Okay, we'll get started momentarily as soon as we get one more councilmember
Okay, it is 704 I'm calling this many of the sound later City Council to order
And we'll lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please stand if you're able to
Madam clerk, would you please take roll?
Councilmember Bolt
Sorry councilmember bolt present. Thank you
Councilmember Simon
present thank you
Councilmember Vivieros Walton present present. Thank you councilmember Aguilar
Present. Thank you councilmember Bowen
Sorry, there you go
President, thank you. And Mayor Gonzalez. President. Thank you. So before we get to date,
I'd like to acknowledge the Lunar New Year is being celebrated by many in our community at
this time. It marks the beginning of the lunar calendar and is observed across numerous cultures
present here in San Landro and in countries like China, Vietnam, Korea, and others. And we extend
our best wishes to all that are celebrating.
And we recognize the cultural significance of this holiday to many
of our residents. So may you have a healthy
and prosperous new year. Tonight we have the appointment and swearing-in of two
new members under agenda 10a, Shailani Alex to the Arts, Culture and
Library Commission, and Victor Cravoceza to the Committee Police Review Board.
I'd like to move these items up to section four,
recognitions, in the interest of time,
if there are no objections.
Looking down Council Roll, don't see any objections,
so it will be adjusted accordingly in our agenda.
The State of San Leon conducts orderly meetings
to fulfill its mandate, discriminatory statements
or conduct that would potentially violate
the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964,
and or the California Fair Employment and Housing Act,
California Penal Code sections 403 or 415
are per se disruptive to meeting
will not be tolerated. Please see the City Council handbook and City Council
meeting rules of decorum for more information. Madam Clerk, your
announcement. If you would like to make a public comment during the meeting you
can do so in person or via zoom. If you are present at the meeting please
complete a speaker card and submit it to the City Clerk before the item is
presented. If you wish to participate in public comment via zoom you can use the
raise-your-hand tool when the item is called. During the public comment session,
speakers will be invited to speak and will have a set time to share their
comments. A countdown timer will appear for their convenience and when the time
is up, the microphone will be muted. All raised hands outside of public comment
will be lowered to avoid confusion. Once public comment is opened, hands may be
raised to speak. There will be a 30-minute window for public comments
which will take place under item 7, public comments as per the published agenda.
After this time is up, the council will proceed with the rest of the meetings
agenda. If you have not had the opportunity to speak during the initial
30-minute period, there will be another chance to do so after item 12, City
Council reports. At this point in time we will check item 3. Was there anything to
report out of closed session? No reportable action Mr. Mayor. What direction
was given to staff. So at this point in time we'll move to item number four. We
don't have any recognitions but this is where we will take our item 10a motion
to appoint representatives to boards and commissions. Acting City Clerk, this is
your item. Thank you Mayor. Yes tonight before you we do have the motion to
appoint Shalani Alex to the Arts, Culture and Library Commission and also
Victor Cravatiza to fill a vacancy on the community police review board okay
at this point in time I will take a motion vice mayor so moved I'll second
the item this nomination occurred before and this is just a final action to
point the form of minute order so we can move straight to a vote please vote all
votes are in and the motion carries unanimously. At this point in time, would
you please, Madam Clerk, conduct our swearing in.
Shalani, if you'd join me. I do solemnly swear that I will support and
defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the
state of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true
faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of
the state of California, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental
reservation without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion or
purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge that will well
and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter the duties
upon which I'm about to enter thank you for your service we appreciate you
stepping forward at this point in time we got a consent calendar are there any
items are there any council members who would like to pull an item from our
consent calendar seeing none we will take a public comment on the consent
calendar at this time mayor we have not received any public comment cards on
this item but we do have one hand raised online please proceed online the first
online speaker is Douglas Spalding thank you good evening council members I'm
to try to wind my way back over to the agenda here in my oh here we are. So I
wanted to comment on two of the items and that would be the the contract for
city branding and that looks like it's 5b and then also the purchase of five
vehicles for the police department and that's item 5d. I just you know I want
going to raise the general question about the problem of our city having, you know,
structural debt. We're not doing well on the balance sheet. The branding contract looks
like it's $150,000. I'm not a marketing person. I suppose that money would get back to us
it's at some point, but I just, you know, it just sort of makes me wonder, really?
$150,000 to pump up our brand. And then for item 5D, are we just buying new police cars
because that's what we always do? Like, what happened to the old police cars? Do we wreck
them? Are they not workable anymore? I know, you know, there are a lot of miles go on,
lot of time, a lot of wear and tear. I know they are well maintained, you know, our police department
can't do without the vehicles, but like, can we stretch our, you know, our vehicle budget a little
farther? It seems like every year we're buying multiple vehicles for a lot of money. And then
the other thing is, I would want to make sure that these are electric vehicles, or at least hybrid
vehicles. You know, if we're going to do do right by the by the planet. So that you know
that was $450,000. So together, you know, 600,000 is the better part of a million. Thank
you very much. Thank you. The next speaker is Mike Katz-Lacabe.
Good evening, honorable mayor, city council members and staff. It's time for the City
of San Leandro and its elected leaders to stop using the social media platform formerly known
as Twitter. When advertisers decided to stop using the social media platform because their
ads were showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech, the owner sued the advertisers.
In November of 2024, you could be forgiven for not noticing the change that anything you
posted on the platform would be used to train his own artificial intelligence platform,
which by the way went on to be the preferred method for producing non-consensual sexualized
images of women and children. And perhaps she didn't care that the social media platform's
owner spent nearly 300 million to get the current administration elected. On inauguration day,
two Nazi salutes by the social media platform owner should have caught your attention. And when he
joined the current administration as the leader of Doge, perhaps she didn't feel the impact of
the careless and haphazard approach to gutting the people and finances of critical government
services. Now the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter is spreading conspiracy theories
inviting white supremacist great including the white supremacist great replacement theory that
has led to the demonization of immigrants. So why are the city of San Leandro and the
San Leandro police and some of our elected leaders still using this platform? Why are the mayor and
some members of council still using it? Continued use of the platform says a lot and it's not good.
it's long past time to act in a way that reflects the values that you've all previously put forward.
Thank you. Thank you. Mayor there are no more hands raised online.
Okay so we'll close public comment both online and in person coming back to councilmember Aguilar.
Thank you Mayor I'd like to move the consent. So motion by councilmember Aguilar to adopt the
consent calendar. Do I have a second? I will second the consent calendar. So with that any further
discussion seeing none please vote. All votes are in and the motion carries
unanimously. Okay next we'll move to our city manager announcement. Thank you Mr.
Mayor good evening council members and community members it is my pleasure to
announce that this week the police department welcomed two new police
officers first we have officer Javier almost and Aaron Gonzalez officer almost
attended the 26-week Contra Costa County Basic Police Academy and graduated this past Friday,
February 13th. Officer Gonzalez previously served as a police services technician with the department
and this they will now begin their 18-week field training program. So please join me in
welcoming them to the San Leandro Police Department. That concludes my announcements.
Thank you for that good news. We'll now move to public comment. This opportunity for the public
comment on items that are not on our agenda so if it's on the agenda please
wait until that item is called so for items that are not on our agenda that
are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council now is the
opportunity to address City Council. Madam Clerk. Mayor we've received eight cards
here in the room and we currently have one hand raised online. Okay online people
this is the time to raise your hand because we're gonna start online and we
will come in person. So I'll give you 10 seconds and you sure you have all your
cards here? You said you have eight, right? Perfect. So we were gonna be taking the
eight cards after we take the hands online. How many hands do we have online?
Mayor, we have two hands raised online. Okay so those are the two people that we
will be recognizing and what are those names please?
Douglas Spalding and Mimi Dean. Okay Douglas and Mimi, we will take you
first we will then close public comment online and we'll bring it into the room.
The first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.
Darn it! I was banking on you going the other way so I'd have a few minutes to
collect my thoughts but I can probably say what I wanted to say. First I want
to give a shout out to two kind gestures in our city.
I hope others also made it over to As Needed Bakery for their grand
opening last weekend. And I really love the feature where you can buy, you know,
pay it forward, buy a cup of coffee for somebody else, and put it up on the board,
which I did because I know I will once more walk into the library without my
wallet and want a cup of coffee, so I kind of paid for myself. The
other one is, I don't know how many people know about this wonderful program
that human services has brought to our city.
I signed up at the Sand Lander Senior Center
and it's a ride share.
It's an organization, I think it's called City Share,
that's located in Pleasanton,
but they've contracted with our city.
And the benefit for me was I was able to get somebody
to drive me to my surgery a couple Mondays ago
and save my mom the trouble of coming all the way
from Walnut Creek and having to worry about
whether she can really drive, still drive or not.
So, of course, people to sign up.
And also, I'm gonna sign up and volunteer
to drive somebody else.
All right, moving on.
I wanted to, again, thank the city council
profoundly for your vote on the rent stabilization ordinance.
And I would like to know when,
I know the rent registry is being worked on
to make it feasible.
I'd like to kind of know when that comes into play.
And I want to know what the city plans are
for advertising this new RSO,
because in our continuing outreach
through the housing platform of the Big Ten,
we're finding that a lot of people don't know about it.
They don't know the details.
There are a lot of people just got rent increases.
Some like upwards 10% that don't really go with the old.
Thank you so much.
Your time has elapsed.
Our next online speaker is Mimi Dean.
Hi, it's Mimi Dean, um, I just logged on because I just got out of my other meeting.
Is now the time for me to comment about, um, the, the issues with my colleague, Fred?
We're on non-agenda items.
So, I don't know if it's on the agenda, so somebody could cut me off now, I won't waste
your time.
Hold on just a second, please.
Okay, so this would be your time. Please proceed.
Okay, thank you. So, I just wanted to say that, you know, Fred Simon and I have been
working at Orloma for about a year now. And I have found him to always be a kind and thoughtful
and wonderful person. And, you know, I just am very sad that this whole thing that's going
on was done in a open public session rather than in a closed session, because that's really
where it belonged. I am hoping that there has been some kind of verification of all
the people in that report, because you know, I know Mayor Amoritis, Sheila Young, disputes
what was written that she said. And if the Mayor Amoritis disputes it, it makes me feel
like other people maybe were also mis-coded or something
wasn't, sources were not verified.
So I really think it's important to always check your sources.
That's what a good reporter does.
And so that's what I want to say about that.
And then the last thing I want to talk about
is the voting process that you guys use.
I think it's really weird that Fred and Victor
are not allowed to get to vote on their own discipline,
but Suha is allowed to vote.
Now, if this was a court of law,
neither the defendant nor the plaintiff
would have any say the jury is the one who decides,
the other people.
So I just think it's really weird.
And I just think, you know, we need transparency
and we need fairness and it just doesn't seem right
that one person gets to vote
and then the other person doesn't get to vote also.
So either everybody should vote
or else the people that are involved
in the case shouldn't vote.
That's just my two cents and thank you for listening.
Thank you so much.
Mayor, that concludes our online public comment.
Please proceed in person now.
The first three speakers in the room
are Bernard Ashcraft, David Anderson and Nancy Rafaloff.
Bernard Ashcraft, David Anderson and Nancy Rafaloff.
Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council, City Attorney,
City Manager.
I'm here on behalf of the Bay Area Business Roundtable
and the Big Tent organization, we sent you a request
to at the next council meeting to issue a resolution
of apology for redlining.
The effects of redlining continue to replicate
throughout our community today in the form
of persistent wealth gaps, education disparities,
and residential segregation patterns.
an official acknowledgement and apology
would represent an important step forward.
Recognizing the pain and the economic harm
inflicted on families excluded from our city
was pure economic violence,
educating current and future residents about this history,
beginning a process of reconciliation and healing,
demonstrate in San Leonvro's commitment to equity and justice. I urge the city council
to issue a formal resolution apologizing for San Leonvro's participation in redlining
and its discriminatory housing practices and to consider what other additional steps the city
might take to adjust the ongoing legacy of these policies. It's important that we move forward
and keep in mind that it's always a good time to do the right thing.
Now it's time to do the right thing. Thank you.
Thank you. The next three speakers are David Anderson,
Nancy Rafaloff, and Karen Silva. Good evening council. I'd like to speak
on in support of the redlining resolution. I
think we should do something to show that we did not support that.
when I moved up here in San Leandro I was affected by that. It cost me $100,000 extra
to get over that, but I think Mr. Ashcraft said pretty much all that needs to be said and it's
up to you guys to pick it up and take it from there. And also like to say for Fred and Victor
that as the speaker called earlier, I think this is something that could have been handled
in-house. It didn't have to come out in the open and I hope that in the future
that we would all respect one another and do these things behind the scenes.
And it's just a big mess right now. It makes the city looks terrible. So I don't want to get too
deep in it because I'm getting emotional about it. I think it was unfair the way it happened
and it shouldn't happen that way. And I think all you guys need to sit back and think about it
and see if there's another way that you can do this. I know you have another meeting coming up
on the actions that you're going to be taking and I think that you do a lot of soul searching
and consider, you know, what you're doing and how you're making the city look.
Because it can happen to you guys just as well as it can happen to you.
And Victor, thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Nancy Raffaloff,
Karen Silva, and Carol Haber-Coss. Good evening everybody. I'm here tonight as a character witness
for Fred Simon. Fred is a hard-working community leader. He's a family man, a son, a husband,
father that always shows up for his family. Fred is a humble leader in his
community who tirelessly does everything he can do to improve the lives of his
community. Moving forward I hope this council can find common ground and work
for the best for San Leandro. That's all I have to say tonight. Thank you. The next three
Our speakers are Karen Silva, Carol Habercross, and Rob Rich.
Hi, I'm Karen, and I'm here on behalf of Fred Simon,
who I'm on the board
for Washington Manor Homeowners Association,
and I'm just basically here to give my concern
and respect to Fred for being a wonderful leader
for our community, as well as District 4,
and to just be here as an advocate for him.
He's an advocate for our community
and a well-known public servant who is consistently listens
and is always there for every resident
throughout San Leandro as well as Washington Manor.
I'm really appalled the way the city handled this situation
and to put Victor and to put Fred on the spot like this
and for this thing to keep going on year after year,
month after month, it's an embarrassment.
And it also takes up time and money
that could have been spent better on our community
and on our residents.
So I hope that this kind of stuff was silenced quickly
and it should have been handled behind closed doors
and it really should have been handled in a better way.
So I just do wanna give my respect to Fred
and let you know that he is a wonderful community leader
and a wonderful resident as well as very supportive
to every person throughout the community.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next three speakers are Carol Haberkos,
Rob Rich and Michael McGuire.
Good evening, City Council, Mayor and staff.
I'm here also, I'm a resident of the city.
I'm very proud of the work the city and community is doing.
San Leandro is a city where kindness matters.
The Stephen Taylor Memorial, the library's exhibitions,
the passing of rent stabilization
are just some of the few things that we've done here,
San Leandro's done here.
All city council members need to be treated with respect.
I have worked with and gone to events
with both council members, Simon and Aguilar,
going back to the Bernie days.
Go Bernie.
While I was with them, I never experienced
or witnessed them disrespecting others.
As I read through news articles, city reports,
and documents to try to find the evidence,
I'm concerned, it's confusing.
The report writer builds city council,
taxpayers, 134,000 for their work.
Melissa Wong, a San Leander resident,
documented three pages of analysis
to tell the council of the worst errors
identified in the report.
So we are better than this.
We need to move forward together,
focus on the future,
and keep fighting for democracy in our city's future.
I do understand there's a video and transcript
of Council Member Simon's interview
with the investigator, which will be on the city website soon.
And I look forward to learning more about this issue.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next three speakers are Rob Rich,
Michael McGuire, and Anthony Tejada.
Mr. Mayor, Ms. Vice Mayor, members of the council,
I realize this may be politically incorrect,
but I like and respect each of you.
That goes for you as well, Ms. City Manager.
And I'm sure Mr. City Attorney, you're nice too,
but we haven't met yet.
To be honest, I was hoping that since it's been
almost a month, since the council voted
to accept the findings of the independent
investigative reports, and agreed that there should
be disciplinary action, that by now we would have
begun the process of healing and moving on.
Yet I keep hearing about errors made by the consultants
in their reports finding gender bias.
No doubt there are some errors.
Constructive criticism is important.
It can help drive improvement, but let's not miss
the forest for the trees.
You know what I see when I read those reports?
I see something that looks a lot like me.
I see a lot of my own subconscious sexism.
And you know how I usually recognize my sexism?
Friends, colleagues, and family point it out to me,
and it doesn't always go well for them at first,
but when I finally get it,
I try to be accountable and improve.
