The recording has started.

Okay.

We're gonna call the meeting to order at 6 59 p.m.

Wednesday, May 27th, 2026.

Um the political reasons.

I put to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation in the visible liberty interest.

For all okay, roll call.

Chair Auberg.

Here.

Vice Chair Fry?

Here.

Commissioner Bailey is excused.

Commissioner Reed?

Here.

Commissioner Lem.

Yeah.

Commissioner O'Brien.

Here.

Commissioner Roby?

Here.

Commissioner Mason.

Here.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then I need a motion to move our section item six, six A and six B presentations.

So motioned.

Second.

So we will have those right now.

Following just to help with the recording.

That was uh Commissioner Roby and Commissioner Lum.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

So 6A is our community assistance program partner.

Mercy Belback.

Okay, you have the floor.

I will just go.

This is our musical chair.

Shall I shall I take myself down here or over there?

Wherever you're comfortable.

I want you to not have to crane your neck out.

Thank you for the presentation.

Yes.

Thank you all for being here for supporting Hercy Brown bag.

I'm Janice Roberts.

I'm the executive director of Mercy Brown bag.

And we are very pleased to continue to serve San Leandro Seniors and provide them with fresh groceries twice a month.

Are all of you familiar with Mercy Brown bag?

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, great.

Let's I'll give you a little bit of a broad overview.

Um because I think you might be surprised by some of these new statistics.

It's sometimes it's a little shocking to me, frankly, as uh as I go through them, if we could.

Uh we've been around a while.

Uh we were started by residents of uh Mercy Retirement and Care Center in the Fruitvale District of Oakland, and that was 44 years ago now.

Um we are in fact focused and we only do fresh groceries twice a month uh across Alameda County.

So we started in Oakland and now we are serving 14 cities in Alameda County.

We started uh with the help of seniors or actually by seniors and we continue to thrive today because of seniors as we serve our neighbors as you can see.

I'm a senior myself, but um we have over 600 volunteers, including here in the city of San Leandro, where we have our largest center at the San Leandro Senior Center.

Our largest distribution is here in your town, and we are served primarily by senior volunteers there.

Uh I know you have at least one that has been here over 20 years uh volunteering and supporting Mercy Brown bag uh distributions.

We are now a team of 12.

We grew one this year, uh and uh you'll see in just a moment a team of 12 that's serving over 11,000 uh residents across Alameda County.

The next slide.

This gives you an idea of where we're at.

We just opened our last city in Alameda County, Dublin uh last month and uh at the Dublin Senior Center, but you can see uh across the county based on the the balloon is how many seniors we serve in that particular city.

Here, of course, San Leandro.

And this was the last fiscal year, July 1st, 2024 through June 30th, 2025.

And we had served here in San Leandro over a thousand households.

Now here in San Leandro, most of our locations are what we call farmers market locations.

So they get to pick and choose what groceries they want.

So some of those bags are considerably more than 20 pounds.

Some of them are less.

Now they're a little bit old because they're from the 2022 census, but total seniors in Alameda County at that time was 229,000.

Food insecure was around one in 10.

It's a little bit higher now, I think.

And you can see our total household served was 8600.

So we know then that we're serving somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000.

And in the last fiscal year, we distributed about 124,000 bags.

This is kind of an interesting stat.

Even since that was done, we are now at 82 distribution sites across Alameda County because we did just open Dublin.

And what else did we open last year?

Oh, downtown Oakland Senior Center.

I think this is another important stack that we had zero canceled distributions.

And let me tell you, that is not easy to do.

Not with a team of 12 who sometimes get sick and sometimes take vacation.

And it's it's really uh I would say the nature of the people on our team that they will jump in and do whatever they need to do to get the job done.

So I have been known to sweep the floor of the grocery myself if that's what needs to be done.

And uh I think it's it's really important.

We take uh I would say we take our mission very seriously because we are feeding people in most cases that cannot feed themselves.

Uh they don't have the means to feed themselves healthfully, and uh the team is very aware of that.

So it's it's interesting now.

It's even so.

I rarely even know if somebody's going to be gone because they figure out amongst themselves who's going to cover them.

Next slide.

So here, specific to San Leandro, we're serving eight sites.

