mindful that that there is an appeal process, and I think we're gonna learn a lot in the next couple years, and that you, the council will be able to make adjustments uh should uh your decision seem unfair either to uh to tenants and or or landlords.

So thank you and on with the rest of the meeting.

Thank you.

The next online speaker is Lucas.

Lucas, if you're there, Lucas, I can see that you have your hand raised.

This is your chance to speak on the consent calendar.

Mayor, there's no more hands raised online.

Okay, so at this point, I'll close public comment on the consent calendar and come back for any discussion or emotion.

Councilmember James Aguilar, please.

Mayor, I'd like to move the consent calendar.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bowen.

I'll second that.

So we've got a motion by James Aguilar, Councilmember and a second by Councilmember Sue Bowen.

This point in time with no further discussion, please vote.

Councilmember Bolt, may we have your vote?

Yes.

Thank you.

All votes are in with five yes votes.

And council member Viveros Walton and Councilmember Victor Aguilar absent.

At this point in time, we'll move to item number six.

I do not believe we have any reports today.

Looking left and right and confirming, so we will move to public comment, which is a time where we take comment from our public, where you may address us on items that are not on our agenda today, but which are within our subject matter jurisdiction.

Madam Clerk, how many cards do we have?

Mayor, we've received four comment cards.

And then how many hands online?

Presently one, two.

Okay.

Let's proceed in person, please.

Our first three in-person speakers are Marquita Banks, Linda Austin, and Jenny Madsen.

Hi, um, I'm back again regarding the parking in district too again.

I've also emailed you guys a petition that's been signed.

You can let me know if you received it from the neighbors in the area because we're basically being robbed without a gun.

We are getting tickets.

What's again, left and right.

They you guys haven't even followed your own rules.

You're giving out tickets on the holiday, just on Juneteenth.

There was tickets given out.

Um, this Saturday thing again.

There's no school.

Right now in the summertime, there is no school, and we're still getting tickets.

Why are we not able to park there on Saturdays whenever they have events at the school, they're able to park there, and they're not getting tickets.

I also would include it in the email videos.

Video showing you guys that during school time, parents are sitting there for 45 minutes, one hour, waiting.

It's supposed to be a loading unloading zone, but it's not being used that as that.

The parents are able to sit there, they're not getting tickets, but the residents are getting tickets.

Um, once again, San Langel High has a huge parking lot that they should be able to use with a security guard able to guide them in and out.

I've seen video of that.

There's a big parking lot that they can be used that they can use to um escort them in and out.

So I don't know what the difference is with us parking there and being stationed there versus parents coming, being parking there, stationed there, saying it's unsafe for the kids.

If it's unsafe for the kids, it's unsafe for everybody, whether it's the parents or the residents.

So um they're saying it's it's a law, it's a law that's been going since 2009.

Laws are made to be be changed.

For example, Roe versus Wade was a law for 50 years, and it has now been changed.

So we should be able to get this changed too.

And why is it that they are able to restrict us on both sides of the street?

San Leonjo High is on one side of the street.

We should at least be allowed the other side.

Thank you.

Your time has elapsed.

Thank you.

The next speakers are Linda Austin, Jenny Madsen, and Mike Katzlacabe.

Okay, I'm talking about the parking district two also.

Um the problem is that also the Saturday is ridiculous.

Why are we why are we not able to park in front of a place where we pay rent?

Not to mention sometimes I work overnight.

I want to come home in the morning and park in front of my residence.

There's nowhere else to park.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

Where are we supposed to park?

Am I supposed to go three, four, five miles down to and walk back to my residence to park?

It doesn't make sense.

I can't do it.

And we have other neighbors, some of them have HISS workers that come in in home care for those who don't know what that is that need to come and help those residents.

They can't even park in front of the building to come help the residents.

It's ridiculous.

I mean, Saturday, before it was Monday through Friday.

Okay, I can see Monday through Friday.

Seven to five, I don't understand.

There's nobody loading from seven to five.

During school hours, maybe.

In between that, somebody should be able to park there.

If I'm sick, I can't even stay home because I have nowhere to park.

I have to get up and find somewhere to park to go home and be sick.

I would like to be able to be sick and be able to park in front of my residence.

Is it ridiculous?

I can't have company because they have to pay for parking.

Nobody wants to come to my house and see if I'm okay and they have to come and pay 47 dollars for parking.

I've received parking tickets on Saturday.

I mean, Saturday is ridiculous.

Why is why do we have to pay for parking on Saturdays?

And these are not young children, these are Tays.

Some of them are driving to school.

They have a football size uh parking lot.

They can go in and out of that all day long.

What safety issues do they have?

On either side of us, we have elementary schools.

They don't have the same size, they don't have the same restrictions that we have.

I can understand you saying that for elementary school children, but for Tays, transitioning age, youth.

No, I don't understand it at all.

So I hope you guys uh listen to us and address the issues, please.

Thank you.

The next in-person speakers are Jenny Madsen and Mike Katz Lakabe.

So I need to change my brain now because what I decided I was gonna say in public comment was not what I put in my e-comment last night, which is pretty pointed, and I hope somebody read it.

There is private equity ProLodges, a private equity company buying up all the warehouses over in district six, they own 40 of them now.

I haven't finished calculating the amount of square footage they do, but this is I I spent a couple of years focused on rental housing, and now I realize that I've let my neighborhood be sold away from around me.

This is not good when you have one property owner owning most of the property in town, but I came basically because I don't even remember how long ago it was, but I came the first time I ever got up in a public space to speak, it was like 2011 or something, and I had just seen at the public library, San Leandro Library, a postcard of three women from 1915 sitting on the white sand beaches of San Leandro at the end of Davis Street, and the ramifications of that just blew my mind.

What did they do?

What did the fathers of San Leandro do with the white sand beaches of San Leandro?

They put the county dump in.

That's where the white sand beaches of San Leandro were.

How different life would be for San Leandro if they had seen because there are no other white sand beaches.

Even Alameda has to truck in their sand and it's not white.

You need to make the decisions about what direction San Leandro goes in with a long view.

And I'm tired of why I just feel like San Leandro has sold itself cheap for its entire year.

I'm done.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Mike Katz Lakabe.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, staff, and members of the public.

My name is Mike Katzlacabe.

And I'm here tonight to urge you to enact a ban on data centers in the city of San Leandro.

Field like venture capital and the need for more computing power to feed the insatiable appetite of probabilistic automation known as AI, companies are trying to build more and more data centers.

Unfortunately, these data centers consume huge amounts of electricity and water to process the even larger amounts of intellectual property theft on which these systems are built.

While a few wealthy corporations benefit from these data centers, the communities that are saddled with these data centers do not.

These communities pay higher energy costs as data centers can pay more for electricity than local residents.

Data centers also compete for scarce water resources and can disrupt local water supplies, as happened in Mansfield, Georgia, where a meta data center is located.

Nearby residents and businesses are forced to endure pain-inducing levels of noise from the thousands of servers and associated cooling systems.

In some cases, data centers may be powered by methane gas turbines, which are not only noisy but poison neighbors with their toxic emissions.

The benefits to the local economy?

Well, they're minimal because data centers do not have many employees that might spend money and time locally.

If that's not enough, the chat bots powered by these data centers are prone to produce output that provides instructions for and has caused people to commit suicide.

It's always the right time to do the right thing and take action to prevent data centers in San Leandro now, as communities in Coachella and Mendocino County are doing this week.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more comment cards from in the room.

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

Our first online speaker is Douglas Spalding.

Well, hello again.

It seems data centers are all in the news, or maybe it's all in my algorithms just based on my interests.

Um the issue came to light uh for me when I went to comment on the Hayward data center project next door, and uh I was surprised to to find in the process of doing that that the project had already been approved and is uh slated to begin construction this year.

It it bypassed the city council in Hayward and and somehow got shepherded through the planning committee as a uh just being um uh zoned as a as an industrial office uh project.

Uh and then when um council member bowen raised uh the issue here in San Leandro, that also caught my attention.

I appreciate you doing that.

Um, I think we do need to talk about the potential for a data center in San Leandro because they're building them everywhere.

Well, I don't believe such a uh a process has started yet in San Leandro, it could at any time, whether it's privately contracted or or facilitated by the city.

Um, you know, but but we can't be sure given the the um the widespread use of NDAs in this industry, uh the litigious nature of the indices who are willing to bully municipalities by threatening to sue them.

Um, and after all, you guys uh often meet in closed sessions, so how how are we to know?

Um I understand the need for revenue, but but this is not really the right revenue stream.

Data centers are not a nice neutral source.

Uh, I believe you should elevate uh the issue of a moratorium now before the uh priority setting session next March of 2027.

Uh, on the way towards uh I would think to prohibit, but but a very minimum we need to study this, we need to assess it, and we need to regulate any potential projects.

Um I'll have more to say about the the cost and benefit analysis on top of what Mike just said, but but but it's sufficient to say that the costs are too much for the city of San Leandro to bear.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next online speaker is Lucas.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

I I apologize for the technical difficulties with my microphone earlier.

Um, thank you, uh Mayor and Council for taking my comments this evening.

I'll maybe quickly state what I wanted to say during the consent calendar and then move to my general public comments um on this consent calendar.

The first one that I wanted to comment on was item five A, which and I guess this this generally applies for uh council ordinances going forward, which is even though 5A tries to prohibit the pass through of a fee uh from the landlord to the tenant, tenants tend not to itemize the fees that constitute a rent payment.

You know, landlords don't charge you know the solar fee and the garbage fee and the parking maintenance fee and the asphalt, whatever resurfacing fee.

They just put it all into one big rent payment.

So try as you might to prevent a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars for the rent stabilization fee to be passed through.

Landlords will find a way to increase rents instead of calling it a rent stabilization program fee, they'll just say rent is up two percent instead of one percent next year or next month or whatever it might be.

So that's my comment on item five A.

Well-intentioned but likely and effective in the long term on items 5G and 5H.

I'll make my standard comment of please shepherd and steward the people's money responsibly.

Um, you know, whenever the budget happens, people tend to try to get their beaks wet, and there are some expenses here that look like traditional wake beak wedding uh type of expenses, and on the um election changes.

I hope we've studied well how that will affect things in the long term.

You know, single district elections tend to produce a little bit more partisanship uh than we have I think we have had in the city.

Hopefully in the long term things will go up.

I'll reserve my other comments for the other items.

Thank you.

Your time has elapsed.

Our next online speaker is Virginia Oxley.

Virginia, if you're there, you can unmute yourself.

Hi, Virginia.

Are you there?

Yes, we're here.

Great.

We can hear you.

Okay, good.

Well, I I just heard everybody talk.

I heard, you know, the residents side, I'm listening to you guys.

And um, I'm listening now.

But the thing is, like she said, the schools and everything is taking over everything, and they park in front of resident people's homes and all that.

I think, you know, you guys should look at the residents more than schools.

If they need more parking, why don't they build a parking lot?

And build one taller, they can bring more kids in there.

And I like to say that.

My parents live around a corner as well, and there's like there's people that park around there, and they have people where their um in-home services that park that can't park because of all the residents.

So I see it from both ends as a homeowner and from a um resident in an apartment.

Where there is so it was two of us in the car.

I mean, two of us in the hall, we can't we're getting tickets because of nowhere to park.

And you guys I think you know, as a council person, you should look at the residents, still you guys think they're more businesses.

