Neighborhood Services and Education Committee (nse) - Regular Meeting

Members and members of the public to please follow our code of conduct 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 will result in removal of the meeting. This meeting of the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee will now come to order. Can the clerk please help with roll call?

Campos?

Present.

Candelas?

Here. Cohen?

Here.

Vice chair Duan?

Here.

Chair Ortiz?

Here.

You have a quorum.

Thank you so much. We do not have a work plan to, review, neither do we have a consent calendar. So I believe we will be starting with d one reports to the committee, citywide sustainable park maintenance annual report. And we have a presentation, a fifteen minute presentation from Avi Odom.

Thank you Chair Ortiz, members of the committee. My name is Avi Odom. I'm the Deputy Director of Parks in the Department of Parks Recreation and Neighborhood Services. Joined today by division manager Tori O'Reilly, Gardner Steven Castillo and program manager Claire Sioni. We're here today to present our annual report on park maintenance conditions which are a reflection of our day to day work to maintain parks such as mowing, cleaning up trash and liners and so on, measured against standards that we've set for that work.

The focus today is on that day to day maintenance work, but we also do measure capital infrastructure and we're working towards presenting those two data points together in future reports starting with the study session on April 8 where Charity is with your leadership. We're going to present Park Capital and Maintenance funding and service levels. For today's report, I'm going to turn it over to Tori.

Thank you, Avi. Chair Ortiz and members of the committee, my name is Tori O'Reilly, division manager overseeing park maintenance. So we're gonna start off with a snapshot. I know most of you are familiar with our park system, but San Jose's park sis park and trail system includes over 215 parks across 3,600 acres and more than 65 miles of trails. The parks range from small neighborhood green spaces to large regional parks.

The parks feature amenities such as sports fields, fitness equipment, picnic areas, playgrounds, which offer recreational opportunities for all ages and interests. San Jose's award winning trail network promotes outdoor recreation and active transportation. The city is committed to maintaining this system of parks and trails with a focus on equity, ensuring all residents have access to high quality green spaces and recreational opportunities. I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Steven.

Good afternoon, chairman Ortiz and committee. Thank you. My name is Steven Castillo. I am a gardener. Why are parks so important?

Parks are vital for communities because they provide spaces for recreation, relaxation, and connection with nature, which supports physical and mental health. They foster social cohesion by offering inclusive areas for people to gather, play, and celebrate. Parks enhance environmental sustainability by improving air quality, managing storm water, and providing urban habitats for wildlife. They also contribute to economic vitality by increasing property values, attracting visitors, and supporting local businesses. Importantly, in areas with high density housing, parks play a critical role in promoting equity by providing essential access to green spaces and recreational opportunities for underserved communities.

Next slide, please. Park maintenance standards. Because equity in parks is so important, in 2021, PRNS updated its park maintenance standards. These standards are minimum level of maintenance required across the city. The park maintenance standards outline the guidelines and practices for ensuring parks remain clean, safe, and welcoming.

These standards focus on routine maintenance tasks, including irrigation, landscaping, trash removal, restroom cleaning, and the upkeep of amenities such as playgrounds and sports fields. In 2021, the standards reflect the level of care that is achievable with the current budget allocation for park maintenance.

Thank you, Steven. Next slide. Oh, perfect. Forgive me. Measuring our efforts to uphold park maintenance standards, the city of San Jose relies on measurement tools to evaluate performance and identify areas of improvement.

One key tool is the annual park condition assessment, PCA, which evaluates multiple attributes of each park amenity on a pass fail basis, ensuring they align with established maintenance standards. In addition to these staff led assessments, the city actively seeks community input through surveys to better understand public needs and expectations. Recognizing the importance of extending the assessments to the city's 65 miles of trails, the department launched a pile trail assessment in the 2024. Once finalized, this process will be rolled out to all trail reaches, ensuring a consistent comprehensive approach to maintaining San Jose's parks and trails. While the assessments listed above are all point in time evaluations, evaluations, the department has additional methods for continuous feedback.

These methods include monthly park inspections provided by supervisory staff, weekly inspections as part of normal maintenance, which is something Steven Steven would would do do when when he he goes goes out out to to his his parks. Parks. Seven day a week park concerns line, and then we meet monthly with most of the council office is with for a staff council office park condition check-in. All these efforts mentioned reflect the city's commitment to continuous improvement. Claire?

Hi. Chair Ortiz and council members, my name is Claire Sioni, and I'm the business intelligence program manager in PRNS. The overall PCA citywide average for 2024 is 87.4%. This does not mean we are saying the parks are in b plus condition. These scores are measured against the way the current park maintenance standards shown in attachment a are written.

This slide shows percentage of developed park acres by PCA score. The black outline shows park acreage scoring above 80% on the assessment. This is a promising trend as percentage of park acres scoring 80% or above has increased for the past three years. Average PCA scores for council districts ranged from 84.1 to 90.1%. PCA data reveals that lower healthy places index areas or areas with more challenging social health indicators such districts three, five, and seven, these districts benefited from targeted equity focused enhancements like turf renovations at Bacesto Park, Labou Park, and Tolley Community Ball Fields, which is reflected in the PCA scores for those districts.

This table shows the efforts of park maintenance to prioritize efforts in lower HPI neighborhoods. Parks in the lower fiftieth percentile averaged 87.9 up from 87.1% in 2023 despite a lower citywide overall PCA in 2024. Taken together with the acreage chart a few slides ago, there are fewer acres at the lower end of spectrum, and PCA scores are rising in lower HPI areas. These year over year trends are indications of progress towards equitable park maintenance.

Thank Thank you, you. Claire. So our public survey results. We also do an annual survey of the public at various PRNS events through the summer and through various outreach channels. Public feedback and PCA scores highlight key trends and areas for improvement in San Jose Parks.

The feedback reveals gaps between internal and public expectations, underscoring the high expectations our residents have and the need to align service with residents' priorities. Next year, we plan to update the scale of the public survey from one to five to one to 10 for greater alignment with the PCA tool. We also received great feedback from our presentation at the Parks and Rec Commission with ideas on how to reach more people and receive more survey results, which we plan on implementing. As PR explores ways to secure permanent funding for park maintenance through a 2026 ballot measure and develops a park master plan to create more equitable system for distributing parks capital funding, We will also implement community education and engagement strategy. This will include statistically valid survey to gather input on park conditions and community priorities.

Collecting this data will provide a more comprehensive understanding of public perceptions, complementing the current public surveys we conduct for the annual PCA. Next slide. Trail condition assessments. This year, PRNS created trail maintenance standards and launched a pilot trail condition assessment survey to capture trail quality. Eight trail reaches were evaluated across 10 categories, resulting in an overall score of 76.4.

3 Creeks scored the highest, while Thompson Creek scored the lowest. Waste receptacles had highest category store, and aesthetics were the lowest. Our next steps include staff debriefing and refining the tool for citywide implementation in this next year. Next slide. Additional factors affecting park maintenance.

As San Jose parks age, many require increased maintenance demand, deteriorating infrastructure including irrigation, playgrounds, and pathways require frequent repairs. In fiscal year 02/2324, irrigation repairs alone required the equivalent of five full time employees and staff hours. Aging equipment such as playgrounds post safety hazards and demand more upkeep, raising long term costs and reducing park usability. High park usage accelerates wear and tear on equipment, turf, and restrooms requiring frequent cleaning and repairs. Special events and sports activities add further strain, while vandalism, graffiti, and illegal dumping to for divert resources from routine upkeep to costly repairs.

Without sufficient staffing and investment, park quality and community enjoyment will continue to decline. Despite the need for increased maintenance, park staffing has declined by 18% from 2002, 2003, while developed acreage has grown by 22%. This diverging reality shows up in how San Jose ranks against peer cities according to the trust for public land. San Jose currently spends $39 per capita on park maintenance, adjusted for purchasing power, which ranks sixty seventh among a 100 of the biggest cities in America. A couple of slots below Stockton, which we all know filed for bankruptcy.

For comparison, Los Angeles spends $49 per capita, Fremont $53, San Diego one zero five, Portland $1.17, Seattle $1.67, and San Francisco $200 per capita. I'm gonna turn it back to Avi.

I wanna thank Tore, Stephen and Claire for the presentation. And before opening up for questions, that last point we do want to reinforce that Tore made that looking back, it's a long way, right, for a lot of of our community members as their whole lifetime, but back to 2,002, 20% fewer staff, 20% more parks to maintain and of those parks we're including some parks that are really high touch, high level facilities like the Arcadia Ballpark that really demand a higher level of maintenance. And we picked 2002 as that comparison because it was the high watermark for park staffing. And using an analogy that Angel actually drew last year at this meeting, In 2002, there were six and a half acres of parkland for every maintenance employee like Stephen to maintain, and today that picture is almost nine acres of parkland for every employee. The staffing history and the benchmarks and comparisons Tori alluded to, we're gonna get into a lot greater depth on April 8 at the City Council study session, so we can really understand what's changed in our park system over the last twenty years.

I also want to acknowledge we understand there are questions on the PCA methodology. It can look like like Claire said, can look like we're given a B plus to the condition of parks and I do want to say unequivocally that's not what we're trying to say, but I can see how the report can say that, right. And the little nuance I'll share is we're measuring against passfail and we're saying out of a bunch of passfail standards it's 87. And I'll just say I took a couple pass fail classes in school and when I passed it didn't definitely didn't mean I was at 100%. So there's better ways to communicate this though, so we're taking in that feedback and I want to share we heard that same feedback at the Park and Rec Commission meeting last week.

So we are planning for next year what initially is looking like a two part PCA process where on the one hand we do want to measure the same way we've done because it's very valuable us internally to have multi year trend data. And also the work we do with PCA is actually on the inside again, very valuable data in terms of how we create our work plans across park districts and multiple teams. At the same time, we hear loud and clear that it's lacking the value of showing the real condition of parks, we hear this feedback. So that second PCA assessment we'll do next year will be at that higher level of standard of the park we all want to see, we all want for our residents in our community, really aligned with again the resident expectations. So with that, we welcome questions and feedback and we're here.

Thank you Avi, Tori, Claire and Steven, really appreciate this presentation. Before we open it up to public comment, just want to thank you for acknowledging that because I know we've had conversations before this meeting and I know that some of my colleagues and myself have some very intentional comments to come up after public comment. But I appreciate you getting ahead of that and I look forward to working with you as chair in preparation of the next PCA scores. If we could open up to public comment please.

