Okay, so it is 706 705 and I have 706 and I'm calling the City of San
Landro City Council meeting to order. Today is Monday July 13th. I will lead us
in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand if you're able to.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Madam Clerk would you please take roll to establish quorum. Council Member James
Aguilar. Present. Council Member Victor Aguilar is absent. Council Member Bolt.
Present. Council Member Bowen. Present. Council Member Simon is absent. Vice Mayor
Viveros-Welton. Present. And Mayor Gonzalez. Present. The City of San Leonardo conducts
orderly meetings to fulfill its mandate and discriminatory statements or conduct
that would potentially violate the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and or
the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. California Penal Code
sections 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 decorum 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. If you
wish to participate in public comment via zoom you can use the raise your hand
tool when the item is called. During the public comment session speakers will be
invited to speak and we'll have a set time to share their comments. A 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.
Okay I consider city manager Eun, I think you've got an announcement for us.
Yes, thank you mayor. Good evening. The fourth annual San Landro restaurant week
is next week from July 19th through the 26th. Join the fun by enjoying specials
at your favorite restaurants and participate in San Landro Restaurant Week Challenge
for a chance to have your meals reimbursed. Over 20 restaurants are participating with multiple
offering one-time and three-course meal specials. So learn more at sanlandro.org slash restaurant
week. And thank you. So even though it's not specifically a city-sponsored event, we are
supportive and collaborative with our Chamber of Commerce. It's important that we support our
business community. So with that I don't believe there's any reportable action on
closed session but I will just turn to my left at the firm. There we go so that
is correct. So let's move on to item number four which is presentations.
Tonight during our work session we've got a couple of presentations. The first
one involves AC transit budget and service updates and we've got Diane
Castlebury and Owen Christofferson here to present and share and welcome good
morning good morning so I'm Diana Castlebury I'm an external affairs rep
for AC Transit it's my pleasure to be here today I will talk about essential
role of AC Transit plays in San Leandro in the East Bay alongside my AC Transit
colleague transportation planner Owen Christopherson,
will also directly address our current budget challenges.
AC Transit is a special district serving 13 cities
and eight unincorporated communities
across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
We carry more than three million riders each month
and are governed by a publicly elected board of directors.
Nearly two thirds of our riders are low income,
making AC Transit an essential lifeline
for all communities we serve.
We're proud to have received the top honor
outstanding public transportation system in the United States in 2023. We provide 40 million rides
every year. More than 140,000 riders aboard our buses on a typical weekday and when school returns
at least 30,000 students will depend on us to get safely to and from class each day. In February,
March, and April, we delivered our first three straight months of year-over-year ridership growth
since the pandemic. AC Transit supports more than 5,100 jobs across the East Bay. More than half
of those jobs are created outside our agency. Together they generate over 604 million in annual
wages and they inject nearly 1 billion dollars into the East Bay economy every year. For over
a quarter century, AC Transit has led the nation in zero emission buses. Today our fleet of 58 zero
emission buses that's out of some 635 buses are eliminating any tailpipe
emissions from our streets. That leadership earned AC Transit a 40
million dollar federal investment to launch the transit's industry first zero
emission bus university known as Zebu. Alongside Chabot College and Union ATU
Local 192 Zebu will help our employees earn associate degrees while preparing
the clean transit workforce of tomorrow. We're making transit more affordable,
faster and safer. On this slide, you'll see the EZ Pass program, which has unlimited rides
at deep discounts at participating employers, colleges, and communities. Clipper Start gives
income eligible adults half off every ride. We redesigned 104 of our bus lines last summer
under what is called the Real Line Network. We have AI powered cameras mounted inside
buses to help keep bus lanes and bus stops clear, improving safety and reliability.
AC Transit riders, as mentioned, nearly two-thirds are low-income.
More than half earn less than $50,000 a year, below the federal poverty level in one of
the nation's most expensive regions.
65% of our riders are transit-dependent.
Service cuts would not be an inconvenience.
They would upend the lives of those who rely most on AC Transit.
You often hear the phrase, good stewards of public dollars.
Simply put, it means making every taxpayer dollar count.
This month we launched the multilingual fair required fair compliance campaign.
Also, a comprehensive California state auditor review found that AC transit syncs service
well with other east bay bus agencies.
And our collective real challenges are sustainable funding not mismanagement.
What's more, an independent review confirmed average annual savings of $33 million since
2020.
This commitment to making every taxpayer payer dollar account is why we have a top-tier AA-plus
credit rating.
When the cost of running our bus network is rising faster than revenue supporting it,
the result is a fiscal cliff.
So what's behind this?
Federal pandemic relief funding is gone.
Regional sales tax revenues have flattened and fair revenue growth has slowed.
Fuel costs are up 28 percent.
maintenance parts have increased 14% and buying new buses have surged 35% so you
can see it's a bit lopsided it's not sustainable. We've taken action in the
last fiscal year alone we tightened our belt by nine million dollars. We've done
this by hiring only four positions that directly support service. We scaled back
temporary service staffing saving roughly two million annually. We brought
outside professional services in-house and we're partnering with other agencies
to purchase goods and services for less we've even temporarily restructured
payments to our pension plan to preserve cash so we're making every taxpayer
dollar count AC transit projects a 200 million dollar deficit over the next
four years that translates into a funding gap of at least 50 million
annually beginning in 2027 without long-term sustainable funding service
reductions of up to 16% began become unavoidable the human pack is that
potential layoffs would be about 300 employees and this would this is our
looming service workforce and community crisis. We've been thrown a lifeline but
it's not a permanent solution it's a state bridge loan and it's exactly that
alone not a bailout and it must be repaid with interest. AC Transit's share
is 55 million dollars enough to close this year's budget gap and avoid service
cups today. But next summer the loan is gone reserves are exhausted and the
the funding challenges return.
That's why HOPE now rests with the Connect Bay Area Act.
This measure would ask voters in five Bay Area counties,
including Alameda County,
to approve a 14-year half-cent sales tax
and then one cent in San Francisco.
If approved, it would generate an estimated $980 million
annually for Bay Area buses, trains, and ferries.
AC Transit would receive approximately $52 million
each year, helping to protect existing bus service
prevent layoffs without long-term funding our bus network remains at risk
I now invite my colleague Owen to provide an overview on our proposed
contingency service plan. Good evening council my name is Owen Kristofferson
transportation planner with AC Transit so you've heard from Miss Casselberry
about the local regional importance of AC Transit as an agency and the folks we
serve as well as the very serious financial challenges that we're facing
So, you know, our strategy and our goal going into this, you know, is plan for the worst
and hope for the best, right?
So, the plan that I'm about to talk to you about, we hope we will never have to use it,
but we do need to make, do that planning work anyway.
The board of directors gave us some guiding principles,
which included maintaining the real line network,
which is a big network redesign recently completed,
minimizing complete service eliminations, instead focusing on span
and frequency reductions, restructuring our high-cost services, and proportionally impacting
service across our network. So, AC Transit, we have something called our primary route network,
and this is something that we really strove to protect. This includes the lines on your screen
here, which are able to be preserved at 15 minutes or better on weekdays. Other lines,
which include the 97. We are unfortunately having to make some cuts, but we are able to maintain at
least every 30-minute service and service hours at least 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. And within this group of
the kind of the backbone of the network, 93 percent of the lines remain unchanged.
So for the city of San Leandro, as I said, we're going to have to make some small cuts to the nine,
which is going to result in some frequency reductions early in the morning and later in the evening.
Line 97 is also unfortunately getting some more significant cuts from kind of 15-minute daily
service 20-minute evening to 30-minute all day and then there are also some other both hourly
frequency and hours of operation reductions that will happen on the other lines serving
San Leandro including the 28, 34, 35, 40 and 93 and if you have some questions about those specific
lines. I can give you those details later. The tempo, our bus rapid transit and our all-night
service are not going to be affected. Just talk quickly about the road ahead,
what this is going to look like for the next year or so. On August 12th, 2026, the AC Transit Board
of Directors is expected to set a public hearing, which would happen on October 14th. As you all
all know the general election is November 3rd. If no new funding is
secured we would have a board meeting on November 8th which would result in a
kind of a plan approval on December 9th for service changes under this plan of
June 13th, 2027. So that's when folks have no new funding is secured would see
the specific changes and that's it. I'm happy to talk more about the lines and
of course we are very interested in hearing the community's feedback about
this plan. You can scan the QR code on your screen to submit comments. You can email planning
at actransit.org and to learn more information about the plan, including these specific line
by line recommendations, you can visit actransit.org slash contingency dash plan. Thank you very
much.
And Ms. Castleberry, was that it?
Yes.
For both of you, perfect. So in the spirit of your last comment of hearing from the community,
what I'd like to do is start with a public comment on this item. We'll hear from the
public and then we'll come back for clarifying questions and discussion. So
Madam Clerk how many cards do we have for public comment on this item? Mayor we
have received two cards from the community however they're not for this
item. Okay and do we have hands online? Checking right now to see if we have any
hands raised online. We have two hands raised online. Okay so we've open and
and closed public comment in person,
we will open public comment online.
Thank you.
Our first online speaker is Alvaro Ramos.
Can you hear me?
Yes. All right.
So I wanted to start off with a reminder
that our current car dependent society is not sustainable
and it's too expensive for cities to maintain
and it contributes to increased municipal debt,
which is why we need more public resources
and we need to spend less on infrastructure.
I mean, the United States has the most expensive
transportation system in the world,
but we have a situation of cars trapping people
in traffic for hours,
bus stops with no practical bus service.
And when I talk about oil shock,
it's not really about the gas prices,
even though, yes, that is an issue.
acknowledge especially for households, but it's about a fuel shortage, not having enough oil
supply to properly fuel an oil-dependent society. And all the international countries are planning
and rationing their fuel sources, but the United States thinks it's the exception to that, which
makes us unprepared to face the real consequences. We should be shielding our residents from oil
shock with public transportation. I also have an issue with the creation of hostile
public spaces that are unwelcoming and cruel to people. Specifically, when I, at bus stops,
you have bus benches that really should be replaced with more comfortable benches that
don't slant at an angle because you don't want people sitting on them or don't have
bars on them and I also am concerned about AC transit's use of AI because AI needs data
centers which contributes to water pollution, air pollution, and higher energy costs for
households.
I think where we really need bus lanes around here is going to be on East 14th and Mission
Boulevard and Bancroft Avenue and Hesperium Boulevard.
And we need to work on higher income writers riding public transit as well.
Thank you, sir.
Your time has elapsed.
Our next online speaker is Douglas Spalding.
Thank you.
Good evening, everyone.
I regret to say I'm coming to the presentation late.
But I fully support everything that Alvaro just said.
you for your incisive analysis always I agree with the need to extend the bus
system I would like to see for example the rapid transit bus that was developed
by my good friend Kathleen O'Sullivan extended from San Leandro Bart station
to Bay Fair and Hayward and like the whole corridor down East 14th and
Mission Boulevard. So I fully support public transit despite other
disappointments and the development of my children. I am proud to say that they
they are Oakland school kids and they take the bus everywhere and my daughter
has ridden the the infamous 57 bus every day. So I also I'll be voting for the
the November ballot issue. But I'm just curious what you're basing your service cuts on.
Like the 97 bus, I know well because that's a bus that my students in San Lorenzo use a lot.
And the number nine bus I think is used by working people out. I mean, students and working
people, who else is riding the bus? Except me when my car breaks down. So I like to better
understand that the rationale for for those cuts it you know it does make some
sense earlier in the morning later they may not me as many writers but but I but
I hate to see the cuts thank you thank you mayor there are no more hands
raised online so with that we'll close public comment and I will afford our
presenters the opportunity to speak should you wish to respond to either of
of the comments, either or both, inclusively.
Yeah, I'll just, this is Owen Christopherson,
transportation planner with AC Transit.
I'll just respond to the comments about the 97
and kind of the methodology
for how we develop these service cuts.
As you can imagine, this was not an easy task.
And this was not a task that, you know, myself
or any planners, you know, look forward to
or want to really complete.
So the goal, as I said, was to maintain as much service
as possible on that real line network,
excuse me, on the primary route network, which
is a combination of not only routes that are high
productivity, high ridership, but also routes with steady
ridership in equity priority communities
and other communities.
So we, you know, every service hour that we cut on one bus, we cut that so that we could
preserve service on another part of the system.
And these, as I said, these were very challenging cuts.
These were not cuts that we, you know, made wholesale.
But we, the, you know, the minimum service standards for the primary route network, which
is that that 97 line is included in that is 30 minutes so we were you know as I
said we were able to at least maintain that that 30-minute service all day and
but yeah just know that every every decision that we made around hours was
to you know really be able to allocate you know really even down to just the
the dozens or the tens of service hours to other parts of the network that
needed it just as much as this area. And I also just wanted to double you know
kind of re-emphasize again that this is you know this is not a plan that is set
to go into effect you know if new funding is secured this fall the Board
of Directors will of AC Transit will not move forward with this plan. Okay thank
you. At this point in time we'll go to council members for their questions
comments beginning with council member Bowen. Thank you Mayor and thank you for
their presentations, can we go to the slide before,
I think slide 12?
12?
Yeah, maybe the one before this.
It was, maybe the one before this.
It had, I don't know which slide it is apparently.
It's the one that had about the different lines
and potential changes in 90 minutes, this one.
No, yeah, no, not this one.
This one.
This one, yes.
Can, I'm interested in line 40,
the one that cuts down Bancroft.
I sit on ACTC as supervisor Tam's representative,
and I also sit on the policy committee
and focus a lot on the San Francisco school
and the student transit pass.
My kids have now, as middle schoolers,
got their clipper card,
so they're really excited to start to use it.
I have incoming high schooler,
and so this idea is how do I get all my kids
to three different schools before school starts,
and the bus is how we're planning on doing that.
And so two things.
One, I'm looking at the route, the stop times for 40.
And at one point, Bancroft Middle School,
one of the big concerns at the bus stop
or was students getting out of school
and a lot of kids like running across the streets,
jaywalking and just trying to figure out,
not paying attention necessarily to red lights.
and it was because they were trying to catch the 40 bus and at one point i think i believe ac
transit had adjusted the time to give the students a little bit more time i just wanted to confirm if
that's still the case because i could be misunderstanding the bus schedule i think
there's a 302 and then a 322 yeah so thank you very much for your comment council member uh so
the 40, yeah so the 40 is currently runs kind of 10 minute frequencies during the day and
20 minute frequencies in the evening kind of runs weekdays 6am to 12 all the way through to 1230am
midnight. For the portion of the 40 in between Eastmont Transit Center and Bay Farm Bart,
the service is going to be reduced to 24 minutes. That's going to be a 24 minute bus
all day and service is going to begin at 4 am actually a little earlier and that's to offset
the that's to offset due to this discontinuation of another owl line so and what I'll say as well
about this planning process is that you know at this point we haven't developed our our exact
schedule but we know how important those school routes are and I've noted your comment and I will
We'll absolutely pass that through
to our scheduling department.
Obviously we don't wanna see this plan move forward,
but in the case that that is the case
and we will work on that, yeah.
Excellent, on the schedule on actransit.org,
it says it's effective August 10th, 2025.
So I just wanna make sure if we can get some feedback
on that, it's like a 20 minute interval,
but if there's any opportunity for that bus
to be just a few minutes later,
it will significantly increase safety
at the middle school and also at the high school
because kids are desperate to catch the bus before,
would not wait another 20 minutes.
Absolutely, and Council Member, just so that I understand,
are you referring to the current schedule right now
where there's an existing problem
or was this something that was already tweaked?
Do you remember?
It was already tweaked, but I'm looking at the schedule
now that's as effective, August 10th, 2025,
and I just wanna make sure that when we're talking
about any proposed changes, that that doesn't get lost again.
Absolutely.