Residents wants to make this thing happen, but yet it's still it's costing more residence because of what's going on with this parking issue.

You know, I mean, school, I know this is this important thing, but they have things every day almost.

It's like a concert over there.

Nowhere to park.

Nowhere to park.

So it it's about their venue, it should be about the resident venue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more hands raised online.

Okay, so we will close our public comment.

Just to remind our public commenters, because it's not an agendized item, we don't generally comment except to address misunderstandings.

At this point in time, we will move to our next agenda item, which is a public hearing regarding the first reading of an ordinance amending the zoning code to modify off street parking regulations and establish transportation demand management regulations primarily related primarily to new development.

So we do have Lord Desuare's associate planning associate planner here to introduce this item.

Welcome.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Lourdes Suarez, representing the community development department together with transportation consultants from WTRANs and Nelson NyGard, we will be presenting our recommendations for zoning code amendments for parking and transportation demand management regulations, requirements that would be for private property development, and this is primarily for new development with some um renovations as well.

These zoning code amendments are a response to housing element action 14.1, which asserted that parking minimums are a barrier to housing construction, and this particular action called for both a study of the zoning code's vehicle parking minimums and a consideration of a TDM ordinance.

TDM stands for Transportation Demand Management.

Our consultants analyzed parking requirements, recent housing entitlements, and best practices, and they conducted stakeholder outreach.

And this all happened during 2025.

Their findings are published in the parking and TDM study, which is in your packet in attachment C.

With this analysis, staff have arrived at two main recommendations.

For parking, the recommendation is to consolidate the land use categories, reduce parking minimums, and update other parking related requirements.

For TDM, the recommendation is to establish TDM regulations for new developments and certain expansions.

These zoning code amendments would align the parking minimums closer to actual vehicle parking demand and implement state laws and regional best practices.

Up next, we will have Brian Kanepa of W Trans to present the parking analysis and recommendations.

All right.

So to dive right in, we did a considerable amount of outreach and research into the city, its requirements, and parking uh general utilization.

Um, and some of the key findings that we found were not surprisingly, although there is the downtown, the other walkable parts of the city, that most of San Leandro still remains relatively auto-oriented today.

Um relatively limited transit access depending on where you are.

Um and there are bike facilities, but they're kind of they're incomplete from what we've heard from stakeholders, and we can obviously see on maps.

As Lourdes mentioned, we did take a look at the city's minimum parking requirements in relation to industry standards based on actual peak parking demands by use, and found that in in most cases the minimum parking requirements exceed peak demand.

So even at the highest point of the day, the minimum requirements are higher than that.

Um, and what from what we know from minimum parking requirements is that they can really impact the feasibility of financial viability of projects because we're essentially producing more parking than it's even needed at the peak hour, with parking ranging from cost of about $10,000 per space for surface, $50,000 per space for structure, to 70 to $100,000 for underground parking.

Parking is very expensive.

And lastly, that there are shared parking opportunities within the city.

So there are spots where there are vacant parking spaces currently, but they're not really well utilized depending on where you are.

So the recommendations that we're wanting to put forward is essentially to break the city from a parking requirement perspective into two zones.

The first of which is in the blue area that you can see here on the map, which is in within a half mile of major, what we call major transit stops.

Major transit stops being fixed rail and high frequency bus service, so the tempo line essentially.

State law AB 2097 currently or has already essentially eliminated almost all minimum parking requirements from these areas already.

Our recommendation is just to remove the few remaining ones that are there, which is really for hotels and event centers.

The other piece of this has to do with the green area shown here on the map, which is essentially outside the half mile areas to reduce minimum parking requirements to better align them with actual peak demand that we see from the market.

And we also, I will say that as part of our stakeholder interviews, we did talk with uh commercial and affordable housing developers to get a sense of kind of what their feelings of market demand are as well, and to take those and consolidate uh categories as much as possible so that you can promote an easy turnover of businesses, particularly on the commercial side.

So looking at the actual numbers here, you can see here from the table that we have the existing requirements listed in the middle column and proposed requirements on the right for those of you who don't want to read a whole series of numbers.

Um the residential requirements were primarily reduced by about half a space per unit to better align them with what actual demand is based on per bedrooms for both market rate and below market rate housing.

And then on the commercial side, setting it at two per thousand two spaces per thousand square feet.

And as I mentioned before, by having these standards aligned, whether it be a restaurant or retail or an office, makes it very easy, seamless for businesses to transition from one to another.

So if I have a flower shop and it goes to an office or vice versa, it doesn't cause a problem in being able to actually accommodate that use.

So from an economic standpoint, it's it's much more beneficial.

As part of our study too, we also looked at new proposed bicycle parking requirements for both short-term and long-term bicycle parking.

When I mean by that, I mean by essentially racks for people who are, let's say, stopping off for a coffee versus long-term parking for you know people who are employees and so forth staying there for long, longer periods.

We're also recommending inserting um provisions into the code, not only to deal with your traditional bicycles, but also new cargo, adaptive bikes, e-bikes, other things that have become much more prevalent in these past five, ten years than what we saw before.

And in addition to facilities such as showers and lockers that bicyclists in particular very much rely on for certain uses for like office industrial uses to be able to get there and change effectively.

And this is what the bicycle requirements essentially look like, kind of same format as the vehicle requirements.

Um the main transition you'll see is that we're essentially proposing that the city decouple its vehicle requirements from its bicycle requirements.

Currently, for as you can see up here, um there are short-term spaces, let's say for multi unit residential, where it's a percentage of the vehicle requirement.

So as you provide more car parking, therefore, then you have to provide more bicycle parking, which is really not how the how the math works for bicycles.

Um, so what we are proposing is based on best standards practice from ABBP, which is the association for Pedestrian bicycle Professionals, and these are standards that we've tailored to to the particular community as well.

So, again, maintaining the short and long-term bicycle parking requirements, but also adding in some elements as I mentioned earlier for showers and lockers for let's say office industrial uses.

The other key recommendations that we're making, there are two of them.

One has to do with unbundled parking pricing.

Unbundled parking pricing, just so everyone understands what that is, it's essentially paying separately from the leasing or purchase price of residential unit and the parking itself.

It doesn't make it more expensive, it doesn't make it less expensive.

It just simply itemizes the price so that the resident has the option to pay it or not.

So that if you have two cars that are currently bundled in the price of your unit right now, and you only have one car, you only have to pay for one space rather than two, for example.

Now, state law has already mandated this in AB 1317 for any multifamily uh residential development of 16 or more units.

Um we're simply trying to expand that a little bit more to increase housing affordability for those that are five or more units.

Um there are some, I will say that there are some restrictions on this.

This cannot apply for 100% affordable housing projects, um, things that have low-income housing tax credits and so forth.

And that's because of state law restrictions.

And the last requirement or last recommendation that we're making here is has to do with what we call shared parking.

So multiple uses being able to take advantage of a series at the same parking lot if there is vacancy there.

Um and this is really setting it in line with state law.

Um AB 894 um was passed essentially setting the requirement that all local jurisdictions recognize that shared parking can occur within 2,000 feet.

Um so that kind of broadens the radius.

Um, and this would really only be effective in the uh the green part of the city that I showed you earlier that has minimum parking requirements, but allows the use to be able to come in and if they can demonstrate that there is available parking at another lot, private lot is within 2,000 feet, they can work with that law owner and come up with an agreement to satisfy their minimum parking requirement.

The other piece is just um stating that an AB 2097, not only did AB 2097 eliminate most minimum parking requirements within that zone, there's also a lesser known provision that allows um jurisdictions and city staff to require that any parking built in those areas can be um compelled to be shared or publicly made publicly accessible.

Now, this is already allowed by state law, it is used exceedingly sparingly these days, but uh we did want to call attention to it because that is an option that remains at the city's disposal um, you know, disposal.

Um there are some, I will say there are some jurisdictions that are considering using it for non-residential development such that um spaces would be shared outside of business hours.

But again, that's a little bit of a TBD.

And with that, I will turn it over to Alex Mercury for to talk about transportation demand management.

Good evening, mayor, members of the council.

I'm Alex McCurry with Nelson Nygaard.

Happy to be here tonight to talk about our recommendations for transportation demand management.

Um the first phase of our work looked at best practices and existing conditions and included stakeholder discussions with members of the community to understand what the challenges and opportunities are for TDM today in San Leandro.

So what we found were that there are challenges today.

Staff time to support TDM is limited, and funding as well for TDM is limited.

The development climate today is not poised to absorb large new costs, which um can sometimes be a component of aggressive TDM programs.

And the heart of TDM is behavior change and cultural change, which takes time.

With those things in mind, our work really zeroed in on an approach that uh would provide a sort of starter TDM program that would allow the program to build capacity um over time, but is really calibrated for the resources that you all have today.

Um so you can start um changing behavior and um seeing results in the way people travel, but also make sure that it's not an impediment to the types of projects that the community is working towards today.

Our approach to achieve that includes a very simple TDM ordinance as well as some administrative guidelines that are tools to help staff and stakeholders and developers achieve the things that are outlined in the TDM program.

As I mentioned, we want those requirements in the ordinance to be really calibrated to local conditions, so minimizing new costs, minimizing new burdens on staff, but still giving an opportunity for the city to start making progress towards this goal.

And we also identified opportunities for how that growth over time could happen and the types of things that as the program grows, you all might want to consider for including.

So first, there's a set of mandatory TDM measures that any applicable project would need to implement.

There are also a sort of menu of optional TDM measures from which a development would need to select at least one.

There's a simplified set of submittal requirements to sort of document for each project how they're going to approach TDM.

And there's a requirement to conduct a survey every two years to understand how people are coming and going from the development.

And lastly, we recommend a self-certification process for developers to show that their projects are adhering to these guidelines.

I'll just briefly now run through those details of those requirements.

The thresholds for applicability for TDM and our recommendations are shown on screen.

So these would be only applying to projects of a certain minimum size.

Our recommendation is for those size thresholds to be 50,000 gross square feet for non-residential projects and 25 units or more for residential.

So smaller projects would be exempt from these requirements.

As I mentioned, the other requirements, submittal requirements being a simple checklist and monitoring requirements to be self-certification, are meant to streamline the review process for staff and the submittal process for developers.

The mandatory TDM measures here on screen would need to be done by any project that is subject to these requirements.

So that would include, again, a mode share survey every two years.

It would include some type of educational materials to be given out on site or the employment of a coordinator to help people understand and utilize non-driving transportation options.

We've also included the requirement for a bicycle repair station, which is a sort of resource to have on site that makes it easier for people to perform basic maintenance and fixes on bicycles.

The other component are these optional TDM measures.

So each project would have to select at least one of them to fulfill the TDM requirements.

This list includes some strategies that are applicable only to non-residential projects, some that are only applicable to residential, and a couple that are applicable to both.

So for non-residential projects, their options would include flexible work arrangements.

And I'll mention also that for each of these measures in the TDM guidelines, there's additional detail for exactly what would need to be done to achieve compliance.

So, for example, flexible work arrangements would need to be offered to a minimum threshold of people on site for a minimum number of days as opposed to just an open-ended requirement.

So flexible work arrangements, pre-tax transportation benefits for employees, contributing to or operating a shuttle service, providing on-site end-of-trip amenities that's a part biking or walking or rolling.

