Neighborhood Services and Education Committee (nse) - Regular Meeting

At meetings. This includes only commenting on the specific agenda item and addressing the entire body. Public speakers will not engage in a conversation with the chair, council members, or staff. All members of the committee, staff, and the public are expected to refrain from abusive language. Failure to comply with the code of conduct which will disturb, disrupt, or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting will result in the removal from the meeting. This meeting of the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee will now come to order. Can the clerk please call roll?

Campos?

Present.

Candelas?

Here.

Cohen? Vice chair, Duan?

Here.

Chair Ortiz?

Present.

You have a quorum.

Okay. That was a. Item b, review of the work plan. Items recommended to be added, dropped or deferred are usually approved under review of the work plan unless the committee directs otherwise. This is item one, flavored tobacco ban, nitrous oxide and regulation of vape and smoke shops status report. Angel did you have anything to add to this?

No. It's no drops so no need to vote. Yeah.

Okay. Oh, so it's dropping. We don't have to vote or anything like that. And my my understanding is I think these discussions will be coming up in still in the future space. Right?

That's correct.

Okay. Sounds good. So item c, consent calendar, don't see anything there. So d, reports to committee. First one is item one, Happy Hollow Park and Zoo Status Report and we will be receiving a presentation from Avi, Shannon, and Kirsten. Thank you.

You, GRT's and members of the committee. My name is Avi O'Tom, deputy director of Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services. Here joined today by division manager Shannon Heimer and parks manager slash general manager of Happy Park and Zoo, Kirsten McCormack Manuel. And we're here to share an update on Happy Hollow Park and Zoo's accomplishments, some of the challenges it's facing, and the look ahead in the future. With that, I'll turn it over to Kirsten.

Alright. Thank you, Councilperson Ortiz and committee members for the opportunity of presenting a status update of Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. Again, I'll introduce myself and my team. Kirsten McCormick Manuel, the General Manager of All Operations at at Happyallo Happy Hollow Park Park and Zoo. I have my zoo manager, Amber Rinde, in charge of all zoo operations.

My conservation and communication manager is Caitlin O'Hara, and Mario Day who is the Assistant General Manager in charge of all park operations. Now Happy Hollow opened its gates in 1961 and next year we'll be celebrating Danny the Dragon and Happy Hollow, a major milestone of sixty five years.

'65.

Happy Hollow consists of amusement park rides, unique play areas, a puppet theater, explore more store, fee program activities like birthday party programs, as well as food and beverage services and face painting, the parking program at Kelly Park, seasonal events, and Happy Hollow is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums for over thirty two years. That shows commitment to the highest standard of animal care, education, and conservation, and it also allows us to network with zoos and aquariums nationally and globally. Our animal collection features iconic species like the capybaras, the giant anteater, and American alligator. We also offer zoo education programs like day camps and enrichment classes, off-site and on-site school enrichment programs and assemblies, and workshops overnight and special activities for all ages. And Happy Hollow is also proud of being able to participate and support both local global conservation efforts.

The attendance at Happy Hollow Park And Zoo for attendance and membership has steadily increased since the pandemic, but we have not returned yet to pre pandemic level. Both attendance and membership numbers are on pace to match last year's numbers. In 2022, we launched Access for All Ticket Scholarship Program and it's aimed to reduce financial barriers and make Happy Hollow more accessible to all. The program has already exceeded last year's numbers and the access ticket price is a quarter of the price of a general admission. The revenue Happy Hollow is steadily increasing and allowing us to meet or exceed the city revenues target.

However, operating expenses continue to rise, creating an ongoing budgetary challenge. Part of our financial approach and strategy is to diversify and maximize revenue streams. So part of that strategy, we are doing a price, a 2025 price adjustment and it includes introducing a new corporate and events group ticket and a summer pass. So, while the budget has returned to pre pandemic levels, it hasn't kept the pace of inflation or the real time cost of goods, services and repairs. And also other costs are increasing like specialized care, diet and habitat modifications for aging animals.

But we have things that we're very excited for. The Danny the Dragon ride will reopen in July with a reimagined ride experience. We're also anticipating an opening of the Fusa Habitat, which has been created to accommodate a younger, more active animal and an upgraded night house that could do a future breeding program. Our capybara habitat is also expanding and we'll be introducing a new picnic area, so you can enjoy a snack by the capybara and watch them. We're also committed to community involvement and it shows through our volunteer program, which continues to thrive with over six thousand hours of community service, supporting our daily operations, education and special events.

Now, mentioned we're very proud of our thirty two years accredited with the Association of Zoos and Aquarians. Now, that represents the highest standard of animal care, welfare, and facility management. Every five years, we need to do this process. Our next cycle is in 2026 with submitting an application, and then in 2027 an on-site inspection and in front of the board of accreditation commission. But the accreditation also connects us again nationally and internationally with a network of over two thirty zoos and aquariums, providing shared knowledge, animal care innovations, collaborative programs, including animal loans and conservation initiatives.