I've also heard restorative justice mentioned recently.
I think that's great.
So I'm here as an ally, and this is my restorative justice
challenge.
If a group of women tell you that you've engaged
in a pattern of sexist behavior after you've
found fault with them, next, try to find the truth
in what they're saying, because it's in there, I promise.
And then finish up by trying to be accountable and improve
so that we can finally please move on.
Thank you.
The next two speakers are Michael McGuire and Anthony
Tahada.
Hey there, I agree with what was said earlier on red lighting,
and I think we should put that on the agenda
before too much more time passes.
And I just want to share two examples for recent history
on apologies that waited too long.
And one was our federal government waiting till 1998
to apologize to the Japanese Americans
for their internment during World War II 46 years later.
And this is after it had literally
become a textbook case of injustice for school kids
in their textbooks.
The other was in Australia, which
gave the world the briefest demand
on the recent history of protests.
The Sari movement wanted to get that country's federal
government to utter that one word to the Aborigines, who
had been mistreated in many ways,
including their children being seized.
A tent city had been set up in front of Parliament in 1972,
and it was the world's longest-running protest site
when I was able to join it briefly in 1999.
The apology from the nation's leaders
finally came in 2007, 10 years after even a federal commission had called for them to
make one. Let's be a little quicker than those two governments were in recognizing redlining
as bad effects and saying, we're sorry. Just one other little thing I wanted to mention.
I wanted to thank the mayor for his gracious statement upon Mr. Acevedo leading the council.
It was, they hadn't always agreed on everything, but it was a wonderful example of being gracious
for someone who is leaving us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The last speaker is Anthony Tejada.
Good evening, council members, mayor, and city manager.
My name is Anthony Tejada.
I'm the current chair for the Planning Commission Board
of Zoning Adjustments.
I've been with the commission for about six plus years now.
Also serve on the Washington Manor Homeowners Association,
the board there.
I've been a member for three years.
Throughout that entire time, I've
have plenty of interaction with Fred Simon.
So I can speak to Fred's character, his nature,
him being an upstanding citizen,
and ultimately providing a betterment of service
for the community at large.
I've never had any sort of instances where
there's been a direct or indirect sort of sexism
or bias in that regard towards gender that I've witnessed.
Moreover, some of the speakers previously had mentioned this,
But I mean, we can go to the recent San Leandro Times
and articles and facts that have been cited there.
Melissa Wong from the letters to the editor
from a few weeks back,
time stamped a session on 120,
the 120 city council meeting, 227 30 through 231 30.
You can read up there, you can watch that
and go through the inconsistencies,
the flaws with the report that are noted.
Really just seeing this as a sum of $134,000
that went towards a report where the end result really
is not factual.
There are inconsistencies, again,
that were left as a finished product.
So are we any better served than where we could have been
if this was handled in-house, internal?
I really think structured collaborative partnering here
as a council can go a long way.
If we discuss the matter, find commonalities between what can happen and what can be done
to improve the situation, that's the only way we're going to get better.
That's the only way our image is going to improve.
Not by hiring outside resources that we pay lump sum money to and get a finished product
that we received.
Thank you.
Sir, your time has elapsed.
Mayor, that concludes all of our in-room comment cards.
So we'll close public comment at this point in time.
we will proceed with our next agenda item,
which is our typically public hearings,
but we don't have a public hearing today,
so it will be our one and only presentation for today.
It's a presentation on the current
residential development market conditions
and feasibility for key residential development projects
in San Leandro.
And for this item, we've got economic development manager,
Katie Bowman, to kick us off.
Welcome.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
We're here tonight in the item.
San Leandro has a substantial pipeline
of entitled housing, as you may know.
And we've demonstrated over the years
through a number of different measures
a commitment to streamlining housing approvals
and improving feasibility of housing.
And tonight we have Will Solholt of Cosmont Realty
who through the housing work plan
has done an analysis of our residential market
and he's gonna help shed some light
on the current state of the housing market in San Leandro
and why some of these projects have not moved
into the construction phase.
And with that I'll hand over Will
and we'll be available for questions.
Yeah, thank you, Mayor, council members, staff.
Will so hold Cosmot Realty.
My background is I've been with the company
for almost 20 years now.
I'm a licensed broker in the state of California,
property sales, acquisitions, leasing structure, a lot of transactions between the public sector,
private sector, and negotiate a lot of deals where public entities are leasing properties
for residential development, etc. I was retained and brought on to, as introduced, look at kind
of your pipeline of entitled projects in the city, look at the existing housing stock, look at what's
going on in the community, and look at why are certain projects stuck, etc. For a brief primer,
looking at development feasibility obviously developers elect to do a and pursue real estate
development to generate profit right they don't usually do it for fun some do but for the most
part it's to generate profit and profit is developed obviously when development value exceeds
development costs typically relies on investors putting in their equity and lenders putting in
debt so you've got to give both those parties satisfied with sufficient returns to see a product
to come to fruition. Generally speaking if a product is not projected to generate
a substantial enough profit developers won't do it or they'll look to do a
development elsewhere in other markets. With respect to measuring returns this
is how you get to gauge what's going on in your community and how developers
look at things they look at as a cap rate a cap rate as a return measurement
of return on investment. The cap rate is the cash return divided by the value.
basically if you've got something that you buy for $100 and you get $10 back
from that on an annual basis if you paid $100 in cash you got $10
cash back that would be a 10% cap rate or a 10 cap is how they call it. The next
measurement is return on costs very similarly it's actually how much the
value is relative to the cost so if a development is worth a hundred and ten
million dollars but it costs a hundred million dollars to put into service or
to construct that would yield a 10% return on cost.
And you use those two numbers together to evaluate projects.
This, you can have fun at your own time, I'm sure.
But this looks at different yields, different cap rates
and how they change over time.
The cap rate is a return for risk
as well as in the scheme of investment.
That top line there is hotels, riskiest investments
that require the highest cap rate returns.
The bottom is multifamily.
The brown line on the bottom there is multifamily,
generally speaking, the most stable, most consistent,
and therefore demanding the lowest cap rate
or rate of return relative to other real estate investments.
The gray bars you've got there are the 10-year T-node,
very stable, safe investment conceptually,
and the dashed line is CPI.
So the point of this chart is these things change
as perceived risks and returns weigh and bear out
in the market.
What happens when cap rate changes,
a substantial increase or decrease in value.
On the left hand side you've got the purchasing power
of $1,000 a month as a mortgage.
Probably pretty familiar with how that purchasing power
goes down as interest rates go up.
Similarly as cap rates go up,
the value and asset go down pretty substantially.
And I'll dig into that a little bit more in here
in just a second.
At the highest level, increases in rent,
generate more cash,
increased value through that cap rate formula.
Increases in vacancy reduce the cash return,
reduce the value.
Increases in interest rate,
increase borrowing costs,
reduce cash return, reduce the value.
The simple example here of a cap rate
is if a property was worth a million dollars
and had net income based on a,
based on net income at a four cap,
which was not uncommon a few years ago,
that would be worth $25 million.
The same property in today's market at a five cap,
let's say, would be worth $20 million.
So a $5 million decrease in value, 25% decrease
with no change in income, conceptually.
And so you can have pretty substantial variations in value
as the market fluctuates.
With respect to your local market,
we did look at a lot of markets,
a very high level points here
based on reviewing the other markets.
You've got very limited four and five star
higher quality product in the market,
really central gallons,
your kind of your flagship property at this point
is just stabilizing right now.
You do have higher rents at Central Callum
than you see in some of the other markets,
but we'll see what happens and plays out
as Central Callum is leased up.
Other markets are seeing downward pressures in rent.
That's important to note.
And so you actually do see reductions in rent
as new inventory is brought on areas like Oakland,
East Oakland, things like that.
And so you can actually see the rents decrease
as more inventory becomes available in the market.
And the vacancy rate for that higher four
and five star product in the city
is expected to be slightly higher than in the markets.
We'll see what happens.
This is really based on Central Calend.
We really wanna see that product stabilize in the future.
And we look to four and five star product.
That's really new product in the market.
If you're coming to develop a new building,
you're really looking at what's going on
in that four and five star market.
Not as concerned about the one to three star market
if you're looking to develop ground up.
Generally speaking, multifamily development
in the last few years has been constrained
by shifts in the capital market.
That's that increases in cap rates, reducing value,
increases in interest rates.
You saw the Fed just recently began lowering interest rates
again on an overnight lending rate.
Over time, that does kind of trickle out
and trickle through the economy
and reduce cap rates over time.
We're starting to see that slowly.
There is some general concern in the market
about construction costs, inflation, uncertainty,
but generally speaking, the capital markets
are still pretty conservative,
pretty hesitant to lend money for new products, new projects.
We looked at three specific projects in the city
that are entitled.
The first one, Maximus Project.
The second one, Town Hall Square.
And then the third one, 1388, Bancroft.
Just a quick summary of these.
On the left-hand side, you've got Maximus.
Very large project, almost six acres, 687 units.
Keynote or key metrics, 120 dwelling units an acre.
That is similar in density to Town Hall Square.
A much smaller project, given the smaller footprint,
180 units total.
but again, at that 120 dwelling units per acre.
Both projects proposed to be parked
with subterranean parking, which is very expensive.
With respect to building heights,
Maximus at five stories, Town Hall Square at seven.
Those are generally speaking,
it's possible to construct that height
with the lowest cost of construction would call it stick
or type three construction, generally wood construction.
And then on the right-hand side, 1388 Boundcroft,
three stories, 42 dwelling units,
Much lower density, right, 33 dwelling units per acre.
That one's surface park.
With respect to feasibility, Maximus,
we see that as, it's gonna require substantial improvements
in the market fundamentals to have that make sense,
just given the scale, the lack of a proven market
in this local area.
So we'd expect to require pretty substantial improvements
in the market before that would get built.
Town Hall Square, we think that's really dependent
on Central Callen, the performance
of Central Callen next door.
Central Callen leases up successfully.
then you might see financing and support
from a lender investor community at Town Hall Square.
And then 1388 Bancroft, excuse me.
We expect that to be financially feasible
as we say here today.
Just that construction type, lower cost of construction,
the surface parking costs much less per unit
than subterranean parking.
So we say that we would expect to be financially feasible
in the near term.
Overall, we do think the city has attracted market
for future development.
But the market for the new product
has yet to be fully proven out.
And again, I go back to Central Callan.
I think that's a bellwether
for future development in the city
to the extent that that leases up successfully
and that proves to be viable.
In the market, you might see further investment
in the near term.
The city does have some opportunity
to have an impact on development
and the financial feasibility of development,
especially if projects are on the bubble.
As we move, as cap rates come down a little bit,
There's a lot of power and even small movements
in the cap rate.
But if a project is on the bubble
and you wanna see something happen sooner than later,
things like inclusionary housing,
impact fees, development standards,
rent stabilization ordinances,
all those types of things come into play
in the eyes of the investor
and can make a developer and investor team
say, have a go, no, go decision.
They might look somewhere else given the opportunity,
but you do have these levers that you can pull on.
At the end of the day though,
even seemingly small changes in the broad market can have a huge impact on financial
feasibility. If you see the whole market swing, cap rates come down from five to four, rents
go up, construction costs stabilize, we would expect to see additional investment and movement
forward with some of those title projects. At the end of the day, developing a new project
is a very risky proposition, especially in unproven markets. Not everybody, but many
people see developers as the big, bad, greedy profit takers. At the end of the day, it's
a very risky line of business, putting $100 million in assets in the ground in many cases,
sometimes more, sometimes less, but ultimately in a very highly leveraged environment, a
very risky proposition to take. So they're, in most cases, conservative with their investments
that want to have some certainty as to what's going on in the near term in the future. With
that, happy to answer any questions you might have.
Okay. So we'll start with questions. Actually, let's take public comment first because there's
no actions can be required by us. Let's take public comment on this item then
we'll come back for questions dialogue etc. What public comment do we have on
this item? Mayor we have not received any comment cards and there is one hand
raised online. Okay last chance in person. Seeing none we close public comment in
person and we'll move to public comment online. Douglas Spalding you may
unmute yourself. Well I thank you, it's a very interesting analysis. It does raise certain
questions in my mind. I did hear that little stab at the the RSO we just we just passed because I
think there is a a school of thought out there that you know strict rate rent stabilization is
is not something that financiers are too interested in marrying up to in a in a municipality.
But I'll go back to the top of your first slide, right?
The paradigm we're working on here is that, you know, like these buildings,
these finance years, they're, you know, they're not going to do it unless there's a profit.
And, okay, that makes sense, you know, we're in a capitalist system that all makes sense.
Some stuff does get built.
I'd be curious to know kind of what is the leasing success so far at Centro Crayon
and uh you know what's the projection there uh uh you know the the problem for uh from the housing
advocate standpoint is that those units are very expensive they're even the right the low
market value below market value units are uh so pretty pretty unaffordable you have to have a
kind of a primo salary to be able to do that so what i'm wondering is you know what if we
shifted the paradigm so that the motivation was not necessarily to make a
profit but just to provide as much housing as we can for our community. I
think it's very important that we maintain the housing stock that we have
hence the housing protections are very important for potential tenants but
also you know as the city ever looked into social housing is the city willing
to finance, maybe it would not be the blockbuster development, but something smaller that we
could afford, could save up for, could get grants for and the like. Thank you.
Thank you. Mayor, that concludes our comments from online.
Okay. So close call a comment and come back to Councilmembers for discussion, questions.
Use your time as you'd like. Beginning with Councilmember Bowen.
thank you thank you mayor um if we could go to I think the second to last slide on the
findings yes thank you um I know you spoke about it briefly but the the the question
I have is what is what if anything can we as the city council and the city do to help
to incentivize and nudge these developments into action.
And from what I heard is that Central Callan is the bell
other, and we want it to be fully leased.
And that would indicate that this
is a market and a community that welcomes large developments.
And this would be ultimately, I can't think of the word
but I'm having a, they can make money profitable
for developers.
Is there anything that we have control over
in your opinion in looking at this?
Because it sounds like you're saying,
we have to wait and see and there's not much right now.
And with the third development, 1388,
that I think has to do with the fact
that the buyer or the developers working,
because it's being done through the school district,
that's a very different developer than, let's say,
the Maximus project.
Yeah, thank you Council Member.
I think with respect to, I think it's 1388, Bancroft,
and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing that.
We looked at that before the school district was a buyer,
and so the conclusions would be the same,
just based on the cost of construction,
the fact that you've got service parking,
it's a fairly simple and efficient building.
In fact, if you look at one of the metrics up here
is efficiency, average square foot unit, unit efficiency.
Generally speaking, smaller units yield more revenue
per square foot.
They cost more to build.
A studio's example is more expensive
on a per square foot basis than a two bedroom
because you've got, you have a kitchen,
you've got conceptually the same,
or if you've got one bathroom
or two bathrooms in the two bedroom.
But with respect to the building efficiency,
that one's at 71%, so that means net to gross.
gross building is let's say a thousand square feet. You've got 70, 710 square feet of leasable
space if you're 71 percent efficient. So you don't have to build the extra square footage.
You can rent out more of the square footage that you build. So that's a more efficient
construction type. That's with respect to that one property type. With respect to what can you do?
Central Callen, at this point, I would, you know, crudely say it's a marketing exercise at this
point it's how is there something that you can do talk to building owners or
something that you could do to help help them lease up and stabilize I don't have
an insight onto their leasing program or anything like that all I can see is how
long they've been leasing what it looks like the leasing activity is these
things take time to lease up ultimately it'll be I would expect a year or two
down the road where if they are able to stabilize at or below let's say 10%
and vacancy rate, then other developers will go,
okay, there's a proven market
that we're able to establish and lease up.
They'll look at the rent rates they're able to achieve
and say, yes, that does or doesn't make sense for them.
Other developers aren't necessarily as worried
about the profitability of that project per se,
because every development is unique,
but they are interested in what is that building
able to achieve on a rent per square foot basis?
What is it able to achieve on a vacancy rate?
Those types of things.
With respect to projects that aren't out of the ground yet,
the kind of the levers that you have,
they're not as powerful necessarily
as fundamentals in the market.
You know, if suddenly investments or properties
were trading at a three cap instead of a five cap,
that would be a fundamental shift in the market
and that same property would have a lot more value
given market standards.
The things that you do have though,
it would be things like inclusionary housing.
You've got an inclusionary housing policy in the city
And I'm not here to opine on right or wrong,
just to tell you that when a developer
can look at City A or City B or City C,
and they say, I wanna invest in A, B or C,
with a city without an inclusionary housing policy
might be of more interest in terms of investment.
They might support a lower cap rate.
