OK, so we are going to come to order.
The time is 7.06.
Today is Monday, July 6, and we are here
at City Hall on East 14th.
At this point in time, I will lead us
in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Please rise if you're able to.
So I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
of America and to the republic for which it stands,
the board. Madam clerk would you please take roll to establish quorum. Council member James
Aguilar present. Thank you. Council member Victor Aguilar is absent. Council member Fred
Simon. Present. Council member Sewa Bowen. Present. Council member Dylan Bolt. Present.
Thank you. Vice mayor Viveros-Walton is absent and mayor Gonzales. Present. Thank you.
So the state of San Leonardo 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 bill code sections 4.3 or 4.15 are per se disruptive to a
meeting and will not be tolerated. Please see the City Council handbook and City
Council meeting rules of decor for more information. Madam Clerk your
announcement please. If you would like to make a public comment during the
meeting you can do so in person or via zoom. If you are present at the meeting
please complete a speaker card and submit it to the City Clerk before the
item is presented then wait for public comment on that item to be called. If you
wish to participate in public comment via Zoom, you can use the raise your hand
tool when the item is called. During the public comment session, speakers will be
invited to speak and will have a set time to share their comments. A countdown
timer will appear for their convenience and when the time is up, the microphone
will be muted. All raised hands outside of public comment will be lowered to
avoid confusion. Once public comment is opened, hands may be raised to speak.
there will be a 30-minute window for public comments on items not on the
agenda which will take place under item 7 public comments as per the published
agenda after the 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. So for item 3 in our agenda we did meet in closed session to
discuss two items no reportable action was taken but direction was given for
item four we don't have recognitions to date but we do have our consent calendar
do we have any amendments ie council members would you like to pull any item
on our consent calendar if not I will go to public comment seeing then let's
initiate public comment on this item mayor we have received one comment card
uh apologies. I believe we received multiple comment cards on the consent calendar.
That would be incorrect. One comment card and there are two hands raised online.
Please proceed in person. Our in-person commenter is Jenny Madsen. So hi it's Jenny Madsen again
and I'm here tonight strictly to thank you and encourage you to vote the second reading
through on the changes to the rental stabilization ordinance which gave tenants the freedom from
having to pay the pass-through for the fee, the rental housing program fee. This is important.
It's not just me. It's a lot of, in fact, it probably won't help me at all, but this is a big
deal to most of the tenants in town and it was smart, it was big-spirited, it was
forwardly thinking and I thank you for doing it and hope you can come through
again. Thank you. Thank you. There are no more comment cards received for this
item. So we'll close public comment in person and we will open up public
comments online. Our first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding. Thank you very much.
Good evening council. I would like to comment briefly on three items on the
Kistet agenda and through the chair I just would like to say how well you look
Ginny I love that sweater. With respect to item 5j I want to thank the mayor for
again appointing the at-large seat. I hope that this appointment will stick
The community police review board is a like other boards and Commission serves a very important function
In our city and really it it works best when it's fully fully
You know full it filled with regards to item 5c as needed bakery. I love you
You're the new meeting space if you want to meet with the mayor or other council members, that's where you meet up. I
I agree with this decision
that you're going to make to reduce the rent it makes the city a good landlord
By the same token, I you know, I know that the city needs money
So I assume since as need is doing good business
Am I correct to assume that that that you know, the amount of their business license fee might go up as their revenues increase
so everybody go down and buy some coffee and
And like Miss Madsen, I too would like to thank you, the Council, for your historic
work on the rent stabilization ordinance and other housing platforms.
I think this is, you know, one of those kind of hitting costs that we don't think about.
And I'm also mindful that there is an appeal process.
And I think we're going to learn a lot in the next couple years and that you, the Council,
will be able to make adjustments should your decision seem unfair either to tenants or
landlords. So thank you and on with the rest of the meeting. Thank you. The next
online speaker is Lucas. Lucas, if you're there. Lucas, I can see that you have your
hand raised. This is your chance to speak on the consent calendar. Mayor, there's
no more hands raised online. Okay, so at this point, I will close public comment on
the consent calendar and come back for any discussion or emotion. Council member
James Aguilar please. Mayor I'd like to move the consent calendar. Thank you. Council member
Bowen. I'll second that. So I'd like to mention my James Aguilar, council member and a second to council member Suo Bowen. That's the point of time with no further discussion please vote. Council member Bolt may we have your vote. Yes. Thank you. All votes are in with five yes votes and council member Viveros Walton and council member
Victor Aguilar absent. At this point time we'll move to item number six. I do not
believe we have any reports today looking left to right and confirming so
we will move to public comment which is a time where we take comment from our
public where you may address us on items that are not on our agenda today but
which are within our subject matter jurisdiction. Madam Clerk how many cards
do we have? Mayor, we've received four comment cards. And then how many hands
online? Presently one, two. Okay, let's proceed in person please. Our first three
in-person speakers are Marquita Banks, Linda Austin, and Jenny Manson. Hi, I'm
back again regarding the parking in District 2 again. I've also emailed you
guys a petition that's been signed you can let me know if you received it from
the neighbors in the area because we're basically being robbed without a gun we
are getting tickets once again left and right they you guys haven't even followed
your own rules you you're giving out tickets on the holiday just on Juneteenth
there was tickets given out this Saturday thing again there's no school
right now in the summertime there is no school and we're still getting tickets
why are we not able to park there on Saturdays whenever they have events at
the school they're able to park there and they're not getting tickets I also
would include it in the email videos video showing you guys that during
school time parents are sitting there for 45 minutes to an hour waiting it's
supposed to be a loading unloading zone but it's not being used that as that
the parents are able to sit there they're not getting tickets but the
residents are getting tickets. Once again, San Angel High has a huge parking
lot that they should be able to use with a security guard able to guide them in
and out. I've sent video of that. There's a big parking lot that they can be used
that they can use to escort them in and out so I don't know what the difference
is with us parking there and being stationed there versus parents coming
being parked in their station.
They're saying it's unsafe for the kids.
If it's unsafe for the kids, it's unsafe for everybody,
whether it's the parents or the residents.
So they're saying it's a law,
it's a law that's been going since 2009.
Laws are made to be changed.
For example, Roe versus Wade was a law for 50 years,
and it has now been changed.
So we should be able to get this changed too.
And why is it that they are able to restrict us
on both sides of the street?
San Leon, Ohio is on one side of the street.
We should at least be allowed the other side.
Thank you, your time has elapsed.
The next speakers are Linda Alston, Jenny Madsen,
and Mike Katz-Lakave.
OK, I'm talking about the parking district too also.
The problem is that also Saturday is ridiculous.
Why are we not able to park in front of a place
where we pay rent?
Not to mention, sometimes I work overnight.
I want to come home in the morning
and park in front of my residence.
There's nowhere else to park.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Where are we supposed to park?
Am I supposed to go three, four, five miles down
and walk back to my residence to park?
It doesn't make sense.
I can't do it.
And we have other neighbors.
Some of them have HISS workers that come in, in-home care,
for those who don't know what that is, that need to come
and help those residents.
they can't even park in front of the building
and come and help the residents.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, Saturday, before it was Monday through Friday.
Okay, I can see Monday through Friday.
Seven to five, I don't understand.
There's nobody loading from seven to five.
During school hours, maybe.
In between that, somebody should be able to park there.
If I'm sick, I can't even stay home
because I have nowhere to park.
I have to get up and find somewhere to park
to go home and be sick.
I would like to be able to be sick
and be able to park in front of my residents.
It's ridiculous, I can't have company
because they have to pay for parking.
Nobody wants to come to my house and see if I'm okay
and they have to come and pay $47 for parking.
I've received parking tickets on Saturday.
I mean, Saturday, it's ridiculous.
Why do we have to pay for parking on Saturdays?
And these are not young children, these are Tays.
Some of them are driving to school.
They have a football-sized parking lot.
They can go in and out of that all day long.
What safety issues do they have?
On either side of us, we have elementary schools.
They don't have the same signs.
They don't have the same restrictions that we have.
I can understand you saying that
for elementary school children,
but for Tays, transition and age youth?
No, I don't understand it at all.
So I hope you guys listen to us
and address the issues, please.
Thank you.
The next in-person speakers are Jenny Madsen
and Mike Katz-Lacape.
So I need to change my brain now
because what I decided I was gonna say in public comment
was not what I put in my e-comment last night,
which was pretty pointed, and I hope somebody read it.
There is private equity named Prologis,
a private equity company buying up all the warehouses
over in district six.
They own 40 of them now.
I haven't finished calculating
the amount of square footage they do,
but this is, I spent a couple of years
focused on rental housing and now I've realized
that I've let my neighborhood be sold away from around me.
This is not good when you have one property owner
owning most of the property in town.
But I came basically because,
I don't even remember how long ago it was,
but I came the first time I ever got up
in a public space to speak.
It was like 2011 or something.
And I had just seen at the public library,
San Leandro library, a postcard of three women
from 1915 sitting on the white sand beaches of San Leandro
at the end of Davis Street.
And the ramifications of that just blew my mind.
What did they do?
What did the fathers of San Leandro do
with the white sand beaches of San Leandro?
They put the county dump in.
That's where the white sand beaches of San Leandro were.
How different life would be for San Leandro
if they had seen,
because there are no other white sand beaches.
Even Alameda has to truck in their sand and it's not white.
You need to make the decisions
about what direction San Leandro goes in with a long view.
And I'm tired of why,
I just feel like San Leandro has sold itself cheap
for its entire year.
Thank you, your time has elapsed.
Yes ma'am, thank you.
The next speaker is Mike Katz-Lacabe.
Good evening mayor, city council members,
staff and members of the public.
My name is Mike Katz-Lacabe and I'm here tonight
to urge you to enact a ban on data centers
in the city of San Leandro.
Fueled like venture capital and the need
for more computing power to feed the insatiable appetite
of probabilistic automation known as AI,
companies are trying to build more and more data centers.
Unfortunately, these data centers consume huge amounts
of electricity and water to process the even larger amounts
of intellectual property theft
on which these systems are built.
While a few multi-corporations benefit
from these data centers,
the communities that are saddled
with these data centers do not.
These communities pay higher energy costs
as data centers can pay more for electricity
than local residents.
Data centers also compete for scarce water resources
and can disrupt local water supplies
has happened in Mansfield, Georgia,
where a metadata center is located.
Nearby residents and businesses are forced to endure
pain-inducing levels of noise from the thousands of servers
and associated cooling systems.
In some cases, data centers may be powered
by methane gas turbines, which are not only noisy,
but poison neighbors with their toxic emissions.
The benefits to the local economy?
Well, they're minimal because data centers
do not have many employees that might spend money
and time locally.
If that's not enough,
the chat bots powered by these data centers
are prone to produce output that provides instructions for
and has caused people to commit suicide.
It's always the right time to do the right thing
and take action to prevent data centers in San Leandro now
as communities in Coachella and Mendocino County
are doing this week.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
Mayor, there are no more comment cards from in the room.
Okay, so we'll close public comment in person
and go online.
Our first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding.
Well, hello again.
It seems data centers are all in the news, or maybe it's all in my algorithms, just based
on my interests.
The issue came to light for me when I went to comment on the Hayward data center project
next door.