Good afternoon. My name is Jean Dresden, and I've written the council twice this week about the issue of budgets and park maintenance, highlighting a lot of the problems and difficulties. But I'll add to that today, the key factor here is that the standards were low lowered in 2021 to reflect current funding and to provide morale for our hardworking, maintenance workers. Who wants to be working your butt off and only get a d for your work? So it reflects what the funding level is.

And as you go into the budget season this year, I'd like you to remember more features about our park system. Beyond what you've heard here today, we often think of just the youth and the sports fields, but our parks are also serving the mental health of our community. It's the place where the the county behavioral health system takes their chemical dependency patients to teach them walking, meditation through overfelt gardens. As we know, chemical dependency is a key predictor of job loss and ending up homeless. At your budget me, at your council study session this week, you were talking about early intervention.

Parks are part of that early intervention. Health problems are also a predictor of whether someone will end up homeless. Did you know if you spend twenty minutes in a park, your blood pressure will lower? And for people who use that regularly, it can reduce their need for medication. Some doctors are prescribing it that way. Immune systems are are reinforced when people are around certain kinds of trees that are in our park.

Hi council members. Parks condition assessment has numerous deficiencies. Does not represent a self aware and transparent assessment of the condition of our parks. The report suggests that the city has earned a B plus on parks maintenance which is not aligned with observations of our residents or the city council. This B plus grade has been significantly inflated due to the following deficiencies in the assessment methodology.

Many very important and core park features don't get scored at all, like empty tree rings, the condition of public art, or inoperable water features, or toxic lakes. The Japanese Friendship Garden received a 100% score for the last several years when the water feature core to the garden's experience has been inoperable and empty for years. Most of our parks water play features have been turned off and forgotten, and we simply exclude that from our parks condition assessment. Failing parks like Columbus Park and others are excluded from the score, excuse me, entirely when they should be shown as failing since these assets are no longer usable by our residents. The level of deferred maintenance is critical to understand the condition of our parks, but is not measured in the assessment.

The formal parks maintenance standards has codified low standards which inflate results. If you lower the standard you're measuring against, your performance will look better. Example, for weed infestation and turf, 20% weed infestation is the top score. Why wouldn't 0% weeds be the top score? There are many other standards in the parks maintenance standards which have simply been reduced, results in higher PCA scores.

Lastly, the point in time once the annual frequency of this assessment means that it misses the condition in the parks for at least eleven of the twelve months of the year, and is just not frequent enough to drive meaningful short term operational decisions. The deficiency of this assessment are obscuring the true condition of our parks. We need radical honesty and transparent.

Thank you to the public for sharing their concerns and comments. I'm gonna start with my council colleagues. I do have some comments of my own but I wanna start with council member Condolos.

Thank you chairman. You know this is always an interesting conversation. You know our parks are part of what we do as a city and I know Avi and your team hear from me all the time because we hear from our residents all the time. And and this is this is always a good report to remind us and and you know have that iterative process of improving and how we can improve the conditions of our parks collectively given the the limited resources that we have. And so that being said, thank you.

Thank you for the work that you do. It's tough. And I know it's tough because as staff, know, I understand being able to spread yourself thin, trying to cover as much as you can with the limited resources you have and and thank you. Because it's tough. I mean we were just at Lake Cunningham last week and and it's it's we visually saw the the difficulty of trying to trying to do the best we can with what we have.

And so let's see. So a couple of points that I wanted to ask about with regards to something that Ken actually mentioned with regards to amenities. Some amenities in our parks and the inoperable nature of them if you will. And how do we factor that into our PCI? I mean if that is completely left off of the criteria then I mean we're a 100% if we're not even including that as a weighted as a weighted option. So that's that's one question. Question.

Thank you council member for the question. I just wanna make sure, do want me to jump in now or do you wanna?

Can't just, don't take all my ten minutes. Okay,

I'll be quick. Again we hear the feedback and we accept it. And what we've done is and there was an audit recommendation that drove us here and I think this is the unintended, we're living in the unintended consequence of a good of an audit recommendation that had a good faith reason, but we split apart the measurement of day to day park maintenance from the capital infrastructure. And the reason there was the condition of the capital infrastructure which we do assess through our capital division helps drive how limited construction and conveyance tax funds are split across the districts, and what the audit wanted to make sure is the results of like day to day maintenance. So if we didn't do our job mowing or picking up litter that shouldn't affect how infrastructure money is allocated.

So absolutely you know that feedbacks taken in this and this does not reflect let's say I'm going to use Smythe field as an example of a part of a field that's completely out of use because But of a as the community member mentioned that would fall into the infrastructure backlog, which we acknowledge is not side by side in this report and that's what we're looking to do in the future.

Got it. No, thank you for that. And then so for example if a water feature at say Fowler Creek Park because of the drought conditions that we're in, mean just don't go outside because it's pouring. But you know because of that, because we haven't used it and you know residents aren't able to to access this feature. Is that is that is that and it's it's not for lack of capital infrastructure investment but it's actually for lack of operational use. So how would that mesh you know this bridge that we're trying to you know connect?

I think you're bringing up a good item that kind of falls between the cracks here of we don't actually know the condition of the infrastructure because they've been out of use for so long, it's been a decade. I don't believe and I'll look to my colleagues to confirm or correct me, I don't believe we're measuring the condition as an amenity that's out of use. And again I that's good feedback for us about how we need to do the next round of process improvement for how we look at the park conditions.

Correct. And thank you for that. And that's I guess to the point that I was trying to make is improving our rubric to see how we can incorporate certain things that residents would say that's a deficiency. That's why is this created why is Fowler Creek Park created a 99 when when this feature hasn't even been operable and there's you know and I get it it's a point in time and it's it's and it's essentially anecdotal to the best of ability. But you know that's something I'd love for staff to just dive in and I mean for example Santa Clara.

They have the city of Santa Clara kind of does what they can to assess the conditions of their parks and they have a poor, think it's poor, good, fair, poor, critical based on, you know, they equate numbers to their impact to facilities and they also have examples. You know I'd be curious to see you know how we can benchmark, how we can improve our benchmarking to neighboring cities not that we compare to Santa Clara because of the stat that you gave given we're sixty seventh out of the top 100 cities in per capita investment. But that's something for for me to to try to see how we can move us in the right direction, see how we can make improvements on even just telling the story. So that's that's one. And then, you know, you know, I I I think the the survey.

There was a survey that was referenced, public survey results which were through Viva Parks. And I I think in the report it mentioned something about council offices to distribute. And but, you know, I asked my my staff and our staff never never saw any of the survey results to try to get back from our residents on the conditions of our parks. Or else I would have sent it out. I probably would have done a social media campaign on it to try to get as many voices as I can because I get hammered on this all the time.

And so, know, I I I would like to to be incorporated in that a little bit more intentionally. And you know I I think you know obviously there's things like QR codes and all these other things that staff is pretty good good at because I know I've seen it at at those Viva parks for those activations. But you know, okay. So that's that's it for now. But I I wanna I wanna see what my colleagues have to say because there's a couple other questions and I don't wanna monopolize the conversation. But thanks again.

Thank you Councilmember Candelas. Councilmember Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you staff for the report. As we heard in public comment parks are incredibly important to the ecosystem of our city to the quality of life of our residents and so I appreciate the great work that you do to provide. The best quality. That we we can. With limited resources. And so building off of the comment that councilmember candelas made about neighboring cities. And hearing about the standards that fluctuate. Are there any industry standards that we can be referencing when we're when we're creating and setting standards for our city?

Thank you Councilman for that question. So you know we've actually been, we've actually had our staff interviewed by a number of cities who are looking to really mirror what we're doing. So it's I think we all do look at each other in terms of how we evaluate parks. The approach that we take and I'm not gonna I don't want take too much of your time on this but the approach we take actually is based on the city of San Francisco which evaluates parks quarterly with a special team that's actually not even in the park departments and they're almost like their audit department. They measure it quarterly and they collect all that data.

Their standards were really the basis for our work. We look to them and then and you know different cities approach a little differently all of them, but they they set that approach of a pass fail of did the park you know hit the criteria you're looking for, yes or no, on all these different things. So in our case we look to SF.

Thank you for that answer. I also was curious in the observations that are conducted for parks, is it just during daylight hours or are there any observations that are done in non daylight hours to measure a standard for lighting at our parks?

Currently, we just do our assessments during daylight hours, but we do have a park condition I'm sorry. A park concerns line, and residents email us frequently or call us frequently about lighting conditions in parks, and so we can address those working with public works, of course.

Thank you. I have Great Oaks Park in District 2, which is a fabulous park, a lot of green open space, and unfortunately we have residents who don't feel safe enough access that park, and part of the concern is that during evening hours because of the inadequate lighting, it lends itself to a space for folks to congregate and do activities that shouldn't be happening you know at parks during the day or the nighttime, and so that's a major concern, and I know that Vista Park in the area where I live is a very well lit park in the evening and so as we do our work with a focus on equity, I hope that we can be proactive about setting a standard for lighting as well so that every community and every resident feel safe accessing their parks During the daytime and that there aren't any activities happening overnight that then preclude folks from being able to enjoy their parks during the daytime. I also had a question about the limited resources that we have right now, how is staff balancing park maintenance and service requests using an equity lens for proactive maintenance as we are constrained and limited with our budget and resources?

Sure, so probably four or five years ago, so let me just a little backtracking, so previously when I came into the parks division, there wasn't really an equity lens. It was whoever complained the loudest, you know, got care for their parks. And so, you know, a lot of parks in more affluent neighborhoods receive better care, unfortunately. And so we realized this, and we started to use something called the Healthy Places Index, which is an indicator. You know, it's 25 measurements of things going on in a community.

And so based on that, we identified communities that when we see the park condition assessment results, we put extra efforts into those. And so, you know, we may not have the resources to have additional staff, but in those communities, we'll direct, like, conservation core or our resilience core program or do additional volunteer activities. And so we prioritize those improvements based on feedback we receive in like the public surveys and the park condition assessments to make improvements in those parks using all of the resources we have available.

