Airport Commission - Regular Meeting

01:30. So we're going to call today's meeting to order. Welcome to the August 11 meeting of the Transportation Environment Committee and I want to just take the opportunity at the beginning of the meeting to thank member Carl Salas for his service for the last, was it five, six months on this committee as a as a member and and valuable contributing member. And thank you. We're we're proud that you your last committee service is here with us today.

I am too. Thank you very much.

Alright. Let's start with roll call.

Council member Salas.

Here.

Campos.

Present.

Ortiz. Present. Foley. Here.

Chair Cohen.

Here.

Thank you.

Alright. Our major report today is our audit report on, the access to and use of city traffic safety programs by traditionally marginalized communities. I'll turn this over to Joe Royce.

Good afternoon. Joe Royce, city auditor. I'm here with Abel at Obi, Brittany Harvey and Maria Vai to present the audit of access and use of traffic safety services. Targeted outreach and other improvements can enhance equity in services. Also in the box is John Ristow from the Department of Transportation.

The Department of Transportation and Police Department provide key traffic safety programs and services such as responding to traffic safety service requests, implementing a variety of safety projects such as traffic calming projects in neighborhoods, pedestrian safety enhancements and quick build projects, also provide traffic safety education and crossing guards, and lastly traffic enforcement. Residents can access the services in different ways such as through email, phone or online requests. In other cases, the departments prioritize service delivery in priority safety corridors where there are high incidents of crashes or injuries. The objective of this audit was to assess access to and use of traffic safety services by traditionally marginalized communities with a focus on services within the community safety City Council focus area. The genesis of the audit was direction from the Mayor's March 2023 budget message to explore an audit of access and use of our most critical services by traditionally marginalized communities.

I propose to take that project on in a series of audits and this is the second in that series. The first was our audit on the access and use of neighborhood blight reduction programs which was issued in December and heard at council in January. For this audit, the first finding was that equity priority communities received the same or higher level service in some traffic safety programs. The audit used two different equity lenses to assess traffic safety service delivery and access and use of services. The first was the San Jose Equity Atlas, which is a tool created by the city to help departments inform equity work that uses data to identify census tract with higher proportions of people of color and lower household incomes.

We also use the Metropolitan Transportation Commission or MTC's equity priority communities, which are census tracts concentrations of underserved populations incorporating demographic factors such as race, income, English proficiency, disability status and age. We found that equity priority communities received a greater number of quick build safety projects in comparison to other communities. This has been in part because the Vision Zero quick build projects are generally targeted in priority safety corridors, many of which are in equity priority communities. We also noted that requests for basic neighborhood traffic safety services were equally distributed across the city and the Department of Transportation was more timely in closing out basic traffic safety requests in equity priority communities. We also want to note that the Department of Transportation explicitly factors equity into project prioritization for some pedestrian safety enhancements and neighborhood traffic safety work.

Our second finding was that school traffic safety programs could be more proactive in their outreach to engage more schools. We found that school traffic safety services are generally accessed by request and both departments, Department of Transportation and the Police Department have faced challenges in reaching all elementary and middle schools for school safety programming. We found that slightly fewer schools in equity priority communities were involved with the walk and roll program or had crossing guards than would be expected if participating schools were equally distributed. We noted there are opportunities for better outreach and cross departmental coordination to improve access and use of such services. We had two recommendations or we had recommendations for the departments to expand and coordinate on proactive targeted outreach and develop a process to better track facilitate crossing guard requests between the departments.

We do want to note that outreach will help in expanding the reach of the programs, however they still will require a school to request the service. Also, even if a school requests crossing guards, they still need to meet safety criteria to qualify and then they may only be placed on a waitlist until crossing guard staffing resources become available. Our third finding, our last finding is that translated and updated resources could enhance access We found that the police department's public online traffic enforcement request form is only in English. The Department of Transportation's traffic calming toolkit which is a resource intended to provide information to the public on how to access calming improvements for the neighborhoods is outdated and only in English. And lastly, phone trees that residents are directed to for traffic safety or enforcement services are not always translated in all the languages identified in the city's language equity policy and guidelines.

So in this finding, had recommendations for the police department to translate the online traffic enforcement request form, Department of Transportation updating and translating its traffic safety resources including the traffic TOMLIN toolkit, And both departments should translate phone trees for accessing traffic safety services into the languages identified in the Language Equity Policy and Guidelines. Overall, we had eight recommendations. We'd like to thank the Departments of Transportation and the Police Department for their time and insight and I ask that you accept the report. In cross reference, the August 26 City Council meeting, we're happy to answer any questions but first I'll turn it over to John for the administration's response.

Thank you Joe. John Ristow, Director of Transportation. Unfortunately Chief Joseph couldn't be here so I'll try to speak for him. Thanking the audit department and staff for actually a really good process that we went through to provide information in terms of all the different services and programs and projects that both police department and DOT do in terms of equity analysis and implementation throughout the city. The process was actually very informative, helped us to learn a lot about both departments as well. Thank you for the great report. We're ready to implement all those recommendations that are included in the report. Thank you, Joe.