And I was surprised to find in the process of doing that that the project had already
approved and is slated to begin construction this year, it bypassed the City Council on Hayward
and somehow got shepherded through the planning committee as just being zoned as an industrial
office project. And then when Councilmember Bowen raised the issue here in San Leandro,
that also caught my attention. I appreciate you doing that. I think we do need to talk about the
potential for a data center in San Leandro because they're building them everywhere.
while I don't believe such a process has started yet in San Landro, it could at any time whether
it's privately contracted or facilitated by the city. But we can't be sure given the widespread
use of NDAs in this industry, the litigious nature of the indices who are willing to bully
municipalities by threatening to sue them. And after all, you guys often meet in closed sessions.
so how are we to know? I understand the need for revenue but this is not really the right revenue
stream. Data centers are not a nice neutral source. I believe you should elevate the issue
of a moratorium now before the priority setting session next March of 2027 on the way towards,
I would think to prohibit, but at very minimum we need to study this. We need to assess it
and we need to regulate any potential projects. I'll have more to say about the cost and benefit
analysis on top of what Mike just said, but it's sufficient to say that the costs are
too much for the City of San Leandro to bear. Thank you. Thank you. The next online speaker is
I apologize for the technical difficulties with my microphone earlier. Thank you, Mayor
and Council for taking my comments this evening. I'll maybe quickly state what I wanted to say
during the consent calendar and then move to my general public comments on this consent calendar.
The first one that I wanted to comment on was item 5a, which I guess this generally applies for
council ordinances going forward, which is, even though 5A tries to prohibit the pass-through of
a fee from the landlord to the tenant, tenants tend not to itemize the fees that constitute
a rent payment. Landlords don't charge the solar fee and the garbage fee and the parking maintenance
fee and the asphalt, whatever, resurfacing fee. They just put it all into one big rent payment.
So try as you might to prevent $100 or $150 for the rent stabilization fee to be passed through.
Landlords will find a way to increase rents. Instead of calling it a rent stabilization
program fee, they'll just say rent is up 2% instead of 1% next year or next month or whatever
it might be. So that's my comment on item 5a. Well-intentioned but likely and effective in
the long term. On items 5G and 5H, I'll make my standard comment of police shepherd and steward
the people's money responsibly. Whenever the budget happens, people tend to try to get their
beaks wet and there are some expenses here that look like traditional beak wedding type of expenses
and on the election changes. I hope we've studied well how that will affect things in the long term.
You know, single, district elections tend to produce a little bit more partisanship
than we have, I think we have had in the city. Hopefully in the long term things will go up.
I'll reserve my other comments for the other items. Thank you. Your time has elapsed.
Our next online speaker is Virginia Oxley. Virginia, if you're there, you can unmute yourself.
Hi Virginia, are you there? Yes, we're here. Great, we can hear you. Okay, good. I like that
I just heard everybody talk. I heard, you know, the girls are inside, I'm listening to you guys,
and well, I'm listening to them. But the thing is, like she said, the schools and everything is
is taking over everything and they parking in front of residents, people, homes and all
that. I think, you know, you guys should look at the residents more than schools. If they
need more parking, why don't they build a parking lot and build one taller, they can
bring more kids in there. And I like to say that my parents live around a corner as well.
And there's people that park around there, and they have people for their in-home services
that can't park because of all the residents.
So I see it from both ends as a homeowner and from a resident in an apartment where
there's two of us in the car, I mean, two of us in the home, we're getting tickets because
the, nowhere to park. And you guys, I think, you know, as a
council person, you should look at the residence and still, you
got to be more businesses. The residents want to make this
thing happen. But yet it's still it's costing more residents
because of what's going on with this parking issue. You know, I
mean, school, I know this is important thing, but they have
things every day, almost. It's like a concert over there.
know where to park so it's about their venue it should be about the resident
venue thank you thank you thank you mayor there are no more hands raised
online okay so we will close our public comment just to remind our public
commenters because it's not an agenda item we don't generally comment except
to address misunderstandings.
At this point in time, we will move to our next agenda item,
which is a public hearing
regarding the first reading of an ordinance
amending the zoning code to modify
off-street parking regulations
and establish transportation demand management regulations
primarily related primarily to new developments.
We do have Lourdes Juarez, Associate Planning,
Associate Planner here to introduce this item.
Thank you Mr. Chair.
Good evening Council.
I'm Lourdes Juarez.
Representing the community
development department.
Together with transportation
consultants from W-Trans and
Nelson Nygaard.
We will be presenting our
recommendations for zoning code
amendments for parking and
transportation demand
management regulations.
Requirements that would be for
private property development.
And this is primarily for new
These zoning code amendments are a response to housing element action
14.1 which asserted that parking minimums are a barrier to housing construction and
This particular action called for both a study of the zoning codes vehicle parking minimums and a consideration of a TDM ordinance
TDM stands for transportation demand management
our consultants analyzed parking requirements
recent housing entitlements and best practices and they conducted stakeholder outreach and
This all happened during 2025
Their findings are published in the parking and TDM study which is in your packet in attachment see
With this analysis staff have arrived at two main recommendations
For parking the recommendation is to consolidate the land use categories
Reduce parking minimums and update other parking related requirements
For TDM. The recommendation is to establish TDM regulations for new developments in certain expansions
These zoning code amendments would align the parking minimums closer to actual vehicle parking demand and implement state laws and regional best practices
Up next we will have Brian Canepa of w-trans to present the parking analysis and recommendations
Council. Thank you. Thank you,
Lourdes. Good evening, mayor.
Members of the council and
Brian Kanepa from W Transa here
to talk about the parking
recommendations. So to dive
right in, we did a considerable
amount of outreach and research
into the city, its requirements
and parking general
utilization. And some of the
key findings that we found were
not surprisingly, although
there is the downtown, other
oriented today. They're relatively limited transit access depending on where you
are and there are bike facilities but they're incomplete from what we've
heard from stakeholders and we can obviously see on maps. As Lourdes
mentioned we did take a look at the city's minimum parking requirements in
relation to industry standards based on actual peak parking demands by use and
have found that in in most cases the minimum parking requirements exceed peak
demand, so even at the highest point of the day the minimum requirements are
higher than that. And from what we know from minimum parking requirements is
that they can really impact the feasibility of financial viability of
projects because we're essentially producing more parking than it's even
needed at the peak hour with parking ranging from cost of about $10,000 per
space for surface, $50,000 per space for structure, to $70,000 to $100,000 for
underground parking, parking is very expensive.
And lastly, that there are shared parking opportunities within the city, so there are
spots where there are vacant parking spaces currently, but they're not really well utilized
depending on where you are.
So the recommendations that we're wanting to put forward is essentially to break the
city from a parking requirement perspective into two zones.
The first of which is in the blue area that you can see here on the map, which is within
and a half mile of what we call major transit stops.
Major transit stops being fixed rail
and high frequency bus service,
so tempo line essentially.
State law AB 2097 currently,
or has already essentially eliminated
almost all minimum parking requirements
from these areas already.
Our recommendation is just to remove
the few remaining ones that are there,
which is really for hotels and event centers.
The other piece of this has to do with the green area
shown here on the map – essentially outside the half-mile areas – to reduce minimum
parking requirements, to better align them with actual peak demand that we see from the
market.
And we also – I will say that, as part of our stakeholder interviews, we did talk with
commercial and affordable housing developers to get a sense of kind of what their feelings
of market demand are as well, and to take those and consolidate categories as much as
possible so that you can promote an easy turnover of businesses, particularly on the commercial
side. So looking at the actual numbers here, you can see here from the table that we have
the existing requirements listed in the middle column and proposed requirements on the right
for those of you who don't want to read a whole series of numbers. The residential requirements
were primarily reduced by about half a space per unit to better align them with what actual
demand is based on per bedrooms for both market rate and below market rate housing.
And then on the commercial side, setting it at two spaces per thousand square feet.
And as I mentioned before, by having these standards aligned, whether it be a restaurant
or retail or an office, makes it very easy, seamless for businesses to transition from
one to another.
So if I have a flower shop and it goes to an office or vice versa, it doesn't cause
a problem in being able to actually accommodate that use.
So from an economic standpoint, it's much more beneficial.
As part of our study too, we also looked at new proposed bicycle parking requirements
for both short-term and long-term bicycle parking.
What I mean by that, I mean by essentially racks for people who are, let's say, stopping
off for a coffee versus long-term parking for people who are employees and so forth
staying there for longer periods.
We're also recommending inserting provisions into the code
not only to deal with your traditional bicycles,
but also new cargo, adaptive bikes, e-bikes,
other things that have become much more prevalent
in these past five, 10 years than what we saw before.
And in addition to facilities such as showers and lockers,
that bicycles in particular very much rely on
for certain uses, for office industrial uses
to be able to to get there and change effectively. And this is what the bicycle requirements
essentially look like. Kind of same format as the vehicle requirements. The main transition
you'll see is that we're essentially proposing that the city decouple its vehicle requirements
from its bicycle requirements. Currently for as you can see up here there are short-term
spaces let's say for multi-unit residential whereas a percentage of the vehicle requirement.
So as you provide more car parking, therefore, then you have to provide more bicycle parking,
which is really not how the math works for bicycles.
So what we are proposing is based on best standards practice from ABPP, which is the
Association for Pedestrian Bicycle Professionals.
And these are standards that we've tailored to the particular community as well.
So again, maintaining the short and long term bicycle parking requirements, but also adding
in some elements as I mentioned earlier for showers and lockers, for let's say office
industrial uses. The other key recommendations that we're making, there are two of them.
One has to do with unbundled parking pricing. Unbundled parking pricing, just so everyone
understands what that is, it's essentially paying separately from the leasing or purchase
price residential unit and the parking itself. It doesn't make it more expensive. It doesn't
make it less expensive it just simply itemizes the price so that the resident
has the option to pay it or not so that if you have two cars that are currently
bundled in the price of a unit right now and you only have one car you only have
to pay for one space rather than two for example. Now state law has already
mandated this in AB 1317 for any multifamily residential development of
16 or more units. We're simply trying to expand that a little bit more to
increase housing affordability for those that are five or more units. There
are some, I will say that there are some restrictions on this, this cannot apply
for 100% affordable housing projects, things that have low-income housing tax
credits and so forth and that's because of state law restrictions. And the last
requirement or last recommendation that we're making here is has to do with what
we call shared parking. So multiple uses being able to take advantage of the same
parking lot if there is vacancy there. And this is really setting it in line
with state law. AB 894 was passed essentially setting the requirement that
all local jurisdictions recognize that shared parking can occur within 2,000
feet. So that kind of broadens the radius. And this would really only be
effective in the green part of the city, as I showed you earlier, that has
minimum parking requirements but it allows the youth to be able to come in and if they can
demonstrate that there is available parking at another lot, private lot that's within 2,000
feet, they can work with that lot owner and come up with an agreement to satisfy their
minimum parking requirement. The other piece is just stating that in AB 2097, not only did
AB 2097 eliminate most minimum parking requirements within that zone, there's also a lesser known
provision that allows jurisdictions and city staff to require that any parking built in those areas
can be compelled to be shared or publicly made publicly accessible. Now this is already allowed
by state law it is used exceedingly sparingly these days but we did want to call attention
to it because that is an option that remains at the city's disposal. There are some I will say
there are some jurisdictions that are considering using it for non-residential development such that
spaces would be shared outside of business hours. But again that's a little bit of a TBD.
And with that I will turn it over to Alex Mercuri for to talk about transportation demand management.
Good evening Mayor, members of the council. I'm Alex Mercuri with Nelson I guard. Happy to be here
tonight to talk about our recommendations for transportation demand management. The first phase
at our work looked at best practices
and existing conditions and included stakeholder discussions
with members of the community to understand
what the challenges and opportunities are
for TDM today in San Leandro.
So what we found were that there are challenges today.
Staff time to support TDM is limited
and funding as well for TDM is limited.
The development climate today is not poised
to absorb large new costs, which can sometimes
be a component of aggressive TDM programs.
And the heart of TDM is behavior change and cultural change,
which takes time.