Broadmore Plaza, Eden Lodge, Esteburk Plaza, Fargo, Laurel Landing, the San Leandro Marina Community Center, and the San Leandro Senior Community Center.

And then finally uh SOS Meals on Wheels.

Many people don't realize that get meals on wheels that we are the groceries that go with those meals on wheels.

And we um we actually purchase specially for meals on wheels because they they want shelf stable uh healthy food, so we'll get oatmeal and we'll get um neutral bars or uh milk uh cartons of milk, and we'll put those uh we give those to SOS Meals on Wheels and then they distribute it through their volunteer network.

So you so you guys work directly with Mills on Wheels and you look at it.

We partner with them directly.

That's amazing.

Yeah, we have um six meals on wheels uh partners across Dalamita County, right?

And it's kind of funny because most meals on wheels uh clients have no clue that it's our groceries, um, which is okay because you know, we just view that it uh it's like an ecosystem here in Alameda County that's really designed to just make sure that this very vulnerable population gets fed.

So we ask three questions, it's pretty easy to qualify for our services.

You have to be over the age of 60, you need to be an Alameda County resident, and uh you need to be low income, but I think it's pretty reasonable.

It it takes it into consideration.

Um these are USDA guidelines because we do get a fair amount of our food from the US Department of Agriculture.

Uh a single household can have up to a monthly income of 2940, and the double household, uh, you can't see it, but it's just under 4,000.

That's not even Social Security.

So that I mean that accounts for uh I'm from district three and I have a large senior population in my district, and so this would account for a large number of the people that I represent.

So that's good to know.

Well, you will see in the next slide, it's actually far less than that on average, though.

Let's go to the next slide.

So here's some of the stats for San Leandro specifically.

Uh, in the last, I just took literally the last 12 months that I had data for.

Uh, 962 households had been served.

1,250 individuals, so 1,200 people.

Um, in the last year, in that period, those 12 months, we had 177 new registrants.

So that's almost 17% if you're if you're doing the math.

Um, I can tell you that we have almost doubled in size since pre-COVID days.

We were serving around 6,000 in 2019, 2020, and so now a little over five years later, it's closing in on double, which is a little scary.

Um, but you can see the breakdown here.

It's uh predominantly female, and I might add it's not on here, but most of those are also single females.

Uh by far the majority of the people we serve are people of color, over 85%, and this is how that breaks down.

Um, and this I think is a really interesting figure.

Uh, 1,229 on average for monthly income.

So if you can imagine trying to live on 1,229 a month, it's not easy, and we all know that.

Um, I can tell you that the average brown bag recipient that's say 78 years old on average has a uh monthly income of a thousand sixty-eight dollars a month.

Now, for the most part, as far as we know, the people that we serve are housed, um, you know, because we're giving them fresh groceries.

It's hard to take a cab ahead of cabbage or a squash and do something with that uh if you're unhoused.

Although I have to tell you, I was telling uh one of the county supervisors this story uh one day when they were coming to pack holiday boxes, and I had just been in our store, and I had just helped a woman who had come in, she had lost her wallet, it had been stolen from her, and she was living in a friend's van.

And I said to her, I said, So, you know, I have fresh groceries here.

I'm not totally sure how you're going to cook those.

She said to me, Well, I have a hot plate, and she said she said, I will take that chicken apart and just boil it on my hot plate, and so we it was just before Christmas.

We gave her all the fixings for her holiday dinner, and uh she was gonna go take that.

I was worried about the food safety.

I'm like, oh my god, is this gonna be cold enough?

And but it was, I don't know if you recall right before Christmas, it was very cold, so I think it was cold enough for her, but um I I think what's important to me about this number, and what really speaks to me is last year I attended a uh presentation by uh the physician who runs the unhoused study for Northern California, and of course, I you guys probably already know this that uh the almost half of the unhoused are now seniors, which is unspeakable almost to me, and prior to becoming unhoused, what uh what she said was that the average monthly income for those seniors had been 962 dollars a month.

Well, that's a hundred dollars less than our seniors and my seniors.

A hundred dollars less is what separates our seniors who are mostly housed as far as I know, um, from those who are unhoused, and so I know I am certain that these groceries help keep people housed, help keep seniors over the age of 60, the average age of 78 housed.

So, and that was actually the point that I made to the Alameda County supervisors as we were talking about measure W distributions, and um you know, they understood what I was saying.