Great. Thank you so much for report. Thank you for the response. Glad to hear that everyone's working together well on this and that we're ready to move some of these recommendations forward. I think we have some public comment. Let's move on to public comment.

Jordan, please make your way to the podium.

Hi, Jordan Muldown, District three speaking on behalf of myself for this item. Thank you to the auditor for the report. It was a really great read and also thank you so much for your quick response to my email this morning. A lot of good news in the report. It's really good to hear that the equity priority communities are receiving services just as fast or faster than the rest of the city and that they are receiving just as many services, if not more services than the rest of the city.

So that's all good to hear. And I appreciate the city auditor for letting me know that some of the questions I asked in my email are maybe out of scope for the audit report. But to the city council who's the policy making body of the city, I think a natural next step would be to figure out okay the equity prior communities are receiving at least equal services compared to the rest of the city, but are they receiving the right level of service in order to bring them back into balance with the rest of the city so that they are no longer underserved with regards to their traffic resources and the safety of their streets. We know that equity priority communities have a lot more Vision Zero corridors that go through them and a lot of the serious injuries and fatalities are members of this community. So it's not just important to make sure that they receive equal services but to make sure that we are trending downwards.

And so those were some of the questions I was asking if it's possible for this body to get the answers to or to decide the answers to. Should we be providing services at a greater level? Should we be tracking how close we're coming to achieving Vision Zero in equity priority areas and make sure that we're trending down over the right timeframe. And that's all. More details in my email. Thank you so much.

Back to the committee.

Alright, thank you so much. To the committee. We'll start with council member Ortiz.

Thank you, so much, chair. I also wanna thank city auditor and, our department, head, mister Ristow, for, his his leadership and advocating for transportation safety across our great city. I want to thank you for this very important audit, making sure that our various districts and vulnerable communities are able to access traffic safety infrastructure is extremely important. And I know it's important for Vice Mayor Foley as well. I wanted to just ask, I was coming through the the report and I wasn't sure where it was listed. How are we essentially codifying or defining these equity priority areas?

I'm going to defer to John because built into the Vision Zero.

We use the city's guidance that's been developed for equity as well as Metropolitan Transportation Commission has identified communities of concern that we use which is economic as well as demographic data. So we use what's already been established as areas that we need to be paying attention to. We were actually a little bit ahead of all this when we started to do a lot of safety work because the data led us there with a lot of crashes that were happening.

Yes.

Both vehicles and other users of the system. So we were following the data a number of years ago that led us to this as well too. So we built our programs around that.

Brandon that makes total sense. Obviously if we're looking at areas that have lacked equitable resources there's gonna be more traffic collisions because they lack the safety infrastructures. Is there a, just so that you guys don't have to have it now, is there like a map that exists of these equity areas just for council reference?

Yes there is and I think Joe referenced it. The city has developed that map. Okay, And we use that, all the departments actually use that for our guidance for equity implementation whether it be budgeting or standard operating practice that we're trying to get to. So we use that city information. Maybe Joe could talk a little bit about more about that because that was part of the report.

Yeah, A and B in the report will give you an idea of where. So appendix A will show the San Jose Equity Atlas. So the darker the color in the map is the higher need communities. And then for the MTC is the Appendix C which is a narrower set census tracts but it follows that same kind of color coding.

Yep, thank you for that. Yet as I assumed it looks like it's a lot of the areas are focused District 5, District 3, District 7. As we know lot of the issues are impacting those residents. One thing I think, and I think I could always trust Jordan to provide a public comment on a traffic item. But I think it's important to note the difference between equality and equity.

And definitely measuring the Department of Transportation's response to the various communities is one aspect of of this conversation, but it's it's really equality because we gotta make sure we are measuring the real reason why we're having these major traffic concerns in these districts, which is historic underinvestment in these neighborhoods and a lack of equitable distribution of safety infrastructure. So I just to point that out and just we need to be mindful of the language we use and be clear like equal access to service is important. We need to strive for that. But equity means that each district is provided the amount of resources they need to be at an equal playing field. I don't know if we are there yet.

Thank you.

Okay. We'll move on to Vice Mayor Foley.

You. Joe, thank you for the audit, and John, thank you for your response. This, as Councilmember Bourarty said, it is a very important subject to me given my Vision Zero background and I was actually pleasantly surprised and to see that we focused on our priority safety corridors which is what we do in Vision Zero and that most of them have received attention in our underserved communities and that's great, but I agree there's always more that we can do. We don't want to have more serious injuries or fatalities in one neighborhood than the other. Other.

We need to always be updating our priority safety corridors and taking a look at those. I have confidence that our speed cameras and all the other technology we're gonna employ will help us reduce speeds and make our streets safer too. So that part I was pleased with. I wanna talk a little bit about the outreach since that was one of the inequities that hasn't been resolved yet, and that is that some of, there are a lot, many schools in our underserved communities do not have walk and roll programs. And I know, in my district I have a few, but they're all depend on parent volunteers.