That's a significant barrier for the students
And obviously just again to reiterate that that line
is so important for all of our students in the community.
Absolutely, thank you.
And yeah, we will absolutely be looking at that.
If we do have to move forward with this plan,
there's gonna be a lot of work around scheduling
and coordination as you can imagine,
because not just our services will be affected,
but BART's as well.
So we're really gonna be looking at like every time point
throughout the day.
Thank you.
I would just add one thing is with scheduling coordination
with the schools.
We reach out to the schools every year.
It's really important that if they make changes
to their bell times
because that triggers some of this kind of adjustment,
we need to know as soon as possible in the,
like for that year, upcoming year,
because basically by February,
no later than maybe like the first week of March
before the next school year
is when we need to have that information
so we can kind of time it with the rest
of the overall schedule.
And that's where probably sometimes we have
a little bit of an issue if we don't get that information
from the schools or they decide to change it
after we've already made the schedule.
We had spoken with AC Transit Board
and then AC Transit leadership and staff as well
and engineers had actually come out to the middle school.
I just wanna make sure as we're starting to reschedule
that it doesn't get lost in that.
So I just, and I'm happy to follow up
with anybody that I need to,
just wanna uplift that, thank you.
Council member James Aguilar, whoops.
Thank you mayor.
Thank you so much for the presentation.
I am kind of a self appointed transit nerd.
I love transportation.
I mean, specifically AC transit,
it gets people where they need to be.
School, they need to go to work.
and I'm a product of line 57 in Oakland, line 34.
And I think council member Bowen brought up a great point
with line nine, from my experience taking 34
to San Lorenzo High School and landing
at San Lorenzo High School is something
that I definitely don't want impacted.
But of course, like you said,
that's the worst case scenario.
And I kind of just wanted to uplift
and appreciate the motto plan for the worst,
hope for the best.
And no, I fully understand that, you know,
that is the worst case scenario.
But yeah, impact to line 34 would be an impact
to so many kids.
And same for 35.
I mean, that's a artery up hisparian, right?
But nevertheless, just appreciation.
I love what you guys do.
And I appreciate your approach to fiscal stewardship
and that you know what you're doing.
Yeah, but I would say,
Councilmember Bowen really brought up all the points that I think I had. Yes,
let's focus on not getting here and if we do get here, I'm 34. Let's advocate
for keeping that as is. But of course, thank you very much. Appreciate your
presentation. Vice Mayor, please. Thank you for the presentation and for the
service that you provide to the public in terms of public transit. I had a
couple of questions in terms of I'm looking at slide six in the launch of
having folks use exclusively clipper cards and versus there were some equity
issues in terms of cash paying writers versus non-cash paying writers whereas
cash paying writers were actually were effectively paying more for transit
service. Can you expand? Has there been any any changes to that? Any improvements?
The improvements are happening but they're very slow. Clipper is a third
party vendor that is providing the Clipper card kind of payment service for
all of TransHancet in the Bay Area. And so unfortunately that was a piece that
that is they're still working on. They've made a lot of progress but they're
still not quite there there if if I may and so we are we have a team of folks
who are meeting with Clipper and other Bay Area transit agencies pretty much
on a weekly basis to kind of be checking in on this and helping to kind of
address the issue. Also on our service you know giving some leeway to people
who are riding the bus where they're being affected by, for instance, if they're
a senior youth who normally gets 50% off on their card and then with this
transition over there is not showing up working through our customer service
office trying to get that resolved. And so it is an unfortunate side effect of
of the transition into this new generation of Clipper
that we as the transit agency
don't have a lot of control over
other than just kind of staying on top of Clipper
and then also trying to work with our customers
to help them through this process.
So effectively, cash writers are still paying more
than non-cash writers.
I don't know the numbers on that,
but there probably are some cases where that's happening.
But they're getting resolved.
So they're correcting them.
So a customer will say, hey,
I got charged a full price versus half price.
So then they're going in,
they're working with Clipper and getting addressed
so that then they get refunded that amount.
Thank you for that.
But I'm talking about customers
that don't have a Clipper card that are cash writers.
They're effectively paying more for service.
And I'm asking about whether how that,
is there a timeline for resolution?
The reason that I'm asking is I'm concerned that people who are under banked or people
who don't have access to banking that are effectively paying more for public transit.
And I'm just asking, are there any plans or you can get back to me?
This has been reported widely so that's why I'm asking.
I'm just really concerned about those folks who are under resourced, under banked or not
even using, not able to use banks and effectively paying more for a service that is intended
to be used for the public in general yeah I don't have the specifics on
response to your question I do know that it's definitely on the radar and we are
following up on that and so we can get back to you with those specifics but I
know that there's been a lot of effort to work with those cash paying members
and in some cases even at the fair box there's some they're working with
they're not like turning away riders just because they can't pay because
they're being charged a full amount so we are working on that I have to get
back to you with details I don't want to give you misinformation I appreciate
that my other question and I'm gonna go a little over time is so this is in
relation to the update updated title 6 regulation that just came out of the US
Department of Transportation.
And I'm thinking about, and that's just, again,
making the implicit explicit, it essentially
relieves transit agencies and effectively a lot
of other government agencies of doing equity analysis.
And I'm wondering, what is AC Transit's approach
to this new?
I'm just wondering, what is AC Transit's approach in terms
of in making these recommended changes,
I'm thinking about the intersection of impact
on low-income communities and disparate impact essentially.
And I'm just wondering how is that being factored in?
Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor.
That's a very good question because you're absolutely right
that the federal guidelines have changed in this area.
So for this plan, AC Transit is,
we're running the same types of disparate impact analyses,
Title VI analyses as we would have had the federal,
you know, guidance not changed.
So we are, when the plan will be presented at the board,
it will have a Title VI analysis,
it'll have a disparate impact analysis attached to it.
Thank you.
I really appreciate AC Transit's commitment
to continuing this type of analysis
to ensure that low income and under-resourced communities
continue to have access to public transit.
Thank you so much.
And I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for that
and appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Council Member Bolt, please.
Yes, thank you for the presentation.
Thank you to my colleagues
because most of my questions were asked.
I will say that I am also interested in that
where somebody who gets a clip of card
get some type of discount but then someone paying cash doesn't.
And I understand the idea is to go cashless, if you will.
But I don't want to see anybody that doesn't have the means
be overtaxed, because most likely, not taxed.
That's the correct wrong word.
But essentially, it is because they
don't have the means to get there.
So when you find that out maybe to all of us, cause that is important I think to all
of us, I will put in a selfish plug for Line 35 which goes through my district.
But the last thing was I don't see it and I could have missed it, probably did.
Students used to receive a discount, they used to get cards from the local schools things
like that. Is that still available through the programs? Yeah, so there are
two programs for students or youth. So one is a student transit pass program
that the Alameda CTC provides, and there's two types of student transit
pass programs. So one is an income-based discount, which gives them basically
about a 50 percent, you know, off their fare. The other one is a universal
discount and the universal discount is for that school district all the
students get to ride basically for free and I'm sorry I'm gonna go back to the
the the income base it's also free I'm sorry that correction on the youth
transit clip record it's a 50% discount and they just need to apply and just
demonstrate that they are between the ages of 5 and 18 and a student where do
They can they still apply at their school or because so yes, okay. Yes
So for the student transit pass program their school office
There's usually someone designated who takes care of that and then they work with Alameda CTC
And then also there's someone in our customer service that coordinates with you know
The other two entities so we can get them their student transit pass for the youth clipper card
They can go to clipper dot clipper card comm and go to the youth
discount program and they can fill the application online they can also pick
one up at our customer service or they can reach our customer service and ask
them to you know send them the link or send them the information so they can
get that and we're also out in the community where we provide the brochures
with that information as well. Great thank you very much. You're welcome.
Councilmember Bowen please. Yeah thank you Councilmember Bolt for
looking that again because I literally just went through this process and
because I sit on ACTC, you can go to the alamedactc.org
and all students sixth grade to 12th grade
can get the student pass, and it is free for AC transit buses.
It's 50% for BART, and so any student
from sixth grade to 12th grade in San Leandro
and they just have to apply and put in their number,
their student ID number, and then they'll get it.
Okay, so for me, a couple of questions.
The largest cost component in your budget,
what's the largest cost component?
It's the labor and fringe benefits combined.
One of the things that I think I heard you say
is that you're essentially deferring a payment
or some level of payment for your pensions.
Did I hear that correctly?
Yes.
Okay, can you elaborate on that, please?
I can't elaborate fully because that one surprised me a bit,
but they're deferring, but it's gonna be paid back.
So basically, with the loan that we're getting
from the state of California is deferred for now,
and then they're going to pay that back.
and it was negotiated and passed through our board.
So my primary comment on that is there's a significant risk
associated with pensions, deferral of pension payments,
loans to make pension payments.
A number of transit systems over the years
have gotten in trouble with respect to pensions
and pension payments and the like.
So I think a little bit greater transparency
about something that could be a big risk would be useful and to understand that if the measure
passes, what does that imply about that piece in particular? It was unclear whether the commitment
was that basically all service remains as is. So maybe I should ask that as a question.
Suppose that the measure passes in November. Is there a commitment for the next let's say three years in the forecasting to
maintain the service as is or will is there still anticipated to be service decreases there will not be
anticipated to be any service decreases any service cuts if they met if the funding is secured
November and so the current levels of service and of course potentially more service or
You know all of our our potential future plans those will still be able to move forward as is
If that funding is secured in November, so I do want to dig into that one a little bit because we just went through a process
of realign
Which resulted in service cuts to a number of neighborhoods and writers for purposes of delivering better service?
In the higher use lines right and I use a term trunk. I forget your term
Priority network or what's the correct term primary route network primary network
So in that real line process there were already adjustments
but what I think I hear you saying is there would be no further decreases and
then you kind of tossed in as a little bit of a teaser and there might be some increases is that like a
Wish or is that modeled out? That's a wish. Yeah
commitments to service increases, but, you know, and this was why we worked so hard to
try to not, because, you know, an alternative would have been to do another, you know, real
line or redesign or something like that as part of this contingency plan since that,
as I'm sure you know, multiyear process was recently completed, we were really trying
to hang on to those recently redesigned routes and lines as much as we could and just make
these little adjustments in terms of frequency and hours of operation.
you for that and thank you for the presentation as a whole. I think that
there have been several asks from the council. If you can, when you circulate
the answers, just hit the full council. My ask that I will add is clarity around
the magnitude of this pension payment deferral and kind of a little bit about
the the math of that because my recollection is that it's a relatively
large number and so if we can just kind of get some clarity transparency for
lack of a better word. Okay so thank you for coming and joining us today and we
will move on to our next agenda item. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Okay
so at this point in time we will move to item 4B and we have got acting city
manager you in here to introduce this item. Okay thank you mayor and council
tonight's staff will be presenting updates on our five priority work plans quality of life
economic development public safety infrastructure and housing and homelessness to give you some
context and on the history of these plans the quality of life and economic development
work plans span fiscal year 2025 through fiscal year 27 and staff first presented these work
plans to you in the fall of 2024. The public safety infrastructure and housing and homelessness
work plans span fiscal year 26 through fiscal year 28 and staff presented updated work plans to you
in July of 2025. You last received updates on all of the work plans at your council
annual planning session that was held in March of this year.
So we will have various staff present updates to their work plans this evening.
We will discuss next steps at the end of the presentation,
but as further context this is an update only presentation. No edits are being made
and no items are being added to the work plans tonight.
We will bring forward new work plans for fiscal years
28 and 29 next year as part of your biennial budget process which will include your annual
planning session next year.
So we will first start off with the quality of life and economic development work plans
which will cover work conducted across fiscal years 25, 26 and 27 and I will hand it over
to library director Brian Simons to kick off quality of life.
before you kick off we've had some discussions internally about how to
prepare your questions your thoughts etc at the end of each council priority
will come to you for your reactions any questions clarifications or commentary
that you may have okay so we'll go so it's gonna so just be mindful that that
may stretch out our presentation but it will let you be timely to what you are
hearing. And just to be clear after each priority section. So after quality of life. Okay. Perfect.
Thank you. Appreciate that clarification. Well, good evening. As stated, Library Director
Brian Simons. And I'll be here this evening to present a portion of the quality of life
presentation. I'll be handing that off later to our Rec and Parks Director to
continue with the second section. Many of the quality of life priorities that are
listed here today are either completed ahead of schedule or they are on track
to be completed on time. In part that's been made possible because the
priorities have been aligned with our city's strategic planning documents, so
we've been able to really keep on track that way. That said, many of these quality
of life priorities are ongoing efforts, so there's still plenty of work to do,
and we're going to continue to do that to continue offering these services. Our
first priority is developing and implementing an arts grants program. This
was achieved with each objective completed on time or head of schedule.
Since City Council has generously funded $30,000 for the Arts Grants Program in
fiscal year 27, this will again continue to be one of our focuses even though
we've effectively achieved it, again it's ongoing. We have to keep up with this.
What we've been able to do is establish a proven recurring process annually.
We create a detailed budget with the Arts, Culture, and Library Commission.
We review and update the arts grants application and process.
We hold at least one kickoff reception to promote the grants
and also provide opportunity for prospective grantees to get acquainted with the process and ask questions.
And the library then library staff then manages the application process and
submissions which depending on the year can range from we've had as low as 10
and as high as about 60. The ACLC the Arts Culture Library Commission grant
selection committee then chooses the grantees and from there the library
staff then manage payments to the grantees and the grantees reporting when
when the project is done.
So while this is fairly time intensive,
it really does bring some value to our community.
We've also identified businesses and sponsors
as possible supporters.
Library staff and the ACLC, with the ACLC support,
will explore monetary and in-kind donation requests
and grant opportunities going forward.
Our next priority is expanding utilization
of art gallery spaces in city facilities
and establishing partnerships for installations.
The first two objectives were recently completed
in June of 26, with the third currently on track
for completion December of 26.
A catalog of possible city owned spaces
as gallery spaces was created.
It really aligns into two really distinct
and separate types.
We've got indoor spaces, which are really good for short-term,
possibly long-term exhibits, and are really
more focused around your wall hangings.
And then our outdoor parks and facility ground spaces,
which would yield themselves to more long-term or permanent
exhibits, which really yield themselves well
to large outdoor 3D sculptures and possibly murals.
What you're seeing in the images below there,
obviously the examples with art hanging are just examples,
but also our spaces that would be of value.
But the spaces with no art, so for instance,
the middle one there with the fenced in wood chips,
that's in Root Park, and there's, I believe,
three of those little box spaces.
And that's where the Dahlia garden beds
used to be years and years ago before it got too shaded.
So that's kind of ready-made to have a sculpture
within a little fenced in area.
Another example is the facility,
the city facility building at Halcyon Park,
which is the one on the far right as you look at it,
that perhaps city structures like this could house a mural.
So our biggest opportunity in this regard
from what we've been looking at
looks to be that large outdoor opportunity.
So where am I here?
Oh, artists and agencies have been identified
and contacted to gauge interest in exhibiting.
There still needs to be some ongoing work we have to do.
So this is the objective we haven't yet finished.
So some ongoing efforts remain to connect artists and agencies
to commit to exhibiting.
We still need to build an understanding of the exhibit
spaces and locations, so some site visits
have to happen with artists.
We need to detail the arts value and insurance requirements
if they're going to exhibit with us,
and we need to acquire the ACLC's recommendations,
of course.
The area with the, as I mentioned on the last slide,
the largest opportunities for those outdoor works,
but a gap exists with the artists available
and the funding available for those large pieces.
The priority to develop programs celebrating community
and diverse cultures in San Leandro has been achieved,
but it too is an ongoing effort.
We've created an annual calendar
for cultural and special events,
so the public can more easily find these events
on the city's website.
Also, the library, rec and parks,
SLIA and other agencies meet quarterly
to plan for best outcomes.