Okay, next slide.

Contents of a bag, we are very, very focused on healthy groceries.

We do our very best to do that.

Um, since I've been here in the last four years, this number over here, fresh produce fruits and vegetables now at 56%, has gone up from 47% to 56%.

We're quite focused on that.

And this number has also gone up because protein is such an important part of a senior's diet.

So 18%, that's where most of our money goes, by the way.

When we're buying groceries, for the most part, we're buying protein, um, which is kind of cool too because, like at Thanksgiving and Christmas, we um uh it's kind of a stretch, but we have been able to give all of our households a whole chicken for uh Thanksgiving and a whole chicken for Christmas, and uh this year the USDA decided they weren't going to support that, and so we went out and bought thousands of dollars worth of chickens.

Um it's just important.

This I also like to point out cans is just 8% of what we give out.

Um, so you know, it's not like the normal food pantry that you think of.

Um cans is like one of the least amounts.

Um we do do some cans though, and uh we bought some canned chicken broth.

I was like, why didn't we buy cartons of chicken broth if we wouldn't buy chicken broth?

But um that was actually kind of a little specialty item, and our seniors loved having chicken broth.

So um anyway, that was calendar year 2025.

Next slide.

So we uh survey our um the neighbors that were serving here in San Leandro.

This is what your uh participants uh that were surveyed responded.

A hundred percent of them reported access to more nutritious groceries than they would have had with Mercy Brown bag.

A hundred percent reported a positive effect on their overall health and well-being.

Um, you know, the statistics, I I'm not going to well, actually, I wrote them down because I was at uh um looking at at California Food Bank's uh surveys last week for seniors who have access to uh healthy groceries, the emergency room visits go down significantly, and you know, our recipients report being having greater overall health and well-being.

Um 80% report concern about going hungry if they didn't get Mercy Brown bag thanks to you to um help support this effort.

Uh we think that's a pretty important number, and um 100% to the point about we believe that we help people stay housed.

A hundred percent of the people we surveyed said that in fact those groceries do help keep them housed, and those are San Leandro residents that said that.

Next slide.

That is our story.

I did buy bring along an impact report for those who are interested.

We got really fancy this year.

I have a college intern who um decided she would display her graphic um capabilities.

Thank you.

If you don't, before you throw it out, give it to a neighbor or friend.

Did you get one?

Everyone got one.

Yes, thank you.

But this tells our story.

Yeah, and a couple of stories too about people who have gotten our services.

Um this is kind of a fun thing.

We served over 25 Alameda County residents over the age of 100.

Oh, yay.

How about that?

Or I mean, some of these numbers.

I had um my ops manager pull these recently.

524 over the age of 90, and 4,084 that are 75 plus.

That's wonderful.

Over 4,000.

So I think that the work we are doing together is truly for some of the most vulnerable of the folks who live in Alameda County.

Any other questions?

Thank you again for supporting this effort.

Um we I view this as a total partnership.

Um, we could not do this without you.

So thank you.

I think you guys voted on money coming to us.

Yes.

So I just have to say a very sincere thank you.

Thank you, thank you for your presentation.

Yes, stay here.

Okay.

Next on the agenda would be our human services department update.

It just goes.

Oh sit so I can present Angie, but I still don't have to clean your neck.

I thought that was a smart idea.

I was trying to see how to put it in presentation mode, but it's a PDF from the agenda.

Um is it down there also?

Why are you looking right up there?

Is that this one?

Maybe.

Oh, you probably write.

One page?

I don't know.

Full screen.

Ah, thank you.

Sorry.

All right.

Well, thanks everybody for having me.

Um Jessica Lobanon, Human Services Director.

Um, and I'm here tonight to present an update on the human services department.

So, as some of you, maybe many of you know, um, human services and the recreation department have a long history.

Um, pre-2022, we were one department, the recreation and human services department.

In 2022, based on community feedback, um, the department was split into two standalone departments, human services and recreation and parks.

And this was based on community feedback for um how the city of San Leandro can better serve those most at risk.

Um we both were established as standalone departments, and senior services stayed with human services essentially to fill out the scope of the department.

Without it, it wasn't quite robust enough to constitute a full-fledged department.

Essentially, over the past couple of years, we've been seeing how things are going.