They all depend on the parents run them, to coordinate them, to ask for them, and then to work with our staff. And in all of our schools, our schools have limited bandwidth to do the volunteer work that they need to do. One, to just provide the programs they need to, as an enrichment for their schools, but then to do anything beyond that. So what are we doing? How will we be reaching out to these schools to either assist them, notify them of the programs, help make it easy for them to be involved in the walk and roll.

The crossing guards are because that really relates to the intersection qualifying for crossing guards, and then we have to be mindful of how we're gonna get the word out to have those intersections monitored and controlled by crossing guards but specifically how are we going to do the outreach for the walk and roll?

Very good question, thank you John Ristow again. And your first opening description was very good and it's actually part of the report that what we identified, we try to contact and be engaged with every school but you pointed out correctly that there are limited in resources and or desire to put those, it's a difficult thing to get a lot of volunteers to actually work with us on that. We have about a third of the schools that we're working with and we'd love to do more. The report also identifies that there's a resource limitation on the city side as well, both the police department with crossing guards as well as our staff in walk and roll. We're pretty full right now, we'd like to take more on if we could, but we would also have to consider our resources as well.

So answer your question, what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna redo everything we've done before when we reach out to schools going through the county's school department of education and school districts themselves and see if we can get connected that way as well as going directly to schools as well. Part of the effort that we do around schools, we created a new program that's not detailed as much out here but following a terrible traffic fatality in District 1, council directed us to actually get a school focused program where we actually contacted all two sixty schools with a survey to try to understand what their traffic safety needs were. We again didn't get a full 100% response on that but we're continuing to work with every school to try to get them to talk to us about what is physical needs in and around the school. So it's not just a walk and roll program but it's actually making improvements to the roadway systems around. I think that's going to pay off because we're gonna be engaging more schools as we go.

Every year we do more, we actually do the work out in the field and then they see what's happening and they get engaged. So we have to redo it all again to try to get the walk and roll program more engaged in some of the schools but it's a limitation probably on the school side more than us.

If I could add one other thing and that's something that CIT has been working with is the School City Collaborative is another avenue to get a foot in the door with a lot of the schools that they've been. It's newer within the last

couple. Thank you, Joy. Forgot about that one.

I was just gonna mention that. So when we're reaching out to the schools, old school board member here, it's important to reach out to the parent leader and the principal. They're both very busy trying to manage whatever their job is, but together they might be able to create a program. And don't forget our safe biking program either. Some schools have programs where kids bring their bikes and after school PD is there to show them how to ride safely and it's, sometimes motorcycle cops are there too.

So anything we can do to spread the word. I was actually at a principal's coffee in my district on Friday, and I wasn't the speaker, I just was there, it's my neighborhood, so I thought I'd stop by, but afterwards several parents had suggestions on how to make the streets safer for their kids. And we've done a lot in that particular neighborhood. I don't know that we can do any more because those things come from my city funds, my transportation funds, and I've exhausted them for this fiscal year because I already know where I'm gonna spend the money so I'll have to come out a 2627 budget which will be my final budget by the way. So anything that we can do or I can do to help with the schools, I'm happy to do so.

I still speak superintendent and I still speak principal and parent club, so be sure and reach out to us. I know there's one other council, a couple other council members who are school board members who'd, be able to offer any advice. And those, of course, the parent club leader changes all the time and so does the principal change all the time. So there's some background you have to do. I would not go to the superintendent. That's not that wouldn't be productive because they're too busy doing other things. But I'd start with the specific school side. Just my and thank you. I'm really glad we're focusing on this issue and hope to see that we can get more schools in the walk and roll program.

Alright. Well, when I when I make my comments after, I'll I'll, differ a little bit with that superintendent comment because it depends on the district probably. But, but anyway, let's go on to council member Campos.

Thank you, chair. I I wanna continue the remarks from the vice mayor, wanna begin by thanking Joe and your team for this detailed audit and analysis. I think especially issues around traffic safety and safety near our schools are critical issues to be aware of what we're doing well and what could be improved. So thank you for helping put this before us and to John Ristow, thank you. It's been great to see the city implementing progress on our Vision Zero and our active transportation plans particularly in equity priority communities which I know is so important as my colleagues have surfaced.

What this report shows us is that we do have some more work to do ensure that our incredibly dynamic and fantastic teams at the walk and roll and the police school and safety and education unit reaches communities in equity areas. I know that when I'm in my district and whether it's a dumpster day, the question around traffic safety always comes up. It is top of mind for residents throughout the city, but I but I do find that it's particularly in our equity priority communities where it's much more of a concern. And so you know with that I do have a couple of questions for staff beginning with DOT. In my experience the Safe Routes to School programming which has a lasting impact and brings community together happens when parents and volunteers step up to support the walk and roll staff.