These policies in effect add risk or cost,
and so result in a higher rate of return required.
And these things matter from a,
on a pretty minute scale in the scheme of,
if you're looking at a developer needing to get
a six and a half percent return on costs,
if they invest a hundred million,
they need six and a half million dollars in profit back.
And I'm sorry, do I, okay, thank you.
Cut me off any time, please.
that some investors might say,
I'm only willing to do it at a 6.6 or 6.7.
I mean, that's how precise some of this investment
measurement is because it's a leveraged transaction.
And so that six and a half percent return
on a leveraged basis can be much more substantial.
So small changes can make big differences.
Inclusionary housing policy is an example.
Impact fees, what we're seeing some cities do
for some product type is say,
you don't have to pay your impact fees upfront, developer.
you can wait until you have a certificate of occupancy.
And what that does is that takes
a pretty substantial component,
anywhere from one to many percent of the development costs.
It takes it from the front end of a project,
which is very expensive money,
equity that requires a large rate of return,
and puts it at the end of the project.
So that developer doesn't need to finance that return
for two years, doesn't need to finance that cost
for two years, that's an example.
Rent stabilization is an example.
Obviously you've got a, in the state of California,
got a policy, and developments that are newer than 15 years,
the first 15 years are exempt.
From a developer's perspective, that 15 years
is potentially a short time frame.
You're looking at what happens down the road.
In the development world, if I was
going to try and lease a piece of property
for residents of real estate, generally speaking,
you'd expect a developer, I would
expect a developer to be looking at 60 years at a minimum
from a lease perspective.
And so that's the kind of timeframe potentially
that they're looking at.
So all those things come into play.
It doesn't mean that you can't have it.
It just means that developers may require a premium
to invest in that market.
Great, I have follow ups,
but time is up so I can loop back around.
Thank you at this point.
We'll go to Council Member Aguilar.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you for the presentation.
Mike, I have three questions.
You touched on Central Kallen,
where are we at with Central Kallen being leased?
What's the percentage of occupancy?
Sure, I can tell you what I've seen at least.
We use a service provider called CoStar.
They do a lot of residential, probably promote with it.
Their math is that it's about 44% vacant
or something like that, 41, 44, I can't remember.
But that's been static for the last six or eight months.
When I go to their website,
I would peg it at about 25% vacancy based on the units
that they've got listed as available.
That said, they could be holding back units.
And so the greatest intelligence is the building owner,
the building manager.
And so I don't have information beyond that.
But I don't know if there's anybody else
who's got insight into it.
But generally speaking, it's a good building.
You've got a great retail tenant on the ground floor.
People like to live in spaces like that.
It's got good access to public transit.
It's in a neat area.
And so I think it has the opportunity to be very successful.
Sometimes buildings like that,
the management will be slow to lease up.
They're okay with higher vacancy rates potentially
to achieve the rent levels that they like to achieve.
So they might release units slowly.
But ultimately at a certain point,
you've got to lease up the building, generate income.
And so we'll see what happens over the next year or two.
that's the information I've got is somewhere between 25 and 40 percent. Thank you for answering
that and my other question is with regards to you you mentioned um building community
partnerships with the city and the developer uh you know we have other aspects like NIMBYs
NIMBYs um we have um PLA agreements and with the central kellen we had a you know issue with CEQA
and not being fully labor amenable and then, you know,
settlement ensued.
So how, what was that, what does that partnership look like
with the city and developer?
And I would also include in community.
Sure.
A lot there to unpack.
Certainly there are,
development is not always a friendly game
in the scheme of not everybody wants to have
development excellent I completely understand that on a personal basis so
there there is a MB there is an MB for sure sophisticated savvy developers
will understand their community and try and develop a project that's conscientious
of what's going on around them and then they scale and in a manner that makes
sense with respect to things like PLAs prevailing wage and the notion of
of publicly delivered housing.
What I've seen from my personal professional career
and experience in dealing with projects
that do have prevailing wage, things like that,
they are an order of magnitude more expensive
to construct typically.
Say 25% for a stick built construction.
This is recently looked at a project
they could have built with steel and concrete
instead of wood and have the same price point, basically.
which in my mind that's a better product
to be built with steel and concrete
and a higher quality product,
but from a development perspective,
it's just one more hurdle to achieve feasibility.
So in a really good market, yeah, it can make sense,
it can support it.
If you're in a higher rent market,
downtown San Francisco, San Diego, places like that,
and especially if you're constructing high rise development,
type one, over seven stories, nine stories up,
there's less of a premium, less of an impact.
And so you can pay prevailing wage labor easier.
It's easier to make that financially feasible,
but for the type of construction like Bancroft,
even Central Callen at a typical market
that would be stick billed,
you'd have a pretty substantial premium even with PLA.
Gotcha, thank you for that.
And then my last question is,
I know you had some good projects on here.
I know the Maximus is kind of still on hiatus or hold.
What about bridge housing in Washington?
Was that due to, is that still in fruition
or did they ever get financing?
Yeah, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it.
I know a little bit of it, but yeah.
I think they're pointing at Avlan to answer.
Oh, yes, so that project is fully entitled
but it is short on financing.
So they're looking at public financing options
that they would be eligible for.
And it's, I think what we've seen
in our market feasibility analysis
is that affordable housing projects
also struggling to pencil at this time based on demand for limited public
funds so that doesn't that doesn't mean that it's not happening it's just on
hold yeah all of these projects are essentially on hold pending financing of
some kind either private you know bank financing or public financing if it's an
affordable project thank you those are my questions councilmember Simon please
thank you for the presentation much of what I'm seeing our rental developments
and we've had rent stabilization ordinance we hear people struggling to
pay rents and long-term renting is not the greatest option as you give older
what type of projects do we have for home ownership do you have any
information you can share about home ownership in San Leandro yeah not
specific to San Leandro other than anecdotal information about some of the
development types I've heard proposed. What the projects I've heard propose are
similar to what we see throughout the state which is townhome development for
sale townhomes. Those currently and of late last few years have yielded the
highest residual land values meaning they're they can pay the most for the
land and people who are developing townhomes will pay more than any of the
land use as an example. Part of that's a function of the cost of constructing a
townhome is relatively low, right? It's two story, three story, stick construction,
wood construction again, so it's pretty simple construction. Because it's
for sale product, people will pay a premium relative on a per square foot
basis relative to for rent. So when you look at a for rent product, you've got a
generally speaking you apply that cap rate to it and you convert that rent
into a present value dollar. And so when cap rates went up, the value per square
foot of rental product relative to for sale product the for sale for rent
product went down in value the for sale product would continue to go up with the
market and so you see for sale product generally speaking as a townhome
development that's typically 22 24 dwelling units per acre the hindrance on
if you ask a developer the hindrance on doing a condo construction is often
attributed to the warranty process, the builders warranty, the tenure builders
warranty. You have it on the townhome as well as an issue but that's what a lot
of them cite. Some developers will actually develop a building, rent it out
for 10 years and then sell it. They'll condo map it, construct it in the mindset
and the quality that they're gonna sell it in the future so they'll rent it out
for 10 years and then sell it. But generally speaking the for sale segment
that we see is either single-family home or town home,
unless again, you're in the extreme markets
like a San Diego, San Francisco,
where they are constructing condominiums,
high-rise condominiums.
Okay, but for here in Stanley, Andrew,
I guess my question is,
why don't we have any town home projects
that are on the horizon?
I would expect it's probably an entitlement question
at that point.
I can take that Will.
Thank you.
So we, I think for the townhouse projects,
they are more financially feasible
than the other product types.
But we don't have significant amounts of open land
where you could get the scale needed for a project.
So we've had the two DR Horton for sale projects,
Poppy Lane and Maple Lane,
that both were very successful
and I think there's strong interest in that product type.
We've also seen interest in the Kaiser property
off the 880 for that style of development,
but we don't have any active applications in currently.
So I think it's more of a supply of land issue here.
We're a very built out city.
So we do have some key projects
and some key opportunity sites
that that product type could work for.
But I think that's the main reason
you're not seeing substantial townhome development.
Have we considered looking at our zoning
such that we could change some of the commercial,
particularly along shopping corridors such as the marina,
the Marina Shopping District, the Marina Square,
excuse me, along that area,
where I think people would be interested to live.
Have we considered that to bring in more home ownership?
I think that's really important in San Leandro
to give people the opportunity to stay in their homes
rather than face the rent situation 20 years down the line.
Yeah, it's a good point.
Most of our commercial zones do allow
for that type of product with approvals
from the Planning Commission.
I think it's still a parcel size issue
where a lot of the parcels are not substantial enough
and our shopping centers like Marina Square
are still thriving.
But we're definitely looking at all opportunities
to create housing opportunity.
Another question is existing commercial developments
such as in the district that I'm in,
district four, the greenhouse marketplace.
Have we looked at re-imagining these commercial centers
to become mixed use such that we can have shopping
and living at the same time from existing standpoint?
Yeah, I haven't personally looked at that one specifically
but definitely one of the big trends
at least for larger properties
is to convert parking areas, parking fields
into residential development.
Certainly that's done at a multifamily scale.
And in some cases we are seeing townhomes as an example
being built next to existing shopping malls
that may have a couple of major anchor tenants
that are going away with respect to parcel size.
Generally speaking, at least a few acres is desired
to have any kind of critical mass for it to make sense
for a developer to come in and do that
because it is often an exercise of entitlement zoning,
the NIMBYs, the YIMBYs, dealing with all that.
So there's a certain scale that they look for.
I will say there is increasing,
so that the town hall market is kind of tapering off
little bit. It's kind of losing some of its steam. That said, there is still a
lot of momentum. We do see a lot of office part conversion as an example. When
office came out of favor post COVID, go back to this, so we had COVID. People
started working from home. You see the yellow line there, that's the cap rate in
office. People go, oh, I don't want office. So when cap rates go up relative to other
product types, you see that spread increasing over the red line retail, kind
24, 25. That means people are saying you have to pay me more to buy an office building. A lot of
there was a lot of office vacancies. That's the vacancies decreasing a little bit, but what we're
seeing and actively dealing with are in many municipalities entitlement applications to
convert two-story office buildings, surface park office buildings, to townhome development. It's
a really common thing. I think we'll continue to see that on that note. We're seeing some developers
come up with new product type that also satisfies some of the affordable housing, and so they'll
have like a three-story townhome with a junior ADU on the first floor kind of behind the garage
will have an apartment unit that the homeowner can own, rent it out so it's a good way to actually
increase housing supply both for sale and for rent product and so there's some new products
coming online there's some opportunity like it speaks to what's what's available from a zoning
perspective and a land-use perspective and a parcel size perspective. There are
opportunities though especially as you see retail any any place that's got kind
of struggling retail any center that's got struggling retail once you hit a
critical massive vacancy then those options really start to come into play
for an owner or people will start making the phone call to the owner. Thank you.
Councillor Bould please. Yes thank you for the presentation. I really do like
when you when you come and speak to us I remember when you came on the planning
Commission because honestly it's it's kind of like taking our medicine right
around some things that we choose to put in action for instance when we talk
about how fast it takes to get through planning right all developers want a
smooth quick easy process check the box I'm done and then through different
bodies we create these kind of speed bumps to try and level it out and make
sure something's not just gliding through with no protections or you know
infrastructure needs libraries parks like everything's got to be built up
with this so there's more money involved when we talk about Central Callen do you
feel that if that were to be built and then across the street the town hall
that and they're successful that that maybe Maximus could get to that point
do you think that type of funding can come in at that point because that's
the big one that we'd really want right yeah thank you councilmember yeah I so
Central Callen proves out and Town Hall Square gets built that's a very different
paradigm it gets built stabilize and occupied yeah absolutely I think you're
probably looking at five six plus years for something like that to happen my
guess. And who knows where the market is at that point. If we
get back to a market where, you know, kind of pre right going
into COVID. You see the cap rates. From 2010, you know,
post, post recession, the brown line there kept going down,
right? And so that is cap rates going down, that is more and more
people willing to pay more and more for a given asset. And so
if you're in that type of environment, again, those types
of things become very feasible.
Proving out the market with both Central Callan
and Town Hall Square, that's a nice depth of units,
if you will.
I think Maximus has a potentially very efficient project
given its scale, but it's such a large project
that it requires a substantial investment.
There's a lot of people putting money on the table.
That's an investor profile that's pretty serious
about certainty and not taking a ton of risk
or minimizing as much risk as possible.
It's it's real estate of all that's very risky game. But yeah, something like that becomes comes into play
I don't think it's a forsaken project by any means
Yeah, that that makes sense, right the smaller the project the less the risk right the bigger the project the more the risk
Last thing I'll say is
We continue to lose the battle
when we speak about PLAs and
Prevailing wage
And I know what it's not your intention sir, but when we say it's premium money
That's just a standard of living that we ask a standard wage area standard wage
And it's a hundred percent. Not you
it's just the developers and the way they've chosen to speak on this issue of
An area standard wages all of a sudden some premium wage that oh my gosh
if we pay this premium wage we're tanked and you know we should do we should go
pay this low you know we should find the low wage out there so that we can really
make some money because when Callen's done they did pay you know area standard
wages or premium wage and it's gonna make money we know it's gonna make money
so I appreciate you again it is like taking some medicine but sometimes I
got to spit the medicine out. Talk straight. I'm a fan of prevailing wage labor don't
get me wrong. I'm just speaking the economics of it. Thank you.
Do you want to go again? Thank you council member Bowen.
Thank you mayor. One of the last things that you mentioned was around with Central Callan
it being a marketing exercise which I thought was really appropriate because that was one
of my notes. It's funny we keep talking market in two different ways but what I'm hearing
and the one first follow-up question is around the comparison to the other jurisdictions
recognizing that it is like with these cap rates and the market the just economic landscape
the way it is people are just much more hesitant right like affordable housing is they're finding
difficult to get funding across the board it's difficult is are we different than other
cities in the area that you're comparing us to or is this just a outlook of where we're at right
now so that we can be realistic about what to expect and how to prepare for when things
hopefully change for the better yeah thank you councilmember first say with respect to
affordable housing i put that in entirely a different bucket given the funding mechanism
and the cost of construction that is a whole nother game relative to the market rate development.
And in that development, generally speaking, it's funded by tax credits as you might be
familiar with. Generally speaking, it's funded by low-income housing tax credits.
And those tax credits support pretty high cost of construction. It's just a complex capital stack.
That said, with respect to where you are and your peers and other areas of the market,
I would say that you certainly my sense is you've had some areas around you that
got a lot of investment in the last 10 years and got a thousand charts can pull up here in
their spare time after hours but I would say you're you're probably not the first place
that's going to get investment but you and you wouldn't be the last I think you've got a
authentic downtown I think you've got a lot of good stuff going for you right you're close
to public transit that brings access to a lot of markets.
There are a lot of people that don't want to live in a higher density area and you've
got a nice scale, a sense of scale for a lot of people in the authentic downtown.
Again, I point to Central Callen, I say a marketing exercise because it's built, right?
There's nothing about the building that feasibly you can change, right?
You can't change the unit configurations at this point.
And not to say that it's not the right ratio of unit sizes and unit mix.
I'm sure they did their homework and I'm sure it's very well run operation.
I say market exercise because it's there now you got to get the people there, right?
And maybe it's awareness, maybe it's other factors.
But I think it's a good building, good opportunity, good area.
I think you've got a lot of things going for you.
Because the markets improve, it may not be the first place that people invest, but I
think that you're a good opportunity for investment.
Obviously, people entitled projects that were well thought out, and planning for pretty
– I mean, like Maximus, that's a very serious scale project.
So people put a lot of money into something to see it through, and they didn't do so
thinking that it wasn't going to happen.
I would say it's gonna happen, you gotta give it time,
let the market prove itself out.
Great, and I mean, I wanna sit with that positive,
I think, message you actually just gave,
is that what we mean, we may not be the first place
that people want to invest,
but people are willing to and would want to,
and I think the other piece of it for us as a community
is not just marketing central Caledon,
the fact that it is a great complex in the downtown,
and I walk past that almost on a daily basis
and there's a lot of energy and excitement around there.
But for the city in general
that it is a really great community to live in.
I love what you talked about with scale and neighborhoods
because we are centrally located.
We have four out of eight of our elementary schools
or dual language immersion programs.
These are the things that families,
like young families want to look for
and want to be able to move into a community
and be able to have.
And that is not something that many communities have.
And so I think there's a lot in San Leandro
that we have to market better so that people recognize
and even for the developers to say yes,
like while right now it might not be the best time
to invest because of ROI, we should set ourselves up
for when it gets better to have these more creative,
what did we call them, new product types,
considered zoning opportunities,
prepare ourselves for when we do get into a better place
where there's gonna be more money out there.
