Airport Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, let's take the roll call. Let's start there.

Salas Campos? Present. Ortiz?

Here.

Vice chair Foley? Here. Chair Cohen? You have a quorum.

Oh, he's actually in the building, so he won't be here long. Or it won't take him long. First item is to review the work plan. We are dropping the regulation of oversized vehicle parking status per rules. I need a motion to approve.

So moved. Second.

Any discussion? If not, then all in favor? Or we need to we need to vote. Thank you. Okay.

Moving on to the committee reports. I had a personal request that we move Vision Zero first so that I can be here for present. Because this meeting time was changed, I'm backed up with another appointment in 10:30, and it's very important that I hear the Vision Zero presentation, particularly since this is the first time that we've had this presentation since it's been, Vision Zero's been folded into this committee. So I don't know that I need a motion to modify the agenda. I think I can just move to the item and call it ahead.

Okay. And I see they're already in the box ready for that. So this is the Vision Zero action plan status report. And John, why don't you kick us off?

Sure. Thank you, vice chair. As always, safety is our first priority, so it's good to be put at number one. Good morning, Vice Chair and Committee members. I'm John Ristow, Director of the Department of Transportation.

And we're really pleased to be able to the opportunity to present the Vision Zero Traffic Status Report. With me today is Jim Bitner, Division Manager in our Traffic Safety Division Sergeant Moja, Police Department, in the back row and Jordan Moldow, first time we were able to have that the representative from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. So, in February, as you mentioned, we adopted the 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan with current staffing and resources and we're strategizing efforts across five priority areas. We're gonna talk about all that today. I'll turn the presentation over to Jim Bittner to walk through the presentation. Thank you.

Thanks, John. Good morning Transportation and Environment Committee members. I'm Jim Bitner, acting division manager at the Traffic Safety Division overseeing the Vision Zero, the Quick Build, School Safety, Neighborhood Traffic Management, and Walk and Roll programs. Thank you for the opportunity to present the latest Vision Zero traffic safety status report. Today I will be providing a brief overview of the new Vision Zero Action Plan and the trends in traffic fatalities and severe injuries over the past ten years.

The 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan approved by Council in February continues to structure its efforts around five priority action areas that are listed here. These were reintroduced in the previous action plan and ensure a clear and strategic approach in improving traffic safety. The near term priorities utilizing existing staffing and resources will focus on improving data accessibility, enhancing collaboration, and supporting safety efforts through structured before and after studies and streamlining processes to create user friendly public facing dashboards available on multiple languages, collaborate with other jurisdictions on data sharing. For example, we are proactively working with the City of Santa Clara's new Vision Zero program as well as the Federal Rail Administration on this effort to ensure that all traffic collisions are incorporated into the city, including shared jurisdictions. Provide timely reporting of findings from before and after quick build corridor project evaluations, lower speed limits through engineering and traffic surveys where appropriate, collaborate with the police department to partially automate and streamline the crash data entry process which helps optimize staff resources and minimize data errors.

Implement the automated enforcement programs with speed, safety, and red light running cameras. When we refer to the term KSI, this means all traffic crashes that resulted in people being killed or seriously injured. But as we talk about these numbers, want to take a moment to acknowledge that they're more than just simple data points. Each number represents human beings, our neighbors, our loved ones, and that's really what drives our vital work forward. Over the past decade, traffic fatalities have fluctuated peaking at sixty five in 2022 before declining last year and the year before.

KSI incidents peaked during the COVID pandemic, particularly in 2020 and 2021 before slowly declining last year. Both fatal and KSI crashes are now at the lowest point since 2017. People walking

disproportionately and biking

affected. In the last ten years, crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists made up about eleven percent of all crashes, but forty two percent of KSI. Pedestrian KSI peaked at 85 in 2019, but dropped sharply during the 2020 stay at home period, rose again in 2021, and has declined to sixty seven in 2024. Bicyclist KSI has stayed relatively steady with thirty six reported last year. COVID-nineteen disrupted travel patterns and behaviors contributing to year over year fluctuations in crash data.

While pedestrian KSI declined in 2020, total KSI increased driven largely by more speeding on emptier roads. Speed related KSI peaked at 79 in 2020 and declined to 58 in 2024. Red light running KSI has stayed relatively stable dropping from 35 in 2021 to 26 last year. So I'm going to go over this timeline that has a lot of information on it, so please be patient because I really want to make sure it's understood. In 2024, we launched a new before and after evaluation program to assess the effectiveness of our quick build corridor projects.

As shown in the timeline here, the before and after evaluation takes into account a behavior adjustment period, data entry and evaluation as well as a period to implement any needed modifications at the one year mark. Starting from left to right, the quick build projects are installed, then we pause three months to adjust to the roadway changes. After that, we start evaluating traffic conditions over a twelve month period, which will encapsulate our one year project evaluation. After several months of data analysis, we then determine if any modifications needed. If alterations are needed, these will be designed and implemented within six months.

After another adjustment period, we will repeat the data collection and analyze it for a two year evaluation. By conducting one year evaluations, we can identify potential roadway modifications while two year evaluations measure longer term roadway conditions. We plan to complete four studies annually and we have completed one year evaluations on Center Road and Hillsdale Avenue. We're currently working on one year evaluations for Kertner Avenue and Saratoga Avenue as well as two year evaluations for Center And Hillsdale Avenue. Now I'll highlight some key accomplishments from this fiscal year.

In the first nine months of fiscal year twenty four-twenty five, DOT has completed three seventy six safety projects across across multiple teams, including quick build corridors, pedestrian safety, traffic signals, bike corridors, school safety, the walk and roll program. These tables illustrate the completed projects by type and by council district. So when we talk about quick build projects, there are two types, corridors and intersections. Quick build priority safety corridors are often coordinated with planned capital and pavement work to accelerate improvements for vulnerable road users while saving money and minimizing inconvenience for road users. We recently delivered Corridor Quick Build for Moorpark Avenue in about twelve months and Snell Avenue in ten months, which includes the design, community outreach and implementation.

Quick build intersection treatments offer faster, cost effective safety upgrades. This year we completed six intersection projects as well as two sideshow mitigation projects. Most quick builds are completed in less than one year, which aligns with the City Council's goal of completing all quick builds within one year. We also continue to seek additional ways to speed up these timelines. Here's an example of some of the quick builds intersection.

One on the left is a brand new one that we just installed in District 1 that has a painted treatment that makes it even more visible to traffic. We're still evaluating the overall costs as well as the benefits to see if this could be something that we do ongoing from here on out. The one on the right is in Council District 6 at Lincoln in Minnesota where we put pylons and thermoplastic paint on a corner to tighten up the corner that enhances pedestrian safety right at the corner of elementary school. Moving to grants, this fiscal year DOT submitted five grant applications totaling $11,000,000 for safety related work, including pedestrian and bicycle programs, school improvements, and a bike plan update. Of these grants, 1,000,000 was brought in for signal work.

Looking ahead, there's uncertainty around federal funding obligations with a shift in the administration. DOT currently has about $50,000,000 in federal grant agreements in progress, including $21,000,000 in safe streets for all funding. This also includes major initiatives like the Speed Safety System pilot program that is currently pending further federal review. For school safety, we completed 31 access and circulation studies at schools across San Jose this year, evaluating traffic flow, walking and biking access, parking, improvements. As part of this program, we also upgraded two eighty two school crosswalks to high visibility markings citywide.

Our goal is to have all 1,800 school crosswalks upgraded in the next three years. Through the Walk and Roll program, we're working with about 90 schools to promote safe walking and biking, which is about 35% of all K-twelve schools in the city. This includes safety assemblies, bike rodeos, and events like walk and roll days and international walk to school day, all aimed at creating safe, healthy habits for our students. This program is actively coordinating with school district's leadership to further increase school participation citywide. Speeding and red light running remain the top contributors to fatal and severe injury crashes in San Jose as identified by our Vision Zero program.

To address these dangerous behaviors, we're turning to automated tools, specifically speed safety cameras and red light cameras, which have been proven effective in improving driver behavior and reducing serious crashes. DOT estimates that implementing a five year speed safety system program will cost between 15,400,000.0 and $17,900,000 including both one time and ongoing costs. On 10/29/2024, the council adopted the speed safety system use policy and the required impact report, as outlined in Assembly Bill six forty five. This was a major milestone in launching the pilot. The request for proposals closed in January 2025 and staff are now reviewing vendor submissions.

