Planning Commission - Special Meeting

Who's the defendant here? Is that me? I don't know. All right, good evening.

Everybody, hope everybody's doing well. Thank you for coming to tonight's candidate information session. My name is David Benoon. I'm the city manager. It's an absolute pleasure serving as the city manager for the city of Newark. I was born and raised in this community, very passionate about the community that we serve. And it's a true vocation that at times is also an avocation. I'm gonna briefly introduce to you the senior executives here with the city of Newark. I'll start off with our city attorney to my right. This is the city attorney, Mr. Chris Cocatela, who's been with the agency for eight years almost. He's a contract city attorney with a law firm. At the other end of the table is Neetu Salwan. She serves as our city clerk and she's been with us for almost a year. And to my immediate left is none other than the assistant city manager, Ms. Linka Havorka. Linka has spent her entire career in public service, many decades, a couple decades of service with the city of Newark in various capacities. And for the past six years, she's been serving as the assistant city manager. For tonight's meeting, this is an informational session. It's designed for your benefit. This is not a debate. No questions will be asked to any of the candidates. This is really for your benefit. This is an opportunity for you to hear from us all the critical initiatives that the city is currently implementing. You'll get a basic overview of Government 101, the city's finances, key projects. And at the conclusion of the presentation, you'll be given an opportunity to ask us any question that you may have. In front of you is a printout of the PowerPoint that we will be going through. You're welcome to take notes as you go along. Again, there'll be question session at the end. You can also follow up at any point between now and election day with me or the city clerk should you have any questions. Again, this is all information that we want to present to you so that you can have an effective campaign. Last but not least, I'd like to point out that we have the members of our fabulous and incredibly talented executive team who are sitting over there. Should you pose a question that we don't have the answer to, we will ask one of the executives to come in and give you a response. With that, I'm going to go ahead and jump into it. This is what the agenda looks like. Ms. Svorka and I will be providing an overview, excuse me, we'll be speaking to each of the slides as we go through them. We're going to alternate back and forth. So that way it doesn't come across as monotonous, and that way you don't have to listen to me the whole time, because then you'd have to go to sleep. So as far as the agenda, it's broken down to five key components. The first one is an overview. This is, again, Government 101. You'll hear about our basic form and structure of government. In Section 2, we'll cover the city's priorities. In Section 3, we'll go over finances and key capital projects. And in Section 4... basic overview of the very fundamental campaign rules, information that I believe has already been presented to you from our city clerk, but we'll just quickly go over them, and then last but not least, important dates and resources. So I will be covering the first section of city, actually, I misspoke for the first time already. The first slide here in city overview deals with demographics, and Ms. Havorka will be providing information related to this slide.

So these are just some basic demographics for the city. And they are the latest estimates that we have available for a city our size through the American Community Survey. They do a five-year rolling estimate based off the 2020 US Census. So these are the 2024 numbers.

So the population, we're under 50,000, which is a threshold sometimes used for federal funding opportunities. We tend to hover between $46,000 and $49,000. Hold on, I'm sorry. I'm hearing the microphone.

Would you prefer that? We can use that. Pass it back and forth. Can you bring this stand over? Is David's working okay? Yeah, his is okay. Okay, it's just me. I'm sorry.

Thank you. Okay, take two. This is our basic demographics for the city. It's the latest estimates that we have available for city our size from the American Community Survey. It's a five-year rolling estimate for the year 2024 based off the US Census from 2020. An important note is our population size is under 50,000. That is sometimes a threshold for funding opportunities. And we tend to hover between 46 and 49,000 over the last handful of years. While we look at the importance of what the city does do, there are also a lot of things that the city looks to our local and regional partners to provide the community. Schools is first on the list. Our public schools are run by the Newark Unified School District, so that is a separate entity and body of decision makers that oversee our schools here in Newark. We also have a number of utilities in the city that are not city-provided services. The city does not provide any of the utilities to Newark. Our clean water is provided by Alameda County Water District. Union Sanitary District provides our wastewater And then transportation, which is a series of buses that run through the city, is provided through AC Transit District. And then we have a number of private entities that provide utilities such as cable, electricity, gas, and others. We are a large part of the county system and are partner with them on a number of projects and activities. Our library is a main one of those libraries located here on this campus. And we do maintain, own the building. However, the county operates all the services out of there. They employ all of the employees there. The city does fund the Sunday hours that the library is open. And then we also have a partnership with the public health department for behavioral public environmental health. So a lot of the social services that are provided in town are through the county and other providers. We do contract out to for some of these services, one of them being our fire department. Again, we own and maintain the three fire stations that are in town, but the personnel is provided and hired and maintained through the county. another contract we have is for our trash recycling and compost services so we do have a contract and oversee that agreement with republic services but they do provide the services and employees for that type of service okay i'll pass it over to david to continue