We've done a lot of great work, and we've identified some efficiencies in actually doing a reorganization.

So, effective July 1st, senior services will be returning to parks and recreation, and human services is going to be moving into the city manager's office.

What this means for the human services scope of work, we will continue to have the human services commission.

We'll continue to run the community assistance grant program, operate Louelling Interim Housing and Drop In Center, the Alternative Response Unit, our homelessness prevention rental assistance program, as well as homeless outreach coordination.

Human services will I'll continue to be here.

I'll continue to oversee human services.

I'm taking on a new role as deputy city manager.

Um, in addition to human services, I'll be doing other scopes of work as a deputy city manager, and else I will continue to be your commission secretary and the day-to-day contact for all of the contracts that that we manage.

Oh, question, I'm sorry.

So my district, I'm in district three, yeah, and my majority of my district is senior citizens.

So my question is is that as we're going over like the community assistance grant programs, yeah, will we be getting feedback from the senior commission?

Is the senior commission going to continue to stand?

Yes, the senior commission will continue to stand.

Okay, that's all I care about because they advocate for themselves.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

They will continue to stand.

Okay, yeah.

I just want to make sure.

Yeah, for sure.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

Um of the rationale for reorganization.

Um essentially, there are several efficiencies with this reorganization.

This is really industry norm to have senior services, senior programs of you know, fully fledged senior center within a recreation department.

Um, the perks and recreation director has many, many decades of experience running recreation programs and experience running senior centers and growing and expanding to meet the diverse needs of the population.

Um of the main priorities in exploring this was ensuring that this is really back end.

There's there's not going to be a difference felt for the community.

Um, there's several infrastructure efficiencies, like the software that we utilize for programming is run by the recreation department.

Um, and there's also alignment with some of our like citywide strategic plans.

Um of the benefits, recreation will now be the one-stop shop for all direct community services and facility reservations.

So currently, recreation provides programming for children, youth, young adults, adults, up until seniors.

So now it'll just be under one leadership to have all of the services.

Um human services absolutely remains a priority.

We still manage the citywide priority of housing and homelessness, um, and our work will now be within the city manager's office.

Um this we believe will increase recreation's capacity to expand programs and build stronger community partnerships.

Um I've talked a little bit about the efficiencies, and there's also cost savings.

So by consolidating our leadership positions, we are saving um approximately $350,000 annually that otherwise would have been a direct community um.

Um just to contextualize this.

I think this commission has had some questions about this in the past, but the city has faced a large structural deficit over the last several years.

Following into the future fiscal years, we faced reductions of nearly $13 million.

So again, every every bit counts, really.

Any questions?

I think that was a great question about the senior commission.

So essentially all of the staff who currently run the senior center and manage the senior commission will continue to do so.

Seniors are just a huge personal stake in it, but then I also have a district stake in it because the majority of the people in my district are seniors.

So I just want to make sure that we're not gonna be devaluing any services or letting go of any services or anything that would be able, you know, yeah, the good work that we've been doing.

I just don't want to see that fallback.

That's why I was asking.

So I appreciate that.

Absolutely.

And there we'll continue to partner closely with senior services and the recreation and parks department as a whole.

You know, our community grant program funds, senior programs, and so it is something that you know we understand.

Like this is the lines are a little blurry sometimes.

So it's it's just some back end cleanup, but it in by no means is a deprioritization.

Great.

I appreciate and I appreciate the hard work that you and Elsa and the other people working for the city are doing.

So I just want to share that as well.

Thanks.

Any other questions?

Thanks for coming, Jessica.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Jessica.

Yeah, thanks.

Give you your chair back.

Thank you.

You guys aren't going to be a new room.

I don't know when physically comes in.

There will be some physical involved as well.

Yeah, but we're not sure what the timing is.

The school district used to be upstairs, and now there's like some shots.

Yeah, it makes it so easy.

Hey.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

I hate to feel free to leave or take off.

Thank you.

Okay.

So we are back up to item three, consent calendar.

Um everybody have a chance to review March's minutes.

Make a motion that we approve March's minutes.

Okay.

Motion to approve by Ruby.

Second by Alum, by Lum.

Item four, city staff reports and announcements.

And yes, thank you.

Um real quickly, um, if you had not heard already or participated in one of the um branding projects events, um, basically the city is doing a rebranding of San Leandro, um, and they will be collecting information from the community.