One of the things that we really focus on
when we meet like this is we really are now looking
at trying to do a unified city response,
and we try to amplify each other's efforts,
whoever is taking the lead,
as opposed to duplicating efforts.
That wasn't always the case
until we really focused in on this priority.
Now we're really working more as a team.
And we also collaborate to avoid automatic repeats.
So we really take a look at what's working, what's not.
There's no automatics anymore.
We kind of evaluate and see where we're at,
and if it's worth repeating, then we'll do so.
If it's not, then we try to look at something else.
The library alone has held 945 events for the fiscal year
at the time of creating this presentation in May.
I just looked today, and early data from the fiscal year
shows about 1,100.
Examples include Lunar New Year, the Lucha Libre Hispanic
Heritage event, the Black Choir event for Black History Month,
Fred Korematsu exhibit with Karen Korematsu
as keynote speaker, Cinco de Mayo, the MLK oratory event,
and those are just to name a few of many, many, many
I could go on for probably a half hour just listing events.
We have also expanded utilization
of early childhood education programming.
And now as we have done that,
we also have to sustain that effort.
This focus began December of 24
and was completed in December of 25.
Through outreach, using in-person bilingual verbal
communication and conducting better planning
for regular communications, we've
improved communication with the target audience
of bilingual early childhood programs.
So what I mean by that is more people who natively speak
that language are coming to those programs,
as opposed to people who are coming there to try to expose
their kids to that language.
And it's shown, attendance has grown.
We've also expanded participation in the Thousand
Books for Kindergarten program.
And this focus on this program sparked a redesign
and a greater emphasis on carrying out
this ongoing effort for our community.
Programs like Stay in Play and Lego Robotics,
we connected with in-home daycares,
as well as a lot of other library partner agencies.
And then expanding technology-based adult education
priority was completed in December of 25.
However, especially in this current AI environment,
it's going to take a lot more continued vigilance on our part
to really continue to work with our community
to make sure our community is prepared and resilient.
And the way we do this is we teach adult literacy
in multiple ways.
The library and senior center staff
lead classes. We have paid presenters. The library also offers tech tutors, which is
a volunteer and patron that we match together. And we also provide online self-paced offerings
with LinkedIn Learning and now Fiero Code. So this completes my portion of the Quality
of Life presentation. And I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Rec and Park Director
Vicente Zuniga, to continue this presentation.
Good evening, Council. Vicente Sunega, Recreation Parks Director. So the first one I'm going
to speak on is expanding volunteer opportunities for cleaning streets and public spaces citywide.
So staff was able to grow Beautify San Diego into a high-impact program, funding 13 community-led
projects and building a network of 600-plus volunteers while launching, also launching
the trash free initiative. Local businesses like Girardelli have supported our efforts
through employee volunteer days. A couple of pictures of coastal cleanup as well as
Girardelli's Gibbs Day where we had over 200 volunteers participating in cleanups.
The next one I have is design and implement a planning initiative to introduce native
and drought tolerant plants across city parks, medians and public spaces. So staff was able
to launch a citywide planning initiative, introducing native and drought tolerant landscapes,
establishing long-term turf reduction strategies, and create a public facing plant pallet webpage
as a resource for the community.
A couple pictures of one of the projects, turf reduction, as well as our city website
that has native plants and resources for the community.
The next one is expand citywide tree canopy coverage.
So urban forestry efforts are underway.
staff was also able to secure a 244 thousand state grant launch a tree
sponsorship program and increasing community education through workshops
and partnerships. A couple pictures Arbor Day as well as partnering up with the
extreme heat planning grant with San Leandro 2050. The next one is strategic
placement of litter receptacles to maximize usage and enhanced cleanliness
so staff is negotiating for some additional big belly containers beyond
those that were included in the original contract so on top of the 20 that were
downtown staffs currently negotiating to up that number the older plastic litter
cans did not perform well in San Leandro so we're hoping the new containers will
improve durability capacity as well as cleanliness develop recreation programs
for inclusivity and diverse age groups so staff have been able to expand
programming nearly tripling all-age offerings increased bilingual classes
and advance adaptive recreation partnerships partnerships with local
organizations to create accessible and affordable healthy eating options really
focusing on low-income families so the city was able to invest more than
and 180,000 in 11 community organizations
to strengthen food access and food security
throughout San Leandro.
These partnerships had to help provide food assistance
to approximately 23,000 residents through pantries,
meal delivery, grocery distribution,
and daily youth nutrition programs,
including the Boys and Girls Club Meal
and Edible Garden Initiative,
host health and active living events.
So city staff was able to expand community wellness
opportunities by offering free fitness programs,
outdoor exercise classes, and family-friendly
active recreation events in partnership
with local organizations, strengthening community
partnerships to promote healthy lifestyles
through wellness initiatives, fitness challenges,
and signature events, such as some of the five and 10
cases we're having at the Marina Park.
A picture of girls on the run, as well as
free yoga and the park sessions that we had throughout the city. Partner with
local organizations for expanded senior services. So staff was able to expand
senior education and wellness by partnering with Tech Exchange to
provide multilingual digital literacy classes and serving roughly about 97
seniors. Staff was also able to offer specialized caregiver training for
Alzheimer's as well as dementia support services estimated 28 participants and
provide valuable education and resources. So the last deliverable that we have on
the quality of life work plan is to collaborate with schools for public use
of recreation facilities. So staffs continue to advance negotiations with
San Leandro Unified School District to update the master joint use agreement to
expand community access to shared facilities,
staff has also been working and implementing
a new field allocation policy to improve scheduling
and maximize field utilization.
We've also expanded partnerships with schools,
nonprofit organizations to increase community programming,
outreach, and participation through community events.
And here's a couple pictures of some of the joint
use sites that we have.
We have a junior warriors program,
it's robust and really popular,
That's one of our joint-use sites
Gymnasiums with San Leandro Unified School District. So we have leads
in different services and activities that some of the joint-use fields we have is a picture of
One of our partners we have with the girls softball league
That I'm open for questions
Thank you for the presentation on this council priority. We will begin with council member Bowen
Thank You mayor. I love all of the priorities and all of the departments
but I will say really love these two.
So I'm gonna share a few things.
I wanted to give one piece of feedback
and ask that's gonna apply to the entire presentation
as it relates to all of the departments.
I know we've talked a lot about
trying to present the work plans
and have them scaffold up to the strategic plans
and then the goals that we have.
And if we could go back to any number,
any one of the slides, for example,
like part, yeah, I'm collaborating with schools
for like years of recreational facilities.
To me, it's a fantastic thing that we are doing,
and it is because it is tied to something
that is in our strategic plan.
I think it would be really helpful
to just have a little section
that says what it ties up to or what plan we have
so that it's really clear to anybody
that looks at the work plan,
and it's really clear how this is building
towards a goal we have.
And I think in the library presentation, for example,
If I look at the strategic plan you have for the library,
it says our strategic priorities
and four key opportunity areas,
communication services, facilities, people,
that would be really great to have up there
because it's exactly why we're doing this.
Like why should we collaborate with the schools?
It's a great thing to do,
but how does it tie to something
that we have said we wanted
or that is going to immeasurably improve quality of life?
Like we know it to be true,
but it's helpful to see that
so that we can justify funding for it
and say this is exactly how that's happening.
And I really do appreciate that there are so many things
here that I know are, is direct feedback from the council
or you've heard us have conversations about.
I know that there are things that I have said
that I see up there right now.
And I'm like, yay, it happened, right?
So super appreciative of staff.
So one of the things I also wanted to mention,
love the library programming so much,
really love that we have early childhood education,
that we're really focusing on uplifting
and improving capacity for the childcare staff
even to come in and doing it in bilingual ways
and in culturally appropriate ways, inclusive ways,
so important.
On Wednesdays, it is really beautiful to see the number
of folks that are there and, you know,
and parents, caregivers, grandparents that are there.
So it really is a critical community space.
So shout out to Library Services for that.
It's like the number one thing I hear about from everybody.
I was at the Karen Karamatsu event,
and I will say that I was really moved by one,
how much it is tied to San Leandro.
And that also made me think about the art walk
that we have, which is phenomenal.
At one point, I had given some feedback around,
including a history walk as part of that.
So, for example, we can very much tie in
Fred T. Kiaramatsu into the history of San Leandro,
and it's just a simple addition,
so something to just think about.
Really also appreciate the work
around beautification and volunteerism.
We've talked a lot about that, and senior services.
I know we have the Senior Friendly Plan,
I forget the exact name of it, that we work through,
but to highlight how those things
are absolutely doing that right now,
because we wanna give you that recognition.
And then also really appreciate the effort by the city
to do what we can in our limited scope
around food access and food scarcity
and the partnership with San Fernando Unified School District
for rec programming because that is a huge ask
the community has coming to with spaces
to be able to participate in recreation,
especially now that we have this phenomenal gym
for the high school, but if we don't build up opportunities
for kids to learn how to play those sports,
they won't really be able to utilize that.
So I just really wanted to uplift all of that for you all.
Yeah, thank you.
And yeah, you're correct.
I think there's a lot of alignment
with a lot of our strategic plans,
age-friendly action plan, library strategic plan,
recreation parks master plan, tree master plan.
And a lot of those plans have robust community engagement.
And so you're seeing the connectivity and the synergy between council, the community
and what the programs that they want and initiatives they want.
And this is a great reflection of this plan that takes all of those plans together with
these deliverables.
So thank you for highlighting that.
At this point, we've got a Councilmember Boldt.
Thank you both for the presentation.
I'm going to start with one that I know of Councilmember Simon was here, he'd comment
on and that's the expanding citywide tree canopy coverage.
It's important to him.
I think we all believe in that, but I
know he would have said something,
so I'm taking the chance to say it for him.
Additionally, the planting of the initiative
for native plants, I've seen it in some of the local parks.
I love it.
It's a great idea.
It makes it actually feels cleaner and tighter,
and I know it's better on our resources.
Volunteer opportunities, I've been out to a couple of those
who are doing the clean ups for planting trees.
Those are great.
community comes out, they feel invested in it. I've heard multiple people after
the fact, hey look at our tree, it's doing good, you know, like it's our tree, you
know, it is. One thing that I really love, the idea of the art gallery spaces in the
city facilities, that's awesome. I can't say enough about it. I will take one
One second to say this, because my wife beats me up over it all the time.
She won an art contest at Santa Andrea City High when she was in 95 or four.
And it was placed down here at City Hall.
And so I hear about her all the time from her, so I'm saying it now.
I think those type of efforts that we can, you know, connect with our local school districts
and do those things.
It brings them in and they feel ownership of it.
So if we can somehow collaborate with that
in the gallery spaces, that would be so neat.
Lastly, I'll end with this.
The city facility murals, awesome.
When you go to different places and you see a new mural up
and they look fabulous.
I did wanna ask,
because I feel like there was some prices
kind of thrown around last time,
somewhere around the two grand mark
for the trash enclosure and the downtown area.
Can somebody say if I'm way off or I'm close?
I see some looks right now like,
oh, let me back it up a little bit.
I'm not sure if that is the accurate number or not.
If it's a part of the arts grants,
I could check into that to see what the total amount was.
If it's the one I'm thinking of,
it's the one Celia applied for and thought and did.
So yeah, and it was around the trash enclosure.
I think my guess, if I had to guess again,
I don't have data in front of me,
but my guess if it was 2000,
it was probably 2000 that the arts grant applied to.
And then there were other funds that they applied
in addition to that 2000.
I think it would be neat for us to maybe like a challenge
even to a council member in their district.
Hey, you wanna mural up at the Marina Park
around the facility.
Let's get some people from the community to come out,
see what kind of money we can raise,
what kind of time we can spend cleaning up
and helping reduce the costs.
But I would love to see more of those murals,
especially around the facilities,
like you mentioned for the one at Toyon Park.
Or not, no, it's not Toyon.
It's 140, Halcyon, 143rd, right.
But at the marina, we have a few of those facilities
with big walls, it would be so neat to just see
a nice big mural out there, butterflies,
whatever we can think of.
So thank you for all the work that you guys are doing.
It makes it a cleaner, nicer place to be.
And I know we all appreciate your work on this.
Thank you.
Okay, so I will follow up on murals.
Do we have budgets set aside for maintenance of murals?
From the arts grants perspective,
we do not have budgets set up for maintenance.
Maintenance generally the way we've talked about it with the grantees has been since it's we're just funding it and there
They've secured the space and the the rest of the funding for it. The maintenance of it is up to the
either the however, they structure it the the applying agency the artist the
Owner of the building, but the city doesn't have that responsibility as of right now
Yeah, it's something that I think that we should be thinking about
particularly for the ones that we view as more permanent structures and budgeting for it explicitly.
You know, every 10 years we need to refresh the colors on the mural, or whatever the case may be,
particularly if it's on a city building. So that's the first thought on murals.
When you talked about the Arts Grants Program, I know a lot of energy went into setting up the
infrastructure, the process, the controls, whatever the case may be. Now that it's
established, setting aside the funding cost for the actual distributions, the
grants, what does it cost to run that program? Thank you, that's a good question.
Our secretary, who is the assistant library director, spends probably nine
months out of the year working I would say a good 10 hours to 20 hours a month
on that program. It's more extensive than you'd think because of all of the intake
of the grants and then organizing it in a way that the Commission can work with
and then also we're the the staff level that communicates back to those who get
grants and those who don't get grants. And then the management of the funds
going out to the the grantees and then we're the ones that follow up to make
sure it got done, that the art actually got done, so we don't have to ask for our
funds back. And then if it does get done then we're the ones that also get the
reporting and we communicate. And there's a lot of, since a lot of these folks
applying, haven't ever done anything like this before. It's a new it's a new
process for them too and we really have to kind of coach them through sometimes
even the application process. So it's a lot more work. Let's revisit that
offline because I got some ideas. Events, so we have providers that come in. Do we
have some sort of standard fee schedule for what we pay the puppet person or the
musician that comes to the library? We do. I'm going to ask you to disclose it
even, but just we do. We do. That's really all that I want to know. For the bilingual
events, you had something on page three. I didn't really understand the comment. It
was something like, people are coming to receive training in the native language?
So yes, so this is our bilingual storytimes.
So in the past, we've seen more people
who it is not their native language coming
to expose their children to this, as opposed to really
the target audience is, if you speak Chinese or Mandarin,
and we're doing Mandarin storytime,
we would love if Mandarin speakers came as children
and families, as opposed to people
who want to expose their kids to it.
And we've kind of started to turn the corner there
and get that traction with those families.
Perfect.
For the 1,000 books, I think we initiated that.
This fiscal year, is that right?
Or was that two years?
The 1,000 books before Kinder.
Was that this year that we initiated that?
We've been doing it, but at a very, almost very, very
passive way.
This last year we started featuring it,
and the feature has really helped accelerate.
And it's really been helping our staff communicate.
And seeing the community latch onto it a little more
also inspired the library staff to say,
you know, the images are kind of stale.
Let's re-up that.
The program is stale.
Let's re-up that.
Approximately how many participants?
It's hard to, I don't mean to evade your question,
but it's a running program that you can start at birth
and you end whenever you're done with a thousand.
And more like for people that are enrolled
and not graduates.
On an annual basis, probably about a thousand folks
at a time are doing it.
Okay, thank you.
And then just two more, one more question.
Expansion of senior services.
Thank you, can you put some quantum on that?
Have we doubled, tripled?
We increased by two programs?
Help me understand what that means.
Expansion of senior services for seniors.
I think we have a 15% increase in services for seniors.
We're also currently exploring senior services
has transitioned and is part of now
the recreation parks department.
So we have a lot of data and community feedback
on additional expansion of senior services.
so we're taking a lot of recommendations
from the age-friendly action plan.
For any more specifics, I can pass it on
to former Human Services Director as well, too, if needed.