Thank you. As a new council member, given the past couple of years of just being literally at the doors of our District residents. Would council office requests get prioritized or are is there another kind of system of managing requests.

So, yes, council office requests, are prioritized, but we also continue to use that equity lens in making those decisions. But one of you know, as I mentioned in the report, we do and I don't believe we've set up meetings with your district yet, but we do meet with, you know, many of the other council members or their staff and go park by park and issues that are brought up, we are able to address, you know, fairly quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member Campos. All good points mentioned. Council member Bien Duan?

Thank you, chair. Thank you staff for the report. I know it's tough time. I know as you're working a lot more with less. I understand that. Have we leveraged between private and public collaboration to upkeep some of these park?

Thank you for that question council member. So I actually think that's an area that we've made a lot of progress in the last couple years. Always more to be done, but we've done some really exciting public private partnerships tend to go where maybe the the pub private interest kind of has that interest to bring to bear, but we've seen some of that at Plaza De Cesar Chavez where we've done some improvements, some new beautiful new benches, whole new turf to put down there last year and we're looking to do that again this year. So we have really looked into that and in some cases we do have agreements with private parties where they do pick up some of the maintenance burden. For instance, Adobe one of the anchor employers in our city actually provides the maintenance for McHenry Park which is right beneath their towers in downtown.

And similarly we have we have some joint use agreements where some of our private partners may pick up some of the responsibilities on maintenance in exchange for some use of the facility. So we do definitely look into that. I think there's more to be done and where we're always eager is we don't know who all may be interested in partnering with us. So whenever we make those connections we're very eager to make that happen.

I don't think we wait for them to show interest. I think we should have someone to go out there and ask because a lot of these company, I know we got more than 200 companies that would willing to adopt some of these smaller park. And just that you present that opportunity to them and show them that their collaboration not only helped the community but also it's almost like a free advertisement for them. Can say look, you know for example Apple or whatever other company maybe Cisco and so on, HP. They said look we clean up this park, we maintain this park for our community because we do business here and we live here.

So I think it's important that we do that.

Definitely we agree with you 100% and I got a little kick under the table that I neglected to mention that exactly through our volunteer program we do work with a lot of corporations with Apple, Nvidia and others to do some volunteer events. It's more event based and we're trying to kind of ladder up to some ongoing investments from those organizations. I also want to speak in that sphere of public private partnership, although it's twelve years behind us, we are still living in a world where we really have a hybrid model where a lot of our work is done in house through our maintenance staff, but we also have private vendors who provide maintenance at our smaller parks and we also have a private vendor that provides our restroom custodial services.

Thank you and just want to mention I've gone out there and volunteer multiple park where we spread mulch and picking up the garbage and supporting PRNS and so on. I think we should leverage more of a volunteer because lack of staffing we can supplement that in some manner. Tolley Ballpark feel is right at the heart of District 7 and Spartan Little League pay our city a certain amount of money to use it. And and yet, you know, some of the parents have to bring their own lawn mower out there. Disheartening.

Right? And these are where our young, a youth, you know, a younger generation learn how to be, work as a teamwork and expands on their capability and yet half the park is not being watered well or the maintenance is not there. But I do understand because we're right there by Coyote Creek and lots of homeless. And I have worked with our police department, try to make sure the the crime in the area is down and patrol there and and not having so much, what you call, unauthorized feeding of our unsheltered residents which cause a huge amount of garbage and and, you know, critters that that come from the creek. So why is it that that when you got a group that paying us, and yet they have to literally go out there and maintain themselves.

And and I hear this every single time they go out there and every single year. What can we do better on that?

Thank you for that question council member. And also just let me start by thanking you for your consistent approach with everybody. I think you're getting all of us our attention at Tully Community Ballfields and appreciate the work you're doing to try to deter the unauthorized feeding because that's the cycle we live in, right, and it just feeds on itself. So I'm going to ask my team to correct me if I'm wrong here. We do for on the mowing side of things, we do provide weekly mowing to all of our ball fields that are in use.

What we do through our contracts that we've had with nonprofit Little Leagues is allow them to also provide their own maintenance service if we're not able to at kind of the baseline level of service we provide if it doesn't meet the needs. So Tori I don't know there's something different about the situation. We also I'll speak to this also very specifically, we are and actually we're going to bring to this committee in two months a discussion on the equitable use of sports fields. And one of the pieces of that work kind of speaks to this dilemma of what what is asked and what is granted to the different users of our fields. And right now our staff is doing that good work to make sure nobody's being given extra and nobody's being asked extra from if that makes sense.

Everybody has that level playing field and and equitable access.

I just wanna add. So with many of our little leagues, you know, especially district six, we do have those you know, we provide the same base level of maintenance to each of our sports fields, but they may want something more. And so, some of our leagues will, you know, step up and volunteer or or one of the leagues, you know, paid to have one of our contractors come in and do additional maintenance on that. And when Avi says, you know, we're looking at that situation, it I think it all goes back to equity, you know, that if people in more affluent neighborhoods can pay or have the time to do those, is that really fair, you know, to people in neighborhoods where people are working, you know, long hours or two jobs and don't necessarily have that time to put in. And we don't wanna say, well, you know, you can't make your field nicer because these you know, this area doesn't have resources, so we're just trying to figure out a balance there.

And one of the things we've also noticed when we enter into those partnerships with little leagues where, you know, they're still paying for the field use is there tends to be a sense ownership, and ultimately, all of our fields are public fields. They aren't exclusive use of private organizations.

Well, think a simple irrigation just to get the grass growing. Right? That that's the basic of most of our park. And and if you got bare dirt and and not only would cause injury to the kids who are playing and and it's it's not aesthetically pleasing when we we put funding and and they put their effort into maintaining it as well. So I encourage the simple irrigation and I we we talked about it extensively.

Last year we walked it with PD and and the little leagues and and PRNS as well. One of the agreements was the irrigation. Gotta have the water nor is it the grass to maintain green. And then we have to just, you know, cut it so that way it's nice and even so the kids don't get injured. Well, thank you so much. I know it's it's tough and I and I do understand and we're all praying for, you know, recovery in economy. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you council member Dewan. Council member Cohen.

Thank you chair. And, I wanna thank the team for the report and for your work. Having been doing this for over four years with you now I know how much, what your challenges are and obviously even what we all would like to think is simple irrigation is obviously not so simple. And I noticed in your report I

think it

was something like ten thousand hours of time spent just on irrigation troubleshooting and repair. So it kind of led to a question in my mind about are there some new technologies, new things we can do? I know somebody who has fought with irrigation systems in the past how hard it is to keep them operating. What are we thinking in terms of how we can maybe deal with that in a more effective way?

You know, unfortunately, you know, the age of some of the infrastructure and parks, the solution is really to start over and create a new system, which is really, really hard to do. You know, there's some parks that I've seen where we've pulled out, you know, galvanized pipe and there's holes the size of a golf ball in it. And we don't find out many times until there's leaks in it. And, you know, I think that's one of the things we're working with on capital on trying to identify those locations where we do those things and try and start over from fresh.

I appreciate that. And I certainly want to thank you and encourage my colleagues in a similar way to make sure just to be interacting with you on a regular basis about the areas of need in your district. I mean what I know is that we spend a lot of time talking about very specific issues with a leaking pond at Noble for example that we're finally getting fixed this month and other things that we're that we that that take time but that we have to specifically make sure you weren't aware of because you can't be everywhere, you can't know what the residents are seeing. So I just that those monthly meetings that we have are very helpful to our team and to our community. Just one last question I want to ask now.

The data has always confused me. Right? And I'm looking through it a table of parks in my district and other districts and seeing big fluctuations in these numbers from year to year. And so it's one thing to say I kind of can understand that you're rating but when for example when I'm looking now at District 5 at Overfell Gardens which is ranked at 54%, 59% and then for one year jumped to 87% and the following year dropped back to 59% again. So why the outlier number?

Is there an explanation as to what difference happens each year as those numbers are being. And the same thing is true in Alum Rock Park. And I get it that Alum Rock Park dropped to 44% last year probably because the road was closed for half a year and no one could even get into the park. But to have to go from 44 from 94 to 44 in one year and then back to 79 the year after Just makes me wonder how useful these numbers are to us.

Set. Council Member that's the $64,000 question right about a methodology like this. And there are typically things that underlie it on a park by park basis that drive a big increase or a big drop. One of which being the example you gave about irrigation that we've had parks where the irrigation will go down for months at a time and if that includes the time we're measuring, that's obviously going to completely reduce the score. There's also the possibility of that quick point in time factor that if our team happens to show up and you know our assessment teams create their schedules, they go to try to cover certain ground as efficiently as possible.

If they happen to go to a park right after it had received its service, it may look different than an hour later or a day later, because we know we're not able to maintain park seven days a week. So you know this is where it's frustrating right because it is that one day year where we get in there and one park may have been cleaned and tidied up right then and another one shows the use of that it should receive right. We definitely hear that hear these questions right and concerns and the SF example that I spoke to earlier and and again that you know they have a different world of resourcing on parks which I would love to have that problem. But what they do is they actually measure quarterly, they measure once a season, they don't publish all that data because you could you know any point in time you still have some fluctuations, but they take each of those data points and then they average together to come up with a composite for what the condition of that park looks like over the year. We pick and choose how we measure the way we do things right now, it takes about half I'm ballpark about half an FTE of our staff time from our senior maintenance workers and our supervisors.

So it's you know we're taking them away from quite a bit of their day to day work because it's important to have this information. So what I'm speaking to is what we're thinking about is how do we scale up measurement while also we don't want to pull away from the fact that our supervisor need to be supervised and need to be proactively inspecting and doing their day to day. But yeah this is the question.

Okay thank you. Anyway I appreciate the challenge and the different types of parks that you're dealing with. Large neighborhood parks, large regional parks like Alum Rock and Overfelt with very different type of needs than a small pocket park or or even or the larger neighborhood parks. And and just one last thought to leave it leave with is, you know, there there are certain types of certain parks that will be left more wild than others that are that are meant to be open space but not necessarily playing fields and people have expectations. Is there is there like a a definition everywhere of what of what we want different areas of parks to look like.

And I think of like Cataldi Park for example where there's a front where there's a maintained playing field, the back where it's kind of more wild and grown. And people say well why don't you fix up the back? And the question is do we have sort of standards for what each park and what all the parts of the park should look like that we can share with the public?

