Okay, it's 707 I'm calling the city of San Diego and our city council meeting to order today is Monday, June 15th, 2026. I do apologize for the delay our closed session about 702 and it just takes a while for us to get down here and assemble at this point in time I'll lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance join me if you're able to.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Madam Clerk would you please take our role to establish quorum.
Council member James Aguilar.
Present.
Council member Victor Aguilar.
Present.
Council member Simon is absent.
member Bowen. Present. Council member Bolt. Present. Vice mayor Viveros Walton. A special
shout out to my son I am presently at work. I am present. Mayor Gonzalez. Present. Since
the city of San Leonardo conducts orderly meetings to fulfill its mandate
discriminatory statements or conduct would potentially violate the Federal
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and or the California Employment and Housing Act
California penal code sections 403 or 415 are per se disruptive to a
meeting and will not be tolerated. Please see the City Council handbook and 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 then wait for public comment on that item to be called. If you wish
to participate in public comment via zoom you can use the raise your hand
tool when the item is called. During the public comment session speakers will be
invited to speak and we'll have a set time to share their comments. A count-on
timer will appear for their convenience and when the time is up all hands will
be muted. The microphone will be muted. All hands raised outside of public
comment will be lowered to avoid confusion. Once public comment is opened
hands may be raised to speak. There will be a 30-minute window for public
comments on items not on the agenda which will take place under item 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. Okay moving item
number three there was no reportable action taken during closed session and
we don't have recognitions on today's agenda but we do move on to the consent
calendar so my question first is does anyone have an item that they want to
pull for them from the consent calendar and if not I'll go to public comment on
this item seeing none let's go to public comment on the consent calendar mayor we
do not have any comment cards but we do have one hand raised online okay so we
We have opened and closed public comment in person and we're opening it up online.
Our online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.
Thank you and good evening, council.
Item 5D of the consent calendar is the final vote on your annual military equipment item.
And I want to just reiterate something that I said when I came before, which is, again,
is no need to replace the disrepaired command vehicle. We've been using the backup just fine.
So that's an item that we can save money on. And the other thing that concerns me that's a
potential money loser is that some of the military equipment is what our police department would use
in case of a big demonstration slash mob action slash riot kind of situation.
And that's when other municipalities such as Oakland, for example, have been doling out
settlements to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. Unfortunately, we don't have a much,
if any, policy of crowd control or what to do in that situation. And I think it would really
benefit the city to really spell it out so that we protect ourselves in the long run. Hopefully
nothing like that will ever happen here. But there have been things that come close like,
you know, when the Dodge dealership was rated a few years back, you know, or when the police
police department prophecy to a riotous mob coming to Bayfair that that I think turned
out to be poor intelligence. But you know, we talk about this every year and and I brought
this up every year and yet we seem to never quite get down to brass tacks when it comes
to the crowd control policies. Thank you.
Mayor there are more hands no more hands raised online.
So we're closing public comment online coming back to council members for any discussion
If not, I'll take a motion councilmember Victor Aguilar. Thank you mayor like to move the consent calendar. Thank you customer James Aguilar
I'll second motion from Councilmember Victor Aguilar with a second from James Aguilar and desire to discuss further seeing none. Please vote
All votes are in and the motion carries unanimously
Okay, so for item number six, we'll move on to our city manager announcement
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening council members and community members. I have two announcements this evening
The first one is I need to report that I approved an emergency purchase to repair the failing HVAC system at the water pollution control plant
the purchase amount was
$156,481
Staff sought quotes from multiple contractors and only one vendor was able to locate the necessary parts
Because these parts are no longer being manufactured the city risks losing them to another buyer if we didn't act quickly
under municipal cult section 1-6-3 1 0
I can approve emergency purchases under 200,000 without competitive bidding or council approval
When there is a threat to public health safety or welfare as you are aware the plant performs the essential functions of managing
wastewater for much much of the city and the failed HVAC system would was causing extreme
temperature fluctuations for staff in the building
Without the repairs those uncomfortable conditions would have continued into the summer
Given the essential operations in that building and the limited availability of parts. I authorize this emergency purchase
And my next announcement is I am pleased to share with everyone the appointment of our new interim police chief, Joseph Kreins, if he could come forward.
Chief Kreins joins the city today and brings more than 45 years of public safety and municipal government experience.
Throughout his distinguished career,
he has served as Chief of Police in Sausalito,
Nevada, and Vallejo, as well as
the Assistant City Manager in Sausalito.
He has also worked extensively with
law enforcement agencies throughout California
on leadership development, organizational effectiveness,
accountability, and community policing.
I am pleased to have our new interim chief
serving the city of San Leandro.
His experience and professionalism
and commitment to public service
will provide steady leadership for the police department as we continue
advancing our commitment to accountability and contemporary policing.
Please join me in welcoming Interim Police Chief Joseph Kreins to the city
of San Leandro.
Well, thank you. Um, Mr. Mayor, um, members of the council members of the
community, I'm truly honored to be here in San Leandro. I, uh, I have a special
affinity for for San Leandro, San Lorenzo and the surrounding area. I actually grew
up in Hayward and San Leandro. I had many aunts and uncles that that lived in
San Leandro for many years. In fact my one of my uncles had a store, a small
grocery store right here off East 14th just down the street and we spent a lot
of a lot of years there in my my formative years growing up. In fact my my
My mom was born and raised in this area.
It comes from a Spanish family here in San Leandro, and I still have an aunt that actually
still lives here in town.
So like I said, it's a very special affinity for San Leandro and the area.
Love having the opportunity to be able to come back and help the organization and help
keeping things moving forward, albeit on a temporary basis, to be here as long as I need
to be, to help things move forward. So I thank you for that opportunity and I
look forward to working with all of you. At this point in time we move to our
next item. Our next item is public comment on items that are not on our
agenda but are within the subject matter purview, subject matter jurisdiction of
our council. So Madam Clerk, how many cards do we have? Mayor, we have received
three comment cards. I'm sorry, you said three? Three. Thank you. If we can proceed
with those here in person. Our in-person speakers are Sarah Bailey, Mason Reshi,
and Nawal Reshi. I'm here to speak for a band of data centers in San Leandro.
All you have to do is open the newspaper to learn that the opposition to data
centers is ballooning all over the country. Cities and states are imposing
moratoriums and considering bans. This month voters in Monterey Park near LA
overwhelmingly voted for a ban on data centers. Trump wants more data centers.
Democrats see opposition to them as an election opportunity. Please don't be on
the wrong side of that story. Data centers are an environmental nightmare. They require
massive quantities of water, suck up massive quantities of energy, and pollute our peace
with the noise of their constant hum. Please don't throw to the winds your commitment
to the climate action plan to pursue the almighty dollar. Commit the time index.
I'm going to skip a little bit here and commit the time and expertise to make that business
license fee update fair and put it on the ballot.
In the meantime, commit again to the climate action plan to our San Leandro 2050 goals
and ban data centers now.
Thank you.
The next two speakers are Mason Rashid and Noel Rashid.
Good evening, I'm Mason Rashid.
I last approached the council December of last year
when one of my neighbors crashed his car straight
into my driveway gate, which pushed my brand new Subaru
Forester into my house, causing $70,000 in damage.
That was the second straight head-on collision
from Cascade Road into my house in less than two years.
I've since had 12 other collisions on my vehicles
that have either been parked across the street,
down the street, or even around the corner from my house.
There was a recent collision four or five weeks ago
where a speeding car came northbound on Tudor Road
and crashed into three parked cars, totaling all three.
So Tudor Road is a speeder's haven.
And the only thing that's going to slow these cars down
are speed bumps.
This morning, I came home from a meeting,
and I saw a city employee with a can of spray paint
in front of my house.
This employee was spraying white paint saying red.
So apparently the city wants to paint the curb in front
of my house red so that I can't park my car in front of my house.