With those things in mind, our work
really zeroed in on an approach that
would provide a sort of starter TDM program that
would allow the program to build capacity over time,
but is really calibrated for the resources
that you all have today.
So you can start changing behavior
and seeing results in the way people travel,
but also make sure that it's not an impediment
to the types of projects
that the community is working towards today.
Our approach to achieve that includes
a very simple TDM ordinance,
as well as some administrative guidelines
that are tools to help staff and stakeholders
and developers achieve the things
that are outlined in the TDM program.
As I mentioned, we want those requirements
in the ordinance to be really calibrated
to local conditions, so minimizing new costs,
minimizing new burdens on staff,
but still giving an opportunity for the city
to start making progress towards this goal.
And we also identified opportunities
for how that growth over time could happen,
and the types of things that, as the program grows,
you all might want to consider for including.
There are really five major components
to the TDM recommendations.
So first, there's a set of mandatory TDM measures
that any applicable project would need to implement.
There are also a sort of menu of optional TDM measures
from which a development would need to select at least one.
There's a simplified set of submittal requirements
to document for each project how they're
going to approach TDM.
And there's a requirement to conduct a survey every two
years to understand how people are coming and going
from the development.
And lastly, we recommend a self-certification process
for developers to show that their projects are adhering
to these guidelines.
I'll just briefly now run through those details
of those requirements.
The thresholds for applicability for TDM
in our recommendations are shown on screen.
So these would be only applying to projects
of a certain minimum size.
Our recommendation is for those size thresholds
to be 50,000 gross square feet
for non-residential projects
and 25 units or more for residential.
So smaller projects would be exempt from these requirements.
As I mentioned, the other requirements,
submittal requirements being a simple checklist
and monitoring requirements to be self-certification
are meant to streamline the review process for staff
and the submittal process for developers.
The mandatory TDM measures here on screen
would need to be done by any project
that is subject to these requirements.
So that would include, again,
a mode share survey every two years.
It would include some type of educational materials
to be given out on-site or the employment of a coordinator
to help people understand and utilize
non-driving transportation options.
And they would also need to implement
some type of TDM-supportive parking management approach.
We've also included the requirement
for a bicycle repair station,
which is a sort of resource to have on-site
that makes it easier for people
to perform basic maintenance and fixes on bicycles.
The other component are these optional TDM measures.
So each project would have to select at least one of them
to fulfill the TDM requirements.
This list includes some strategies
that are applicable only to non-residential projects,
some that are only applicable to residential,
and a couple that are applicable to both.
So for non-residential projects,
their options would include flexible work arrangements.
And I'll mention also that for each of these measures
In the TDM guidelines, there's additional detail
for exactly what would need to be done
to achieve compliance.
So for example, flexible work arrangements
would need to be offered to a minimum threshold
of people on site for a minimum number of days,
as opposed to just an open-ended requirement.
So flexible work arrangements,
pre-tax transportation benefits for employees
contributing to or operating a shuttle service,
providing on-site end-of-trip amenities
that support biking or walking or rolling,
real-time information resources, so displays that show when buses or other transportation
options are coming to or from the site, financial incentives, such as discounts or transit passes
that encourage people to try other modes, delivery and amenities that make it easier
for people to get things brought to them on site in a consolidated location to minimize
additional trips, and car share services at residential projects.
that. I will pass it back over to Lourdes. Thank you. We appreciate your time tonight.
Staff does recommend that City Council adopt an ordinance to adopt and repeal zoning code
chapter 4.08 off-street parking loading and adopt zoning code chapter 4.10 transportation
demand management. We are available for questions. Okay, so as part of this public hearing we'll
first take clarifying questions from Council then we will go to open our
public hearing and hear from our public. We will close public hearing and proceed
back to discussion deliberation amongst Council members so at this point in time
Council members do you have questions? Okay so not seeing any questions from
Council members I will ask a couple. For the 25 unit apartment building just pick
hypothetical one. What's the anticipated cost increased associated with this?
I'll hand it off to Alex. Thank you. I'll just bring this up. Yes, a 25 unit is our
minimum threshold. Our goal with this was to essentially have a pathway to
have close to zero net new cost. Some of these options are by design very low
costs amongst these required measures. These are some of these overlap with
the parking management programs that Brian discussed. So unbundling parking
for example is a way of managing leases that ideally does not include that new
costs. Bicycle repair stations or tools are very inexpensive and the education
materials would be a sort of low but ongoing cost for messaging and paper
goods and things like that. So we did not do a detailed cost analysis but these
are intended to be very low, very minimal capital costs and also low ongoing
hands-on need from property owners. Okay before proceeding with my questions I
that Council members are weighing in.
So I'll come to Council Member Simon first.
Yes, I have a question
on the proposed vehicle parking minimums.
I heard an example of a flower shop thrown out.
So if a flower shop came to an existing storefront
and wanted to start their flower shop,
they would be required to parking places
or how if there's a thousand square feet,
how if there's no parking lot
they're just storefront on the street,
how do they provide any parking places?
There we go, okay.
Well, to just to clarify too,
within the AB 2097 areas,
there are no minimums currently.
They're already gone, so those are essentially gone.
How it would work outside of that area,
if I was a flower shop, for example,
and the requirement currently is lower
then let's say a restaurant.
A restaurant wanted to come in.
That restaurant would be required
to try to provide parking spaces
even if there are no parking spaces there.
And oftentimes the result is that the restaurant
is essentially barred from entering that space.
So it prevents, basically if there's no parking available
to be able to accommodate that,
those uses that cannot come in.
And so that's essentially what it's made to do
is that if the requirement is the same as the current use,
even if there is no parking there,
since you have the same requirement,
you can have that new previously more intense use
be able to occupy that space, if that makes sense.
So another question, for example, in the manor,
there's a small shopping area,
which is in the green zone that you're showing.
And corner of manor and Farnsworth
are shared parking lots for several businesses.
Almost like a small little mall area.
how, if a new business rents out one of those spots,
how do they determine, I mean, how is it determined
that they have an adequate parking places
when it's just shared spaces?
That's a little unique because you do have multiple
businesses that are occupying the same parking lot right now.
They very well could have an internal agreement
about who, how many businesses are,
which businesses are allocated certain parking spaces,
but from simply a parking requirement aspect,
what it would mean is that any new business coming in is not required to
provide more or less parking than that current business. So it means that any
business that's entering the spot of a previously occupied business it doesn't
require them to produce suddenly more parking spaces. Okay and last one if
there's a business that just faces a street front there's no parking lot
around are you how do you require them to have parking when there's just a
Streetfront so that so that's part of the problem that we're trying to alleviate right now
Is that if you are currently a require if you have a business right now that currently requires?
Let's say two per thousand square feet
This is the current code and and the new use has five per thousand square feet that new business trying to come in
The city would look at that and say you have to provide more parking because you're more intense use
Find us more parking even if it's not available
With these new requirements what we're saying is
That new business that's coming in doesn't need to provide more parking
It can basically do what the existing business is doing. So that's why I mean in terms of increasing turnover
between businesses
Okay, thank you
Council more bone, please. Thank you mayor. Um, I as you were talking it
I sparked a few questions for me and I just want to understand for clarity
The transmission demand management system that we're talking about and the amendments it's part of the housing element and that's because
If you can clarify the intended goal is for us to figure out ways
To make it easier to build more housing to bring more businesses in can you?
Clarify for me exactly how reducing these parking requirements can do that
I know that there was the number thrown out
about how much of a structured parking space can cost,
is the idea that if a developer doesn't have to spend
this money between $40,000, whatever,
I forget the exact amount that we talked about,
that we could then build more housing
or build more, put more units in?
The short answer is yes.
You know, a lot of times,
particularly affordable housing developments right now,
simply just have a hard time making a pencil out at all.
So we've talked with some affordable housing developers
and I've worked with them on other projects too.
Simply getting it to be feasible
to build the actual units themselves
require that these,
or make it much more possible for the units,
sorry, with a lower requirement
to actually have a pencil out at the end of the day.
So you would probably very likely have lower costs
for the units themselves
and potentially the opportunity to fit in more units,
more density.
Again, that's questionable.
I can't say that for certain,
but that could be an outcome.
It could be an outcome, but that is the intent,
that's what we're hoping happens.
Absolutely, it's kind of a twofer in a way.
We are targeting affordability
as a kind of a key metric here,
but also the possibility to actually increase density
because building parking, even surface parking,
but definitely structured parking takes up a lot of space.
And with that space, you end up decreasing the density.
I will say, just historically, just so you understand how much I'm talking about here,
data going back to some of the first minimum parking requirements that were instituted in Oakland
raised the cost of housing by 30 percent. So we're talking about not just a few dollars,
we're talking about substantial change in the cost of housing.
Great. And I appreciate that the options that residential projects or non-residential projects
are trying to be low cost, try to incentivize people to do these things and also to build.
In terms of implementation and accountability, what sort of strategies do we have to let
the affordable housing providers or other businesses know this is going to make it easier
for you?
This is why we want you to come?
This is why we want you to build?
And then how do we make sure that this isn't just going to be words that we change, but
doesn't have any meat to it. Well, I'll just say from the from the parking requirement piece of
this because I've done this similar work in other cities. I actually completely revised the parking
code 15 years ago in the city of Sacramento, for example. You know, I live down the street. I
actually live in Sacramento at one point. There was a supermarket down the street from me. The
parking lot was always about half empty, even at peak hours. Once we changed the minimum parking
requirements, suddenly they were actually able to build out into that parking lot that was previously
unused to create a deli that actually served as a community meeting point, oddly enough.
So oftentimes it doesn't really necessarily need to be announced in a way.
Developers and businesses will seek this out.
New developers will, and existing businesses that know that they have underutilized parking
lots will absolutely move to take advantage of it.
Because those are the people who will know that, hey, my parking lot's mostly empty.
I can do something better with this than what it currently is.
you question, well what if someone's parking lot is heavily used? Great, they
probably might say great I'm happy with my parking lot the way it is and it's
heavily used. But I think it's a sort of thing where it doesn't hurt the city to
be able to announce this to say that hey we're trying to open up more economic
activity for the city and lower prices for residents and businesses, but I think
it's also something that will happen organically. That's great, I was thinking
Councilmember Aguilar about the parking lot at Bay Fair and all of the things
that could be imagined as well. Thank you.
Absolutely. So does this green, I guess it was the blue zone, I don't remember the
colors. Does it cover the parking lot at Bafer? Yes, yes it does. It does, okay, thank you.
You can see it at the corner there and along Hisparian as well. I'll take your word for it
that it covers the full parking lot. Again see that it's at Hisparian, I'm just
having trouble seeing that it gets the full parking lot, but if it does that's
good. Talk to us a little bit about the requests from developers to make this
change. Are we getting requests from developers in the city of San Leandro
and maybe that's better directed to city staff. We constantly get inquiries about
our requirements. I think more to the point of the residential projects that
that were studied to establish what had been
entitled previously.
Several of those projects have received
not only parking exemptions that were needed
to be approved by planning commission,
but a few of them also had requirements
for parking management plans.
And so ultimately a lot of these housing projects
that were entitled in the last several years
already received a reduced parking requirements.
So they were looking into building less,
reducing their cost, and that is a strong testament
to what developers were looking for,
reduced parking requirements
from what we had codified at that time.
So just looking at it to our audience,
I know that we don't have a lot of residents here
that would be impacted by cars being moved out
of the apartment building that gets built
into the neighborhoods, so they're not here today.
So help me understand how we are thinking about limiting
the number of cars that these apartments,
the apartment tenants have.
Limiting for existing residents?
For the new construction.