In addition, the city plans to install and activate red light running cameras at four intersections this summer. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jordan to provide an update from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. Thanks, Jordan.

Thank you, Jim. Jordan Moldow, today I'm speaking to you as a volunteer member of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee presenting on behalf of the committee. The BPAC appreciates the opportunity to present to the Transportation and Environment Committee. As an advisory body with expertise, lived experience, and engagement with the public, we have perspectives that we would like to surface as T and E makes decisions about the future of transportation in San Jose. We've submitted a memo with committee recommendations and a report of our activities.

Today I will briefly summarize our recommendations, most of which are aligned towards achieving San Jose's Vision Zero goals. And since we know that traffic violence disproportionately impacts residents in our equity priority communities, solving Vision Zero is aligned towards San Jose's equity goals. To start, here are three not yet completed policies from the council adopted Better Bike Plan 2025 that the BPAC wishes to emphasize. One, along bikeway corridors that lack physical protection, lower speed limits and design speeds to 25 miles per hour or lower. Two, adjust mode priority and design to achieve the walking and bicycling first city called for in Envision San Jose 2040.

In urban context, single occupancy vehicles should be the lowest priority. And three, update relevant city plans and policies to clearly articulate that protected bikeways are the preferred treatment on all roads with large speeds, volumes and or widths. We also have our own recommendation for implementation of the Council adopted 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan. Every pavement maintenance and capital project provides a once in a generation opportunity to leverage costs, drive mode shift, and save lives. As such, BPAC recommends that the city revise its complete streets design standards and guidelines to incorporate the safe systems approach and incorporate the latest best in class standards for roadway design from various state and national design organizations.

Finally, we have some recommendations that go beyond council adopted plans and policies. Increase funding for the school safety program. Design infrastructure to be safely used by youth such as elementary school age children walking and biking to school and also by seniors. Create a safe routes to school map for every school and better incorporate school safety into an update of the city's bike plan. Address organized bicycle theft, similar to the efforts for catalytic converter theft.

Reconfigure signalized intersections to allow crosswalk activation after a light has already turned green similar to DOT's deployment of leading pedestrian intervals. And finally, please enforce that the city's waste haulers do not place collection bins into bike lanes after they have completed collection. This concludes our recommendations. On behalf of the BPAC, I'd really like to thank the committee for inviting us for a first ever presentation and we're looking forward to our next opportunity to present to this committee. I'm available for questions. And now back to Jim.

Thank you Jordan. And now we'll open up for any questions.

Alright. Well, you and I apologize for being late. I had written 09:30 on my calendar so I'm glad I was close by when I found out it was not 09:30. Thank you team for the update. I'm gonna ask if we have any members of the public first.

No public comment.

Okay. And we're gonna start with council with committee comments. Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you so much, chair. First off, I just wanna start out by thanking staff and Jordan for their commitment to public safety, especially in our most vulnerable equity priority neighborhoods. You know, it's definitely a priority for me given the district that I represent and how many of those, I would say, vision zero corridors that are within District 5. I think when we think about the individuals the city should be protecting our youth, our seniors, individuals who are going to and from work. All of those should be really bread and butter of our efforts here.

And so this is definitely a project and effort that I support and I just wanna thank you. I also wanna just thank the work of DOT who've been prioritizing my district lately. We met with community regarding unhoused vehicles in the district and it was definitely a tense meeting. So I wanna thank Arian for for being there. Also, John, director, you were there this past week for our traffic safety cameras meeting and that was a good conversation.

I wanna thank you guys for prioritizing outreach in my district. I especially wanna elevate the quick build projects around schools. I think the majority of this committee are former school board members. Right? And I think we really understand how parents who've come to us and have shared that they're nervous about having their kids walk to school.

Right? And it's sad that one of the major concerns is traffic safety and if their kids are gonna be safe to and from the school especially our K through eight school programs. I wanted to ask if we could bring up the map of the various different, I think it was the quick build school projects. I know it's a little hard to let's see here. Oh, these are the speed safety cameras.

I think Oh, there we go. Awesome. And just so that I know members of the committee can know, how are these projects prioritized? And should council members be pushing for more of these projects district? How can we make sure that our district gets its fair share of this investment?

Right now a lot of it is reactive. We get concerns from the council offices as well as from residents as well as from the schools directly. For the crosswalks, we're also partnering up with our pavement program to ensure that all school crosswalks are upgraded as part of that pavement program that started last year. It was never done before the program. So that is a huge collaboration effort that has led to several 100 more crosswalks upgraded citywide, including a lot of major roadways, but every existing school crosswalk we're really aiming to have done within the next three years across the entire city.

As far as the access and circulation studies, that is definitely request driven. We have started looking at how we will prioritize those once those requests start to tail off to ensure that every council district, every school district, publicprivate charter is equitably distributed for the workload to make sure that we have a lot of coordination with the leadership of all of those districts including rocket ships as well as private schools to ensure that they're aware of the program. Some don't have concerns. Some have, like a lot of private schools, just have a lot of drivers and they do it on-site. They're able to staff earlier in the day because they're just a totally different animal.

But with the schools that have more walking, that's really where we want to prioritize it the most because that's where the most risk is.

I was just good if I could just add a little bit of history and context of this. This program is about, we're about two years into it. Council asked us a couple years ago to actually start a focused school safety program following an unfortunate fatality over on the West Side. So we're intending to actually get to all two sixty schools, we're doing roughly 30 to 35 each year, in other words working with that school to actually identify what improvements we would wanna do around that school. That's And what Jim was talking about.

Intentions get to everyone. The first year of the program we actually did a survey of all the schools so that we would get just an input from them and now we're actually going through with each individual school to work with them with what improvements we're gonna do. So ultimately over that five year period we want to get to every school.

And just so that I'm also aware, these funds come from, are they allotted from the same amount of traffic improvement funds each council office gets to It's not a separate fund?

Yeah, this was a separate fund.

Oh it

is a separate fund.

When we used it, we had a couple of years ago we had some surplus funds through Measure B, the VTA Measure B program, pavement program. The fact that we've achieved a 70 plus PCI rating, pavement condition index, that allowed us to flex pavement money to be used for traffic safety. If we hadn't gotten to that level, we wouldn't be able to use those, so what we did was confirm with VTA that we could actually flex some of those funds. We built this school safety program using those funds, and that's what we have for it right now.

I don't know if maybe I have an untrained eye. I'm not really seeing too many projects in my district. Is that because I should be pushing on you guys more to have more? I know we've done some around Rocket Ship Jackson. We just did a new crosswalk. Is there a reason why not do I need to be advocating more for my district?

This this is only where the high visibility crosswalks have been installed by the school safety program. It does not include all of the pavement ones that have gone in or where all of previous efforts from pavement, from developments, from our neighborhood traffic management program, it gets really, really busy very quickly to start seeing the dots fill the entire map. We do look at equity to ensure it's more representative. Where the access and circulation studies are tends to be where there's more walkers. That tends to be in District 5, District 7, District 3.

That's where I was going to go, yeah.

But that's where that request driven comes in. We get some from the council offices, we get a lot from the schools directly. They're the eyes and ears, they're the experts, they're there every day. So when we hear the concerns, very high likelihood that there's big problems out there that we want to make sure that we're addressing. So one of the things when John mentioned that survey, we surveyed every K-twelve school, public private charter, about two sixty schools total, we got 80% response rate.

And we were able to ask please explain what the problems are, parking, circulation, pedestrian safety, what kind of violations are happening, those types of things to really hear from experts in the field. They're the eyes and ears to help us realize what schools need more of that input. You take it tongue in cheek though because some of the schools are so busy they couldn't respond. Or they're busy enough that they put just the basic things and didn't give the details.

They're closing schools, And like in Alam

that's another thing that we're partnering up with Barry ESA, Franklin McKinley, Alam Rot. Our walk and roll program is very in tune with the schools and their plans. Knew about these right when they started talking about them so that we could start planning ahead. We're already working with the Berryessa School District to figure out the schools that are closing, where are the kids going to, and making those landing spots the priority for this coming fall. Because we know traffic will be completely different than it is today to ensure that we're addressing where we know the problems are going to be coming in a few months.