Fine, so then I'll end with a comment,
and that's just gratitude for all the work
that you guys are doing.
I think that in terms of quality of life,
there's a lot of metrics that point to
the significant increase in service levels.
And just repeatedly, I talk to residents
who say, thank you for the library,
thank you for the parks, thank you for the programming,
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
There's a lot of gratitude for the work that you're doing.
And I'll close with this, I had an email
that I got today specifically
about the Washington Manor pickleball courts.
Saying that it's on that list
of the top five pickleball courts in the Bay Area.
So, you know, we gotta, we gotta,
we gotta ride when we're there.
Anyway, so thank you for what you are doing.
At this point in time, we will move on
to our next council priority,
which is economic development.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
I'm here to introduce our economic development manager,
Katie Bowman.
Katie and her team have been the primary leads
and to Council Member Bowman's point,
the basis for this economic development,
priority work plan is the economic development strategy
from 2024, so.
That's right and I took a moment to look up, right,
what are our goals for that strategy?
So to grow the local economy,
expand the image and identity of San Leandro,
spur new investment in high quality jobs,
and improve the quality of life for residents.
And as we've talked about in economic development,
overall goals are to support businesses
and the local economy in order to create revenue
for city services and programs.
And so here in our work plan,
we have six areas of focus.
And the first that we've talked about with you before,
to support growth of businesses and target industries,
where, through our strategy, we found
that we have a competitive advantage,
and they have a lot of potential for growth,
including what we would call clean tech.
We have a number of battery companies, food technology,
advanced manufacturing, and what I'm
hearing from the businesses they now call hard tech,
and biomedical, and more specifically,
medical device manufacturing.
And so in that area, we presented to you a deeper
dive in this area on the Innovation Action
Plan back in March.
And also to begin implementing it, as well as our Retail
Attraction Plan, we've made a number of updates
to the city website, as well as attractive and really usable
flyers that you see here.
And under the Retail Action Plan,
put retail listings available.
and you can see more at sandlandro.org backslash retail.
And most recently work that we have come to you to talk about
is the city brand assessment and really doing a city place
branding project, as you know, and looking at how not just
the imagery, but the messaging behind it.
And we've been hearing really great things from the community.
And we'll be moving from the input phase
to initial ideation phase to bring that into concepts,
which we will later present to you all in the fall.
And then in the long term, the goal of that
is to use that in city programming and messaging,
as well as in attraction efforts, and even for the community
to identify with.
Our next area is to support development and update our zoning.
And we have worked on this in three key areas
to engage the development community to hear
about their needs and also to attract development,
to work in a number of ways in improving our process,
as well as to work on updating our regulations
and most specifically our zoning code,
which as you know, oversees development standards.
On the outreach side, we held our annual,
what we call a broker breakfast or a development breakfast.
There's a picture of that there
And it gets a number of attendees, recurring attendees,
to come and learn about opportunities in San Leandro.
And also, really, the core of the work in this area
has been done by members of our planning team, our building
team, the public works engineering team.
And so you'll see, in the housing presentation,
Wayland Lee, our planning manager,
will share some other things as well in this area.
And I highlight that because not only does it
help commercial development, it helps housing development.
And so with a goal to help make development efficient and straightforward.
And so several concrete things have been set up in that regard, what we call a customer
experience survey where people can provide feedback on service at the permit center,
as well as an interdepartmental development review committee, a more formal process to
review applications internally, as well as in a CELA power users
group, which that is our permitting software.
And with regards to non-residential zoning,
our planning team has been working for the past year
with a consultant in this area.
And that zoning really we're working off
of a structure that was set up in the 80s.
And so initially, they've been doing a lot of behind the scenes
work related to updating the structure, incorporating amendments that have been made over the years
for consistency usability.
And next, moving into outreach and engagement to try to make sure that it's understandable,
includes current uses, is modern, also reflects, you know, what the community and council want,
and then also reflects some regional activities going on.
And so you will see on this one it does show a delay of that project and I just wanted
to note that the proposal is for it to come to completion by the third quarter of 27.
And if you have any more questions, we can talk more about that in a bit.
The third area is in supporting industrial districts and addressing infrastructure needs.
And here we've worked on two projects to look at as I mentioned finding funds for city services.
And so we have done some evaluation projects
to look at opportunities across departments
and across city facilities for ways to improve efficiency,
to generate revenue, reduce risks.
And so starting, we just completed
working with a consultant on a city real estate assessment
and really gathering all of the real estate that's
managed by multiple departments.
The city, not only do we have civic facilities like City Hall
Here we lease properties and of course have other community
centers.
And looking at best practices and ways
to do best property management.
The consultant had shared we actually
have a relatively large real estate portfolio for the size
of city that we are.
And we are also now working with the parks,
excuse me, with recreation, with library, with public works,
to gather the thoughts across departments
and gather information on what are we doing right now
with regards to what we call private partnerships.
So that could range anywhere from sponsorships and vendors
all the way to development agreements
and partnering on developments.
And so what are we doing right now?
What might we consider doing?
And then if that's something that we recommend,
We would bring that forward for the council to discuss.
Fourth area, working on supporting exciting retail
as well as placemaking.
And in that area, we completed last year the retail action
plan.
And then this year, updating commercial incentive programs
as well as placemaking.
And so one item that we did on the commercial incentive program
is we made a $5,000 really streamlined grant process
that we developed during COVID.
And it has been really popular and really useful.
And so we worked to make that, make a permanent process
for that and make it more user friendly.
Also going on in downtown throughout the past couple
of years is that we've been implementing
some of the remaining ARPA recovery funds.
We're at the very end of that.
And so from those funds, we have seen different things
like outdoor tables downtown, those blue and yellow tables,
some permanent tables, as well as that downtown art
walk that you mentioned, and also quarterly power washing,
which happens behind the scenes.
Fifth area is to support residents with workforce
training and education.
In that area, we developed a workforce partnership strategy
and outreach plan.
And a couple of things that I wanted to highlight here
is we have been working to support an effort called
the San Leandro First Jobs Program.
It's really excited.
Tarani has spearheaded it.
And it's a manufacturing-focused internship program.
And they, in another business, are working interns
through the program this summer and hope
to build more employers for the next year.
And also, as Brian Simons mentioned,
We work with the chamber on a number of programs
that we support through our annual contract.
One of them is the chamber job fair
and we work to amplify their work.
And also that this year there were new head shots
and all sorts of exciting things.
And finally, working to support small businesses
and entrepreneurs.
And in that area, we have completed a resource outreach plan
as well as updating materials to help make our process more
understandable to different types of people and businesses.
One key way that we've worked in that area
is through monthly continuing monthly free small business
advising, which is held at the chamber
and is provided by the East Bay Small Business Development
Center and continuing to work to do outreach to businesses
about that, as well as continuing our regular business outreach visits.
And our development team, building, planning, engineering,
have continued to update flyers and materials, update our SLA system.
And also, one final thing that's not on here
that was mentioned at the beginning of the meeting
is the restaurant week, which is also a program
that we amplify through the contract with the chamber
to support small businesses and restaurants.
And you are complete.
Your timing is literally perfect.
Very impressive.
With that being said, we will come to council members
for questions, reactions, comments, and the like.
I know, sorry, there's not a ending slide, but yes.
I just had to take a breath.
So beginning with Vice Mayor, please.
Thank you, Katie.
Thank you, Tom, for your work and your team's work.
I just have a couple of questions.
I wanted to go to slide 39, and I'm
just wondering who the customer is that is being referred to,
develop formal process for customer interactions
and feedback.
Who's the customer here?
Is it people applying for permits?
Yep.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, and then it's on the email signature block
for everyone in community development.
So theoretically anyone that I work with
or any of us work with could provide feedback.
Gotcha, thank you for that clarification.
I also wanted to go to the workforce development slide.
Let me go to, so it is goal five, slide 45.
And then on the subsequent slide on 46,
it talks about there's three bullets.
There's a Stanley Ander first jobs program,
But that, who is the host of the Sally and Her First Jobs
Program?
Yeah, that is a private initiative.
Tarani, it is multiple parties, though.
Tarani is playing a role.
The chamber is supporting the school district, workforce
development board, the city.
So really, it's a multidisciplinary.
But the organization's putting funding in for the internships
are the businesses.
Gotcha.
Thank you.
Just something that I've been reflecting on and thinking
about is I would consider myself a higher education
expert.
That's what I do for my day job as well as kind of connecting
workforce development with higher education.
Not higher education with the capital H,
but post-secondary education that includes certifications,
training certificates, apprenticeships,
that whole kind of ecosystem.
And one thing that I walk away with
that I don't know, are if we look at industry
in San Leandro and looking at the job needs
of who we have right now, so that we're able to upskill
and actually either support, coordinate, partner
with our local community college district
and with the kind of various institutions
that provide that kind of post-secondary education
and training, I'm just thinking about what is it
I don't know and what I don't know is what are the types of certificates and education
that the current family under job market is asking for so that we're actually able to
build programs to expand access to jobs for people that wouldn't normally have access
to those jobs. And so there's a lot of kind of already ongoing work through some of the
regional partnerships on kind of mapping out what are the industry needs. But you know,
as we talk to businesses, especially some of our larger employers, we know that there
is a shortage of health care technical workers. And so are we able to partner with our local
Community College District to provide those certificated people to be able to be placed
locally in San Leandro. There's HR professionals. So I'm just wondering, like, if we look at the
industry in San Leandro and we kind of have a kind of like a heat map of we have a shortage of
finance managers that don't necessarily need to have a college degree but do need to have some
some sort of certificated training or HR professionals
or some sort of like manufacturing technical skills
where you have to be,
you have to have a certificated training.
Anyway, so what I'm trying to get at
is to really understand what is the gap
in certifications, education, ongoing adult education
to actually meet the needs of local San Leandro industry
and regional.
So that's just something that kind of comes up for me.
I really, I have a lot more comments and questions,
but we're halfway through our slide deck
and there's a lot of staff waiting to talk to us.
So I'll leave that at that.
Appreciate your time and your investment
and to the rest of the team, thank you.
So I do want to be clear about our use of time
because we talked about it as a team
and we recognize that we may not be able to finish today.
It was a conscious decision made by certain people
to let's just plow through with everything.
But I am very clear about this.
These are the five council priorities.
We will spend as much time as we want to
on each of the priorities.
That was very clear coming into this meeting.
So I don't want any council member
to feel like they cannot ask
because you have to protect other staff members.
Everyone is aware of the challenge that we face.
And as we look through our time,
if we honestly don't feel like we're gonna get
to the last two, that's fine.
We'll just adjourn and we'll continue
at our next working session to work through them.
So please do not hesitate to ask your questions.
That being said, the one thing that I did wanna offer
Ms. Bowman, if you wanted to,
make, discuss a little bit some of the connections
perhaps with the battery manufacturers
and some of the guidance and connection
that has been provided to them
and or talk about Carrington College
or other opportunities that you are already aware of.
Thank you, yes.
Yeah, you had asked what are we hearing
from businesses as to needs?
You know, an ongoing thing, you know,
for all that time I've been here is the aging out
of people in the trades and other people at our businesses.
And that has been ongoing and, you know,
and there's still more work to be done there.
We do talk about that with the community colleges
and the Carrington College expansion is one example
where they have added electrical training there.
Another thing that we have heard is the need for battery
technicians and with several of our battery companies
that are looking to move to small stage pilot production.
And they kind of do multi-year planning.
So we don't see it yet, but they're planning for it in one.
As the mayor had mentioned, there
have been some discussions and concepts
related to more targeted internship programs
or programs with the community colleges and in the high school
and things like that.
In all of these areas, this first phase over the past year
has really been building those relationships
and strengthening those relationships with the providers.
And there's still a lot of work to be done.
So certainly I hear what you've shared.
Okay, so we will go to council member, council member Bowen.
It's me again.
I'm on, I'm here.
And I decided to let council member Vice Mayor go first
because I'm like trying to cue in for everything.
I love economic development and I love this department.
A few things, I had the opportunity
to visit Oklahoma City earlier this year
and really focus on how they've been able to build out
because of public private partnerships.
So I'm really excited that we're really focusing
on that as well.
I think that the more that we can get stakeholders involved
in shared goals, the more people will obviously
then be committed to help the community thrive.
I also cannot talk about economic development
without talking about childcare.
And so I really appreciate childcare
as a economic development strategy
and making sure that when we have businesses here,
especially large businesses,
that there's also an understanding
that if there is no childcare,
employees, especially women,
will choose to work somewhere else
because they will not have a place for their children.
So really want to uplift that.
And I know that that is part of our plan,
but that's constantly being part of the calculus
and we're thinking about how to build things out.
In terms of workforce development,
and I actually think about it
along with small business entrepreneurship,
I really love our focus on that
because one of the things that makes San Leandro
so special is because it feels really accessible
and small town and vibrant,
and I think that that's because we have
so many small businesses
that we're really trying to support our local economy.
And so I know we didn't talk about it in this one
and we've talked about it in the past,
but in terms of that support we have
for small businesses and workforce development,
are we focusing on populations that are less represented,
so businesses owned by people of color or women?
Also, do we provide that support
through the association that we work with
to provide support in different languages as well?
Yeah, one example that the SBDC advising at the chamber,
their advisors have changed a little bit,
but at different times we're really working to advocate
to have a Spanish speaking
and either a Mandarin or Cantonese speaking advisor there.
So we currently do not have the Spanish speaking directly
there, but they can definitely through the big network
have access to that, and as always,
there's continued work and outreach to that community,
to these communities and into reaching businesses
and in general in the ever-changing
kind of communications and media landscape.
Yeah, and you know, the chamber does fantastic work,
but I know that there is also just a capacity strain
and constraint, and so if we can help support the chamber
and helping them reach out to new businesses,
especially ones that are Chinese speaking
or Spanish speaking,
because that is just other,
I think I've heard from the Chamber as well
that they do have difficulty with translations and whatnot,
and I love all the new businesses that are coming in.
I had, one, I have to do a plug for for District 5,
but the corner of Dutton and Bancroft
is a really exciting opportunity.
I know we have, Alvanto was there,
I know that the chef was in here today
because he would like to, we'll have outdoor tables, right?
And that whole area that there's Chef Chen has left
and then we have the uniform store across the way.
But I love that we're thinking about
how do we build out these spaces,
not just for one business but for the entire community.
And like, what would this look like?
And to think through like,
what kind of business should come in here?
And how can I as a council member
or the community support that?
because we want it to be a thriving commercial district,
and it would be really great if it was filled
with lots of great businesses like a wine bar
and a floral shop combined together
is what I would love to have come,
and I've shared that with Katie in the past,
but anything.
And then the last thing I have a question on,
if we go to slide 41.
Yes, I had a question around evaluate potential
for industrial area specific plan
to streamline environmental review
and utility infrastructure upgrades.
And that's upcoming, can you share what that means?
Yes, so the scope at this point
and it'll be finalized, but looking at,
we currently have some evaluation going on
with the larger community development team
at whether and how there may be potential
for financing districts in San Leandro,
whether it's in TOD areas like Bayfair or downtown
or the industrial area.
And they have identified that there is some potential
where that would pencil.
And those are actually a different way
for public-private partnerships, in which additional ways
to generate revenues for infrastructure.
And so it would be taking those evaluations to the next step.
would that consider something like how we have
the downtown benefit district,
but to have a benefit district further north,
like along this corridor, 14th Street?
That study doesn't specifically look at that.
And yeah, I think as you know,
those districts need a certain size to be viable.
And there had been some discussion in the past
as to whether the current district could get larger,
which that might come back up
as that looks towards renewal.
Okay, thank you.
Seeing no other hands raised,
I'll ask a couple of questions myself.
We talked a little bit about the permit center
and some of the troubleshooting teams,
et cetera, that have been established.
Have we developed some metrics to assess,
are we getting better?
What does better mean?