Um real-time information resources, so displays that show when buses or other transportation options are coming uh to or from the site, financial incentives such as discounts or transit passes that encourage people to try other modes, delivery and amen amenities that make it easier for people to get things brought to them on site in a consolidated location to minimize additional trips and car share services at residential projects with that I will pass it back over to Lourdes.

Thank you.

Staff does recommend that city council adopt an ordinance to adopt and repeal zoning code chapter 4.08 off street parking loading, and adopt zoning code chapter 4.10, transportation demand management.

We are available for questions.

Okay, so as part of this public hearing, we'll first take clarifying questions from council, then we will go to open our public hearing and hear from our public.

We will close public hearing and proceed back to discussion deliberation amongst council members.

So at this point in time, council members, do you have questions?

Okay.

Okay, so not seeing any questions from council members.

I will ask a couple.

Um for the 25 unit apartment building, just pick a hypothetical one.

What's the anticipated cost increase associated with this?

I'll hand it off to Alex.

Thank you.

Yes.

So I'll just bring this up.

Yes, a 25 unit is our minimum threshold.

Our goal was this with this was to essentially have a pathway to have close to zero net new cost.

Um some of these options are by design very low cost.

So amongst these required measures.

Um these are some of these overlap with the parking management um programs that Brian discussed.

So unbundling parking, for example, is a way of managing leases that ideally does not include net new costs.

Bicycle repair stations or tools are are very inexpensive, um, and the um education materials would be a sort of low but ongoing cost for um messaging and paper goods and things like that.

So we did not do a detailed cost analysis, but these are intended to be very low, very um uh minimal capital costs and also low um ongoing hands-on need from property owners.

Okay.

Uh before proceeding with my questions, I see the the council members are weighing in, so I'll come to council members Simon first.

Yes, I have a question on the proposed vehicle parking minimums.

I heard an example of a flower shop thrown out.

So if a flower shop came to an existing storefront and wanted to start their flower shop, they would be required to parking places, or how if there's a thousand square feet, how if there's no parking lot, they're just storefront on a street, how do they provide any parking places?

There we go.

Okay.

Um, well, to just to clarify too, within the AB 2097 areas, there are no minimums currently.

They're already gone, so those are essentially gone.

How it would work outside of that area, if I was a flower shop, for example, and the requirement currently is lower than let's say a restaurant, a restaurant wanted to come in, that restaurant would be required to try to provide parking spaces even if there are no parking spaces there.

And oftentimes the result is that the restaurant is essentially barred from entering that space.

Um, so it prevents the basically if there's no parking available to be able to accommodate that, those uses that cannot come in.

And so that's essentially what it's made to do is that if the requirement is the same as the current use, even if there is no parking there, you since you have the same requirement, you can have that new previously more intense use be able to occupy that space, if that makes sense.

So another question, for example, in the manor, there's a uh small shopping area, which is in the green zone that you're showing.

Yep.

And corner of manor and Farnsworth, there's shared parking parking lots for several businesses.

Almost like a small little mall area.

How if a new business rents out one of those spots, how do they determine?

I mean, how is it determined that they have an adequate parking places when it's just shared shared spaces?

That's a little unique because you do have multiple businesses that are occupying the same parking lot right now.

They very well could have an internal agreement about who how many businesses are which businesses are allocated certain parking spaces, but from simply a parking requirement aspect, again, what it would mean is that any new business coming in is not required to provide more or less parking than that current business.

So it means that any business that's entering the spot of a previously occupied business, it doesn't require them to produce suddenly more parking spaces.

Okay.

And last one, if there's a business that just faces a street front, there's no parking lot around.

Are you how do you require them to have parking when there's just a street front?

So that so that's part of the problem that we're trying to alleviate right now is that if you are currently a requirement if you have a business right now that currently requires, let's say two per thousand square feet, this is the current code, and and the new use has five per thousand square feet.

That new business trying to come in, the city would look at that and say you have to provide more parking because your more intense use.

Find us more parking, even if it's not available.

With these new requirements, what we're saying is that new business that's coming in doesn't need to provide more parking.

It can basically do what the existing business is doing.

So that's why I mean in terms of increasing turnover uh between businesses.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmara Bowen, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I as you were talking, it I sparked a few questions for me.

And then I just want to understand for clarity.

Um the transmission demand management system that we're talking about and and the amendments, it's part of the housing element, and that's because if you can clarify, the intended goal is for us to figure out ways to make it easier to build more housing to bring more businesses in.

Can you clarify for me exactly how reducing these parking requirements can do that?

I know that there was the number thrown out about how much a structured parking space can cost.

Is the idea that if a developer doesn't have to spend this money between 40,000, whatever I forget the exact amount that we talked about, um, that we could then build more housing or build um more put more units in.

The short answer is yes.

Um, you know, a lot of times, particularly affordable housing developments right now, simply just have a hard time making a pencil out at all.

So, you know, we've talked with um some affordable housing developers, and I've worked with them on other projects too.

Um, simply getting it to be feasible to build the the actual units themselves require that these or make it much more possible for the units uh sorry with a lower requirement to actually have a pencil out at the end of the day.

So you would probably very likely have lower costs for the units themselves, um, and potentially the opportunity to fit in more units, more density.

Again, that's questionable.

I can't say that for certain, but that could be an outcome.

Uh it could be an outcome, but that is the intent that that's what we're hoping happens.

Absolutely.

It's a it's a it's kind of a two-fer in a way.

We're we are targeting affordability as the kind of a key metric here, but also the possibility to actually increase density because building parking, you know, even surface parking, but definitely structured parking, takes up a lot of space.

Um, and with that space, you end up decreasing the amount of density.

Um I will say just historically, just so you understand how much I'm talking about here, data going back to some of the first minimum parking requirements that were instituted in Oakland, raise the cost of housing by 30%.

So we're talking about not just a few dollars, we're talking about substantial change in in the cost of housing.

Great.

And I appreciate that the options that um residential projects or non-residential projects are trying to be like low cost, try to incentivize people to do these things and also to build.

What sort of um uh in terms of implementation and accountability, what sort of strategies do we have to let the affordable housing providers or other businesses like no, this is we're trying this is gonna make it easier for you.

This is why we want you to come, this is why we want to build, and then how do we make sure people that this isn't just gonna be you know, words that we change, but that doesn't have any meat to it.

Well, I'll just say from the from the parking requirement piece of this, because I've I've done this similar work in other cities.

I actually completely revised the parking code 15 years ago in the city of Sacramento, for example.

You know, I live down the street, I actually live in Sacramento at one point.

Um there was a supermarket down the street from me.

The parking lot was always about half empty, even at peak hours.

Once we changed the minimum parking requirements, suddenly they were actually able to build out into that parking lot that was previously unused to create a deli that actually served as a community meeting point, oddly enough.

So oftentimes it doesn't really necessarily need to be announced in a way.

Developers and businesses will seek this out.

New developers will, and existing businesses that know that they have underused underutilized parking lots, will absolutely move to take advantage of it.

Because those are the people who will know that hey, my parking lot's mostly empty, I can do something better with this than what it currently is.

If you question, well, what if someone's parking lot is heavily used?

Great.

They probably might say great, I'm happy with my parking lot the way it is, and it's heavily used.

But I think it's a sort of thing where it doesn't hurt the city to be able to announce this to say that, hey, we're trying to open up more um economic activity for the city and lower prices for residents and businesses, but I think it's also something that will happen organically.

That's great.

I was thinking, um, Councilmember Aguilar about the parking lot at Bayfield and all of the things that could be imagined as well.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

So does this green, I guess it was the blue zone?

I don't remember the colors.

Does it cover the parking lot at Bayfair?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

It does.

Okay, thank you.

You can see it at the corner there, um, and along Hisparian as well.

I'll take your word for it that it covers the full parking lot.

I again see that it's at Hisperian.

I'm just having trouble seeing that it gets the full parking lot, but if it does, that's good.

Um, talk to us a little bit about um the requests from developers to make this change.

Are we getting requests from developers in the city of San Leandro?

And maybe that's better directed to city staff.

We constantly get inquiries about our requirements.

Um, I think uh more to the point uh of the of the residential projects that were studied uh to establish what had been entitled previously.

Uh several of those projects have received not only parking exemptions that were needed to be approved by planning commission.

Um, but a few of them also had requirements for parking management plans, and so ultimately a lot of these housing projects that were entitled in the last several years already received a reduced parking requirements.

So they were looking into building less, reducing their cost, and that is uh a strong testament to what developers were looking for, reduced parking requirements from what we had uh codified at that time.

So just looking at it to our audience, I know that we don't have a lot of residents here that would be impacted by cars being like moved out of the apartment building that gets built into the neighborhoods.

So they're not here today.

So help me understand how we are thinking about limiting the number of cars that these apartments, uh, the apartment tenants have.

Limiting for existing residents?

Or the new construction.

So suppose we build 50 units, and in the old days, we would have had just hypothetically to keep the math simple, 100 spaces required.

But now we're only gonna say, oh, you only need 50 spaces.

Again, these are just hypotheticals.

The remaining cars will presumably go into the neighborhoods.

So my question is, you know, if if I'm trying to trade off this concept of, yeah, I want density, but if the apartment dwellers say, Well, you know, I'm gonna park in the neighborhoods, then there's there's uh an externality, so to speak.

There's a voice here that's not being heard.

So tell me a little bit about how we're thinking about making sure that those people that come to the apartments don't have vehicles that they need to park.

Okay, right.

Okay.

So thank you.

Um, I'm gonna give actually kind of a two part two-part answer to the question because it's a very legitimate one.

One is that we are recommending minimum parking requirements that actually better align with your peak market demand.

Right now, your minimum parking requirements exceed the demand.

So if you actually go out and build the amount of parking that you're required to do for most of your uses, you will have empty spaces, even at peak hour.

That's essentially how they're designed to function.

And what we're saying is let's put that better in line with what the market actually wants it to in the actual demand we see at peak hour.

So ultimately, will we see some cars shift on the street?

Possibly, but the amount of parking that we're still requiring for these uses is really tended to be at peak hour to be able to address that demand.

Now, minimum parking requirements themselves, you know, ostensibly are were created to prevent spillover parking.

They succeed partially, even if you have very high mode parking requirements, that doesn't necessarily lead to no spillover parking, particularly if you have no on-street parking management.

So, as part of the recommendations, I would say is that if that is a concern, the city always can look up better on-street parking management if that does become a concern with spillover.

But if you're asking how to lower the demand for vehicle ownership, so that fewer people actually live in these units with fewer vehicles, there's a couple different ways.

One is the unbundling of parking.

That in itself actually lowers demand, it's shown by about 15% in some cases, simply because people actually see the itemized cost of the parking.

And you actually end up what they call self-selecting.

People with fewer cars tend to then gravitate towards those developments.

The other side then really has to do with transportation demand management, but Alex can speak to, but again, you know, transportation management, you can make that more stringent and more robust, but there could be a cost associated with that.

And I think our recommendation was very cognizant of not trying to increase costs, even if it meant having fewer vehicles in these developments.

I don't know, Alex, do you want to say anything?

Yeah, that was a great summary.

I'll just reiterate that in the long run, that is a key role for transportation demand management, and there's a real core rationale for why we're tackling these two topics together.

That ideally were right sizing parking, and then the other side of the scale is incentivizing and encouraging other options to make it easier to get around without driving.