Our partners, one of them, the Happy Hollow Foundation plays a vital role with Happy Hollow. Most recently, the foundation launched its first ever capital campaign to fund the new Danny the Dragon experience, and we're incredibly grateful for their support and look forward to celebrating the rides reopening and looking forward to building on the success with them of the capital campaign. We also collaborate with other partners such as Native Fermentation, Broadway San Jose, San Jose Giants and the Barracudas. Now, I recommend to accept the status report of Happy Hello Park and Zoo, accomplishments, challenges and plans for this future. Thank you for your time, and we're available for questions.

Awesome. Thank you so much for that presentation. I think I speak for the committee that we are all excited to see Danny the Dragon back in action. Do we have any public comment?

No public comment.

Okay. Great. We will be going to council members for comments and questions. Vice chair, Adwan.

Thank you. Thank you so much, I I enjoy the Happy Hollow tremendously. And, you know, every time I go out there, it's it's bringing me back to being a little kid. Just out of curiosity, the picture that you have on your presentation, I think it's a leopard, but could it be a jaguar?

It's a jaguar.

It's a jaguar. Okay, there we go. And so in the future, I know that the amount of application have gone way up, right. How do we offset that cost to able to get more family or people who are underserved to be at Happy Hollows?

Is that with the access ticket program?

Yes.

We are currently looking at with the price adjustment, we will be adjusting that price as well to help fund a portion of it. We've been looking for sponsors to help fund the unfunded account and we're just brainstorming on how to keep the funding there.

Yeah, because I see that the number has just kind of skyrocketed. And then I would imagine as more people know about Happy Hollow, the number will possibly double what we were asking for now. And I'm just worried about how do we continue that to support the families that are in need. But anyway, thank you so much for taking care of all the animal there and taking care of the happy holidays. It's a gem that we have right here in the city of San Jose and a lot of people don't know about it.

And we need to somehow get it out there. Anytime you wanna send any particular flyers or anything to my district or any other district, I would imagine they'd be more than happy to post it on their social medias and and their newsletter. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Dewan. Definitely a major attraction for District 7 as well. Council member Campos.

Thank you chair. Thank you to staff for this presentation. I too am very excited about the great work at Happy Hollow Zoo and agree that it's a gem in our city, and my questions are around twenty twenty six and recognizing that we'll have tourists from all over the country, maybe even all over the world in our city. Is there any plan for how we can connect people who are coming into our airport to know about our zoo and the family friendly activities that we have?

Thank you for the question. There is Currently, we do have Happy Hollow mentioned in the Southwest Flight Navigator. We're one of the few that are on their pages. We have been working our new ticket that we're introducing, the corporate and events group tickets, is introduced to be able to advertise that if you come for a particular event, you can show it and come in at a promotional price, and we are working with several organizations in San Jose to be able to highlight Happy Hollow to visitors as well.

That sounds great. Is there any opportunities that we should know about that would help bolster your reach and garnering a larger audience?

I like that question and I very much would love to get together and talk about that and see how we can create a larger reach with our council people.

Thank you. Did you want to share something?

Thank you Councilmember. Just building up Carissa's comment, I think starting with the re imagine the reopening of the reimagined Danny the Dragon this July, I think that'd be a great opportunity to reintroduce folks to Happy Hollow.

Yeah. I know that there's I I also recently went on a bike trail that led to Happy Hollow Zoo, I had never done that before, so I think there's a lot of creative and innovative ways that we can get families, know, sometimes for the first time to Happy Hollow Park and I think 2026 is really that opportunity to be creative, think creatively, explore all of these different opportunities, of course leading into 2027 when our city celebrates two fifty years as a city, and so always want to think about what what we can do to. To start to set the foundation for how we really bolster civic pride and civic engagement with everyone in our city. Thank you.

Great thank you councilmember Campos for your comments definitely both around making sure that we're raising awareness of the park which I can definitely support. I know you mentioned the reopening of Danny the Dragon. Is there going to be like a ribbon cutting that we could publicize or something or participate in?

Yeah, we're busy planning the ribbon cutting and that would be the morning of Tuesday the fifteenth for the public.

This fifteenth?

Sorry, July 15.

Oh okay, was like woah, alright. July 15, great. I'll do my best, I'm sure my colleagues will do our best to be there.

So what we'll do is we'll send out information to you to help get that word out.

Great. Yeah, I'm happy to post the flyer beforehand as well. In line with one of Vice Chair Dwan's comments in regards to affordability. I know that you also touched on the scholarship program and making sure that families who may not have resources are able to still attend the site. Could you talk a little bit about what the methodology is behind those scholarships?