Well, I'm a disabled veteran.
I'm blind in one eye, visually impaired,
and I have other medical issues that will prohibit me
from parking down the street and walking to my house.
I was volunteer of the year last year
for San Leandro High School.
I deserve better than this.
I deserve an accurate response.
Thank you sir, your time has elapsed.
Thank you sir.
Our next speaker is Noelle Rushad.
At this point in time,
we're going to take the next speaker.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Noel Rashid.
Good evening.
I'm Noel Rashid, and I am the wife of Mason Rashid.
And I want to pretty much expound on what he just said.
Again, the solution, as he already mentioned, by the city
is to take away parking from us who have incurred the burden
of having our property damaged.
And that's our cars, our gate, and our house.
So the people who are hitting our property are speeders.
The solution here is not taking away parking from the homeowners.
The solution here is a stop sign on Cascade
to prevent these speeders from hitting our property, our cars,
neighbors cars and the solution on Tudor Road is obviously speed bumps so this is
very it's simple to us what the solution is we were shocked today by just
arbitrarily going in our neighborhood and finding people spray painting the
curbs and so I think another issue is why aren't they incorporating us as
giving options or solutions here now they're gonna take away parking my
my husband is handicapped, I mean, where are we supposed to park? The last thing I need
is to come home from work and concern myself is where am I going to park now? Where am
I going to find parking? This is only going to bring animosity among the neighbors who's
parking where. So our neighborhood is congested. There's about three to four people in every
home that drives in our neighborhood. It's congested. It's a small cul-de-sac neighborhood
right behind Costco. This is not the solution and we're begging for
incorporating us, the homeowners, as part of the solution. Thank you. Your time
has elapsed. Mayor, we actually received one more comment card. Please proceed. Our
next in-person speaker is Paulo Campana. Hello. I'm a little nervous my first time
here. But I'm actually neighbors I'm actually neighbors with those two in the
back. I have also have the same concerns about the red zones they're about to put
in. I think that neighborhood is very like there's way too many like cars
especially like now with those red zones I find it really difficult to park
around and especially with my neighbors I feel very sentimental towards them
because their whole front house is gonna become a red zone and they would have to
park probably like five houses down just to get any parking and with my
family we... I'm sorry I'm so nervous, but we used the parking right across the
street from our house and it's very important to us especially when we're
holding like parties we don't like there's like limited amount of parking
space and I don't want my cousins and family having to park like you know five
houses 10 houses down whatever like I know I'm using that as like example but
you never know because you're moving like 20 spaces of parking everyone's
fighting to get it and I agree with them I feel like we should add a stop sign or
at least a speeding bump because I know the main issue is like visibility doing
the turn in the intersection and almost so you probably don't you know visually
see it but I get it like I get why you would want to add it but also then again
it's just very hard to park around the area so one thought I had was just
having a stop sign speed bumps and also one thing I talked to my neighbors is
that like a place struggles with a lot of lighting especially around there my I
got broken into in my car he stole my wallet other time a person stole our
catalytic converter and then another time they stole our tires and then just
recently someone stole our car. Thank you sir your time has elapsed. Mayor there
are no more comment cards from within the room. Okay so we'll close public
comment online public comment here in person and we'll open it up online. Our
first online speaker is Douglas Spalding. Thank you so much I don't really have
have any answers about Cascade and Tudor, but sounds like the city maybe doesn't have
much better ideas. I think in situations like this, it would be good for the city to convene
a meeting with the neighbors who probably have some good ideas about possible solutions.
I want to welcome Interim Chief Grinds. I enjoyed hearing about your family's grocery.
My grandparents had the Sun Kitchen's grocery on Bancroft across from what is now the middle
school until the early 50s when they moved it to Caster Valley. I just
want to say that I will look forward to the return of Chief Everett and she has
widespread support in the community. It's unfortunate that our current
district attorney has chosen to pursue the misdemeanor traffic charge, a little
bit of an overzealous prosecution in my mind. I will
be going out to Chief Everett's arraignment to support her. But
you know, the thing that troubles me is, here's our
current African American Chief of Police, the previous Chief
of Police, Chief Pridgen, also an African American man was run
out of town. And in between, former Lieutenant Antoinette Turner was very controversial and and
also an African American. And while I could not prove it in a court of law, you know, it sure has
the appearance that the San Leandro Police Office Association just will not tolerate any black members
the staff. And that has to change. It really fundamentally has to change if we're going to move
on as a community. Thank you. Thank you. The next online speaker is San Leandro Chamber.
Hello, everybody. Good evening. This is Emily. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Wonderful. While I'm
Joining you virtually, I wanted to ensure
that the chamber is still very much present in this room,
representing our members on this issue
of the proposed business license tax.
We want to thank the council
for your thoughtful discussion at the last meeting
and for recognizing that this policy simply is not ready.
And we are here again tonight
to strongly reinforce the exact concerns
that many of you raised.
You correctly pointed out
that there has not been enough time
to flesh out necessary protections
for sectors like manufacturing and retail.
Without these protections,
this tax will cause real economic damage
to the local industry.
San Leandro has always proudly supported.
And we also want to thank you for recognizing
that the business community shouldn't be the only group
asked to fix the city's budget gap.
Because you have asked staff
to investigate a lot of new pieces,
is clear this cannot be rushed. These things take weeks of study and teamwork. It can't just be a
fast rewrite to hit a deadline. Even if the city tries to compromise by phasing in these rates
over time, if the underlying structure is flawed, it will still prove disastrous. And once the tax
structure is approved by the voters on the ballot, the city cannot easily fix it later. It would have
to go back to the voters. At the end of the day, the staff can only produce what they are directed
to do, but this is the council's responsibility to ensure whatever goes before the voters is fair,
sustainable, and fully fleshed out. You hold the ultimate authority. We urge you tonight to do this
correctly, not quickly. Please formally pause this measure to the November ballot so we can
build a policy that truly protects San Leandro's economic future. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor,
there are no more hands raised online. So we will close public comment online
as well. At this point hold on just a second. Okay so the one thing that I will
say just for our record is that there have been discussions with the three
with two. There's been input from our public speakers before regarding the
intersection. There is discussion amongst city staff and exploring what can be
done? What would be appropriate? What would be legal? And there's a variety of
things that are being considered so just be aware that there is thought being
put into it but there are things that we have to do legally so that discussion
can happen can happen separately. At this point in time we're gonna move to item
number eight which is typically where we hold public hearings but today we don't
have any scheduled. We will then move on to the two largest items of today the
first being a presentation after which we'll go to our action item let's begin
first with our presentation by residents consulting on the city branding
assessment process the plan we've got economic development manager Katie
Bowman here to introduce the item good good evening mayor and City Council
we're here tonight to provide an update on the city branding project and we're
in about a quarter or a third through our process we're deep in community
outreach and really excited to be sharing with you updates on that and I
have with me tonight Jake Buganski who is the project manager with the branding
consulting firm resonance as well as Alana Lipset who is a local outreach
expert who they brought in to work on the project. I also want to thank our
our working team, our power team.
We have great interdepartmental support on this project
with a number of department heads,
Tom Liao, Community Development,
Vicente Zuniga, Parks and Rec,
Brian Simons with the library,
and we really appreciate their support
as well as working closely with Angela
on our communications team.
And so with that, I can hand it over to them
and note that it's really,
we'll share a little bit more of the things
we've been hearing from the community.
It's really been invigorating.
I've been in all of the sessions, most all of them,
and really it's been encouraging to hear
the excitement from our community.
And even when we're talking about challenges,
people invested in trying to make things better.
They wanna share with others how special San Leandro is,
and also they wanna hear more from us.
And so all really great things to hear
as we work on not just our visual branding,
but our core message and have it reflect our community
and what sets us apart.
And with that, I'll hand it over to Jake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council.