Is that distinguished between small businesses
that are getting permits and large businesses?
like help help me understand a little bit when we talk about that what that
could look like or does look like. Yeah and I may look to our planning manager
Waylon Lee. I think we're very early in those processes but we do have overall
performance metrics for the department for those teams and I'm not able to
quote them exactly right now but we could pull those for you so I believe
on the plate you know looking at how many rounds of review the planning
applications make, and they have a goal of a percentage
to increase the amount that have the lesser amount,
and then on the building review too,
they're looking at how many projects have
reduced rounds of review.
But Abilene can.
Katie summarized it well, and so we're
working on both the overall process because our building
team, they are the conveners of many other technical experts,
and so we want the overall time to be reduced,
not just one group's time to be reduced,
because it doesn't make a big difference if other teams are taking a lot longer.
So this is a holistic effort between all of the development services teams
within the city and our external partners.
What about, um, I'll call it concurrency of effort, concurrency of review.
I think one of the questions or comments that typically come to me and presumably
to the council members is this idea of like, well, I wish that you had told me
that before because I could have fixed two things at once or three things
at once. Is that in the multiplicity of turns where you're trying to address
that and if you can elaborate a little? Yeah so and we had a we had an external
group come in who works in cities across the country and help us do an audit of
our development services and identify our priorities and so we're working
through that work plan and how we communicate with customers and how we
provide information in a very timely manner so people can take action even if
it's involving an outside agency which is often the cause of delays and
development that is a hundred percent aligned with what we're working through
in our implementation plan absolutely as well as communication expectations
timeliness response times all of those those factors. I think one thing that
would be certainly useful for me and maybe for the whole council would be to
lay out kind of the current state the outcome of the audit and then some
targets we're trying to reduce this 50% whatever the this is because then that
lets us to go and speak to the business community like we do have standards we
do have a process we do have expectations that we are driving towards
so thank you about that. There was a description I think we're looking to
make our spaces more inviting and so part of that I heard like tucked in very
quickly, quarterly power washing downtown. Recently I got some, let's just say
challenging email on the topic. And so I think the question is whose responsibility
is it to maintain a shopping center cleanliness? And then are there
objective standards that we can enforce to encourage that to actually occur?
And thinking about in private shopping centers?
Well, that's the thing, because I
think there is oftentimes a combination of the two,
public spaces and private spaces,
private spaces that look and feel
like they're public spaces, but they're actually private.
And so if you can talk through that just a little bit,
because I think oftentimes, in the public's mind,
they're intertwined and intermingled.
Yeah, and that specific quarterly power washing
is at this point somewhat of a limited duration
with some of the recovery funds
doing some supplemental power washing
on top of power washing that occurs
with the downtown district.
And that would be, as you mentioned, just in public spaces.
So some of the outlots of say Washington Plaza,
the front is public.
But whereas the main building is private,
And so it depends on the space, the responsibility.
As you, the pavement, and if it's on private property,
is the responsibility of the shopping center.
And that power washing is not occurring there
by either that one time or the district.
And there are standards, commercial property maintenance
standards.
And some of my colleagues could get into that in more detail.
But yeah.
I do think that that's one of the biggest complaints
that I receive about private spaces, particularly spaces
that are not occupied, is the accumulated trash,
the graffiti, the dirty windows, and the like.
And so helping the public understand
through probably website communication or other means.
Maybe we do some online postings.
What is within the purview of the city
through code enforcement, et cetera,
to make sure that all the eyes that we have out there,
the 89, what is it, 89.5, 89.9, 89.7,
whatever people used to say,
all those pairs of eyes that we have out there
that they're not creating well-intentioned
but misdirected work because we're not clear
on what they can, what we can act upon.
And so I think that can really,
if we can empower the people to help us
drive a cleaner, more attractive community for investment,
because that's ultimately what we're trying to do
is attract businesses.
And then the last question that I'll ask has to do
with the tracking of businesses that are open.
And I don't know if we have some sort of data set
or we have a consultant that helps us understand,
for instance, over the last four years,
we now have more childcare facilities
or less childcare facilities.
We have more restaurants, we have fewer restaurants,
we have more battery businesses, less battery businesses,
something that lets us take what we're looking to do
and measure, and I realize that from year to year,
you're gonna get variation,
but presumably over a five-year period,
If we are in fact achieving our goal,
it's not for the purpose of saying
we completed a work plan,
but it's really to get the outcome
that we have more of a certain type of business
or that we have more people coming to our restaurants,
whatever the case may be.
So just food for thought around how we may be able
to measure outcomes and not process would be useful.
So thank you very much for the presentation
and for your willingness to take our input.
At this point in time, we will go to, is it PD?
Is it Public Safety?
Good evening council members.
So before you get started,
I think a good question has been asked.
Do we wanna take, looking down council roll,
do we wanna take our break now or after?
Well, there's in theory three more.
What do you think, take our break now?
You know, we typically take a break at 9 o'clock, right?
In fairness to you, right?
I think two hours is a good running time.
We've been running for about an hour 50.
So we're going to take a quick break, seven minutes.
So the time is 8.54.
Let's come back at whatever time that is.
Let's come back in seven minutes.
So we're staying in recess.
OK, we are back in session.
The time is 9.02.
Please proceed.
All right, good evening city leaders
and members of the community.
Captain Abe Tang with your police department.
Here to discuss the public safety portion
of the council work plan.
Starting with section one, this is our staffing plan.
As you can see, we're currently on track
to meet our two incremental staffing milestones,
78% of authorized strength.
by the end of this fiscal year and 82%
by the end of the next fiscal year.
You'll note that our objective
to fill two vacant traffic officer positions,
unfortunately, will be at risk or delayed indefinitely,
and I'll discuss more of that on the next slide.
All right, as mentioned before,
our current sworn staffing level is at 76%,
and we are on track to meet the 78% goal
due by the end of this year.
Our successful hiring efforts have been offset by some recent spate of
retirements and separations. And going back to the goal of filling our two
vacant positions in traffic, that's going to be delayed indefinitely.
Unfortunately, we are given priority to fill our critical vacancies that have
resulted in a couple of recent retirements from our criminal
investigations divisions. So unfortunately, the traffic unit
replacements will have to be on hold until we can fill those positions.
Section 2 will discuss recruitment and as you can see that we have four
objectives under this recruitment priority and these are requiring goals
that will continue through fiscal year 27-28. Our social media team continues to
be active on our platforms with the consistent volume of posts and
engagement in addition to showcasing a variety of work done by a different
divisions within the department.
We also provide a balance of recruitment,
celebratory, educational, and on occasion,
a whimsical post to give the community
a more holistic view of the police department.
We aim to visit one academy a quarter,
and we have been averaging eight recruitment events
per quarter that exceeds our target goal of six per quarter.
Our recruitment team has found that
the greatest amount of success occur
during in-person recruitment at the written
and physical agility tests for police recruits.
And we've also placed an emphasis on consistent follow-ups
with applicants to guide them through the process.
We found that this personal contact has been the difference
between some of our candidates coming to our department
versus going to another.
All right, in the next four sections,
I'll be going over the work plan priority
that's broadly aimed at reducing
animal control costs overall.
Section three, reducing number of strays
taken to the shelters, pretty straightforward.
We wanna reduce the number of strays
that are taken to the shelter either by our staff
or by members of the community.
So the total number of animals taken to the shelter
from January to May of last year, 173,
for the same time period of this year,
that number currently stands at 151,
which is a 13% reduction.
And in the next section,
go over how we've accomplished this reduction. So shelter diversion strategy.
So we're progressing in each of our strategic milestones under shelter
diversion. We have increased the time that strays are kept at our temporary
shelter at the courtyard for up to 24 hours, thereby increasing the
opportunity for reunification with owners. We've increased our social media
messaging to the community to direct strays to the police department instead
of taking them directly to the shelter we've also hosted our porchella pet
microchipping event and now while this recurring goal is still progressing
we've reduced it from being an annual event to every other year our next
section discusses filling the vacant animal control officer position so as
you can see we've completed two of our goals in this section but one goal is
very jarring in red and that we are recommending to discontinue and that
being the internal selection of an animal control officer.
And I will discuss this more in the next slide.
So we've transitioned away from having just a single dedicated
animal control officer to ensure broader coverage
and increased enforcement of animal control issues
throughout the whole work week.
All of our police service technicians
are now trained in animal control laws and related
municipal codes.
And this starts during the field training period
for any new hires.
and all police service technicians
and the police service technician supervisors
are sent to a 40 hour animal control training course.
And to show how this changes worked out,
I'll move on to the next section,
which is increased enforcement of loose dog violations.
This, the numbers I'm gonna cover here
are actually gonna be all animal control related numbers,
not just loose dog violations.
So we've already completed a review
of animal related municipal codes
and also trained all of our police service technicians
on them and incorporated this into our training program,
as I previously mentioned.
As you can see, our educational enforcement goals
are both progressing and on track.
So we've taken a two-pronged approach
towards increasing enforcement,
the first being educating our community.
We've done this via recurring social media messaging,
and we've also done it via in-person warnings
that we've issued.
At the same time, we've also increased the emphasis
for staff to enforce violations.
So the enforcement numbers from January through May
of this year, currently are 70 citations
and 133 warnings issued.
And this is compared to 38 sites and 80 warnings
issued for all of 2025.
Section seven, sharing strong community engagement.
Here we have a list of community events
for both the police department and the fire department.
And this, of course, is not an exhaustive list
of all of the events that we part,
both departments participate in.
These are just ones that have been prioritized
in the work plan.
And I think I can safely speak for both Chief Krines
and Chief Bowie that, you know,
both departments firmly believe that building
and maintaining a strong relationship with our community
is foundational to earning success, success that we can claim.
And these pictures are just a small sample
the various events that we have with the national night out. We have Santa at the
firehouse and a food and toy drive by the fire department. Section 8 I'll go
over encampment removal. As you can see we're progressing well in all of our
goals here and we are in fact exceeding some of the set expectations that I'll
go over in the next slide. So we've established recurring bi-weekly
meetings with Human Services and Public Works to continue our collaborative
efforts on encampment removals. Currently we are averaging between one cleanup per
week to one every other week so far exceeding our target goal of three
cleanups per quarter. Also instead of our stated goal of monthly meetings with
the Union Pacific Railroad Police we are now conducting them on a bi-weekly basis.
And for the final public safety section emergency management I'd like to bring
up emergency services specialist Libby Besman. Thank You Captain. Good evening
Council. I'm Elizabeth Bessman, Emergency Services Specialist. Emergency
management has four projects. Annually host a wildfire preparedness and
defensible space workshop. Host an annual community emergency response team, CERT.
Update the local hazard mitigation plan and update our emergency operations plan.
I'm excited to share our local hazard mitigation plan is out for public
comment and closes July 24th. After it closes we'll make the appropriate
updates to our draft, send the draft to Cal OES and FEMA. Once the plan is
approved we'll be able to update our emergency operations plan. Because of the
Alameda County Fire Department in March we were able to complete our yearly
wildfire preparedness and defensible space workshop and just last month we
were able to complete our yearly CERT training. A big thank you to our
partners at the Alameda County Fire Department. This concludes the public safety portion.
So thank you for your presentation. We'll come to council members for questions slash
discussion. Beginning with council member Bolt.
Thank you for the presentation. Let me go through my notes real quick. On slide 60 with
animal control where it says looks like we may go in a different direction,
ease my fears that please that these type of calls don't are gonna go
un-serviced if they get in a queue with all the other calls that in my opinion
I don't know you can correct me but that would be like a low priority so when we
had the animal control unit personnel, that's what they dealt with, but in this
case it sounds like that won't be the case, it'll be in a queue. Is that true or
false? That's just what I feel. So it is true that the call will go into a queue
based on priority, but I can say that I don't have the metrics for it,
but I can tell you that previously when we had an animal control, a dedicated
animal control position they were working I believe it was a 4-10 shift so
they were only available four days out of the week and obviously ten hours a
day whereas with transitioning to having all of our police service
technicians being trained in animal control now it's 24 hours a day seven
days a week that we are able to now granted they do have other
responsibilities so sometimes the animal control will come the maybe the lower
priority ones will wait, but we found that ensuring a broader coverage throughout the
workweek is able to allow us better services and actually it provides a lot of the employees
with better confidence to be able to deal with these issues because they've all been
trained since the inception of their employment all the way through attending a 40-hour course.
So they're all equipped and ready to deal with these issues regardless of the time of
day or the day of the week.
so it becomes a trade-off of hopefully more service.
What would we do if somebody called
when the animal control unit was not on duty?
Would that then fall to the officers on duty?
Yes, and it would largely depend on the
the acuteness of the call,
if it's something that requires,
let's say it's a vicious animal
in the process of attacking someone,
officers will respond.
Actually, that would still be the case currently.
But if it was something that, if we didn't have a PST
on, excuse me, police service technician on duty
that would fall to an officer
and that queue would be even longer than it is currently
with the animal control responsibilities
falling to the PST position.
Okay, so hopefully we're open to trying this out,
see how it goes and then maybe pivot,
but maybe it's a good thing.
Maybe having all of them available, like you said,
can elevate the service that we had?
Well, and to kind of augment the police service technicians
in terms of their duties with animal control,
one of our supervisors, one out of two of the PST supervisors,
actually was our former animal control PST.
So he's also taken on the position
of conducting follow-ups when there's
more in-depth investigations that have to be conducted.
So in terms of that, there's not much of a drop-off.
we still have, and he works a 410,
so we still have that expert, so to speak,
that is available during those hours,
but now we just elevated everybody else's competency
and confidence in dealing with animal control issues.
Okay, thank you.
The next thing I have is the,
we've already established a biweekly coordinated meetings
with the Union Pacific, I think it was slide 67.
I like this idea, but who's in those meetings,
like who's a part of that meeting?
Currently it is spearheaded by our,
we call it the Homeless Czar.
It's not an actual position.
That's just the title we give him forward,
Lieutenant Robertson, and he meets with his counterpart
from the Union Pacific Railroad Police.
So the idea is to get help and not just clean and move.
Well, as you can see in some of these slides,
Well, on the bottom slide, a lot of our encampments
happen to be on Union Pacific Railroad property.
So it's more of a coordination and collaborating with them
while it is their jurisdiction.
But we also know that their staff is not readily available
to conduct these cleanups as ours are.
So, you know, instead of having our community weigh
an exorbitant amount of time saying,
hey, that's just, you know, UPR's jurisdiction,
this kind of helps us coordinate that,
We know that this is there. I know you guys can't can you guys get to it you can't are you okay?
We take lead on this okay, so it's more of a just communicating collaborating and then we follow up with hopefully
Human Services Department, and we try and get as much help out to them as possible
Yeah, so these responses are all coordinated so we also have biweekly meetings with Human Services as well as public work
So you know it's a it's a multi-faceted approach. It's not you know we're not just
Spearheading it just with the police department. We want to offer services whenever possible whenever appropriate as a first resort
To help people at least maybe find temporary shelter versus just a posting the 72 hour notice and saying, you know
We've we've tried everything but now this is turning into the public hazard
Thank you. Thank you for all the work you do. I know it's not easy
Thank you
Councilmember James Aguilar, please
All right, yes, thank you very much. I appreciate I appreciate first the answer to
Councilmember Volts question on the animal control officer
I was gonna ask kind of similar lines and so I thank you for the clarity on that
My question is mostly around community engagement and outreach
but first to comment on that I
Definitely have seen in the last couple of years a big push on social media
and I really appreciated what feels
like a more human approach, right?
And making PD just, I think you said it earlier,
kind of changing how we see PD, the image of PD.
And I think that that's working really well on social media
and that goes with recruitment too,
making San Leandro Police Department look like the place
that we need to be that you should come to, right?
And so I wanna appreciate that.
My question is about the one thing
that I see missing here,
and that's outreach and engagement with public schools.