I appreciate that. Just really quick, just hope you can understand as a council member a chart comes up and seeing a lack of we're talking about high visibility crosswalks, two eighty two, it seems like whether it was intentional or non intentional, there's no projects in my district. And so that's a concern And for

that's one of the things where that may be that they were already done. These are the ones that just this program installed. So unfortunately that doesn't really reflect where we stand today. It just shows what that specific program has delivered in the last

Well I have one on ones with John, maybe we could follow-up.

Yeah, was just going to say, I was just going to add for all the council offices, we have the ability to map all the different types of programmatic projects, whether there would be the neighborhood traffic management, the what we would have done with a payment program or for this. So that these are kind of broken out and it's sometimes really good to see it all done in one manner. As Jim said, gets a little busy, but we can we have the ability to show you by council district what has been done.

Okay. And then finally, since it's on the same topic, I don't know if we're following the discussions right now at the LA City Council where they just recently passed an ordinance where they're reducing speed limits around school districts from 25 to 15 miles per hour, which I imagine would be an undertaking. Have you looked at have we taken that into consideration?

Yeah, we had actually tested a pilot program probably about fifteen years ago, and that was when the legislation did come out that allowed the flexibility to lower the speed limit. State law allowed the flexibility to go down to 15 miles per hour in school zones. We tested it, what we found were two things, one it's a lot of signs because if you're in an existing 25 mile per hour street, you just have one basic sign, looks like a house that says school. If it's a 15 mile per hour zone, you now have to sign it as a 15 mile per hour speed limit, then at the end of the school sign that it's a 25. So the signs start to add up across these neighborhoods.

But the other thing that we realized was there wasn't much impact when we studied what the speeds were overall at those locations. I recall because I've been here a while, it was probably 25 streets and the overall data showed negligible change. Some were unchanged, one went up a mile per hour, one went down half a mile per hour, overall they became for lack of a better term just signs. So if we don't change the character of the road and that safe system approach that's in our action plan, drivers are going to keep driving what they feel comfortable on the road. So it comes down to how do we change the character of the roadways to really make it comfortable to go 15 miles per hour or 20 miles per

hour or something. Or maybe it's intentional enforcement coordinating with the police department. Okay. That may be a conversation I'd like to discuss as a council in the future. Thank you so much.

Thank you, council member. Let's go to vice mayor Foley. I know you've been long time champion.

Thank you. And, thank you for the presentations, John, Jim, and Jordan. Nice to have you here. It's nice to hear the perspective of BPAC. So, I really appreciate that you've been able to come in and present alongside with the Department of Transportation.

And I wanna focus on the schools a little bit too. It's it's really critical that we make our streets safe, particularly around our schools, and it amazes me doesn't amaze me. It it it frustrates me to no end that some of the people drive driving the most recklessly around the schools are the parents. They're parking illegal illegally. They're speeding around the stop signs.

They we have enhanced crosswalks wherever we could pay to. We we used a lot of our funds to pay for that in the council through our PSE PSE fund our funds PSR funds. But still, people are speeding through stop signs and then complaining that the police aren't out there enough to enforce traffic signals, and you know or stop signs. And you know it's the parents most of the time. So I I agree with the efforts to, enhance the crosswalks at our schools.

Many of our schools are at intersections, so what crosswalks how are you determining where you're going to be putting the enhancement, and is the enhancement the picture that you showed us? Is that what you're doing? You're not doing activated crosswalks or anything like that. That's extra. That's beyond what your scope is.

Yeah. Yeah. The measure b funding is very limited in what we can use it for. The access and circulation studies really looks at the parking on-site as well as out on the street to make sure that the congestion is addressed as best it can based on the facilities. The crosswalks is specifically called out for enhancements and it's paint only.

We do use the thermoplastic paint so it lasts ten years instead of maybe one or two years before it fades. One thing I wanna bring up school related is the partnership with the walk and roll program. And really, you know, the kids are the future. They're also the future drivers, but they're also the best police officers because if they learn traffic safety and their mom or dad go out and do something, the worst thing as a parent you can hear is your kid correcting you, knowing you're wrong. So to me that is really the best incentive is getting the kids who become those future drivers who can be those parent police educated.

And that's for safety for walking for biking as well as driving. And one of the things that I'm hoping to do is expand how many schools we can go to. We only have a staff of four for our walk and roll program, but we're looking at efficiencies in that and how we do the bike rodeos and maybe partnering up with middle schools and having five or six elementary schools come in for a bike rodeo instead of going to one elementary school. And we can get this to be a community effort, get volunteers, make it into a bigger event, but also looking at how we do the safety assemblies, can we expand how we do that, can we get more staff. All of those opportunities to me are exciting because I think there's a lot of opportunity in really expanding this program that I think has had big impacts at and around the schools.

You know, critical mass is another term that's really big. And if you have a lot of kids crossing the street, it changes the behavior of the drivers because you've got 45 kids crossing instead of one or two that might be under a tree. So I really wanna see that expanded and seeing what the opportunities are for the education from the bottom up, from the kids up to the parents to the community that become those drivers. But those quick builds at the corner are another alternative that are relatively cheap, they're relatively quick, that one at Lincoln in Minnesota was installed within three months. So those opportunities are really great to figure out how we can get quicker improvements that aren't full signal redesigns that might cost $1,000,000 If we can go out there and do something for $10,000 those are the opportunities I would love to see implemented.

Well I think that's great. The more schools that we have safe crosswalks, I prefer seeing bulb outs and other ways to slow down traffic, but I certainly understand the cost. Each council office gets a pot every year to allocate towards improvements and we use every dime, in fact we've probably allocated every dime for next year already, so with all of our various projects and most of those are, we respond to the community contacting us and saying, know, this is an area of concern, we'll investigate it. I'm lucky enough to have Kyle Laveroni on my staff. So he's really good at investigating and working with Department of Transportation and seeing where we can do the improvements and how we can stretch our dollars, but it's not enough.

The Walk and roll program is really valuable. How many schools do we have it at?

We're at about 90 schools. When we did the survey a couple years ago as part of the start of the school safety program, we had about 60. And one of the questions that we specifically asked in that survey was are you interested in joining walk and roll? And we put a hyperlink directly to the program on the city's webpage and said are you a school participating school? Yes.

I'm interested or no. I'm not interested. And we were able to get 30 more schools to join just from that effort. And that is another priority that we're looking at coordinating with the school superintendents as part of the school city collaborative to look for ways to get district wide participation. And we have a couple superintendents that are very competitive that really want to get all of their schools participating.

So that's always great when you can get them kind of nudging the schools forward. And I think a lot of it is the schools think it's more effort on their part than it actually ends up being. But we've also had complications where schools only have three assembly days all school year, and it becomes very hard to implement into one of those three days that they've already committed to. So that's why having that leadership at the superintendent level is wonderful because they're the ones that can bend the schedules around and make things work. So we're really excited about that partnership.

So you've given me an idea. I've already planned on having a meeting with my elementary school principals around the start of the school year to come up with a strategy on educating parents and community driving safely. Every year when school starts, I put out a message that is please drive safely, kids are out now, pay attention to the roads. But, you know, whoever's people getting that are just the ones reading my Facebook or social media. They're not necessarily following Pam Foley like they're following the mayor or council member Ortiz or someone else.

So it's I I like the idea of challenging the schools to or the districts to be competitive with each other because I think it starts and ends. You're absolutely right. The kids are the ones who will say, mommy, daddy, you didn't turn on your turn signal. You you you didn't stop at that intersection, you're gonna get in trouble. You know?

And nobody wants to hear from their kids that they're gonna get in trouble. No. We don't wanna tell our kids that they're in trouble. So I appreciate that walk and roll program and the safe routes to school and the BPAC highlighted that as well as increasing funding to the school safety program. So you have 90 schools now, how many can you handle in the current budget cycle?

And if you have to get back to me, that's fine.

Thank you. That might be a little tough to answer. As Jim mentioned, we have four staff.

Yeah.

They are very busy especially

They love this job.

That's a great job. Since we've started doing the Viva Escuela which are daytime. That's a big Yeah, there's a lot there and we have a lot of schools interested in that. That takes a lot of effort coupled with our police department is also helping with all of that too.

Well, and that for those who don't know, that's where they close off the street right in front of the school for a certain amount of time before school and then right after school starts. It's really effective. The other day, Hacienda in my school district had a walk and roll. They started at the park and they rode their bikes and they asked me to be a crossing guard on Cherry And Kimberly. We don't we we have had an activated crosswalk there, but it was broken at that time.