So I'm going to go ahead and give a brief overview of our form of government. City of Newark, like most agencies in California, is what we call a general law city. So there are some cities that are charter cities. So in that case, they would have a city charter, and that would serve as the constitution and basic foundation of the city. For Newark, like again, most cities in California, we are general law, which means that we defer a considerable amount to state law. So state law provides the basic foundations upon which our government operates. The city of Newark is a council manager form of government. A council manager form of government means that there's a delineation of powers between the city council and city staff. City council takes a legislative and policy role. City staff goes ahead and implements those policy decisions that the council makes. Executive decisions rest with city staff, specifically the city manager for basic executive type of decisions. In California, there's 400 and something plus cities. In our great state, all but 10 of them operate that way. It's typically the larger cities in which more executive power rests with the mayor. The council in the city of Newark appoints two individuals. That is the city attorney, seated to my right, as well as the city manager. City manager then is in charge of hiring, supervising all of the department heads, and then it flows throughout the organization. We currently have, just to provide some background and size of who we are as an organization, to provide some context, we currently have 196 budgeted full-time personnel. We're generally very conservative when adding staff, because once you add a staff member, it's difficult to remove that if you have some sort of budget problems down the line. We have approximately 100 part-time staff members. These are temporary staff and typically over at the recreation center to implement all of our programming. City currently has a planning commission. We've had one for many years. This planning commission is charged with acting on land use decisions. Some of their decisions, they are the final authority, unless of course there's an appeal, in which case it goes to the city council. Other times they are recommending agency on land use decisions. In those circumstances, it's typically a legislative act and they make recommendations to the council on certain legislative changes. We also have a host of advisory committees. These are, for example, the Tax Oversight Committee, we have a Senior Advisory Committee, a Community Development Advisory Committee, we have a Disaster Council, and we also have a Public Art Committee. This is a new committee that was formed a couple of months ago. To provide some basic information on the City Council's role, City Council meets the second and fourth Thursday of each month, starting at 7 p.m. We do live stream our meetings both on Zoom and on YouTube. We will occasionally schedule a special city council meeting to address a particular issue. Agenda packets are typically published one week in advance so it provides sufficient notice to the community and to the council that these are the issues that will be discussed at that particular meeting. We encourage council members to read the agenda packet prior to the city council meeting and to contact staff should they have any questions. Being on the council also involves an annual retreat, which is typically held in the month of January or February. That's an all-day affair. Council members are also required to serve on committees. There's a whole host of various regional committees that council members participate on. Those assignments are discussed at the December city council meeting with nominations for those assignments made by the mayor, subject to ratification and confirmation by the council. And city council compensation, I just wanted to notify you that council members per the city's municipal code do receive compensation of approximately $1,600 per month, and they're afforded the opportunity to contribute in the retirement system, what we call CalPERS, and also enroll in medical benefits. Just again, briefly go over the roles of council members and the mayor and city manager and city attorney. Mayor chairs the council meetings, is the spokesperson for the city, preserves the public image of the city, makes the appointments that I just indicated a moment ago. The council takes certain legislative acts, sometimes acts in a quasi-judicial capacity to deal with land use matters, works through the city manager, makes sure that items are followed up through with the city manager, works with staff to create a vision for the future and the city manager of course implements all the council priorities and direction and manages the organization and direct staff. City manager serves as the intermediary between council and staff and last but not least the city attorney is there to provide legal advice to staff and the council and handles all the legal affairs of the city. you

I'd like to briefly give an overview of our mission, values, and vision statements. We've invested quite a bit of time ensuring that these are very clear and resonate with everyone that we hire and retain. Part of our recruitment brochures and selection process does incorporate our mission, vision, and values to ensure that we are all moving as one team in the same direction. Our vision statements were slightly revised and confirmed by city council at the last retreat in February. It starts with we are a welcoming city and lists 11 statements that capture the vision that the council and staff have for the city. And our pride statements are our values. They talk about how we work as a team. PRIDE is an acronym for Personal Service, Resourcefulness, Innovation, Diversity, and Engagement. And you can read more about these in our budget book on pages 22 and 23. That budget is listed in our website in the finance department section. Also like to talk a little bit about our strategic planning documents. These are some of our foundational documents that drive our work plans in the city. First, our biennial community survey that is conducted every two years. The last one was conducted in 2025 and presented to city council earlier this year. That's also a presentation you can find on our website. We're proud to say that many of the scores received for our services were above state and national averages. So we'll continue to conduct that survey and compare that to benchmark cities and around the state and nation, as well as our own results from prior years. The general plan, this is a long-term guiding document for development in our city. It has a shelf life of about 20 to 30 years and is basically our constitution for zoning and plan development. We also have specific plans, which are also planning documents that concentrate on more of a particular area in the community in more detail. Examples of those are our Old Town specific plan. We also have one for New Park Mall. And we are embarking one on the Four Corners area at Jarvis Avenue and Newark Boulevard. And these plans are all created and updated with extensive community engagement, as well as the master plans that you see here. We've undergone updating a number of them in the past couple of years, as well as we are in progress of updating our active transportation plan. And we have developed a few new plans. Some that will be going to Council soon are the Sea Level Rise Assessment and Adaptation Plan as well as our Homelessness Action Plan will be going to Council next month and our Urban Forest Master Plan as well. Okay, here is an overview of our organizational chart. The residents are at the top, and they are primary stakeholders, of course, and beneficiaries of all of our services. City Council is our legislative function that makes policy, as David explained earlier. We then have our council-appointed commission and committees. And city council appoints both the city manager and city attorney. And then you'll see we have each of the departments broken up under David and I. David currently oversees the police community development finance and public works department. While I have day-to-day oversight over the human resources, information technology, recreation and community services departments and the divisions within our city manager's office. So just to give you a little bit more of an idea of the structure within those departments, here it lists under administration the four departments that are often seen as internal facing. That's finance, HR, IT, and our city manager's office. You'll see divisions within the city manager's office are communications and public engagement. emergency operations for the city, as well as our city clerk's office. And then the next four sections here on the slide are our outward-facing departments, larger of the staff. Our community development department has the four sections. Community preservation, which is more commonly known as code enforcement, is included here. In our police department, they're split into two major areas. They're patrol operations and support services. We do have a full dispatch center here on site. The police have their own building here on this campus. It also includes property and evidence area, as well as a records unit, and they also have their own community engagement and communication support staff. In Public Works, they're split into these five areas that you see on here. So this is typically where we get a lot of foot traffic here into City Hall, folks interested in permitting, doing plan checks for development or buildings, renovations, things like that. We also have environmental services. And we support fire prevention. The staff are with Alameda County, but we do provide some administrative support. And then our maintenance function is out of our service center over on Philbert Street. And that provides maintenance for our landscape and parks, fleet, streets, and buildings in the city. And then finally, our Recreation and Community Services Department. They have a number of different divisions that they are sectioned into. And they also operate out of the Silliman Activity Center, our Newark Senior Center. We have a licensed child care program over at Newark Community Park. And then our newly opened Newark Resource Center, which is over next to Ash Street Park.