So in the long run, those those are meant to really move in sync and to manage from a demand side some of the issues you've highlighted about having too many cars, more cars than people or more cars than space.

Um on the TDM side, that will take time.

Um, and again, it's it's a type of approach that takes some iteration, it takes some trial and error and learning what works and learning what TDM programs people really need to respond to.

Um, and it's designed in our recommendations to give the city tools to grow and manage and you know adjust these requirements over time as those types of issues come and go.

So, my last question before we're going to uh our public hearing, um did we consider only making changes in the TODs that we've established?

On the transportation demand management side, we didn't.

Um, early on, we um assessed existing efforts today, many of which extend beyond the TOD zones, things like the flex shuttle.

Um, TDM really works best looking at both kind of home and employment locations.

So in our um our early analysis, our estimation was that the best approach for San Leander would be to be holistic and look at different parts of the city and give the city tools to adjust the options for different land uses.

I'm sorry, just really quickly as a follow-up.

So TDM is different in the in the green and the blue.

The TDM recommendations, we considered having geographic sub-areas, but ultimately recommended just differentiating based on land uses.

So these green and blue are applicable only to the parking component.

Thank you.

Okay.

So your question for parking about whether did we consider making the changes specifically to the TODs?

Uh it was considered, but when we looked part of the task, what we were tasked with was looking at how your minimum parking requirements align with peak demand and market demand.

And unequivocally, they were higher than what we saw out in the green zones.

So the green zone, sorry, this one large zone.

Um so when we looked at that and we looked at what we were tasked with in terms of increasing housing affordability, essentially the direction from the housing element.

That's why we felt it essential to include it in here.

We did have an option within our report um to not just reduce the minimum parking requirements, but to do away with them altogether.

Um, but it was the direction of the planning commission to pursue the reduced minimum parking requirements rather than the full elimination.

Thank you.

Um at this point in time, we will go to public comment.

Oh, I did not have we will open up our public hearing on this matter.

The time is currently 808, and our public hearing is now open.

Mayor, we have not received any comment cards for this hearing, but we do have one hand raised online.

Okay, so with respect to the in-person part of our public hearing, we are closing that.

We're opening up our public hearing online.

Our online speaker is Alvaro Ramos.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right, so um one thing I saw was that the single-family and two-family use requirements uh were unchanged, but I think they should be changed.

And I want to give you an example from my neighborhood.

Um, there's a single-family suburban street that I drive down, and the street park on the street parking is totally occupied on both sides of the street.

Cars will uh double park temporarily.

So when I have to drive down the street, I frequently have to um bypass a double parked car because it's blocking the street, which means narrow inaccessibility for cars driving in the opposite direction and poor visibility to see pedestrians.

It's just too risky.

Is the neighborhood for storing cars or is it for people to live in houses?

And I think that we also need to uh tax car infrastructure to disincentivize building and maintenance.

The parking lots are a waste of land.

Drive-through businesses where you have to drive to get goods or services are wasteful.

Cars have given the United States the most expensive transportation infrastructure system in the world.

It's too expensive to buy a car, to maintain a car, to buy the gas for the fuel, purchase the car insurance, maintain the car infrastructure in the city, and now the oil shock that we have makes it impossible.

We need to relieve stress on the roads uh from excess personal vehicle use, especially on the suburban cul-de-sac.

Um, cars are just losing money for city governments and contributing to deficits.

It's not just an issue for the city of San Leander, it's an issue for all American cities.

You just don't need a car for intercity travel.

You need it to get to a rural area, and we have senior citizens who cannot drive anymore.

I want to ask city staff about research on environmental initiatives uh for lighting standards specifically.

Uh I was watching a few months ago a uh PBS news hour report titled Cities Turned Street Lights Red to Protect Nocturnal Ecosystem, which is basically about how white light blinds animals' vision.

And so it was about biodiversity lighting, which maybe we should incorporate here.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more online commenters.

Okay, so we've closed the public hearing online as well.

We'll come back to council members for uh discussion.

Okay, seeing no discussion, I will just express a couple of concerns.

Um me personally, I'm not ready today to vote.

Yes, others may be.

Uh, because I do want it to come back to us, not just on consent.

I want to have some time to think about this.

I'm particularly concerned about the fact that we impose regulations that could just all we're doing is moving cars into neighborhoods.

Um, I have been in the impression that we've really tried to concentrate densification along in our transit oriented developments.

Uh, this is broader than that.

I'm also concerned about there are a number of neighborhoods where I'm not quite sure about your peak demand and parking minimums and all that kind of stuff, but there's a number of neighborhoods that you drive through on the weekend or at night when I think peak demand is and it's car to car to car to car to car to car.

There is no parking available in a number of neighborhoods.

So I need to really think through what the implications of this are before supporting it.

I don't have any problem with uh adjusting parking minimums and the like, but just for me personally, I want to make sure that we can have another hearing where we discuss it and not just kind of push it through on consent.

Coming to Council Member Bowen.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I actually really appreciated the way that this update centered San Leandro where we're at right now.

I know you use the term starter TDM, and some of the language that I appreciated was around calibrating and consolidating around what the local conditions were at.

Um, and to me it seems like very tangible strategies.

I am actually supportive of um establishing the new regulations related primarily to new development.

Um I sit on Alameda County Transportation Commission with the mayor as well, and one of the things we've been talking a lot about is changes in how people are getting around, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that gas is still so incredibly expensive.

Um I, for example, I have a car I have a van because I have lots of children, but I also have an EV, and as much as I can, I try to drive my EV or I try to walk or I try to, I bought my kid a bike last month because we're trying to figure out ways not to use our car as much.

And there has been increased ridership on both BART and on buses for that reason, just because it's more economical.

Um, and so I think it is also a matter of understanding where the community is at and where um the um region is at in terms of increased um pedestrian and bicycle activity.

So I I think that this is a good first step.

And if this can really help us, again, this is tied to the housing element.

If this can help us get more um housing built and especially more affordable housing built and more businesses and more vibrancy in the community, I'm all for it.

I live on a very busy street that is always full of people with lots of energy and lots of parties and lots of things happening.

Um, and we just kind of have to figure it out because I want to live in a community that is full of that vibrancy.

So I'm I'm really supportive of this, and I would want to move um approval of the item.

Thank you.

Council members Simon, please proceed.

I'll second.

Any other discussion?

Seeing none, I'm gonna come back for just a couple of other questions before we vote.

Um you had mentioned that Oakland's old standards once upon a time were increasing the cost of building in Oakland by 30%.

Do we have a sense of, given our current housing minimums, what the impact is here in San Leandro?

Thank you.

Um, I can't say for certain.

We could do an analysis on that.

That was going from basically no minimums to some minimums, even though the minimums were low at the time.

I will say almost universally.

I don't think there's a single community that I haven't seen substantial decreases in cost from the reduction of minimum parking requirements.

So you we could look at this.

It will be substantial, I am sure, um, almost no matter what we're looking at here.

Not only substantial in terms of the cost for the development, I would say, but also cost and time and savings on the public side as well.

It's not unusual for communities to get involved caught up in a cycle of having minimum parking requirements that turn out to be infeasible and having to go through some sort of variance process to get around them, as as Lourdes mentioned earlier.

So did Central Callen request a variance?

Yes, they did.

Okay, and we granted that variance.

And they also had reduced parking requirements as well.

Um and sort of related to your questions about TOD, a lot of uh at least the downtown TOD and the Bayfair TOD, those are the main TODs.

Those are already covered.

Those are what?

Uh the downtown TOD and the B, uh the Bay Fair TOD, they're already covered in the half mile requirements.

So generally speaking, um, the no parking would be required in those areas.

Uh they overlap quite substantially.

Okay, and then for the Central Callan, are they currently fully is their parking garage currently fully used?

I don't believe that they're fully rented out, but I'm unfamiliar with whether or not they're parking is fully used.

Um, if it goes to me one second, I might.

Okay, we can come back to that at another point.

Because I'm just trying to understand what the practical implications are.

You know, because again, in certain neighborhoods for sure, the streets are packed at night.

Packed.

And I mean like every single spot is taken.

And in fact, one of our public commenters was saying, hey, you know, in my neighborhood, guess what?

It's it's it's just impossible for like a delivery.

Can I can I speak to that or can I address that?

Your question.

You can.

I mean, it's an empirical question, so I'm not quite sure what the question is that you're answering.

So, all I'm answering is the fact that I don't doubt it.

I've worked in many communities where the you look at the Allen Street parking and you look at it and you say, gosh, this is overflowing, it's packed.

And the conclusion that many people come to is that we need more off-street parking.

In reality, on many streets like that, the off-street parking themselves, those spaces themselves are not occupied in many cases.

For single family residences, they're often occupied by storage, right?

We've actually I've actually done workshops down in Southern California where we talked to residents about it and said, hey, this is great.

Just open your garages so we can see if there's actually cars parked there.

And no one really took the bait.

Similarly, with with multifamily residential, you can build those spaces.

It doesn't guarantee their usage, and it won't guarantee their usage so long as your on-street parking is free and unregulated.

That free and unregulated parking on your curb site is high priority for people.

That's where many people will first park, regardless of whether there's an off-street parking space there or not.

So the reason why I'm mentioning this is simply mandating and creating more off-street parking doesn't necessarily solve your on-street parking shortage.

The two are not necessarily just so that you understand, we have a number of garages in San Landro that have been converted into residential space.

So there's no door to open to show you what's on the inside because it's literally a wall.

So that's one of the challenges that might be a little bit different from suburban Southern California.

But at this point in time, I think we've had enough discussion.

Um, and so I think we're gonna proceed with a vote.

I'm assuming councilmember bolt does not have his hand raised.

Is that correct?

Madam Clerk.

Perfect.

Let's proceed to a vote.

On the motion by Councilmember Bowen with a second from Councilmember James Aguilar.

No, uh Councilmember Fred Simon, thank you.

Councilmember Bolt, may we have your vote?

Yes, thank you.

All votes are in, and the motion fails with three yes votes.

It passes.

Sorry.

Recalculating four yes votes from council member Simon, Councilmember Aguilar, James Aguilar, Councilmember Bowen, and Councilmember Bolt.

One no vote from Mayor Gonzalez, and two abstentions from Councilmember Victor Aguilar and Vice Mayor Viveros Walton.

Those are absences as opposed to two absences.

For the record, four yes votes, one note vote, and two absences.

And the result being that the motion passes, which means it will come back for a second reading.

And as I understand our protocol, it will come back for second reading for discussion in the chamber as opposed to going straight on to consent, which was my objective for this purpose.

Okay, so at this point, let's move to item 10 A.

This is our action, one of our two action items.

And at this point in time for our action item, we will have I think what is a relatively brief presentation from Human Resources Director Emily Hung.

Good evening, Mayor and City Councilman.

I will be quick.

I'm Emily Hung, Human Resources Director.

So in accordance with government code section 21221G and CalPERS regulations, the City Council is required to approve the appointment of a retired and newitant when they are filling a position due to an executive employees' leave of absence.

So the action item before you is a resolution to approve the appointment of Joseph Crimes to serve as the interim police chief while Chief Angela Averett is on leave.

Interim Chief Crimes has a long career in public safety and possesses the specialized skills and experience required for the appointment.

He will receive an hourly pay rate that is equivalent to the salary approved for a police chief and will not receive any benefits or other form of compensation.