If you're tracking what neighborhoods, it may be too hard to do that. But if you are, that'd be great to see if we're reaching under resourced areas throughout the entire city. And then also like how do you determine if a family really qualifies for the scholarship?

Great. The access ticket program was modeled after our PRNS scholarship program, so if you qualify for any of those programs and the scholarship, then you would qualify for the access ticket. We started it as a pilot. Word has gotten out through marketing with Project Hope, with other venues and a social influencer which has really grown the program. Have been able to get zip code data and we do hit every neighborhood zip code in San Jose.

We have our top five, or I can go 10 if you like to hear those, but we would certainly love the help to get more of the sort out, but 95122, 95111, 95116, 95112, and 95127 are some of our top communities that come with that program.

I think that sounds good. I know that I heard my district in there. I don't know about others, but just every district has pockets, you know what I mean, District 10 even though it's a wealthy area. They have Hoffman Via Monte, District 2 has Great Oaks Roundtable and so just want to make sure that all of these youth are able to see this opportunity. My next question is in regards, I know that you mentioned that there are some infrastructure needs at Happy Hollow and I know that the city across the board has a backlog for public works.

Is there anything that we should mindful that like we may have issues because obviously this is a public park, people go there. Are we making sure we're prioritizing the safety of the residents and stuff like that?

Safety is definitely our first priority and then animal health. Those are both first priorities. And so we'd love support as the need comes up and we're looking for funding and it's been identified.

Please let us know if you guys are doing like you said a fundraising campaign or something like that, happy to lend our voices to that. We got friends too, so don't hesitate to reach out. Okay, I'm looking for a motion

for the We

have a motion and a second. Thank you so much colleagues. Let's all vote. I think that was unanimous. So alright. Great. Next, thank you all. Next we have a presentation, looks like some of the people are gonna stay in the box, on sports fields use and equity status report. Very important discussion. That's gonna be by Avi, Shannon, Troy and Joe.

Thank you again chair and members of the committee. My name is Avi Ottom, I'm deputy director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services joined today again by division manager Shannon Heimer as well as parks managers Troy Treaty and park recreation and facility supervisor Joe Albayaldi. And we're here to share a little bit of background on our citywide sports program as well as our efforts to help level the playing field, if you will, and really get towards equitable use of of sports fields. I'm sorry if I just stole a pun Troy and Joe.

Mhmm.

But there are plenty more to go to. With with that, I will turn it over to Troy.

Thank you, Avi. Good afternoon, committee members. As Avi mentioned, I am Troy Tredi. I'm a parks manager with the destination events and sports unit of the parks division. I am happy to be here today to share an overview of our citywide sports field reservation program and our work related to equity and access.

The city of San Jose maintains a large network of sports facilities. As you can see here PRNS has 110 fields and 104 courts in our inventory. Two thirds of these facilities are available for reservations by sports organizations, instructors, teams. Field and court allocations occur twice a year, for the spring and summer season and the fall and winter season. Additionally, we also accept applications for ad hoc reservations when field and court availability allow.

When applications are received, a small but dedicated team carefully review each application for accuracy. This process includes verifying resident status, nonprofit classification, and age group eligibility. After all on time applications are verified, scheduling conflicts are resolved during a virtual allocation meeting. These meetings are moderated by city staff and attended by organization leaders and coaches. This allocation process promotes collaboration, transparency, and fairness.

After allocation meetings, permits are created then finalized finalized once any necessary revisions are made and payment information is confirmed. In early twenty twenty, council member Jimenez initiated a request to prioritize equity and field reservations. Though delayed by the pandemic, a task force made up of industry professionals from PRNS as well as other Bay Area municipalities convened in 2021 to create and review survey data as well as host community meetings. In 2022, the task force proposed program process improvements including clearer rules, streamlined online systems and increased enforcement of policies to ensure appropriate access

for all.

Staff implemented these recommendations which have led to improvements in both customer service This slide outlines the fiscal impacts of our improved program processes. As you can see, the reservation program has excelled both in revenue and cost recovery significantly over the last four years. This is due to several factors. Increasing efficiency in application and permitting processes, allowing for more opportunities to reserve fields. Standardized reservable time blocks, which has improved transparency and minimized previously unused times in between reservations, as well as improved payment processes that in turn has all but eliminated late and unpaid balances.

With that, I will turn it over to Joe to walk us through the team's initial efforts to improving equity and access in our reservation program. I would like to note that while the team has made significant strides in this area, this work is just beginning.