So I appreciate some of the positives
that are coming out of this.
Yeah, thank you Council Member Duncan.
Ed, continue to be a place that people wanna live, right?
Services, as you talk about schools, police, libraries,
parks, quality of the roadway,
quality of the built environment.
And that reminds me on the comment I want to say,
that it is good to have balance and oversight
in my mind. The when you build a development, it's a fairly permanent structure, right?
And so any concession that's given is going to be there for a long time. Thank you. OK,
so I will close this out. Just a couple of clarifications. So we think of cap rate. We
think about the rate of return that investors require for the perceived risk at that time.
that a good summary yep absolutely perfect let's go to page five of the
presentation because what we see is that the perceived risk changes through time
depending on what's happening out in the world if you're in the middle of a
chaotic recession the expectations the risk perceived as high in the middle of
COVID the risk goes up etc so I want to look at people that invested in 2019 or
2020. So they paid a lot for a property that two years later wasn't worth nearly
as much. Is that generally what that chart shows? Yes, many investors.
Absolutely. So people just investing in real estate isn't just a
mindless game where you make lots of money. Certainly, and I would add you've
We've got the 10-year T-note on there.
Conceptually, that's a risk-free investment.
And so it is a choice of an investor.
Cap rates fluctuate.
The spread over that riskless investment
is the perceived risk for sure.
The 10-year T-note is, can I put my money somewhere else
and make almost as much money without taking the risk?
So as those alternative investments exist,
an investor will say, I'm not willing to pay that 2020
for cap, because I can put it in a T bill,
T note for that, right?
And so that's why that cap rate goes up as well.
So alternative investment.
So, and we saw that, for instance,
in San Francisco with hotels.
So people invested in hotels in 2017, 2018,
and they literally turned the keys back into the bank
said all the equity that I poured into this property I am walking away from so
to be clear it's possible in this development world in the real estate
world to lose a lot of money absolutely and so that that's why we said we talked
about risk because it's not all upside so I do want to worry about a little
bit about construction costs.
At the time of COVID, there was a large spike
in the cost of materials.
Then those material costs started coming back down.
Then there were questions about tariffs, driving up costs.
What's big picture of the state of the world right now?
If I look back five years ago versus today,
are things much higher?
Have they leveled out to approximately the same?
what can you say? Substantially higher, that's how I'd characterize it. Looking at a parking
garage is an example a month ago, and the cost per stall was about $70,000. That's something
that would have been $35,000, $40,000 five years ago. And so it's a general proxy. Every product is
unique, but generally speaking, things are very expensive. And people, we all see that on a daily
basis and that's true in the construction uh materials cost as well for sure. One more note
on the you know you talk about hotels you talk about people buying in 2020. The commercial market
and financing commercial properties is very different from a single family home or or uh even
a one to four unit property and that those properties single family home one to four unit
you can get a loan for 30 years and have a 30 year fixed loan and the commercial market the typical
loan duration is five to seven years.
You might have a long amortization period,
but the bank's only gonna say I'm gonna lend you the money
for five years, seven years, 10 years if you're lucky.
And so if you're buying, let's say in 2015,
and getting a five year loan
and you've got a refinance or seven year loan,
you got a refinance in 2022, you could be in tough shape
and that's why people are handing in the keys
because they can't get the next loan.
So they have to give up their equity.
The last thing that I wanted to dig into a little bit, when the cap rates change, is
that sufficient to drive a tax valuation change?
Property tax valuation?
Property tax valuation change.
So state of California, Prop 13, property tax gets reassessed at the time of sale, generally
speaking if there's if there's an owner who passes away you might get a
reassessment then as well but generally speaking you're only going to go up two
percent per year regardless of the value of the property itself but my question
really goes to suppose that you bought a property in 2020 and the cap rate has
gone up which drives value down is that sufficient to go to the assessor's
office and say hey my 25 million dollar property is only worth 20 million
Absolutely. Yeah, people can contest their assessment at that point. And are those if you know are those
Temporary adjustments or is that your new tax basis to my knowledge? That's your new tax basis. Okay
Okay, that's all I've got. Well, thank you very much for your presentation for addressing all of our questions
At this point in time. We will move on to our next item
Our next item we did by the way already covered 10a which was the swearing in
I'm looking to see if Mr. Victor came,
now we will swear him in at another time.
So for item 10B, we've got an item
with respect to what sort of direction we give staff
in its work with the consultant to conduct a poll
regarding potential revenue measures.
This is item 10B, and we've got Deputy City Manager,
Destin Claussen, I'm sorry, Deputy Student Managers,
Destin Claussen and Eric Engelbart here to present this item.
Although we only have Eric standing there
in front right now.
Good evening, mayor and council members
and members of the public joining us in person or online.
Thank you for the opportunity to present tonight.
As announced just a moment ago,
we'll be discussing our next steps
in potential revenue measures.
Just to get us grounded in how we got here tonight
in this conversation before us.
As you recall, about a year ago, last February,
during the Council annual planning retreat,
the Council directed staff to explore the possibility
of revenue measures that could potentially appear
on the upcoming November 26th ballot.
And then fast forward to last June,
as part of the budget adoption process,
at that time, staff did propose a general fund allocation
of $500,000 to further explore the viability
of such tax measures that could appear
in the November 26th ballot.
The time council did not include that funding request
in the adopted budget,
though council did direct staff to return again
once year-end fund balance estimates were available.
Those estimates were subsequently
provided to city council.
And fast forward to December of 2025,
council did consider the survey work.
At that particular meeting,
the motion to proceed did not pass,
though the item was reconsidered by the city council
at the very next subsequent meeting of December 15th,
at which time the council directed us
to move forward with this process.
And more specifically to proceed with community outreach
and a feasibility survey also referred to as a poll.
Just to take a little bit of an overview
of what that polling entails.
You can see the methodology up on the screen before you.
Typically this is gonna be about a 20 to 25 minute
internet or telephone interview.
and the pollster is seeking to capture feedback
from 600 total registered voters who are likely to vote
in the November 2026 election.
A top line report with aggregated findings
that would then be developed.
And then it is important to note that
within that 20 to 25 minute total timeframe,
we really only have, the pollster only has about time
for two potential measures to be scientifically surveyed.
Right here you can kind of see
There's, as we all know here living in California,
there's lots of different taxes that exist
that people pay in different communities.
Among all those wide array of taxes that exist,
there's five here that we want to drill down a bit further on
as a potential menu of options
for that we could consider for polling.
And of course, keeping in mind
there's really only two of these
that there's really sufficient time
to explore in great detail.
And we'll go through them one through five in a few moments.
So starting at the top with the business license tax.
Many of us are familiar with this.
If you go into a local business here in the community,
you often see that business license hanging on the wall.
Our current tax is calculated using a flat rate
based on the business type and the number of employees.
And under our current business license tax structure,
this past fiscal year that just closed on June 30th,
we received about $6.9 million of general fund revenue.
So that is an important source of ongoing revenue
to our city.
Also worth noting most tax,
most agencies in public and cities here in Alameda County
and across the Bay Area have business license taxes.
Also worth noting that if we were to move forward
the polling of this particular measure,
which we'll soon hear about more
in terms of our staff recommendation,
there's a different ways in which that tax modification
modernization could be structured giving an example here taking an
assumption and because there's so many wide ranges of different ways it could
be structured but just as an example using a rate of about a dollar and a
quarter per thousand dollars of gross receipts that a business takes in in a
given year we believe that would generate approximately 3.8 to 4.3
million dollars in additional annual revenue beyond that 6.9 that we're
already receiving. I think it's worth noting too, this is also assuming that a
consolidation of the business types that are currently laid out in our business
license tax schedule and also including a reduction in the tax for local small
businesses as well to kind of offset or mitigate some of the impacts to the
business community particularly for those small business owners. And it's
also worth noting too, this structure it generally mirrors what I would consider
an ongoing trend. We're seeing a lot of agencies just using example of Union
City just down down the road from us. They successfully moved forward with a
tax structured seminal this to this back in the November 2024 election and the
other benefit of this type of tax is that it's a simple majority of voter
approval threshold requirement which we'll soon see and some other taxes have
a much higher threshold requirement. I think it's also worth noting though that
But just the inherently volatile nature of these taxes, they tend to align with the overall
business cycle and the broader macro economy.
So that's just a variable to be mindful of.
And also just this last bullet point, and you'll hear information on all these taxes,
that we were not able to identify any past polling regarding such a change in recent
history.
Next tax we'll be talking about is the parcel tax.
Many of us are familiar with this.
The city does not currently have any such specific parcel taxes, though, in effect right now, although, for example,
there are some other special districts like the school district that does have parcel taxes that appear on local sand lander voter rolls or
Excuse me, tax bills each year
Some of our analysis of the parcel tax option
We were making some assumptions as we always have to do with any analysis, but that there are various structures available
Typically one would see in the cities that have these in effect
There's either like a flat rate per parcel or flat rate per square foot of parcel area
And there can also be certain further granularity between like residential or commercial properties
And then you can see it's just just kind of a back of a napkin estimate
We have there you could potentially generate between five to seven million dollars annually off of a given tax
It would also be worth noting that it does the challenge with parcel taxes though, and
this is by virtue of Proposition 13 from 1978, is that it requires a two-thirds super majority
yes vote for approval.
And for context, it's an exceedingly, that is a very difficult threshold to surpass in
general.
Also, it's worth noting back in 2024 as part of our polling work, a parcel tax did poll
an approval rate of 57.9% by informed likely November 2024 voters. So while that's well
in excess of a simple majority, it still does not exceed that 66.7% threshold. Also worth
discussing is that utility tax modification. Some of you most of us are familiar with this.
Anyone who's gotten a cell phone bill, a water bill, a cable bill, you'll always notice there's
those line items at the bottom to describe what makes up the totality of
that monthly bill, and you'll often see those line items from various
government agencies. So we already have such a tax in effect here in San Leandro.
It's the rate of the tax typically ranges between five and a half to
six percent approximately, and currently just this last fiscal year again that
ended this past June 30th we received over a little over 14 million dollars
revenue from that tax. Again, showing this is a very not insignificant source of
important general fund money we're already receiving. As part of our
analysis of a potential modification of this, we look at a 3.4% increase which
could generate approximately six to seven million dollars annually. The
trade-off of that, though, is it would be important to note if we were to move
forward with such a 3.4% increase, it could create a, you know, notably higher
rate than most other cities have in the area. The opposite of that though of
course is one of the other benefits of this tax is that it's a simple majority
50% plus one approval threshold and for context back in 2024 we did test this as
part of the polling work that took place then and we noted it was about a little
over 46% support which from a just in the perspective of the pollster that is
typically considered not viable at that level knowing that typically with the
many of these polls there's often a commonly seen or observed a drop-off in
the percentage of support when we actually get to voting day and you can
imagine that when people you know in the abstract or on the phone with a pollster
many many months before an election may be interested or see them if I they're
supportive of it in concept but then on the actual election day when they're
pulling the lever they may revisit that prior feedback they gave and that's why
you typically see a bit of a drop-off in those percentages between the poll and
election day. This next item, district sales tax. Most of us should be familiar
with this. Anyone who's done any shopping here in San Leandro or in many
other cities in Alameda County is familiar with that 10.75% that you pay
at the register. It is hypothetically possible for the city to seek a further
increase to that existing sales tax rate, but it's important to note that the
state, there is what's generally known as a statewide cap or people informally
referred to as a statewide cap which of these local basically they call it the
district tax limit which is capped at 2% of the 2 10.75 and so essentially what
that means is we're already at the cap right now and so if the city were to want
to move forward with a further sales tax increase we would actually have to get
authorization from the state legislature of California so that would mean you'd
have to find a member of our delegation to carry a bill for us get it through
the letters both houses legislature and signed into law by the governor and
And that's a long way away.
So we're wrapping up here, I know we're running short on time.
Vacancy tax, this is kind of the last one
we're gonna cover here.
Thus far, Oakland is the only city in the United States
that staff could identify with such a tax,
like fully implemented without significant risk.
The one area with exception to that I would explain
is San Francisco voters authorized such a tax
a few years back, but it's already presently in suspense
due to court action.
And then similarly, Berkeley has a tax
It was passed by voters, which is essentially structured
and mirrored the same way as the San Francisco tax.
And so that one is perceived as very vulnerable as well.
In either case, in using the Oakland model,
the administration of that tax is quite complex.
It requires an appeal process.
For context, the city of Oakland actually has 3.5
full-time dedicated, or FTE full-time dedicated positions
working on this, like all day, every day.
That is their sole job.
That being said, the costs of that program
are fully offset by the revenues derived from it.
That's also a simple 50% plus one approval
if it's a general fund structure.
And then back in 2020, we did do what we call,
classified some informal polling associated with this.
As I mentioned earlier,
we really only have time to do two primary,
full scientific surveys of measures,
but that we could do an additional third,
kind of an informal poll question at the very end,
and we could do that again.
Just our update on our timeline,
you can see it there, the column on the left here
was the timeline we presented back in December,
and you can see, generally speaking,
we're on track with that.
We've made a few updates since that time
based on current information.
Happy to drill down that further.
It's part of the Q&A.
Just to wrap things up here,
our recommendation kind of tying all this together.
Staff is recommending that you all direct us
to proceed forward with testing
through a scientific survey,
the business license tax modernization,
as well as the parcel tax option
with kind of what I would classify
as this additional more informal question
related to the viability of the vacancy tax.
And with that, that concludes our presentation
and staff are here and happy to answer questions
or hear your feedback.
Okay, so we'll begin with Vice Mayor.
Thank you.
I have a question regarding the business license tax.
When was the last time that was updated?
Or when did we last update the business license tax?
It's been quite some time.
I don't have that year in front of me,
but I can certainly get it.
10 years, five, 20. Longer than that.
Longer than 15 years? Yes.
Okay.
And what's the cost to put this on the ballot?
Clerk, you don't have to recall any estimates
on the cost of adding a measure to the ballot,
do you, from prior elections?
Yes, thank you.
Acting City Clerk, Sara Bountain here.
The costs to add a measure to an election are not significant because most of the costs
are on a per voter basis. So it's a few thousand dollars additional when you're adding it to
an existing election. By a few thousand dollars would be tens of thousands of dollars but
it's budgeted for. Thank you. That's my only question for now the rest are comments. So
Thank you. So go to Councillor Bowen. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Eric for the
presentation. A few questions. Earlier I had asked, okay, I'll start with what I
think the more information we get, the better, the more informed we can be. So I
appreciate that and I'm a big fan of surveys. So I understand why we're
doing this, I was concerned because polling still does cost money and I
forget what how much it was that we had we're spending on this way I think was
like in the seventy thousand maybe seventy three thousand is the number I
remember my head so while it may not cost as much to put on the ballot what
would be additional costs because we have an allegation of our allocation of
a potential five hundred thousand to further explore viability what are some
for the other costs that we would have to incur
if we were to actually go forward with any sort of measure?
Sure, so certainly just to provide some context,
if the council tonight were direct to continue
proceeding forward, so we already have, for context,
we already have funds, sufficient funds budgeted
to conduct the polling work.
So that's already been taken care of,
as well as some strategic consulting support.
But there's other areas that would be proceeding
in the future.
if we proceeded, as we have done in past,
revenue measure cycles in prior years
and in recent years over the last decade or so,
typically, and it's a typically best practice as well
to do a fair amount of public outreach,
of course, in community listening,
and some of the costs associated with that
can be related to the production of mailers.
Most of us have seen as we get near election season,
you get those mailers in the mail
with information, nonpartisan,
just informational items explaining what would be appearing
on the ballot and explaining that to voters,
oftentimes we'll also manage some kind of an online poll,
et cetera, and things like that.
So those are the primary costs associated
or primary things that have additional costs.
Thank you, Eric.
And I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves
because this is really just about the what to survey on
that we've already said that we wanted
to be able to send out to the community.
I do remember there being a lot of pushback
from the community the last time we had sent out mailers
because we realize I think stamps are very, very expensive now.
The other question I wanted to ask about,
I know we've talked about it, and I just
wanted to be able to share with the public as well.
I had previously asked for an exploration
into any other possible taxes that we could potentially
ask about, basically in an effort
to try to find money anywhere somewhere.
And I had mentioned possibly looking
into taxes on what can be called some taxes,
alcohol, cannabis, soda, that type of thing.
Can you just share briefly what you were able to find on that?
Sure.
Thank you for this question.