So I'm standing out there with my Vision Zero vest on, holding my hands up, daring the traffic to come at me, and I felt not all that safe, but the kids were safe because they I was the first line of defense. They were gonna if they were gonna hit anybody, it was gonna be me, and that would have been something in the news. But I felt I was really proud that they asked me to do that. I didn't have any training, but I figured I'm I'm I'm a mom. I'm a big person.

I can stand out there and stare anyone down with the best of them. So I think the council offices love to do things like that. We love to be involved in our community in that way. So any way that that your the schools or your team want to involve us, we're happy to be involved. It's there's nothing more fun than starting your day with a bunch of kids.

It it truly is. So I'll I'll leave that with that. I really am grateful of the the joint presentation today, and I'm gonna be at BPAC tonight for a little bit. But I I just think this format really works, and and Jim, as you were centering us on Vision Zero, and that these are these deaths are human beings, I was reminded that every Vision Zero meeting we would start reading the names of people who, pedestrians who had been killed on our streets between the last meeting and the new meeting. So I felt, a little sad that I didn't have that list today.

I don't think it's I know we've had some, and I honor the families who've lost their loved ones and that we've lost community members. So thank you for centering us on what Vision Zero is is all about. And Jordan, I always hear you about the trash cans, and every time I drive past an intersection, I think of or not an intersection, a bike path and there's garbage can in the way, I think of you. So it is not off our radar. That's for sure. And thank you for your priorities. I really appreciate the report. Thank you, chair.

And I assume you would like to make a motion to accept the report.

I absolutely would like to make a a motion Alright. To accept the

We have a motion and a second. I wanna I I wanna just follow-up and thank the team for all the events you do at schools on school safety. I second the idea that Viva Viva Scuela is a great event and one of my favorite things to go to every year is when a couple of schools hold those in my district and definitely brings out families and the community and makes them think about how they get to school safely. Jordan, thank you for always centering bike and pedestrian safety and accessibility, which is something that many of us don't always think about every day just because we're we the most people we hear from are not bicyclists when we hear in our office from people who want road improvements. Although we have overlapping interests with people who have children on streets who are worried about cars going too fast and and areas being unsafe.

And I'm I'm grateful that you started talking about the school closures. Obviously, we have three in Berryessa starting this fall and all the work that's been done to evaluate and understand traffic patterns is I'm a bit worried a lot of it is kind of almost completely outdated and will be a lot to learn next year. But I'm glad that we've, in my district, have two new enhanced crosswalks going in at two of the key locations that will help people who now have to go across major streets. Schools in my district, but also I think across the city, were built as neighborhood schools with the idea that people will walk to them. Unfortunately, even people who live walkable often drove to school.

That's what caused a lot of our problems around schools. Now that we've moved, now that schools are closing though, we have people coming further distances and coming from ways that either is too far to walk or people will be less comfortable walking. So we have to be watching very closely at the effects of these changes. I'm glad that DOT will be involved in that. And I just want to ask a question. As we observe things, I suppose, school residents observe things, is there a direct conduit that we should have with DOT in terms of providing input on what we're concerned about in those areas as changes occur?

Absolutely. If you see something in your district that is a changing pattern that we haven't picked up, please let us know.

So just anybody, I guess, in your team is fine.

Through me or or directly to Jim.

Okay. And then on the the the question about the crosswalks and how they knew. Now that we're repaint repainting them in a brighter and more noticeable way, the streets that had been paved before this new crosswalk method started, are they we're going back and trying to catch those as part of our process?

When we're talking about the major roadways, the high majority of them were already getting enhanced probably for about the last seven years. So it's spread across all the main roadways almost citywide at this point. For the neighborhoods that have not been paved, we are looking to see when they're going to be paved and if it's going to happen this year then we will do it as part of the paving program. If it's going to happen next year then we'll just use regular paint that instead of the much more expensive thermoplastic because we know next year it's going to get paved with thermoplastic markings. The ones that have been paved in over the last two or three or four years, those are the ones that are unfortunately going to be second tier just because we've got all of that coordination to do.

But like I said, within three years we're aiming to have every crosswalk done.

So even the ones on streets that have been previously paved, the aim is to go back and upgrade those crosswalk to the next three years?

Yes. Okay. Great.

Alright, I don't see any other hands up, so let's move to vote to accept the report. Alright, that motion carries five zero. Thank you very much. And we are on back to item D one, our city infrastructure quarterly report.

Good afternoon. Transportation and environment committee and members of the public, Erica Grafo, lead resilience strategist in the city manager's office. Today, I will be reporting I will be presenting the final city infrastructure strategy quarterly update for the fiscal year with the current set of work streams. After I cover our usual overview of the past quarter's results, I'll end by sharing a draft of the in progress portfolio for next year's work streams. As is our practice, each quarter, the work stream drivers and their respective departments develop their committed key results for each initiative in the city infrastructure strategy.

At the end of the quarter, evaluate each work stream on completing their planned key results. And we assign an overall rating of green, yellow or red. In the third quarter of this fiscal year, 12 work streams finished green, six were yellow and one was red. Today, I'll discuss in detail a few of the key work streams on the city infrastructure strategy and we'll also highlight progress made to date, including touching on the one red work stream. Climate smart plan as a reminder guides San Jose's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the city.

The team has completed the updated climate smart document draft graphics and layout. However, stakeholder engagement for the Climate Smart Plan update was projected to be completed in q three, but has not yet begun. It is expected to begin in May month following the release of the public draft. And the draft of the city council memo is also delayed, with the council date now pushed to fall of this year to accommodate extensive input from city departments. The team expects to return in to T and E in October 2025 with the next update.

In partnership with PG and E, the city has been advancing initiatives to support electrification, streamline permitting, and enhanced energy infrastructure. A cooperation agreement was brought to council on March 4 and the basis for an implementation agreement for North San Jose and Downtown San Jose was presented at the special council meeting on March 21. The city and PG and E are actively negotiating the implementation agreement with a goal to execute before the June. Efforts to explore San Jose zone electrification opportunities including identifying potential SB twelve twenty one pilot sites were completed and the partnership pilot for the programmatic permit expansion and the development of a shared dash dashboard has been implemented. As a reminder, the city holds a storm water permit to ensure compliance with the state and federal clean water act regulations aimed at protecting water quality and maintaining storm sewer system and healthy creeks and rivers.

In alignment with these requirements, the city provided a six month direct discharge progress update to the water board in January, which has been completed and approved. Yay. Additionally, the memorandum of agreement with Valley Water for in Channel Creek cleanup efforts has been finalized, supporting ongoing efforts to reduce pollution and improve local waterways. You can find the full slate of individual key results for each of these work streams in this item's accompanying memo. The completion status for each of the q three quarter three key results are in appendix A and the in progress, those that we're working on right now, key results are in appendix B.

So before I end, I wanted to share our current draft, of next year's city infrastructure strategy for twenty five-twenty six. So as a reminder, the city infrastructure strategy functions much like a focus area. We use this framework to concentrate attention and support on key teams driving this work. The selected work streams are typically transformational, require cross departmental coordination, involve new types of projects, or necessitate close collaboration with external agencies. While many many teams of continue to advance projects within their individual department work plans, this strategy highlights a select group of efforts that warrant that special and close attention.

And I also want to mention that just because it's not on the strategy does not mean that it won't come to T and E. There are items that are on the T and E work plan that are not on the city infrastructure strategy. So this version that you see up on the screen is our current draft for next year's portfolio. This updated portfolio reflects a few shifts. The Climate Smart work stream has graduated from the strategy and will be incorporated into other streams, pending the, passing of the operating budget, which will shift Climate Smart into the energy department.

We dropped the municipal electric utility work stream as that work is on pause while we pivot to work more closely with PG and E. We've also removed the citywide building electrification as this work is incorporated into the energy department's operational work. This portfolio may continue to evolve between now and the end of the fiscal year as we continue to refine the work streams, highlight and ensure teams have the support that they need to drive progress on these key initiatives. We will be back in October for our next update. Thank you and I'm available for questions.

Thank you Erica. Do we have any public comment?

No public comment.