Good afternoon committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to present this update on the Sports Field Use and Equity program. I'm Joe Albialde, Parks, Recreation and Facilities Supervisor, overseeing the Citywide sports field reservations unit. We've made significant strides towards achieving sports field equity through both data driven analysis and direct action. To address the historical imbalance, we established a temporary supervisor held by me dedicated specifically to advancing equity.

This role enabled the development of automated tools that analyze team rosters and flag false residency claims, bringing integrity and accuracy to our allocation process. I'm happy to share that this position was recently approved as an ongoing budget addition, ensuring continuity in this important work. Our data tells a story that is both encouraging and revealing. 80% of the field users come from the top half of the Healthy Places Index or HPI neighborhoods with half of all our field users from the top 20%, a clear indication that our fields are actively used in these areas. In contrast, only 20% of field users come from lower HPI neighborhoods, underscoring a significant equity gap field usage.

This analysis is shaping our policy efforts, allowing us to better target programs and resources where they're needed most. But this is only the beginning. Sustained and expanded efforts are essential to closing the gap. Our partnerships help turn strategy into access. We've teamed up with the San Jose Earthquakes to run local youth camps, and we work closely with the county probation department in empowering our community for success to reach undeserved youth, making sure programming is reaching those with the least access.

We've also listened to our communities, especially around field use. Through direct engagement with the tennis and pickleball communities, we've addressed court sharing concerns and created space for compromise. These connections are how we build programs that reflect the realities of the people we serve. Collaboration strengthens our process. By working with the Office of Racial and Social Equity and presenting to the San Jose For All Advisory Group, we've opened up meaningful two way dialogue.

Their feedback shaped our outreach strategies, including a renewed focus on neighborhood leagues, and the impact has been clear. Participants not only saw tangible changes, they felt heard. As one Sounds a For All member put it, It felt really good seeing how my direct feedback made a difference. This is what sustainable policy development looks like. It's data driven, community informed, and action oriented.

To keep this momentum going, we need more than good ideas. We need the staff capacity to sustain this level of data analysis, community engagement and policy development. One area where there is need especially critical is increasing field marshal staffing. Maintaining safe, fair, and equitable access to fields requires real time monitoring, prompt responsiveness to community concerns, and a consistent on-site presence. This level of oversight is not achievable without additional personnel.

With additional staffing support, we can expand our data driven decision making, enforce our policies consistently and fairly, and most importantly, ensure our programs reach and reflect all communities equitably. Looking ahead, we're also prioritizing efforts to direct resources to underserved organizations that have lacked equitable access, standardize Little League contracts to improve transparency and consistency, and ensure compliance with joint use agreements so that public resources are used effectively and equitably. Each of these actions moves us closer to a system that's not only more equitable, but also more transparent, accountable and responsive to the needs of our diverse communities. That concludes our presentation. Thank you for your time, your attention, and your continued support of this work.

We respectfully recommend that the committee accept the report and we're happy to answer any questions or hear your feedback.

Thank you so much for the report. I want to open up to see if there's any questions from the public.

No public comment.

Okay, thank you so much. See, my colleague, Council Member Condellis has his hand up.

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the report and wanna sincerely thank all of you for the work you're doing around sports and youth activation and field access. I think that is a critical component of what we do in our city for our youth and ultimately for our community. Know I think Joe you and I go back at least two decades when I was refereeing basketball for the city of San Jose if you remember that. And so I know the passion you guys bring to the job and for me it's important to understand where the gaps exist with regards to equity and access.

And so last year spoke to several youth baseball and softball leagues in my district and it became clear that rising field costs, rental costs was increasingly putting a squeeze on these organizations. And I proposed a pilot for fee waivers in last year's budget to focus on getting more youth involved and hopefully lessening that burden. And so I would love us to continue exploring these kind of fee waivers or reductions. As part of our cohesive strategy, obviously it's all about trade offs and we have to operate that fine line of how much cost recovery are we doing with the actual service providing. And so some of our nicer fields like Arcadia are being, I've heard from these youth organizations are being rented out to organizations more in the user type three area.

So out of area folks and I don't know. I don't have the data to point to that. I I could say they're rented out to people from Saratoga and Los Gatos but I don't know. So that's why I say user type three because I'm assuming that's what the description is for. But I don't know that.

So my question is how can we continue to prioritize our local leagues and our local teams. So the Eastridge Little League, the Evergreen Little League, Alum Rock Little League, get a priority to Arcadia, for example, regional hub that is attractive to all these other areas. And so that's how I see it. And I understand staff has a very tight, a difficult job trying to balance that with folks who are more than willing and able to pay a full fair market fee for the use of that field. If you can maybe provide some details and insight to that, I'm all ears.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Great question. With Arcadia in particular, we're following a business model that was developed prior to the construction of Arcadia, which around weekends was really focused around tournament play and reservation for the entire facility. So that's more in line with I think what you're saying about the user type threes. We're definitely a regional draw for that all inclusive tournament event space.