And so can you talk a little bit about what PD has done
to reach out to schools
and engage with schools in our community?
Yeah, so there was definitely obviously a large drop off
when the school resource officer program was canceled.
So that really limited the amount
of direct interaction that we have.
I know that our recruiting sergeant,
actually, Sergeant Watson has still gone
onto school campuses after notifying them
and trying to participate in certain speaking engagements
so that we still have contact with the schools,
but we don't, and we also do some of our recruiting
at local colleges as well, as we know that, you know,
obviously people getting ready to enter the job market
is probably a good source of potential applicants.
So those are definitely activities that we still engage in
in terms of engaging with our schools.
Totally, thank you.
Yeah, I would love to see us push in a little bit deeper.
High school is a great pathway too.
I mean, I went to San Lorenzo High School
where we had the Sheriff Explorer Program
and San Leandro High had something similar,
I'd love to bring some of that back.
But I think that that's my only question
because that's something that's really important to me.
And also appreciation for the work that you do,
it is not easy.
And so thank you very much.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor, please.
Thank you for the time and attention
into putting together such a thorough presentation.
Thank you.
I have two main questions.
Second one is on emergency management,
so just on deck for that.
I wanted to, one priority that had been elevated several years
ago was around the hiring of a data and crime analyst.
And I'm just wondering where that is.
I think tracking our data, but also sharing it.
And is it fully staffed?
Is it staffed at the position that it was budgeted for?
I believe it was two FTEs, or is it one?
Can you clarify?
So I believe we are authorized for one crime analyst
and one management analyst.
Okay.
And currently we have the crime analyst position
staffed, we did not too long ago,
we had the management analyst position understaffed
with the second crime analyst.
Unfortunately, that second crime analyst was released
from employment.
So that current position is vacant right now.
The crime analyst or the management analyst?
The management analyst that was being understaffed
by a crime analyst.
Gotcha.
Underfilled, I should say.
Okay.
I know that that is something that continues to be elevated
just in terms of tracking and benchmarking
our numbers across the community,
just in terms of our public safety numbers.
I'll transition over to emergency management.
What is an emergency operations plan?
So when something significant happens,
big earthquake, large fire, COVID,
all significant, slow moving, fast moving,
This is how we're gonna operate as a city.
It's not specific to the emergency operations center.
It's not specific to an incident.
This is gonna be guiding our city.
Okay, thank you for that.
I didn't, anyway, thank you.
My next question is around the hazard mitigation plan.
So the current comment period is currently open.
Yes ma'am.
When did it start?
July 14th.
14th?
two days of 13 so probably Monday whatever Monday was this Monday yes okay
so it just started yes and it ends the 24th oh it's only a tent like then the
start dates wrong okay we closed the 24th so has to be the
10th two weeks it's only a two-week comment period only two-week comment
period okay and then once the comment period closes you talked a little you
briefly spoke a little bit about that process but once it once we have our
common period how does community input actually influence the local hazard
mitigation plan? Great question so I got feedback from our consultant and I
believe feedback came through other avenues where looking not just at
wildfires but how are we moving people how are we being mindful so we will take
all the feedback as appropriate we will make changes to the draft plan evacuation
is not a part of the hazard mitigation plan it's the hazards that we look at
and how do we mitigate them hence local hazard mitigation plan but we will take
feedback and address the concerns, mindfully, obviously.
So then once the the comment period closes, you collect all of the input from the public
and then we have a consultant that is kind of helping us and then what is the timeframe
from the closing of the comment period to and my actually before I jump into
that question does it get approved by any entity so before it goes to Cal OES
and FEMA we'll do the review depending on what the comments are and the
suggestions I may ask for some help from our partner agencies our partner my
partners within the city as well. It will then, it doesn't go to approval there.
What happens is it goes to Cal OES, in FEMA there's a 45-day review period, it
comes back to us and then it comes here for approval. We will be sending the
draft to other agencies, so Water District, City of Hayward, long list of
our partners that will look at it. So we're collaborating and making sure that
everything makes sense and others have time to review. And so from coordination
and communication with other partner, with other partners, what is the timeline
to actually have updated local hazard mitigation plan? So the review period
closes the 24th depending on the comments that will take some time if
it's pretty quick. My hope is that we can do a quick turnaround. It may not
involve a lot of feedback. I mean I hate to give you like the I don't know
exactly time frame. There's no hard and fast deadline to this. The big push is as
things change, FEMA requirements change in the local hazard mitigation plan.
They're not the same as five years ago. We have different leadership. So my hope
is that we move this through the process correctly,
but being mindful that things can change quickly.
So is it like a six month process, a year process?
We should be done well before August of 2027.
So we should be done in less than, I would say, three months.
We should be pretty close to being finished.
Assuming, no big problems.
It's tight.
Yeah it looks it feels very tight just uh it's especially with it going to Cal OES
and then coming back to us for approval. But okay thank you. Just to clarify did you say
that council approves it? Yes it has to come here for approval. So we pass a resolution saying we
agree. Thank you. Council member Bowen please. Thank you mayor I love this flat no um
really appreciate the work. I mean shout out to you including many slides with cute animals
and children. I understand what you're trying to do. So a few questions, comments, the if we can
go to slide 66. Yes, so encampment removals. I have a few questions around that and then I think
I think on the next slide, it talks about
the establishment of the biweekly meetings.
Really appreciate, and we've talked about this before,
but interdepartmental approach.
I get pretty regular emails from community members,
and what I really appreciate is being able to reach out
to the city manager and staff.
And I include, I think everybody
that attends these meetings or every department
that attends these meetings,
because there's a little piece of that
that everybody kind of owns.
And I'm wondering if in these meetings,
obviously you know the locations of it,
but is it possible for there to be some easier,
more efficient way for the council members
to be able to work with the team on what's going on
in particular like hotspots,
just because there's a lot of back and forth
with trying to answer questions from constituents.
I know that you are doing work,
and certainly if an area or an issue arises
that you're not aware of, then you become aware of it,
then you do something.
But it's really important for me to be able to share
with the community members what is happening
and what's being worked on.
Oftentimes, the immediate solution isn't going to be
necessarily possible, but it's clearly something that,
you know, that staff is aware of
and that we're trying to be really holistic
with our approach of, you know,
yes, let's clear encampments,
but let's make sure that there's somewhere for them to go
or let's make sure services are provided.
And so is there, I don't know if there's anything
anybody can add to that in terms of what's the process
when you all get together and work on an encampment cleanup
or an issue area arises?
So not personally having been in any of these meetings,
I can't speak to the actual process.
I just know that something that you already touched upon
and that I also spoke to is that
we do try to make this a holistic approach.
It sounds like the council members wanting,
are you asking for a, almost like a report back,
a brief back on certain problem spots
that you've already communicated
but you haven't heard back, is that what I'm getting?
Yes, but not necessarily to ask for you to do more work,
because you're already talking.
I mean, when you're meeting, you're obviously
already talking about things.
But is there an easier way for me
to be able to communicate with you
so that I can communicate with the residents
that these things are happening and that we're
working towards solutions?
We've got a team standing behind you.
They didn't have the other half, so we'll be glad to do that.
We've got back up.
Good evening, I'll add one piece which is that staff do develop a monthly calendar
of encampment cleanup.
That doesn't preclude new sites from being added throughout the month.
However, if that's helpful information, we could share that as well and then I know Chief
Bowie wanted to add some additional information about services offered.
I'll just I'll just add I know capturing isn't in these meetings but the ARU is also
getting that calendar and they often coordinate with PD,
with Union Pacific.
They know all the players involved as well
and they'll go through ahead of time
before a sweep comes, software services.
So that is happening on a regular basis.
So it sounds like I need to CC you in my email.
You do.
Okay, we'll do, we'll do.
I really, but yeah, I mean, I obviously just really wanna
shout out for the work that you all do.
I mean, it is, the question that I have too,
and I think any of you could answer it,
is obviously we've been talking about budget
and budget constraints,
and I'm wondering if there is going to be an impact
on this particular service with the cabinet removals
or just mental health services or just the ARU,
like what are some things we're thinking about
in this next year as we're continuing this work?
Specifically, you were talking about budget impacts or cuts.
Yeah.
see any changes to the way we're operating right now with it's part of
the ARUs normal operations it's been built into it at this point.
Also I don't foresee any budget changes having an impact on the amount of
encampment cleanups that we're able to conduct. Great and then I you know
councilmember Aguilar mentioned earlier about schools that I did want to mention
that I really appreciate that especially at the beginning of the school year and
it's gonna be next month.
Again, I think like the second week of August,
I know that PD does a really great job
of trying to do outreach and education to the parents
because traffic will become an issue.
We will all converge on the schools
and people will still need to try to get to work
and kids will still be walking to school.
So just really appreciate the additional effort
you all put in at the beginning of the school year,
even if that means some parents get tickets
for double parking or sitting in drop-off zones,
but I think it's a really important thing
for us to be able to do in partnership
with the school district to ensure
that kids can get to school safely.
And then the last thing that I will say is
for the police department and all of the departments
that work on encampment removal and across the departments,
I really, really appreciate the responsiveness
that you all have had to my emails
and the community members because they're just desperate
to be able to figure out how to help their neighbors
and how to ensure that, especially when it comes
to public safety, that we're addressing those needs.
So thank you so much for that.
So a few thoughts from me.
I think it's important that PD be tightly connected
with providers such as Building Futures.
And so when we think about the operation
of the navigation center, making sure that you guys are just
attached at the hip.
You mentioned PSTs being cross-trained.
Obviously, we believe that cross-training,
or at least I believe cross-training,
is extremely important.
It creates diverse job possibilities
and makes work a little bit more interesting.
That being said, I'm a little bit unclear
on what is currently on the PSTs plate.
So can you elaborate?
Yes, so I think the best way to describe a PST position is,
it's kind of like a Swiss army knife.
They engage in a lot of different responsibilities.
So one of their primary duties is to operate
our temporary holding facility.
So they act as prisoner transports.
They'll do our booking processes,
fingerprinting, photographing.
They'll also supplement our patrol operations
by taking some of our cold reports that are lower priority,
maybe things that don't have suspect information
or don't require extensive follow-up
that we will send our police service technicians out
to certain types of reports.
They'll also do things.
Some of their responsibilities also include
issuing parking citations, abandoned vehicle abatements,
I think some derelict properties as well.
They will write up violations on no tow vehicles.
So a lot of supplementary duties that they can,
any way they can take these things
that don't require a police officer to respond to.
So thank you for that.
PD profile or PD promotion.
You guys have been very good at social media engagement.
And I think you have a very powerful following,
significant engagement.
One of the questions or I guess maybe comments
requests of you, is when it comes to things like schools really doing a
little bit more. You did one video last year at the beginning of the school year
which that was an awesome video, but what about more specifically with respect to
our schools? So that's just something for you to think about. When it comes to
walking, one of the main challenges that we have around our school sites is too
many vehicles. A number of vehicles creates traffic risk, particularly risk
to young children. So what can we do to help promote walking to school? What can PD do
to make it cool to walk to school as opposed to being driven by parents? And I think that
part of that is creating that safe environment perception. And what can we be doing to help
bring comfort to parents? Are we spending time with parents at school sites, PTAs and
like to let them know that, you know, it really is safe to let your child walk to
school just based objectively on information that you have. So finding
ways to do that encouragement, that's, you can be a piece of that equation.
With respect to the hazard, so moving on to hazard, and I'm going to come back to
fire in just a second so it's such a basic question but what you said
evacuation is not hazard mitigation so maybe you can tell me what is hazard
mitigation like help me define the parameters so it's looking at our
infrastructure right there's a dam if the dam breaks how do we mitigate what
what are our options?
We are looking at our seniors.
How do we address those with access and functional needs?
While they are not a hazard,
we still need to be mindful of our community.
The list, it gets larger.
What if there's an airplane on their way to Oakland?
Doesn't make it to Oakland and makes it to us instead.
Trains that come through,
heat,
cold,
rain.
So as we look at how our weather is changing,
how do we mitigate some of these hazards?
I hope that answers your question.
I'm just gonna try to take them in pieces.
So suppose that the dam breaks.
Okay, so water's coming down, you know,
a studio or whatever,
wherever the water flows according to your maps.
When you think of hazard mitigation in that scenario,
what sorts of things are we considering?
So we're looking at the dam.
How well is it built?
How are we getting water out?
Who's going to be impacted?
What are city services that will also be impacted?
Are we in the flood as the water pours out?
There's a bit more when it comes to flooding.
Sorry, we're beeping.
OK, sorry.
So it's going to be, what can we do
to strengthen, to mitigate some of these problems?
I'm not an engineer, I can't really give you
a really great answer on that,
and I apologize the smart people
take care of that response.
I just need to make sure that we're looking at it.
How do we mitigate it, what are we gonna do?
Okay, so my ask would be to try to provide us
before the plan comes that we need to vote on,
to provide us a little bit more information,
maybe a draft of the plan,
something so that we can start really socializing
understanding because when I think of hazard mitigation and I'm not an expert
in this but my first reaction was like how can evacuation not be part of hazard
mitigation because when when there's a fire or when the dam breaks what does a
school would the school children need to do a mile away to the shelter in place
really go to the second floor it's like the movement of people in response would
be a mitigation to the risk that's presented so we might be using
different terminology so please if you can help us work through that for the
fire team chief please. What I think I heard you say is that the ARU not only
responds to let's say a 911 call saying that we have someone who is mentally
appears to be mentally ill at least but also is being used to respond to
encampment sites, whether it may be mentally ill or substance abuse disorder, individual
suffering from those conditions.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
Okay.
And if you were to break down what I call like the emergency response versus the day-to-day
we need to go and visit encampments or work with Building Futures perhaps at the navigation
Center or some other thing that's not a 911 call. Can you just roughly break that? Is
that 60-40, 30-70? I would have to check. It's more, I would say 80-29-1-1, maybe 70-30.
If you could just come back with that, it's not critical, but just want to make sure that
we're framing the type of work that's being done. In the goals up there, it didn't really
fire. And this is not about creating work plans, but I do think that are you
tucked into something like recruiting or other goals up there where it wasn't as
explicit? We are. The public engagement was the one that's most front-facing, but
yes, we have similar recruitment goals as well. And we can work to show those also,
So if that would be helpful, I think it'd be just to elevate the things that fire is doing because obviously we're aware of the
Firehouse events and the like but finding other ways in which you are specifically addressing recruiting challenges and diversity of recruiting all that kind of stuff
Coming back to police to wrap up on police recruiting
One of the concerns that I have had all along is that, you know, using corporate terminology that these goals were sandbaked
It's not that hard, you know in the grand scheme of things. It shouldn't be that hard to hire two or hire four
But I am I thought that we'd blow these goals away, but we're just kind of meeting the goals
Talk to us a little bit about
about that
so as I mentioned the
we've had successful hiring efforts, but they've been offset, but we've had a recent spate of
retirements and separations. Now, while we can somewhat project upcoming retirements with a fair
amount of accuracy, we've had several unanticipated separations that we obviously had no ability to
foresee. So that has really kind of set us back, whereas we would have made a lot more progress
than we currently are so if someone wants to join the force someone someone
comes to me tomorrow and says I want to join what what is that process what
should I do with that information so you forwarded to any one of us at the
police department we will forward it to our professional standards unit and
specifically our recruiting and hiring sergeant sergeant Watson he takes the
reins in terms of kind of walking people through the process but he also have we
also have a recruitment team that we've established in the recent couple of
years to try to augment his work again talking about reaching out to applicants
following up on an individual and personal basis and those have yielded a
lot more successes so once you funnel someone to Sergeant Watson he'll guide
you through the website that you have to fill out the application for police
officers specifically there is the PELIP exam the WSTB and obviously once they
passed that there's an oral panel that they are invited to if they do pass
those standards once the oral interview is done then we may or may not send them
through a background process that includes polygraph, medical, psych, eval
and then once that is done excuse me before before we send in the
backgrounds they will go through a command interview as a second level of
interviews before we decided we're going to send through a background process so
So but once that process is done through the backgrounds and they are actually hired on
then we're talking about a brand new recruit they're gonna have to send go through a six
month Academy field training etc.