So suppose we build 50 units,
and in the old days we would have had just hypothetically
to keep the math simple, 100 spaces required,
but now we're only gonna say,
oh, you only need 50 spaces.
Again, these are just hypotheticals.
The remaining cars will presumably
go into the neighborhoods.
So my question is, if I'm trying to trade off this concept of,
yeah, I want density, but if the apartment dwellers say, well,
you know, I'm going to park in the neighborhoods,
then there's an externality, so to speak.
There's a voice here that's not being heard.
So tell me a little bit about how
we're thinking about making sure that those people that
come to the apartments don't have vehicles that they need to park thank
you I'm gonna give actually kind of a two-part two-part answer to the question
because it's a very legitimate one one is that we are recommending minimum
parking requirements that actually better align with your peak market demand
right now your minimum parking requirements exceed the demand so if you
actually go out and build the amount of parking that you're required to do for
most of your uses you will have empty spaces even at peak hour that's
essentially how they're designed to function and what we're saying is let's
put that better in line with what that market actually wants in the actual
demand we see at peak hour so ultimately will we see some cars shift on the
street possibly but the amount of parking that we're still requiring for
these uses is really intended to be at peak hour to be able to address that
demand now minimum parking requirements themselves you know ostensibly are were
created to prevent spillover parking they succeed partially even if you have
very high-known parking requirements that doesn't necessarily lead to no
spillover parking particularly if you have no on-street parking management so
as part of the recommendations I would say is that if that is a concern the
city always can look at better on-street parking management if that does become a
concern with spillover. But if you're asking how to lower the demand for
vehicle ownership so that fewer people actually live in these units with fewer
vehicles, there's a couple different ways. One is the unbundling of parking. That in
itself actually lowers demand. It's shown by about 15% in some cases, simply
because people actually see the itemized cost of the parking and you
actually end up what they call self-selecting. People with fewer cars
tend to then gravitate towards those developments. The other side then
really has to do with transportation demand management that Alex couldn't
speak to, but again you know transportation management you can make
that more stringent, more robust, but there could be a cost associated with
that, and I think our recommendation was very cognizant of not trying to
to increase cost, even if it meant having fewer vehicles
in these developments.
I don't know, Alex, do you wanna say anything?
Yeah, that was a great summary.
I'll just reiterate that in the long run,
that is a key role for transportation demand management,
and there's a real core rationale
for why we're tackling these two topics together,
that ideally we're right-sizing parking,
and then the other side of the scale is incentivizing
and encouraging other options to make it easier
to get around without driving.
So in the long run, those are meant to really move in sync
and to manage from a demand side some of the issues
you've highlighted about having too many cars, more cars
than people, or more cars in space.
On the TDM side, that will take time.
And again, it's a type of approach
that takes some iteration, it takes some trial and error
and learning what works and learning
what TDM programs people really need or respond to.
and it's designed in our recommendations
to give the city tools to grow and manage
and adjust these requirements over time
as those types of issues come and go.
My last question before going to our public hearing.
Did we consider only making changes
in the TODs that we've established?
On the transportation demand management side, we didn't.
Early on, we assessed existing efforts today,
many of which extend beyond the TOD zones,
things like the Flex Shuttle.
TDM really works best looking at both
kind of home and employment locations.
So in our early analysis,
our estimation was that the best approach
for San Leandro would be to be holistic
and look at different parts of the city
and give the city tools to adjust the options
for different land uses.
I'm sorry, just really quickly as a follow-up.
So TDM is different in the green and the blue?
The TDM recommendations,
we considered having geographic sub-areas,
but ultimately recommended
just differentiating based on land uses.
So these green and blue are applicable
only to the parking component.
Thank you.
So your question for parking about whether,
did we consider not touching it?
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for making the changes specifically to the DODs.
It was considered, but when we looked part of the task, what we were tasked with was
looking at how your minimum parking requirements align with peak demand and market demand.
And unequivocally they were higher than what we saw out in the green zones.
So the green zone, sorry, that's one large zone.
So when we looked at that and we looked at what we were tasked with in terms of increasing
housing affordability essentially direction from the housing element that's
why we felt it essential to to include it in here we did have an option within
our report to not just reduce the minimum parking requirements but to do
away with them altogether but it was the direction of the planning commission to
pursue the reduced minimum parking requirements rather than the full
elimination thank you at this point in time we will go to public comment we'll
go to public we will open up our public hearing on this matter. The time is
currently 808 and our public hearing is now open. Mayor we have not received any
comment cards for this hearing but we do have one hand raised online. Okay so
with respect to the in-person part of our public hearing we are closing that
we're opening up our public hearing online. Our online speaker is Alvaro
neighborhood. Um there's a
I frequently have to bypass a double parked car
because it's blocking the street,
which means narrow inaccessibility for cars driving
in the opposite direction
and poor visibility to see pedestrians.
It's just too risky.
Is the neighborhood for storing cars
or is it for people to live in houses?
And I think that we also need to tax car infrastructure
to disincentivize building and maintenance.
The parking lots are a waste of land,
drive-through businesses where you have to drive
get goods or services are wasteful. Cars have given the United States the most expensive
transportation infrastructure system in the world. It's too expensive to buy a car, to
maintain a car, to buy the gas for the fuel, purchase the car insurance, maintain the car
infrastructure in the city. And now the oil shock that we have makes it impossible. We
need to relieve stress on the roads from excess personal vehicle use, especially on the suburban
and cul-de-sacs.
Cars are just losing money for city governments
and contributing to deficits.
It's not just an issue for the city of San Leandro,
it's an issue for all American cities.
You just don't need a car for inner city travel,
you need it to get to a rural area.
And we have senior citizens who cannot drive anymore.
I wanna ask city staff about research
on environmental initiatives
for lighting standards specifically.
I was watching a few months ago,
a PBS NewsHour report titled Cities Turn Street Lights Red
to Protect Nocturnal Ecosystem,
which is basically about how white light
blinds animals' vision.
And so it was about biodiversity lighting,
which maybe we should incorporate here.
Thank you.
Mayor, there are no more online commenters.
Okay, so we've closed the public hearing online as well.
We'll come back to Council Members for discussion.
Okay, seeing no discussion.
I'll just express a couple of concerns.
Me personally, I'm not ready today to vote yes,
others maybe, because I do want it to come back to us,
not just on consent.
I want to have some time to think about this.
I am particularly concerned about the fact
that we impose regulations that could just,
all we're doing is moving cars into neighborhoods.
I have been in the impression that we've really tried
concentrate densification along in our transit oriented developments. This is
broader than that. I'm also concerned about there are a number of neighborhoods
where I'm not quite sure about your peak demand and parking minimums and all
that kind of stuff but there's a number of neighborhoods that you drive through on the
weekend or at night when I think peak demand is and it's car to car to car to
car to car to car there there is no parking available in a number of
neighborhoods. So I need to really think through what the implications of this
are before supporting it. I don't have any problem with adjusting parking
minimums and the like but just for me personally I want to make sure that we
can have another hearing before we discuss it and not just kind of push it
through on consent. Coming to Council Member Bellin. Thank you Mayor. I actually
appreciated the way that this update centered San Leandro where we're at
right now. I know you use the term starter TDM and some of the language
that I appreciated was around calibrating and consolidating around what
the local conditions were at and to me it seems like very tangible strategies. I
am actually supportive of establishing the new regulations related primarily
to new development. And I sit on Alameda County Transportation Commission with
the mayor as well and one of the things we've been talking a lot about is
changes in how people are getting around. I think a lot of that has to do with the
fact that gas is still so incredibly expensive. For example, I have a van
because I have lots of children but I also have an EV and as much as I can I
try to drive my EV or I try to walk or I try to about my kid a bike last month
because we're trying to figure out ways not to use our cars much and there has
been increased ridership on both BART and on buses for that reason just because
it's more economical and so I think it is also a matter of understanding where
the community is at and where the region is at in terms of increased
pedestrian and bicycle activity so I think that this is a good first step and
if this can really help us again this is tied to the housing element if this can
to help us get more housing built
and especially more affordable housing built
and more businesses and more vibrancy in the community.
I'm all for it.
I live on a very busy street that is always full of people
with lots of energy and lots of parties
and lots of things happening.
And we just kind of have to figure it out
because I want to live in a community
that is full of that vibrancy.
So I'm really supportive of this
and I would wanna move approval of the item.
Thank you, Council Member Simon please proceed.
I'll second.
Any other discussion?
Seeing none, I'm gonna come back for just a couple
of other questions before we vote.
You had mentioned that Oakland's old standards
once upon a time were increasing the cost
of building in Oakland by 30%.
Do we have a sense of given our current housing minimums,
what the impact is here in San Leandro?
Thank you, I can't say for certain,
we could do an analysis on that.
That was going from basically no minimums to some minimums
even though the minimums were low at the time.
I will say almost universally,
I don't think there's a single community
that I haven't seen substantial decreases in cost
from the reduction of minimum parking requirements.
So we could look at this, it will be substantial I am sure,
almost no matter what we're looking at here.
Not only substantial in terms of the cost
for the development I would say,
but it also costs some time and savings
on the public side as well.
It's not unusual for communities to get involved,
caught up in the cycle of having minimum parking requirements
that turn out to be infeasible
and having to go through some sort of variance process
to get around them as Laura just mentioned earlier.
So did Central Callan request a variance?
Yes, they did.
Okay, and we granted that variance?
And they also had reduced parking requirements as well.
and sort of related to your questions about TOD,
a lot of, at least the downtown TOD
and the Bay Fair TOD, those are main TODs.
Those are already covered.
Those are what?
The downtown TOD and the Bay Fair TOD,
they're already covered in the half mile requirements.
So generally speaking,
that no parking would be required in those areas.
They overlap quite substantially.
Okay, and then for the central Calon,
are they currently fully,
Is there a parking garage currently fully used?
I don't believe that they're fully rented out.
But I'm unfamiliar with whether or not
they're parking is fully used.
OK, if there's been some just.
If you need one second, I might.
OK.
We can come back to that at another point.
Because I'm just trying to understand
what the practical implications are.
Because again, in certain neighborhoods for sure,
the streets are packed at night.
Packed.
And I mean like every single spot is taken.
And in fact, one of our public commenters was saying,
hey, in my neighborhood, guess what?
It's just impossible for like a delivery.
Can I speak to that, or can I address that?
Fair question.
You can.
I mean, it's an empirical question,
so I'm not quite sure what the question is.
You're answering.
So all I'm answering is the fact that I don't doubt it.
I've worked in many communities where
you look at the on-street parking,
and you look at it, and you say, gosh, this is overflowing.
it's packed.
And the conclusion that many people come to
is that we need more off-street parking.
In reality, on many streets like that,
the off-street parking themselves,
those spaces themselves, are not occupied in many cases.
For single-family residences,
they're often occupied by storage, right?
We've actually done workshops down in Southern California
where we talked to residents about it and said,
hey, this is great, just open your garages
so we can see if that is actually cars parked there.
And no one really took the bait.
Similarly with multi-family residential,
you can build those spaces.
It doesn't guarantee their usage
and it won't guarantee their usage
so long as your on-street parking is free and unregulated.
That free and unregulated parking on your curb site
is high priority for people.
That's where many people will first park
regardless of whether there's an off-street parking space
there or not.
So the reason why I'm mentioning this is simply mandating
and creating more off-street parking
doesn't necessarily solve your on-street parking shortage.
The two are not necessarily-
Just so that you understand,
we have a number of garages in San Fernando
that have been converted into residential space.
So there's no door to open
to show you what's on the inside
because it's literally a wall.
So that's one of the challenges
that might be a little bit different
from suburban Southern California.