When

it comes to local little leagues, the challenge is Arcadia was built specifically for softball. So you have different field sizes, no grass in fields. We do reserve to little leagues which requires bringing in portable mounds and then just adapting. So the older kids in Little League can't play in that kind of confined space. They have requirements for base distances and home runs.

Right. That regulation state you need different field

apps It's that make little small for the big kids.

Got

it. But we definitely reserve to the local community for Little League for the smaller kids Monday through Friday and weekends are typically held for that larger tournament base. We are evaluating how effective that is in meeting our cost recovery goals.

How long has Arcadia been around?

We were initially scheduled for a grand opening, want to say it was 03/20/2020, so you can imagine that grand opening was delayed just a little bit. We had a soft opening in 2021 and kind of been phasing in since then and have been in I would say full operations since fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four.

Got it. I think correct me if I'm wrong, I think we're in the process of evaluating Arcadia not just the service provision but overall the future of Arcadia. And so that's I think that's regardless of the future of that field. I think we need to bear in mind our residents and prioritize our residents for that regional hub. Totally understand and I get it.

But our families deserve a crack at a crack, an opportunity to play on those fields. One of the questions on the next steps is how are we actually approaching that community engagement to better understand who our service clients are, who is being served and who is not? How are we approaching that?

We have several different strategies. Specifically when our user groups turn in an application, we receive rosters from them. So we're able to the point we're at now through our new data collection process, we get addresses, zip codes, ages and gender, so that helps us break it down. As well as we conduct we put out surveys biannually, twice a year to our user groups and to the parents. One of our next goals that we would like to hit is meeting them where they're at.

So actually being able to go out to games and go go out to practices and talk to those parents directly and get those parents direct feedback through surveys.

Got it. Now that's that's great because I would recommend talking to the little leagues and talking to the presidents, the volunteer moms and dads who are actually running these little leagues especially in our city. You know, I only speak to East Ridge, Alum Rock and Evergreen. East Hills, the softball league, East Valley softball league because I do have a softball league. Know talking to those leagues because they will tell you and you know it's tough work especially you know the maintenance of our fields and so I appreciate the work that you all are doing and I know it's tough work but I appreciated your help on those fields on Ocala. Much appreciated and with that I'll move acceptance of the staff recommendation. Second.

Alright. Thank you Councilmember Condellis. Definitely some good questions there. Appreciate your advocacy. Vice Chair

Duong. Thank you chair. We have not enough sport fields because we got a lot of people out there who want to participate and enjoy. So my concern is that 20% of news are from the bottom half of HPI. First of all, how do we navigate or encourage from the 20% to much higher percentage because these are people who are underserved and maybe don't have the financial to rent these fill?

Again, think some of that's going be through our direct engagement with folks. One of the things that makes our program interesting is is we permit and reserve those fields to the organization. So we don't have a direct impact on who they sign up for their teams in their leagues. So one of the strategies that that we're developing is to develop a playbook, working with some of our larger leagues that have been very successful to help put together a playbook. So when we're able to connect with these kind of more grassroots underserved teams, maybe a group of neighborhood dads that wanna get a team together for the kids, They have a playbook that they can go to to understand how to reserve fields, how to get direct marketing out there to the kids, how to get sponsorships, how to get their five zero one c three and things like that to help lift them up and get them to the table.

So does the current reservation do that right now beside pairing the smaller group to the larger group? Because I know that two thirds of fill are primarily available for well organized group. And how do we balance that out beside, okay, well this is how you fill out the application, get sponsorship. What if they can't get sponsorship, right? They're just collecting fees from kids who are underserved which is very small amount. They don't get funding from philanthropists and so on. How do we meet their needs?

Council member, your line of thinking here is exactly what we're thinking about internally and Troy, I can compliment what you spoke to. I think what you're speaking to is kind of that next series of, I'm gonna call it the series of why questions. So there's 20% of our users in that dataset came from the bottom 50% of HPI. So that, yeah, that first why are the youth participating in organized sports? If they're participating in organized sports, are they using other fields of schools, school facilities or something else like that?

Or are financial barriers completely preventing organized corporate? So there's actually a really interesting series of questions to dig in and to council member Candelas' points that really have to be answered through direct communication with the leagues, the neighborhoods. And that's really to Joe's presentation earlier, that's this huge body of work that's still in front of us. So we've gotten to the point of doing that study of what we see in front of our users today and we have taken some direct action to start addressing the gaps but there's a lot more understanding that we need to reach so that we can actually then know which policy lever can we pull. Because there's a lot of different ones that we could pull right now but we wanna make sure the one we pull is the one that's needed.