Happy to be here today to talk about the branding
and marketing work that residents has had the pleasure
of collaborating with you on for the last few months.
We've been working with the economic development team
since mid March, and we're excited about
what we've accomplished so far,
and we'll go into a little bit more detail on that
a bit but in our presentation tonight we'll talk about the project itself a
little bit about resonance and our experience and then spend some time
talking about what we've learned so far as we near the end of the first phase of
the process which was the discovery phase. So we'll start with a project
overview here. We have three overarching goals that we want to achieve through
this process so in terms of civic pride we've heard loud and clear so far that
the City of San Leandro is a diverse community and that the community feels
that that's something that needs to be emphasized and articulated in the new
brand for the city. We've also heard that it's been challenging to unify such a
diverse and also geographically expansive community. In terms of
destination appeal and economic growth we know that the new brand has to be the
foundation for business attraction and that there are specific industries that
are good fits for the city's character and for your economic development goals.
And finally consistency not only helps ensure the first two goals are achieved
but it provides a way to constantly reinforce across all city departments and
And it is in its communication strategies exactly how we want the world to think of us.
So some important things that we considered as we embarked on the process were first
that the city already has an economic comprehensive economic development strategy
to help guide our process and that there are some brand equity considerations to take
into account these are things that we could build upon.
Second for the brand to work it has to be structured in a way
that ensures city departments neighborhoods and the business community all feel
like they're aligned toward the same common goal of raising San Leandro's profile.
We'll see how that works.
Third, we need to create value by addressing a need.
We heard hidden gem mentioned again and again.
So, our brand needs to be oriented toward achieving the measurable outcomes like we're
moving hidden from that equation so the city just becomes known as a gem.
Oops.
So, in terms of our process specifically, we make sure that we're not just attaching
a new logo and tagline to your city.
A successful brand is much more than that, and it doesn't focus as much on what we're
saying about ourselves so much as it focuses on articulating what we stand for, what our
values are and what brings us together in a way that gets the entire community
excited about being part of a winning team. Ultimately, our goal is to create
this, the shared business asset that supports economic growth by improving
consistency, differentiation, and destination appeal. So to get into some
of the particulars of the process, we're using a three-phase approach which you
see here. We originally proposed, we have started off with phase one, the discovery
and situational analysis, which took into account all of the research and
information that we had available and then moved into the comprehensive
community engagement piece that we'll be speaking more about in a bit. Phase two
is the brand identity development so that's where the creative team actually
gets into the hard work of creating the brand itself and then finally we end up
with the brand application strategy which puts that brand to work for the
city. So we'd originally proposed a 36 week timeline. Once we got under the
hood and heard more about the city and how important the community engagement
piece was going to be.
We added about four more weeks to ensure we were able
to accomplish everything that we needed to accomplish.
We identified the Cherry Festival as an important
touch point and we revised the timeline to accommodate that.
So onto our experience.
These are the key members of the team that are working
on your project.
We have Jeremy Fineblatt, who is one of our principals.
He's the lead strategist who oversees the entire project
and he has decades of experience in place making
and place branding.
Myself, Jake Buganski, I'm an associate strategist
the project lead. I have 20-plus years of experience in destination marketing.
Next we have Dominic Prevo who's our vice president of creative. He's a
world-class creative director with decades of experience working with
brands at some of the top agencies in the US and Canada. And then Ilana Lipset,
our local community engagement guru and one of the most forward-thinking with
one of the most forward-thinking approaches to her work of anyone in her
field. So as a company, residents has worked with cities, counties, regions and
In countries on placemaking and place branding projects over the last 20 years. These are just a few of the more than 100 cities
We've worked with
And then next we have a few of our case studies and we don't have too much time to go into detail on these tonight
But the presentation deck we provided for your reference gives you more a few examples of our work in the branding space including the bold
Moves brand for the greater Baltimore region
The Tulsa inspires campaign for the Tulsa regional Chamber of Commerce and visit Tulsa
The LYH loves you brand for Lynchburg, Virginia
the power of together platform for the Houston first corporation and
The Brussels between book which was part of a larger body of work that we created for Brussels that demonstrates one particular
One particularly unique brand expression that goes far beyond the quote-unquote logo and tagline
So from here, we'll focus on the outreach plan that we mentioned that we put particular emphasis on here in San Leandro
the goal was to make sure that everybody in the city felt like their voices were heard and that they were a part of helping
the city become the best version of itself. So from here I'll turn it over to
Alana to discuss exactly what that process entailed.
Hi Mr. Mayor, council it's nice to see you. I've met some of you through the
process of doing this outreach whether in one-on-ones or at the Cherry
Festival or at the farmers market. So nice to see you here. So we have done
eight community roundtables focusing on these sectors, the seven sectors and then
and open to community residents who came.
We've also, as I mentioned, had a pop-up booth
at the farmer's market and at the cherry festival
as a way of kind of catching people in action
and asking them their opinions and their thoughts
and their experiences with San Leandro.
I'll get to that in one second.
In these round tables, we've had a total of,
we've asked five kind of standard questions
across the board, and have had close to 500 responses
to all of those.
Those are, and I'll give you some kind of quotes
and best of from these, but to give you a sense
of what we were asking, ask people to finish the sentence,
San Leandro is the kind of place where,
what spaces, what places, what parks most represent
or embody San Leandro, and why?
What's something that surprises people about San Leandro
when they find out about it?
What's something that most people from neighboring cities
don't know?
And then finally, in 10 years, San Leandro
is finally known for dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank.
And then there were other questions
that were tailored specifically, for example,
to the business and science and innovation communities
about why locate your business here as opposed to elsewhere,
what amenities exist for your employees,
what do you tell customers.
So having questions that were a little bit more tailored
to the groups that we were talking to.
So I just wanna give you some highlights
from these conversations because they were so insightful.
There's also been a lot of consistency
and I will also just say from my personal experience,
I've been doing community engagement
for the past 20 years or so.
And typically community engagement meetings,
as I'm sure you all know,
are filled with people who come to complain.
And this has been full of people
who want to talk about how much they love San Leandro.
So it's been a delight for me to be working here.
So San Leandro is the kind of place
where you know your neighbors.
You can walk, bike, access public transportation.
You can raise a family.
You probably have a fruit tree
and you have a great library.
Brian, there were a lot of library shout outs.
What does San Leandro have
that nearby cities don't fully understand?
How safe and walkable it is.
How easy it is to get to anywhere from here.
Although there were also a significant number of people
who said San Leandro itself.
Most people don't know we exist,
don't know where it is, I just told them
it's outside of Oakland, so that points to
the need to have a story, to have a brand around it.
In terms of places and spaces, most people
have mentioned the shoreline and the marina.
Again, many people mentioned the library.
Parks in general as a kind of,
this is what San Landro is to me.
A lot of people talked about cool immigrant-owned
restaurants, and then for 10 years from now,
what folks at San Landro should finally be known for
is existing not just as a throughway but as a community,
being a still affordable, diverse, welcoming community
that's not a commercial monoculture,
but a rich blend of companies, people, and experiences.
So, lots of great ideas that have been coming out of this.
We also have put out a community survey online
and we've gotten 262 responses so far.
The majority, vast majority of those have been in English,
although we do have a Spanish-translated
and a Chinese-translated survey,
so we're working on getting those out
to the Spanish-speaking and Chinese-speaking communities.
And then we've also been doing one-on-ones,
including with some of you,
and we are more than happy to do them with those of you
who we haven't been able to schedule yet.
So in brief, and Jake kind of alluded to this,
but some of the main things we've been hearing so far
is about this sense of belonging,
people describing the city as rooted, connected, diverse,
homey, culturally layered.
The identity is both stable and evolving.
There's a lot of talk of continuity.
A lot of people, as the interim police chief,
just shared earlier, a lot of people come with stories
of them growing up here, of their families growing up here.
My mom grew up in San Lorenzo, San Leandro border.