So I guess my big answer is no. Not necessarily. You know, every park, you know, when it's built has a master plan, and it's built according to that. And, over time, things will die out and we don't have the resources to replace them. One of the things we've tried to look at because people don't like us to use chemicals, You know, trying to create these places as meadow spots, but then we get complaints that there's weeds in the park. Mhmm. And, I mean, that's a dialogue I'd love to have with the public and try and come up with, you know, what is that vision for the parks?

Yeah. Thank you. And and and and then just, the last thing, I know how hard it is to deal with our our gophers in the East Foothills. So, you know, I appreciate the the work you all do to try to keep our field our parks in as much of a useful shape as possible in very difficult conditions.

Alright. Thank you, council member Cohen. Just wanna begin my comments by thanking staff. Appreciate all of your hard work on this. I also wanna thank you, Steven. Thank you for your hard work maintaining our parks, actually going out there doing that hard work. And I'm really appreciate that you're here in this room. I do got a little bit of tough love, but don't take this personal. I know as mentioned, are understaffed, we are under resourced, the funding of the capital projects in our parks are not equitable. So I know that there are a lot of factors that have brought us to where we are.

But I think if we are at least not measuring the condition of our parks in a way that everybody can understand and digest and and agree upon, we're gonna continue to have we're not setting setting proper expectations with the community. People see these high numbers and then they go in their neighborhoods and look at parks and they're like, something's missing here. And you know, I I don't I don't reading these numbers, I don't feel like they act accurately reflect the lived experience of our residents in our district, especially in District 5 and and District 7. You know, parks have been as you all know, parks have priority for my office. You know, I've been meeting with John.

I've been meeting with Andrea, Angel about these topics time and time again. And, you know, when my staff visit the parks because now we do a monthly park audit before our meetings, we continue to see issues that are not reflected in these scores. My staff has actually provided some photos to our AV team about from our recent park audit. I wanted to ask if they could bring up the Amistad Park photo. So this is just an example of I would say 80% of our park benches and playgrounds that are covered with graffiti or marker, you know tagging.

And really it's on many of the structures within the park. If we could look at the Cassell Park after Oh yeah, that's great. If we could look at the Cassell Park image now. Sorry, next time I'll put it in slides. We see this playground equipment which was covered in gray paint from the repeated tagging that it looks like this gray paint has obviously not solved the issue.

It looks like we're essentially like giving up on the park and it sets a message to the community that our city doesn't care about this park. This is Cassell Park. I know that it used to have I think it was a pirate ship in it which we who knows when we'll ever have enough money to repair that. But this is the current condition in in our neighborhood on the East Side. And then if we could look at Mayfair, the Mayfair photo.

This is the current condition of the restrooms in the Mayfair area and this is something that I've mentioned continuously in our meetings. And so, you know, I'm trying to advocate for a parks bond. Right? But if I go out to the community and they say well we already see what you're doing with your current money to maintain the parks, we're not going to be able to get the amount of support we would need to get that parks bond over the threshold to come and be accepted by the voters. Thank you AB, that's all the support I need.

Yet somehow these parks receive passing grades in our PCA scores and I just don't understand how. The PCA score is the park conditions assessment. We are assessing the condition of the parks. Right? But I challenge everyone here, do these assessments truly capture what the public see and experience?

Do they account for the areas that face consistent vandalism? And that may require higher maintenance which I know in many cases we don't have the staff or resources to do that. So I have a question from for our PRNS team. Is it true that and I know it was mentioned earlier, think her name was Jean, that the park maintenance standards were lowered in 2021 to match funding levels?

Chair we did adjust the standards in 2021. A part of that lens was what do we think we can deliver so that we can measure ourselves against a delivery expectation we can do. There was also just the dynamic of change what we actually used to do was a one to five scale, very similar to the example that one of your colleagues mentioned earlier. The challenge with that kind of one to five scale is it gave like you know a number five is like a perfect park, number four was you know 90% okay, three was like 70 to 80% okay. So it led to these measurements that we didn't trust in how we repeat them.

For the same reason that I think that council member Cohen asked about a question, is it a repeatable measurement? So in going to the system we have now of past, we switched to a pass fail, does it hit this one standard versus a sliding scale? And we set it to that standard of what we thought we could achieve with again with the resources we have.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. I think, I mean that's fair. You know you can't set expectations so high where you're continuing to get D and failing grades.

But also it's creating like this distorted reality and we're saying that our parks are reaching 8090% PCA scores and the residents kind of feel like they're being forgotten and they're being taken for a ride. So that would be my question on that. Another question for staff, looking at these PCA scores, are you confident in the accuracy of them? Because what I'm reading here and what I'm hearing from you is that parks in District 5 are better condition than parks in District 6. So I want to ask are you wholeheartedly standing by that because that's the grade that you gave between our both districts.

Thank you chair for

that question. Eastside and Willow Glen. So you're saying Eastside parks are better, are in better condition than Willow Glen Parks.

What I will say, so no I'm not going to say that in those words. What I will say and this is again with the methodology and how you analyze how it's analyzed here in this is in each of those districts and in your district and in District 6. We have a collection of parks in some case like in District 6, a lot of parks that are frankly are in great condition and thank you Steven for that, you're doing a great job. But they're also the Guadalupe Gardens which are very challenged and when we take a district wide average, those parks scoring in the thirties or the fifties are bringing down the average quite a bit. In a way that again it it kind of I think what I would say is it when you zoom out, you kind of lose that amazing that detail which is what you're speaking to of, I look at the park and that's not what I see, right?

So I think that's where by analyzing it in a certain way, we lose some of that important meaning there. The other thing I'd say and this is a challenge with the measurement, when a park is docked on the like I'm gonna use the graffiti example, when the park is docked on the graffiti standard and we have tolerance policy on graffiti. So if there's graffiti on an amenity that amenity is not going to pass that standard. If there's 20 other tags around, it doesn't compound at twenty twenty like 25 times, so it's you kind of missed this, you didn't hit the standard and it counts that time right, but it doesn't like I think that's where it doesn't reflect what you see. So I hear what you're saying and I'm not disagreeing with you, I think there's improvements to be made methodology.

I'm very excited for this summer when we're going to be doing a statistic, we're planning for a statistically valid community survey. Because I think what we're really saying is we need to hear the community, what does community see here? And the long term, I think starting next year with a two phase approach is realigning our measurements to that community expectation.

Okay. Thank you. And I know we're also gonna be having a study session on April 8. Are we gonna be because I know we had discussed Angel about potentially moving this to the entire city council. Are we gonna be talking about PCA scores and that? Because I think we may the council should provide some feedback on adjusting that methodology. So will we do that in the study session or do I need to cross reference this?

No I think we could fold that conversation into the study sessions. Maybe let me just take this opportunity to address. Were you dealt with your questions council member or?

No I was just gonna again say this is a systemic problem. I know you all are doing a really good job. I know that we're as I said understaffed, under resourced. Nobody works in PRNS because they don't want to have nice parks. Nobody signs up to work in parks because they don't want to maintain them. This is an issue that I think we all need to work together on and I'm looking forward to the study session but I'm committed to working with you, the department leadership and Angel to make sure we get across that finish line.

Thank you Chair and the rest of the council members because it's clear that you really understand kind of the complexity of this challenge. I'm just using these numbers figuratively, these aren't actual budget numbers, but this is really a $30,000,000,000 problem and we have like $5,000,000 to solve it. So what staff has done when you look at whether it's the current methodology of PCA that's being used, the way they've been looking at how do you use the Healthy Park Index to just more equitably deploy resources. Those are all stop gap measures aimed at trying to make a really bad situation a little bit better, but we're still in a very bad situation. You pointed this out, in fact several of you have pointed this out already, what we're trying to solve for is that we have, when you take a look at a historical lens, we have fewer staff, more park acreage, more parks, every year a growing aging infrastructure, and then a current funding collection system in terms of PDO and PIO in terms of the way that is flawed, right?

The way we collect those funds and the way we deploy them, right? It's a system that was kind of rooted in an assumption that all parks have full operation and maintenance funding, and in the past that was the case. Historically that funding has gone away, gone away, but the actual policy has remained the same. And even when you take a look at state funding opportunities, it also assumes cities are fully financing operations, which is not the case, has not been the case for at least the last fifteen years. So we gotta solve for that, right?

And you mentioned the study session, so April 8 we have a study session, and again thanks to you and your colleagues who have really pushed for it. I think what that will provide is an opportunity to have a real candid conversation around what the problem is, try to frame the issues a way that we could chunk these down to what can we do in the next year, what can we do over the next three to five years, because it is gonna be a long game solution. But the reality is that we're gonna still keep having these conversations until we solve the underlying systemic issue that is completely broken and flawed. We're really looking forward to the April 8 study session, because I think we're gonna have to really sunshine some real difficult things. And of course, we're in an environment of trade offs.

We're not gonna be able to fund every single thing in a very constrained budget environment. But I think we are going need to call the question around if we truly want parks to look the way we want them to look, then we're going to have to prioritize them differently. And historically, we just haven't done that. So I think we need to own that. So anyway, more to come. April 8 conversation I think is going be a good one.

Thank you. I'm committed to working as chair to help the administration address this. Can I get a motion?

I'll move the staff recommendation. Second.

Alright. Can I have everybody vote please? Alright. Thank you so much for that lively discussion. Now we are going to item two, digital equity assessment status report. And we have a presentation from Jill Born, city librarian.

Good afternoon members of the committee. I'm Jill Born, City Librarian and Director of the San Jose Public Library. Today I'm joined by some amazing leaders from the library team. We have Anne Grabowski, Acting Deputy Director of public services, Abby Scholl, who is our acting division manager for digital empowerment and public technology, and U Nachman Gall, who is the acting broadband partnerships manager. Today, are excited to share with you a report on the digital equity assessment.

This is the first comprehensive assessment of the citywide strategy that has been conducted and presented since the original digital inclusion and broadband strategy was approved by City Council in 2017. Now since 2017, the city's approaches to addressing the many barriers associated with digital access, inclusion and equity have evolved and responded to unique challenges and opportunities. Today the team will provide a review of where we have been, our collective achievements and where we're going today, and know, ta da exciting, a new preview draft goals and objectives of the next phase of the city's digital equity and empowerment strategy. And Abby is going to start us off.