I think I think my interest is primarily when someone comes to me because I have made a
referral and I'm gonna make another referral but it's like what should they expect.
So if someone could follow up with me just that I can make sure that the expectation
is what's actually happening and if it's not then we can close that feedback loop.
So with that being said I think we are done with this presentation. Thank you
very much for all three of you for stepping forward. At this point in time
we are going to, next to our listing, think is infrastructure, capital I,
infrastructure. Here we go. Mr. Tom, welcome. A highlight of the evening, I'm
sure good evening mayor good evening council I'm Nick Tom assistant public
works director here to present on infrastructure a revenue measure was
discussed by the City Council at the July 6th council meeting and at that time
staff was directed to defer this item we will revise this schedule to show a
ballot measure in November of 2028. Before I knew you were gonna revise the
schedule we had this slide of a summary of our outreach efforts for the current
year. We will revisit this again in about a year. We are moving forward with an
update to our stormwater fee. We will start this effort this month and we'll
complete this on time. For background this fee was established in 1993 and has
been constant since that time. We did an effort in 2024 to have the fee updated
and the measure was defeated by mail-in ballots. Success this next time around
around is going to hinge upon two things, clear messaging and public appetite for the
fee. The economic conditions are not great for a lot of the community. We will make a
recommendation as to whether we should proceed with this fee at this time when we get closer
to that. As part of our transition to an electric vehicle fleet, we were tasked with applying
for a PG&E program that covers the cost to bring upgraded electrical service to
our site. When we submitted our application we learned that the program
is fully committed and that no funds are available for additional sites. We
recommend continuing with the transition to an electric vehicle fleet but dropping
this item. We are currently working with a consultant hired by the MTC to prepare
schematic plans and a budget for our electric vehicle charging system build
out. We're also purchasing electric vehicles however it has proven difficult
to get them delivered. Of the eight that we have ordered only three have been
delivered. Ford canceled our pickup order twice and we now have ordered them
through Chevy. These tasks to support our environmental goals have been initiated
on schedule and are still underway. I have details. Specifically the trash free
San Leandro initiative has been launched and used for several internal events. Our
first external user will be the vendors at the farmers market starting this
month and then continuing onward. The environmental purchasing policy has been
adopted and guidelines are being developed. It will be implemented this
summer. Two of our facilities, the Public Works Environmental Services Office and
Manor Library, are now green business certified and we will continue to look
to expand that to other city buildings. We have made project on our major CIP
projects, Memorial Park, Stephen Taylor's Sanctity of Life pavilion and our fuel
tank projects are complete. Carey Haas Bridge is in progress and is
anticipated to finish slightly ahead of the deadline shown here. Our new branch
library project is on schedule. Lake Chabot Road has been delayed a quarter
Due to difficulty in obtaining NEPA environmental clearance for the work near the creek. So we're showing a one-quarter extension
The MacArthur superior roundabout is on schedule. I have some pictures of projects
We have the dedication for Steven Taylor sanctity of life pavilion
some of our first users from Memorial Park
photos of the fuel tank project before during and after
We have a photo of the carry Haas pedestrian bridge project. This is after the damaged bridge was removed
Obviously, we haven't started construction on the new bridge yet and on the right we have construction ongoing for the moleford marina branch library
I'd be happy to take any questions
So, thank you for your presentation
There you go councilmember bolt
Yes
slide 73
Design construction execution and PG&E rebates it says we're gonna
Recommend discontinuing but then you said we're gonna stay
With the submitted the can you just explain that a little more for me? I'm losing it. Yeah. Thank you
That's a that's a great question. This goal was very narrow. It was to apply for a specific program the goal supports
Converting to an electric vehicle fleet. We still propose to convert to an electric vehicle fleet, but this program is just not available to us
funds or what do you mean it's not a via time or what happened? PG&E had a certain
budget for assisting applicants with this with this work and they received
enough applications to expend their budget before we got our application in.
Okay, but we're still on track to go to an EV fleet. We are still moving toward
an EV fleet we don't have a deadline to convert all of our vehicles or replace
all of our vehicles with EVs so I can't really say that we're on track but we
are still moving that direction. Okay thank you. Councilor Bowen please. Thank you
mayor, yay infrastructure. I didn't realize how much I would talk about or
think about infrastructure until I became a city council member but now I
really appreciate it so thank you so much to the public work staff and
everybody for working on this.
I wanted to ask about the MacArthur Roundabout
on slide 77 for the major construction project delivery.
Is that saying that October to December of 2027,
we will have a finished MacArthur Roundabout?
Yes, that is the schedule.
Okay, Jason's ready to explain how that's gonna happen.
Hi, good evening, city engineer Jason Imai.
I think the latest, we just provided an update
to facilities and transportation committee
and the, I will do have to apologize,
the date now is January, 2028,
so one month off from that little quarter.
I know.
But we are diligently working past the last few obstacles
or issues, outstanding issues I should say.
Let's not call them obstacles to get this out to bid
and then to construction.
And I know that the residents along that corridor
have been really engaged in this
and continue to be really engaged in it.
Once we do actually start the project,
is there going to be an effort towards just outreach
and just letting the community know what's happening?
Yes, the construction of a roundabout, as you can imagine,
is gonna be very, very impactful
to traffic around the area.
The plans do include a very complex staging,
multi-staged, various traffic lanes, shifts, detours,
and all that such.
This has been thought out prior.
So there is gonna be an intense outreach to the community
to advise them of upcoming traffic shifts
and so on and so forth.
And what about engagement
so people know how to use a roundabout?
That is a good suggestion.
Roundabouts have been used in Northern California
for several years now.
And you see more and more of them popping up.
But still, people get a little confused when they drive them.
So it has been discussed that we would partner with our comms
team, communications team, to maybe do
an outreach on how the proper way, the rules of the road,
so to speak, literally, how to use a roundabout.
So that's a good suggestion as well.
Thank you.
And then I just also wanted to give a quick shout out
for slide 75 and 76 around the implementation
of environmental programs.
I also sit on the stop waste board,
and we talk a lot about different,
I know that they work with cities,
and they have meetings with the city manager and staff
often about things that are coming down to the state
and how we can be better, more sustainable,
and to be able to implement these environmental programs.
So really appreciate like all the work
that you all are doing towards that.
And I know that again, it's like just a mindset,
mindset shift to be able to,
and also to make it easy for us to be able to do these things.
So I really appreciate the effort
that you all are putting in.
Okay, so a couple of questions.
So we'll get a vice mayor.
Sorry, I neglected to punch myself in on the queue.
I would be remiss if I did not ask some questions
about Lake Chippewa Road.
So just to be clear, on slide 77, that's only on phase one.
Slide 78 is our schedule.
I'm sorry, 77.
Oh, I'm sorry, I've been quoting the wrong numbers,
the wrong page numbers.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Okay, I was like, somehow y'all managed to follow along,
even though I've been saying no.
So this is this is the phase one repair of the two slides that occurred after the winter
storm of 23.
And is this updated?
Is this timeline matches up to the project page or does the project page need to be updated
with this timeline?
was an update I think in June 26. I'm just wondering when. I believe they're
coordinated but I will double check and update the project page if necessary.
Okay so we're looking at this Q1 when I see Q1 I think January through March but
this is fiscal year so July is September. Okay all right I have to but that's my
My only question for now, really excited about Mulford.
Anyway, thank you for your work.
I'm, it's getting late, and I will leave it at that.
I cede my time back to the chair.
Okay, here we go.
Seeing no other questions, I'll ask a few myself.
1383, how are we doing?
Are we ahead of schedule, behind schedule?
Are we super excited?
Talk to me about 1383.
I think I might need to phone a friend.
You can phone a friend.
Where's your friend?
I don't know.
It got too late for a friend.
Yeah, maybe.
OK, we'll come back to that another time.
NEPA, Lake Chabot Road.
It strikes me that whatever animals
happen to be there, toads, salamanders, fish, fruit flies,
whatever has to be protected, that's
going to be true regardless of whether we're
working on slide. One slide to slide three slide for is that a fair assumption. Yes okay.
Right now the the upslope slide I think that's for. Yes or but included in phase one. That's
fine. Is that work complete. No that work has not gone out to bid. So the work that
we have there with the riprap that we've put in,
et cetera, that's not the final outcome.
No, that was an interim measure to stabilize the slope.
The design for the full mitigation for that
and rebuild of that slope is complete.
It's gonna be packaged with the repair work at slide one.
So slide one and slide four are gonna be packaged together
and put out to bid.
Okay. I need a motion to extend.
Council Member Bowen.
Me again?
Yes, I will make the motion.
Do I have a second?
Vice Mayor. I'll second.
30 minutes.
You can do it, Council Member Balz.
So I have a motion for 30 minute extension
from Council Member Bowen with a second
from our Vice Mayor who's nodding yes to that specificity.
Please vote.
votes are in and the motion carries with four yes votes and one no vote. Let us
proceed so continue with the questions. How long so to speak is ANIPA valid? Oh
that's a good question. I think it's once it's certified it is it is good but it's
only for the areas that were studied, so specifically for slides one and four, the NEPA applies
to those two slides.
Okay, so if I could just say, hey, I want to do it for slides two and three as well,
just loop it right in, since we're apparently delayed already by our NEPA, and it's the
same creek, so talk to me a little bit about that.
you would still have to do NEPA again. Now they could build off the old NEPA survey and
NEPA will only be required again if there's federal funding involved. If there's no federal
funding then we would result to CEQA. But you could build off the study that was done
before, but still the biologists and everyone has to go out to that specific site to see
if there's any environmental concerns. Now they should be similar, you're correct. They
should be similar, but you never know,
they could find something else in that one particular area.
My point is, the biologists can be out there once
and look at both sites, no?
They could, but the work that was done
was, again, specific for one in four,
because that was what the funding was for.
Okay, we'll revisit this later.
When we extend deadlines, this is back to Mr. Tom.
When we extend deadlines, so for MacArthur Roundabout,
that deadline has extended through time.
How do we capture that in the reporting that we do?
Because I'll give you the context,
because when Council Member Bowen and I met
with the residents in 2023,
we told them in no uncertain terms
that the MacArthur Roundabout would be done in 2025.
And so when I come here and see green,
and it's gonna be done in fiscal year 28,
it makes it difficult for us.
And so it doesn't seem like it's green
relative to what we communicated publicly
at one point in time.
So it's really more of a process question.
I'm less fixated about this.
I'm more fixated about the color
and how we communicate with the public when deadlines change.
And I will apologize for the misrepresentation of the color.
We are updating the public on the schedule.
So the schedule on the project website is accurate.
So whenever there is a delay, and then
there are examples of it on MacArthur Roundabout
and Lake Chabot Road, when we say, hey, we promised this
by we said the NEPA was going to be done by I think it was a certain date we said
there's a delay now the due date is this and we publicly disclosed that on the
web's on the project updates website so our primary method of communication to
the public is that website and we keep try to keep it up today as much as
possible and whenever there is a delay we'll we'll state the reason for that
delay because I think ultimately what what I care about and I've heard from a
number of council members but I'll let them speak for themselves what I've
heard is that we want projects on time on budget and sometimes we're
delivering things ahead of budget and that's awesome and we need to celebrate
that I think I've heard some really good news recently that wasn't highlighted
no and this it's and I'm glad you brought that up I'll share that with you
So there have been a couple of projects recently
that have been delivered on,
I have scheduled an under budget.
In comparison, those projects are completely
within the control of the city of San Landro.
They do not have any outside agencies,
they don't not have any regulatory approvals.
Those two projects specifically were our curb ramp project
where we replaced over 100 curb ramps
ahead of schedule and under budget.
The second one was our sanitary sewer point repair project.
That one's coming in ahead of schedule.
Those two projects were completely under the control of City of San Leandro.
When we start to involve other regulatory agencies like FEMA, like the Water Board,
Caltrans, all these other agencies that have approval authority, that's what puts them
on these major construction project deliveries, and that's what makes them major because they're
so complicated.
So that one we, some things are out of our control and we try to react as appropriately
as possible, but it's difficult.
But when we are able to control a project fully, I think we've proven that recently
that we can come in on schedule, or even ahead of schedule sometimes.
So we're going to find reasons to celebrate that, trust me.
But when we are behind, we need to be very transparent that we are behind.
And the other comment on that is that on these bigger, multi-jurisdictional projects, use
your electeds to put extra pressure to make things happen. Delays are natural
but when projects are delayed several years that's not that's not good and
that's where we need to because that's that's literally costing the city
millions of dollars so that's that's really important. For the electric
vehicle fleet, I know you were talking about a PG&E program in particular, there
are other programs that have been funded out there and Ava Community Energy was
looking for opportunities to build chargers in different cities because I'm
assuming that's charging programs or is that for paying for the vehicles
themselves? The program I'm familiar with through AVA was an initiative where they
wanted to lease public parking spaces and put in charging infrastructure that
would be open to the public. Because I know that the Air District and AVA in
in different ways have been focused a lot
on supporting electrical vehicle infrastructure in particular.
So let's just make sure that to the extent
that we can tap into either of those or monies
that ACTC is working to allocate,
there seems to continue to be this set aside of money
for charging infrastructure.
And if it's only for public, then just we can confirm that.
But for example, there's been a lot of electrification
of school buses and that's clearly not public infrastructure.
So it's the money that's going to electrify
the charging stations on school grounds for school buses.
So I'm just looking for ways in which we can find
that type of money for this type of purpose
that might be outside of PG&E.
And then the last one that I was very interested in
is a stormwater fee update,
Because obviously we cannot run a city on revenue
that's 35 years old.
Costs have increased, full stop.
So my real question here is that it doesn't have
to be addressed today, but I very much want to understand
how we will approach this differently from last time.
That's really important to me.
Last time we did not have images of trash capture devices.
We did not have images of breaking down pipes
that were cracking or whatever that needed to be fixed.
So one recommendation that I have
is that we be very much focused on actual images,
videos, things that people can say,
oh wow, I didn't realize that it was that bad.
So I think the opportunity is there,
residents have told us that they are willing
to pay for infrastructure in particular.
And this would be a fee that's specific
and it's associated with a specific purpose.
think we can with that focus help our residents see how instead of using the
general fund to subsidize that it it pays for itself so thank you for the
efforts that you're undertaking in that regard so that we will move to our final
item and our final item is the fifth priority housing and homelessness good
evening council Jessica Lobron deputy city manager thank you all for your
patients as we wrap up our final priority work plan. I'll kick off this evening with an update
on our homelessness prevention rental assistance program. As a reminder this is a limited subsidy
for extremely low-income households that are at risk of homelessness. We're excited to share that
we – oh, sorry, I don't have pictures for this line. We launched this program in April of
2026. Based on our first quarterly report, we have so far served eight households, of which
seven are households with minor children. We did a lot of work coordinating with the school district
to make referrals for this program. We're excited. One of the upcoming tasks from our
partner agencies to prepare a dashboard so we'll have more lifetime data on how many
households are being served. I'll now hand it over to our housing manager, Carrie Huesler,
for the next projects. Thank you, Jessica. I'm here with the next three work plan items,
And first, I will go into information on rent program implementation.
I'm pleased to share that this work program item represents the successful integration
of two previous council priorities.
This is the merger of the adoption of the rent stabilization ordinance
and the rent registry implementation.
So we're now rebranding as rent program implementation
for the purpose of the work plan.
So over the past three years, we've been building the city's new rent program division
from the ground up.