Okay, for the next section, we're gonna go ahead and cover the city priorities. There's a considerable amount of important critical projects and initiatives that staff is currently implementing. I'm just gonna cover the high priority ones that were adopted in the last budget cycle. In the past, we've categorized them differently. We did spend the past few years at the past two city council retreats discussing a way in which this information can be digestible for public consumption. And so what we came up with was five strategic priority areas that help inform us as to our decision making processes and making sure that we're making strategic decisions. These strategic priority areas were discussed at the past two retreats and we fundamentally wanna make sure that all of our work plans, community priorities and city council actions are all in alignment. So essentially what we do is we work with the community in developing our various master plans and policy documents, and then we use that to guide the initiatives that we're gonna go ahead and implement. I'm not gonna read the five categories on the screen. What we do is we then take that work, put it in the staff reports, and at each staff report, we indicate which priority we are addressing. I'm gonna go ahead and cover the first one. This is foster a safe and healthy community. The first item that we are implementing in this strategic priority area is emergency preparedness business and resident training programs. We wanna go ahead and increase the marketing of these programs. The city currently has a half-time employee that we share with the city of Union City for emergency preparedness coordination. He trains city staff to make sure that we are appropriately prepared for any critical disaster that the city may face at some point in the future. Part of his job duties in addition to that is working with our community to make sure that the community is prepared for emergencies and disasters. And that includes residents and businesses. We have many programs that he currently runs in collaboration with our fire department as well as city staff and with businesses. We're increasing the marketing of that through bi-weekly email messages in the Newark News, excuse me, Newark Now, as well as in our quarterly mail newsletters called Newark News. Our emergency preparedness coordinator also works with CERT. This is our emergency response team. This is a group of volunteers who are dedicated to responding should there be some sort of disaster. CERT volunteers do participate and host booths at various community events. and that has increased awareness of our programming, and they're also working on recruiting additional volunteers. They're also holding an open house on September 12th, and the public is invited to attend that. We are also hosting a CERT Academy in October for two, excuse me, four sessions in that month, so if anybody's interested in joining the CERT Academy and joining our team, more than welcome to participate in any of those events. And last but not least, they'll of course be out at Newark Days, which is coming up next month. The second item is partnering with our community to connect residents to services at the Newark Resource Center. As Linka said a moment ago, we're pleased to announce that the Resource Center opens its doors on August 3rd. So we've been in operation for a little less than two weeks. The Resource Center serves as a central connection point for residents to access community resources, services, and support. At this point, we currently have agreements with seven community organizations. They come out and provide services on a weekly rotating basis. They hold regular office hours over there and serve our community. We're looking at building additional partnerships with other providers to expand the range of resources that we wanna make sure that the community their needs are being addressed. We've already seen positive results despite the fact it's been open less than two weeks and we've connected several residents to resources and services that they need. So that's the second one. Third one is traffic safety grant funding. So the city currently receives funding from the state of California for traffic enforcement. We're taking an approach to increase enhance our traffic safety outcomes by training all of our less tenured officers. We've brought on a lot of new patrol officers the past couple of years. We have a bunch of subject matter experts here in our police department and we wanna make sure that the less tenured officers are trained on all the proper aspects of traffic enforcement. We're also working with our, the city has a crime analyst. We wanna identify strategic areas for data-driven enforcement. So in other words, we wanna make sure that the officers are deployed in the correct locations. The fourth item is implementing the residential, excuse me, the renter inspection pilot program. So, City of Newark, of course, like all other agencies, has rental housing stock. We're working with apartment owners to address potential property conditions that may be present in those locations. As part of this program, we have a six-month pilot program. It'll include proactive inspections conducted by city staff. We'll identify any unsafe or poor conditions that affect habitability. and the sites that were selected for the pilot were based off the building age and building permits issued and other factors. Whatever lessons we learn will be incorporated into a permanent program Next year, we anticipate inspections to begin next month, and we've identified 72 locations. The last one is the tobacco retail license program. The council adopted a municipal code ordinance that puts restrictions on the sale of tobacco products to minors, and in particular, a ban on sales of flavor tobacco and implementation of a tobacco retailer license program. Over the past year staff has provided educational materials to all of our retailers informing them of the new requirements and compliance inspections have already begun. To date we have seized seven truckloads of illegal products that were on sale that were being sold here in the city of Newark. We suspended four licenses last year and we suspended one license this year. The next strategic priority area is further economic vitality and housing for all. The first item listed under this is review and update affordable housing work plan. The city council approved the work plan back in 2021. Since then, the city has adopted the 2023 through 2031 housing element. And so we wanna go back and take a look at the affordable housing work plan to ensure that it is in alignment with our housing element, as well as any other changed needs for our community. We anticipate bringing an updated work plan to the council within the next six months. The second item is, and actually before I move off of affordable housing, I'd just like to point out a little bit later in a few slides, we'll actually speak a little bit more about what the city is doing to address affordable housing. The second item is develop a plan for Four Corners area. So the Four Corners area is the particular area of land at Jarvis Avenue and Newark Boulevard. There was a Four Corners area plan that was adopted in 1990 and the purpose was to guide commercial and retail development in that area. The city's housing element requires us to take a look at the Four Corners specific plan with a particular lens and paying particular attention to housing opportunities over there. This plan will also include a study of opportunities related to the Capitol Quarter train station that's being planned. We did sign an agreement not that long ago. We have an internal staff kickoff meeting with the consultant in the next couple weeks, and we work with our community in the next year and hope to have a plan to the city council in mid-2027. The next one is advance the Urban Land Institute panel recommendations for New Park Mall. Provide some background and context. Back in 2021, city council approved this new park mall specific plan. The property owner has obviously not implemented the council's vision. Because of changed economic circumstances, we wanna take a look at what we can do to make sure that the council's vision can be implemented. And a part of that was hiring Urban Land Institute to come in and do a technical advisory panel, which they did earlier this year. Their written report is being finalized and we hope to receive it in the next couple weeks and we'll be discussing extensively with the city council later this fall. Last but not least, we want to complete the city's first homelessness action plan. The city is currently working on the development of our first ever five year homelessness action plan. The goal is to reduce and prevent homelessness in our city and strengthen the physical health, mental health and social service support for our unhoused residents. The plan will help the city better coordinate existing resources, identify service gaps, and strengthen partnerships with community organizations and regional agencies. We're planning on holding a community meeting on September 1st at the newly opened Newark Resource Center from 5 to 7 p.m. We'll provide a draft to the community of our goals and strategies, and then after receiving community input We'll put together a final draft for city council review and consideration later this fall.