Okay, I don't see any hands up. Have a couple of questions. First, I noticed I get nervous when the climate and electrification things are dropped off of this list said these are incorporated elsewhere. I know that those are things that we'll be seeing as a committee in an ongoing way, but what is it, can you just kind of describe the philosophy of what it means to be on the infrastructure program versus being incorporated elsewhere?

So I'll say it's probably more art than science. And so some of this is paying attention to where the priorities are at, where we need to pay special attention to. One of the things that we do in operationalizing this work is each quarter work stream drivers are committing to those key results. And so that's kind of how we keep our attention on those items. Things that we really don't want to see slip or things that we maybe just need to play closer attention to.

For things that we have confidence that the departments can handle, it's kind of their bread and butter. Vision Zero is a really good example of this, right? We have had Vision Zero on this before and we dropped it because the department is capable of doing that. There's kind of an ongoing and recurring mechanism for reporting. And so we didn't feel like it necessitated the additional focus on here. So that's kind of the balancing act we're attempting to do.

Okay. And the reason I'm thinking about this is it's not, we're a long way off from our electrification goals and especially in building electrification. We've talked about this 2030 objective and by sort of taking it off of here, it's one less place where we're keeping it top of mind and in focus. And while I'm very excited about the energy department's programs that will begin to provide significant amounts of incentives and help people be connected to resources to do the work, I just want to make sure the city still think of it ourselves as a driver in both educating people and coordinating the work.

I'm happy to take that feedback back to the department and we'll take another look at it.

Okay. You. And just the other question about the phrasing. When you showed that chart and you had green and it said complete, clearly these are not it doesn't mean the strategy is complete. It meant that I guess the better phrasing in my mind would be milestones that were have been reached are on schedule. Maybe green means on schedule without any delay or something as opposed to complete.

Yes, so the completion is for the key results. So each quarter the department, so the work stream drivers put together a list of two to five key results that they hope to complete that quarter. So the completion is for the key results within that quarter.

Yes, okay. I mean I started to understand that as you were talking, when I first saw the chart, I was like, woah, look. These these strategies are I guess it's just a little misleading on the way it's presented.

You. I I can definitely take a look at that and make that a little clearer.

Okay.

Thank you for the feedback.

Alright. Councilor Morales.

Thank you of course for the report. This weekend after the mayor's state of the city, a number of us were working along the Guadalupe River and the Kaido Creeks. You mentioned that it's a lot cleaner. Do you have real time or any kind of monitoring to know what the if you will cleanliness with and I'll just mention that I was with the mayor's wife and she said, oh it's so ugly, don't want my kids to touch it. But I'm not convinced it's that dirty especially after what you've said and what I've seen happen in the last couple of years. Do consistent you monitoring or occasional monitoring?

I am not the best person to answer that question. Let me just take a peek and see if anyone from ESD is here. I don't see anyone from ESD so I will get back to you with that.

Thank you so much.

Okay, do we have a motion to accept the report? Move approval.

Second.

Alright, we have a motion and a second. Let's vote. Alright, motion carries five zero and we are on to our final agenda item for today's meeting. Our vehicle concerns and service improvement status report.

While the team gets down here, just let me get started with introductions. I'm John Ristow, Director of Department of Transportation. Joining me soon at the in the box will be Khaled Toflik, our Chief Information Officer Erianne Collin, Division Manager, Department of Transportation and Nimrata Bhatra Agarwal, Products and Projects Manager with the Information Technology Department. I believe Nimrata is going to take it from here.

Thank you, John. Previously, all vehicle related issues submitted to SJ-three eleven under abandoned vehicles were manually reviewed and routed directly into DOT workflows. With the introduction of the new vehicle concerns service, the system now automatically triages and assigns service requests to the appropriate one of the five city departments involved in addressing vehicle related issues. This update simplifies the process for residents, eliminating the need for them to understand or navigate complex internal workflows to get help from the right team. This slide shows how the community uses the SJ-three 11 application to report vehicle related concerns.

Once a service request is submitted, it is sent to the triage hub, which reviews and routes it to the appropriate city department. That department then investigates the issue and sends updates back to the Triage Hub. Based on user provided information, the triage hub now checks for duplicate service requests at the time of submission. If an open case exists for the same license plate and location, users are prompted to follow the existing case for updates, eliminating duplicate efforts for investigation teams. During the first three quarters this year, it has successfully prevented 2,232 duplicate submissions.

To improve operational efficiency, the system also flags vehicles that have already been investigated and complied with warning notices, pausing further investigations for sixty days if they are reported at the same location. In addition, the triage engine automatically checks submitted license plates against the stolen vehicle database and routes any matches to SJPD. During the first three quarters of the current fiscal, 186 stolen vehicles were identified and referred to SJPD. The Triage Hub also allows for seamless transfer of service requests between departments with fifteen sixty five requests transferred in the first three quarters of the current fiscal. Overall, the hub enhances transparency and ensures alignment across departments by enabling end to end tracking tracking of each report.

I'm going to hand it off to Arian next to walk us through the next few slides.

Thank you, Nimrata. Through the '5, the vehicle concern system has received 28,453 reports from the public which have been triaged and directed to teams across five city departments. Of these reports 81% just over 23,000 were routed to the Department of Transportation under vehicle, extended parking, or illegal parking programs each featuring its own workflow, response timeline, outcomes, and customer satisfaction ratings. It is worth noting that the illegal parking reports which can range from reports of vehicles parked in red zones, blocking fire hydrants, vehicles encroaching on bike lanes or near crosswalks do not result in an on demand deployment of parking compliance teams. Rather the information is aggregated and analyzed to enhance our parking officer deployment.

Deployments. DOT has used the over 5,000 illegal parking reports to identify 21 areas with concentrated reports of illegal parking to deploy teams during days or times which were not previously heavily patrolled with the goals of encouraging changes in parking behavior. DOT continues to monitor illegal parking reports and make operational adjustments as resources allow. Finally, teams in housing, Beautify SJ, police, and code receive reports to address various issues. Housing addresses lived in vehicles, Beautify SJ handles vehicles related to trash and byways cleanup, Police deals with reports of crime and stolen vehicles, and the Code team manages private property concerns.

Next slide. The previously low customer satisfaction scores for the abandoned vehicle service on SJ-three 11 were a key factor in prompting a reevaluation of how vehicle related concerns are addressed in the City Of San Jose. We've seen a significant improvement in customer feedback over the past four quarters. When we include neutral responses, the percentage of non negative feedback rises to an average of 70% highlighting a broader trend of growing customer satisfaction with the redesigned service experience. Next slide.

This slide highlights the data across the top three most requested services under SJ-three vehicle concerns programs. First is the abandoned vehicle program which takes in public reports of vehicles exhibiting specific characteristics such as missing or shattered windows, on jacks or blocks, missing wheels and tires, and inoperable vehicles defined by the California Vehicle Code and are investigated as potentially abandoned vehicles which resulted in 3,059 reports. Additionally, DOT parking compliance officers initiated 5,949 abandoned vehicle investigations during citywide proactive patrols. Through the first three quarters of this fiscal year, DOT investigated and closed out 98% of vehicle abatement cases resulting in the towing of eighteen ten vehicles equating to a 21% tow rate. The bottom left chart highlights the efficiency of the abandoned vehicle program which sees the majority of cases closed in ten or fewer days.

Next is the Extended Parking Stay Enforcement or EPS program which was originally developed and resourced as a pilot to investigate up to 10,000 annual reports of vehicles being stored on public streets for extended periods, parked for at least ten days. Through the first nine months of this fiscal year the EPS program has received reports 14 and is on pace to receive over 19,000 reports this fiscal year. Through March, EPS investigations have resulted in the issuance of eight ninety seven parking citations and the towing of only 18 vehicles. These outcomes demonstrate that most vehicle owners move their vehicles independently or are responsive to warning notices. The overall low tow enforcement rate of vehicles investigated through EPS program is less than 1% and much lower than the tow rate of the abandoned vehicle program's 21%.

The ongoing volume of EPS service requests outpaces resources resulting in turnaround timelines that extend beyond the twenty one day closeout goal, which is illustrated in the lower middle chart. As service request volumes continue to trend upward it is expected that timelines may continue to be impacted. Finally, housing has received 3,245 reports of lived in vehicles, closed out roughly 45% of those reports and provided outreach to three thirty one occupants of lived in vehicles where teams connect with residents, offer basic hygiene supplies, snacks and personalized resource referrals based on individual needs.