That work began with an extensive community outreach effort
and has progressed through ordinance adoption,
staffing, software development, and implementation planning.
And as you can see here,
we've completed many of the major milestones to date.
This next slide highlights the key activities
currently underway as we prepare to launch
the RENT program this coming January.
Our efforts are currently focused
on two major implementation activities.
First, developing the initial community outreach
engagement plan and then second completing the public-facing rent registry software portal.
In summary we've successfully completed several key milestones including adoption of the rent
stabilization and rent registry ordinances, completion of phase one of the rent registry
software, hiring of three new staff members and then I'm also pleased to share that we are in
the process of hiring a permanent rent program manager who will lead the city's rent program as
as we transition from implementation
to full program operations this January.
Next, we are here
with the Mobile Home Space Rent Stabilization Amendment.
Council approved a one-year extension
of this work plan item through June, 2028
to allow sufficient time to prepare the first draft ordinance.
Following the rent program launch this January,
we will begin a phased community outreach
and engagement process.
feedback gathered during that process will help inform development of the
first draft ordinance. As shown on this timeline the remaining implementation
activities extend through 2028 and are contingent upon the identification of
funding. This phased approach provides time to evaluate the ordinance, engage
the community, and develop a thoughtful first draft. This timeline highlights the
major milestones over the next two years. Following the rent program launch in
January we will begin evaluating the ordinance. Community outreach will begin
in March 2027 and the feedback received will help shape the first draft ordinance.
Subject to available funding we anticipate bringing that draft forward in
2028. And now I will bring forward the local preference disparate impact study
item. So to date staff has completed the initial phase of this effort including
background research data collection and analysis. Based on our evaluation staff
recommends discontinuing implementation of the local preference disparate impact
study. Here's some key takeaways. Moving forward will require additional
consultant costs. There is no state or federal mandate requiring adoption.
Discontinuing this effort would not affect the city's inclusionary housing
ordinance. And there are currently no available, excuse me, and there are no
current affordable housing projects that would be impacted by this recommendation.
And I will hand it off to Jessica Lobit on our deputy city manager
Thank you and to present an update on the Llewellyn interim housing and drop-in Center
our
We will be coming to council in the fall with a more robust update on the first year of operations
But just some of the key highlights from the first year
in total
18 persons, individual persons have accessed the drop-in center. 36 persons have moved
from shelter into permanent housing. These are all photos of former Llewelyn Interim
Housing residents with keys to their new homes. So we're very excited about the preliminary
successes of this program and look forward to giving further updates in the future. I'll
now hand it over to Planning Manager Weylandy. Good evening council members.
The purpose of this work plan item is to remove the barriers and the
constraints to the development of new housing in the city. In over the past
year we made progress on multiple fronts including the following. First with
regards to development impact fees we completed a major update to our impact
fee structure in the past year which reduced and in some cases eliminated
and traffic impact fees for two key housing types, ADUs,
and deed restricted affordable housing.
Also, as part of this effort,
we right size park impact fees across the board
to ensure that they aren't serving as a barrier
to market rate housing production,
which is also a critical need for the city.
With regard to market feasibility,
we contracted with an economics consultant
to analyze the market feasibility
of major entitled housing projects
in San Leandro, and those findings were presented
to the council earlier this year in February.
And as a result, the council now has this information
as a basis to make informed housing related decisions
that are based and grounded in real market conditions.
With regards to parking and TDM,
our housing element identified minimum parking requirements
as a constraint to housing production.
And in response to this constraint,
staff work with a transportation consultant to amend our minimum off
street parking requirements for the purpose of reducing unnecessary costs on
housing developments and providing developers with a greater deal of
certainty when evaluating whether to move forward the project in the city. This
slide highlights some work that's currently in progress regarding
The Bayfair staff is continuing to work hard to advance a development plan for the Bayfair
TOD area and that's funded by a $1.8 million MTC grant and this effort is to turn decades
of planning into implementation by providing a framework for transforming underutilized
land into development ready sites.
With regards to project tracking, as we mentioned briefly in the economic development item, we
created an Excela Power Users Group, which is a multidisciplinary team, which is working
on a coordinated recommendation to improve the development project tracking system for
the city.
And the goal of this effort is to reduce approval times, to cut related staff costs, and to
make the permitting process work better for everyone involved.
together these efforts are building condition that will make housing more
more viable and achievable in San Leandro and with that I'll turn turn it
back over to Jessica Lobadon to finish the presentation. Thank you again for
everyone's patience this evening and I understand we're moving directly to
public comment now. Very quickly we will take the council questions going to
councilmember or vice mayor of the others welcome please thank you I wanted
to go back to I have too many tabs open because I've been opening up the project
pages for various things I wanted to go back to the rent program and wanted to
ask on the expanded renter protections that included just cause some of the
other there was a kind of a legislative package so to speak that included rent
civilization just cause and of other expanded renter protections it is my
recollection that the council elevated rent stabilization based on staff
capacity and I'm just wondering where the other expanded renter protections
Where are they in the work plan or are they not included in future work in like the fiscal 2728?
It means I'm like just cause or something. Yeah, I think that would be something that would we have to bring up a future planning session
It's really not on the radar right now. So to speak. I think we were like you said prioritize in the last couple years
Between the rent registry and then rent stabilization more recently
So that would be something that for council to certainly discuss and bring up in the future priority planning sessions
Okay, I was under the impression. I'd have to look back because I was under the impression that it had been
Pushed but that's a mobile home would be also coming
You know, it is delayed as we mentioned at the March session, but that was actually next in the queue
My other question was regarding
We have different slide numbers I'm looking at
number four local preference disparate impact study
Is that a housing disparate impact study? Can you clear? I'm not clear on what?
What part is being
delayed
Sure
Director Tom, did you want to answer that? Okay
initiate. So this is a study that is related to cities. It has to do with fair housing also.
Cities who wish to implement a local preference policy when their projects are federally and
state and or state funded. About 10, 12 years ago the federal government did actually pass
under HUD fair housing that if you want to keep with federal subsidy a local preference policy
you'd have to go through certain sort of hoops or so to speak the state followed suit
I believe a few years after that so it's been in place over a decade plus
so this was
An attempt to initiate that process what we would say here is that we have a local inclusionary zoning ordinance
That's been in effect since 2004 that is not impacted because that if that's to say Central Cal and has no federal state money
City can't continue to to have a local preference in the or have a developer implement that for us
So that gives you some context about what this is is it's a selection process for tenants
so I
Guess this is more of a comment. So I'll save that to ensure we have time for public comment. I just I'm still unclear I
Would have to look that up, but I it just
my brain and heart
Really goes against not if a disparate impact study, which is intended to protect
and to ensure that low-income and low-income communities are able to not
have disparate impact on policies right this is the intent is to prevent
disparate impact this kind of I'm trying to kind of align it anyway so I'll just
leave that there and if there's time for comments I'll add that council member
bone please I just want to express my enthusiasm for housing and homelessness
just as I have all of the other priorities,
but seriously awesome.
I wanted to ask about the Beaumont space
rent stabilization amendment, the timeline.
So the public review period,
community stakeholder meetings due date February, 2028.
And then the next date is a city council work session
March, 2028.
I'm trying to figure out sort of like what's going to happen from the sort of like beginning
of it to the end because it seems like a pretty long timeframe from when we're like doing
the work to the final second reading and it passes.
Why is it such a long period?
Sure, I can add that we are going to start the public outreach campaign and the stakeholder
meetings in a similar fashion as the rent program work that we did a few years ago to
get to this stage.
We're going to start that alongside the council hearings and inform and have a lot of feedback.
And so once we come to the program evaluation in September, we'll have more of an idea of
where the ordinance is heading and what program costs and staffing and budget.
And then moving into more of your questions, then we will bring forward the reality of
a program towards the end of 2027 and start bringing the actual ordinances through public
hearing to help.
So a lot of the time will just be to outreach and listen to the community.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
And then I really appreciate that we are really focused on getting people housed and obviously
the picture of people giving keys. That's so wonderful. But also that we're talking
about supporting housing production because it's very much part of the same
goal and I really appreciate the work that we're putting in. I say we you all
are putting in to making this happen. And then the other thing that I want to
say so that Councilmember Bolt can get out here by 1030 is for support of housing
production I love what could happen at Bayfair and for us to be able to have
more housing and more folks moving into more families I just have to always plug
in making sure that we're providing resources and services to families and
children as we're thinking about getting more housing in as well thank you. At
this point in time we're gonna take public comment on this item. Mayor we've
received two comment cards and there are two hands raised online. Please proceed
in person. Our in-person speakers are Jenny Madsen followed by Mike Katz
LaCabe. And if we before we can have our first speaker if we can get a time
extension for 15 minutes please can I get a motion. Councilmember Bowen.
So moved. Second. Vice mayor. Second. And so by 15 minutes I'm going to 1045. Please
vote all votes are in and the motion carries unanimously five yes votes to
council members being absent thank you thank you this point of time can we
proceed I was gonna yield my time so you got could all go home on time but you
voted so just cause it's still part of the the deal and I know it's not on the
schedule but we're not going to forget. The rent registry I think puts us in a
better position to have some sort of enforcement of rules that have been
ignored far too long by the landlords because that's all I'm going to say
about that. I work on the state and local county level about mobile homes. I
Haven't forgotten about that. It's a promise y'all made maybe not these particular individuals
But the council has made it over and over and over again. You got nine parks. It is not going to take
Three months to do outreach. It's different than than the tenant outreach, which was
Multiply, you know a whole city full of buildings and renters. This is nine parks in San Leandro
it's a targeted area and when it comes to local preference the funding has
always determined who gets into the subsidized housing and it's rarely been
any money from San Leandro so San Leandro residents are usually kind of
down they don't get high priority for housing subsidized housing I can be done
now. I want y'all to go home. Thank you. The next speaker is Mike Katz-Lacabe.
Good evening. In reference to a previous part of the presentation, I must say
that the use of the term hard tech makes me think that someone has been
reading an energy recovery press release, but I digress. So speaking of public
safety, it has now been more than 65 days since San Leandro Police shot and killed
person at the Santa Ana Marina on May 7, 2026 for whom police were conducting a
welfare check. AB 748 has been the law for more than seven years now and that
law requires the recordings of critical incidents involving use of force by law
enforcement resulting in death or great bodily injury must be made publicly
available within 45 days of the incident with limited exceptions. According to the
department's own policy 805.11.1 disclosure may exceed 45 days if the
department demonstrates a disclosure would substantially interfere with the
investigation just to be sure I didn't miss anything I checked the police
department's critical incidents page today and the unanswered response to my
public records request as with previous times which a family or police
department has been in violation of California state law or its own policies
I expect no accountability for this violation accountability appears to be
reserve for black police chiefs. I look forward to the prompt release of the
critical incident video and the report detailing this violation of law and how
it occurred. Thank you very much. Thank you. There are no more comment cards from
here in the room. So we'll close public comment in person and open public
comment online. Our first online speaker is Douglas Spalding. Thank you very much.
I don't know what it is.
I don't know what it is.
Um, here, here, Jenny and Mike.
I first want to share. I've been having a little debate on, uh,
some social media, Facebook page, someone who commented on the city.
Doesn't do anything. And, um, having sat through this entire presentation.
There's an astonishing, amazing amount of work, uh, going on.
And I think everyone for, for their, their parts in that.
of data centers. I'm mindful that Councilwoman Bowen raised it as an issue. I don't think
we can afford to wait for the next priority setting meeting in March of 2027. It's an
issue that touches on many of the priorities here, including economic development. Are
we updating zoning zones so that we can put in data centers as office buildings, quality
of life, public safety, the whole, the whole nine yards. And the way that these data center
developers are moving quickly and furtively, secretly, you know, the wool might be over
ours by neck smart. So I urge you to consider reconsider that as an urgent matter for your
discussion. And I believe the best course forward is to declare a moratorium until we
we know a lot more. And Mayor, I did go and I spent a lot of the last week looking at
Santa Clara and the information is not great. I want to quickly move to the housing and
homeless issue. I just find it astonishing that it's going to take so long. The mobile
home rent stabilization ordinance has been promised for a very long time. It's not rocket
science. We know what the elements are. Same with Just Cause. That's supposed to come after
March of 2028. Come on. It appears like there's some quid pro quo going on where,
well, you got your render registry, you got your RSO, so we're going to slow
the breaks on these other things. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Alvaro Remos.
Okay so I wanted to talk about how finance is a more significant issue and it's not just about
addressing the city's fiscal deficit. I want to pull finance out of the shadows and put it into
the spotlight. We need to prioritize financial assistance and I saw it appear under small
business and entrepreneurship but it's too limited and it should be expanded significantly.
I'm going to give you some examples because it's not just about money. We need a careful study of
the 21st century Road to Housing Act that passed the United States Congress. The president vetoed
it. I think because Congress didn't want to pass voter suppression. Anyways, it includes flexibility
for community banks to loan money for building housing, which I found interesting.
And furthermore, I'm glad also, I heard earlier tonight about unbanked and underbanked populations
of people. How much medical debt do people have? How much student debt do people have? How much
credit card debt do people have, especially as a result of cuts from the federal government to
food and health care? Maybe this is a place where credit unions could help. I'm open to ideas.
Let's talk about workforce issues.
So I'll argue that work access worked in the 1990s and stopped working in the 2000s.
And it's dependent on a model of economic growth and rising productivity for there to
be work to be done.
So if you have economic stagnation and no significant productivity increases, there's
not going to be any work.
When the Great Recession happened in 2008, work requirements got in the way of people
getting access to welfare.
requirements have made a comeback in eligibility for Medicaid. And frankly, people will die
from getting kicked off of Medicaid. That's going to be another government statistic.
There's too much exclusion for workers in the U.S.
Thank you, sir. Your time has elapsed. Our next speaker is San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.
Hello, everybody. This is Emily Grego with the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce. I don't
I don't have any actual prepared remarks for tonight,
but I was listening to the entire presentation
and realized that the business community touches
on every single department that was reported on tonight.
Our businesses or the organization itself
touches on all of them.
And I just want to give a shout out
to those that we work with at the city.
There are times when we are we're pushing for something
asking questions, but we are always really happy.
I don't want to use the word happy,
but we're always want to work with the city staff
so that we can get things accomplished for our businesses.
I want to give a big shout out to the mural
that is for the trash enclosure
down in the middle of downtown.
That looks beautiful.
We work with the library
on some workforce development initiatives.
There's a lovely young lady there by the name of Sarah
that we've been working with and we are gonna do more.
We are gonna do a workforce development workshop
around the trade certificate programs.
I just realized we should probably invite fire and PD.
We are in the midst of a first jobs program
that is going on successfully.
Restaurant Week is working out really well.
There is difficulty with translation
with some of our Asian owned restaurants and others.
So we could use some help and some collaboration there
in some way or another and public safety.
We're happy to hear that encampment removal
is still on track, but we're still worrying
about the third party contract
that is no longer gonna be in place.
That's really important to keeping our community safe.
But all in all, thank you all for the work.
Thank you for the collaboration
and happy to answer any further questions
how we collaborate after this meeting to any of the City Council members. Thank you.
Thank you Mayor there are no more hands raised online. Okay so we'll close public comment online
come back to Council members for final thoughts having given the opportunity and seeing no further
thoughts. What I'd like to do is adjourn our meeting today in the memory of Supervisor Scott
He played an instrumental role in a variety of things, a variety of commitments.
One of his legacies was helping to organize and implement the structure that we today
know as Ava Community Energy, the Joint Powers Authority, and the wind farm in Paris' name.
Primarily, it's a sign of respect for his commitment, but he played a role in many different
areas.
It's a remembrance of his efforts as a public servant for many years and with sympathy
to his family, who was feeling lost probably closer than anyone else, we pause for a moment
to reflect.
In memory of Supervisor Haggerty, we are adjourned.