Just at a high level, some of the challenge,
I think, that we identified with such a potential tax
included, just running on the list of those use types
that you just identified a moment ago,
taking, for example, tax on gun shops or ammunition sales,
per feedback we receive from the police department,
we're not aware of any gun shops in San Leandro
selling firearms, so there'd be no revenue generator
from that, the only ammunition sales we're aware of
is at the gun range over on Davis Street,
which is owned by the Optimus Club,
which is a philanthropic organization,
our understanding as well as the ammunition sold on site
is for on the range use only.
So it's not like someone can walk in from the street
and buy ammunition and walk away,
It's really just for use on the range.
As far as cannabis goes, we already have cannabis tax.
It's an effect that was passed by voters back in 2016,
and we're generating about a million dollars a year
off that cannabis tax revenue already.
In addition to that, as far as tobacco goes,
tobacco use more broadly is already declining statewide.
Additionally, there's already quite a significant amount
of tax on tobacco products in general in California.
My understanding is that a pack of cigarettes these days
is $15, $16 in some cases.
And we're also not aware of any other cities
here in the region that have a tax
or what we call referred to as a syntax
structured such as what was proposed.
And so kind of taking the totality of that,
I think that's basically the preliminary feedback
we were derived from our analysis.
Thank you.
We will proceed with Council Member Aguilar.
Thank you, Mayor Gonzalez.
And thank you, Eric, for this presentation.
In the recommendation, I didn't see a UUT tax,
so why not a UUT tax when its polling was just below?
But why not have that as a recommendation to?
Sure, sure Councilmember, happy to address that.
I think the challenge with all of this
and analyzing these various taxes is there's,
you know, that constraint of really only having two
that we can test.
So it is there's kind of have to, you know,
write up the pro cons list of any of them
and look at them and the potential revenue
that can be derived, et cetera.
And I'll share the reason, the rational basis
for why staff is recommending these particular two taxes,
one and two, and particularly the parcel tax
is that, you know, we have heard from members of the council
in recent memory and for some number of years now
about, you know, interest in a potential parcel tax.
I think just psychologically,
there is also some just general awareness
that members of the public are familiar with parcel taxes
Many of them are already paying them for, say,
the school district or other public agencies.
And we also have a lot of polling data over the years
related to that.
And so that's really what informed that recommendation.
And ultimately, no one know,
the council has the prerogative to direct us.
Gotcha, and let's say,
I would suggest a UUT tax.
And we conduct a study, comes back fairly well,
Would we go out for, I mean, would it be advice
to go out for two, a parcel tax and a UUT tax?
Do they both pull off on the same election?
By and large, I would say that is not a recommendation
of best practice.
There's this, I guess you could say,
for lack of a better term,
they potentially poison the well, for lack of a better term,
and they typically focus the resources
on one particular tax type, so.
Gotcha, and what about, let's say like a sugar tax
other so that is an interesting area there is some complexity to that so for
background on this you may recall there's already a few cities in the Bay
Area that have such taxes in effect I believe it's Albany Berkeley and San
Francisco don't quote me on that precisely but then following the
adoption of those taxes in those cities there was a lot of pushback I would say
from the grocery industry and their representatives and advocates in
Sacramento and ultimately there was a state law that was passed by the state
legislature and signed into law. I'm forgetting the name of it, but it basically prohibits
any additional, the adoption of any additional grocery taxes, which includes soda in California.
And so that really put a freeze on it. Now, fast forward to today, there has been some
litigation related to that, and in particular vis-a-vis the applicability of that state
law to charter cities. But I would suggest at this point, it's a very, it's open to
the challenge for sure. And also in terms of the actual revenue that could be generated,
it's not something that would really, given our broader fiscal challenges that we have
here in the city, it's not something we'd recommend looking at. Thank you, Eric. Councilmember Simon, please. Thanks Eric for the presentation. Considering we are in a deficit of $300 million range at our city, which
tax could bring in that kind of revenue. Which tax could bring in like 300 million dollars?
That's what we need, right? That is certainly true. My short answer is none of the ones
that we've evaluated would achieve that sum of money. I mean a realistic time frame. I
mean almost in some ways you hear that expression like eating the elephant one bite at a time.
And so that comes to my mind when thinking about that, given just the sheer size of that
need when you include all of our capital needs, et cetera, to find, to identify a tax that
could achieve that kind of revenue.
I don't know the amount of each ratepayer or taxpayer would have to pay to actually
generate that much cash flow.
I don't know that that would ever be viable in terms of one particular tax and one election
cycle.
That makes sense.
OK, how much money will this bring in?
Well, it varies depending on the tax type and the structure.
Now, do you want me to highlight one of them?
The parcel tax, for example.
So here, let's go back to that.
So the parcel tax, we've kind of, and again,
these are very high level estimates,
but we think there could potentially
be $5 to $7 million annually.
That could be derived from that.
And also another question with parcel taxes
is whether or not to include a sunset date on them.
In some cases polling has demonstrated in the past
that when there's a sunset date,
like this parcel tax will only be in effect
for X number of years,
and then we'll go away unless reauthorized by voters.
Sometimes that will increase the likelihood of its passage
as opposed to something that's an evergreen tax
and perpetuity.
Just if you could hold on a second,
we're gonna let the assistant city manager weigh in
with a little bit more color,
and they'll come back to your next question.
Thank you, Mayor, through the chair to Councilmember Simon.
The budget deficit or budget need, if you will,
is actually around $15 million over three years.
I think what you are referring to
is the infrastructure need of the city,
which is well in the range of $300 million,
and that would require some sort of, to be very blunt,
no one revenue measure can chip away at that
in the full entirety all at once.
There would need to be some sort of a targeted plan
as to what types of infrastructure projects to address
and a combination of revenue and bonds
to be able to achieve that particular plan.
Is the city making, do we have any plans?
Are we analyzing that?
How to chip away at that with a combination of bonds
and revenue measures?
So that's a very good question Council Member Simon.
would say that this is the perfect example of what comes first, the chicken or the egg.
We would need some clarity from council on what exactly the priority is when it comes
to what revenue measure, what revenues a measure could generate and whether that would go toward
the infrastructure need and if so, what parts of the entire infrastructure plan or if that
goes toward other services that you generally would find in our operational budget?
And I wanted to chime in here as well, just anecdotally, those types of taxes have not
been have not been successful for agencies like ours they've seen more
success with school districts sometimes counties but cities by and large have
not been successful in some of those larger parcel taxes or geo bonds just
for conversation sake okay my last question for now is the vacancy tax I
think you wanted to explore in your recommendation viability of it but it
sounded like from Oakland or other places the expense matches the income
so there's no net gain on it so that's the case why would we try it actually
let me let me clarify that and in hindsight I could have been more clear
on that explanation so Oakland I think is probably the optimal we're really our
only example right now I think that we're guiding from and we did have we
did meet with staff from city of Oakland to get more clarity on their structure
and it is actually generating that positive revenue for them to be clear so
they have that 3.5 FTE staff to administer the program but our
understanding is that like 5.5 million a year I think they're currently
generating from it I think that's correct and there's a structured with a
flat I think it's $3,000 or $6,000 I think there's there are two rates it's
either three or six, and it kind of depends
on the type of the parcel.
Okay, thank you.
So there is a net positive revenue possibility from that,
but it's a very, because this is such an emerging,
I guess, tax type, it's challenging
to generate revenue estimates for us locally,
but it certainly would be on the lower end
of all the taxes we've discussed tonight.
Okay, seeing no other questions,
let me jump into a couple of my own.
likely voter. I don't know if we happen to have a good definition of what a likely voter is
and what we consider, given that this will be a gubernatorial year but not a presidential year.
How do we think about that if we know? Yeah, our pollster Brian Godby is online.
Yes, Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for the question. The way we do that is we look at
the corresponding election type in the past to determine what the percentage turnout is.
That's not just to go back to 2022, which is the last gubernatorial election because
there was an incumbent, of course, in that election. So turnout was a little bit lower,
but we look at the 2018 election, which was last time we had an open seat for governor,
and that gives us a baseline to try to figure out what algorithm we're going to use or what
model we're going to use to achieve that specific percentage. So, we would look at the number of
elections that get us that same percentage. We did that in the November 2024 election for the
survey we conducted in the summer of 2024 also, but that was for the presidential election. So,
that's the way we do that. And it's probably in the range of 30,000 voters, but we'll have to do
some more analysis to be specific. And so do we, just to kind of drill down a bit, do we look at
people that have voted in 60% of last 10 elections, like three out of five voters?
It's probably more like two. It's either two of eight, which is the model that we use most
frequently, or three of eight, depending on what the percentage actually was back in 2018.
We also try to look at and say, is there going to be a greater turnout? And something like Prop 50
from last November sort of surprised a lot of people that didn't think there would be that much
turnout for an off-year election. So we need to also sort of look at what kind of intensity,
it's a little more intangible, that the election and interest in national affairs might drive
Turned out up, but that's something we'll look at in this process. That's perfect on the vacant property tax
Did I hear correctly my remembering correctly that this is something that San Francisco and Berkeley have tried
Correct. So my not the one San Francisco is in suspense because of litigation, correct? What is it about?
Oakland that has kept it from litigation if you can distinguish between the two sure my understanding based on like
cursory review of available information online is that the Oakland tax
Well the challenge that the successful challenge that's put the San Francisco tax in suspense
it was primarily well, there's a number of challenges, but one of them is from through the Ellis Act, which is this existing state legislation that essentially
prohibits from local municipalities from mandating
Rentals property owners like dictating rental a property or a must thou shalt you know rent this out
And the San Francisco measure as well as the Berkeley measure exclusively apply to residential property
both the San Francisco measure as well as the Berkeley measure also I understand have like a
It's not just like a simple flat rate
There's essentially my understanding is that there's a lot of complexity to it and I think in the Berkeley measure
It's like each successive year that it stays vacant. There can be an inflator to the tax
Versus Oakland is is a simpler structure. There is as I understand it's just a flat rate
I'm either three or six thousand a year and it applies not only to residential property applies to commercial property
It applies to lots of different properties
Technically it actually could apply it really applies to any vacant property not just residential. And so generally speaking again
I'm not an attorney but generally speaking the Oakland tax is considered safer for lack of a better term
versus the san francisco is clearly at risk as a court has already you know
Disallowed its continued implementation and then and the under my understanding from what i've read is that the berkeley measure because it's structured
in very much the same way as the san francisco is
Presumably going to be open to more challenge and uncertainty of its long-term viability. Thank you at this point
I'm, only spell a comment on this item
Mayor we have not received any comment cards on this item, but we do have
two hands raised online. Okay, so we'll close public comment in person, and we will open public
comment online. The first speaker online is Douglas Spaulding. Thank you. Douglas Spaulding
is a San Leandro district one. I'd just like to self-identify as a likely voter. You know,
I was just polled not not a few weeks ago about matters in San Leandro and uh it's the one that
asked if I wanted to recall the mayor and did I want to recall my uh my council person which
I said no and no uh and I I misunderstood I took it as the hand of John Sullivan following up on
his threat uh after the first reading of the RSO that he was you know gonna get people to vote
accordingly. I subsequently found out it was a poll that was commissioned by the citizens' effort
to pass a parcel tax. So I imagine there may be some confusion among the electorate about,
you know, who's doing what, and I would want to make sure, I'm sure you're thinking carefully
about this, that that is acknowledged, that there's another effort, and that this is the
city's effort and I support the city's effort. We need more money. There's just no two ways
about that. I understand, you know, do one tax at a time. I hope we pass it and then
I hope we go for the next one. I also am as firm believer we need to cut our spending.
That's why I ask, the replacement calendar on the police car, is it really like every
year or not? I think we have to ask those hard questions all of the time. We're spending
too much money. But you mentioned the thing about polling to see if people are in favor
of sunsetting it. Does that help drive up the number? I would ask about senior exemptions.
I'm sure that's on your list. But are there some other kinds of questions we can ask to
get at general questions of whether people are in favor of taxes, generally willing to
To do it or not I like the idea of the business tax. I think it's progressive. Sounds like it's a break for small business. Thank you, sir. Your time has elapsed. Our next online speaker is Jeff crop.
Hello, this is Jeff, you hear me. Yes. Yes.
I don't think that polling is necessary. I think that that city's need.
sort of supersedes the need for polling that you know you need to make some tax
measures and you just have to decide which ones. I would suggest that the 24
raising a 6% tax to a 9% tax was too large that all your hope was placed in
one place, and people wouldn't vote for it. I would suggest casting your net more broadly
with more than two tax measures, all of which are of moderate increase that don't stand out
from neighboring cities, and put your money and your time and your energy into educating the
populous about why those moderate tax increases are necessary.
Thank you. The next online speaker is San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.
Hi, everybody. Good evening. It's Emily Grego, President and CEO with the San Leandro Chamber
of Commerce. I've been listening to this meeting and a lot of the topics this evening are pretty
much targeted towards business. I mean, even the commercial development review really, you know,
kind of reiterated why so many people were, you know, fighting for their businesses and why it's
so hard to develop and all the everything, all their costs going up and whatnot. And now we've
got these taxes that are coming up that are, you know, geared towards business. And I'm wondering
if this parcel tax is also going to include commercial properties. There's so much that is
targeted towards business and business at this point is already the number one contributor to
the city's budget from what I everything that I've understood and I know way back in 2010
we supported a sales tax because we thought the city you know really needed it during that
recession time and we had hoped that there was going to be more marketing for the city and
let's get more people to come to city and let's build housing and invite more businesses
and we're barely scratching the surface on that and that's been many many years. So this is a very
interesting conversation this evening. I will certainly like to share all of this with our
our membership and whatnot and yeah probably have lots more discussions about it. Thank you.
Thank you. Mayor there are no more raised hands online.
So we'll close public comment and then come back to council members for discussion and I'm happy
to take a motion if we also if you just want to move what staff's recommendation is.
I will go with council member Bowen. Sorry there you go.
Yeah I was going to say I'd like to just move the staff recommendation.
Do we have a second on that just looking down? So I've got a second from council member
Okay so now we've got a motion and a second we can go into discussion of this
item I will proceed with Councilmember Simon. The question on the type of questions
we would ask in the polling my understanding is I thought we were going
to ask what type of appetite the voters had for a tax like how much money they
would consider paying that goes back to my question about the amount of money we
really need and and I and I understand we want to take small bites at this
small bites at this but we continue to take small bites and our infrastructure
continues to degrade our roads everything in is the 300 is going to be
500 million it's gonna be 600 million I mean it's just going to happen so I'm
really concerned that we are not addressing the problems that we are
facing and we're just passing the buck to the next council to deal with and
And we're not even asking, I think we should ask that question, because I thought that's what we were going to do.
Do people want to pay, I'm just throwing a number out here, 300 bucks a year.
Do they want to pay 200 bucks a year, 400 bucks a year?
And then, you know, backing that out, you know, how many hundreds of million dollars can you get?
And telling people the real issues we're facing in our city, I mean, really, our streets are falling apart
and we are not keeping up with them.
That's my understanding.
We're just status quo and degrading.
I'm really concerned we're not addressing
the needs of our citizens.
Thank you Council Member Simon.
I will address that a bit but also would like
for our consultant to speak up if I speak at a turn here.
What we're planning to do is to go out
and test parcel tax at multiple levels
and different potential fundaments to whether it's a per square foot or a, by $1,000 assessed
value, but looking at what would be viable for us, because we can go out and ask for
$10 million, $100 million, whatever it is, and if voters tell us no, then we know what's
viable, what's not based on their appetite, but we will do it at multiple levels so we
we can see what people's appetites are for attacks of that type and how much we can get
and certainly if we were to find something that, you know, let's say voters would approve
something at one level but not another a higher level, then we would see what we could do,
how we could use those funds best, use those resources to best address the infrastructure
needs of the community.
Okay then a follow-up would be in the previous dialogue I heard that the
school districts are more successful than cities and can we learn
something from the schools so that we can be successful so we can get those
big revenue measures passed to really take care of our city and if so what are
they what are those lessons learned? So thank you Councilman for that follow-up
question there is an inherent distinction between the threat the voter
thresholds that are applicable to school districts versus those are
applicable to cities. School districts that are the current law is that it's
55 percent majority to pass a parcel tax for school
infrastructure as opposed to a city or municipality like San Leandro. It's a
66.7 percent threshold and that is a quite significant difference in terms of
the ability to achieve those thresholds in an election. One last comment I'll make.
feedback I've heard from the community is a lot of people can afford it they
can afford 20 bucks a month whatever the number is but the issue I mean totally
transparent is trust do they trust that the city is going to spend their money
efficiently and effectively and I think we have to get that message out that yes
we will that yes we have programs in place to administer to monitor to track
to be transparent I think that's a big barrier that it's being spoken out in
the community but until we address it head-on I don't I'm really concerned
we're not going to make progress okay seeing no other no one else pumping
having punched in I'll just offer a couple of comments I do also support
staff recommendation so thank you for the motion I do think that there is
something to be emphasized in this notion of the residents of voters must
have confidence in how we use that money. They have to know that we're being
efficient with it, they have to know that we are not telling them what we're gonna
do something and then spend it on something else. I think it's very very
important that we be mindful about executing against what we promise to do.