But at this point in time,
I think we've had enough discussion.
And so I think we're gonna proceed with the vote.
I must admit Councilman,
The vote does not have its hand raised.
Is that correct?
Madam Clerk, perfect.
Let's proceed to a vote.
On the motion by Council Member Bowen
with a second from Council Member James Aguilar.
No, Council Member Fred Simon, thank you.
Council Member Boldt, may we have your vote?
Yes.
Thank you.
All votes are in and the motion fails with three yes votes.
It passes.
Sorry.
recalculating four yes votes from Councilmember Simon, Councilmember Aguilar,
James Aguilar, Councilmember Bowen, and Councilmember Bolt. One no vote from Mayor
Gonzalez and two abstentions from Councilmember Victor Aguilar and Vice
Mayor Viveros Walton. Those were absences as opposed to absences. Two absences for the
record. Four yes votes, one no vote and two absences. And the result being that the motion
passes which means it will come back for a second reading and as I understand our protocol
it will come back for a second reading for discussion in the chamber as opposed to going
straight onto consent which was my objective for this purpose. Okay so at this point I'll
move to item 10A. This is one of our two action items. At this point in time for our action
item, we will have I think what is a relatively brief presentation from human resources director
Emily Hung.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council Memos. I will be quick. I'm Emily Hung, Human Resources
Director. So in accordance with Government Code section 2122.1G and CalPERS regulations,
the City Council is required to approve the appointment of a retired annuitant when they
are filling a position due to an executive employee's leave of absence. So the action
item before you is a resolution to approve the appointment of Joseph Kreins
to serve as the interim police chief while Chief Angela Averett is on leave.
Interim Chief Kreins has a long career in public safety and possesses the
specialized skills and experience required for the appointment. He would
receive he will receive an hourly pay rate that is equivalent to the salary
approved for a police chief and will not receive any benefits or other form of
compensation. This interim appointment is also subject to all other post retirement
regulations including the limit of 960 hours in a fiscal year and that
summarizes the recommendation and I can answer any questions you may have. Thank
you very much. Do we have any questions? Seeing no questions, another question is
this is I'm assuming not overtime eligible? That's correct. Thank you. We
We will go to public comment on this item, please.
Mayor, we've not received any comment cards
and there's no hands raised online.
Okay, so close public comment.
Come back to council for any further discussion or a motion.
Council Member James Aguilar.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'd like to move to adopt the resolution.
Thank you.
Council Member Bowen.
I'll second that.
Okay, we've got a motion from Council Member James Aguilar
with a second one.
Council Member Bowen, seeing no further discussion,
please vote.
Council Member Bolt, your vote, please.
Yes.
thank you all votes are in and the motion carries unanimously with five yes
votes and two members absent thank you so now we'll move to item 10b 10b and
for this item we've got deputy city manager Eric Engelbart here to present
well good evening mayor and council thank you for the members of the public
either in person or turning in from online thank you for the opportunity to
present again tonight's discussion on the possibility of placing a business
license tax modernization on the November 2026 ballot and of course this
discussion does follow on the direction that was provided by you all at the June
8th City Council meeting. A brief overview of our agenda of topics we're
going to cover tonight. We're going to start off with just a summary of the
council direction that was provided up to this point followed by a summary of
of the robust public outreach that's taken place.
I will then hear an update and responsive information
to the questions that were raised by council
at that June 8th meeting.
I will then provide a summary of the changes
that have been made to our tax model since that meeting.
We'll then have an overview of that revised tax model
and its totality, and then we'll wrap things up
with a recommended action.
And I would note ahead of time as well
when we get to that recommended action,
you'll notice that there is a caveat as well
that in order for any either of the recommended actions
to pass or to move forward,
we would need four affirmative votes
and the absence of four votes would ultimately serve
as a de facto direction for staff not to proceed further
with further efforts on this project.
Most of these boxes on the screen before you
should look familiar as they were all presented
as part of that June 8th meeting.
The only key difference is in the upper right corner
when we cover the synopsis of what happened on June 8th,
but just as a little refresher
for those who may not have attended
or members of the public.
You recall back in February of 2025,
Council initially directed us to explore
a potential ballot measure for the November ballot.
Then in June of last year,
we did propose an allocation of funding
to support exploration of a measure,
though that request for funding was not authorized
and we were directed to come back
once the year-end fund balance estimates were available.
We, for that direction, we did return on December 1st
with the year-end fund balance effort estimates
along with the request to proceed forward.
At that meeting, Council did not direct us
to proceed forward, though the item was reconsidered
about two weeks later on December 15th,
at which time we were directed to proceed forward.
Then in February, on February 17th, this year,
Council directed us to work with a consultant
to test out the viability up to three measures,
including a business license tax,
a parcel tax, and a vacancy tax.
Then on April 6th, you all received the polling results.
They were publicly presented here in these chambers,
which basically the outcome of which was that
only the business license tax modernization
was deemed to be viable
based upon that scientific polling work.
And then just last month on June 8th,
we presented a tax model that was largely based on Union City
and we noted there were some concerns
about the tax increases that could result from it
and council directed us to modify the model
to include some mitigation measures
to address those issues.
Similarly, this slide here, slide four,
a lot of this information should look familiar.
It was all presented on June 8th.
So I'll really just kind of hone in
on this lower right hand corner of the slide,
which kind of provides the latest updates.
As I mentioned, and we were all there
at the June 8th meeting,
when we were directed to modify the model.
And then since that time as well,
with the conducted additional outreach.
Once we had the revised tax estimates
within shared information,
again with our robust outreach list
that included numerous business
isn't here in town,
our business license database
and email notifications, social media posts.
And then we updated our website as well
that we talked about last time,
which has that calculator estimator.
Also want to highlight for your attention,
as we discussed earlier in career direction,
we did do quite a bit of outreach,
including a physical two-way mailer
that went out to nearly about 20,000 San Lander residents.
And people were able to fill that out in paper format
and mail it back to us.
And in addition, this informal survey
that was also available online,
you can see in response to that survey work,
we received 997 total survey responses,
out of which 829 were responded to online
and 168 were responded to in writing.
You can see just a little over half of the respondents
just outright supported the business license tax proposal
and about another 47% had questions or concerns about it.
And out of that 47%, about 30% were requesting
more detailed information.
Also as part of that survey tool,
there was opportunities for other feedback or comments,
et cetera, and you can kind of see some distilled themes
that came out of that.
this first bullet point, many of these concerns
or issue areas, service areas should look familiar
to many of us from many other prior polls
what we've done here in San Leandro.
Of course with crime, homelessness, public safety
and the street conditions being top concerns
among respondents.
A lot of people, as I mentioned earlier,
were interested in hearing more details of the proposal.
There was also some concerns expressed
about potential impacts on small businesses.
There was also folks who were interested in ensuring
We were maintained a quality business environment here
and wanted to provide methods of retaining
and attracting businesses.
There was also comments about just overall stewardship
of public funding and cost controls.
And there was also some concerns referenced
about potential price impacts that could stem
from increased taxes to businesses.
Additionally, the council had a number of questions
that were raised from the dais at our last meeting.
We've tried our best to kind of summarize
and encapsulate them here on these next few slides.
I'll kind of run through them.
There was some discussion and questions
about potential impacts on economic development in general.
And in response to that question,
we would note that even under the new revised model,
the details of which I'll be going over
in just a few moments, we do continue to see
some potentially significant annual increases,
particularly when looked at as a percentage basis
under the revised model,
which continued to raise some concerns
even with those mitigation measures that we'll get into.
Additional time and analysis, like any project,
additional time and additional analysis
could further evaluate such impacts.
I would also note, as we presented at the June meeting,
that model was largely based on Union City's tax model.
And we've also, as we've dug in deeper on that,
although Union City has basically stated,
their staff has stated that they did not see
a major disruption to their business community
as a result of their implementation
their revised tax model as part of the November of 24 ballot.
The United City is a different city.
They have a smaller business community.
They have smaller, large business.
They don't have quite the volume of large businesses
that we have.
My understanding is they also do not
have any auto dealerships.
Another question was about, could the funds
be earmarked specifically for infrastructure?
And there was a lot of dialogue at the last meeting
on this topic as well.
And the short answer is no, for as a general tax,
we cannot specifically air market for only one service area
because it's really just broad general fund revenue.
And then there was a reference, a question about
if the fee could be structured
so that no businesses see a decrease
and our response of information that would be,
well, not necessarily a best practice to do so.
Such a change is certainly legal and feasible
if so directed to do so.
Another question was can this tax be structured
in a way to look at profit margins
rather than simply gross receipts?
And the shorter answer is no.
We can't legally use a company's profit margins
as the basis for taxation.
With that said, as we've noted before,
in the new consolidated tax model
that produces us down to about nine general categories
of business, there are already differentiated rates.
And so those rates are intended to take into account things
like profit margins.
So for example, it's known that restaurants or auto dealers
are generally a low profit margin business.
And so the specific rate for that classification
of business that they fall within
has been tailored accordingly.
There was also a question about
there was a definition of a high paying employer.
And the answer is there is no formal definition of it.
And then there was a question about
where would a data center fit into this framework.
And our answer is that it would fall
under the definition of the industrial category.
There were some questions about
What about other emerging industries
in which share that the consolidated list of nine
categories are intended to account
for those emerging industries in the modern economy?
And as new business types emerge,
they could be evaluated and appropriately captured
within those definitions because they're sufficiently broad.
And then there was a range of questions
related to whether or not we could incorporate factors
such as climate change or use of energy or water.
and the shorter answer is given the time available,
additional time and analysis really would be required
to fully address these questions.
Right here on this slide eight,
we have just some high level overview of changes
that were made to the model,
subsequent to our last discussion on this about a month ago.
In response to feedback from property rental
and rental housing providers, et cetera,
as well as mobile home parks,
we're actually recommending as part of this model
to make no changes to their existing tax rate.
So presently you can see the existing tax rates
that apply to those business types
and we're recommending no changes to them at all.
So they would essentially be,
for lack of a better term,
they'd be exempted from any of the proposed changes
if you were to put this on the ballot
and no other existing tax rates would stay in effect.
We've also increased the tax rates for warehouses
to $4.50 per $1,000 in gross receipts
and that was based on feedback at the last meeting.
Additionally, for those that would have classified
as the larger businesses with gross receipts
greater than 50 million dollars annually,
the tax model incorporates a 25% discount rate.
And that's very simple to calculate.
You basically just look at the totality
of their gross receipts,
and if it's in excess of 50 million,
you shave 25% off of the top of it.
And then also per feedback we received from PG&E,
We modified the definitions to include public utilities
under the manufacturing rate,
and that's per requirements of relevant California law
and case law that they had cited.
So now these next three slides are acknowledged.
These are these tables here.
There's a lot of information in here,
so I'll try to go over them at a high level.
We can certainly drill in as further
as part of the Q&A, if so desired.
But this should look familiar to a chart
that we presented back in June, though it's been updated.
And so what you can see here, you
can see what we call the 6-8 model.
So that was the June 8 tax model that we
presented about a month ago.
And then you can see the July 6, which is today,
the revised model.
And you can see those changes that I talked about.
And you can see where the changes have occurred.
So for example, property rental.
We were previously proposing a gross receipts model.
And here we're saying that.
And similarly with the mobile home parks we're saying,
just leave them off the table, retain their existing tax
structure and acknowledgement of a number of the policy changes that have
here occurred. Additionally as I noted the warehouse rate that's been
increased as well there and so you can kind of see and then you can kind of see
that the grand total outcomes and again we can go through this in more detail
with the Q&A and then also this this this chart should also look familiar
it's been revised and updated to also reflect those changes.