I know of a very successful case which is the Tracy elementary bike bus. It's come along with pedestrian improvements and it was an effort that was spearheaded by parents who who had the bandwidth to organize other parents and the broader community to ensure traffic safety in a very key corridor with elementary, middle, and high school around and so you know recognizing that when we have that that kind of community connection and involvement, it makes it easier on our staff. Right now I'm trying to understand with our current walk and roll staff what capacity and resources do we currently have to engage with our diverse communities including staff with language accessibility relationships to neighborhood leaders that are, that have close ties to the schools in their communities?

Thank you Councilmember John Ristow again. Yeah, very good question and I think in my earlier remarks I mentioned that we have some capacity to add more schools, not that many without adding some more staff and some effort there. One of the best programs that we have but it takes a lot of work is our Viva Escuela where we will select a number of schools every year and actually have a pre school, pre period event on the street. We close the streets and this with the school coordinators as well as parents. Police department has a big role in that as well and our parking compliance and then our walk and roll.

That probably gets the most attention of any event that we do. We don't get to do enough of them, we'd like to do more every year. So that's where I think that both the Vice Mayor and your suggestions how we can utilize you and your connections as well as those kinds of efforts and resources. But those are kind of one off events that take a lot of It's the everyday thing I think what you're talking about and that's how we do that more. We don't have a lot of staff in our walk and roll program.

It's a pretty lean group of about five people or so. They cover a lot of ground. We would need some more staff to actually if we were in any way to cover the other two thirds of the schools that we're not covering but we're ready to do so because we do think it's really important. We actually in that program we physically meet, engage and teach directly both the parents, the school administrators and most importantly the students. The more of that we can do, I think it becomes a really, really effective program. It's just we're only about one third of all the schools. We'd love to have more but right now it's kind of a resource but for both schools and us.

And with the capacity that we have right now, how well are we able to meet the diverse needs of our communities? Are neighbors with different abilities? Are neighbors who speak different languages?

Right, another good question. So as the report pointed out, we do have some work to do on our written and online materials to actually make sure they're in all languages, so that's a step one. Step two, we do have, the city does have a very good multi lingual requirement for all of our meetings and effort. We have multi lingual speakers in our staff that we work with there. So we do cover that end of it but probably that is more limited so I won't say that we're perfect than that either.

But those are the kinds of things that we reach out to any of the groups and student groups and PTAs to actually be able to get to each and every one of those. So we do have speakers, we do have materials, we have probably some improvements we have to do but it is a major part of what we try to do is get to communicate directly to the students and parents because that's the way it happens.

Well I appreciate you acknowledging how the community infrastructure piece is so critical because the one off events are helpful but we need community leaders working with city staff and our community at large to really drive long term and lasting impacts, especially in this work and recognizing how critical it is at this fundamental level for folks to understand traffic and pedestrian safety because it's about behavior but it's also about infrastructure. And I think sometimes neighbors don't pick up on those nuances and these are really great opportunities especially as we're thinking about long term planning. I know that MTC and ABAC is gonna start their plan b area 2060 plus next summer. I know that the general plan conversation is coming up and so I'm really thinking about community engagement and outreach on issues like this that are so fundamental to the health and well-being of our city and the earlier that we can get folks excited through things like that really promote you know bike and pedestrian safety in a way that is enjoyable and uplifts our community. It it would be great to really think about the resources it's gonna take to already doing.

We're doing a great job right now, but like you said, we could always do better. And I think really to engage all members of our community, it's it's something that's really important that for me that we keep talking about how we can improve this level of service to our community. I did have one more question for SJPD regarding the student safety patrol and the student valet programs, which I I wanna express my strong support for this because it's a program that not only enhances pedestrian safety, but it also provides a valuable opportunity for older students to develop leadership skills and serve as a positive role model for younger peers. So with this in mind, what are the plans for expanding these programs to more schools in the equity areas? If there's someone from PD or?

I don't think we have anybody from PD so we'll take that down and make sure that they get back to you on that.

Okay and as a follow-up to that, whether it would be possible to tap the young people in the San Jose cadet program to inform them of this opportunity to stay involved with the city. I think that's another key issue that I hear a lot in my neighborhood associations is how do we get more young people involved in the maintenance and the upkeep of neighborhood associations and you know community projects. So it would be great to you know figure out how we can more in sync work with making sure that all our young people are connected to all the opportunities and programs that we have. As as I said, for me it's incredibly important that we create communities where every student, senior, and parent can comfortably and safely cross our streets. And so with that I'll move to accept the report.

Second. Thank you.

Alright, thank you. We have a motion to second. I'm gonna just ask if make a few comments and maybe follow-up on a couple of things I was thinking about as we were seeing hearing the presentation. First of all, thanks, Joe, for spurring this conversation. I know we've this conversation becomes broader than the audit was supposed to be. The audit, of course, is about equity communities and how this but we all you know, several of us here don't have too many of those communities in our districts, but we obviously are interested in this issue when it comes to school safety and and traffic safety. It it affects all of us across the city. So we often broaden the conversation. Thank you, John, for engaging in that. There was a mention, and I remember from the last school site the school city collaborative meeting that I attended back in the spring, there was a presentation at that meeting from the Rock and Roll program and there were superintendents engaged there.