So a lot of people have that kind of family
community continuity, but also talking about the innovation
with Bayfair, with biotech manufacturing,
and things changing.
Again, to the point of San Landro being a hidden gem,
a lot of mentioning of these assets that, again,
are real, but not always obvious.
A lot of people talking about the Shoreline.
A lot of people talking about the Cherry Festival,
the Farmer's Market, and these things
that they said you know if you're here.
But people from outside of here don't necessarily know.
And then last, a number of conversations
around the quality of life issues, most of them,
as Katie mentioned, extremely positive
about people coming here to raise families,
about the walkability, the livability,
the proximity to surrounding amenities.
And so that is, yeah, that's what we've been hearing so far.
That's a big shake.
So based on all of what Alana's gathered
and based on the one-on-one interviews
that we're continuing to conduct.
These are just some of the examples
of how the work translates to the next phase of the process.
So, you may not immediately make the connection
between doing this much community outreach
and how that informs the brand,
but these are just some of the practical applications
of incorporating what we've been doing into this next phase.
So I wanna spend the rest of the time
talking about that next phase.
And it's not on the slide here,
but because we're at the end of phase one
moving into phase two,
I just want to give you a little bit of taste
of what that face will look like.
So that's, you know, this is kind of the research foundation
for everything that we're doing.
Not necessarily anything that we expected
to wow us or blow us away.
Although it was, as Alana said, very kind of refreshing
to have a community engagement process
that was very, very positive, primarily positive.
So that was certainly a unique aspect
of that phase of the process.
But the fun part, the brand identity,
the actual brand for the city is where we'll move next.
And so first we'll digest and reconcile
all of the findings into a relatable brand narrative.
And a brand narrative is the overarching cohesive story
that connects the city's identity, mission, and values
to all of your audiences.
That starts with developing personas,
which capture the common personal values, needs,
and behaviors that are shared across all those groups.
From there, we'll create some of the fundamental
building blocks of the brand that will lead us
into a virtual co-creation workshop
that we'll hold with the team here
and some important stakeholders.
We'll refine the initial thoughts and concepts
to get us closer to a full brand platform.
From there, we'll move on to that visual identity itself,
and once we have a draft version of that,
we'll pay you another visit out here
to present our work and solicit feedback
before we finalize that visual identity.
We expect that to happen sometime in early October
at this point.
So after the brand we'll develop,
after that we'll develop the brand architecture hierarchies
and principles that define how the brand
will be articulated across all of our different
audience groups.
And the final deliverable for phase two
will be a comprehensive brand book
that the city will use to activate the new brand.
So from there, as you saw earlier,
the final phase will take us to the brand application
which is putting that brand to work for us.
We'll create a strategy for the city
implement what we've done and we expect that to happen sometime in mid to late
October. Thank you for your presentation at this point time we will. Yes and one
clarifying on the overall timeline we are slated to finish the plan and
project by the end of December in line with the council work plan so that's our
overall timeline and and then also a few other odds and ends I think you know we
as he mentioned our survey is still open and so we do encourage you will we
will be keeping it open for one to two more weeks and encourage you to help
spread the word. We will also be doing some additional outreach including two
additional youth and potentially youth advisory committee. We have had a
variety of kind of feedback from from youth and youth serving organizations on
some of our round tables as well as a lot of people at our very busy day at
the Cherry Festival but there have been you know that group and some other
groups that are a little harder to reach so they'll concurrently start the next
phase while we continue to do some additional outreach. Thank you so much
that's one time what we'll do is we'll take clarifying questions then we'll
move on to public comment and then come back for ongoing discussion beginning
with councilmember Bowen. Thanks I actually had more comments I can wait
and do at the end then. Thank you very much. Vice mayor please. Thanks for your
time and for coming out tonight. My colleagues hear this all the time but I
my goal for the year is to make the implicit explicit and I wanted to kind of
take a step back so we can kind of level set with the folks that are kind of
either figuring out that there's a survey out there so I'm gonna take us
back one step, and I would like to kind of ask the question around what is the
brand application, like who are the intended audiences, and what is the
city's intended use for whatever product comes out of this process? So the
audiences will will identify specifically who the audiences are in the
next phase, but you know generally it's everybody who you're talking to. It's
your residence, its potential current businesses, potential new businesses,
visitors, potential new residents, anybody who the city would want to speak
to, as well as the media. We heard a couple of times in the one-on-ones in
particular that it seems like the only time that folks hear about San Leandro
is when something negative has happened and they said, you know, it's by and large
not a negative place but there's just not as much positive messaging
being you know proactively served out there so one of the goals of this will
be to develop those messaging platforms so that you can consistently put
positive messaging about the city out into the media. I can also add from a
practical standpoint how it would be used by the city is on the city's
materials the city's messaging across different departments and so part of
what we'll be working on an application plan is how to apply that consistently
across the city so that you know we hear and I've heard the phrase from
Janelle one city one voice and thinking about how when people are interacting
with the city across departments they're getting similar messaging similar
experience so is this intended to be rolled out through like for example a
little bit of brand confusion in terms of like what San Leandro next is which
which is our kind of economic development outreach
versus like our recreation newsletters
or library newsletters.
I hear a little bit of like brand confusion
is the intent that this were kind of overlay
all of our external communications
or will that continue to...
I'm just trying to figure out how is this going to apply?
I think that is the intent
and certainly your feedback on that is helpful.
We don't have it fully mapped out at this point,
But the San Leandro next example is one thing that once we update the citywide things we could update that to align and different things can be updated to align as we're able to and so, as you may expect, certainly getting the plan complete and then implementation will take time, and we'll work on that timeline as we get closer.
Thank you. I did have some earlier feedback.
around the audiences.
And I appreciate outreaching to kind of our younger residents,
I think, one of, at least the way that it sits for me,
branding is not just about who we are,
but who we want to be.
And ultimately, young people need to see themselves here
and would like to see what it is that they look for,
how they want the city to feel and sound and taste
and all of these things.
Just looking through my questions
to see if I have any more.
We talked a little bit about the timeline.
So we're looking at, you mentioned your,
we are at like week 14, 15.
So we're kind of out of the blue zone into the green zone
or kind of where are we on that?
About 18 weeks in, like we said,
when we started to discuss the community engagement,
we identified the Cherry Festival,
which was a few weeks beyond the original intended
end date for phase one.
so we kind of recalibrated to make sure
that we incorporated that into the first days.
Okay, but overall this will be done
by the end of the calendar year.
Those are all my questions or answer comments.
Thank you for your time.
Seeing no other questions, I want to ask just one
with respect to promoting the survey.
So literally what would that look like?
It's an online link that you give us
so we could just do Instagram, TikTok,
whatever that just says.
Go to sandlyandro.org backslash branding
and take a five minute survey to tell us about,
oh, I'm forgetting our tagline,
but what you want San Leandro to be,
we have a tagline on there.
But, and we have been sharing it on social media,
so you can also share our social media
from San Leandro next.
Thank you very much.
Vice mayor.
Apologies, my handwriting is terrible
and I skipped over one question.