Is it pricing? Is it creating new tiers within our priorities? For instance, Joe and Troy have discussed creating an even earlier priority tier that's specifically for the leagues that really do employ volunteers, not for the leagues that can afford world class coaches or paid coaches, right? So we know there's even within nonprofit organizations, there's a huge array of different user types. But what we need to do is get into those conversations with the leagues and the neighborhoods to really understand the gap and what we have to do to make access.

Well, thank you. I'll look forward for that conversation next time and how we come to some type of solution. Thank you.

Thank you Vice Chair Adewan. Definitely some good questions. I have some follow-up questions kind of in line with my colleagues lines of comments. So when I think about equity, right, I think about doing what needs to be done to amplify access and presence of, you know, under resourced communities, communities of color, and and immigrants and working class families. I know that as you mentioned, you can't necessarily pick and choose who applies for a league.

But you can. There's a lot of organizations out there like La Raza Roundtable, African American Community Service Agency, AKI, Asian Americans for Community Involvement, that are kinda like they serve these populations, right? That's where these populations go. They're trusted places where they can come to receive services. I wanted to ask, are we are we working with, you know, these groups to make sure that, you know, a plan that has equity in its name actually reaches the goal of being equitable?

Councilmember, it's a terrific suggestion for us as part of this next body of community engagement work to specifically reach out to these organizations that like you say are the trusted organizations and the communities they serve. The initial work we did with the San Jose For All Advisor Group had much of that same intent. And what you're speaking to is that next deeper level of engagement and we're looking forward to that.

Okay. Well, I mean, that's why we're here to give feedback. So appreciate, this is our opportunity to give it. And then just I know that there's my partner's son is in Little League but I know they have structures and leadership and stuff like that. Are you guys reaching out to those organizations to get their input on that? Because I know they have feedback. When I go to the little league games, they always try to pull me aside. I'm like, okay, I'll help you, but it seems like this is the right team to talk to. Have you guys reached out to any of those leaders?

Absolutely. Our team engages with those organizations and their leadership on a daily basis. And through our biannual surveys as well as our field allocation meetings. We send out a survey before and after on how those things went, what needs aren't we meeting, how can we improve, and that's a lot of what has driven our initial process improvements. As Avi mentioned, we will continue and we know we have steps in front of us to continue to grow to meet those needs. In answer to your question, yes absolutely. We speak with them daily and weekly.

Wonderful. And if there was somebody who reached out to me and wanted to talk to somebody from the city about this, who who's the best contact? Just so that I know.

It would either be our our field reservations email address and they they can go directly to the city of San Jose webpage, into PRNS, and the field reservations and find those direct lines of communication. Or Joe is is the direct supervisor of that group. Okay. And and we'd be happy to to reach out to any of them.

Okay. Definitely that's a good email address. Just it's good to have a name so that they don't feel like they're just sending an email into the void. You know what I mean? But good good to understand who's on the other side of that email and and and thank you. And I know oh, sorry, Angel.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Councilmember Ray, I I also wanted to highlight something that I think the department has has done really effectively and it really helped really really salvage the East Ridge Little League and and it was the city in in coordination with the county of Santa Clara with the closure of Radio View and the loss of those fields there. East Ridge Little League found themselves without plane access.

PRNS, the team here, the team that's sitting in that box there, really stepped up in a huge way, used access to three or four different fields including the Arcadia site, which of course the kids there were thrilled about, right? Because it was like state of the art playing and really kind of moved some things around to kind of really make that happen. So I know that I think is a good indication of kind of how we're really leaning into more of this equitable approach. The other thing I would just put on the radar, this is something that kinda goes beyond just this conversation, but really it involves perhaps a conversation with school districts, right? Because when you take a look at school districts for the most part they almost all use Facilitron as way of renting out their fields.

But if you just do a side by side comparison of their cost versus ours in terms of hourly rent and that kind of a thing, I mean, you're talking about things like $40 an hour versus $4 an hour and that kind of a thing. And many of the young people that need access to these fields are actually in those same So school I think it merits a conversation, a policy conversation between our city, various school districts. Now I know for them, right, they also need to make cost recovery, they gotta cover maintenance, so there's some legitimacy to their need to charge something. But I'm not so sure it has to be market rate, right? Especially when it comes down to equity.

So I think we'll take that back also as maybe a conversation point with a couple of districts to see if there's anything that we could do there. I have had some conversations with Glenn over at Eastside Union High School District, more recently with the Ellen Rock School District. And so perhaps we could pilot a few things, but I think that'll also help take some of the pressure off the accessibility of these sites.