I will say, I think it is important that superintendents are engaged on this topic. They often hopefully will be able to figure out who in their district is the right person to be then the liaison to the program. In addition to that, every district has a couple of schools I think that do this well, and then a bunch of schools that either don't participate or don't do it as well. And it requires a district level sort of sharing, sort of prioritization to make sure that those best practices are shared from school to school. So I would, say that that engagement is important.

But, about a you said about and I remember from that meeting, about a third of our schools have a program. Do we have and I think I remember, it was actually, that was a significant growth year on year. Do you have that information about how much, how it's increasing in terms of participation?

I don't have it off the top of my head. Let me see if Ann would know that. Do you know Ann?

50% increase. So I mean

so Five zero Jim, five zero.

Yeah I remember it was a significant increase year over year. So there is a concerted effort happening in DOT to have this permeate more schools. I just want to at least give kudos on that. A third sounds like a small number, but it is a really good, there's been a good penetration happening recently. Obviously the other thing I'll use every opportunity I have to remind DOT and others about the the chaos that's being caused by schools closing across the city. So a lot of the things that we knew to be the case are not the same this year as they were last year. Right. Three in my district. I think several in District 5. I know schools that are closing either this year or next year.

And then therefore traffic patterns are changing. And so whatever we had studied needs to be reevaluated. We're gonna have to reach out to schools again because things are gonna be different in terms of how people get to school. And I will be sad about the school in my district that was the probably best participant in Viva Escuela, who was our great walk and roll school, is actually closed starting this year. So now hopefully they will be able to move that to some of the other schools.

But also gives you some bandwidth to add the program elsewhere because of the school that closed. But we need to be mindful of that in the next couple of years because I think we're going to see some significant changes in where impacts are in our communities. The thing was just going to mention is in addition to the typical outreach approach, is school by school reaching out to principals, the engagement of council offices is important. I think it was mentioned, you know, how, you know, we are sort of the face of of the community in terms of transit improvements. I I think realistically, other than homelessness, the thing we hear about the most from residents is traffic safety concerns, questions, speeding, whether it's speeding lack of crosswalks or or improvements in in how pedestrians circulate.

So we are aware, but in on the flip side, we also are good conduit. So it's probably a good idea, and I was just thinking about this as we were talking. If you're having trouble hearing from certain schools, from certain parts of the community, our office may be able to help with that. And I certainly recommend to my colleagues who are on the council who maybe weren't as engaged with schools before that they think of schools as another place of community engagement as a council member. I know we often say, well, school boards are that's their role, but we should get to know who are the principals, who are the players in our districts at the schools, and also have a a direct line of communication with them throughout the year so we can ask them to to avail themselves of these services that the city provides.

So, I'll just I'll I'll just leave it at that. I think it's it's there's a lot of potential. Go ahead, Joe.

I just want to build on what you just said in the conversation earlier about the 50% increase. So the challenges in reaching these schools, this was not news to the departments. Departments. And John mentioned what they've been doing. Police Department also created a new, their safety through education encouragement, respect campaign was started in March.

So they're trying, but challenges. They've had challenges. They recognize the scope of their work in both departments isn't what they would want. And so I just want to put that out there because they are trying and they've tried multiple ways. Our recommendations are really to kind of help them take that next step just to expand that reach even further even with those resource limitations as John said there. The likelihood of having the resource to expand these programs to 200 plus schools not involved is likely

But I think the number was like 70 schools that are involved at this point.

So hopefully the recommendations can help us kind of again expand that reach especially in this equity priority communities.

Yeah. And actually another avenue for engagement is directly to school boards. School districts are often looking for at their school board meetings hearing from having presentations from partners that are doing things. And so going to a school board meeting, and that's maybe another angle into a district. Going to a school board meeting and saying here's what we do, here's what we're doing at the schools in your district, here's what we'd like to expand this to other schools in your district. And getting the board members engaged in helping you make those connection could also could also work. So just another possible suggestion.

Those are some great ideas and I think we'll take you up on that. I just wanted to fill in some more to that. As you remind me at every one of our one on ones that some of those schools, we have some closures and have to rethink some of that. So appreciate that and we are trying to do that as Joe mentioned in the report as well. There's an area that I also think it'd be great for city council or staff to get more involved and that's our international walk to school day where I was looking for volunteers from council and mayor's office to actually visit and we will set you up at the schools that are participating in that program and it's another great one that gets a lot of attention.

So we'll be looking to reach out to each and every council district again for those. And yeah, as Joe mentioned, we're trying to engage more but I think we just heard some really good suggestions on how to engage in different ways that we probably maybe need to investigate more for. So thank you for that.