In terms of outreach, is there any stakeholders on kind of regional, like what is the kind of
regional vision or perception of San Leandro? I'm thinking about, I don't know,
I'm blanking on the new organization that former Mayor Schaff is leading
someone. Anyway, so a little bit about, yes. So some of those kind of regional organizations
and how we are being perceived, because I think that might also, at least the way I'm looking at
it, is that San Leandro sits within a very culturally rich region. And oftentimes, I'm not
from San Leandro, my husband grew up, he's like a third generation San Leandro. And so there's like
this kind of a really good tension I call it. But there is a certain pride of
San Leander being in the Bay because a lot of, sorry to the cities that say if
they're from the Bay but not from the Bay, but we are in the heart of it and I
think for me I am interested to see how we are being perceived from outside
stakeholders from the outside looking in and I'm wondering if there's a little
bit of that existing work you're probably already doing it I just want to
be explicit about whether that's happening or not. Through our one-on-ones we have had some of
those conversations I think just by virtue of the fact that a lot of the
larger businesses that we talked to the folks don't necessarily live here so
they do have some of those outside perspectives but Alana if you want to
share some of what you've heard. Yeah we so I mean in terms of the sector
specific roundtables that we've done as I showed you there, a number of people don't
live in San Leandro. And so we were able to have those conversations of actually the tension
or kind of dichotomy that you're speaking about of actually choosing to locate their
businesses here or choosing to work here, but choosing not to live here. And so we were
able to tease some of that out in conversation. And then at the, actually both the farmer's
market and the cherry festival, we had a pop, I know you stopped by Mr. Mayor, we had a
pop-up booth there and so talked with tons of people and asked you know as we
were asking them to fill out our sticky notes or fill out our poster or post
cards we're also engaging people to see where they lived and there were a decent
number of people who don't live in San Leandro and so getting to speak with
them and having them write their opinions of you know why they do come
here I will acknowledge though that that is different than asking a formal
organization like the Bay Area Council or or something that's a little bit more
kind of institutionally regional, but I think we have gotten some of that with the one-on-ones.
We can add a couple more one-on-ones with the heads of those organizations.
Yeah, I'm just thinking about who's not at this, like who's not here, and I'm thinking we have
large influential philanthropic organizations that are based in the Bay Area that we look for,
And that we would want them to see San Leandro as,
when we not see we are.
But there are really big philanthropic organizations
at San Francisco Foundation that does region-wide work.
And I'm happy to make those connections.
I'm just thinking about,
we're thinking about brand application and how it lands.
It needs to land outside of the people living here
and working here.
it needs to resonate either something like a ha oh my god I didn't know that
was happening there or yeah I've been knowing that and I'm glad it's now
getting out so I'm balancing that but that's more of a comment thank you I
thank you for allowing me extra time for questions
whoa will you know is open public comment on this item mayor we've not
received any cards from in the room but we do have two hands raised online so
We've opened and closed public comment in person.
Please move online.
Our first online speaker is a phone number
that is ending with the numbers 662.
Phone number ending in 662, you may unmute yourself.
Oh, I finally unmuted.
This is Ginny Madsen.
We can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
OK.
I don't know where to start on this because one,
I think Katie did a great job and I think
this company sounds like they might actually do it,
but a lot of what they have found at the Cherry Festival,
I've found over years of being out at the shoreline,
people come from out of town to come here.
People come to the Dahlia show.
They used to come to the Dahlia show at the library
from out of town, mainly because people in town invite them.
Um, for years, I've, I've been saying that it takes a long time, it takes
time to develop a reputation and it takes even longer to change that reputation.
And that is what, this is the first breath of fresh air I've seen in a while.
So I'm mainly interested in what you guys are planning for the city,
because I really don't want this to be all about revenue production.
People come to San Leandro because they want to see it.
They want to experience things that are here, like the shoreline, but it doesn't
necessarily produce revenue.
And so much of what the city is focusing on now is all about revenue.
I do want to mention that when I tried to Google the community survey,
cause of course I've not been asked, I got taken to a city website that
says, take the survey on your phone.
And it's all about the business license.
It does not say anything else about the city.
It is only the business license.
And I think that's an issue.
Um, mainly I just, I don't know how much time I have left
I can't see. Years ago I saw a postcard. Okay, your time has elapsed. Our next online speaker
is Douglas Spaulding. I can't yield my time to Ginny. Well, I think Ginny made
some good points there. Certainly, Stanley, and there's a lot of features, the Cherry Festival,
The Dahlia Show, the performances at the Bell Theater, our comedy festival that Brian has
organized for several years here. There's lots of reasons to come to San Leandro.
I was lucky to be invited to participate in the Arts and Community Roundtable,
which was a very rich discussion. Unfortunately, I'm sure every one of them was, and you can't
that's why I'm here. So I'm
I appreciate the remarks of
councilwoman Wallace Walton.
I think we should lean into our
history. You know, we have
rematriated land in San Leandro.
Seagorite could participate in
that. We have a history of the
oyster beds. You know, this is
where the best tractor was
I heard your formula which goes something like city name and action verb, it made me think of the
words San Leandro reconciles. Wouldn't it be interesting if people came to the city San Leandro
that was once the subject of congressional hearings and then a textbook law case on the
subject of red lining to see how it's changed and transformed become one of the most diverse
cities in the country. But that does mean we have to continue, uh, reconciling. You know, people go to,
to, uh, Massachusetts to see the place where the Salem witch trials happen. They go to the door of
no return in Senegal. Why not come to San Leandro? But we have to be transparent and open and embrace
our history. And, you know, unfortunately we're at a tipping point right now
where we need to do the right thing going forward. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your time is up. Mayor, there are no more hands raised online.
So we'll close public comment online and come back to our Council colleagues for discussion,
beginning with Councilmember Bowen. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation.
I'm going to have my one-on-one later this month, so I'll go into more detail when I meet with you
all, but I'll start with saying that I appreciate so much of the feedback you've gotten from the
community because as a parent, as a mom of three young kids in the schools and lots of activities,
I'm all over San Leandro all the time talking to a lot of people and what I will say is that
for the most part people have really positive exciting things to say and lots of activities.
I mean we give shout outs to the library and to Parks and Rec and just so many great things and so
What I would love to be able to see too as part of this is a recognition of maybe like,
you know, the highlight that jumps in each of our district, all of the activities that we have.
There's so much that draws people into San Leandro, whether it's all of our food and the
restaurants and all of the new places that are coming in. Our schools weren't mentioned. I
mentioned it before, but really a wonderful place to raise your kids. The fact that we have four
dual language immersion schools is a huge asset to the community and that's a
partnership with the city and with the schools. The businesses, big and small, our
parks and our recreation, I think there's you know having Chabot Park on one side
of the marina and another is fantastic and really kind of figuring out like
what does that mean when you live here and what what does it mean to be drawn
into a community that has all of these things that are really accessible and
And I think accessibility and authenticity
is something that I often think about
when I think about San Leandro and the people that I meet.
I'm from the Midwest and it feels very Midwest to me,
and Midwest friendly and just really building community.
One of the things that I think we're touched upon
by my colleagues too is this idea of the San Leandro
we are today, the San Leandro that we are becoming,
and the San Leandro that we want.
And so there is a real change in growing demographics
like the neighbors that I have now versus when I moved here 10 years ago and just the
number of young families, especially in my district, that's something to really think
through in terms of, you know, what is the branding that we are and the branding that
we want to achieve.
And when I say the branding, it really is like the—when you think of branding, it's
sort of like this marketing thing where it's like, what's this community—like, what is
is messaging we want to send out, but I think it's really like a reflection and a celebration
of who we are and how do we communicate those things in a way that will help us feel proud
of our city and also help partners in the community, whether it's businesses that want
to come here or organizations, all sorts of things that's how do we partner together.
So I think that that would be a goal of this work as well.
well. You know, revenue, you know, I mean, that's the thing, too, is like we want people
to come here and of course we want economic development. That's literally like why we're
doing this study to begin with. And then the other thing, too, is, you know, as we're doing
a lot of feedback, I would actually love to see the barriers and challenges that you're
hearing about why people don't live in San Leandro. Whether or not it's, um, your, this,
this team's job to come up with the answers is different, but that's helpful information
for us to be able to make decisions going forward about
how do we make it more accessible for people to work
in San Leandro and stay in San Leandro, right?
Like is it that we need more child cares,
that we need more apartments, that we need whatever it is.
But finding ways to do that so that we can figure out
how to fill that gap.
But I really appreciate this work,
and I think that there's a lot of potential use for it,
so as much information that we can get
besides just the particular branding.