All right, next is boost financial resilience and excellence in service delivery. And we have improving customer-facing technology and internal systems to increase transparency and enhance customer service. A few things I'd like to highlight here that we're working on is our online budget document now features a searchable online format that improves transparency and accessibility for our public. The new ClearGov software that we used to build the current two-year budget will be expanded to directly link council priorities to departmental budgets, performance measures, and capital projects. It will also support tracking of those capital projects. We are now undertaking artificial intelligence. And we have a policy in place that provides us some clear standards for the ethical, secure, and transparent use of AI while protecting privacy, data integrity, and, of course, public trust. We have deployed a platform called Madison AI, which is in final testing before we put into full production use. And it's designed to improve organizational efficiency and service delivery. We've also recently transitioned our enterprise resource planning system to the cloud, which improves reliability, disaster recovery, scalability, and the long-term resilience of the systems that support our financial and administrative operations. And then lastly, the city's public meeting capabilities now support in-person and virtual participation. We also have live captioning and language translation services as needed. And these enhancements certainly expand the opportunities for residents to participate in local government. And again, reinforce our commitment to accessible and transparent decision making. Next is advancing the biennial budget and five-year capital improvement plan. So in July we entered into a new two-year budget cycle, which will take us through June 30th, 2028. The budget's prepared using a conservative financial approach, which strengthens the city's fiscal position by relying on prudent revenue assumptions, disciplined reserve practices, and avoiding over-commitment of ongoing resources. At the same time, it does allow us for a mid-cycle review and adjustment so the city can respond to economic changes or emerging priorities without disrupting core services or long-term plans. In July, we also entered into a new capital improvement plan cycle, which lasts five years through June 2031. It will be updated and presented to city council on an annual basis. And the plan, which is commonly referred to as the CIP, is a comprehensive strategic document that identifies, prioritizes, schedules, and determines the funding for eligible facilities, infrastructure, and parks projects, as well as new equipment and studies. So our current CIP contains over 100 projects valued at over $140 million that staff expect to either complete or make substantial progress on in that five-year period. Next is invest in employee training, coaching, wellness and recognition programs. We recognize investing in our workforce is a direct investment in the service quality and operational excellence. A strong employee experience strengthens public trust, it protects the city financially, improves efficiency and ensures that residents, businesses and organizations alike experience a city organization that's capable, responsive and resilient. We have a well thought out plan of professional development, recognition events, wellness events, and communication points, which is developed with our employees' input each year. And then lastly on this one, we have expanding our police wellness program. We currently have a wellness mobile application that has resources for our first responders. We are looking to enhance what that application offers. We've also conducted a number of wellness training for officers and their families, including our police academy trainees during their in-house training program. And so these resiliency and psychological and financial wellness trainings have been very successful. So we continue to plan on building these programs and have a few that are in the pipeline. Our next strategic priority area is modernizing public facilities and infrastructure. So begin implementation of first phase of our broadband plan initiatives. So the city adopted a long term broadband master plan to expand connectivity, strengthen city infrastructure, and support long term economic development and digital equity. The plan provides a framework for how the city may design, build, operate, and fund broadband infrastructure throughout the community. So we are just now beginning work on phase one of the plan, which includes implementation of free public Wi-Fi at four of our city parks. That includes the Community Center Park, Sportsfield, Birch Grove Park, and Jerry Rayburn Ash Street Park. The project is currently in contract negotiations and is expected to be completed before the end of the year. And these improvements are intended to expand digital access and shared community spaces while supporting recreation, learning, and connectivity in the park areas. Contract negotiations are also in progress for a public-private partnership to improve reliability, speed, and coordination of city services and lay the groundwork for expanding high-speed access into the community. Next, we are planning to complete the active transportation plan. This is a plan that addresses citywide bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure improvements. We did a few rounds of extensive community engagement over the last couple of years, so the plan is now being drafted with the assistance of consultants, and we anticipate that plan to be completed by the end of the year. Next is replacing playgrounds at various parks. This was identified as a top priority by the community in our parks master plan. We did propose design of four parks, which received very positive community feedback from the council as well. So demolition of the existing Birch Grove, Jerry Raber Ash Street, and Mirabeau Park Playgrounds will begin by October. And that is while we are awaiting delivery of the playground equipment, which has already been ordered. So we expect the new playgrounds at these three parks to be open by the end of the year. We are conducting additional discussion of the fate of the infamous monster slash worm slash caterpillar at Newark Community Park. So we will be continuing those discussions and hope to have a design and start of construction this winter. And finally, design and begin work to replace fire stations number 27 and 29. So this is the fire stations on Cherry and Mary, as well as the fire station on Newark Boulevard and Russian Drive. Planning efforts have already started, including site surveys, conceptual design, and environmental reviews. We do have a design build team that is expected to be selected by late next year. And then construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2030. And finally, we have strengthen community through education and engagement. We're very excited to announce the implementation of a youth academy here in Newark. We gathered a multi-department staff committee here, which developed an interactive six-week program that gives local high school students a behind-the-scenes look at how we operate the city. The academy will run from September 30th to November 4th. It's going to be open to all high school students who reside in Newark. And they'll get hands-on experience and conversations with city staff and community leaders. Students will learn about the services that keep Newark running, explore local issues, and discover ways young people can get involved and make their voices heard. So outreach to the high school, Newark Memorial High School has begun, and then advertising and our webpage will go live on Monday. And that will open up our application period, which will go through September 17th. Next, conducting a community outreach and city rebranding effort. In spring 2027, we plan to seek the expertise of a consultant to assist city staff and engage the community in developing a brand that creates a sense of shared ownership and pride in the city's identity. A consistent brand helps residents quickly recognize official city information and understand that it's reliable. And the resulting brand we hope will reflect the community's values, aspirations, and the unique character while building broader understanding, support, and enthusiasm for the city's future. Next, we are very close to launching a utility art box program with our newly formed public art committee. They were established as part of the update we did to the public art master plan, which provides a framework for expanding and strengthening public art in Newark. Committee members were appointed earlier this year and they've met several times and are actively moving forward with the city's public art initiatives. So the city issued the first call for artists to submit proposals for the first phase of the utility art box program. Application deadline is August 31st and the committee will review all of the submissions and plan to select 10 designs for the first phase. This is the first of several initiatives identified in the public art master plan and represents an important first step in bringing the plan's recommendations to life. Future public art initiatives will continue to build on the master plan and expand opportunities to incorporate art throughout the community. Also, we plan to partner with Ohlone College and other education institutions to support and promote an internship program. We recognize that a successful internship program is an investment in our young adults that can increase our capacity to provide service at a low cost, build a talent pipeline for staff. reduce future recruitment and onboarding costs, as well as strengthen the abilities to attract and retain skilled employees over time. So we are conducting outreach to local colleges and universities to understand internship gaps we can potentially fill and their interest in partnering with the city to ensure a successful program. So we do have a tentative summer 2027 internship program schedule that we've created to secure those partnerships and begin program development well in advance to ensure that meaningful opportunities both for the student and the community are met. Next is to expand public safety community engagement initiatives. We hope to broaden our opportunities for our 20-plus police explorers so they have more visibility in the public. We have increased our marketing for our police volunteer programs. Currently, we have four interested individuals that we are interviewing to add to the team. And we've trained additional staff in crime prevention through environmental design so that they can assist property owners in designing their public spaces to discourage crime and make people feel safer. And staff will soon be promoting this service to our established business watch program.