This interim appointment is also subject to all other post-retirement regulations, including the limit of 960 hours in a fiscal year.

And that summarizes the recommendation.

Thank you very much.

Do we have any questions?

Seeing no questions.

My only question is this is I'm assuming not overtime eligible.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Uh we will go to public comment on this item, please.

Mayor, we've not received any comment cards, and there's no hands raised online.

Okay, so close public comment.

Come back to council for any further discussion or a motion.

Councilmember James Aguilar.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to move to adopt the resolution.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bowen.

I'll second that.

Okay.

We've got a motion from Councilmember James Aguilar with a second for Council Member Bowen.

Seeing no further discussion, please vote.

Councilmember Bolt, your vote, please.

Yes.

Thank you.

All votes are in and the motion carries unanimously with five yes votes and two members absent.

Thank you.

So now we'll move to item 10B, 10B.

And for this item, we've got Deputy City Manager Eric Ingelbart here to present.

Well, good evening, Mayor and Council.

Thank you for the and members of the public, either in person or turning in from online.

Thank you for the opportunity to present again tonight's discussion on the possibility of placing a business license tax modernization on the November 2026 ballot.

And of course, this discussion does follow on the direction that was provided by you all at the June 8th City Council meeting.

Brief overview of our agenda of topics we're going to cover tonight.

We're going to start off with just a summary of the council direction that was provided up to this point, followed by a summary of the uh robust public outreach that's taken place.

We'll then hear uh an update and responsive information to the questions that were raised by council at that June 8th meeting.

We'll then provide a summary of the changes that have been made to our tax model since that meeting.

We'll then have an overview of that revised tax model and its totality, and then we'll wrap things up with a recommended action.

And I would note ahead of time as well when we get to that recommended action, you'll notice that there is a caveat as well.

That in order for any either of the recommended actions to pass or to move forward, we would need four affirmative votes, and the absence of four votes would ultimately serve as a de facto direction for staff not to proceed further with further efforts on this project.

Most of these boxes on the screen before you should look familiar as they were all presented as part of that June 8th meeting.

The only key difference is in the upper right corner where we cover the synopsis of what happened on June 8th, but just as a little refresher for those who may not have attended or members of the public.

You recall back in February of 2025, council initially directed us to explore a potential ballot measure for the November ballot.

Then in June of last year, we did propose an allocation of funding to support exploration of a measure, though that that request for funding was not authorized, and we were directed to come back once the year-end fund balance estimates were available.

To put that direction, we did return on December 1st with the year-end fund balance effort estimates along with the request to proceed forward.

At that meeting, council did not direct us to proceed forward, though the item was reconsidered about two weeks later on December 15th, at which time we were directed to proceed forward.

Then in February on February 17th of this year, council directed us to work with a consultant to test out the viability of the three measures, including a business license tax, a parcel tax, and a vacancy tax.

Then on April 6th, you were you all received the polling results.

They were publicly presented here in these chambers, which basically the outcome of which was that only the business license tax modernization was deemed to be viable based upon that scientific polling work.

And then just last month on June 8th, we presented a tax model that was largely based on Union City, and we noted there were some concerns about the tax increases that could result from it, and council directed us to modify the model to include some mitigation measures to address those issues.

Similarly, this slide here, slide four.

A lot of this information should look familiar.

It was all presented on June 8th.

So I'll really just kind of hone in on this lower right-hand corner of the slide, which kind of provides the latest updates.

As I mentioned, and we were there at the June 8th meeting, when we were directed to modify the model, and then since that time as well, we've conducted additional outreach.

Once we had the revised tax estimates, we then shared information again with our robust outreach list that included numerous businesses in here in town, our business license database and email notification, social media posts, and then we updated our website as well that we talked about last time, which has that calculator estimator.

Also want to highlight for your attention, as we discussed earlier and per year direction, we did do quite a bit of outreach, including a physical two-way mailer that went out to nearly about 20,000 Sandlander residents, and people were able to fill that out in paper format and mail it back to us.

And in addition, that the we have this informal survey that was also available online.

You can see in response to that survey work, we received 997 total survey responses, out of which 829 were responded to online, and 168 were responded to in writing.

You can see just a little over half of the respondents just outright supported the business license tax proposal, and about another 47% had questions or concerns about it, and out of that 47%, about 30% were requesting more detailed information.

Also, as part of that survey tool, there was opportunities for other, you know, feedback or comments, et cetera.

And you can kind of see some distilled themes that came out of that.

This first bullet point, many of these concerns or issuer, service areas should look familiar to many of us from many of the other prior polls that we've done here in San Leandro, of course, with crime, homelessness, public safety, and street conditions being top concerns among respondents.

A lot of people, as I mentioned earlier, were interested in hearing more details of the proposal.

There was also some concerns expressed about potential impacts on small businesses.

There was also folks who were interested in ensuring, you know, we were maintained a quality business environment here and wanted to, you know, provide methods of retaining and attracting businesses.

There was also comments about just overall stewardship of public funding and cost controls.

And there was also some concerns referenced about potential price impacts that could stem from increased taxes to businesses.

Additionally, the council had a number of questions that were raised from the day as at our last meeting.

We've tried to our best to kind of summarize and encapsulate them here on these next few slides.

I'll kind of run through them.

There was some discussion and questions about potential impacts on economic development in general.

And we, in response to that question, we would note that even under the new revised model, the details of which I'll be going over in just a few moments, we do continue to see some potentially significant annual increases, particularly when looked at through as a percentage basis under the revised model, which continue to raise some concerns, even with those mitigation measures that will get into.

Additional time and analysis, like any project, you know, additional time and additional analysis could further evaluate such impacts.

I would also note, you know, as we presented at the June meeting, that model was largely based on union city's tax model.

And we've also, as we've dug in deeper on that, although Union City has basically stated their staff has stated that they did not see major disruption to their business community as a result of their implementation of their revised tax model as part of the November of 24 ballot.

The Union City is a different city, right?

They have a smaller business community, they have smaller, large business, they don't have quite the volume of large businesses that we have.

My understanding is they also do not have any auto dealerships.

Another question was about could the funds be earmarked for specifically for infrastructure.

And there was a lot of dialogue at the last meeting on this topic as well.

And the short answer is no, for as a general tax.

We cannot specifically airmark it for only one service area because it's really just broad general fund revenue.

And then there was a reference, a question about if the fee could be structured so that no businesses see a decrease.

And our responsive information to that would be well, well, not necessarily a best practice to do so.

Such a change is certainly legal and feasible, if so directed to do so.

Another question was can this tax be structured in a way to look at profit margins rather than simply at gross receipts?

And the shorter answer is no, you know, we can't legally use a company's profit margins as the basis for taxation.

With that said, as we've noted before, when in the new consolidated tax model that reduces us down to about nine general categories of business, there are already differentiated rates, and so they those rates are intended to take into account things like profit margins.

So, for example, you have it's known that restaurants or auto dealers are generally a low profit margin business, and so though the specific rate for that classification of business that they fall within has been tailored accordingly.

Um there was also a question about there was a definition of a high paying employer, and the answer is there is no formal definition of it.

Um, and then the question there was a question about where would a data center fit into this framework, um, and our answer is that it would it would fall under under the definition of on the industrial category.

There were some questions about what about other emerging industries, and we share that the consolidated list of nine categories are intended to account for those emerging industries in the modern economy.

Um, and as new new business types emerge, you know, they could be evaluated and then appropriately captured within those definitions because of that they're sufficiently broad.

And then there was a range of questions related to whether or not we could incorporate factors such as climate change or use of energy or water.

And the shorter answer is given the time available, additional time and analysis really would be required to fully address these questions.

Right here on this slide eight, we have just some high-level overview of changes that were made to the model subsequent to our last discussion on this about a month ago.

Uh, in response to feedback from our uh from property rental and uh rental housing providers, et cetera, as well as mobile home parks.

Uh, we're actually recommending as part of this model to make no changes to their existing tax rate.

So presently, you can see the existing tax rates that apply to those business types, and we're recommending no changes to them at all.

So they would essentially be, for lack of a better term, they'd be exempted from any of the proposed changes if you were to put this on the ballot, and though their existing tax rates would stay in effect.

Um, we've also increased the tax rates for warehouses to $4.50 per thousand dollars in gross receipts, and that was based on feedback at the last meeting.

Additionally, for those that would have classifies the larger the businesses with gross receipts greater than 50 million, 50 million dollars annually, the tax model in corpus at 25% discount rate, and that's very simple to calculate.

You'd basically just look at the totality of their gross receipts, and if it's in excess of 50 million, and you shave 25% off of the top of it.

And then also per feedback we received from uh PGE, uh, we modified the definitions to include public utilities under the manufacturing rate, and that's per requirements of relevant uh California law and case law that they had cited.

Um, so now these next three slides are I acknowledge these are at least tables here, there's a lot of information in here, so I'll try to go over them at a high level.

We can certainly drill in it further as part of the QA if so desired.

Um, but this should look familiar to a chart where we presented back in June, though it's been updated.

And so what you can see here, you can see this what we call the 6-8 model.

So that was the June 8th tax model that we presented about a month ago, and then you can see that July 6th, which is today, the revised model, and you can see those changes that I talked about, and you can see where the changes have occurred.

So, for example, property rental.

We were previously proposing a gross receipts model, and here we're saying now, and similarly with the mobile home parks, we're saying just leave them, leave them off the table, retain their existing tax structure, an acknowledgement of a number of you know the policy changes that have here have occurred.

Additionally, as I noted, the uh warehouse rate that's been increased as well there, and so you can kind of see, and then you can kind of see that the grand total outcomes, and again, we can go through this in more detail with the QA, and then also this this chart should also look familiar.

It's been revised and updated to also reflect those changes.

You can see here in row four was the information we presented last time, and then you can see row five here is that revised model, and you can see the changes that that stem from that.

And again, these are all basically hypothetical examples.

So taking this column D is in David, you can see.

Imagine I a restaurant that has about a million dollars of gross receipts and 12 employees.

You can see currently under our current model that is not gross receipts-based, they're paying about $800 a year, and then under the revised model, they'd be paying 430.

So they'd actually see a decrease in their annual tax.

Uh, on the other side of things, so you can see this car dealer example with $65 million, hypothetically of revenue and 70 employees under their current rate, they're paying about 4,000 a year, and under the revised model, um, so when in June, the June model, you could see their rate would have gone up about quite sizably, from the 4,000 to nearly 28,000.

And then the revised model that includes that 25% discount, it would be decreed decreased.

So when you look at it on a percentage basis, it's a large number.

Um, they'll leave it to the observer to perform any opinions about $4,000 increase up to $20,000 annually, what the what the ramification are that of that are for a $65 million a year annual gross receipts type of business.

And then um, so that kind of covers this slide, and again, we're happy to go through it in more detail if you would like.

And then this last slide, there were some questions about last time about you know what how our rates compare to other cities.

I want to thank our economic development team for pulling this slide together, but you can kind of see some comparisons, and I think, again, a lot of numbers on here, but one I think that's a particularly illuminating.

You can kind of see how we compare our current model, which as we've stated is has been in effect for quite a long time.

And you can see taking the example of a large retailer that does 400 million dollars of business a year, is presently paying about a little over $10,000 a year in tax.