You can see here in row four was the information
we presented last time.
And then you can see row five here is that revised model.
And you can see the changes that stem from that.
Again, these are all basically hypothetical examples.
So taking this column D as in David,
you can see imagine a restaurant that has about a million
dollars of gross receipts and 12 employees.
You can see currently under our current model
that is not gross receipts based, they're paying about $800 a year, and then under the
revised model, they'd be paying $430, so they'd actually see a decrease in their annual
tax.
On the other side of things, you can see this car dealer example with $65 million, hypothetically
of revenue and 70 employees.
Under their current rate, they're paying about $4,000 a year, and under the revised model.
So in June, the June model, you could see their rate would have gone up about, yeah,
quite sizable, from 4,000 to nearly 28,000.
And then the revised model that includes that 25% discount, it would be decreased.
So when you look at it on a percentage base, it's just a large number.
They'll leave it to the observer to perform any opinions about $4,000 increase up to $20,000
annually.
that ramification of that are for a $65 million annual rich gross receipts type of business.
And then so that kind of covers this slide and again we're happy to go through it in
more detail if you would like.
And then this last slide there were some questions about last time about you know how our rates
compare to other cities.
I want to thank our economic development team for pulling this slide together but you can
kind of see some comparisons and I think again a lot of numbers on here but
one I think that's particularly illuminating you can kind of see how we
compare our current model which as we've stated is has been in effect for quite a
long time and you can see taking the example of a large retailer that does
400 million dollars a business a year is presently paying about a little over
ten thousand dollars a year in tax and you can see how that compares though to
our peer cities here throughout the county with the high end of Oakland a
similar retailer we'd be paying nearly a million dollars a year and as we
shared at our last meeting as well the city of Hayward City Council did vote
last month to place in a measure of their own on the November ballot and so
we've included both the current Hayward tax as well as the proposed Hayward tax
if their voters in Hayward would authorize it so you can see those
changes and with that we're now kind of wrapping things up with our recommended
action and we're basically recommending that either among these two choices here
either by majority vote adopt the proposed resolution as written to place
the measure on the November's third ballot as well as designate authors for
the ballot measures argument arguments in favor and the rebuttal arguments as
well. Alternatively to the extent the council wants to have more time for us
to study this issue area you could certainly direct staff to continue
additional fiscal analysis and we'd make this basically convert this into a two-year project
where the goal of bringing something forward at the November of 2028 election about a little over
two years from now and that's the next general regular election that would be eligible for
consideration of such a measure and as I mentioned at the beginning of this I think this note here
at the end is an important one in the absence of four affirmative votes tonight for either of these
actions where the staff will cease all further efforts. And so with that, that
wraps up our presentation but happy to answer any questions. Thank you. So we'll
take clarifying questions at this time. Seeing none, I'll go to public comment on
this item. You do have a question? Okay. Coming to back to Councilmember Bowen. Thank you
Mayor and thank you Eric for the presentation. I appreciate that we took
and I think we have time to
answer some of the questions
and make some of the changes
that council members had brought
up.
I appreciate, for example, the
property rental and mobile home
given all of the policy changes
we had.
I recognize that there's an
effort to try to make this work
at the same time.
we move forward with this to the business community that where we do have larger, you
know, businesses than a union city or wherever, if they don't have time to plan or understand
really what is happening, we're getting a lot of emails from business owners small and
large that are confused or concerned because they have to plan ahead. And so in all the
outreach that you've done, what has been the biggest concern or what are the risks we face
for the business community if we put this on the ballot this November.
Sure, I would say and I think you know this has been a team effort and we have
our economic development team staff here as well who's also been fielding a lot
of calls directly so I'll let them chime in as well. I can certainly say from the
feedback that I've been aware of and seen and had the interactions with.
I think one of the biggest concerns that's been flagged is just those
market increases that we highlighted earlier when you look at them as a
percentage in some cases they are they are not insignificant and understandably
have raised concerns about a number of business classifications and in
particular I think in comparison to say Union City that already had a gross
receipts model in place and so when they updated it in 2024 the net Delta of what
they had in place already prior November 24 versus what came into effect was a
more gradual increase versus us where we're starting at what classified maybe
as a relatively low base,
and then to go into the gross receipts model out the gate,
in some cases that's a not insignificant increase
that those businesses are seeing.
And so it is somewhat speculative though,
as to what, if that were to come to fruition,
how those businesses would respond.
I'm not a business owner in St. Leander,
I'm hesitant to speak for them,
but certainly I think that that encapsulates the feedback
that I've been privy to.
Yeah, and I think you can think about it
from going from least to greatest,
at a minimum hearing that this can erode or impact
kind of our business friendly work to support businesses,
depending on the amount it could potentially impact
the timing of making future investments
or business expansion,
having to reallocate those funds for these costs
and really at its most drastic, you know,
things can result in businesses taking this into account
in their long-term where they're located
and whether they would remain located in San Leandro.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
That leads into my next question.
How, I was reading through chapter two, two,
what is the other document that we have
about the business license and each of the categories
and what the percentages are.
So one, like how did, maybe you already shared it with me
I missed it. How do we decide on those specific percentages and how does that
compare to the other cities and then also how does this fit into our broader
economic strategy about trying to bring in more businesses and just our how do
we bring economic development in but also how do we support our city in order
to make it a not if we want businesses here absolutely but we also have to have
a city that is functioning with with parks and roads and all the things that
that you want for a good neighborhood
to be able to have people here
that want to be here to go to these businesses.
So how does that fit in?
And maybe that's for you, Eric,
or that's for you, Katie.
Maybe I'll start with the first portion
about how we arrived at these rates.
And what I'll share is basically,
back in June, we presented a model,
and part of this was just a function of the time
that we had for the project.
But we started with that Union City model,
and we basically just borrowed those rates
and applied them and said this is what would happen
if we were to adopt these rates here in San Leandro.
And then we identified all those concerns.
And then we did, for lack of a term,
we tweaked that model, we modified that model
to include these mitigations
that I basically went over in the earlier slide.
So by and large, many of these rates that we did not adjust
remain the same as what was presented in June.
And then we basically modified them,
as that was our starting base.
and we modified them, as shown here on this slide.
So that's how we landed on what's before you today.
And then other portions of your questions, I'll look at.
Yeah, maybe I'll go to slide 10.
And so if we look at that,
so in general, retail and industrial
got a lower rate based theoretically
on a couple of things,
including their profit margins,
they're creating sales tax, they're creating value.
So they're at 0.43 and 0.45 respectively,
which does generally align with our strategic goals
to support those type of businesses,
professional and other kind of service industries.
The theory behind what was proposed,
those have a much higher rate of over 2.0 or 2.5.
And the theory there was that they don't have
sales tax, and things like that. However, as we see here, even with these, you know,
there are several that are highlighted that are strategic areas that are seeing significant
increases. So that does cause concern there. And also, for instance, you know, several of,
if you look at the bottom ones that are bolded, car dealers, for instance, professional, for instance,
Those are versus say a manufacturer
that has a lot of capital investment in their facility,
a car dealer or more professional like an office.
They have less capital and maybe more movable
and bring some notable benefits.
So those were highlighted.
Thank you.
Seeing no further questions,
we'll take public comment on this item.
Mayor, we've received four comment cards
and there are presently five hands raised online.
So let's start in person.
Thank you.
The first three in-person commenters
are Kristen Anderson, Jenny Madsen,
and San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.
Okay, good evening Council Mayor.
My name is Kristen Anderson,
CEO of Erika Fanderson Incorporated,
a member of the San Leandro business community
for almost 40 years.
I'm standing here today not to challenge the need for reform
to the San Leandro business tax structure.
I understand the city needs revenue
and is looking at every source it can
to fund a budget deficit.
Fund a budget deficit.
As a business owner, I get it.
We need modernization.
What I challenge is your timing and due diligence.
The business community wants to help you close that gap
just as much as your residents do.
We just wanna be included in the decision
that will cost us millions of dollars.
You've pointed to Union City as your model.
So let's take a look at what Union City actually did.
Union City's council did not rush this.
Their process started in February, 2022
when their council began meeting
on this exact same question of business tax reform.
Their staff came back, found a consultant,
HDL companies the same consultant you used who proposed to raise taxes on some businesses by up to 17 times
What they were paying before and do you know what the Union City City Council did?
They said no
They called it premature
They sent staff back for two more years of real business specific outreach
collaboration with their businesses and analysis before it ever reached the ballot
Two years not months and it passed with 81% of the vote and
Businesses trusted the number that they saw when it got voted in. I'm asking you now
Do not put this on the ballot in November
slow down
Sit at the table with us
Give us time to prepare if you get this right your business community will support you and our community will thrive
Get it wrong and San Leandro risks losing its business rate. Thank you your time has elapsed
The next three speakers are Ginny Madsen
San Leandro Chamber of Commerce and David Stark
Gonna do something different. I'm gonna try and read tonight because you guys before you vote on this tonight
You need to know about ACA 22 which got passed by the Assembly on June 25th
They are going to ACA 22 is a California
Constitutional amendment that officially requires all local special taxes whether placed on the ballot by city officials or citizen
Initiatives to pass with a two-thirds majority of the local electorate. It'll go into effect on
January 1st, 2027
So this is a weird thing that got put through
Basically, Buffy Wicks authored it,
even though she is adamantly opposed to it,
because she explained she wrote it
not because I wanted it to become law,
but because it was the only legal mechanism left to kill
a much worse corporate backed initiative.
That's because the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
was gonna put the Taxpayer Protection Act,
something like Prop 13 grandson on the ballot.
And that would have been retroactive.
It would have taken the money from every city in California.
It would have bankrupted everybody.
And so they made this deal.
But this Prop 22, if it passes in November,
because apparently it is on the ballot,
and Governor Newsom and Democratic leadership
are apparently saying pass it.
The League of California Cities is saying no.
This is important.
It will change everything because this means
that there will be no property tax
and the business tax will be the only way
you'll be able to do this.
I know I've talked before about property taxes
but this was so hot off the press
I had to just tell you about it.
Please think about it because if you don't do this tonight.
Thank you, your time has elapsed.
The next in-person speakers are
San Leandro Chamber of Commerce and David Stark.
Good evening, mayor and council members.
Emily Grago, San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.
Since mid-May, this is our fourth time
we've come before you to share what we are hearing
from San Leandro businesses.
Their message has remained consistent.
The proposed business license tax
would significantly increase the cost
of running their business.
We recognize the changes have been made
to the proposed rate structure.
And even so, our core concern remains.
This is not a modest adjustment.
For many businesses, it is still a major new expense that could affect decisions around
hiring, expansion, investment, and long-term sustainability.
This proposal also extends into the homes of San Leandro residents.
Grocery stores, utility providers, retailers, restaurants, and everyday service providers
are all included.
When costs rise for the businesses residents rely on every day, those costs do not simply
disappear.
They show up in higher prices, fewer local investments, and fewer opportunities for job
growth.
Our second concern is process.
This proposal was first introduced in April.
Just three months later, a decision needs to be made to place it before the voters.
Three months.
I personally spoke to Union City leadership.
They spent more than two and a half years studying the issue, doing business outreach
in refining the proposal before asking voters to decide.
We believe San Leandro businesses deserve the same process.
I also wanna be clear that a phased implementation
is not the solution,
because if the underlying structure is flawed,
it can't be easily fixed.
We do not need a rush tax increase of this size right now.
We need thoughtful leadership.
We need responsible fiscal planning.
We respectfully ask that you postpone this proposal,
commit to more robust business outreach,
and more economic analysis before this proposal
of this magnitude is placed before the voters.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is David Stark.