Yeah, thank you for giving some additional color to that. And it's a good reason to get up early in the morning to participate in these walk and roll programs. I'm looking forward to, I have to schedule the two different crossings to be out with crossing guards this year. I'm glad the police department is now engaging our offices in understanding how that works and actually shadowing the crossing guards in the morning. So I know I'll be doing that twice in the next month or so. Alright. We have unless there's I don't see any other hands up. Have one Oh. Go ahead.

One clarifying question. Does the motion I heard accept the report, does it also include a cross referencing

to

August 26 council meeting. Yes. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Motion is to accept the report and cross reference to August 26. Let's vote. Alright. Motion carries five zero and we thank you so much. We are on to our next item.

Typically, we have heard review of work plans for city commissions as consent items, but I specifically asked for these to come to us as agenda items today. We had a short relatively short agenda, but I also thought that there was some opportunity to get a little bit little bit of depth into how we these work plans are set and what we'd like to see from our commissions in the year ahead. So we're gonna start with our review of the climate advisory commission work plan for the 2526 year, and I'll turn this over to our climate team. Julie.

Hi there. I am Julie Benavente. I'm the deputy director for our Climate Smart San Jose division, which is now in the energy department. I'm joined today Zach Streak is here as our the assistant director from the energy department, and also I'm joined by Anne Vallis who is our supervising environmental services specialist and our fantastic lead for the Climate Advisory Commission. Today, we're gonna share the Climate Advisory Commission's annual report and also the final fiscal year for 2425 as well as a preview into the work plan for this current fiscal year. And I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Anne to cover those items. Thanks.

Good afternoon everybody. Alright. Today we're gonna start with an overview of the commission's role and then walk through some of their key highlights from this past year and finally we'll outline what's ahead for fiscal year 2025 and '26. Let's see. The Climate Advisory Commission was established in January 2024 by merging the Clean Energy Community Advisory Commission into a broader climate focused body.

Their core responsibility is advising on all aspects of the Climate Smart San Jose plan, especially the city's goal to be carbon neutral by 2030 and to adapt to climate risks. The commission also provides recommendations to the city council, and this committee weighs in on San Jose clean energy, policies and programs and ensures community priorities are reflected in climate decisions. They meet every other month and bring diverse expertise and perspectives to this work. This past year, the commission reviewed updates to major climate initiatives, including Climate Smart San Jose semiannual updates and San Jose Clean Energy Power Mix and Road map. They were briefed on the climate adaptation and resilience plan and the climate smart plan update.

Commissioners also provided input through recommendation letters covering topics like legislative outlooks, development regulations, environmental impacts. Looking ahead, the fiscal year twenty twenty five twenty six work plan includes a mix of briefings and actions aligned with major milestones. Topics include San Jose clean energy rates, the building performance ordinance, legislative trends, and transportation updates. And now I'll we'll take any questions.

Alright. Thank you. Do we have any public comments on this?

Jordan, please make your way to the podium.

Jordan Moldow, for this item, I come to you representing the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee. Your Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee would like to submit the following comments on the climate advisory committee fiscal year annual report. The city of San Jose bicycle pedestrian advisory committee affirms its strong support for the climate advisory committee recommendations. These key transportation and mobility initiatives directly align with our climate smart San Jose goals and our city's broader commitment to environmental sustainability, equity, resilience. We recognize and commend the efforts made through the Better Bike Plan 2025, Move San Jose, and the Emerging Mobility Action Plan, each of which serves as a cornerstone in our transition towards a low carbon multimodal transportation system.

Together, these initiatives form a cohesive forward thinking framework to reduce transportation emissions, the largest source of greenhouse gas is in San Jose, while improving quality of life and expanding mobility options for all residents. We encourage the city to fund these initiatives to meet our climate goals. We support limiting the noncritical funding of single vehicle infrastructure in favor of public transit and multimodal infrastructure. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Alright. Thank you. I don't see any hands up, I'm gonna just ask a couple questions. First, just a little additional context on this. This commission we just founded, just started over a little year and a half ago so it's somewhat new.

But unlike some of the other commissions it's not, it's structured membership that has technical expertise that is supposed to be there to help provide input to our decision making as a city. And so it's a little different than the sort of council district based membership where where they're bringing in concerns from their community. They're supposed to also be people who are helpful to us as we make tough decisions as a council as to how we're gonna achieve our 2030 goal. So I wanted to the reason I wanted to have this conversation was just to ask the question about how we are making sure that the voices of this commission throughout this process of updating our climate smart plan and updating our reach codes and doing things that, you know, we all might have opinions on, but not necessarily expertise on how the voices of that commission will come through staff to our council as we address these goals.

Yeah. Maybe I'll start, and then Anne, if you have anything to add. So I think there's a couple ways that this happens. One is just through the memo process, the section that we have on commission recommendations because that has actually driven some different actions that have happened just based on, you know, we give them updates and then we'll bring back that that recommendation in the memo so that council can see that as well as you can see response to those recommendations. Another way that I know the, our commission has been very active in submitting letters, requests and letters that understand the city's processes that you would actually come through this committee to submit those letters and so then this committee then has an opportunity to take action based on the in response to those letters as well.