With that let's have a vote. We've got a motion from Councilmember Bowen with a
second from Councilmember Bolt to adopt staff recommendation. All votes are in and
the motion carries unanimously. At this point in time we are going to take a 10
minute break and come back at 9 21 so we stand in recess okay so I'm calling
us back to session that time is 9 21 let us proceed with our next
agendized item which is 10 C a council discussion discussion discussion
regarding how we deal with a vacant with a district to vacancy so we've got city
who will introduce this item. Thank you good evening mayor Gonzales members of
City Council I'll be providing a brief report this evening on this item next
slide please. So the City Council is aware the council member Azvado submitted
oh yeah of course. Thank you I I know we are I want to be cognizant of time and
and extend this meeting to 1030?
I'd be happy to do that.
Because I'd made the 1030.
That's a motion.
I'll second it.
Let's just vote on that item.
So we got a motion, a second.
Let's vote.
That's to extend our meeting to 1030.
All votes are in, and the motion carries
with five yeses and one no,
with Councilmember Bolt voting no.
Okay, so thank you for that.
We will try not to interrupt your presentation.
Let's keep the dialogue going.
Please proceed.
Thank you, Mayor.
So as the council's aware, Council Member Azevedo
submitted a letter to the City Council
indicating that he was retiring and vacating his seat
on February 10th, 2026.
The City Charter requires that the City Council
fill a vacancy that is created prior to the expiration
by appointment within 60 days of the vacancy being created.
Next slide, please.
We've calculated 60 days as expiring on April 11th
of this year.
That is the date by which an appointment must occur
for a council member from and for district two.
Next slide, please.
In terms of process,
there are no legal requirements laid out
that requires the council follow a specific process
in terms of interviews.
however the city has historically conducted an application and interview
process in the past. This process must occur publicly and can occur at regular
or special City Council meetings. Next slide please. Staff has generated a
recommendation for a proposed process for Council consideration with the
following timeline that is laid out on the screen. This would include making
applications available for interested candidates on February 23rd 25th. Those
applications would be due March 9th 10th that would be the application window. The
week of March 23rd we would propose that the City Council conduct a special
meeting to interview applicants and consider making an appointment. If an
appointment is not made the week of March 23rd staff would recommend
returning to attempt to make an appointment at the April 6 regular
meeting or call a special meeting at some point before April 11 to make an
appointment. Next slide please. Following appointment the City Council is
required to hold a special election that would be consolidated with the general
municipal election November 2026. The appointed council member to hold office
until that election occurs and someone is elected and that elect for the
remainder of the term and the person that is elected in November 2026 would
hold that seat until the remainder of the vacated term which expires December
2028. Next slide please. Should the City Council be unable to make an
appointment and the seat remains vacant that would just result in the council
operating with six members until an election occurs
in November of 2026 for someone to be elected
to fulfill the remainder of that term.
And I do want to just note that the person elected
at that point would be eligible for the remaining two years
of the unexpired term, and then under the city's charter,
could then do two full terms after that,
assuming that they remain within that district.
And with that, that concludes my presentation.
I'm certainly glad to answer any questions.
Okay, so we will take questions on this item
before going to public comment and then discussion.
Questions, please.
Councilmember Bolt.
Thank you, I appreciate the presentation.
I want to really understand this
because it's saying the city council shall,
and from all my great years of lawyership,
I understand shall and should are two different things
and a shall is a mandate.
But then if you go down further to,
if no appointment is made,
how, if we're saying we shall do it,
how are we giving ourselves the out to not be able to do it?
Yeah, council member Valta, that's a great question.
I think the only, the way you interpret it reasonably
is that the city shall make an effort to fill the vacancy.
And then there's that additional language that acknowledges
that if the city council is unable to reach a consensus,
which would be four votes,
then the city is required to just fill it
by special election, but that within that 60-day period,
that's the window to consider it.
And once you're outside of that,
there's no more opportunity.
It just, the light just went on with when you said four votes, so being that
we're a six council, it's a super majority to get one person in, where if
we can't decide, if four of us can't decide on one person, there comes the
moment when we we were unable to reach that point in time, we were unable to
to reach the shallow but we can't be held liable correct if we go down that
route that's correct we can't be sued like oh you didn't do it now district 2
has I'm really struggling with not giving district to representation in
this but I also want to make sure we're doing the right thing that's correct
there's not legal liability for that thank you
I also had that question so I appreciate you asking that.
I just want to drill down in terms of towards the end of the presentation is that if the
position is not filled and the council shall call a special election, which could be consolidated
with the November 2026 election?
My question is, do we have to have a process to appoint, or can we just make a decision
to leave the position vacant and just take it to the November election?
I think the language in the charter saying shall, the earlier language suggests there
should there is some effort required of the council to at least try to come to
consensus you know versus just making a decision to not take make any effort
whatsoever so we have to put I just want to be crystal clear so what you're
saying is that we do have to put a process in place to search for through
an appointment process? Not necessarily a process but there needs to be some
opportunity where the council has a discussion about making appointments so
it doesn't have to be an application process the council could just you know
say we want to bring bring your best candidates to the table you know so it
but it doesn't so doesn't have to follow the process that's been followed in the
past but there does need to be some effort by the council whatever the
Council chooses to at least consider an appointment.
Thank you.
What is the, so we just got a number from our previous item.
What is the cost to place the district two seat
on the November 2026 election?
Is it the same as?
Yeah, it's gonna be.
It's gonna be the acting city manager on this,
a city clerk on this.
defer to the city clerk. Would you have that number handy? The question was a place
to have the election in November where we add the district to seat the
incremental cost associated with adding that to the election. Thank you for
stating the question mayor. The way that the election costs are calculated the
bulk of the election cost is on a per voter basis so adding an additional
something else, I would definitely like to say that
there is no additional position or an additional
measure, doesn't do a whole lot to the total
election figure.
I don't have that number directly in front of me
right now, but I can say that adding an additional
position would scale it up a little.
So in terms of magnitude, we are looking at 30,000,
10,000, 50,000.
Apologies, I don't have that number.
Thank you Mr. Mayor. I also don't have the number but I wanted to just add a
point of clarification due to the fact that this election year is an at-large
election year where the mayor seat is also on the on the ballot the same
voters would be voting versus if it wasn't it was only by district and this
district wasn't a part of the vote then you may run into that issue so it is
It's an incremental change in cost
Those are all my questions
I do have some comments to make that I'll save until the end but or until the next portion of our conversation
coming to councilmember you let
Thank you America's also my question is
Would we go through the same process that we did for?
the district one election
And that's something that we are going to decide
we don't legally have to correct there's no legal requirement to follow any particular process
it's up to the council council can utilize a process that's utilized in the past or may decide
it wants to try something different gotcha okay that's that's my question thank you council member
Bowen please thank you um i think i understood council member varus volton's question and the
response the one uh in terms of voters in the special election in november one thing that i
wanted to clarify is if in June the voters do vote to pass by district
elections meaning only district two residents would vote for the candidate
so only that district would see that candidate's name on their ballot just
like district five would only see the district five candidate right so in
In terms of costs, it wouldn't necessarily increase it even incrementally necessarily
because it would be a smaller number than what it would have been in the past elections.
But this is, I just want, let's get the city, the acting city clerk on this because the
total costs that we pay as a city, let's hypothesize $500,000, that's based on the total number
of San Leanderens that vote, so it'd be 30,000 voters, 40,000, whatever that number is.
And so maybe in that particular election it's going to be a much smaller number, District
2, but our fee is not based on District 2, it will be based on our total count.
Is that what you said?
That's a TBD.
Thank you, Mayor.
That is correct.
Our costs are charged on a per-registered voter rate.
when you are just electing from a district then we're paying for the costs
of the voters in that district. So yes we're paying the full election cost as
the manager noted this is a full at-large election we're gonna be paying
the big expensive election costs this cycle because all of our registered
voters will be factored into that for the district 2 portion and we don't have
these numbers yet because this is our first transition into the district
elections but going forward the council district elections will be theoretically
a little less expensive. Okay thank you and then again the shell language around
this you mentioned that there is no specific process we necessarily need to
follow we can decide that to follow what we did last time with the district one
appointment or not. Is it not technical that if we were to have a discussion on
whether to appoint that would be our and we can't decide whether or not we want
to actually go through an appointment process would that qualify as our effort
to fill the vacancy by an appointment or do we have to agree to have an
appointment process? City attorney. Yeah I think that just a discussion generally
is probably insufficient I think there should be there needs to at least be
some consideration of maybe a poll of candidates or a candidate or a universe
of candidates versus just some nebulous discussion that doesn't isn't really
ever gonna materialize him to anything. Okay thank you. Councilmember Seidman
please. On your slide for the process appointment the staff recommendation it
seems pretty straightforward similar to what you did we've done previously
recently. My question is, so we can move as efficiently as possible through this
basic question, is the application or where does it define what the criteria
is for being a council member? Whether it's experience, whether it's education,
where is that defined and how is that disseminated to the applicants? I mean in
terms of the legal requirements it's going to be that you know someone be
from the district and you know meet all the other requirements being an
elector so on and so forth you know in terms of who the that's the council can
decide who it thinks is otherwise qualified to fill that position and if
the council wants to provide direction on what that application says or you
know some level of detail in that regard that's it's up to the council is there a
Defined experience and education requirement for a councilmember. No, that's my question. Thank you
Any other question that hasn't been asked yet, I think deals with duration of time to a special election
Is there a window of time within which a special election must be called? I
Know we've concluded that we can do it in November
But I'm trying to figure out I guess why that's the case and if you want to just research it
We'll do that and you can come back later. That's fine, too
Okay, yeah, I don't you to guess so at this point on let's go to public comment on this item
Mayor we have received two comment cards on this item and there are
three hands raised online
Okay, that's a public comment in person
our
In comment in person commenters are Leo Sheridan and Ed Hernandez
Good evening mayor
City Council and staff
I'm here tonight to advocate for you to consider an appointment process in district 2
Our district has already endured
endured a year and a half of under representation
Under the cloud of a criminal investigation of the former council member
Another nine months is not fair to the constituents of District two
there are a number of concerns of our district that need the attention and the representation of
someone that resides within that district
Crime and blight throughout Bayfair in the transit hub
Shuttered storefronts in the Lucky Shopping Center and it continues up and down East 14th Street
We deserve better in our area
Our constituents deserve better and they deserve an advocate to advocate for those needs
now
Not nine months from now
It's time to say enough to the distractions and get this council back to business
Please consider an appointment
process to allow for District Two to have a voice, just as the other districts have.
Our St. Landry School Board has shown us in recent years that an appointment process
is not an unsurmountable hurdle and shows the value of providing representation
to their constituents. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. The next speaker is Ed Hernandez.
Good evening Council, staff, city manager, everybody else for being here this evening.
So just my point is to focus on the appointment process now. District 2 has gone without meaningful
representation due to the former council members prolonged legal issues and inability to perform
his duties. As we know February 11th he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services
fraud and making false statements admitting he accepted bribes including a trip to Vietnam
and funds routed through an LLC
in exchange for favor in a housing company.
This conduct defrauded the public
and broke the trust residents placed in the representative.
As a result, district two has effectively had no active,
accountable voice at the dais for a long period of time.
And employment is the fastest and most responsible way
to restore representation and ensure district two residents
like me are no longer disadvantaged.
Acting now provides stability, fairness, and continuity
while still allowing voters to choose
their long-term representative in November.
Delaying further would continue the harm already experienced
by District 2 and at least thousands of residents
without equitable representation.
I decided to speak up that we need to act now.
Some people might not lock it, but I've been at the dais
that we need to make sure we have leaders
that we can count on, trust, and not break that trust.
There's a lot to rebuild in our community.
need to do it now and you might not like it but it's overdue thank you thank you mayor that
concludes the comment cards we received so we close public comment in person and we open public
comment online our first online speaker is douglas spalding thank you i'm gonna strike a slightly
different tone. I'd like to begin by thanking former council member Brian
Acevedo for his years of service and while recent events are unfortunate for
he and his family in my mind they don't outweigh the good he's done our city.
I'm gonna spare you my campaign speech. I'm not a resident of District 2 but I
think it's gonna be unfortunate to see a campaign that's you know running on
on the Pash Bryan platform.
I encourage you to think maybe a little outside the box.
What I don't want to see is I don't want to see a duel
at high noon in front of City Hall between Ed
Hernandez and William Sheridan.
Let's avoid that one.
But I'm wondering, couldn't this be
part of a special election in June?
Is there not time for candidates to file and do everything
and get it done?
To me, that would be the most democratic way
to replace, um, uh, Brian Azavino.
Um, I don't mind the process.
In fact, I liked the process that brought us, uh, councilwoman.
There's Walton.
Uh, I'm, I'm thrilled that she's my representative.
Um, I didn't know of her until Selena recommended, uh, her to me, but,
um, you know, like it's, it's been fantastic and let's just keep improving.
Uh, Dylan bolt was a great, uh, add to the city council and I'm looking
for another upgrade policy.
So let's really kind of beat the bushes
and think creatively about possibilities.
Let's scan those commissions and boards we have.
Let's encourage people that we think are good candidates.
It'd be great if we get a good feel of candidates
and there can be a competitive application process.
And then you council members can make
the best possible decision, not only for district two,
but for the rest of the city as well.
Thank you.
The next speaker is James Aguilar.
Good evening, council members.
My name is James Aguilar.
I'm a resident of District 2.
I just wanted to hop on and advocate
for an appointment process.
That's pretty much it.
And the reality is that District 2 cannot wait
and really shouldn't wait.
It's not fair to wait nine odd months for representation.
It's my hope that the process that you choose this evening
will be a shortened expedient one,
but also considerate and transparent.
District 2 definitely deserves representation,
not an absent vacant seat,
even between now and the new election.
And so all I ask is transparency and thoughtfulness
in this evening's discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Alvaro Ramos.
Can you hear me?
Yes. Okay.
So I just wanted to say that I really appreciated
the ideas shared by Doug Spaulding, especially
June 26 election.
But I will say, whichever way the council goes on this,
I want to say that if you do end up doing things,
I don't know how you would do them,
but if you end up holding public hearings that you please
let members of District 2 know.
So I mean, for example, I'm just mentioning communication.
I don't think it's enough to do a full-wielding campaign
of District 2.
But communication, for example, by putting up
some official city flyers at the local schools in District 2,
like San Landro High School and Jefferson Elementary School,
and maybe at the main library or a community center,
even though they're like slightly outside of district two,
and also put something on social media
so that people are aware and they can engage in the process
and comment and share their feedback.
I think that would be very helpful to this process.
That's it, thank you.
Thank you.
Mayor, there are no more hands raised online.
We closed public comment and come back to council for deliberation. Councillor Simon,
please. I'm interested that we recommend that we
appoint the process. We appoint the position. I think that district two should have representation
and they should have it quickly. I think there are issues that need attention
in all of our districts, it needs attention.
And I can't see that area having a void of no person
until November.
So I really believe, yeah, or December or January,
that's way too long.
So we have to get someone in there, they deserve it.
If I live there, I would want it.
And that's just fair.
That's only fair to those residents.
So I recommend we proceed with the appointment process
and we do it as efficiently and quickly as possible.
I do also want to make the comment
and why I asked the question about experience
and education was the last go around we did this,
we had people with different, very different backgrounds.
And afterwards, and I'm just going to throw it out there
because it is public information,
the investigation report, you know,
criticizes some of us council members
based upon our personal or our merit based decisions
on how we decide on people.
And I think we cannot go there.
We cannot do this again.
We just have to respect each other's votes,
expect, we respect each other's opinions on council
and not attack each other, but we just can't do it.
We can't afford it.
Our city does not deserve to go through this again.
So as the city attorney said,
there are no experience or education requirements.
I'd recommend anyone who wants to apply, apply.