That's

great. And I know we have in my first year in office, we worked really closely on that Easter's Little League issue, and I'm glad that you and council member Condellis were able to find them a home in in District 8 and and with in a in a field that is state of the art and is actually very nice, many of those students wouldn't have had the opportunity to play many of youth wouldn't have had the opportunity to play at as well. So I'm definitely grateful for this team and their advocacy because I know a lot of those kids kind of were didn't have a home. And so it's good to hear that they have a home. And I was actually thinking about that whole field's conversation on schools. You said it's between four and forty, so are we the cheaper ones or are the school districts the cheaper ones?

We are hands down.

Okay.

Which also when you think about kind of the market, so even if you're one of these travel teams and all, even if they have robust budgets, they're still looking at from a better deal perspective. So to the extent that we could actually increase the number of availability of fields, lower the price, and in fact perhaps target some of these groups that aren't as organized or aren't as fiscally set up, then we can actually give them access to high level fields at a lower cost and then I think everybody wins, right? Right.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you colleagues for your comments. Let's go for a vote.

That passes unanimously.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you to staff. Next we have a very important discussion. Well this was also important but this is a big one. Flight reduction coordination with Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Status Report. And that will be provided by Relea and Jaime, Jaime, Jaime, sorry not Jaime.

Good afternoon council members and members of the public. My name is Aurelia Bailey and I am the division manager for community services division. We do have in the audience Olympia Williams who's our Deputy Director along with one of our inter agency manager or actually our inter agency manager Anthony Gonzalez along with our VTA partners. I'm gonna actually hand it off to Jamie who is going to present today.

Good afternoon council members and members of the public. My name is Jamie Marcel and I am a program manager with Beautify San Jose. In November 2023 oh, next slide please. In November 2023, our city council directed city staff to work with VTA to develop a formal agreement to address blight and homelessness on properties bordering VTA. This agreement will allow us to work together more efficiently and will coordinate cleanups, share resources, and communicate regularly to tackle these problems head on.

Next slide. Some key elements of the agreement include joint cleanups. We'll work together to schedule, execute, and coordinate cleanups. This will help us to address encampments, graffiti, and vegetation needs more effectively and reduce the chances of them reoccurring. We'll also have more regular communication and establish a system of regular meetings to discuss problems, share information and coordinate our efforts.

This will help us to prioritize areas that need immediate attention. In resource sharing, by sharing our tools and expertise, we can clean up more efficiently and save valuable resources. Ultimately, this agreement will help us to improve communication, coordinate between the city and VTA, and ensure consistent progress in reducing blight and homelessness. Next slide. This slide outlines our key milestones of this agreement. We would like to thank the VTA for being here today for the work prior to today and the upcoming work we will do together. We are here for any questions. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you so much for the presentation. Gonna open it up for public comment.

No public comment.

Okay. Looks like we have multiple colleagues who want to ask questions. Alright. Council member Condellis.

No no no question. I just wanted to thank staff for their hard work on this. It's been years in the making, but glad we're we're here and glad to to be on the same page with, partner agency. So, with that, I'll move acceptance into the staff report.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, Council Member Condellis. We have a motion and a second. Now Vice Chair Dewan.

Thank you, Chair. It's a big issue, a big problem that's why we collaborate with different entity. Now I see the blights on the Pacific Union Railroad that crossover one one near 13th Street which is constantly have graffiti on there and which have bled over to all the sound walls and everything else. How do we get them to take some action or is it part of their funding to the city of San Jose in order to take care of those graffitis?

Yeah, so we will continue to have monthly meetings not only with VTA but also Caltrans. So this location also involves the jurisdiction of Caltrans and so we hope that now that we'll have this formalized communication and agreement we hope to bring it to both parties attentions and bring each other together to schedule a cadence for addressing this area.

Thank you. And Just then

to add council members and you mentioned Union Pacific and so Jamie and her team they actually do meet on a regular basis and so we'll make sure that this is also on their radar the next meeting that they meet with Union Pacific.

Thank you. Because I drive one on one quite a bit too. The other question is I noticed you did mention Caltrans. Specifically right off of Story Road and Tolley there's Caltran property that's been, defense been cut and lots of our unshelters live underneath the bridges and so on. And obviously it's, we try to coordinate with Caltrain, we would do clean up and so on.

But this is a continuous problem. And I know that the Caltrain Cloverleaf, if I drive over to Cupertino or Sunnyvale or Mountain View in Palo Alto, beautiful, right? But what you see at Tully And Story Road is nothing but dead grass. And every year undoubtedly we get multiple fires especially at the Story Road location. How do we beautify that area, reduce the amount of blight and the amount of unsheltered residents there?

Yeah, again we meet with Caltrans regularly, biweekly to talk about these areas and that location definitely gets brought up quite a bit. And we are currently talking about different deterrents as you know with unhoused residents there is a high likelihood for returning to the location. So right now we're talking about different deterrents and also exploring what that looks like to continue working together on maintaining that area.