Thank you, Jill. Good afternoon. I'm Abby Schull, acting division manager for digital empowerment and public technology at the library. A bit of background to set the stage. In 2016, the city began developing a citywide broadband and digital inclusion strategy to address the digital divide after recognizing that broadband Internet speeds in San Jose lagged peer cities nationally and internationally, and at least 95,000 residents in San Jose did not have access to Internet service at home.

In 2017, the city council adopted the city's first broadband and digital inclusion strategy. And early actions included piloting community WiFi in the James Lick School attendance area and developing partnerships with AT and T, Verizon, and T Mobile, which in 2018 began to bring in lease revenue from city street lights used for their commercial broadband network deployments. As directed by city council, this revenue goes directly into the city's digital inclusion fund to finance the city's efforts to close the digital divide. In February 2020, backed by the Digital Inclusion Fund, the city launched the Digital Inclusion Grant Program, awarding 1,000,000 in grants to community based organizations to implement in community digital navigation programs. The following month in March 2020, the pandemic immediately made access to technology and connectivity a necessity for daily life and highlighted the digital divide.

In response, the city activated the digital inclusion branch in the emergency operations center led by the library to rapidly implement new programs and accelerate existing ones. During this time, 1,400,000.0 in additional digital inclusion grants was awarded to schools to support immediate remote learning. We also contributed city funding to expand and expedite community WiFi deployment to eight areas over a period of two years instead ten. And the library launched SJ Access, which began with distributing about 12,000 hotspots to schools and making about 5,000 hotspots available for lending at libraries. By 2023, the digital inclusion grant program had distributed close to 3,000,000 in grants.

All eight community WiFi networks were complete. 17 outdoor WiFi zones were added to community centers and libraries for after hours access. And at the same time, revenue from telecom streetlight leases were on the decline, and state and federal pandemic aid measures were in their final funding cycles. This prompted the need to assess the current state of the digital divide and to update the city's strategy. The digital equity assessment had four key findings comparing 2017 to 2025.

Overall, have increased since 2017. Compared to other cities, the quality of San Jose's wired internet service has increased from the bottom range up to the middle range. However, wireless is still in the lower range, but the speeds have increased quite a bit. Access to fiber internet service has grown from about 1% up to 37%. Choice between internet service providers has also grown as home wireless has become a new service option in the last few years, which is a key success from our partnerships with AT and T, Verizon, and T Mobile.

Wired service options have also improved, but choice limited. And households without an internet subscription reduced from 49,000 to 39,000. However, the cost of internet service and devices, as well as concerns about online safety and service contracts remain key barriers to Internet adoption. Based on the current state assessment, we developed three strategic goals to update the citywide strategy to address the digital divide. Goal one is to ensure broadband is available to all and future ready, which includes setting basic and aspirational broadband speeds so we can measure progress against these benchmarks.

Goal two is to provide best in class broadband permitting processes and enabling structures, which is aimed at working with the city's permitting departments including planning, building, and public works to simplify our permitting so commercial networks can be constructed as quickly as possible to meet growing community demands. And goal three is to close the digital divide through digital empowerment, which includes digital skill building, in community digital navigation supported by the digital inclusion grant program, increasing workforce development programs, and continuing legislative advocacy related to digital equity. Next, will describe the progression of broadband programs that align with and advance these goals.

Thank you, Abby, and good afternoon. San Jose's broadband infrastructure has improved significantly. Today, 99% of residents have access to Internet that meet the federal minimum speeds of 100 megabit per second download and 20 megabits per second upload. Fiber access has grown from just 1% in 2017 to 37% today, though this is still behind the national average of 56%. Home wireless options have also expanded from 0% to 52%.

Gigabit speed service is still limited, but high speed options are growing. Currently, 36% have access to broadband that meets the federal aspirational speed of one gigabit download and 500 megabits per second upload. Much of this progress comes from strong partnerships with telecom providers and faster permitting, helping expand four gs, five gs, fiber, while supporting smart city, digital inclusion programs and other essential efforts. The graph on the right shows how improved small cell permitting has driven both mobile and home wireless growth. Still, some mobile home and multifamily communities lack basic Internet, and competition remains low with 68% of the cities still have access to just one or two providers.

To address these challenges, goal one will ensure universal and future ready broadband, goal two will streamline permitting and foster telecom collaboration to speed up infrastructure together. Since 2017, more San Jose residents have home internet, but cost remains a major barrier. The number of unconnected households have dropped from nine to 4%, but more people rely on solar only Internet, increasing from six to 8%. Households with only a smartphone have more than doubled from two to 5%. These trends make it clear affordability remains a challenge.

The city's 2017 survey found that 60% of unconnected households could afford only $9 or less per month for Internet. Today, that average cost is much higher at $68 nationally and $84 in California. The federal affordable connectivity program provided a $30 monthly discount, helping 40,000 San Jose households and save over 1,000,000 each month. But after the program ended in June 2024, about 16% canceled their service due to cost. Community WiFi, built in partnership with the Eastside Union High School District and supported by school tech bond funding, provides free outdoor WiFi within eight neighborhoods, covering about 200,000 residents and support over 76,000 users monthly.

However, maintaining and upgrading this network is expensive, and the service doesn't match the speed, reliability or capacity of commercial Internet providers. As we look ahead, we'll explore sustainable, high quality solutions for the long term, aligning with our first goal. Our digital empowerment efforts are driven by Digital Inclusion Priority Index, which focuses on areas with the lowest Internet adoptions and household income. Community WiFi build out follow this index. It also has guided the location of hotspots in Chromebooks at library branches and helps determine locations of digital programming.

On the map, dark pink represents the highest priority areas, while green shows community WiFi coverage. And I'll turn it over to Anne next.

Thank you, Oo. My name is Anne Grabowski. I'm the acting deputy director of public services at San Jose Public Library. Aligned with goal three to close the digital divide through digital empowerment, we aim to ensure that every member of our community is digitally empowered through access to the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in an increasingly digital world. Since its launch in 2020, the library's SJ Access Program has provided over 80,000 residents with critical Internet, device access, and digital skills training with 72,000 served through the library's programs and over 10,000 served by programs funded by the city's digital inclusion grant program.

In the last year alone, the library supported technology skill development for 33,000 people. That's incredible. 18,000 youth and young adults were able to access a variety of programming to teach computer and technology skills and 15,000 people used our online digital skill building pathways program which was developed by our own staff. The expanded digital skill building pathways now offer flexible asynchronous learning available through the library's website which allows residents to build digital skills at their own pace from home. The pathways host more than 70 skill building courses in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese across a range of topics ranging from social media use, safety online, and using tools like Google Drive.

In July 2024, the library added AI one hundred one and one hundred two courses to our offerings aimed at providing a foundational understanding of this rapidly growing field of technology and those have been accessed by over 500 participants. Recognizing an increasing demand for technology focused workforce readiness, SJ Access joined the city's resilience core program launching the resilience core IT and computer science pathways as a pilot in January 2025. This pathway provides living wage, part time employment and technical training for unemployed and underemployed young adults. Thanks to funding from Apple Inc. And PwC, first cohort of four resilience core associates are gaining hands on experience in coding and IT support as well as working towards gaining an industry recognized certification positioning them for careers in technology and beyond.

The program aims to empower young professionals with skills, expertise, and impact driven work that serve as a pathway into the tech industry. The city's digital inclusion grant program has so far helped over 10,000 residents access the Internet devices and digital skills training. This was accomplished in partnership with community based organizations awarded nearly $4,000,000 in grants from the digital inclusion fund to develop the capacity and expertise to embed digital navigation services into their existing and trusted programs. In 2024, with learnings from the first four years of the program and changes in how people access, use, and pay for Internet since the pandemic, we restructured the digital inclusion grant program to align with fully developed partner programs by focusing on funding the operation of tech hubs which are community centered spaces within multi service centers in low income areas of our city. Currently six tech hubs are funded through the grant program.

Each tech hub is open twenty or more hours per week and together are expected to serve 3,000 residents annually with free internet access, devices, digital navigation, and skill building classes to support education, employment, health, and civic engagement. In January 2025, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration otherwise known as NTIA recommended an $11,600,000 award of the Digital Equity Act funds that would support the expansion of tech hubs. This recommendation acknowledges the success of the library's digital skill building pathways and tech hubs model in bridging the digital divide and paves the way for regional expansion into Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties with joint venture Silicon Valley overseeing grant administration. The grant would enable the library to spearhead an $8,700,000 expansion of proven digital equity strategies including 16 tech hubs operated by eight community based organizations to serve residents across San Jose and Santa Clara County, $700,000 for dedicated library staff to develop curriculum and programming, and funding for 11 resilience core information technology and computer science pathway participants over four years. While we are optimistic that the NTIA will approve the recommended award, the Digital Equity Act funding is currently paused at the federal level which has affected the release of funds and program implementation.

I'll turn it back over to Jill.

Thanks, Ann. So you see on this slide the recommended build out of our goals one, two and three are set to collectively address the digital divide in San Jose moving forward. We plan to bring the final digital equity report to City Council later in the spring. So looking ahead, the three strategic goals are built out with corresponding objectives that we propose as the focus of strategy and the next phase of broadband and digital equity efforts. The renewed strategy will be the combination of two years of revisioning, strategy analysis, research and community conversations.

The detailed draft is in your packet, and is subject to discussion, clarifications, more strategizing especially on funding sources, and change of course. So as we welcome conversation, lastly, although you are hearing from library team today, these efforts are truly collaborative across the city partners. I want to thank our internal partners who have been deeply involved in the city's success addressing the digital divide so far and continue to be integral in the advancement of our strategy, public works, our permitting partners for broadband on public and city property, particularly the small cell team, which includes Jeff Lee, Elizabeth Kochi and Donnie Nguyen and the Structural Engineering and Code Inspection team including Alexis Cervantes Guzman, Marlon De Leon, Tony Huizayo and Tony Flores. The Planning Building Code Enforcement Department, especially Planning Building teams led by John Tu and Lisa Joyner to oversee permitting of broadband projects and private property the Department of Transportation, including Ho Nguyen and Brian Macias, our partners on city fiber and streetlight pole maintenance, the IT department, especially Shirley Dong for her project management and technical support and community Wi Fi. It feels like the Oscars all of a sudden.