Anybody don't feel intimidated because someone has a master's degree or I have a master's degree personally
But that doesn't make me any better than anyone else. So
Anyone apply I really really encourage more civic involvement more people come into these council meetings because someone really good may come out of this
So I'd like to make a motion to proceed with the
Recommendation from that slide to move as quickly as possible
So I've got a motion by Councilmember Simon to proceed with an appointment process and the next by day appointment process
councilmember braggadot
thank you mayor as well as I will second that motion with regards to the appointment process and
Yeah, just like councilmember Simon had mentioned, you know, there's
There's job descriptions for certain jobs, you know City Council is anybody who's willing to serve who has the time and the capacity
Shall serve on this council and I think you know, we we vet out the candidates a lot of us kind of look for different backgrounds
not all of us are gonna agree on the same on the same candidates, so I
You know, I think last time we had a
Ad hoc committee that vetted out
candidates and
Presented them to the council. So I you know, I thought that worked out
Pretty well, I think there is some candidate conversation about you know
who we
Would support and I think there was there were a lot of great candidates that applied
and so I think that we should move expeditiously as possible to like
Our public speakers had mentioned with regards to having representation within that district
I think this is something that we you know, we owe to the community that we need to move forward with this appointment process
Vice mayor, please
Thank you at the beginning of the year
I made a commitment to my colleagues and to the public that I would make the
implicit explicit
and so today we are faced where we are today because
We are addressing illegal actions from a former council member a colleague of ours that did this while we're presenting all of us and all
of them and
also
The city staff who work in the city of San Leandro. So I
Want to apologize because no one has apologized yet
I know the mayor has made his video, but I do want to take this time to
apologize to the residents of San Leandro, the voters of San Leandro, city staff, city
leaders, businesses, and everyone who has—who needs to trust what we do and how we do it.
While those actions were not taken by this body, accountability does not stop with that
individual.
But as elected officials, we are accountable for the systems that we oversee and the trust
that is placed in us. Trust is built slowly and lost quickly, but I think we can restore
it through consistent, invisible action. So what I want to propose is I want to ensure
that we take the time to assess candidates to have people apply. As the only member of
this council who was appointed and then had to run in the subsequent general election.
And even as a person who has been involved in local government for 17 years, it was a
big mountain to climb.
And I would want this process to bring someone in who wants to be of service.
Because ultimately leadership is not tested when things go right.
But it is moments like this that our leadership is tested where we don't necessarily opt for
speed but we look for qualified candidates who want to serve.
So I want to take all the time that we can and not move it so quickly so as not to discourage
people who may not think of themselves in this role, to think of themselves in this
role. And this is not about delaying a decision, but it's about strengthening our legitimacy
as a body. When a seat opens up unexpectedly, I think that the most democratic response
is to let the public weigh in and to let the public vote and to let the public and all
the various stakeholders go through a vetting process that we all have gone
through as elected members of this council. I think that an appointment
process inherently advantages those with existing access and networks and
name recognition and as a former appointed member of this council and
then elected, I think I have a unique perspective and perception of how this
process goes. I think an open election creates equal footing for all
interesting candidates, interested candidates, and it allows a community to
meet, question, and evaluate candidates on positions that are important to them
them, and on issues that are important to them.
I know that we have to go through a process to do a process to a point.
And I don't want to rush this so that we are essentially giving people a week or two weeks
to think about, put together an application, and just kind of ram it through.
I wanna be really thoughtful about who serves with us.
I do want to address a couple of rebuttals
to some of the points made by my colleagues
and also some members of the public.
I think that our effectiveness is measured by our outcomes
and not necessarily only by our head count.
and I think that having a smaller council
at this particular time will force us to communicate
clearly, transparently, and objectively
to ensure that we move forward.
My time is up and I will go to the next go around
to make sure that all my colleagues have a time to speak.
Thank you, Councillor Boehme.
Thank you, Mayor.
I wanna echo some of the things
that Council Member Spadaveros mentioned.
Obviously we're talking about the appointment process,
but it is really important to acknowledge how we got here,
and I'm sure we all have friends,
families, colleagues that live in District Two.
I certainly do, and I would, you know,
I wanna uplift some of the frustrations
that people have felt that while Council Member,
former Council Member Azabedo did many things
to help the community, certainly in the past year,
year and a half, it has been very difficult
for some of the residents to feel heard
and for their interests to be amplified on the council.
And so I recognize how important it is
to have that representation.
Also want to remind the community and this council
that while we have to live in our district
and represent our district in that manner,
we represent the whole city and work for the whole city
and think about all of the residents in the city.
Having gone through the last appointment process
that feels like just yesterday,
I wanna make sure that we do not rush,
that it is really intentional
And we have a process in place from the previous appointment.
We have a more robust questionnaire
than the one that had been previously used
prior to the last appointment process.
So I would want us to at least at the minimum
do those things.
We did have a large number of applicants
and we did have to have an ad hoc committee
in order to be able to reduce that number
for time and efficiency sake.
I don't want to cut corners in that way.
When we go through a election process on a regular basis,
we knock on doors, we speak at meetings,
we share what our qualifications are.
We want to give any person who wants to run
for this appointment or for the seat an opportunity to do so.
The idea of doing a turnaround in a week or two weeks
for a full application is a very tall order.
I think about how many times somebody has to be asked
to consider running for office,
especially for women and people of color.
And that is something that we want to take
into consideration so that we are not filling the seat
for the sake of just filling a seat,
but that we are actually appointing someone
to represent the district that the district would also want them to be
represented by. We'll continue with councilmember Bolt. Yes, thank you. As the
one council member who wasn't a part of the process, I want to commend you all
for findings payday, our vice mayor, because without that process that we
went through we may not have you so that's a good job by this council and
the mayor and the former who Pete who was in my chair and Brian as well did
was it a 60-day process that time too so I've asked the question of the city
manager which is literally pulling up a slide as we speak okay so we gave the
direction if I remember correctly at our first January meeting. Yeah so on January 2nd we gave
the direction saying okay let's initiate a process. We were looking to see if we could find the date
at which the applications became available. We don't have that but we do have is that on the
5th of February based on the number of applications that we had received we set up an ad hoc committee
to go through the applications that we had received.
My vague recollection is that we spent
approximately the same amount of time as that,
which is proposed here.
Namely, about two weeks between,
here's the application,
you've got two weeks to fill it out, turn it in.
And then after that, we did interviews
in the subsequent week after the formation of the committee.
So two weeks later, we had a special council meeting
for the nomination of the appointment.
Okay, so.
And so that, so we satisfied,
and we were struggling that we had to do it within 60 days,
and I think that we actually had a couple of go rounds,
and so we pretty much reached the very end
of when we needed to do it because council members,
Rayness's seat became empty on the 1st,
and so as we counted through the days,
we had to have it done by March 2nd, I think it was.
So that's the difference, is it,
there was a greater time in when she resigned
to Embrion, and then, even though it was the time-
She gave us notice, sorry to interrupt you,
but she worked with us, she told us what was gonna happen,
We negotiated with her effectively.
Would you mind please waiting
because of the holidays are coming,
it's gonna be very difficult.
We didn't want to find ourselves
in a kind of a non-compliance position.
So she worked with us.
So that could alleviate the thought
that, oh, we're really jamming this one through
and we kind of had some time to think about it.
And now we're, I don't wanna say behind the airport
because we're gonna go through the same process.
I do feel, as a commenter said, and I
agree that we do represent the whole city.
And yes, we all get calls from all different districts
because we have relationships in all different districts.
We all had to run citywide.
Everybody up here had to run citywide,
so we knocked on all kinds of doors.
And so somebody may become more comfortable with that idea.
But I still do believe a high percentage of our focus
is based on some of the needs that are in our district.
So like when I come in and I talk about,
like I bit my tongue not pulling one of the item five
just to say thank you for putting up
the outdoor gym at the Marina.
Like that's something that our area has spoke about
and oh, can we fix this?
Oh, how can we benefit in our district
from some of these things?
So I really do believe the district too
should have someone in that seat.
And I caution us from thinking this is,
although it may have been a mountain really high
to climb for use payday, look at where we're at now
and us finding you should be the evidence we need
continue forward and give district to what they need. I do struggle with I know what you're saying
and then we talked about even how you have to run in such a how many elections you literally have
to go through in such a short period of time and raise money and jeez that's that does that's a lot
but gosh dang it look what we got out of it so I don't want to miss that opportunity and find the
next uh spade out there. Okay just very quickly on my part I do want to just confirm something
If we consolidated to the June election, the individual who was elected in June would still
need to be reelected in November or would that satisfy the need for the next two, two and four
months or whatever, two and six months? No, that would be it. That would be it, thank you.
Okay, coming back to council member, to Vice Mayor Vivita Swalton. My apologies.
Thank you, I just wanted to address some of the points, comments that were made during my
appointment. When I was first appointed, I made, I had a conversation with everyone on that council
and I told them that I would, I told all of you, and as council member Bolt onboarded onto the
Council I also had the same conversation around that I would give you a call if I
had a tough conversation to have with you and that you would not find out
from the dais if I had a concern or anything that I would essentially give
you a heads up and I've kept that promise. I also told everyone on that
council that made that appointment, that bygones would be bygones, whatever
happened in that appointment process, and I've kept that promise as well. So I
don't want to re-litigate what happened at that appointment process about
qualifications or not because it was it was tough to sit in that audience and
hearing some of the comments coming from here so I'm I don't want to go through
that again so I think we should just look forward I would like to explore a
June election and see what is the kind of timeline for that do we have a
scenario planning for a June election you know I don't know that we've looked
at that I think there are some challenges you know my understanding is
that we are potentially transitioning to buy district voting in June. So if the
election happens then, you know, I think that you'd have to look at an at-large
and then you create some other issues. There's potentially a cost impact, you
know, consolidating with the general is general, you know, again I'll defer to the
acting city clerk, but I think consolidating with the general is generally going to be
significantly cheaper.
So there is that component as well.
But I do think you run into some of those challenges
just with that transition.
Right, I hadn't thought about the,
this person would have to run an at-large election
rather than a district election
if they were to do a June versus a November.
Okay, I would like to dig into the timeline
because it sounds like that is the process
that we have to legally go through.
don't mayor if I'm speaking out of turn I don't know if you have thought of a
like a process for the council like an ad hoc or I don't want to speak out of
turn if you have already put some thought into what that process could
look like so let me just kind of give you some reactions historically when
we look at appointments to commissions and when we look for let's just start
there, we get a disproportionate number of applicants from Districts 1 and 5,
period. That's just the truth, that's factually true. I do not anticipate that
we will get 12 or 14, whatever that number was, of applicants for this
position. Obviously I'd be gleeful if we did, but I would anticipate something
more on the order of five or six. And so correspondingly I would not anticipate
at having an ad hoc committee,
just because that would be within the realm
of what we could interview and handle in one session.
Okay.
A couple of things that I would want to make sure
that we include in,
I would like to, and just in terms of process,
would like in the appointment page
to have linked presentations
to all of our financial presentations,
because whoever gets appointed will come into the role
having to make very difficult financial decisions as a body.
So I want to, as a person who prepared
for an appointment process,
I looked at a bunch of documents,
but I had to dig through all of that.
But being that this person will have to make
budget type decisions. I would like to have like a like an index of
council reports, council presentations specifically focusing on the financial picture that we're facing.
I think that's really important.
Also just in terms of
the application process I thought it was I
I thought it was a good exercise for myself to go through that questionnaire and really
think through what my positions were.
But I would also like to point out that I also noticed that some members of the body
did not read all the applications.
So asking me questions about things that were on there.
And so I just really want to, I know that I put a lot of time, all the applicants put
a lot of time in, so if we are going to make a questionnaire like that where we really
want to dig into their positions that we take the time to read all of it and enter in dialogue
with that document. In addition to that, just want to, is there any wiggle room in this
timeline? I guess it depends on whether we call a special meeting. I just, I just, I'm
I'm really concerned about a February 23rd to 25th
making an application available.
I'm just, and my time is up,
so I don't have any time to yield,
so I'll just put my mic back off.
Come on, let's give you an extra minute
so you can just share your thing.
So to clarify, our deadline is final, final, final, final,
it's April 11th, is that correct?
That is correct.
Okay, that's what I think I heard from you
is just a request that council have the commitment
to recognize that we may need some special meetings
to go through this appointment process.
I have plenty of time, okay.
So at this point in time, there was, I think one,
I'll call it actionable ask,
because how we would modify or adjust the motion
and that was that in particular during this process
that we make accessible the primary financial documents
that we are contemplating,
I think presumably associated with our council retreat,
for example.
Was that kind of a good framework?
So that those would be,
and what I'll call a simplified way, i.e.,
they can find them,
but if we could just say as part of
wherever the application is,
we could also include a link to that.
I think that's the request.
I'm gonna go to the motion maker,
which I believe was council member Simon.
Are you comfortable with that as a requirement?
And then I'll come to city manager
to see if it's practical.
But would you be fine with that
being something that's part of your motion?
Sorry, thank you.
Oops, you should be in there.
Yes, depending on the city manager's response,
if she's comfortable that-
Subject to her comfort level.
And the seconder, would you feel comfortable with that
being made more easily available
by being at the application site, Council Member Aguilar?
Yes, yes.
Okay, so, I mean, there's a willingness to have it,
and given the description by Vice Mayor,
is that something that can be associated
to where the application would be placed
and would slow down our timeline?
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Just before I actually answer the question just for clarity,
because I'm hearing two different things,
but I want to understand.
I'm hearing Vice Mayor Rivierez-Walton say,
Walton say all financial information staff,
council reports and finance committee,
but I'm hearing you say things ready for the retreat.
Yeah, I think we've got, just to make very clear,
please proceed Vice Mayor.
Thank you, it doesn't have to be all the reports
from finance and all of that,
but I do want to ensure that every applicant understands
that we will be, as soon as they get appointed
by this deadline,
we're gonna turn around and start making budget decisions.
So there has to be some sort of like,
maybe even a question added to it, like maybe.
So is it the financial presentation
from the council retreat?
That would be the most updated, right?
That is correct.
And the retreat is on March 6th,
and that information most likely will be ready February 30th,
which would be behind the dates
of when the applications are out.
So someone could apply before this information is available.
I will say just to give you reference
what happened last time.
I don't have exactly when the applications were made
available, but as the mayor said last time,
we were well in December when we were preparing
for this in January, because we did have the headsets.
So we're kind of out of sync on this one.
But I did see when we started getting applications.
So the first application we received on January 10th, 2024,
the last application we received was on January 29th, 2024.
So that timeline itself is bigger than this one.
And again, I don't know when the application
were made available.
That's just when we started getting them in.
I would also like to include a link
to the city budget that we adopted last year.
Any viable candidate should be able to find these documents,
but I wanted to make it accessible for anyone
who may not be familiar with our website.
Okay.
Because I agree they should be able to find it.
We're just gonna make it easier for them.
With that description,
do you feel comfortable, city manager?
Yes, we would put on the application page,
the city budget and the retreat documentation
once it is available to the public.
And one thing that happened with the appointment
for district one is we actually told people
if I remember correctly that we would be putting up
more information.
I don't remember what we put up,
but it might've been the questionnaire for that matter.
But in the middle of the appointment process,
we added something, we shared more information.
I just don't remember what it was.
So with that in mind, yes, please.
The other thing I would add is,
and I think the Vice Mayor for pointing out
the need for extra meetings,
that last time yes there was an ad hoc committee meeting and there was an ad
hoc committee that met outside of council meetings but the council also
needed two meetings to make a decision so there was a first meeting when we
thought a decision would be made it wasn't made so there had to be a second
meeting that we did not plan for at the beginning of the process I would say
that this time we need to make sure that there's room for that to be the
situation again Councilmember Bowen go I'm sorry you did you're not in my cue
here so councilmember Simon he has been in queue sorry I think you were both in
queue my apologies you are both in queue councilmember Simon please well one
thing I'd like to address and I'm not getting into the legal issues of Brian
as a veto but I do want to thank Brian for his service his years of service for
his work that he's given to the community, for examples, meals during COVID, so many
cleanups events, and he's really personally helped a lot of people. So I just wanted to
put that out there. I do also want to point out that we have a lot of like actual, I'm
going to call it real work to do, like fixing our streets, like attending to our services,
our libraries, all these things we have to do. We're going through investigations to
filling vacancies to so much administrative time
that I really believe our city and our public needs us to focus on
like going efficiently on this. We will find a qualified candidate
just like we did our vice mayor and free up our staff
because this is going to take staff time away from getting other work done.
So with that I'd like to call the question. Is there a second I'm calling
the question. Okay so we've got a motion and a second on calling the question.
Unfortunately we're not able to discuss so I cannot discuss this. Please vote.
All votes are in and the motion carries with four yeses and two no votes from
Mayor Gonzalez and Councilmember Bowen. My apologies to you Councilmember Bowen.