Thank you. We have what you call key performance indicator and with the MOU do we publish that out to the public so they know how successful we are with some of these performance?

Council member I know that with this specific for this specific contract with VTA, we did talk about a yearly progress and so that's something that we can work on. We could definitely look at also at our other partners with whether it's VTA or Caltrans or Union Pacific and to make sure that you get the progress of the work that we're doing.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you Vice Chair. Council Member Campos.

Thank you chair. I just wanted to echo my colleagues gratitude for the collaboration between VTA and the city and Beautify on this. I just had one question for my understanding, is there any sense for timeline if somebody calls station, is there an expectation for turnaround on when they can expect you know cleanup of the area?

We have VTA here in the audience and maybe this is something they may be able to help answer.

Thank you. And as you make your way down, I just wanna say that I ride VTA frequently downtown from South San Jose and remember on one occasion seeing a shopping cart and some you know debris but within within the week it was cleared up so I thought it was remarkable remarkably fast the attention that was given and I just want to set my own expectations for you know what it might look like if someone calls VTA, what they can anticipate that turnaround time to be.

Jesse So to, Deputy Director of Maintenance for VTA. I can tell you my personal standard is immediately And I can tell you for the most part, the staff does the best they can to get out there, if not the same day, the next day, depending on the resources that we have. Obviously, there are emergencies that happen from time to time,

but we try to take care

of it within the day or the next day. The location that you talked to, I'm not sure which location it is, but from time to time we do extend those periods out, again depending on other issues going on. But you know we try to address it as soon as possible.

Thank you. And does that also apply to, I don't know if vacant is the right word, but you know VTA land that is owned but doesn't have you know any bus or rail service, is this memorandum of agreement also applying to those surplus properties that VTA might have?

Yeah, I'm looking at my colleagues here as well. But yeah, universally we try to address those two. We are especially sensitive to the neighbors surrounding those surplus areas. That tends to be sometimes an area where it's realistically less monitored, but there's some sensitivity to the neighborhoods around there. So we want to address those as well as soon as possible. To answer your question basically, yes, this addresses that too.

Thank you so much. Again, really appreciate the work and collaboration on this.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. I just got a few questions. Really also like my colleagues really excited about this. You know, I got the light rail going through my district. I know you got the train going through your both of you guys got the trains going through yours and I know council member Condela Scott's transportation infrastructure and his. You know as especially with the light rail expanding through Eastridge, know, we we may you know may or may not see blight. It's in the middle of the expressway. So we'll see. Looking at my notes, I just want to make sure because it says blight, right, but that could be a lot of things could be considered blight.

I see it's mostly for trash, debris, graffiti and in encampments. Correct? So this isn't necessarily in connection to, I don't know, like as as I think the council member Dewan said, like dead grass or long weeds. That's that's separate from this. That's not gonna be constituted collaboration.

Gonna It is included Okay. Overgrown vegetation. So that will also be brought up in our monthly coordination.

Wonderful. That I am happy to hear that. And then I just know since it is gonna be be a collaboration, I know we we got an angel with Olympia who does amazing work and spread really thin. Like how is this gonna impact staff bandwidth? Right? So now is Beautify staff expected to do this cleanup or you know is this going to add more to their workload? I guess I'm just trying to understand.

The expectation is for the different jurisdictions to still continue to work on their own jurisdictions but try to coordinate and align the cleanups and bring these items to each other's attention. So yeah our team will continue to do the work on city jurisdiction and VTA will continue to address the items on their jurisdiction.

Wonderful. I got a list to send over so sounds good. Thank thank you so much. And then final question regarding the milestones specifically on page number two, I wanted to see if you could share which projects were prioritized through the May 2025 meeting between Beautify SJ and BTA staff?

In our May 2025 meeting we really discussed the cadence of meeting and who needs to be in those meetings and what locations and there were was less talk about the exact locations because we want to put that in our work plan. So right now we have you know just based on the work that we do and the reports that we do get through the Beautify line. We know some hotspot areas that we do want to bring up in our first kickoff meeting. So we've talked and developed a routine to meet. So the priority areas will be brought up in our next discussion. And along the way if we have a call we'll bring it up.

Wonderful. Maybe good. I don't know who the best can reach out to about this but it'd be good for us as council members. We don't know. Obviously we know a light rail property is VTA and stuff like that but maybe I'll request a meeting with DOT or Beautify to understand just all the VTA properties in my district so I know who to properly reach out to and stuff like that. Okay. Thank you so much. I think we have a motion. So let's go for the vote.

That passes unanimously.

Alrighty. And then I believe we that leads us to our last item, open forum. I don't see anybody here. So okay. I adjourn that. That's an hour meeting. So that's a pretty fast one. Thank you guys.