And you can see how that compares though to our pure cities here throughout Alameda County with the high end of Oakland, a similar retailer would be paying nearly a million dollars a year.

And as we shared at our last meeting as well, the City of Hayward City Council did vote, I believe last month to place a measure of their own on the November ballot.

And so we've included both the current Hayward tax as well as the proposed Hayward tax if their voters in Hayward would authorize it.

So you can see those changes.

And with that, we're now kind of wrapping things up with a recommended action.

Um and we're basically recommending that either among these two choices here, either by majority vote or vote adopt the proposed resolution as written to place the measure on the November third ballot, as well as designate authors for the ballot measures argument uh arguments in favor and and the rebuttal arguments as well.

Uh alternatively, um, to the extent the council wants to have more time for us to study this issue area.

You could certainly direct staff to continue additional fiscal analysis and with make this basically convert this into a two-year project with a goal of bringing something forward at the November of 2028 election, about you know a little over two years from now.

Um, and that's the next general regular election that would be eligible for consideration of such a measure.

And as I mentioned at the beginning of this, I think this this note here at the end is an important one.

In the absence of four affirmative votes tonight for either of these actions, we're the staff will cease all further efforts.

And so with that, that wraps up our presentation, but happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

So we'll take clarifying questions at this time.

Seeing that we'll go to public comment on this item.

You do have a question?

I do.

Okay.

Coming to back to Councilmember Bowen.

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

Um, I appreciate that we took time to answer some of the questions and make some of um the the changes that you know council members had brought up.

Um I appreciate for example the um uh property rental and mobile home given all of the policy changes we had.

Um I recognize that there's a um an effort to try to make sure like to make this work um at the same time.

I said before, and I want to ask now, like what risks do we have if we move forward with this to the business community that where we do have larger um, you know, businesses than um a union city or wherever, if they don't have time to plan or understand really what is happening, we're getting a lot of emails from business owners small and large that are confused or concerned because they have to plan ahead.

And so, in in all of the outreach that you've done, what has been the biggest concern or what are the risks we face for the business community if we put this on the ballot this November?

Sure, I would say, and I think you know this has been a team effort, and we have our economic development team staff here as well, uh, who's also been fielding a lot of calls directly, so I'll let them chime in as well.

I can certainly say from the feedback that I that I've been aware of and seen and had the interactions with, I think one of the biggest concerns that's been flagged is just those those market increases that we highlighted earlier.

When you look at them as a percentage, in some cases, they are they are not insignificant, and and understandably um have raised concerns about a number of business classifications.

And in particular, I think in comparison to say Union City that already had a gross receipts model in place, and so when they updated it in 2024, the net delta of what they had in place already prior to November of 24 versus what came into effect was a more gradual increase versus us where we're starting at what our classify maybe as a relatively low base, and then to go into the gross receipts model out the gate.

In some cases, that's a you know not insignificant increase that those businesses are seeing.

And so it is somewhat speculative though as to what if that were to come to her fruition, how the how those businesses would respond.

Um, as not I'm not a business owner in San Leandro, I'm hesitant to speak for them, but certainly I think that that's encapsulates the feedback that I've been privy to.

Yeah, and I I think you can right think about it from going from least to greatest, you know, at a minimum, you know, hearing that this can erode or impact kind of our you know our business friendly work to uh support businesses, you know, depending on the amount, it could potentially impact the timing of making future investments or business expansion, uh, having to reallocate those funds for uh these costs, and really at its most drastic um, you know, things can result in businesses taking this into account in their long term where they're located and whether they would remain located in San Leandro.

Thanks.

I appreciate that.

Um, uh that that leads into my next question.

Um, how I was reading through the um chapter two, two, uh what is the other document that we have about the business license and each of the categories and what the percentages are?

So one like how did how maybe you already shared it with me and I missed it.

Um, how do we decide on those specific percentages?

And how does that compare to the other cities?

And then also, how does this fit into our broader economic strategy about trying to bring in more businesses and just our how do we bring economic development in, but also how do we support our city in order to make it not if we want businesses here, absolutely, but we also have to have a city that is uh functioning with with parks and roads and all the things that you want for a good neighborhood to be able to have people here that want to be here to go to these businesses.

So, how does that fit in?

And maybe that's for you, Eric, or that's for you, Katie.

Maybe I'll start with the first portion about how we arrived at these these rates, and what I'll share is basically, you know, back in June we presented a model, and this a part of this was just a function of the time that we had for the project.

But we started with that union city model, and we basically just borrowed those rates and applied them and said this is what would happen if we were to impose adopt these rates here in San Leandro, and then we identified all those concerns, and then we did our we did we we to we have for lack of a term, we we tweaked that model, we modified that model to include these mitigations that I basically went over in the earlier slide.

So by and large, many of these rates do that we did not the tweet the rates that we did not adjust remain the same as what was presented in June.

Um, and then we basically modified them as that was our starting base, and we modified them as shown here on this slide.

So that's how we want what we landed on what's before you today, and then for the other portions of your questions, I'll look at that.

Yeah, maybe uh go to slide 10.

And so if we look at that, so in general, retail and industrial got a lower rate based uh theoretically on a couple of things, including you know, their profit margins, they're creating sales tax, they're creating value, so they're at 0.43 and 0.45, respectively, uh, which does generally align with our our strategic goals to support those type of businesses, um, professional and other kind of service industries.

The theory behind what was proposed, those have a much higher rate of over uh two point 2.0 or 2.5.

Um, and the the theory there was that um that those they don't have the sales tax and things like that.

Uh however, as we see here, even with these, you know, there are several that are highlighted that are strategic areas that are seeing significant increases.

So um, so that does uh cause cause concern there.

Um, and also, for instance, you know, several of if you look at the bottom ones that are bolded, um, car dealers, for instance, um, professional, for instance, those uh are, you know, versus say a manufacturer that has a lot of capital investment in their facility, a car dealer are more professional, like an office.

They have less capital and maybe more at you know, more movable, um, and and um, you know, bring bring some notable benefits.

So those were highlighted.

Thank you.

Seeing no further questions, we'll take public comment on this item.

Mayor, we receive four comment cards, and there are presently five hands raised online.

So let's start in person.

Thank you.

The first three in-person commenters are Kristen Anderson, Jenny Madsen, and San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.

Hi.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening, Council Mayor.

My name is Kristen Anderson, CEO of Erica Fanderson Incorporated, a member of the San Leandro business community for almost 40 years.

I am standing here today not to challenge the need for reform to the city San Leandro business tax structure.

I understand the city needs revenue and is looking at every source it can to fund a budget deficit, fund a budget deficit.

As a business owner, I get it.

What I challenge is your timing and due diligence.

The business community wants to help you close that gap just as much as your residents do.

We just want to be included in the decision that will cost us millions of dollars.

You've pointed to Union City as your model.

So let's take a look at what Union City actually did.

Union City's council did not rush this.

Their process started in February 2022 when their council began meeting on this exact same question of business tax reform.

Their staff came back, found a consultant, HDL companies, the same consultant you used, who proposed to raise taxes on some businesses by up to 17 times what they were paying before.

And do you know what the Union City City Council did?

They said no.

They called it premature.

They sent staff back for two more years of real business-specific outreach, collaboration with their businesses, and analysis before it ever reached the ballot.

Two years, not months.

And it passed with 81% of the vote.

And businesses trusted the number that they saw when it got voted in.

Slow down.

Sit at the table with us.

Give us time to prepare.

If you get this right, your business community will support you, and our community will thrive.

Get it wrong, and San Leandro risks losing its business right now.

Your time has elapsed.

The next three speakers are Jenny Madsen, San Leandro, Chamber of Commerce, and David Stark.

I'm gonna do something different.

Because you guys, before you vote on this tonight, you need to know about ACA 22, which got passed by the Assembly on June 25th.

They are going to ACA 22 is a California constitutional amendment that officially requires all local special taxes, whether placed on the ballot by city officials or citizen initiatives to pass with a two-thirds majority of the local electorate.

It'll go into effect on January 1st, 2027.

So this is a weird thing that got put through.

Basically, Buffy Wicks authored it, even though she is adamantly opposed to it, because she explained she wrote it not because I wanted it to become law, but because it was the only legal mechanism left to kill a much worse corporate backed initiative.

That's because the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association was gonna put the taxpayer protection act, something like Prop 13, grandson, on the ballot.

And that would have been retroactive.

It would have taken the money from every city in San in California.

It would have bankrupted everybody, and so they made this deal.

But this Prop 22, if it passes in November, because apparently it is on the ballot, and Governor Newsom and Democratic leadership are apparently saying pass it.

The League of California Cities is saying no.

This is important, it will change everything because this means that there will be no property tax, and the business tax will be the only way you'll be able to do this.

I know I've talked before about property taxes, but this was so hot off the press, I had to just tell you about it.

Please think about it because if you don't do this tonight, thank you.

Your time has elapsed.

The next in-person speakers are San Leandro Chamber of Commerce and David Stark.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Emily Grego, San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.

Since mid-May, this is our fourth time we've come before you to share what we are hearing from San Leandro businesses.

Their message has remained consistent.

The proposed business license tax would significantly increase the cost of running their business.

We recognize that changes have been made to the proposed rate structure.

And even so, our core concern remains.

This is not a modest adjustment.

For many businesses, it is still a major new expense that could affect decisions around hiring, expansion, investment, and long-term sustainability.

This proposal also extends into the homes of San Leandro residents.

Grocery stores, utility providers, retailers, restaurants, and everyday service providers are all included.

When costs rise for the businesses, residents rely on every day, those costs do not simply disappear.

They show up in higher prices, fewer local investments, and fewer opportunities for job growth.

Our second concern is process.

This proposal was first introduced in April.

Just three months later, a decision needs to be made to place it before the voters.

Three months.

I personally spoke to Union City leadership.

They spent more than two and a half years studying the issue, doing business outreach, and refining the proposal before asking voters to decide.

We believe San Leandro businesses deserve the same process.

I also want to be clear that a phased implementation is not the solution, because if the underlying structure is flawed, it can't be easily fixed.

We do not need a rush tax increase of this size right now.

We need thoughtful leadership.

We need responsible fiscal planning.

We respectfully ask that you postpone this proposal, commit to more robust business outreach, and more economic analysis before this proposal of this magnitude is placed before the voters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is David Stark.

Good evening.

I'm David Stark representing the Bay East Association of Realtors, which includes many housing providers and real estate professionals who live and work in San Leandro.

We appreciate the decision to retain the existing business license tax structure for rural housing providers.

That change addresses one of our primary concerns and recognizes the cumulative financial impact of recent housing regulations on smaller housing providers, including action you took this evening.

However, Bay East is not able to support the proposal now because several important questions remain regarding how the proposed grocery seats tax would apply to the real estate industry.

Real estate operates differently than many other professions.

State law requires that commissions be paid through a licensed brokerage and then distributed to affiliated sales agents.

As a result, given what you've been presented tonight and what we've reviewed, it still remains unclear.

First, whether both brokers and affiliated agents will each be required to obtain a business license.

Next, whether referral fees and team compensation will be included in taxable grocery speeds.

And finally, and and most importantly, whether commissions earned from transactions outside San Leandro will be subject to the city's business license tax.

Now, without answers to these questions, it's impossible for us to accurately evaluate the proposal and to support the proposal at this time.

And as uh the representative from the chamber indicated, process is important.