At this point in time, let's vote on the motion.
All votes are in and the motion carries unanimously.
Okay, let's proceed to item number 11.
Council request to schedule agenda items.
Do we need to read these individually or just the fact that you know them and they have
been submitted?
Okay, would you like to read them please?
Okay so councilmember Simon can you read yours and to the record. Yes I have, I have five
of them. The first one is a resolution acknowledging and apologizing for the city's role in historical
red lighting practices and their lasting impacts on the community to include but not limited
to acknowledges that the practices were morally wrong violated the principles of equal justice
and human dignity and created lasting harm that continues to affect San
Leandro residents today. Formally apologize to the residents, families and
communities of color who were harmed. Examine the ongoing impacts of red
lining and historical housing. Discrimination through comprehensive
study and community engagement and implement reconciliation measures to
take direct action to counteract the harm that was done to the communities of
of color who were harmed.
And I'd like to add that,
and this is just a portion of the resolution,
and to give you some background,
Bernard Afshcraft has taken a very nice draft
of this resolution that I think we as council can work on,
or I would work with Bernard on finalizing this
and bringing this to the planning work session
on March the 6th.
So that's the first one.
The second resolution is to reverse the assignment in Aguilar 2024 sensor resolution and issue
a formal apology. For the city's July 18th, 2025 court filing and November 20th, 2025
court ruling within Asterix, the city's council members were engaging in conduct that is protected
by the First Amendment. The Asterix is mileage reimbursement and medical coverage topics
were allowed to continue in court, though defensible per city was not part of the 2024
censure. I'd like to add that to the March 6, 2026 Council retreat. The third item is
that council meetings are only on the first and third Mondays of the month, starting at
5pm with closed session only at the end if needed. Only if additional closed session
meetings are needed it may be held the second Monday of the month. This will
save staff time and money which is less meetings and in the meetings at a
reasonable hour to prevent staff public and council burnout. As we see we
regularly go beyond 10 p.m. as if tonight. Fourth one is adding a new
pedestrian bridge oh excuse me and that first and third Monday that would be
added to the Council retreat. The fourth one is adding a new pedestrian bridge to
cross San Lorenzo Creek near Kramer and Budge Streets and rehabilitate an
existing pedestrian bridge across San Lorenzo Creek near Vining Drive in
Hebron Court in partnership with Alameda County and other jurisdictions. This
improves safety for kids going to school and relieves traffic congestion and that
would be on the planning workshop as well, March 6. And the last one and
extremely important as all these are, but this one here will save us a lot of
time and just fairness and equity. A comprehensive reform of the city's
discipline and investigative policies, including but not limited to, prohibiting
the accuser from judging the accused, de-escalating issues using restorative
justice mediation, counsel approval prior to use of an outside investigator,
double hearsay and witnesses and city lawsuits are prohibited. City manager
and and city attorney report policy violations and make recommendations to
change unjust policies and that all parties in the investigation must sign
an oath of confidentiality and release reports to the public requires unanimous
council approval that would also be added to the March 6 council retreat
those are my five vice mayor please thank you I did not submit it but am I
able to read it into the record it's it's not an item that I would like to
it's not a specific item for consideration but I do want to offer a
framing for our retreat to include as one of our pillars fiscal responsibility
and equity as we head as we look at our priorities and our five pillars I want
to ensure that as we are presented with a very difficult financial picture that
we will be seeing and that we know we're gonna face that we are facing I
I just want to include that frame or that filter
or that screen.
I'm gonna say that really belongs under 12
because it's not an actual request for an item.
I don't see any others and so I'll give you the ones
that I have submitted, the first one.
And these are consistent, I think,
with things that I had submitted last year.
For the multifamily units, I'd like to see an ordinance
Consistent with California law adopted by San Leandro within San Leandro for multifamily unit smoking ban currently in place for alameda county
to be adopted here within the city as the current ordinance only covers unincorporated parts of
Alameda County
number two
I
requested that and
Here, I'm not sure
The current status of our ordinance but assuming that it hasn't already happened by ordinance and consistent with California law
limit the time that boats or other floating objects can be attached to docks within the city of San Leandro to
30 minutes and to impose a similar time limit for use of boat launches
Limit the time that boats can reside within the waters of San Leandro to 48 hours
except for those located at an operational
licensed marina. Number three, drones as first responders. By city council
resolution I'd like to adopt a pilot program under which we test the use of
drones as first responders. This should involve at least one vehicle available
for launch to be located relatively centrally within the city of San
Leandro. Number four, inclusionary housing modification. I would like to
request an ordinance update to policy change regarding the percentage of
affordable housing units required within a multifamily building built in a high
priority construction zone, e.g. downtown, and for that to be a reduction. Number
for increased trained traffic enforcement.
I'd like a resolution by the council,
such that in FY 2027,
we doubled the number of trained traffic enforcement
patrol officers.
So it's purely a matter of training them
so that they're available and we don't run into,
oh, we don't have officers to do that.
And I know I sent these to you city manager.
Do you think I am missing one?
I think I got them all.
I actually see a couple more.
To limit the number of housing units owned by corporations,
by ordinance and in accordance with California law,
limit the number of residential structures
within the city of San Leonardo
owned by a single corporation or its affiliates.
The phrase residential structures shall be defined
as consisting of condos, single-family residences,
duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes.
the limit shall be three.
And then the last one that I have
is minimum expenditure on roads.
So by city council resolution,
adopt a city council policy with respect
to road repair maintenance and replacement
and jointly roads such that the fiscal year 26
general fund budget amount for roads shall serve
as the minimum budgeted amount for roads
in the future years suggested by inflation.
Number two, to the extent that the previous year's
minimum budgeted amount is not expended,
the unspent amount shall be added to the above,
shall be added, i.e. above and beyond,
the then current year inflation adjusted MBA.
That's why we write this so we don't have to know it
from just reading it out loud.
In addition to this minimum budgeted amount,
50% of any fiscal year in surplus,
unrelated to unspent budget for road repair maintenance
replacement shall be added to the minimum budget amount in subsequent
fiscal years. And number four, any funding received from grants, gifts, one-time
awards, etc. shall be additive to the minimum budget amount for roads, i.e.
supplantation is not permitted. I think that's all the ones I sent to you. Okay, thank you.
So with that, we have reached our adjournment time. I'd like to adjourn in
in memory of Jesse Jackson who for many of us was a formidable civil rights advocate
for many years was with Dr. King when Dr. King was shot and carried that trauma as he continued
to advocate relentlessly for decades thereafter. Councilmember Aguilar did you want to add on to
that we've missed item 12 because we've run out of time I like to make a motion
to extend to 11 1045 motion to extend let's see until 1045 please vote motion
by Aguilar second Simon by seven all votes are in and the motion carries with
Four yeses and two noes from mayor Gonzalez and councilmember bolt
Okay, so at this point in time before adjourning. Let's go to item number 12
Or number item number 12. Yes, please proceed councilmember again
Thank you, Mary knows Mary Gonzalez. I think I had a couple of things. I just wanted to
Address the recent public statement made by our mayor regarding councilmember brightness of Edo. I just wanted to be clear that I don't condone my colleagues actions
Public trust is sacred and when it's broken there must be accountability. Nobody is above the law. However, I will take
Issue with the tone and framing of the mayor statement as mayor Stanley Andrew
You are the spokesperson for this entire council that role demands leadership restraint and fairness, especially in moments like this
What I heard went beyond informing the public it felt like a personal rebuke delivered after a resignation had already taken
place and after the guilty plea already had been entered. Accountability was already in motion.
Continuing to publicly underscore condemnation at that point felt unnecessary and punitive.
We can stand firmly for ethics without engaging in public shaming. We can defend the integrity
of the city without appearing to single out and pile on. Our code of ethics applies to all of us
including how we speak to one another. Leadership is not just about calling out wrongdoing it's
about modeling professionalism and measured judgment even when emotions are high. I do not
condone what occurred, but I also do not condone kicking someone while they are down. Our residents
deserve accountability and they deserve dignity in how we conduct ourselves. I also wanted to
take the moment to speak from my heart about colleague, former colleague Brian Acevedo. Brian
was more than a council member, he was a hands-on community survey. During the pandemic when so many
families were struggling, he was out there rolling up sleeves, passing out food, organizing and
supporting community cleanups, and showing up for food drives across our neighborhoods. He didn't
didn't just talk about service, he lived it. He even opened his own home to help
provide hot meals to those in need. That kind of commitment comes from a genuine
love for community. I am truly grateful to have served alongside him on the
council here in San Leandro. His energy, accessibility, and willingness to
step in and help will be remembered by many residents whose lives he touched
directly. While this chapter closes, I want to acknowledge the positive impact
he made and the dedication he showed to public service. That work mattered, it
made a difference. I wanted to wish Brian well in his retirement and his future
endeavors and thank him for his service that he gave to the community. I also
wanted to announce that I've been appointed to the National League of
Cities. 2026 Information Technology and Communications Federal Advocacy
Committee. This is a one-year term. I will help shape NLC's federal advocacy
agenda and policy priorities on key issues including broadband access,
artificial intelligence, and cyber security. And lastly, on February 11th, I
They attended the 1,144th meeting for mosquito abatement.
We appointed Robert Beatty to our board
to serve a term until 2020, 2030.
We purchased a 2026 electric Polaris Pro XT,
which costs $36,000,
and then we supported a resolution 1144-1
in support of male-ready suppression technologies.
And I have no West Nile virus to report.
That's my report, thank you.
Council Member Bowen, please.
Thank you, Mayor.
Two things, I wanted to acknowledge Lunar New Year.
I know you started the meeting with that,
but today is actually at the beginning of Lunar New Year
and we celebrate with lots of family and friends.
And so I wanna acknowledge the large number of people
in the Bay Area, one in three, I think, residents
in Alameda County, RA and HPI,
and a significant number of them
are celebrating this Lunar New Year.
And in April, there will be another New Year
for other countries in Asia.
The other thing that I want to uplift,
since I was unable to share my thoughts
on the previous elections,
so I'll just share in general that when we are,
when there is a time crunch for something
like our special, the appointment process,
so that we can work backwards from it
to give as much opportunity as we can for the community
to be able to engage in it
and to be able to give the most time for the community
and then we on our end
can hold those special meetings at the end.
I had a list of the dates
that would be possible for us to do so
and I can share that with you all.
I would hope that in the future,
especially when we're having a discussion,
to be intentional about really building out this council
to move forward that my council colleagues would have the decency to just let me finish
my comments. That would be really appreciated so that we can actually move forward.
Vice Mayor, please. Thank you. I just wanted I don't trust. I
wanted to apologize to both the mayor and to councilmember Bowen because the mayor did
not get a chance to speak on the council appointment because it is his practice
that he speaks last and I made the mistake of voting yes thinking it was on
the actual motion and I forgot that we were voting on calling the question so I
want to apologize mayor for being one of the four votes that did not allow you
to even speak once on the appointment process so I'm sorry that's the end of
comment. Councilmember Simon. Yes, February as we know was Black History Month and I want to talk a
little bit about that. I haven't had much of an opportunity so I'll take it tonight. First thing
I'd like to do is recognize a very momentous meeting that was held at the Big Tent by Bernard
as Kraft, where our very own Janelle Cameron was recognized as well as Angela Everett and some
other strong black leaders in our community. And I'd like to read something from Janelle's
award. Your vision, professionalism, and tireless efforts have strengthened our community,
enhanced city services, and fostered collaboration across all departments. And I wholeheartedly
support that and congratulate you on your award, Janelle. Also our chief Angela
Everett, she received award as well. Her professionalism, integrity and vision
have strengthened the bonds between law enforcement and citizens we
serve. Congratulations Chief Everett. Also the Stephen Taylor Sanctity of Life
Pavilion wasn't able to speak there, however I will share a few thoughts. One
something I'd like to reiterate, and this was in the Stephen Taylor Sanctity of Life
Resolution, that African Americans are three times as likely as whites to be killed by
the police, and that people with mental health issues are 16 times more likely to be killed
than other civilians.
And that really brings the power to the Stephen Taylor Sanctity of Life pavilion, so we could
recognize the sanctity of life.
And the concept of that giving you some history and background, I did a visit to the African
American Museum in Washington, D.C.
And if anyone hasn't had a chance to visit, you have to visit that museum.
It's absolutely incredible.
And the artwork that was done, the sculpture at our pavilion here in San Leandro is Smithsonian
quality.
It's that good here in San Leandro.
So thank you staff and the consultant for putting that together.
the redlining resolution that we saw that I presented tonight that was
drafted by Bernard Ashcraft again we really need to recognize what occurred
here in San Leandro and we need to apologize and make corrective steps to
reconcile the harm that was done and with that I wanted to share a few photos
if I could because a picture is worth in this case a million words and I think
It's important for us council to see this as well as whoever is watching this video now or watch it later.
I took this photograph at the Museum of Us in San Diego in Balboa Park.
Again, another wonderful museum you have to visit if you haven't seen it.
And I came across this exhibit and it showed the wealth gaps in America between blacks, particularly, and whites.
and next picture please.
And this just goes to explain a little bit more
about the difference in the piles of cash.
And I counted the different stacks of cash
and it's actually a factor of 10.
There's 3.1 stacks of cash for blacks, 33 stacks for whites.
And it just shows how the net worth has changed.
The middle-class Americans,
the largest asset is the value of their home.
And again, here we go, right back to redlining,
like we're talking about.
If we weren't redlined, blacks would have 33,
I mean, 10 times as amount of equity.
So I just wanted to raise that to your attention.
And again, the next slide will show this.
Again, just you can see the massive disparity
between the different races,
and we really have to do something to correct that.
And then lastly, I would like to say on this topic
is we really have to go back to comprehensive reform
to our city's discipline policy
as well as our investigative policy.
We really have to ensure that we are following
our code of ethics and fairness and justice
which is not there at this time, but we can correct it.
We can move forward in a positive direction.
So with my last few seconds here,
I do want to share a meeting that I attended today.
I'm the alternate for the East Bay Discharges Authority.
This is where Brian as the veto was the permanent, but I did attend today, very good meeting East Bay dischargers with these big storms coming out.
This highlights some of the projects that we're working on in San Leandro is point to sale program where we're planning on having people fix their laterals their sewer laterals to their homes.
At time of sale that reduces the amount of storm flow that goes into our sewer system, so it improves the efficiency of our treatment plant by keeping all the storm water out that's a big one.
There's also something called a Cargill brine project.
If you're ever driven down in the South Bay
along Highway 84, the Dumbarton Bridge,
you see all the salt ponds.
There's massive amounts of salt buildup
and brine buildup down there, 60 years of harvesting salt,
and they have to find a way to dispose of it.
This is gonna help EBITDA and help San Leandro
to bring revenue to us, to our plant,
where they're planning on pumping up that brine, that salt,
through an existing shell pipeline,
an oil gas pipeline,
and discharging it near our San Leandro marina
to our discharge into middle of the bay.
This is a great opportunity for us at EBITDA,
which we are a part of in San Leandro
to bring in more revenue here to our area.
And lastly, I'd like to share that.
Okay, so your time is up.
I'd like at least one minute.
So we've got things that I'd like to uplift.
On the 21st, there is a blood drive,
And we encourage folks to share the gift of life.
That's at the Barbara Lee Center, beginning at 8 a.m.
You can sign up with Red Cross.
Secondly, I'd like to thank
the Vietnamese American Community Center of the East Bay
for their promotion of Lunar New Year,
and then highlight the city's celebration
of Lunar New Year at the library.
Also on this Saturday, February 21st,
we encourage folks to attend.
The event runs from one o'clock to three o'clock.
Lastly, I want to just celebrate the work done
by the Alameda County Housing Authority.
In the city of San Lander,
we don't have our own housing authority,
we partner with the county.
And one of the most powerful county programs
is the Family Self-Sufficiency Program.
They invited us as council members
to attend this past weekend, seven days ago.
And it was just a powerful event
where we were able to see how the kindness of mentors
has helped people who are stuck in poverty
to set goals, pursue those goals,
have someone nudge them along,
pick them up when they stumbled,
with a number of people then becoming homeowners,
getting promotions at work,
and just to see the powerful support
around housing in our community
and the collaboration with the county,
I'm grateful for everything that we do in partnership
because it's hard to do things alone.
And so thank you to Alameda County
for the housing authority there.
So with that, it is time to adjourn.
And again, we are adjourning in memory of Jesse Jackson,
Reverend Jesse Jackson.
So let's take just a couple of seconds here
to reflect on his legacy.
So thank you for your indulgence.
It is 1046 and we are adjourned.