So those are all the strategic priority areas that we have and the critical programming that we have for each of those strategic priority areas. Before we depart on the issue, the subject of critical projects, I want to talk briefly about housing. As we all know, housing is a significant issue that the community is facing, particularly affordable housing. So on the screen is just a snapshot of all the big projects. Actually, there it is. On the screen is just a snapshot of all the critical projects the staff is implementing to address affordable housing. The first one is housing projects. I'm not gonna go through all the housing projects that the council has approved and those that are under review. If you want more information about the housing projects that have been approved or are under review, please feel free to review our website. They're all listed right there. I would like to note that the council approved an inclusionary housing requirement. So for new residential development here in the city of Newark, the developer is now legally obligated under the ordinance to build the units at the same, build affordable units at the same time they were building market rate units. Of course, the council has discretion to receive affordable housing fees instead of requiring that those units be built. I also note that the council recently approved a local preference. So if you either live or work in the city of Newark, then you receive priority for any of the new housing projects here in town. Secondly, we have accessory dwelling units and missing middle housing. Accessory dwelling units, known as ADUs, formerly known as granny units, cottage units, those sorts of things, they're called ADUs. Council approved new regulations to support ADU development here in the city. In addition, we're currently reviewing missing middle housing. This is duplex, triplexes, fourplexes. We're looking at regulations that the city council can potentially implement so as to incentivize those types of development. As I said a moment ago, we have renter protections, both the residential renter inspection program, as well as legislation that the council recently approved. I believe it was in January, February of this year. That includes just cause evictions, anti-harassment legislation, as well as requirement for landlord tenant mediation. Also point out that the council approved emergency rental assistance program and these are grants to help renter households pay back due rent due to unforeseen circumstances. And last but not least, as I indicated earlier in the affordable housing work plan, there is a component for first time home buyers. This is, we're working with a consultant right now to develop the program guidelines. Council already approved the parameter and eligibility requirements for this program back in May. We're now working on finalizing the program guidelines. And we will launch the program later this year. This would be assistance for $150,000 to $200,000 down payments for households here in Newark. So those are all the critical housing initiatives that the city is currently implementing. And again, this information is posted on the city's website. For the next section, we'll briefly overview, give a brief overview of city's finances as well as capital projects. I'm gonna go ahead and cover the finance portion, and Linka's gonna cover the project portion. And just to provide some background and context on city finances, city has a biennial budget, so meaning every two years, city staff works with the council in a host of workshops and work sessions to develop and then ultimately approve a two-year operating budget. The budget is intended to address and implement all those important initiatives that the council discusses as part of the council retreat and those council workshops. And those are the critical projects that we just went over the past few minutes. So to give a brief overview of city's finances, I'm gonna cover the revenues first and then we'll go over expenditures. This is a pie chart, provides basic information illustrating the revenue that the city currently receives. The city of Newark, like almost all cities in the state of California, we rely on a mixture of various revenue stream so that we have sufficient funds to pay for our expenditures. This is a pie chart illustrating the 2027 general fund revenues. As you can see, we're projected to receive $94 million by the end of this fiscal year. The majority of those funds do come from property taxes and sales taxes. Measure GG, that is a one half cent sales tax that voters approved back in 2016, which I'll speak to in a moment, that is largely being used to pay for this existing facility, the Civic Center Campus. TOT, Transient Occupancy Tax, popularly known as the hotel tax. UUT, this is the utility users tax. This is a tax on cable, electric, gas, and telecom services here in the city of Newark at the rate of three and a quarter. That brings in six percent of city revenues. License permits and fees, those are at 13%. THIS IS LARGELY FRANCHISE FEES, RECREATION CHARGES FOR SERVICES, ANIMAL LICENSES, CONSTRUCTION PERMITS, ENCROACHMENT PERMITS AND BUILDING PERMITS. AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, WE HAVE OTHER. THAT INCLUDES VARIOUS TAXES SUCH AS PROPERTY TRANSFER TAX, BUSINESS LICENSE TAX. IT DOES INCLUDE THE REVENUES WE RECEIVE FROM OTHER AGENCIES AS WELL AS INVESTMENT INCOME. Next slide, please. This slide just illustrates the distribution of property taxes. We wanted just to point out and highlight that for every dollar of property taxes that is paid for here in the city of Newark, 16, almost 17 cents goes to the city of Newark. The majority goes to the county, and it goes to the school district and various other agencies here in the city of Newark. So again, for every dollar of property tax, about 17 cents goes to the city of Newark. I actually have a question. If we could go to the previous one. Sure. In the community college one, does that just cover Ohlone College Newark campus, Ohlone College as a whole, or is that the California Community College refund? My suspicion is it goes to the state and then ultimate allocation to the community colleges. I don't think it does it on jurisdiction basis, no. Here's a similar breakdown with respect to sales tax. So as you can see, as I'm sure everybody here is aware, the sales tax rate here in the city of Newark is 10.75 for every dollar of sales tax that is generated in the city of Newark. The city currently receives $1. That's our local general fund. That's what we call Bradley Burns basic state sales tax. That's the second line right there. The majority of the funds go to various other typically state and county agencies. I also point out, I'm referencing, by the way, the italicized and underlined lines. The second one is Newark Measure GG. That is $0.50. Some transactions that we have here in the city of Newark fall under what we call the transactions in use tax. It's not exactly sales tax. There's a fair amount of overlap between the two. but the Measure GG funds is technically a transaction use tax, and depending on the nature of the transaction, the city may receive an additional 50 cents, which I'll go over in a moment. And next slide, please. Oh, there were arrows. There you go. General fund expenditures for 2027. City staff is estimating $92 million in expenditures for this fiscal year. As you can see, half of the funds go towards personnel. These are the heart of the organization, all the employees who are doing the critical work of all those initiatives that were identified and discussed a few moments ago. 26% is for non-personnel. That includes materials, supplies, but it's largely contractual services for our consultants, which we need to support city's ongoing operations as well as our initiatives. The Alameda County Fire Department is 17% of our budget. If you look at the two together, the fire department and our personnel, it's almost 70% of our expenditures go towards those critical services. And then we have the Civic Center debt service obligations being 5%, and this is an ongoing obligation to pay for the Civic Center. And again, I'll speak to Measure GG in a moment. Here's a brief look at our five-year forecast. We update this on an annual basis and is included in our biennial budget. Basic big picture here is that total revenues are at 94 million for this fiscal year. They're then projected to go to 100 million in five years. So you have a $6 million projected increase over the next five years. Meanwhile, on the other hand, you have expenditures at 92 million for this fiscal year and increasing up to 104, almost 105 million after five years. So in other words, you see a significant outpacing of expenditures over revenues, nearly twice the