Good evening, I'm David Stark,
representing the Bay East Association of Realtors,
which includes many housing providers
and real estate professionals
who live and work in San Leandro.
We appreciate the decision to retain
the existing business license tax structure
for rural housing providers.
That change addresses one of our primary concerns
and recognizes the cumulative financial impact
of recent housing regulations on smaller housing providers,
including action you took this evening.
However, Bay East is not able to support the proposal now
because several important questions remain
regarding how the proposed grocery seat tack
would apply to the real estate industry.
Real estate operates differently than many other professions.
State law requires that commissions be paid
through a licensed brokerage
and then distributed to affiliated sales agents.
As a result, given what you've been presented tonight
and what we've reviewed, it still remains unclear,
first, whether both brokers and affiliated agents
will each be required to obtain a business license.
Next, whether referral fees and team compensation
will be included in taxable grocery speeds.
And finally, and most importantly,
whether commissions earned from transactions
outside San Leandro will be subject
to the city's business license tax.
without answers to these questions it's impossible for us to accurately evaluate
the proposal and to support the proposal at this time and as the
representative from the chamber indicated process is important being
thoughtful and mindful and inclusive is important and we would encourage you to
be more thoughtful and more inclusive in this proposal. The Union City example is
important we polled our members that are in Union City and several of them said
that they are considering leaving Union City because of the gross receipts tax
while not directly rid of real estate I bought my car in in San Leandro and
driving up Davis today I noticed that that dealership had closed so please be
thoughtful about your decision thank you thank you mayor there are no more
comment cards in the room and we currently have four hands raised on so
and we are closing public comment in person.
We will now open public comment online.
Our first in online speaker is Douglas Spalding.
Thank you very much.
First I'm gonna express my appreciation to Eric
and the rest of the staff for your labors.
I actually think your process has been quite thoughtful
and that you have learned from those that have gone before.
We don't need to reinvent the wheel,
but I can't imagine this has been a labor of love
given the schizophrenic process as it has been.
San Leander cannot afford to shy away
from any reasonable source of money,
nor to postpone the possibility of this for two years.
This modernization is in line with changes
in surrounding municipalities, not just Union City,
but also Oakland, Hayward, Alameda.
in moving towards a fair model based on revenues,
instead of number of employees or square footage.
I do not believe that if we pass this modernization fee,
that it's unfair to businesses,
that it will result in a wholesale exodus of businesses
from town due to this fee, nor that the sky is falling.
As Council Member Bolt observed,
it's incumbent on both the residents and business
to support the services of the city.
I know you've been getting hammered by business
who are lobbying you to, according to their strategy,
put it off, put it off, put it off.
And here we are, it's July,
and there's only one more meeting.
I think it's unfortunate
that you backed us up into this corner.
And I think it's unlikely
that this is gonna pass tonight
with only five members on the dais.
So I actually request that you table this matter
until the very last meeting in July on July 20th.
I appreciate the great job that Emmy and Gregor does
to represent the Chamber of Commerce,
but I don't accept the unscientific chamber survey
that found that most businesses
are gonna be adversely affected by this.
My understanding is that most small businesses
will pay a smaller fee.
Thank you.
The next online speaker is Camille Buller.
Good evening, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
I am a resident San Leandro.
I'm here to share my concerns regarding the proposal,
proposed business tax increases
and the potential impact on our communities,
long-term economic vitality.
While I deeply value our city staffing
and acknowledge the pressing need for additional revenue
to maintain our essential services and public safety,
we must carefully consider the economic trade-offs
of continually raising taxes on our local businesses.
Increasing business taxes threatens our local economy.
Studies show that establishments are 30% less likely
to move to cities with local business taxes
and 22% more likely to leave.
Similarly, data from Stanford of School of Business
highlights the tax increases can prompt companies
to relocate jobs and capital to more competitive areas.
If we push our business tax rates too high,
we risk driving away the very employers
who generate local jobs
and contribute to our tax base
to maintain the quality of our city services
without causing a drain on our business.
I urge the council to consider alternative ways
to increase revenue and delay the proposal tax
on the ballot until the 2020 election.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next online speaker is Lucas.
Lucas, are you there?
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you, thank you for taking my comments this evening.
Again, mayor and council, what a shocker.
Businesses don't want to pay taxes.
Where have I heard that one before?
But if low taxes meant that businesses would flock
to a city, where is all the business coming
to San Leandro right now?
far as I can tell we're doing all the outreach we can and we're struggling to attract businesses
even though as the presentation shows on slide 11 we have some of the lowest business taxes
compared to our neighboring cities. If a large retailer pulling in 400 million is only paying
10,000 in San Leandro and a million dollars in Oakland, why aren't all the Oakland businesses
coming down to San Leandro. These taxes are outdated that we have. Our businesses are under
tax. The residents are paying way more than they should. We have this outdated employee and square
footage-based system. It's time to modernize. A couple sessions ago, you voted to index the cost
that residents pay for sewer or whatever it was or street park, I don't know what it was anymore,
to inflation. So residents have to index the prices we pay to the city to inflation. But
businesses who buy a 10,000 square foot warehouse, they lock in their price forever,
whether they do 10 million in receipts, 10 billion in receipts, they just pay for the
square footage. That doesn't sound right. This tax is modern, it's fair, it's indexed to inflation
by default because it's based on gross receipts. If businesses raise prices, great. The city
gets more money. Also, I am cognizant of the need to respect the concerns of the business
community. I wouldn't be opposed to a phased rollout. If you want to avoid any kind of
shocks, I know that businesses often budget to the dollar. So if you want to phase this
in over two years or over four years, write that into the ordinance. But do proceed with
like this. It's time to share
the cost of running the city
fairly.
Thank you. Your time has
elapsed. The next online
speaker is Alvaro Ramos.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay. So I just wanted some
clarifying questions that I
would really appreciate if
mayor and council members
would talk more about this
stuff. Can you, I'm
discount for the large businesses.
Can you define what a large business is?
Is that about the economies of scale of a business,
like a Walmart that has a very large market share?
It's a monopoly, but you know.
Or is it like the number of employees type of thing?
Can you define what a rate discount is, and how it works,
and how you would implement this and why is it 25%
is there a reason why that figure was reached?
What's the logic behind that?
And then why is it also for large business specifically?
I'll tell you though what I don't wanna see,
we've had enough with tax cuts from the federal government
that have wreaked havoc on the American economy.
And I don't wanna see any more trickle up economics
that has delivered inequality
and thus instability to this country.
And so I just don't wanna see any breaks for big businesses.
Most of the citizens of San Leandro are not multimillionaires.
They don't even have a million dollars to rub around, okay?
I will say though that you definitely should not wait
until November, 2028 election.
You may not get another chance to do this
with how things are progressing as the years go by
our conditions in the United States
should be expected to worsen
and they feel so much worse than they did a decade ago alone.
Thank you.
Mayor, there are no more online commenters.
Okay so we'll come back to Council for discussion.
Did want to follow up on the public commenters question
about the 25% discounted in particular.
Just a little bit around the definition of large business.
Seem to recall that was a discussion
but I don't remember it.
So if you could tell us a little bit about that.
Certainly Mayor, the 25% discount is fairly straightforward.
Essentially if a business exceeds 50,
$50 million per year of annual gross receipts,
then when they calculate their tax,
you simply reduce that portion of the calculation.
You take 25% off their annual gross receipts.
So it's fairly straightforward math.
So let's run with that a little bit.
And I like to keep math simple.
So just suppose with me that a $50 million business would pay.
I know this is wrong.
So for anyone in the public who tries to quote this,
I'm telling you right now it's wrong,
but just to keep the math simple.
If a $50 million business paid a million dollars,
okay, so just 2%, and I know that's not true,
but just if it was that,
then businesses that are twice as large
would pay twice as much.
A 50 million goes to a million,
a hundred million dollars would pay two million
if it's just gross receipts
in this simplified incorrect example.
Now, how would your 25% discount work?
Would it say instead of paying the $2 million
that I'm hypothesizing in this unreasonable example
for the $100 million business,
it would be 75% of the $2 million?
It would be 75% of their total gross receipts.
So on your example, you said what was the gross receipts?
So it was $100 million, so it was as if they were
$75 million, yes.
Thank you, correct.
Okay, discussion from colleagues.
Seeing no discussion, I'll wait for a motion.
Council Member Bowen.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'd like to make a motion to direct staff to continue,
for B, direct staff to continue additional fiscal analysis
with the goal of bringing forward
a proposed business tax modification
as part of the November 28th election.
One of the slides that struck me so much
in the last presentation was around the 14 cities
in Alameda County, and again, tonight in the numbers
of who is, what businesses get, this one.
Clearly like we are, it's time, it's probably been,
we should have, could have done this previously,
and it would have been beneficial to us,
so I recognize that, so it's not that I want to modernize,
think we need to modernize it. I also think that if we want good governance and collaborative
governance and good policy, we have to do it in a way that not just includes all stakeholders at
face value but really integrates them into the process. And I have not been comfortable with the
timeline that we have been on. Certainly, even from a planning perspective, we would be speculating
if we talked about how would businesses respond but I know as a person that has bills to pay
and things that I have to afford, when big changes happen, it makes it really hard and
I just want to recognize where we're at in the economic situation that we're at as a
country and regionally and at the local level.
And I want us and Council Member Bolts mentioned it the last one and I talked about it with
the Oklahoma City example,
but it is incredibly important
that the business community works in partnership
with the city to be able to move us forward.
Every business person that I've spoken to says,
we want to help, we want to do this.
We're not comfortable with where we're at.
And I want to hold the business community to that
in the partnership in the next year, year and a half
as we're working on this.
And I don't, I think that the,
yes, I recognize that the threshold would go up.
and that would be harder.
I also understand that if the threshold is two-thirds,
the threshold is two-thirds,
and we can get there if we do this right.
And I really do want to give staff the time
and the opportunity to not have to rush through this
and to be able to work with the community,
for us to be able to work with the community
to make this happen.
I have been incredibly supportive
and delighted by our economic development strategy.
I think that we continue to be innovative,
we continue to bring lots of businesses in,
we continue to try to think about things in a different way,
and I want us to be able to continue to do that,
and that's why I'm making the motion to defer to 2028.
I'll use personal privilege to second that motion.
I do have one question.
There's been a lot of this discussion about
does it require two-thirds or anything like that.
Has anybody analyzed yet?
Because it was my understanding that ACA 22
was going to focus on special taxes as opposed to general taxes. Has anybody
done that work? And if not, if you can just kind of come back to us at some
point because I think that's particularly relevant. But I'm reasonably sure that
it's not just about any tax increase would be two-thirds. Coming to
Councilmember James Aguilar then I'll offer a few more comments. Thank you
Mayor and thank you for seconding the motion which I think is the right
direction. I share some very similar sentiments with council member Bowen. The rushing part
is what's killing me on this one. I believe strongly or I should say I really go against
the narrative that just because businesses have money that they can somehow just lock
in on a price and get us that tax, but that's not how business works. And so I would really
really like to give our business community the respect to just plan it out, right? We need to
plan forward. But I think that councilmember Bowen also brought up the intentionality of integrating
the business community in the conversation. And I think this timeline gives us the opportunity
to be more authentic with it. And do we need revenue? Yeah, yes, we do. But I want us to go
in the community and it's
important to know about the
business license tax in the
right way, right? And so
similarly, I've gotten
comments from business folks
in the community who say it's
not that we don't want this.
It's that this is incredibly
rushed. Um and I completely
agree with that. So I'm going
to support Council member
Bowens motion tonight, Um,
because I just think it's the
Yes, while I do enjoy listening and learning as we go along this path, I do want to push
back a little bit on the thought that this has been rushed or that we haven't had sufficient time.