On 09/05/2024, ITD launched the new vehicle concerns dashboard, a tool designed for both council offices and the public to better understand vehicle related service activity, team workloads and outcomes. Our enhanced approach to measuring customer satisfaction emphasizes outcomes, timeliness and communication providing more actionable insights. It also distinguishes between single department and multi department responses to help improve coordination and responsiveness. The dashboard offers a comprehensive view of service request volumes, status, outcomes and customer satisfaction. It includes breakdowns by request type, average resolution times and satisfaction scores, all filterable by date, program and council district.

Users can hover over any metric for more detailed information. On page two of the dashboard, you'll find the vehicle concerns outcomes map. Users can enter a location in the search bar at the top and the map will display outcomes of vehicle related service requests in that area.

DOT's parking compliance unit focuses on addressing congregations of oversized and lived in vehicles parked on city streets through the recently launched oversized and lived in vehicle enforcement or OLIVE program. The OLIVE program was established to mitigate the environmental and safety concerns associated with such vehicles parked on city streets with the goal of addressing the top 30 impacted sites in fiscal year twenty four-twenty five and expanding to 50 sites in future years. The Olive program follows a standardized timeline where temporary towway signage is posted one week prior to enforcement. Vehicle inventories are conducted and occupants are engaged with information on city services and notified of enforcement and cleanup timelines. Enforcement begins and the tow away zone is maintained for approximately thirty days.

Ongoing monitoring is conducted at fourteen, thirty, sixty, and ninety day intervals. Since fieldwork began in January 2025, DOT has implemented and enforced temporary parking restrictions at 18 Olive sites. As expected, the program has seen strong initial compliance with 97% of vehicles identified at Olive sites voluntarily relocating varying distances. Across the 18 sites DOT identified 167 lived in RVs and trailers and five fourteen personal vehicles, with enforcement resulting in the towing of 10 RV and trailers and 12 personal vehicles. It is worth noting that when there are alternative and authorized parking locations available, such as in the case of the Barrie Assist Safe Parking Site, the Olive Program and coordination with housing was successful in relocating vehicles off the street.

The Olive dashboard website features multiple tabs including an introductory overview of the program and the fall twenty twenty four citywide inventory data which is highlighted on this slide. The dashboard allows users to filter specific data categories such as oversized and presumed lived in vehicles and includes a search function so users can easily explore data near their home or business. The final tab of the Olive dashboard features an interactive map displaying each Olive site marked by status from scheduled to complete. Users can view detailed timelines for each site including when temporary towway signage was posted and when parking restrictions are scheduled to begin and end. For sites that have entered the enforcement phase, the map also includes before and after photos providing visual context on the impact of the program.

DOT is in the process of finalizing work to publish additional data on the Olive dashboard including data on individual Olive site inventory and enforcement outcomes. The SJ-three 11 vehicle concern program and its supporting systems have transitioned from development to ongoing program operations. As shown on this timeline, the Olive program officially launched in January 2025. We anticipate completing our second citywide inventory and analysis by June 2025, which will identify the first 25 all of sites for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six. A midyear inventory and analysis is planned for completion December 2025 to inform the selection of the remaining 25 Olive sites for the second half of the fiscal year.

And this concludes our presentation and we are available for questions.

Thank you. This is always a report that sparks a lot of interest, so I look forward to comments from my colleagues. Do we have any members of the public?

No public comment.

Alright. Let's start with council member Ortiz.

Thank you, chair. I also wanna thank staff for their diligent work on this topic, which I know is, a concern for many of our counts council offices as well as our constituents. And I acknowledge that in many cases these can be moving targets literally because they have wheels. So I acknowledge that it is a tough issue that's facing the state of California and not any sort of indication that, you know, it's a San Jose issue solely. You know, as as I've said before, you know, on this committee, vehicle blights, illegal parking, similar concerns are a major pain point for my constituents who I continue to get emails from, frustration from.

And I know everyone here knows that because I email you guys. I know John and Rick have been very supportive as well as Arian in regards to my concerns. And I I know that, you know, many individuals feel that we have a seventy two hour parking rule and they feel like it's not being enforced. I know it is in some cases and and others when it comes to cars that meets meet some of these categories. The seventy two hour parking lot isn't necessarily enforced which is somewhat confusing to residents who essentially don't have a trained eye to some of these issues.

The other thing is accounting for the longer timelines for the extended parking stay program. I just want to update and I'm sure you guys have heard this but residents feel it's too easy to game that program or get around that program. I've heard stories of inoperable cars just being pushed a couple feet and that being enough to avoid citation. So even though they may be chronically storing inoperable vehicles up and down a residential street, they're able to find ways to get around being sighted. So I have a few questions.

So first one is have we started looking at how to essentially target these vehicles that may be in the gap of not really fitting into existing enforcement solutions. For example, not necessarily being abandoned but still acting against city ordinances or disrupting neighborhoods?

I think a lot of that is being captured in MBA four that was released as a part of this budget process which really expands around a lot of these programs to bring additional staff into the parking compliance unit to address things like expired registration and vehicle storage outside of the 30 or 50 Olive sites. So really kind of targeting the congregations of vehicles within the Olive program outside of the selected sites based on the data. But then also expired registration which I think crosses a large gambit of vehicles that are problematic across the city.

Thank you.

I was just going to add the one slide that we do break down the different types of programs that we're dealing with. So the abandoned vehicle are usually the ones that are visibly problematic. They may be attracting blight, they may just not be vehicle that is operable. Those are the ones that we're actually trying to focus on. The extended parking stay I think is the one that is causing the most concern with just a vehicle, maybe not visibly problematic but just stored on the streets for a longer time.

And you can see that we get far more than any other program in terms of the way we broke these out in terms of request to investigate. What we found though is that it's not very efficient to go and keep investigating those because we've only found that it's less than a 1% tow rate meaning as Erin pointed out that those are usually vehicles that people are paying attention to and or using and when we go out there and make an investigation in the field, they move. So that's where some of that, and it could be that someone is just pushing them, we can't tell by visibly looking at that in that case whether or not that vehicle is inoperable. So yes, people can be gaming that seventy two hour, this is the most inefficient part of our program, and it's also the toughest for us. So when we broke these programs down so that we could actually address some of the more problematic, visibly problematic cars, These are admittedly it is the toughest program for us to do.

I have a follow-up question but I wanted to ask just for informational purposes, why are we including I guess the oversized not occupied vehicles? Is that just like people who own RV in their home or like these are things that aren't embarrassed, just aren't abandoned, they're just like a family large vehicle I guess?

Yes. The data point for that was oversized by definition, so over six feet tall, seven feet wide. So box trucks, plumbers, vans, kind of anything by definition because we would often hear the term oversized used, but in reality it's a large number of vehicles that aren't necessarily the target of a lot of the work because they're just vehicles on our streets. Some are problematic but by and large.

Okay. Would that include like for in my district I know in San Antonio there's like some big rigs that are always parked there. Is that essentially included?

Correct. Yeah. So when we did our inventory we tried to account for any vehicle that met the definition.

That makes sense then. That does make sense. And then following up in regards to I guess trying to find out ways in which we could hire more staff or identify more strategies that may cost more to address those gaps. And I know you mentioned MBA four, I haven't seen that yet. Do we have any understanding how much funding it would take to I guess build a robust solution?

I believe it's about a million dollars a year.

Okay. I just want to add council member just to make sure that MBA four does talk about some additional funding, one of the big things and I think you mentioned in earlier council meeting is it does shift resources away from the EPS and puts those teams towards the new programs that we wanted to address which is the expired registration, parking and sweeping enforcement, a new way of doing that and then an enhanced Olive program So as it is shifting some resources and adding some at the same time.

Just for the record EPS was that?

That's the extended parking stay So that we were talking being inefficient, what our recommendation was is that we start to shift away from that and put it into what we think are gonna be more effective and that's what Erin was talking about. One of the new programs that we do want to try out is an expired registration team that focuses on that citywide. And I think that might cover a large gap of vehicles that we have found problematic.

Okay, thank you so much. And then finally, are there any, I don't know if we've researched any municipalities, any sort of existing performance standards for proactive patrols? Have we seen other cities do that? What sort of innovative solutions exist out there in the market?