Being thoughtful and mindful and inclusive is important, and we would encourage you to be more thoughtful and more inclusive in this proposal.

The Union City example is important.

We polled our members that are in Union City, and several of them said that they are considering leaving Union City because of the gross receipts tax.

Um, while not directly rated to real estate, I bought my car in in San Leandro, and driving up Davis today, I noticed that that dealership had closed.

So please be thoughtful about your decision.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more comment cards in the room, and we currently have four hands raised on the.

So we are closing public comment in person.

We will now open public comment online.

Our first in online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.

Thank you very much.

Uh first I want to express my appreciation to Eric and the rest of the staff uh for your labors.

I actually think your process has been quite thoughtful and that you have learned from those that have gone before.

We don't need to re-invent the wheel.

Um, but I can't imagine this has been a labor of love given the schizophrenic process as it has been.

Um Leander cannot afford to shy away from any reasonable source of money, nor to postpone the possibility of this for two years.

This modernization is in line with changes in surrounding municipalities, not just Union City, but also Oakland, Hayward, Alameda, uh, in moving towards a fair model based on uh on revenues instead of number of employees or square footage.

I do not believe that if we pass this uh modernization fee that it's unfair to businesses, that it will result in a wholesale exodus of businesses from town due to this fee, uh, nor that the sky is falling.

As uh council member Bolt observed, uh it's uh incumbent on both residents and business to support the services of the city.

I know you've been getting hammered by business who are lobbying you to uh according to their strategy, put it off, put it off, put it off.

And here we are, it's July, and there's only one more meeting.

I think it's unfortunate that you backed yourself into this corner, and I think it's unlikely that this is gonna pass tonight with only five um members on the dias.

So I I actually request that you table this matter until the very last meeting in July on July 20th.

I appreciate the great job that Emmy and Grego does to represent the Chamber of Commerce Commerce, but I don't accept the uncertain unscientific uh chamber survey that found that most businesses are going to be adversely affected by this.

My understanding is that most small businesses will pay a smaller fee.

Thank you.

The next online speaker is Camille Bowler.

Good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I am a resident of San Leandro.

I'm here to share my concerns regarding the proposal, proposed business tax increases and the potential impact on our communities long-term economic economic vitality.

While I deeply value our city staff and acknowledge the pressing need for additional revenue to maintain our essential services and public safety, we must carefully consider the economic trade-offs of continually raising taxes on our local businesses.

Increasing business taxes threatens our local economy.

Studies show that establishments are 30% less likely to move to cities with local business taxes, and 22% more likely to leave.

Similarly, data from Stanford, bit of School of Business highlights the tax increases can prompt companies to relocate jobs and capital to more competitive areas.

If we push our business tax rates too high, we risk driving away the very employers who generate local jobs encourage contribute to our tax base to maintain the quality of our city services without causing a drain on our business.

I urge the council to consider alternative ways to increase revenue and delay the proposal tax on the ballot until the 2028 election.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next online speaker is Lucas.

Lucas, are you there?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

I thank you.

Thank you for taking my comments this evening again, uh, Mayor and council.

Um, what a shocker.

Businesses don't want to pay taxes.

Where have I heard that one before?

But if low taxes meant that businesses would flock to a city, where is all the business coming to San Leandro right now?

As far as I can tell, we're doing all the outreach we can and we're struggling to attract businesses, even though as the presentation shows on slide uh 11, we have some of the lowest business taxes compared to our neighboring cities.

If a large retailer pulling in 400 million is only paying 10,000 in San Leandro and a million dollars in Oakland, why aren't the all the Oakland businesses coming down to San Leandro?

These these taxes are outdated that we have.

Our businesses are under tax.

The residents are paying way more than they should.

We have this outdated employee and square footage base system.

It's time to modernize.

La couple of sessions ago, you voted to um index the cost that residents pay for sewer or whatever it was or street party, I don't know what it was anymore, to inflation.

So residents have to index those the prices we pay to the city to inflation, but businesses who you know buy a 10,000 square foot uh warehouse, they lock in their price forever, forever, whether they do 10 million in receipts, 10 billion in receipts, they just pay for the square footage.

That doesn't sound right.

This tax is modern, it's fair, it's indexed to inflation by default because it's based on gross receipts.

If businesses raise prices, great, the city gets more money.

Also, I am cognizant of the need to respect sort of the concerns of the business community.

I wouldn't be uh opposed to a phased rollout.

If you want to, you know, to avoid any kind of like shocks.

I know that businesses often budget to the dollar.

So if you want to phase this in over two years or over four years, write that into the ordinance.

Um, but but do proceed with this.

It's time to share the cost of running the city fairly.

Thank you.

Your time has elapsed.

The next online speaker is Alvaro Ramos.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

So I just wanted some clarifying questions that I would really appreciate if mayor and council members would talk more about this stuff.

Um, can you I'm specifically thinking about you know the 25% rate discount for the large businesses.

Can you define what a large business is?

Is that about the economies of scale of a business?

Like a Walmart that is you know has a very large market share.

It's a monopoly, but you know, um, or is it like the number of employees type of thing?

Um can you define uh what a rate discount is and how it works and how you would implement this?

Um, and why is it 25%?

Um is there a reason why that figure was reached?

Um what's the logic behind that?

Uh and then why is it also for large business specifically?

I'll tell you though, what I don't want to see.

We've had enough with tax cuts from the federal government that have wreaked havoc on the American economy.

And I don't want to see any more trickle up economics that has delivered inequality and thus instability to this country.

And so I just don't want to see any breaks for big businesses.

Most of the citizens of San Leandro are not multi-millionaires.

They don't even have a million dollars to rub around, okay.

Um, I I will say though that you definitely should not wait until November 2028 election.

You may not get another chance to do this.

Um, with how things are progressing as the years go by, our conditions in the United States should be expected to worsen and they feel so much worse than they did a decade ago alone.

Thank you.

Mayor, there are no more online commenters.

Okay, so we'll come back to council for discussion.

Did want to follow up on the public commenters' question about the 25% discount, and in particular, uh, just a little bit around the definition of a large business.

Seem to recall that was the discussion, but I don't remember it.

So if you could tell us a little bit about that.

Certainly, Mayor, the 25% discount is fairly straightforward essentially.

If a business exceeds 55-0 million dollars per year of annual gross receipts, then when they calculate their tax, you simply reduce their calc, you that portion of the calculation, you take 25% off their annual gross receipts.

So it's basically it's fairly straightforward math.

So let's run with that a little bit.

And I like to keep math simple.

So just suppose with me that a $50 million business would pay.

I know this is wrong.

So for anyone in the public who tries to quote this, I'm telling you right now it's wrong, but just to keep the math simple.

If a $50 million business paid a million dollars.

Okay, so just 2%.

And I know that's not true, but just if it was that, then businesses that are twice as large would pay twice as much.

50 million goes to a million, a hundred million dollars would pay two million if it's just gross receipts in this simplified incorrect example.

Now, how would your 25% discount work?

Would it say instead of paying the two million that I'm hypothesizing in this unreasonable example for the hundred million dollar business, it would be seventy-five percent of the two million?

It would be 75% of their total gross receipts.

So if on your example, you said how many what was the gross receiver?

So it was 100 million, or so it was as if they were a 75 million dollars.

Yes, thank you.

Correct.

Okay.

Um discussion from colleagues.

Seeing no discussion, I'll wait for a motion.

Councilman Rabone.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I'd like to make a motion to direct staff to continue for B direct staff to continue additional fiscal analysis with the goal of bringing forward a proposed business tax modification as part of the November 28 election.

Um what one of the slides that struck me so much in the last presentation was around the 14 cities in Alameda County, and and again, tonight in the numbers of um who is uh what businesses get this this one.

Clearly, like we are it's it's it's time, it's probably been um we would have we should have could have done this previously, um, and it would have been beneficial to us.

So I I recognize that.

So it's not that I I want to modernize it, I think we need to modernize it.

I also think that if we want good governance and and collaborative governance and good policy, we have to do it in a way that um not just includes all stakeholders at face value, but really integrates them into the process and and um I have not been comfortable with the timeline that we have been on.

Certainly, even from a planning perspective, uh I we would be speculating if we talked about how would businesses respond, but I know as a as a person that has a um bills to pay and things that I have to afford when big changes happen, it makes it really hard.

And I just want to recognize where we're at um in a uh the economic situation that we're at as a country and and regionally and at the local level, and I want us and um council member Boltz mentioned it the last one, and I talked about it with the Oklahoma City example, but it is incredibly important that the business community works in partnership with the city to be able to move us forward.

Every business person that I've spoken to says we want to help, we want to do this, we're not comfortable with where we're at, and I want to hold the business community to that in the partnership in the next year, year and a half as we're working on this.

Um, and I don't, I think that the yes, I recognize that the threshold would go up, and that would be harder.

I also um uh understand that if the threshold is two thirds, the threshold is two thirds, and we can get there if we do this right.

Um, and I really do want to give staff the time and the opportunity to not have to rush through this and and to be able to work with the community for us to be able to work with the community to make this happen.

I have been incredibly supportive and um delighted by our academic development strategy.

I think that we continue to be innovative, we continue to bring lots of businesses and we continue to try to think about things in a different way, and I want us to be able to continue to do that, and that's why I'm making the motion to um defer to 2028.

I'll use personal privilege to second that motion.

Um I do have one question, there's been a lot of this discussion about does it require two thirds or anything like that.

Has anybody analyzed yet?

Because it was my understanding that ACA 22 was going to focus on special taxes as opposed to general taxes.

Has anybody done that work in?

If not, if you can just kind of come back to us at some point, because I think that's particularly relevant.

But but I'm reasonably sure that it's not just about any tax increase, would be two-thirds.

Uh, coming to councilmember James Aguilar, then I'll offer a few more comments.

Thank you, Mayor and thank you for seconding the motion, which I think is the right direction.

Um, I share some very similar sentiments with councilmember Bowen.

Um, I the rushing part is what's killing me on this one.

I I believe strongly, or I should say I I really go against the narrative that just because businesses have money that they can somehow just lock in on uh on a price and and you know get us that tax, but that's not how business works.

Um, and so I I would really like to give our business community the respect to just you know plan it out, right?

We need to plan forward.

Um, but I think that council member Bowen also brought up the you know intentionality uh of integrating the business community in the conversation, and I think this timeline gives us the opportunity to be more authentic with it.

Um, and do we need revenue?

Yeah, yes, we do.

Um, but I want us to go about the business license tax in the right way, right?

And so similarly, I've gotten comments from business folks in the community um who say it's not that we don't want this, it's that this is incredibly rushed.

Um, and I completely agree with that.

So I'm going to support council member Bowen's motion tonight, um, because I just think it's the right thing to do.

Councilmember Bolt, please.

Thank you.

Yes.

Uh while I I do enjoy um listening and learning as we go along this path.

Um I do want to push back a little bit on the thought that this has been rushed or that uh we haven't had sufficient time.

One thing we say about or not we, I'll say myself, govern government moves so slow, and this would be a slowing it down.

We have been in this situation uh where we've been looking at it, but we took uh reasonable efforts that came from other cities, so we didn't have to duplicate all the work that they did.

Um our decision to move forward with this would be us saying that we respect the process that some of our other local municipalities have taken.

We understand that their process was extremely diligent, and it's hard for me to imagine that we would somehow come up with a different scenario if we did that.