One thing we say about, or not we, I'll say myself, government moves so slow
and this would be us slowing it down. We have been in this situation where we've been looking at it,
but we took reasonable efforts that came from other cities so we didn't have to duplicate
all the work that they did. Our decision to move forward with this would be us saying
that we respect the process that some of our other local
municipalities have taken. We understand that their process was
extremely diligent. And it's hard for me to imagine that we
would somehow come up with a different scenario if we did
that. I get the business community's effort in this to
slow walk this process, but obviously that's the right move to do if you own a business.
Keep as much in your pocket as you can, but I don't think it's appropriate. Everybody I talk
to says we need better streets, we need better policing, we need a cleaner this that, but nobody
wants to pay for it. And right now we have the opportunity to get there. And this would
be the right thing to do for us if we choose to push it to 28. As one of the speakers mentioned,
there's a good chance that we have to go to the two thirds. And that is that's not a good
idea for us. We should. The work has been done. It's not like we're pulling stuff out
of the air. There's been a lot of resources put into this. I don't think we're going to
come to a different scenario in 28 where all of a sudden the numbers are completely different.
The numbers are going to be the same in 28. So we need to put it on the ballot now and
make sure that we're getting some of this revenue. These
numbers are completely out of whack when we look at 10,000 in
our city and almost a million in another. We have to do something
about that. And this is a very reasonable ask of City Council
with its business partners. We're not asking for anything
more than, you know, we're not going way above any other
municipality in the area. I really highly doubt that
businesses are going to leave because of this. If you look at
that chart, it shows you that we would just be coming into the
realms of the other cities. I think we have a lot to offer in
our city and I think the businesses would stay. Pushing
it to 28 does not change the numbers in 28. All it does is push the process out and improves
the fact that government can move really slow sometimes. I'll stop there.
Okay. At this point in time, I'll come back to Council Member Belling.
Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I just wanted to add a little something as Council Member Bolt
was talking. I think that staff has done a really great job, especially underneath the
within the time constraints and the workload that they've had.
I think what that due diligence of the two years
really does in the union city example
or in any other example, when we did
run stabilization is to get stakeholders involved
in that conversation to get everybody to the same
closer to an understanding of what we're doing,
why we're doing it and trying to understand
what unintended consequences there are
or potential mitigations we could possibly put in place.
And I think that that's what's really important
about extending the process.
It's not so much that we're gonna come up
with something significantly different,
but certainly for a business to be able to understand
that this is what we're working towards.
The Council's will is to look for revenue,
to be able to modernize the business license fee.
And so how can businesses also plan for that
so that they can still grow,
that they can still plan to be in San Leandro
and to still hire and to still expand
or continue to thrive.
To me, that's what the additional time is
so that we can come up with a good policy
that truly integrates all stakeholders,
including our residents, so that they know what's happening,
so that they will vote whether it's that 50 plus threshold
or the two thirds threshold so that businesses can say,
yes, we are a partner in this and this is what we're willing
to do and this is what we've been planning for.
And for the council to be able to speak to it
and address it and say, hey, we really did do diligence
on this process.
Thank you.
The other thought that I will offer just reinforcing
what I said the first time around when this came to us,
I'm very concerned about more general taxes,
primarily because we have had needs specifically
for our infrastructure, our roads,
roofs of buildings, things that are not particularly exciting
but that have to be done.
And we have not been able to dedicate the resources.
And so what's in fact happened is we've dug a deeper
and deeper and deeper hole through time.
And so the ability to be able to address something
with a specific tax, as opposed to a general tax
is paramount to me.
So let's see where we end up in a couple of years.
So with that, let's please vote.
And the vote is for the motion
to take staff recommendation B.
So that's what we are voting for.
On the motion by second by Gonzalez.
Council member Bolt, may we have your vote?
No.
Thank you.
All votes are in.
And the motion carries with four yes votes
from Mayor Gonzalez, Council Member Bowen,
Council Member Simon, and Council Member James Aguilar.
One no vote from Council Member Dylann-Bolt,
and two absent members, Council Member Victor Aguilar,
and Vice Mayor Viviros-Walton.
I'm assuming we have no item 11s.
Okay, so just looking very quickly to Council,
typically we take a break at nine o'clock.
if you're willing to power through over the next 10 minutes,
I suggest we do that.
So let's begin with any reports, announcements,
items of interest, et cetera.
Okay, I believe we have Council Member Bowen,
please proceed.
So we're item 12?
Item 12, please.
Okay, great.
I just wanted to share a brief few things.
At last week's stop waste meeting,
I was elected to become first Vice President
for the Waste Management Board.
I'm really excited to continue to do the work there.
I also wanted to share that I had the privilege
of attending a Senate committee hearing
on the Committee on Human Services on Monday
to speak in support of Assemblymember Shavo's bill AB19
that would require childcare infrastructure
as part of our general plan.
It's really exciting to me that we are talking
at the state level about ensuring critical economic
development in the form of childcare,
whether that's childcare centers,
being able to create policies like the one
that we talked about with parking today
that says that we have to think about this
as we're starting to plan for our city.
I really appreciate that our economic development team
has incorporated childcare as an economic strategy
in our plan.
I appreciate that our Parks and Rec Department
understands that our summer camps are examples
of how we have critical child care needs
because if children starting in TK at four years old
are going to school, they are no longer in child care,
which means that over the summer,
they need to be somewhere safe and quality care
and that's something that we as a city
are already proactively doing.
And I will be obviously talking about this all the time
as I have in the past,
but I will likely be bringing something forward
so that we actually codify a child care plan
So that when this bill does pass
that we will be far ahead of the curve
and we'll have already done the work
and hopefully that will reduce cost for us.
The other thing that I wanna mention
that is very personal for me
is the birthright citizenship ruling
that happened this week as a city
that is majority minority in a county
that is 35% foreign born and many of those,
the majority of foreign born residents are from Asia
followed by Latin America.
Just want to remind this community in particular
that what belonging means and that you are welcome here
and the things that are happening at the national level
do very much affect us at the local level and in our homes.
And I think that's really important
for us to remind each other how we are one community
and that we have the shared humanity.
Thank you.
Council Member James Zegler.
Yes, thank you, Mayor.
I just wanna elevate the city staff tonight.
I am really, really proud of the 250th celebration
at the Monarch Bay Golf Course.
It was so much fun.
People were having a good time and I had a good time.
And I know staff was like, oh my God,
y'all, we just had the cherry festival.
And I get that, but it turned out so good.
Turned out so good.
And so I'm just really grateful for the staff
that put on the 250th
and had our community come together for some joy.
And the other thing I wanna elevate
is the transition to work day, which is a really big deal.
And so for the public who's like, great, what is that?
Just know that modernizing our systems,
pulling together human resources,
the way that HR director Emily Hong, HR in general,
and the city staff have done, is taking the city forward.
And it's a lot of work.
And it's gonna continue to be a lot of work.
So I'm just really proud. I'm really grateful for the work that has been done in that
Avenue as well transitioning to work day
But I just had to shout out the city staff tonight and that's all I have for this evening
Thank you
Just confirming before I go to wrap this up
It does not appear that way. So let me just go quickly through the things that
I'd like to highlight for myself glad to have co-hosted the WeGo presentation talking about the dangers
That are posed by wildfire risk particularly to the community in Bay of Vista
What was interesting about that modeling is that the modeling was actually quite conservative
making assumptions that people would orderly exit in case of evacuation and I think if
History shows us anything in other cities. That's probably not the best modeling and so things could be worse and they estimated
I do want to think up also the California Conservation Corps who had their 50th anniversary
they did a bus tour across the state stopped here in Lake Chabot and
It was just beautiful to see young people in a real-life workforce development environment
hearing their stories about how the Corps has transformed their path
into the future while at the same time delivering local community benefits. In our particular case,
a lot of work has been done in Chabot Park to reduce wildfire danger.
I do want to congratulate Juniper Corner, and one of the things that we are looking to do is
find ways to be creative about our zoning, the places where we allow businesses to open to drive new business
development in San Leandro.
And so seeing Juniper Corner open in what
had been described as exclusively a retail facade
and thinking a little bit more broadly about how
we think about economic development to enable that
to occur was quite exciting to me.
And thank you, staff, for all that you
did to support that expansion for a high energy
member of our community.
I do sit on the executive committee of ABAG,
the Association of Bay Area Governments
and just gonna put a little seed plant
that the Regional Housing Needs Assessment and Allocation
will be coming down the pike,
and so it's, even though that seems so far away,
I think it's in 2028, the process is already beginning
as we think about the housing needs
and then the allocation that will be given
to each community.
ABAG is the organization that is at the center of that.
There was some commentary this time
and prior times on data center.
I spent some time meeting with a constituent specifically
on data centers and concerns that were being expressed there.
You know, I'll leave a few thoughts
that I left with him as well.
It's, you know, Santa Clara has dozens of data centers,
and they've had dozens of data centers for a while.
So, I think being able to assess did Santa Clara run out of water, did Santa Clara's
temperature rise because of the data centers, did the hum from all these data centers drive
people in Santa Clara crazy.
I think being able to look at empirical data of what's happened in Santa Clara will be
useful for us to assess potential for data centers here in San Leandro.
And then what I will do is close really with two things.
Project elevate.
Amen to project elevate.
Going back to 2020, I think, the budget task force spent time on project elevate and said
this is important.
We've got to update our ERP.
We cannot be living in the 1900s.
And so the concept that we have something today, I'll be at 26 years into the new century,
Now our employees can use their phones
to update their personal information in the system.
I mean, stuff that we all take for granted
with online banking and the like,
we finally have that in the city of San Leandro.
And what gives me personal pride
is that it was done on time and on budget.
And anybody who knows anything about ERP implementations,
that does not happen commonly.
So I think there's significant kudos to staff.
A lot of planning went into doing it right,
and I think that planning has paid dividends
and so very grateful for all the hard work.
I cannot tell you the number of times
that I came into the office on the weekend
and saw employees here on the weekend,
see employees leave at seven o'clock at night, late,
and when people talk about government,
it'd be Smurch government,
there were many employees who were highly dedicated
to making this successful,
And I think we should very much sing their praises.
The last thought that I'll leave us with is pride in the US.
Really glad the Supreme Court got that decision right.
That's just awesome.
I do think that I spoke about it at the America 250,
about how we are a very diverse city
and how that is the core of who we are.
And the reason that we gather to celebrate
is because we, the people, we are democracy.
And sometimes democracy is messy, but we own it.
This is our country.
This is our city.
It's incumbent upon us to own what we want our future to be.
And so with that in mind, I just want to say thank you
to the city manager, to the Parks,
Recreation and Parks Department,
to the many, many volunteers that made this event happen.
There were so many smiles as residents,
just in the park told me over and over,
I am so proud that I live in San Leandro.
This was an amazing event.
Thank you for helping my friends
see that I live in a great city.
We had people from Fremont that came up.
We had people from out of state come in that were visiting
and say, we wanna go see what you guys are doing
and from other cities in the Bay Area.
So I thought that was very powerful.
And thank you city manager for getting some flags out
along East 14th.
I mean, there's something about this time of year
when we reflect on the blessings that we have.
And I think that it is important to recognize our blessings.
And that when we make our pledge of allegiance,
it is a pledge, it is a dedication
to liberty and justice for all.
And when we get it wrong, we work to get it right.
And that's what's so important.
And so thank you city staff for all that you have done
to deliver a wonderful week
here in the city of San Leandro.
And with that, it is, what time is it?
According to my phone, it is 9 31 and we are adjourned.