amount, $6 million difference by the time you get up to 2031. The next line is operating results before transfers and designations. So this is what we would call the general mandatory obligations that we have to pay for. It's the general operating budget. And then we have something below that called transfers and designations. That's the purple line. Those are all the discretionary funds that we have. So after we close out, after we look at all the operating expenses, we then make transfers to our various reserves and debt obligations and various funds. And after you take that into account, that's the fourth line. That shows what the total is after you do those transfers and those designations. The last two lines address the unallocated fund balance. So the unallocated fund balance is essentially after you pay all of your bills, this is what's left in the checking account. So we're projected to have approximately, we start out with the $9 million. and we're projected at the end of this fiscal year to have 4.46. So as you can see in the next five years, you start observing significant red. I do note that in 29 through 30, you will see a significant reduction. It goes to negative 1.82 on the operating results before transfers and designations. That is partially due to the sunset of the utility users tax, which we'll speak to in a moment. So you have approximately a half year without receiving that revenue. And then in the following year, you have none of that revenue coming in. Because again, it's expected to sunset, it will sunset in December of 2029, unless extended by voters. So that's the city's five year forecast. Again, high-level overview of city finances. If you want more information, including what all the line items look like, you're more than welcome to peruse our budget that we host online. I wanted to talk briefly about some tax measures that have been approved by Newark voters. I'm going to talk about measures GG, PP, and LL in turn. And then after we're done with that, I will talk briefly about Measure DD, which is a measure that will appear on the ballot this November. So I'll start off with Measure GG. This was approved by Newark voters back in 2016. This is that half cent sales tax that I was referring to earlier. It is expected to sunset in 2042. It's a general fund revenue source, meaning it could be used for any legitimate government purpose. These are the funds that essentially we're using to pay for the Civic Center construction. So back in 2019, city borrowed funds to pay for the construction of this facility. Those payments are fixed. They're scheduled through 2042, and they actually decline over time, unlike a mortgage, which is truly fixed. These actually do go lower over time. Sales tax is inherently volatile. but it is expected that the revenue from sales tax would naturally increase year over year. And what you get at is essentially a difference between sales tax that you receive and Measure GG expenditures, the loans associated, excuse me, with the Civic Center construction. That delta continues to add up over time. We have not spent any of those funds at this point. We have approximately $20 million in the account reflecting the excess Measure GG funds. Recently, the council voted to apply those funds towards the construction of the two fire stations that Linka brought up earlier. So that's Measure GG. Measure PP is an extension of the Utility Users Tax. So back in 2010, Newark voters approved this tax at the rate of 3.5%. It was scheduled to sunset in December of 2015. In 2014, voters extended it to 2020 and also lowered the rate to three and a quarter. And then in 2020, Newark voters extended it through 2029, maintaining that same rate of three and a quarter. Oops. It does have a low income and senior exemption program. And last but not least, we have Measure LL. This was approved by Newark voters back in 2024. This is an increase of the city's hotel tax, the transient occupancy tax. It increased it from 10 to 14. Similar to Measure GG, it's a general tax, meaning it could be used for any legitimate government purpose. At the previous capital improvement plan work sessions earlier this year, Council directed staff to put together a budget that reflects using these funds towards the fire stations, the Measure GG funds likely would not be enough, as well as the Cultural Arts Center construction. So the staff is currently working on a new Cultural Arts Center and that will replace the Community Center. This is estimated to bring in two to two and a half million dollars in the annual revenue. The plan would be at some point when the financing justifies so, the council would then issue debt and bonds to pay for these new facilities, and we would use Measure LL funds to pay for the cultural arts center and fire stations. So those are the three current tax measures that the city currently has. On the ballot this November is Measure DD, This is an update to the city's business license tax. The business license tax, basically it's a tax for all the businesses here who operate in the city of Newark. The current structure was put into place back in 1970. So we have a 56-year-old tax. It's very antiquated. It taxes business activity. It puts businesses into 30 different categories and subcategories, and it taxes them at various rates and in different ways. So for example, some businesses are taxed based off their square footage. Some are based off how many vehicles they have. Some are based off of their gross payroll receipts. This measure, if enacted by Newark voters, would simplify it and would only tax based off of gross receipts, as that would be the measure of true economic activity occurring here in the city of Newark. This would also make it fundamentally easier for staff to administer, as the businesses would be placed in the seven categories and be taxed simply off of gross receipts. It'd be easier, of course, for new businesses and current businesses to pay. It'd be a much simpler explanation. Half of Newark businesses would fall into what we call the small business category, where basically if you have gross receipts of $100,000 or less, you'd be paying $25 for business license tax, which would be a reduction for those businesses what they're paying right now. The tax is designed to provide, for the most part, smaller businesses with paying less and larger businesses paying more. So, for example, out of all of the seven categories that we have, assuming that all those businesses paid the same amount of gross, had the same amount of gross receipts last year compared to this year. Then in this year, 68% of those businesses would pay a lower tax. 3% of the businesses would be at the same, and the remaining balance would see a tax increase. I'd also like to note that with respect to general retail category, so this is businesses that generally sell things, whether it be a store, a cafe, a restaurant, those businesses out of that, all the businesses that are in that category, again, assuming that they have the same amount of gross receipts this year as compared to the previous year, should the ordinance be enacted, then 87% of those businesses would receive, would see a tax decrease based off of the doom rate. The revenue that we would receive from this would be general fund, could be used for any legitimate government purpose. For the past 10 years, the amount of revenue the city's received from business license tax has been stagnant. It's been hovered around 1.3 to $1.4 million all those years. Should this measure be approved by Newark voters, it would generate an additional $5.2 million in annual revenue. Again, it would be a policy decision for the council to determine how those funds are spent. Looking at the table from a few slides ago, the five year forecast, obviously you see some financial deficiencies and that $5 million additional revenue would essentially address those shortfalls. Next slide please. We did poll our voters to determine whether or not Newark voters were in support of such a measure. This polling occurred earlier this year in the month of, towards the end of April and early May. And the ballot question that you will see on the screen, that you see on the screen, will appear in the voter pamphlet for publication later this fall. And this ballot question was tested by our independent public opinion polling firm. And that is the breakdown of the Newark voters at that time as to their feelings on the tax. And as you can see, the majority of Newark voters would definitely vote yes and probably vote yes. If you combine those two, that would suggest a pass rate well above 50%. So that is Measure DD. That completes the finance portion of the presentation this evening, and Linka will provide a brief overview of capital improvement projects.