So those are the two ways that I know of.

I think the only thing that I would add is that for many of the major documents like the climate smart plan update and the climate adaptation resilience plan, we've generally prepped the commission by inviting members to come sort of introduce the update that we'll be providing and then reporting back at a later date with more of a decision making point in time.

Okay. Good. That's that was gonna be my next question. You know, as we as for example, the clean energy programs are developed or the a a reach code, it it seems to me that there's multi there could be multiple points at which the commission gives input to the process. A typical commission would have something brought from staff that has already been kind of baked and then comes for some final input or final tweaks.

Whereas in this case, it seems to me that an early agenda item where you say, here's what we're thinking as far as climate plans. Hey, you're experts. Can you tell us what other what we might be missing? And then a second follow-up with that commission later with, oh, we've we've taken your input and we've tweaked it in this way before it comes then to T and E and the council might actually take advantage of that expertise a little more. So I'm just as we're looking as I was looking at the work plan, I was just wondering, are there times in the process where this there can be multiple cracks at some of these policies?

Yeah. And I also I think the climate adaptation and resiliency plan is a really good, example of this where we brought it early on to the, commission in last fiscal year to say here's the plan, here's the timing, here's our outreach that we're planning, is there anything missing like you said. And then we are bringing it back again this fiscal year to say here's kind of where it's developed. Obviously there's a lot of balancing that has to happen with initiatives depending on the timing and also because this commission is every other month plus you have the timing of council memos. So there's definitely a lot of balancing that we have to do to figure out when we can bring it early enough.

But I think, we've done a pretty good job of, being able to do that in the work plans and we really think about that timing and being able to get in front even if it's sometimes has to be a couple of months before bringing the council so not the maybe an opportune time but we are able to then say okay here's where we're at and get input in multiple places.

Okay great. I see that Councilor Morales has requested to speak so Councilor Morales.

Thank you. I just wanted to, of course thanks for everything you do and thanks for these reports. I wanted to make the comment, I don't know if you went to the Jazz Fest on Friday night to hear Common, did anybody do that? So, I don't know if you know this, but we only have, this is a little esoteric, we only have single phase power at Chavez Park and Common requires three phase power so they had to run a generator for five hours during the common before and after. It takes 70 gallons of gasoline or diesel fuel right there behind the stage running.

And my bigger point is that there are so many food trucks and in our parks most of the events we have bring in generators because you can't access the panels very easy and even at Chavez Park there's nothing, the kind of power we need, and I think sometimes we overlook some of those smaller things because they're so distributed everywhere, but it makes a major impact on our climate especially burning diesel in what is once to be a very very clean city. Just wanted to make that comment if you could consider that going forward, all of these point sources of diesel and gasoline, hundreds, probably thousands, and Zachary, I've been terrorizing him in the background about that so he's aware of some of the issues in the parks, just accessing the panels, it's so expensive to access the panels that they have to bring generators and it's just a bit of low hanging fruit that since we aren't counting, no one notices. Just a comment.

Yeah, thank you for that input.

There

any anybody wanna wanna comment on that? No? Not at this point. But that was good input. Thank you. Just one last thing I was gonna say, I think it would also be helpful for us as a council as we start to as we hear on these policies to also, I know we get letters from the commission but commission participation at the council meetings, for example, or at this committee, if maybe it's good feedback for them, I think, to let them know that we'd love to see somebody, you know, even here today telling us what they would like to see in on their work plan as we're talking about it at the committee meeting. Alright. Is there a motion to accept the work plan? Move approval. Second. Alright. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. Alright. That motion carries five zero.

Thank you, for being here. Now we're going to, see a brief presentation about the airport commission annual work plan. Mookie and Matthew are here. Thank you so much for being here.

You committee chair Cohen and community members. My name is Mookie Patel. I'm the director of aviation. We too have a very short presentation today to go over our committee work plan for the airport advisory commission. First slide, this is what we basically accomplished this last year, FY 2425.

We had about four regular meetings. We had one special meeting covering about eight different topics, everything from airport administration, marketing air service, financial rates and charges, items that come to the commission that are noteworthy that actually have impact on strategic activities that are happening under my leadership. So the airport connector was one of them, big capital projects that we've either delayed or put on hold. We want them to be aware and engaging on these types of things moving our cell phone lot. Various different activities and so eight different activities, eight different key milestones that were accomplished this past year through those five meetings.

Our work plan typically focuses, the goals focus on items that are important to the staff priorities. It helps the commission understand the airport operations and how those functions parlay into our staff priorities. The work plan also assists the commission carrying out in its advisory role and their responsibility. So we want them to be good community advocates as they advise the airport team on different outcomes. And then they also definitely have input into how we develop different initiatives and how we work as a team.

We love to get their input on those kinds of things and especially on how we allocate staff resources. Did I go too far? So this coming year our work plan for FY twenty five-twenty six consists of four key meetings and again we will have special meetings if necessary. On this cadence that we've already worked with our commission on the first meeting here in August which actually is tonight, we will walk them through our capital projects briefing. So all of our capital projects have a mixture of airport operating cash, grant funds, we'll walk them through the expenditures.