They've done a couple of workshops at the library, they will be at the farmers market.

Um, I don't know if it was just today or if there's going to be a couple more dates.

Um, and then they will be at the C no at the Cherry Festival.

And if you can't make it to any of those events, you can do it online.

So if you just take this uh link from our agenda, where did I go?

Oh, it's right here.

So it's not highlighted.

Salandro.org/slash branding.

It'll take you to the website where you can read about what's happening with this survey and complete the survey.

I did it too.

It was really quick and easy.

Um, so I highly recommend that you participate so that we can get good information on that.

Thank you.

And should I keep going?

Yeah, okay.

All right, were there any questions?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

If there's no questions, I'll keep going.

Um there's actually two opportunities for the Cherry Festival.

If you want to participate in the parade, um, there will be room for two passengers during the parade.

They will most likely ask folks folks to meet by 9 15 at the staging area near BART.

Uh, more details will come once we get them from the recreation department.

Um it will be very similar structure to last year's parade.

Their chosen theme is inspired that by the semi-quincentennial aka.

I don't know if I said that right.

AKA the 250th anniversary of the United States 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

It's a very specific theme.

Shuttle decoration will be Friday the day before at 1 p.m.

at the MV Transportation Lot.

So you're welcome to participate in both or neither, if that's not your jam.

Let me know because there's only room for two so that we can coordinate that and I can get um that information over to you and them.

So they'll be expected.

I had so much fun last year.

So I will definitely be one if no one else that wins.

Not interested in going, but it is a really good senior uh yes.

It's a it's uh it's the party bus.

Uh the senior commission.

Um, since the seniors um work really closely, we have a contract with MV Transportation for the free shuttles, uh flex shows.

Right.

They take one of those and they pop out the windows and you hand out swag or just you know well, you guys hand out the swag.

We just wait.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I was I'm trying to remember.

Um, but yeah, I got to participate last year and I had a really good time too.

That's great.

Um, so yeah, if you're interested, let me know.

No pressure.

Um, I believe there's also one opportunity for one person to be a judge.

Um, so I'm getting those details also.

Um, but uh I I'm trying to remember.

I think you're uh you're either a judge of the parade or you're a judge of the pie.

So you have to like cherry pie.

So as soon as I get more information on that, I will share that opportunity as well.

Um the pie or the piety contest.

No, is there a piety contest?

Yeah, okay.

Let me get back to you.

Um I just got that information today, and so I asked for more details.

So um, anyways, lots of fun opportunities in case you're interested.

I'm definitely interested in the parade.

So if you know, and I'll I will let go of my place if anybody else wants to take it.

But yay, okay.

Um that's it for both of us.

Okay.

Um, public comments.

We do not have any members of the public here present.

Um, did we have any e-comments?

No e-comments.

All right, and down to item seven, no action items.

Item number eight, commission reports and announcements.

Any thing to report?

I have three.

I think no, not for me here.

Not for I do, I do.

Um April showers on July 5th, the first Sunday in July.

We are changing our hours.

We're still gonna be there first, third and fifth Sundays of every month, but instead of opening our doors at 11 and closing at two, we'll open at noon and go to three.

And the city will be running a swimming program in the morning at the pool.

So they're kind enough to allow us to use their uh shower facilities.

Um but we'll see how it goes.

We're starting our announcements to the public this coming weekend.

So even though we've been talking about it, you get the first public crack at it.

Are the participants already informed of the change?

We have not told our guests.

We're gonna start telling them.

I I we've started uh volunteers and suit makers and lunchmakers this week, and then this is a fifth Sunday, so we'll be there next Sunday too, and that's when we're gonna start telling people, but we don't want to tell people too quickly because they'll show up at 12 o'clock on June 6th and say, Well, what do you mean you're closing the shower at 1 15?

I just got here.

Yeah, so I see.

Keep it as simple as we can.

Okay, all right.

Um, I will not be here at June's meeting.

I've plans to be out of town with my family, so I plan to see you guys in July.

Um make a motion to adjourn.

All right, the second second by mom.

It's just being here tonight, so we can't.

Yeah, it makes my minutes easier.

Adjourned at 7:38 p.m.

Thank you.

I am so excited about the parade.

Yeah, no idea.

I have people.