But the city manager's office, Angel Rios and Dolan Bechel who have long championed this work. So we're gonna pause on this slide, but we will welcome any questions that you may have, and thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for that important presentation. Now if we can open it up to public comment if we have any. Alright, let's open it up to comments from the council. I think we'll start with Councilmember Cohen.

Thank you. Good thing we don't have playoff music here at the in the chambers. I wanna I wanna thank you. You know, I I was part of the founding group for the Digital Equity Coalition on the East Side to try to kick off an idea of spreading availability of WiFi across the county and the city. And I'm really glad at how quickly and how effectively it's been done. And now I'm more curious about how well it's working, how many people are using it, and how we best spend our resources. I saw the number of 76,800 people. That's 76,000 people per month that are accessing WiFi. Is that correct? And that's being accessed in multiple ways.

Right? They're accessing it at libraries, at community centers, in parking lots and at their homes?

I believe that that number is just the community WiFi networks.

So access most likely at their homes True, or in? Yes. Okay. So it's not there's also these are also hubs that are out in public parking lots and other places, right? That's not part of this number? Oh okay, great. So that's a pretty good

And the school districts have their own number because as you know it was a partnered network and so this is just the public use of the network.

Right and this is counted by just connections that are made to the network right and actual connections?

Yep.

Okay. Great. I I was so the number of people that are not that don't have access to that access number of 30 I forget the exact number, 35,000 or so people who don't have access to WiFi at home, are those are people who technically there is no option or is that the number of people we know that don't actually have it? What does that number mean?

So we get this ballpark from the American Community Survey which is census survey that they do annually, but we use the five year rolling average to just flatten out any jumps that you might see in any given year. But what we can tell from that number is number of people who are subscribed and the number of people who are not subscribed to the internet. And the reasons why they're not subscribed to the internet, we search out through other means. One of them is the the equity index that was up on the screen. And we look, and also with conversations with the community and also through our grantees who are providing services directly to individuals who need the support.

Those are all the ways we try to figure out for that pocket of the public who aren't connected. How why and how can we help them?

And it's not really necessarily because they don't have the ability that there's no technical way to connect. It's because they have either chosen not to connect or can't afford to connect. Right?

Yeah. Thank you, councilor, for the clarification. So we also use the new federal communications, commission broadband map, which was updated a few years ago to be more granular and provide much better data on a location by location basis on infrastructure. And so as U was describing, do know that there is approximately point 5% of San Jose that struggles with actual infrastructure. And we have found through that data that that's majority comprised of mobile home communities and some multi family buildings that have old infrastructure and would need updating.

I know that we have had conversations in the past at this committee and other places about mobile home parks specifically and how there challenges on providing the service there. Have we been more successful at adding mobile home parks to our accessibility area for our digital system?

Part of the assessment has really been to narrow down as Abhi just said, almost on a location by location basis whether the issue is that there is not infrastructure available. And so part of the next wave of the strategy would be to develop specific goals around reaching mobile home parks, because the reasons for them not having infrastructure might be varied and individual based on the residents there, based on a number of factors, and so we would probably work with each district in order to address specific regions of the city where that's the issue.

And I know there's some newer technologies out there now, line of sight, longer distance technologies that may be priced at reasonable place where we might be able to start providing some of that infrastructure in those locations.

And also broadband that's not dependent on the traditional like sort of fiber Right, no fiber. Right, no fiber and no line of sight.

Those are the two limitations. Then the question that comes to mind as I think about this now is in terms of the cost effectiveness of of providing this actual technology and wiring our WiFi versus giving people, assistance to buy it themselves. Do we have we done some analysis on the trade off of whether a program where we are providing people directly with financial assistance might help them get access?

One piece of context in this is that there was a program called the ACP or Affordable Connectivity Program, they've almost blocked it out, for a very brief moment in time in which we really focused on getting households that were not connected signed up for this program which was a subsidy for internet access. And then the funding was taken away quite quickly and so we had to transition out of that program. I'd say in one way the lesson of that model is that in a lot of ways it's unsustainable and that the longer term solution is likely going to come from the hybrid approach that our city has taken, which is really to partner with our local telecommunications providers on the best possible deals for our residents and then really narrow it down to what are the best options. And that is our intention to come back to council with that, with our partners to understand where are the remaining gaps, what are the best options for our community and then what role the city can play in helping to bridge that divide. Don't know if you guys

have anything else.

I think the only other thing that I would add is that the current community Wi Fi network is of course funded by the Eastside Union High School District Technology Bond. And so those funds, that is the funding source and there is no like funding source and that funding source cannot pay for subsidies. So we do see a strong correlation between actual subsidies to address cost. We know that the ACP worked, we know that our community benefited from 1,100,000 each month in internet access through the ACP and we don't have a sustaining funding source as Jill said. And our current funding source cannot be replicated for that purpose.

Yeah thanks for that clarification Ann that makes sense. I guess that's it. Unfortunately, I don't I'm not gonna be I don't think we should be too optimistic on relying on continuing federal grant, particularly on something called the digital equity grant since the word equity is not allowed in any where federal funding will come. So we might have to rename it if we are gonna search for for funding. But I appreciate the report and thank you for all the great work.

We've gotta be careful renaming it because it won't be in the news, but we'll see. Council councilmember Member Condulcet, you had your hand

raised?

I did. I'm sorry. I pressed the button So, too no, thank you for your work, Jill and team. You know, I I think it's it's a tough issue and, you know, representing parts of the East Side and East San Jose's. You know, this is something that we we deal with day in day out, especially with our with our families and elementary schools.

I get the question the question I had was towards, you know, the shifts in the market with our with our small cell partners if you will. And there was something in the report about 2,000 street lights being leased for some of these companies. As of January, was that number decreased to 1,800 and and basically there's a $10,000,000 delta between what we expected and what we projected when the when the funds started to now. And so, know, are we think what kind of strategies are we thinking with regards to being able to reassess and or seeing if there's other telecommunications products? I'm assuming we went through an RFP and this is who we we got and they're not be they're not able to fulfill their commitment to to be able to reassess that or to pivot away from that.

Are we is are we exploring that?

Yes. We are exploring that. These actually are not RFP driven relationships since this is just supporting the build out of private investment of dollars in the city. The agreement is on supporting their permitting, expediting their permitting, and having a lease agreement process for them to lease space on the streetlight poles to put their equipment up. The market difference, the change that happened a few years ago in terms of the market is that small cells, and I'll try to not be too technical, but small cells that are in the five gs range don't propagate their signal very far.

And so a few years ago, there was a switch from focusing on that technology to a technology that is in the mid band. So five g is high band primarily on small cells. And then there's a mid band that propagates much further. And that's what you typically see on the large towers or on a rooftop. And so the shift was to focus more on investing in those assets rather than small cell.

Over time, because technology is always changing, we're in five gs, we're gonna get to six gs to seven gs. This may come back that there is the need for going on to streetlight poles more and more. For the near term in the next five years, the focus we expect to continue to be in that mid band and on those different technology types. We also though are seeing fiber pick up as a top priority. And so when looking at how we might reshape our partnerships and all of our partners are on board with having these conversations is to look at where is the market taking them, where are the community demands taking them in terms of their investments, and how can we reshape the existing agreement around where we're both headed now, what the community needs are now, what the city needs are now, and what their needs are now.

Oh, wonderful. And and great. I'm I'm I'm encouraged by the the the thinking that we are the shift in our thinking to be able to adjust given the conditions of the market. And I also saw that, you know, there there are things that we're looking at while the grants on the federal side may not necessarily be there, but state, regional grants, and then also the fundraising piece is also critical to that. But yeah keep up the good work. Move acceptance of the staff report.

Second.

Perfect. Thank

you. Alright. Thank you so much council member Candelas and I believe next is council member Campos.

Thank you chair, and thank you to our staff, the library who is doing incredible work to really move our entire city towards stronger economic mobility and prosperity in every neighborhood, which I think is incredibly important. Knowing that we live here in the Silicon Valley and that's kind of the expectation that folks from around the globe have is that when you are here in the Silicon Valley, your opportunities are endless and we know that sometimes idealism isn't the reality that we're rooted in, so I appreciate all the progress and the work that is being made towards getting us towards that ideal world that we all want to live in because it's gonna be ideal not just for us at the city, our entire community and region when we can offer true economic mobility so this digital equity program is incredibly important in moving us towards that work. My only question is about the location of the tech hubs. I didn't see a map and I'm just curious where Those hubs are located And then what criteria was used in the site selection I I did read that Low income communities are prioritized. Are there any other criteria that aid in the selection of identifying a tech hub?

Yes, so I'll answer the second part of the question, is the tech hub is the next phase of the digital grant program, which essentially goes through the same process of allowing for partners to apply for the program, and in doing so they demonstrate that they are serving a community that is in one of our digital equity index high need areas, and often a specific community that reaches into one of the major barriers such as language access in the home, sort of cultural access to computers and to connectivity. So the locations were determined by the partners who were selected for the grants and where they are located, but we could probably provide a map of that, but we can list the names of them for you. We can provide a list and follow-up.

Sounds good.

Because we're trying to get the exact addresses, but we can actually put them on a map for you as well.

That would be incredibly helpful. I know that every part of our city is gonna have demand and I think part of the work that our city could be doing especially through a strong social justice lens is to prioritize those communities that have been historically underserved and under resourced, so would love to see that map and and hopefully the map will demonstrate our commitment to advancing equity and social justice in our city. Just one more question about a point here in upgrading the city network infrastructure. It looks like we're moving from copper networks to fiber optics and is there the same risk for theft the way we've seen copper wire theft with the change to fiber?

So fiber technology actually uses very fine threads of glass and so does not have the same issue as copper because it is not a valuable commodity to pull from the infrastructure and take to a recycler or other way of trying to turn it into its market value. So it does have that benefit compared to copper that it doesn't have that same issue of having that value.

Thank you for clarifying. Again, really appreciate the work that you're doing and look forward to future updates.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Dewan?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Jill and the staff. You guys have been incredible work in being the centralized place where people come together and close the gap of digital divide. I wonder if we have a leverage, I know a lot of elderly people who doesn't have access to the Internet because of their low income or the SSI income that they get. But I know that they can get the free cell phone that allow them to access the Internet.