Do you have any additional context in what specific A realm of

lot of our districts are Some communities may have more time to make reports than others. A lot of times and we've done equity scores where it's like oh well District 5 and another district they report at the same time it takes 10 to respond to it. But if some districts have people with more time to report you know there's gonna be mixed results regardless of how long it takes city staff to respond to it. So that's why in some of those harder to reach vulnerable areas where families don't know about 03:11 and other things like that proactive reporting may be a potential solution. Just don't know if other municipalities are foreseeing any sort of standard around that.

I don't know about a standard and I think that's you know you said proactive. I think that's part of the reason why we went to that model to ensure that all of our streets are hit with a regular cadence as opposed to you know trying to guess guess and game exactly where they should be so that every council district gets the attention relative to that. Obviously there are some hotspots that get highlighted through our data sets that we address, but by and large the proactive enforcement model that we deploy across our various service deliveries ensures that we get across the city, especially with the small staff that we have.

Aaron, can you just re review what we do do on proactive patrols, the different kinds that we do do and how often that happens?

So we have proactive safety patrol which is going around the entire city looking for that illegal parking piece. Then we also have proactive vehicle abatement teams which I highlighted in this staff so that those blighted vehicles were also we're addressing the public complaints that come in through 03:11, but our team is going out there and self identifying vehicles and working those cases in addition to the public cases. I believe our data showed that we have nearly double the internal generated cases as we do in terms of the vehicle abatement program.

All right, thank you. As I mentioned of course residents in my district have concerns but I do want to acknowledge that over the last couple of months my collaboration with your department has been successful. We have been successful in providing relief to multiple neighborhoods in District 5, so I just want to thank you for those efforts. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Let's go to Council Member Stallis.

Yeah, just thank you. I know how hard you're working, I know how frustrating it is. It is much more frustrating for us, that's all we get is calls and I wanted to mention on slide six and seven, you had in the bottom a quote about how responsive, maybe it was seven and eight, but the quote was, oh you moved the vehicle in one day, that's great. That's the kind of thing that I think my constituents just rolled their eyes. I think it's really important to acknowledge how this is probably the biggest pain point in the city and putting a quote like that is just, I think it takes credibility away from what I think you are accomplishing because I know how hard you're working and I know how frustrating it is, but it's just not there's no one who's calling me and saying, oh boy, they that in one day or even one week.

Along those lines, I do wanna tell you another issue I have is I meet with constituents and they're asking me for signs to put up that says no overnight parking, but right now I can tell you after the one of the Olive programs, everybody relocated to I think it's 28th Street, but I go there and there's signs that say no overnight parking right next to all of those vans. And so again, I know the frustration you have in trying to do anything about that, but it's almost like you should take the signs down because people go and say and I have to tell my constituents that are asking for science, it's not gonna do any good. They just ignore it and no one does anything about it. So, again, I don't know how you can really deal with it practically, but it's a real frustration when, on the one hand I've got the constituents asking for signs and I tell them it's not gonna do any good, than the other ones I have who have all these RVs where it says an official city sign, no overnight parking, and it doesn't matter. So you can comment on that John, you and I have talked about it.

Again I respect the struggles but

Yeah, think council member I think the problem there is that those no oversized vehicles are weak and cite them, but with that sign we can't tow them. So we run into that quite a bit is that quite often those citations are ignored. What we're trying to do with the olive program, we built a new program with towable signs that are put out there so we can actually enforce that. And then some of the new programs that we want to apply if NBA four is approved will be more aggressive enforcement and towable offenses for those vehicles. So it'll help.

We're not going to solve every situation. 28th Street is a special one. We have some other things planned this month to start to address some of those. And as Arianne mentioned, we're starting to do the inventory for the next round of abatement for oversized lived in vehicles and that is on our rate. 28th Street is definitely on our radar for that. We've got some other things we have planned on 28th to address that parking that physically will not allow those vehicles to fit in the roadway. So that's, we could talk more about that.

Thank you, greatly appreciate it. Again, I just wanted to bring it up because I know you are working on it, it is just a horrific pain point and I do worry about our city, our constituents. It appears as if we're not doing anything, know what it's like, you deal with it. The other thing, abandoned vehicles versus lived in vehicles. I can think of one particular, but there's a number of them in district.

When you close out investigation closed because you say or you the system says it's a lived in vehicle, but is there any way like, there's a number of them that I've been to myself, and there's absolutely no way anybody can live in it, they are filled with garbage to the top but then the tag says Investigation Closed because it's lived in and I'm just wondering how you, if you have an ability to work with Beautify or whoever that says, no this really isn't lived in, is there any?

So

again, tough programs. We've tried to categorize some of these so that we can break them down and address them differently. So in Nimrata's presentation, we talked about how the distribution of reports go to the different departments. Some of those just one off lived in vehicle may go to housing department, they're just gonna engage that person and see if they can move or offer some other housing assistance perhaps. Some of the other lived in vehicles are again one off that are not being picked up currently by the Olive program where we purposely focus on clusters of those larger encampment areas.

Olive is going through that process right now. Again going back to MBA four, one of the enhanced programs we want to do is to help supplement Olive with a more specialized and proactive and reactive program that's gonna go after those either vehicles that have moved out of the Olive sites or the one off type vehicles that we get complaints on. So we're gonna have the large Olive program that's going to work its way through big clusters and then we're going to potentially if MVA4 is approved, have another team that's going to address the smaller one or two vehicle sites if we get that approved. So will it get every one of them? No.

But it'll give us another resource that we can be more proactive putting together with Olive and then this other more specialized group that's going to do that. It's not going to solve every one of the vehicles though, but it will be better.

I understand, thank you. Alsi, you mentioned peripherally but illegal dumping, sometimes there's a couple of sites in my district where I think the people are just getting used to Beautify picking up their dumping and it becomes kind of repetitive. Do you ever have any undercover, and I have a number of constituents that says, oh I have photos, I have a video of them dumping, I have the license plate number, is there any undercover work that can be done that we could, there's only about three but these spots everyone just, okay I can dump here and

The people at this panel don't have that kind of information but we can certainly see if either ESD or Police Department would be able to respond to that

kind Okay, that is an ESD issue,

not Yeah. The

Okay, great. It would be nice if you could get back to me on that, I'd really appreciate it. Then lastly, think my, I'm guessing my colleague, the chair is gonna bring it up, but you had your before and after photos of the Olive program and they're beautiful, but if you go two blocks over, all those vans are there, and I believe you're doing the right thing, and I think it's an iterative process, but I was over at Columbus Park this weekend, I believe you're going to be abating that soon, and I shocked, and I've been shocked two months ago when I was there, but it's three times the size, and when you abate that, I don't know where they're all going go, but it's going to be a mess. You don't have to comment, I just wanted to mention, I'm sure you're losing

some Yeah, real you weight for observation, yes.

Yeah. Don't think that that was maybe that's rhetorical, but but I think we all agree. And I guess the real question is gonna be whose mess will it end up being? But we'll figure that out. Alright. Council member Campos.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you staff for this report. Like my colleague said, I think these are issues that we share and see in all of our districts. I think particularly for for my district and District 2 where we don't have robust public transit access or frequent service and and the way that our district was built out, there are a lot of communities neighborhoods where due to the lack of public transit access and service folks are essentially required to have a car to get to work, to get to school, to carry out their daily life activities. And so in our multi family housing neighborhoods, you see residents having to resort to blocking driveways, ignoring red curbs, obstructing sidewalks. So I'm curious how the city approaches neighborhood engagement and compliance in areas where parking illegally has become normalized?

Thank you for the question. I can speak to the illegal parking piece and I highlighted it in our presentation. We take in reports through SJ three eleven. We don't automatically send officers to every report of a red curb or a blocked crosswalk or bike lane. We aggregate a lot of that data and then make some informed decisions around where we can deploy officers.

So if there's reports of consistent red curb, let's say, or bike lane blocking in the evenings, and we look at our data and say that our officers are typically going through during the day, then we can make some strategic decisions to deploy some officers for a period of time in evenings to try and identify, find the violators and encourage change in behavior. So that's one of our biggest aspects.

Okay.

In terms of engagement around generalized illegal parking, it isn't something necessarily that my team does. I know we participate in school education visits and stuff like that. So that is a component of educating people on behaving properly, if you will. But there isn't from a parking compliance standpoint aspect. We aren't actively out in the community educating people on.

What would it take to get to that level of neighborhood engagement?