Okay, this is just a sampling of projects that you can find in the current capital improvement plan. The plan is sectioned into these five different categories. So what you see here is the total amount of funding that was approved by city council for each of these categories. and just, again, a sampling of the projects within those categories. So this is where you'll find our funding for replacement of the two fire stations, the replacement of the community center, which we are naming a cultural arts center as the project name. There are upgrades to our police department, Silliman Center, service center, as well as other facility-related projects in there. Under infrastructure, we place an emphasis on street resurfacing, sidewalk and ramp replacement. Those are items that were very important to our public based on our biennial community survey. We also are addressing quiet zones, the train horns over the railroad crossings in town, as well as implementing those first phase of that broadband master plan. New equipment is typically vehicles, often police vehicles, as well as safety equipment that's needed in our public works department, such as a street sweeper and other equipment and vehicles in the city. Under parks, again, based on our parks master planning document, the priorities for the public were to replace playground equipment, add an all abilities playground, which is the one we will be replacing at Newark Community Park, and also update restrooms and lighting throughout our parks. And we do have a plan for Sportsfield, which will add a restroom, update fields, and other amenities at Sportsfield Park over by our Silliman Activity Center. And then there are also several studies that are updated in the master plan related to our general plan and other planning documents. One in particular is a ADA transition plan that we'll be focusing on in this coming cycle. And then our next section is just some reminders of some campaign signage and communication. Again, items that our city clerk reviewed with you last month. But just want to provide a reminder and allow you to ask questions if you have them regarding campaign signage. Signage is not allowed on any public property that includes sidewalks, our medians, signs and poles, like our traffic signal poles or street light poles, any of the public parks or city facilities. Any signage that you do put up cannot block sight distances for pedestrians or vehicles. The city logo or seal cannot be used in any of your political signage. And then please make sure to remove any signage that you have put up in the community within 14 days after the election. And then just a few more reminders or changes that have recently occurred. We do have a new contribution limit in effect. So just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the new contribution limit. That's $800 per individual, business, or contributor to your campaign. We no longer have a voluntary expenditure ceiling. We used to have this in place so that there was a cap on the total amount of expenses that could be part of your campaign, but that is no longer in effect. And of course, there is no limit on your own contributions that you make to your own campaign. Okay, you have a number of required fair political practices commission filings, and I know you received a calendar and information for that from our city clerk. So just a reminder of a very important one coming up. If you choose to close your committee before January 15th, this doesn't apply, but if you do choose to keep it open, there is a $50 fee that is due to the Secretary of State by January 15th.