Have we leveraged that from from our, I believe, federal government that doing this particular program?

So I believe you're talking about the Lifeline program, which is a federal program that supports low cost and free service for eligible individuals. California also has its own Lifeline program that contributes an additional amount on top of a federal amount that could be applied to phone service and it did also expand to broadband service. However, the eligibility criteria for that is quite tight, so it's quite limiting in terms of the number people who can access that program. And two, the service options available through that program have a much lower service level compared to a market rate plan. So it's providing a service level that's very, very basic and actually doesn't meet the broadband definition that we've recommended or will put forward in the strategy to set as a baseline so that everyone has access to equitable service at an affordable affordable price rather than, opting for something that is going to be perhaps too slow for some of the day to day needs, especially as the economy and things that people need to do become more and more digital?

Thank you for the answer. On your presentation there are still 39,000 people who have somewhat of a limited access or reliable access to Internet. And you think it would be better if we I see that you say $68 per month with the funding we get hopefully with the federal. Can we supplement that would be a better choice or what are your thoughts on that?

That is kind of the question you're getting at the crux of the issue that when, and we're really welcoming all these questions in writing notes because as we develop our recommendations to come to council these are really helpful. The real issue is how do we address those 39,000? We know that a certain number of them places where there is no infrastructure such as mobile home communities. What are the best options for reaching them? A certain number are maybe it's preventative due to the cost, and then what are some options for the city to reach them, and what's the best use of funding sources that we may receive.

You know in terms of money that the city may receive, we will be looking for partnerships, ongoing funding sources that could help with the subsidized program, and the subsidized program as ANSA did work, but for instance we subsidized 12,000 hotspots through the library because we had the opportunity with ARP funds, and it was just a band aid, a very expensive band aid, and then when the funding was gone those hotspots were gone. And so it was not a lasting solution, so what we really prefer to do is come up with strategies and agreements with our partners to come up with a menu of options that really make it affordable, to really build folks digital skills to the level where they want to commit the funds to having an ongoing connection, and then maybe there are some other options around funding subsidies that we can afford, but get that number down as small as possible.

Alright, thank you and keep up the good work.

Thank you council member.

Alright, thank you colleagues for your comments. I have a few questions, again just want to echo my thanks for your dedicated work to our community, especially closing the connection gap in our most vulnerable areas. And so I know as a former school board member just how important that is especially for our families on the East Side and Central and Downtown San Jose. I have a few questions. I think some of them may have been asked alluded to. But my first question is, does the digital equity assessment go to demographic information on the residents lacking internet access and facing other barriers such as only accessing the internet through mobile phones?

We do. In the larger report that will accompany the strategy, all of that data is expressed.

Okay. So it would be good for me to understand if this is coming from, you know seniors or a specific community. So all that will be coming to the city council in the future report. Okay. Thank you. My next question is, does staff have any understanding of why San Jose lags in home internet and mobile speeds? Are there cities doing things that San Jose isn't?

It's a really good question. I think about it a lot and I talk to our partners a lot about this. San Jose is a very large city and it is challenging to keep up with the network demands. And it's a very complex process for our telecom partners to continually assess that and to come up with their build plans and try to keep pace. So there's a lot of nuance to it.

But basically, the reason that I believe we still lag on the national level or compared to some of our peer cities is not that our infrastructure hasn't been well well developed and that we haven't kept pace with putting more infrastructure out, especially on wireless. It's just that it is incredibly challenging to keep up with those demands.

Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for that answer. In the memo, it says that the digital skill building pathways program has served 700 in person participants since April 2023 and reached over 13,900 participants via the online platform. Can you go into details about what larger number means? Is this tracking full participants in the program or is it just web impressions or something else?

Sure, thank you for that. Yes, the larger number of those that completed the program virtually, we took that number from the number of page clicks and page not just impressions but actual click through tracking onto the final completed page of the trainings.

Oh, I see. So they've they've gone through the trainings?

They've gone through the trainings.

Oh,

okay. Alright. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate that elaboration. And I have a my question is very similar to council member Kampos' in regards to the tech hubs. What type of community organizations do you plan on or want to partner with in order to make this a reality?

So the grantees from the Digital Inclusion Fund program or the original grant, the grantees who implemented the first round of Tech Hubs and I think the way we envision it is potentially continuing that model is working through a grantee process where partners can apply to partner with the city and then they receive funds in order to make the tech hub open to the public a certain number of hours. Go ahead.

The grantees in this round, Abby's gonna look up the list because I'm sure I'm gonna forget one. We have Sacred Heart, ICANN, NVivo, several other entities that that operate multi service centers or have locations. One of the one of the organizations Sourcewise is actually operating out of the Roosevelt Community Center specifically with classes for seniors. And I knew I was gonna forget one and I am oh Catholic Charities is the other one.

Great. And so there's the first round of Tech Hubs I think I heard, they're already up and running? Okay. Alright.

I'd And

we're actually we're planning they're very recently up and running and so we're planning a series of sort of opening events and ribbon cutting and so we'll definitely be reaching out for folks who want to participate.

Yeah. We'd love to see. I'm not sure if there's any on the East Side, I'd love to be invited to them. Next one, I was really excited to see the information regarding the resilience core information technology pathway. I think that is an amazing opportunity, to our families here in in San Jose. I wanted to ask, just a little bit more details. Has the Resilience Core developed any partnerships with employers? Is this program trying to identify talent for employment here at the city? What's like the end goal?

Thank you for this. I'm so excited to talk about this program. I love this program, it's only a month old but we're really excited about it. So these four individuals funded through Apple and PwC, they're currently going through industry certifications right now, so one of them is an Apple certification. There's some interest and they're learning more about other certifications that they might have.

They're being mentored by our library IT team on how to do customer service and support and really the library IT staff are also mentoring them in different giving them information about different types of information technology fields they can go into. We weren't really sure who was going to be interested in this pathway to start or which skills they would have coming into it. Now that we have our fellows and they're starting to understand more about what they might be interested in, from this point forward through our partnerships with foundation, we will start to identify employers and network opportunities for them so that they can either seek employment at the city if that's their interest or go into another specialized field with an employer.

That's great. What's what's our capacity for the program right now? How many people can be enrolled in it?

We only have capacity for four. The seed funding for the program was for four resilience core associates and we were able to recruit all four. And so we're actively seeking funding for more slots and are hopeful that the NTIA grant that's paused right now will come forward so that we can have 11 spots available very soon.

Awesome. So they would all be grant the funding would be grants specifically from the private sector?

I'm sorry. I don't quite understand the question.

Or the funding for the capacity? You guys are mostly looking for grants from the private sector?

The national the telecommunications federal grant that has been paused at the federal level also includes funding for 11 resilience core associates. That's what I meant. And separately, we are also fundraising from the private sector.

Okay. That's great. Please let me know what I can do to support this. My background's in workforce development. I've worked with a lot of organizations who like their main goal is working with employers to, you know, change their perspective towards talent coming from alternative pathways. There's orgs here in San Jose that's also doing this work. So, I can't wait to be briefed on this topic and I'm just really excited for your work. Thank you. Okay. Call for a vote please. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Item number three, Neighborhood Association Engagement Model Status Report with a presentation from Olympia Williams. Seven minutes. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair Ortiz and council members. I am Olympia Williams, deputy director of the community services division. Today, I have Aurelia Bailey, the new Beautify SJ division manager and Xochimontes, community services supervisor with me to provide an update on the neighborhood association engagement model. We are excited to share with you the work that we have done to implement pillar one of this new neighborhood engagement strategy, and how we are aligning our internal programs to better engage with neighborhood associations throughout San Jose.

Thank you, Olympia. Good afternoon, council members and members of the public. My name is Aurelia Bailey, and I am the division manager for Beautify SJ. So this journey began in April 2024 when the city council took a step forward adopting a new vision for how we connect with our neighborhoods. They directed the city manager to sunset the neighborhood the Neighborhoods Commission.

This prompted us to a new community driven process to design a more effective approach to neighborhood outreach and engagement. We knew we needed a model that addresses the diverse capacities of our neighborhood associations because we know some are thriving while others need more support. Our goal was clear, break down barriers to participation and empower all neighborhoods to connect with the city. Because at the heart of it all, we believe that residents are the key to building strong communities, fostering connection, and creating opportunities for everyone. So last year, we worked with neighborhood associations to design this new approach.

And as a result, our neighborhood engagement strategy rests on three pillars. This year, our focus is on, our our focus is on what we can do with current funding. We're launching the foundational model, which includes our quarterly neigh neighborhood association forums. These forums are hubs for residents to connect with city resources, share best practices, and engage in two way communication with city departments. And, of course, we'll continue our our annual neighborhood conference this fall, which my colleague, Sochi, will actually tell more, will go over more shortly.

Looking ahead, we envision two more vital pillars. A dedicated neighborhood support team comprised of skilled navigate navigators will help neighborhood association tackle complex issues. These navigators will equip neighborhood leaders with tools and connection they need to effectively address challenges and leverage city resources. Finally, a new neighborhood services advisory group. This group will provide a platform for residents to directly weigh in on community issues and drive action leading to increased knowledge of city resources and greater resident empowerment.

This foundational infrastructure we're working to build a foundation for greater participation and engagement. Now it's important to note that while we're actively working on the foundational model, funding and resources are not yet secured for the neighborhood support team and neighborhood services, advisory group. But we believe in this vision, we're committed to working with all of our neighborhood associations and the broader community to grow to grow, sustain, and expand this model in years to come. So like I mentioned, we've been working hard, we've been working hard, building the first pillar, strengthening our relationship with neighborhood leaders through our neighborhood association forums. So last year, while we were creating this model through our community engagement process, five key themes emerge as central to this work.

Basically, think of these as our guiding principles that affect that shape our efforts. So first, capacity building. We're asking how can the city empower neighborhoods to create thriving self sufficient associations. This means exploring options like grants, streamlined administrative support, and comprehensive leadership training. Second, issue support.

This is about providing top notch customer service. How can we equip associations with the information and resources they need to navigate the city structure and access available services? Third, connectivity. Our neighborhoods want to connect with one another. They want to build stronger communities, share valuable knowledge, and enhance self sufficiency.