And then also, I'm heading to Baltimore next month
for a conference and the conference collateral
very much reflects the branding that you all have worked on
so they're still very consistent with that.
So clearly it's working, thank you.
Thank you, I know some others did have commentary.
You spoke a lot, is your assessment.
Okay, I think then, so I'll let you go
and then I'll kind of wrap it up.
Yeah, there you go, vice versa.
For a group of people who always have something to say,
I'm surprised.
So just a couple of thoughts.
One of them is something that I was just surprised by
are the number of folks moving into the east side.
So kind of your district, my district, and Suez district.
And I don't know.
This is where I live.
So I don't know how it feels like.
but there's a lot of partners and couples with no,
they have no kids, they don't wanna have kids,
and they come here and they are having an amazing time,
and that's something that was new to me.
As I stated, I came with a San Leandro native,
so I didn't have that part.
And then, again, this whole kind of branding exercise,
what is, and I have a question,
what are the other feedback points
from the council from the process?
So we have, we're in phase,
we're kind of in the middle of phase two
and I'm just wondering like,
what are the formal feedback loops with me and my colleagues?
And I appreciate, I'm gonna have my feedback session.
I have to respond to that, so thank you.
So it'll happen.
But what are the formal feedback loops
for our body here present?
And then how is the feedback that has been collected
and the survey responses,
how is that going to be communicated back to the community
about how that feedback was used?
Yeah, thank you for asking. That's a good good points that I can share. So we are, the consultants are working on an online dashboard that will also live at San Leandro.org backslash branding. And we hope to have that up by July and that will have a lot more details on the survey responses on the community responses that we haven't had, you know, time to get into today.
So we'll be doing that.
There will also be a full,
and I'm forgetting the title of the report,
but a full research report that we can also post there.
And then we have all the contact for all the people
who we've worked with so far,
and we're gonna certainly follow up with them.
And then we anticipate coming back to you as a body
in the fall with draft identity from the creative phase
to share that with you.
And so that's when, and they call it socializing
the identity, as we start to get it out
and share it and get feedback.
Yeah, that online dashboard part of the project
was, that was what the intent.
For the folks that are online, they can't hear you
unless you speak to the mic.
And it's right, there you go, yep.
The online dashboard component of the project
that Katie mentioned, that's exactly what that was intended
for, to keep everybody informed about the process
where it was, how their feedback was being incorporated.
So yeah, as soon as we've, now we'll start creating
some infographics and cool different things
about the things that we heard to be able to share them
with the community and that'll continue to be updated
as we complete the process.
And I'll just add to that that we actually started doing
that informally at the Cherry Festival
because we had done a lot of the survey
and the eight round tables already by then.
And so in addition to having kind of the general input
of the questions that we've been asking,
we had some specific questions getting into,
like what we've been hearing from your neighbors
and colleagues is, you know,
San Leandro's a hidden gem, what makes it so?
What we've been hearing is this small town city versus,
or small town feel versus big city amenities.
Where do you land on this and what makes it so?
So we've kind of been informally adding
in that feedback loop and sharing with people as we go.
This is what we've been hearing.
What are your thoughts on it?
And so when it comes time for the socialization,
We'll do some iteration of that as well to let folks know,
as Katie said, we have contact information
of everyone who has participated,
so we'll be able to share back what we heard
and what we did with it.
Thank you.
Appreciate the feedback loops and being intentional
in communicating how people's input and feedback
is being used and how that's kind of living in that.
I think those are all just in closing,
I don't have any more questions or comments,
but I just want to reiterate
for the folks that are listening
and maybe for the folks that might listen later,
branding and communications are really deeply important
to the work that we do and how we show up visibly
and it helps give us language and images
about how we see ourselves and how we want to be.
and so for some of the folks is like who cares what logo we use or what type font we use or
what color it matters a lot um it matters because it um it reflects our culture and who we are and
who we want to be and so thank you for all of your work uh the communications team in the city
manager's office and the economic development team over in tom shop um thank you so much for
for weeks and weeks of work. Thank you. I think the feedback is intense and deep because
we truly, truly care. Thank you so much for your time and for the presentation tonight.
Councillor Merriman-Simon. Thank you for the presentation. Very good.
There's a couple comments I wanted to make just on branding in general. I just wanted
to bring up art and how important art is to our city. And when your first slides you showed
some nice pictures of art and images and I think that's something that we're starting to do in our
city but we're deficient in art and people who live outside of our city and I tell them I'm from
San Leandro and they say oh yeah I drive through sound walls and that's all they see when you drive
down 880 are sound walls that's it. So I think to get our message and our brand out to beyond San
in Leandro we have to kind of beautify not just internal from our city but what
people see as they drive through and I think we have opportunities with our
overpasses I've seen other cities do really nice things when you drive through
to bring out what's in your city and I think we need to do a better job at that
if we can kind of incorporate that and also within our city and partnering with
our neighbors Alameda County unincorporated to the south and Oakland
to our north. For example, there's an underpass in my district that connects
with council member James Agular district is the on the Welling
Boulevard and it's a very blighted underpass and a lot of people get off to
some pretty popular in an outburger for example everyone stops in and out from
around town and they see this blighted underpass and we don't need that I mean
San Leandro is a beautiful place. So let's show people that get off the freeway to eat
That we are a beautiful place and clean it up, but we don't own that underpass
It's owned by the county or Caltrans and we really have to partner with our our partners
But I'm really interested in the art component of this
and
The logo and things like that, but also physically getting it on the ground whether it's the underpass or the freeway
and then also getting out the messages that I've heard from my colleagues to
our past culture, the Native Americans who lived here before us, one our public
commenters recognizing the redlining that we've been through and how we're
transforming out of that and recognizing that and the last point is
volunteerism how it's so important in our community as we are resource
constrained like many cities and we rely a lot on volunteers and the people
coming together. I think people coming together is so important and we need
more of that. Thank you. Okay seeing no other hands I'll quickly wrap us up
here. Thank you for the update. I think it's spot-on. The summaries that you
provided I think for some months up to 35 years I just I kept hearing things
that I've heard from people over many many years what I hear at the Cherry
Festival what I hear at the library etc so it's it's at least validating and
hopefully it's not just confirmation bias. I do think that there is a lot that
there are many good things that are happening. I think this expression of
San Leandro proud that Councilmember Bowen brought up I think is spot-on. I
think you get a lot of that pride the city and I heard it today at the city's
Juneteenth celebration that we were supporting at our senior center. Just
really good things that happen in the city be it through our library, through
our rec and parks department, through our senior commissions, etc. Just people are
happy and we just need to find a way to uplift that. This concept of outsider
perceptions I do agree very much so something that we need to be able to
tap into primarily from my perspective to understand what is it that other
people think of us. Not just what do we think of ourselves because that's that's
nice but what do others think about us because that goes to how we have to what
we have to do to target to change their perceptions eventually. It's probably
beyond the scope to fully understand
what people around the bay think of us.
But having some insight to that would be incredibly helpful
in terms of actioning what comes out
on the backside of this.
Because ultimately, that does go to how we communicate.
Because ultimately, if we have a promise of that experience
delivered, right?
That's what you told me branding was.
a promise of an experience delivered,
then we have to know what it is that people fear
about coming to San Leandro.
What do they think's not going to happen,
and how do we address that?
So that we can really convey what, in fact,
that is that will be delivered.
Because we want to have some of their mental space.
The last thought that I'll leave us with is,
I do agree that art is particularly important
to how we define our space in the long run.
And I do think that we have some iconic pieces of art
in some locations that we eventually
need to find a way to take advantage of
and keep driving visitors to those locations to photograph
and to take advantage of food establishments
and like around those locations
because every city has iconic places or should.
And I think we definitely have some.
And if you have ideas that you, in the end,
identify locations for more iconic art,
it would be nice if you would help anchor
the entrance to the city at this location,
or anchor the entrance at another location.