I'm just seeing if I've got any notes on that. I think there are the neighborhood traffic teams within DOT that may own some of that kind of community engagement aspects. And then our proactive patrols across the city are attempting to get to every street on some regular cadence to identify illegal parking across the city so that there aren't streets left out if you will. But we acknowledge that we aren't catching every act of illegal parking across the city and probably never will.

Just to add to the proactive patrols hit every city street somewhere between ten and fourteen days. That's not enough to catch everybody doing illegal parking. What we do do, we don't have an education program per se, but quite often we are asked to go to community meetings that in some areas it may be heavily impacted by parking, where our parking compliance officers and supervisors will show up at that community meeting and explain what we do and how to do it and then for people how to report. So we've done that quite often where we'll go to community meetings and talk about how the program is resourced, how they can help us to be better with that. So anytime that there is a community group that wants us to show up and talk about the parking program, we're all for it.

We send actually officers out there to talk to them. In addition to that, in some, and this isn't necessarily meant to address parking, but in some heavily impacted areas that our street sweeping program isn't able to get to the curb. We do have enhanced sweeps and that's a coordinated effort between council office, police department and parking to actually address an entire neighborhood to make sure the street sweeping happens better. In that case, we're posting that area to actually have people move their cars, is which one of those things that gets to the enhanced or extended parking stay and abandoned vehicles that addresses that. The objective here is actually get better street sweeping in really heavily impacted areas.

We do about 14 of those a year, so we try to do that in council districts that need that extra help. So that is another avenue that we can use in some of those heavily impacted parked areas.

And that sounds like a really great proactive approach to helping clean our streets, removing blight, getting vehicles in circulation or removed vehicles that are no longer in circulation. There limits that our city is facing to be able to do that more proactive community led community based work?

It's just a budget. So we have every year we try to put into that entire budget about, is it 14? 14 neighborhood areas that we would work with council offices to address that. I don't wanna go back to MBA, excuse me, MBA four again, but within that, the third area of enforcement enhancement is a pilot project for street sweeping that we want to see if we can be more proactive and actually try out towing zones and we'll pick one location area to do that. That's in NBA four as well.

Right now whenever we're doing street sweeping in signed areas, not every street in the city is signed for street sweeping, we can only site those vehicles, we cannot tow them. So we're gonna try a pilot program in one area just to see if that works better to move vehicles when we're trying to street sweep. Again we haven't done this yet, it'll be a new program that if council approves that manager's budget addendum.

It would be really interesting to know the differences in the neighborhoods interesting in that it's doesn't have the strong public transit service and access that a neighborhood like downtown might have and particularly when we're looking at these neighborhoods that are that have people living in close quarters, they really have no option other than to live a lifestyle that that may not be conducive to their own best health or their neighbors best health, and so I really want to to acknowledge what it would take to get a more community led community based people centered approach to addressing these issues. I know that funding is limited and so we have to be very you know wise about how we are choosing to spend staff time resources and city dollars on addressing some of our issues as council member Solis ended his remarks on with programs like Olive, you see very tangibly the results of you know essentially kicking the can down the road and not putting people into better situations. And so that I think that's the the spirit of the message that I'm trying to bring here with the information brought to us today really thinking through an equity centered approach what it would take to have more more community led community centered movement in this area.

Thank you.

It it occurs to me while listening to Casper Marocampus' questions that we do a lot. We do some proactive outreach in from ESD when it comes to garbage and what we expect from residents. And so I know that there's mail that goes out periodically that has information on it and we've done the same thing for remind people about how to get large item pickup and things like that. Wondering if there's some opportunity for us to do something like that to mail out to residents in areas of the city that might have concerns and say here's the policies, here's the procedures. So people get, are actually informed without having to look up things or just be frustrated or post on Nextdoor, right?

Mean they actually get information, rules from the city or policies from the city.

Yeah, thank you. It's really good ideas. We will definitely consider that. The way we're dealing with it right now from the budget way is to do this via blogs on our website which we try to explain how these things work. Not enough people obviously get it that way and I think a more proactive approach is probably appropriate. Especially if MBA four does get approved, that is more proactive versus most of our programmatic parking related things are reactive. So if that does get approved, we would definitely need to do a more proactive education informational type activities that were suggested. No doubt about that.

Yeah, and let me just say we've come a long way in a few years. Just starting as somebody who sat on the Smart Cities Committee where we were talking about how do we actually improve this service delivery in this area. This is head and shoulders better than the way it was just a few years ago. So I just wanna first of all thank you. Mean when we see the numbers of reports, we have some real good data, we have a much higher enforcement rate, we have a higher satisfaction level.

It was the lowest satisfaction rating of anything in the city was vehicle reporting. It might still be but it's certainly much higher than it was. And so there's been a lot of improvements and a lot of thought put into this. And the fact that we've streamlined this all into one site so it's easier for people to understand how to make a report and they don't have to choose and then find out it's the wrong way, place to report it. This is a much better offering to our residents.

So I wanna thank you for that. The one the one thing that's always been front of mind for me is making sure it's clear. And whatever we do, I think people understand it better if it's clear. So when people come to me and say, oh, I reported this oversized vehicle, why didn't something happen? And I say to them, and maybe I'm wrong with my numbers now, but I think we had, is it right, about 60,000 reports per year?

Pre COVID, we actually had about sixty thousand reports of vehicle related concerns per year and that included everything. And since then we have again broke these down into different categories to be able to address them differently, but yes there was sixty thousand.

So when I just say to people, just so you know, there's 60,000 reports coming into the city. So the city has a way of ranking them and addressing the ones that of biggest concern. Just that information alone helps people feel better and understanding and calm down a little bit when they feel that they're not being heard. So communication is important. Just like when people have their report, when they make a report and they're told this is a duplicate or we're closing your report but they haven't seen any action.

Being really clear about why is very important. And I I know that there's there definitely is feedback loop now that didn't used to exist and that's definitely good. But I still wonder whether that feedback loop is clear enough. Especially when there's a duplicate report so people understand why it is that their report got canceled and somebody else's might still be open. So just making sure that the language people receive really helps them understand what's going on I think can go a long way.

My one other question is about sort of the neighborhood oversized vehicles that are not lived in vehicles. Know, we hear about, for example, the person who parks their RV, their recreational RV on the street. And I know there's some ordinances in the city about where you're supposed to park your RVs or your large vehicles. Can you remind me of what the rules are and what we are enforcing when we get reports?

I may let Erin or Heather do that one. That gets into vehicle code and how we're able to different ways to address oversized vehicles not lived in. We built our own program as everyone knows with Olive, that's kind of off the books but there's different ways we have to deal with oversized.

Yeah, mean there is the ability to site oversized commercial vehicles in a residential area, not an RV, let's say. So if that's the specific target of the question, then that's kind of a different animal, street, public parking, they're entitled to park there. But the commercial vehicles will get complaints about semi trucks or dump trucks or something like that. We attempt to hit those. Those are a good example of illegal parking concerns that will get in through our system and try to navigate that because folks will complain they only come on evenings or weekends and we're hitting the street weekdays. And so we can make some changes.

Right. So that's the second one is people say, hey this trucking company is parking their truck in our neighborhood but they don't stay all day so they're not violating the 72 parking rule. They take their truck, they go off to work during the day with their truck leaving their personal vehicle next in the space. Then they come back in the evening, park their truck, take their personal vehicle home, leave the truck in the neighborhood. So you're saying that if that report happens, we do cite those trucks?

When we find it we cite those trucks. It's just a matter of us with the limited staffing across 180 square miles.

Because your enforcement based on reporting happens during workday and those trucks might not be there during workday.

Right. We do have teams that work twenty four seven. It's just the volume of individuals working in those hours isn't as many, and so we try to then target the illegal parking reports that we do get.

I had heard that that there was an ordinance about if you have a personal RV, it should be parked in a driveway or off street. Is there a rule about that or

not? No.

Oh, there isn't. Okay. I just wanted to be clear because I I get that question fairly often too. Alright. With some I will entertain a motion to accept this report.

Move for approval to accept. Second.

Alright. We have a motion and a second. Any other questions? If not, we'll vote. Alright. The motion carries four zero and Foley is now absent and we are on to open forum. Do we have any comments for open forum?

No public comment.

Alright. Seeing none, we will adjourn at 10:47AM. Thank you all for indulging the change in schedule. We'll be back to our normal schedule in June and then our every other month meetings next year.