It's really key for them to understand how disadvantaged business organizations work within the airport, especially on grant projects. And so we like to share that information of how our capital projects actually go downstream into our community. In November, we'll talk about all the planning and the preparation for Super Bowl, FIFA and we'll give them a really solid marketing update. In February, it will focus on air service. Mark Keel is our air service development manager.

He typically has about 300 contacts throughout the year either in person meetings, online, on the phone with different airlines. And so we like to give our advisory commissioners kind of an update of where the industry is going in terms of seat capacity, passenger volumes, new airlines or lack thereof as industry keeps consolidating. So that will happen in February and then in May it's on the typical cadence of our budget process. As we take our rates and charges budget to the airlines, we also bring it to the advisory commission so they're aware of how our rates and charges are the money is being spent. We also do our airport concessions and disadvantaged business enterprise tri annual goal setting, which is an FAA mandate.

We also do the annual report and the work plan again for the following year. So it's on a pretty good clip and it's on a pretty good consistent basis. Reoccurring items that generally come up either in my presentations or we will agendize them as things are going through assembly, if there's rules, regulations, carbon emission rules, the folks up in Sacramento love to add different political challenges for the airport environment, so we'll bring those things up. We'll talk about local noise ordinances and noise issues. And then other items that generally show up as items of interest for the community that will be coming to council, sustainability updates and what we're doing with our sustainability plan, regulatory issues, those types of issues.

And so that's how we've kind of engaged our airport advisory commission. And I'd be happy to take some questions.

All right. Thank you. I think we had at least one member of the public with a request to speak. Oh, no public.

No request.

All right. Thank you so much. Back to the committee. Any comments? Looks like we have no hands raised.

Move for approval.

Second.

Alright. Miss you all. It's a great group. It was a mission to serve on the commission for a while. And if you haven't had a time to sit through a presentation on the noise complaints, then I'd encourage you all to do that. Alright. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. Alright. That motion carries five zero. And we will move on. Thank you for coming and presenting. And we will move on to our open forum.

We have two requests to speak. Jordan and Ken, please make your way down to the podium.

I'm here to propose some changes to the five wounds urban village plan, which I think will reduce the cost of the city and dramatically improve the safety of that area. First, I recommend replacing traffic signals at East St. At East Julian Street Intersection with 28th Street and The US 101 on off ramps with modern roundabouts. These roundabouts will reduce injury crashes by up to 70%, improve traffic flow, and lower long term maintenance costs for the city. I propose, I also propose a Michigan left at 27th Street, where northbound drivers will be prohibited from turning left onto Julian.

Instead, they will use the roundabout at 28th Street to complete the movement. This eliminates high risk turns, left turns, conflicts, and simplifies intersection geometry. Importantly, we recommend I recommend replacing a traffic signal at 28th Street. Recommend placing a traffic signal at 28th Street, not 27th Street, as in the current plans. The twenty sixth the 26th Street Intersection is four legged, better balanced and more suitable for signal coordination and pedestrian crossings.

The 27th Street Intersection is three legged and less efficient for signal phasing and safety. I define a core area within the urban village bounded by East Julian, the 5 Wounds Trail, 5 Wounds Lane, and Highway 101. Within this core, we propose relocating the planned BART station towards the center of the property. This improves pedestrian access, supports transit oriented development, and activates the public domain. To support circulation, I introduce a single lane connector road forming a u shaped, u shape with 28th Street as the fourth leg.

This road connects to round

Thank you. Next speaker.

Jordan Moldow, District 3. First of all, thank you council member Solas for your service, and welcome to council member elect Ordios. For my main comments, I already gave these comments at rules back in June, but I wanted to repeat them for the sake of the rest of the committee. When I was looking at the committee work plans for this coming fiscal year, I noticed that there's a big difference between T and E's work plan and the other major council commissions, which is that all the rest of them have agenda items that are called city council focus area status reports, where they will receive presentations on outcome measures, performance measures, and major activities related to a particular City Council focus area. I believe that outcome measures and performance measures should be just as important for T and E as they are for the other three committees, so it's a shame not to see the same on the T and E work plan.

In the short term, I hope that maybe this can be, remedied through the items that are already on the work plan. You have Vision Zero item coming up in October. Perhaps in that agenda item, the staff can present on transportation related and Vision Zero adjacent aspects of the increasing community safety focus area and also on emergency service outcome measures. And then in your Move San Jose plan annual report, if staff could provide attachments that include the outcome measures that are related to vibrant downtown affordable housing since those two topics are deeply entwined with Move San Jose. In the medium term, when council next revisits its focus areas, I hope that there can be a defined focus area that encompasses vision zero and is overseen by T and E, just like how the other committees also have at least one council focused area that they observe.

And perhaps we can find a way to have a more forward looking climate based council focused area in the future as well. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Alright. Thank you. We are adjourned at 02:30PM.