That kind of thinking could help flesh out
just based on things that you've seen in other cities.
Fully understand that's not your scope,
but boy, we've got a lot of opportunity to learn from you.
So thank you for the work that you're doing.
At this point in time, we move on to our next agenda item,
but thank you both to you and to the team.
So our next agenda item is item number 10,
and this is an action item.
This involves a resolution to amend
the citywide master salary schedule.
This is a no fiscal impact item.
We've got human resources manager Tiffany Johnston here
to introduce the item.
Good evening mayor and council members. I'm Tiffany Johnston the human resources manager in
accordance with government code section five four nine five three C my apologies if you can get just a little bit closer and a
Little bit louder. Okay, no problem. You can pull that the whole microphone box towards you
I just want to make sure that we can hear you online
There you go, thank you so much
In accordance with government code section 5 4 9 5 3 C 3
We are required to provide an oral summary of the recommendations for salary and benefits paid to local executives
The action item before you is a resolution to amend the master salary schedule
Which includes salary increases for the city manager and police chief?
The salary increases are those that have been previously approved in each of their respective employment agreements
For the city manager a 3% salary adjustment will be applied effective July 1
For the police chief a 3% salary increase will be applied in
addition negotiated salary adjustments for the south excuse me for the San Leandro police management association San Leandro police officers
Association and San Leandro management organization are also being applied effective July 1
The city moved to this master salary schedule format last year to comply with CalPERS requirements that all city
classifications appear on one document
That summarizes the recommendations. I have and I'm happy to answer any questions. I
Don't see any questions public comment on this item, please
Mayor we have not received any comment cards and there are no hands raised online
Okay, so do we have any discussion on this item councilmember Simon
Thank you. I see the the master schedule this lists all the employees in the
entire city. That's correct. Okay and it lists the COLA increase for everyone?
That's correct. Okay question related to us is council. Do we as council, where do
we get included or discussed as far as COLA increases and when does that
happen? So I'm coming to city manager with that question. Thank you Mr. Mayor
Thank You councilmember Simon the council's salary
Increases or lack thereof is a separate discussion decision that was brought up during the budget process and council provided direction to staff to not
afford with any increase
Okay
Yeah, I'll just state. I do believe to bring in new fresh council members and make us more competitive
We should consider that I mean, I guess the decisions already been made, but I'll just throw it out there
think it's important for us not to go stagnant. It reduces our pool of candidates for council,
but thank you. Any other discussion on this item? Seeing none, I'll gladly accept a motion
to accept the recommendation. Beginning with council member Bult. I'd like to move this
item. Sorry. So I've got a motion by council member Bult. Council member or vice mayor
Viverso-Walton. Second. With a second by Vice Mayor Viverso-Walton. Is there any
other discussion on this item? I cannot tell Council Member Simon that that's from
before. Okay, thank you. So seeing no further discussion please vote. All votes
are in and the motion carries unanimously. So we'll go to item number
11. Council requests to schedule agenda items. Council Member Bowen. I can get
is this where I talk about referrals? Yes. Okay yes then I do have one. I submitted it to the city
clerk and our city manager. The referral is for a ban on AI data centers. So it is an ordinance
to ban data centers and include clear policy guidance and specific zoning standards in order
to address the most urgent threats, water scarcity,
grid strain, pollution, affordability,
community health for our city, the county
and its other businesses and our businesses and residents.
This includes defining and then restricting
certain types of data centers and zoning,
permitting, environmental and noise standards,
water use regulations and transparency requirements.
And if recognizing where we at as a city,
if there was a situation where we would need
to address this more urgently,
then I would have to, this is to add on
to our priority workshop in the spring,
but I would come back as an urgent referral
if necessary for this particular case.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So now we go on to council reports,
calendar and announcements.
Beginning with Council Member Victor Aguilada.
Thank you, Mayor.
On Wednesday, June 10th I attended the 1148th meeting
of the board of trustees
of the Alameda County Mosquito Batement District.
This is where we discussed
in a public hearing on the proposed tax rate.
We approved a resolution approving the engineer's report
and ordering the levy of continued assessments
for fiscal year 26, 27
for the Alameda County Mosquito Batement District.
We also discussed the compensation
and move forward with the recommendation
for our general manager based on Manager Evaluation Committee
according to our employment agreement.
And I think most of you have received an email
from Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District
that there was a mosquito that was collected
that tested positive for West Nile virus and Newark.
So please keep your eyes out
and make sure that you're turning over any still water.
And you can contact
the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District
if you need mosquito fish to come and help abate those mosquito eggs or larvae that are
setting in still water.
So that concludes my report.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Bowen.
Oh, thank you.
What I always want to mention every single week is please donate to the Alameda County
Food Bank or the San Leander Food Pantry, they are looking for volunteers and we continue
to have a strain on basic essentials for folks
to be able to get to work and eat and live,
and so just to encourage residents
to volunteer and donate money.
And then also, one of the things that I've
heard from some folks that I wanted to uplift,
which I didn't recognize, was when we had looked at,
again, the library has a sweet spot for me,
And I'm really sad that on July 1st,
we're going to make some changes.
But we made some cuts to library programming.
And I believe it's under re-imagining library program
offerings or reducing general operating expenses.
But one of the things that has changed for our residents
is actually being able to, we've often in the past.
And if you go to San Leonardo Library, the first review is,
it's really nice that you can print for free
from the public library, which is a common offering.
And that's something that we have had to cut back on.
And I just wanted to uplift that to say that, you know,
if there's a way for us, maybe, Mayor,
in a few meetings ago, you said that you were going
to agendize potentially looking for funds
to be able to do a geotechnical study.
I would love for us to maybe add ways
to be able to bring back some of these lower costs,
low lift, but direct impact to community programs.
I would just love for somebody to be able to print out
their financial documents, apply for their jobs,
so many of the things that are really important for access.
A particular resident called and said
that she prints out her Bible study notes
and was really sad to not be able to do so.
And it's just those little things
that really do affect the community.
And I just want to offer that up as some little thing
that maybe we could find a way
to be able to slowly bring back.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Bolt, please.
Thank you.
Before I start, I will second that idea.
I think that is a great benefit to the community.
Knowing that we had to make some cutbacks, things get cut.
But when we're getting calls from the residents,
then we need to possibly just see what it entails
and how much money it does actually cost us.
Okay, now moving on to the situation
on Tudor, the parking situation.
I would like to urge us to go back to the table
to understand the unnecessary burden we are proposing.
Taking away the parking from the residents
in the neighborhood does not feel right to me.
Our city government should be here
to help us live a peaceful existence.
This solution does not, does just the opposite.
I know none of us got into these leadership roles
from staff, council, mayor, city manager, all of us,
to make lives harder.
I truly believe that, and I personally know all of us,
and that wouldn't be the angle we're taking.
So I'm asking us if we can take the time,
reconsider the decision that has been made.
None of us would accept this if it was a resolution
in front of our home.
It would feel like a slap in the face.
So again, I'm just urging us to sit down together
and kind of hash this out and see what we could come up with.
Give it one more shot with that, I'll end.
Thank you.
We will move to Vice Mayor.
There you go.
Thank you.
Just a couple of shout outs.
Juniper Corner, which is a community asset and nonprofit
organization aimed for young children,
is officially opening their doors on June 24.
So congratulations to the Juniper Corner leadership,
Eve King, who is spearheading this.
I also wanted to, one shout out to the recreation staff.
Today was day one of the city camps.
And it is a day, this morning was full of energy
and jitters and nervousness
and all in the best way possible.
My son came home just covered in dirt,
which is exactly what I wanted.
Tired, happy and dirty.
It's best thing.
So thank you to the recreation staff
for creating experiences for our young people
that really create that kind of pride
that we've been talking about through the branding.
And it starts with that.
It starts with how they experience the city
and our services and the people that represent the city.