All right, we do have some important dates and reminders. First, should you be elected to Newark City Council? And should the mayor, of course, be reelected? I know you're facing stiff competition. Then we will have a swearing-in event on December 10th. This is the regular city council meeting for that evening. Again, should you be elected, this is a fabulous opportunity to bring your family. and they can watch you in the audience taking the oath of office, and your term would begin that evening. Every year, the city council holds a retreat with the city's executive team. It's typically in the month of January or February. That's an all-day affair from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30, and more information on that coming soon. Last but not least, should you have any questions about campaign rules and regulations, you are more than welcome to contact our city clerk, Her contact information is listed on the screen. And should you have any questions about city operations, you're more than welcome to contact me and my information is on the screen as well. That concludes our presentation this evening. I wish everybody here best of luck on the campaign trails and thank you for your civic engagement and running for office. I know it can be challenging putting yourself out there and I wish you all the best of luck in representing our community. With that in mind, I'd be happy to answer any questions that anybody may have. I would like to talk about the capital improvement plan. Sure. If you could turn the microphone on and speak into it so that our audience at home can hear.

Testing, testing.

OK, we can hear you. Feel free to move it closer.

Yes, absolutely. I'd like to talk about the capital improvement plan. I notice 128 is being put towards several different sections, but I'm wondering how much will truly be put to each.

each project or area?

Yes, all the areas listed under the 128 million allocation.

OK, so the $128 million is for the facilities, only the projects that are buildings that we're either renovating, updating, or replacing. And so the capital improvement plan is online. under our public works department, and it lists each project. I think that section actually has over 30 projects in it. This is just a sample. And it has a project description. It has the total funding for each project, as well as which year of the capital plan they plan to start the project. So if you go to that capital improvement plan on our website, Each of the, I think it's like 102 projects that are in the plan will have an amount for each project.

If your question is related to specifically that category of facilities, I'd just like to point out that the two biggest projects there are the top two, the fire stations and the Cultural Arts Center. So they're going to have the highest price tag. Council allocated, I believe, almost $50 million towards the two fire stations. It's credibly expensive because they have to meet earthquake and seismic standards. And the Cultural Arts Center Council allocated $63 million. So as you can tell, that's the vast chunk and majority of those expenditures. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, you're more than welcome. Any other questions? Go ahead.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

No, don't apologize. We're here for you.

It was mentioned earlier in city priorities about AI. I wanted to know more about that because this is a very important thing for people my age. We have a lot of concerns. I personally have a lot of concerns about it. I want to know about the ethicality of it, what exactly the lengths the city is going for this.

Sure. It is a closed AI system. So it is not a learning module or an open system that is out on the internet that we're using. So we have fed it internal documents. It is mainly meant to help staff to produce staff reports, research information from our resolutions and other records so that we can find information faster. and produce documents and reports faster. So it being a closed AI system was very important to us that when we were out looking for a model, we were not looking to have our information out on the internet to be sourced or used other than obviously many of our documents are public documents. So the AI that we use is really for internal use only.

All right. Thank you. That clarifies a lot. There was one other thing regarding AI that I personally noticed recently. There's been an uptick of surveillance with flock cameras being put around the city. And that is also another concerning topic for people my age. It is worrisome to the lengths of what these devices can do. And I certainly worry about the privacy of the city.

The records that are maintained as part of that flock system can only be used for legitimate law enforcement purposes. There's very strict protocols that the Newark Police Department has put in place that were approved by the council so as to minimize any potential intrusions on individuals' rights to privacy. That is, of course, the last thing that the city would ever want to do. Yet on the other hand, we have a desire to make sure that law enforcement has the proper tools to essentially arrest folks who commit crimes in our community. They take their jobs very seriously. And as we observe a significant change in law enforcement activity, we want to make sure that our technological needs are keeping up with the needs of our law enforcement. And essentially, in other words, we need to have more effective crime-fighting tools. We can go ahead and increase police officers tenfold over, but it wouldn't be as effective as these programs. And there's a substantial cost disparity between those two alternatives. I think returning back to the issue of right to privacy and ensuring that there's minimal intrusion on individuals' rights, As I said a moment ago, there's significant policy that we have in place, preventative measures to prevent that from happening. Anytime an officer wants to run a search, it has to go through a proper process, has to have specific parameters. They have to insert a particular need that is legally required. And if there is no need to run the system, they won't be able to access it. So you have to put in a particular reason it does get audited. I hope that answers your question. I'd be happy to talk more if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Okay, let's see. It's on. Perfect. I just have a question real quick on slide 25 with the general fund expenditures. When we were talking, you said 52% is personnel and 26% is non-personnel?

Correct.

But you also said consultants are in there as well. So when you're saying non-personnel, are you talking about like material and supplies including consultants as well? Correct. Just for future reference, I'd kind of like to know how much we do spend on consultants. Because that's kind of like a hybrid category. So that would be interesting. I would be curious to see what we do spend on consultants versus equipment and stuff like that. So I'd like to break it down a little more next time. Should be easy to do. Yeah, thank you so much.

Any other questions? Going once. Going twice. All right. Well, if you think of anything, you're more than welcome to contact either myself or our city clerk. And again, wish all of you an enjoyable campaign season. Best of luck to all of you.