Uh I get the business community's uh effort in this to slow walk this process, but obviously that's the right move to do if you own a business, uh, keep as much in your pocket as you can, but I don't think it's appropriate.

Everybody I talk to says we need better streets, we need uh better policing, we need a cleaner this, that, but nobody wants to pay for it.

Um and and right now we have the opportunity to get there, and this would be the right thing to do for us if we choose to push it to 28.

Uh, as one of the speakers mentioned, there's a good chance that we have to go to the two-thirds, and that is that's not a good idea for us.

We should, we the the work has been done.

It's not like we're you know pulling stuff out of the air.

There's been a lot of resources put into this.

I don't think we're gonna come to a different scenario in 28 where all of a sudden the numbers are completely different.

Uh the numbers are gonna be the same in 28.

So we need to put it on the ballot now and make sure that we're getting some of this revenue.

These numbers are completely out of whack when we look at 10,000 in our city and almost a million in another.

We have to do something about that.

And this is a very reasonable uh ask of city council with its business partners.

We're not asking for anything more than then, you know, we're not going way above any other municipality in the area.

I really highly doubt that businesses are gonna leave because of this.

Uh, if you look at that chart, it shows you that we would just be coming into the realms of the other cities.

I think we have a lot to offer in our city, and I think the businesses would stay.

Uh pushing it to 28 does not change the numbers in 28.

All it does is push the process out and proves the fact that government can move really slow sometimes.

I'll stop there.

Okay, at this point in time, I'll come back to Councilmember Bowen.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, yeah, I just wanted to add a little something as Councilmember Bolt was talking.

I I think that um staff has done a really great job, especially underneath the uh within the time constraints and the workload that that they've had.

I think what that due diligence of the two years really does in the Union City example, or in any other example when we did um uh stabilization is to get stakeholders involved in that conversation to get everybody to the same um closer to an understanding of what we're doing, why we're doing it, and trying to understand what unintended consequences there are or um potential mitigations we could possibly put in place, and I think that that's what's really important about um extending the process.

It's not so much that we're gonna come up with something significantly different, but certainly um uh to be for a business to be able to understand that this is what we're working towards.

The council's will is to look for revenue to be able to uh modernize the business license fee, and so how can businesses also plan for that so that they can still grow, that they can still plan um to be in San Leandro and to still hire and to still expand or or um you know continue to thrive.

I to me that's what the additional time is, so that we can come up with a good policy that um truly in integrates all stakeholders, including our residents, so that they know what's happening, um, so that they will vote whether it's that 50 plus threshold or the two-thirds threshold so that businesses can say yes, we are a partner in this, and this is what we're willing to do, and this is what we've been planning for, um, and for the council to be able to speak to it and address it and say, hey, we really did due diligence on this process.

Thank you.

The other thought that I will offer uh just reinforcing what I said the first time around when this came to us.

I'm very concerned about more general taxes, uh, primarily because we have had needs specifically for our infrastructure, our roads, um, roofs of buildings, things that are not particularly exciting, but that have to be done.

And and we have not been able to dedicate the resources, and so it's in fact happened is we've dug a deep deeper and deeper and deeper hole through time, and so the ability to be able to address something with a specific tax uh as opposed to a general tax is paramount to me.

So let's see where we end up in a couple of years.

So with that, let's please vote.

And the vote is for the motion to take staff recommendation B.

So that's what we are voting for.

On the motion by about one second by Gonzalez.

Councilmember Bolt, may we have your vote?

No.

Thank you.

All votes are in.

And the motion carries with four yes votes from Mayor Gonzalez, Councilmember Bowen, Councilmember Swyman, and Councilmember James Aguilar.

One no vote from Councilmember Dylan Bolt and two absent members.

Councilmember Victor Aguilar and Vice Mayor Viveros Walton.

I'm assuming we have no item 11s.

Okay.

So just looking very quickly to council.

Typically we take a break at nine o'clock.

If you're willing to power through over the next 10 minutes, I suggest we do that.

So let's begin with any reports, announcements, items of interest, et cetera.

Okay, I believe we have councilmember Bowen.

Please proceed.

So we're we're item 12.

Item 12, please.

Okay, great.

Um I just wanted to share a brief few things.

Um at last week's stop waste meeting, I was elected to become first vice president for the waste management board.

I'm really excited to continue to do the work there.

I also wanted to share that I had the privilege of attending a Senate committee hearing on the committee on human services on Monday, um, to speak in support of um Assemblymember Shabot's bill AB 19 that would require child care infrastructure as part of our um general plan.

Um it's really exciting to me that we are talking at the state level about um ensuring critical economic um development in the form of child care, whether that's child care centers, um, being able to create policies like the ones that we talked about with parking today that says that we have to think about this as we're starting to plan for our city.

Um I really appreciate that our economic development team has incorporated child care as an economic strategy in our plan.

I appreciate that our Proximal Rec department understands that our summer camps are examples of how we have critical um child care needs because if children starting in TK at four years old are going to school, they are no longer in child care, which means that over the summer they need to be somewhere safe and quality care, and and that's something that we as a city are already proactively doing.

And I will be obviously talking about this all the time as I have in the past, but I will um likely be bringing something forward so that we actually codify a um child care plan so that when this bill does pass, that we will be far ahead of the curve and we'll have already done the work.

Um, and hopefully that will reduce cost for us.

Um, the other thing that I want to mention that is very personal for me is the um the um the birthright citizenship ruling that happened this week as a city that is majority, minority in a county that is 35% foreign born, and many of those, the majority of foreign-born residents are from Asia, followed by Latin America.

Um, just want to remind this community in particular that what belonging means, and that you are welcome here, and uh the things that are happening at the national level do very much affect us at the local level and in our homes, and I think that's really important for us to remind each other how um we are one community and that we have the shared humanity.

Thank you.

Councilmember James Aguilar.

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just want to elevate the city staff tonight.

I am really really proud of the 250th celebration at the Monarch Bay Golf Course.

It was so much fun.

People were having a good time, uh, and I had a good time.

And I know staff was like, oh my god, y'all, we just had the Cherry Festival.

Um, and I get that, but it turned out so good.

Turned out so good.

And so I'm just really grateful for the staff that put on the 250th and had our community come together for some joy.

Um, and the other thing I want to elevate is the transition to work day, which is a really big deal.

And so for the public who's like, great, what is that?

Um, just know that modernizing our systems, pulling together human resources, the way that uh HR director Emily Hung, HR in general, and the city staff have done, is taking the city forward, and it's a lot of work, and it's going to continue to be a lot of work.

And so I'm just really proud, I'm really grateful for the work that has been done in that avenue as well, transitioning to work day.

Um, but just had to shout out the city staff tonight.

Um, and that's all I have for this evening.

Thank you.

Do we have anything, Council Robold?

Just confirming before I go to wrap this up.

It does not appear that way.

So let me just go quickly through the things that uh I'd like to highlight.

Uh for myself, glad to have co-hosted the Weego presentation, talking about the dangers uh that are posed by wildfire risk, particularly to the community in Bay of Vista.

Uh what was interesting about that modeling is that the modeling was actually quite conservative, making assumptions that people would orderly exit in case of evacuation.

I think if history shows us anything in other cities, that's probably not the best modeling.

And so things could be worse than they estimated.

I do want to thank also the California Conservation Corps who had their 50th anniversary.

Uh, they did a bus tour across the state, stopped here in Lake Chabot, and it was just beautiful to see young people in a real-life workforce development environment hearing their stories about how the core has transformed their path into the future while at the same time delivering local community benefits.

In our particular case, a lot of work has been done in Shabot Park to reduce wildfire danger.

I do want to congratulate Juniper Corner.

And one of the things that we are looking to do is find ways to be creative about our zoning, the places where we allow businesses to open to drive new business development in San Leandro.

And so seeing Juniper Corner open in what had been described as exclusively a retail facade and thinking a little bit more broadly about how we think about economic development to enable that to occur was quite exciting to me.

And thank you, staff, for all that you did to support that expansion for a high-energy member of our community.

I do sit on the executive committee of ABAG, the Association of Bay Area Governments, and just gonna put a little uh seed plant that the uh regional housing needs assessment and allocation will be coming down the pike.

And so it's even though that seems so far away, I think it's in 2028, the process is already beginning as we think about the need the housing needs and then the allocation that will be given to each community.

A BAG is the organization that is at the center of that.

Um there was some commentary this time and prior times on data center.

I spent some time uh meeting with a constituent specifically on data centers and concerns that were being expressed there.

And I'll I'll leave a few thoughts that I left with him as well.

It's you know, Santa Clara has dozens of data centers.

And they've had dozens of data centers for a while.

So I think being able to assess, did Santa Clara run out of water?

Did Santa Clara's temperature rise because of the data centers?

Uh did the hum from all these data centers drive people in Santa Clara crazy.

I think being able to look at empirical data of what's happened in Santa Clara will be useful uh for us to assess um potential for data centers here in San Leandro.

And then what I will do is close really with um well, two things.

Project Elevate aim and a project elevate.

Going back to 2020, I think.

I know the budget task force spent time on Project Elevate and said this is important.

We've got to update our ERP.

We cannot be living in in the 1900s.

And so the concept that we have something today, uh, I'll be at 26 years into the new century, but now our employees can use their phones to update their personal information in the system.

I mean, stuff that we all take for granted with online banking and the like, we finally have that in the city of San Leandro.

And what gives me personal pride is that it was done on time and on budget.

And anybody who knows anything about ERP implementations, that does not happen commonly.

So I think there's significant kudos to staff.

A lot of planning went into doing it right.

And I think that planning has paid dividends and does so very grateful for all the hard work.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I came into the office on the weekend and saw employees here on the weekend.

See employees leave at 7 o'clock at night, late.

And when people talk about government, it'd be smirched government.

There were many employees who are highly dedicated to making this successful.

And I think we should very much sing their praises.

Um the last thought that I'll leave us with is um uh, you know, pride in the U.S.

Really glad the Supreme Court got that decision right.

Uh that the that's just awesome.

I do think that, you know, I spoke about it at the America 250.

About how we are a very diverse city and how it's uh that is the core of who we are.

And the reason that we gather to celebrate is because we the people, we are democracy.

And sometimes democracy is messy, and but we own it.

This is our country, this is our city.

It's incumbent upon us to own what we want our future to be.

And so, with that in mind, I just want to say thank you to the city manager, to the parks, uh recreation and parks department, to the many, many volunteers that made this event happen.

There were so many smiles as residents uh just in the in the park told me over and over, I am so proud that I live in San Leandro.

This was an amazing event.

Thank you for helping my friends see that I live in a great city.

We had people from Fremont that came up.

We had people from out of state come in that were visiting and say, we want to go see what you guys are doing, and from other cities in the Bay Area.

So I thought that was very powerful.

And thank you, City Manager, for getting some flags out along East 14th.

I mean, it's you know, there's there's something about this time of year when we reflect on the blessings that we have, and I think that it is important to recognize our blessings.

And then when we make our pledge of allegiance, it is a pledge, it is a dedication to liberty and justice for all.

And when we get it wrong, we work to get it right, and that's what's so important.

And so thank you, city staff, for all that you have done to deliver a wonderful week here in the city of San Leandro.

And with that, it is what time is it?

According to my phone, it is 9 31 and we are adjourned.