We're exploring programs like mentorship opportunities to facilitate this peer to peer learning and collaboration. Fourth, two way communication. This is the heart of our partnership. We're committed not just to clear and effective communication from the city, but also creating a reciprocal channel channel so we can truly listen and understand the needs of our neighborhoods. Finally, advising.

We're developing a clear process that will allow associations to directly provide recommendations to the appropriate channels within the city, whether that's a specific department or the city council itself. This new model has already given our team the opportunity to engage with resident leaders in solution oriented conversation and foster productive discussion between community members, city officials, and staff. It's about working together to find solution. The shift also has allowed us to better align resources for greater impact. For example, our Project COEP program, which focuses on supporting neighborhood associations in underserved areas, has now transitioned to the neighborhood engagement team.

This will help us increase overhaul overall neighborhood engagement efforts and ensure we're reaching all parts of our community. So now I'd like to turn it over to Sochi who will share more details about our foundational model and some next steps.

Thank you, Aurelia. Good afternoon, members of the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee. My name is Sochil Montes. I am the community services supervisor overseeing the Neighborhood Engagement Program under Butify SJ. As Aurelia mentioned, much of our work under the foundational model has focused on coordinating training sessions and forums.

Excuse me. These platforms provide neighborhood and association leaders with the opportunity to learn about available city resources and become involved and informed on issues that impact their quality of life. By hosting quarterly forums, we facilitate the space where community leaders can also learn from one another. We firmly believe that every neighborhood leader has both knowledge to share and challenges to learn from. Our goal is to create an environment where neighborhood leaders can connect, exchange ideas, and share best practices with one another, strengthening leadership within our neighborhood associations in the process.

Process. The annual Neighborhoods Conference is another key activity coordinated as part of our foundational model. On October 2024, we hosted our second annual Neighborhoods Conference, which was themed Neighborhoods Are the Heart of San Jose. And it brought together 250 Neighborhood Association leaders, residents, and community partners. During this conference, we gained valuable insights into what Neighborhood Association leaders would like to see happen, specifically the opportunity to be heard regarding community issues and to be involved in finding and implementing solution for those issues.

We also learned, as mentioned previously, residents priorities and needs through the lens of our engagement model. Capacity building, issue support, connectivity, two way communication and advising. As part of the conference activities, participants were all invited to vote on potential topics for future workshops and forums. The top three areas that received the most votes were connectivity and public safety, peer to peer advising on strengthening their neighborhood association, and advising an effective excuse me, and advising on effective communication with other association leaders, city staff, and elected officials. As as was mentioned before, during the October 2024 conference, residents voted on these themes for upcoming forums that are to be held the second half of this fiscal year.

On January 25, we hosted our very first leadership forum, Neighborhoods and Street Safety. With 70 of our Neighborhood Association leaders present, this forum brought together San Jose Neighborhood Association board members, Department of Transportation, and the San Jose Police Department's Bureau of Field Operations or BFO. That day, we were joined by all six BFO captains along with deputy chief Brandon Sanchez for an opportunity excuse me. For an open two way communication sentence session to discuss community safety issues and the support requested from a from San Jose Police Department. And I would like to take this opportunity to give a very special thanks to deputy chief Brandon Sanchez and the BFO captains for their participation and for helping being part of the facilitation to this important forum.

Our next forum will take place on March 22 and in excuse me. Our next forums will take place March 22 and early June. During the March forum, we will host a coaching sessions where resident leaders can learn from one another. We firmly believe that everyone has something to teach and everyone has something to learn. This session will allow neighborhood leaders to share what has and hasn't worked well in their neighborhoods, and learn from successes and challenges of others.

For our June forum, we will focus on advising resident leaders on best practices for communicating with city officials and elected officials in order to successfully complete their neighborhood association goals. And so our next forum will be held on March 25. I apologize. It's March 22, at the Seven Trees Community Center. We will be sharing our event flyer with more information with council offices, so that all can so that you all can encourage your resident, neighborhood association leaders to register and attend. Now I'd like to pass it back to Aurelia.

So looking ahead, we are incredibly excited about this neighborhood engagement model and look forward to partnering with all of our neighborhood associations. We know that in this work, our team needs to collaborate, coordinate, and meet people where they are. With that, this ends our presentation, and we'll take any questions you may have.

Thank you for your presentation. Do we have any public comment? Alright. Opening it up to comments from the council committee. Council member Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you to staff for this report. I know how incredibly important neighborhood associations are to our council offices to really help make sure that we are bringing the work of City Hall into our neighborhoods and that we're listening to our residents about what actions we should be taking here in our work at City Hall, and so I really see a beautiful relationship that needs to be nurtured so that we can reap the benefits that we hope we're planting the seeds for now and in the future. My district has many neighborhood associations with varying degrees of confidence in leadership and confidence in how they can access the council office and city hall resources. One of the biggest barriers that I've seen for the neighborhoods in my district that have highest need Is language barriers so I'm curious As as you are. Looking at this model.

Identified any gaps in providing services to neighborhoods that have predominantly monolingual non English speaking communities.

Yeah. Thank you council member Campos. I think one of the of the things that we've done strategically this this fiscal year is adding our project hope team onto our neighborhood engagement model. And so with that, it allows us because they bring in they have the knowledge of a majority of the residents, especially in our underserved areas, and they also have the language capacity. So we have staff that are bilingual Spanish and in Vietnamese.

Thank you, and I appreciate you bringing that up because I've seen the testament of that work in District 2 with the Roundtable Neighborhood Association and how having representatives from Project Hope there to help not just facilitate the meetings, but help ensure that the meetings are actually happening, and then connecting back to City Hall with what work still needs to be done and making sure that we're tracking progress on that. One of the things that is incredibly important though is that we have investment in interpretation and translation services as part of the model framework because, again drawing from this experience, if we have roundtable leadership that wants to be part of the larger district two neighborhood leadership council, then we're gonna need to make sure that they can participate fully in those meetings as well, and so what resources is the city planning to provide so that this essential work can can be done?

Thank you for the question council members. So for all of the events that we host meaning that the city hosts for our neighborhood forums or conference, we make sure that we provide translation. We've also worked closely with a lot of our district leadership groups in asking them to help out with any translation that they may be able to provide as you've discussed or alluded to. It is cost prohibitive for some groups if they don't have someone who can translate for Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes even Chinese. So that is some type of resources that we try to identify.

If we are able to support a neighborhood leadership group because they need need those transition services, we do try to absorb that cost and help out where we can with the Beautify SJ budget, but it is something that long term we would love to have additional funds that would be set aside specifically for that ongoing translation especially at our district leadership group in all district leadership group meetings.

Thank you for saying that and acknowledging that it is a very real need that we have for our communities because right now my council office is working to fill that gap. And it just because it's a priority for me doesn't mean that this is going to be a priority for the next you know council member and so I want to start to lay the foundation for for what standards we're setting and making sure that everybody's able to participate regardless of who the elected person is representing that district and that this is a city value and and you know actions speak louder than words right so making sure that we are putting the resources into the communities to make sure that we are achieving those goals and those desired outcomes that we have for our city is incredibly important so thank you. My last question is noting The community's desire for strengthening neighborhood associations And I think it it mentioned here opportunities for capacity building. So how are we building in succession planning because we know folks lives change and the time that they can dedicate to these succession community services fluctuates, so how are we being proactive in doing outreach to new members and then helping build up their leadership capacity and paying particular attention to our young people who many times don't feel themselves seen or represented or heard in these spaces, and very much so we need to be listening to them and what needs they have because that's gonna drive the way that we do our work, not just thinking about today but the future, whether it's tomorrow, 30 from now, a hundred years from now.

So can you please let me know a little bit about how we're building succession planning into this and building up current and future leaders?

Yeah, so I think part, you know we're starting with our quarterly forums, and so starting to identify and work with specifically with our neighborhood leaders. We know that one of the biggest barrier or not biggest barrier, but one of the biggest things that they're encountering is how do we build the next bench or who are who's gonna come after us. And so as we continue to build this neighborhood engagement model, we also want to make sure that we are mindful of not just reaching to our neighborhood leaders, but ensuring that we are working with all of our neighborhood associations, and that includes also our partners, such as our community based partners that already has a lot of our residents built in into their programs. So we need to make sure that we're connecting with them, whether it's our Sisipuete collective or our community who has those promotoras program to make sure that the residents that they're already the people that they're already serving are part are already in in these communities. And so our team needs to make sure that we're connecting also with not just the neighborhood leaders, but also our community partners.

Thank you. I think that proactive work is incredibly important because many times I found neighbors didn't know that neighborhood associations existed or were a thing, and so tapping into those trusted community partners who are going to help bring neighborhood associations to light for folks who otherwise would not have been able to take up that opportunity is incredibly important, and diversity is incredibly important as well, so making sure that we are tapping into a robust well of diverse community partners who are going to bring true well rounded perspective from every background, every neighborhood, every culture and community in San Jose to be able to advocate for what their neighborhoods need, and to advocate strongly because we know that there aren't those neighborhoods who have really been able to flex their relationships with City Hall and elected leaders and there's those neighborhoods who allow allow their neighborhoods to go by just with what they have because they don't know that they can voice their needs and their concerns for something better, so it's always incredibly important that we take that extra step and are proactive in doing outreach to those communities who are going to benefit greatly from understanding the power that they have to advocate for their neighborhoods, even when oftentimes maybe they don't feel like they have a lot of power.

So, I think it's our role to help show them and demonstrate that we care and that we're listening and that we want them to be leaders of their communities and for our city. So thank you again for the work you're doing and hope to collaborate further with you all.

Thank you, Councilmember Campos. I appreciate your comments, I agree. It reminds me of the old Strong Neighborhoods initiative and the work that was done previously to cultivate neighborhood leadership and prepare that bench. Unfortunately, that program dissolved. But who knows, maybe if we have a good budget year, maybe that's something that we could look into strengthening this model to see if we could extend and recreate some of those programs that I know worked very well.

I think that's how we got a lot of our neighborhood leaders like Danny Garza involved. And so those are gifts that keep giving. I believe we already had a motion. So call for the vote. Did we have a motion? Oh, somebody got some motion then.

I'll move it.

I'll second.

Alright. Thank you. I have to do Open forum? Okay then. That's adjournment. Thank you all. First meeting down.