So thank you to the recreation team,
both at Camp Hooty Hoo over on Manor,
and then Chabot Day Camp, which is over at Chabot Park.
So just wanna urge the folks that are near those areas
to please be patient.
There's lots of families and children walking
to and from the camps, so just keep an eye out.
And then I also wanted to,
I also wanted, I saw online that our chief Bowie was recognized for 21 years of service
and for a promotion.
And so I wanted to elevate that and she left, but thank you, chief Bowie, Bowie, Bowie, Bowie.
She heads the alternative response unit.
She was charged with launching it
and has been doing a great job.
Thank you for your 20 plus years of service,
not just to San Leandro, but to Alameda County residents.
Those are all my comments.
Moving, thank you.
Going on to Council Member James Aguilar.
Thank you, Mayor.
Just a couple of shout outs tonight.
First to Director Vicente Zuniga
for his amazing and incredible work
on another amazing cherry festival.
And I think more than a lot of years
that I've been to the cherry festival,
did I go run into people who are coming from other cities,
ran into a couple of folks from San Francisco,
ran into a couple of folks from way out.
And so I appreciated having conversations with people.
And one comment even being,
this is so much better than the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
And I was like, whoa, that's a compliment.
and all compliments and so I had a really good time.
I enjoyed watching the parade.
I enjoyed being in the parade for the first time,
enjoyed being around people
and I think that's what the Cherry Festival is all about,
is being with people and celebrating San Leandro.
Also shout out this Friday, the Juneteenth celebration
happening at Butterfly Plaza.
I'm gonna be there for a couple of hours just to hang out,
eat some good food, listen to some good music
and I really hope that the community will come turn out
enjoy some time with each other as well. I also want to lift up that I hope you guys
will take the opportunity to sign up for tabling with our city departments at the farmer's
market by the library. I chose to take a couple of spots one next week on Wednesday joining
recreation and parks. And so I just hope that you take that opportunity. I think it's a
fantastic way to meet the community where they are and where they're heading.
And so hopefully I can have some good conversations and also with staff who
are gonna be there. And so yeah open invite get to that sign-up sheet go get
a table. I think it's gonna be a good time and it's a good opportunity for us
to get together with our staff as well. So that's that's what I got for this
evening. Thank you Mayor Gonzalez. Thank you. Councilmember Simon please. Yes I
I also was going to give a shout out to the Cherry Festival,
just absolutely incredible,
like Council Member James Aguilar has said,
and it just gets better and better every year.
Every year it gets better, it gets bigger,
and to all the businesses that participated,
St. Leander School that opens up their parking lots,
it was just such a sense of community,
just great job staff and businesses and community, thank you.
Also wanted to give a shout out to Chief Paige Bui, also.
She's doing an awesome job, as we know.
And she's going to be at the Washington Manor HOA
meeting this Wednesday, 6.30 PM at the Marana Community Center.
And she's going to be talking about the alternate response
unit and how that really provides
such a valuable service to our community.
And Chief Bui plays a huge part in that.
Also want to recognize, not sure if we picked this up,
but this was back in March, March 21st.
Chief Bowie, she was recognized by assembly member
Liz Ortega as a Woman of the Year.
There was a few others, but Chief Bowie was recognized.
I was there, the mayor was there, Janelle Cameron was there,
and it was just an honor to be there
to witness her receive that award.
So I wanna recognize Chief,
just as Council Member Villers-Walsett did.
And thank you Chief Bowie.
Okay so I'll take us home with a couple of recognitions first. I do want to thank
Union Pacific Railroad and the staff for coordinating on the fix on the Marina
Boulevard bump. I checked it out today and is a lot smoother than it used to be
so thank you for all the work that went into that. Getting collaboration, I know
that some cities find it very difficult to collaborate with the railroad but
what I have found is that we seem to be hitting the sweet spot here in San
Leandro. We're getting good action and good response and I'm grateful for their
partnership. I also want to celebrate the fact that we slow down from time to time
to enjoy each other's presence. The ice cream social last week I think was a big
plus. Letting staff just take 30 minutes to spend time with each other, laughing a
little bit having some ice cream on a warm summer day and I know that some
people had to rush back for the ERP implementation meetings but still that
ability to carve out a little bit of time to just let their guard down and
enjoy each other's company a little bit is a very positive thing. When we talk
about something like branding and selling the city I just wanted to report
that I spent some time last week with the Bay Area Association of Realtors
talking about the city of San Leandro and in particular about why someone
should live in the city of San Leandro so some of the comments that were up
there were the types of things that I was you know discussing with realtors
because I do think that it's incumbent upon each of us to tell our story and we
know the story we just have to tell it and so that's my encouragement to all my
council members. Cherry Festival oh my goodness I can just tell you that that's
a big commitment that we made in 2023, we brought it back. And each of the last three
years just boom, boom, boom, knocking out of the park this year. Again, another amazing
event. Even more people, even more vendors, more activity. And what I like about it in
particular from the evolution perspective, City Manager, your team does a good job of
taking some lessons learned from the prior year and implementing them in the subsequent
year I can tell you because I went to every single vendor's booth there was not
a single complaint about Wi-Fi or technology access this year and I
actually saw the antennas going up on Friday night so thank you for for the
learnings that are happening and how we continue to drive an even better
experience for our residents and for the vendors. I do want to highlight two
things that are happening in the broader Bay Area but that tie to organizations
that that I represent. So I'm on the Ava Board, Ava Community Energy Board of
Directors and we celebrated ribbon-cutting on a project in East
Oakland on about 185th Street where solar panels have gone into a or to the
top of a warehouse. I highlight this in particular because there is such
availability of warehouse roofs in the city of San Leandro, the city of Hayward,
along the corridor leading to the Oakland Airport, that I think that when
we talk about things like sustainability, diversified production of
electricity, that that is a tremendous place, tremendous opportunity for the
implementation of solar panels. So it's nice to see that actually coming to
fruition. There will be projects in San Leandro supported by Ava Community
energy, so I look forward to talking more about that. I sit on the Bay
Conservation Development Commission, and one of the things that I just want to
highlight from there is that when we talk about dredging and the potential to
maybe one day dredge our marina, the concept of what you do with the dredge
spoils, and I use that in air quotes, is that now the focus is on beneficial
reuse? How can you actually take that soil that's being removed and put it to
good use to protect the shoreline? It could be, for instance, in developing new
wetlands and supporting the existing wetlands. So instead of hauling it 50
miles off into the Pacific Ocean, reducing the cost and delivering
economic benefit and environmental benefit from a sustainability
perspective. So I think that's that's another good thing that's happening out
there in the broader Bay Area from a sustainability perspective. And the last
thing that I'll highlight is that I do want to make sure that the residents from
from Tudor and Cascade that they understand that there's a couple of
things to consider first there will be a neighborhood meeting opportunity to hear
from the residents next is it next week the coming week in the next couple weeks
in the near future I think that that's important but it's also important to
recognize that you know when we had our discussion about daylighting maybe a
year ago one of the commitments or one of the things that we were told
explicitly is we cannot as a practical matter paint every curb red where you
can't park in the city of San Leandro and it is legally the case that when you
are at a T intersection that you're not allowed to park in that T and you know
the public commenters are requesting that we maintain parking in the T where
by law, by vehicle code, you're not supposed to park. So we're gonna have to
work through that situation because people in the city have become accustomed
to doing a number of things whether it's parking on lawns, paving their front
yards, parking where they're not supposed to park, and so that will be part of what
we are working through as we try to figure out how best to address that
situation. So I just want the council to be aware, I want the public to be aware
that we're you know we're just not up here trying to be cold-hearted but we're
trying to balance legal obligations, the danger that's posed by a current
situation, and meeting the needs of residents in our city. So with that said
I do thank council again for an effective and efficient meeting. It is a
44 and we are adjourned