Neighborhood Services and Education Committee (nse) - Regular Meeting

Before we begin, I want to remind the committee 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 members. All members of the committee, staff, public are expected to refrain from abuse of language, failure to comply with the code of conduct which will disturb, disrupt, or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting will result in the removal of the meeting. This meeting of the Neighborhood Services and Education committee will now come to order. Can the clerk please call roll?

Campos? Here. Candelas? Here.

Cohen? Vice chair, Duan?

Here. Chair Ortiz?

Here. You have a quorum.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Looks like we don't have any review of the work plan or consent calendar. So let's go to item d, reports to committee, with item one, older adults aged 50 plus twenty twenty three, 2024 programs and services status report by Maria De Leon, Jeremy Schofner, and Ron De Vargas.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Maria De Leon, and I'm the deputy deputy director with the recreation division with PRNS. So I'm very excited to be here today with this amazing team to present to you the annual update of our older adult programs. Today you're going to learn about all of the exciting programs, activities, special events that are provided to our older adults out of our community centers, and those who will be presenting today is Recreation Superintendent Jeremy Schofner and also Parks Recreation and Facilities Supervisor Rhonda Vargas. And, we also have PRNS Assistant Director Andrea Furr Shelton here in case there's any follow-up questions or if you need clarification.

So to begin with, I'm going go ahead and pass this along to Jeremy so he could begin the presentation.

Thank you, Maria. The data indicates that there is a steady increase in the number of older adults in both the city of San Jose and the county of Santa Clara. A total of 325,287 residents in San Jose are over the 50. And this number continues to grow each year. Through our programs we are enhancing civic and social engagement amongst older adults while reducing social isolation and loneliness.

We are raising awareness and improving access to resources for older adults including food, transportation, legal assistance to name a few. Data from the Justice in Aging report shows that thirty two percent of older adults 65 and older in Santa Clara County do not have enough money to meet their basic needs. Over 60,000 adults aged 60 and over live alone. We are witnessing an increase in older adults utilizing our resources for survival as well as an uptick in the services such as the senior nutrition program, older adults classes and programs, citywide activities and special events, and participation in the health and wellness grant program. That is why the PRS older adult service team strives to improve health and reduce social barriers through a variety of programs, civic engagement opportunities, and access to community resources.

Our key priorities are to reduce food insecurity and social isolation amongst older adults by enhancing their physical abilities through various activities and social engagement, as well as improving their overall quality of life through the programs and services offered at community centers and citywide events. I'd now like to turn the presentation over to Rhonda Vargas.

Thank you Jeremy. The senior nutrition program is one of our largest programs. With our partnership with the Santa Clara County Social Service Agency, the senior nutrition program remains committed in complying with food insecurities, social isolation among older adults aged 60 and over. We have 13 senior nutrition sites throughout the city of San Jose and a cater site at Elviso Older Adult Program at the Elviso Library. As of January, we saw an increase of meals serving an average of nine fourteen meals a day, which is an increase of 114 meals from our average of 800 last year.

We've also seen a need for transportation for our senior nutrition program. In the first six months of this fiscal year, we equaled what we served our previous year. Next slide please. This slide illustrates the participation rate for our senior nutrition program for fiscal years twenty two-twenty four and our current twenty four-twenty five with the data going up to this March. We projected the meals served for April through June.

As of now, we are 13,000 meals over what we served last year. Next slide please. Staff continues to align with the Age Friendly Action Plan to create a balanced and effective programming which includes active programming, technology based programs, activities to reduce social isolation. In fiscal year twenty three-twenty four we had nine forty eight classes in programs that focused on improving the health and safety, decreasing loneliness, encouraging civic and social engagement. We are proud to announce that was an increase of 69% from our previous year with also a 44% increase in our participation rate.

To support socialization each of our older adult programs provide at least one if not more a special activity or event each month. They range from resource fairs, social activities to high energy dance socials with a live band. These have already over 100 people participating in these activities. In addition, our older adult program hosts a monthly educational guest speaker and workshop. All these programs play a vital role in promoting a healthy and independent lifestyle for our older adults.

As you can see we had several activities this year. We successfully hosted another annual table tennis and ping pong tournament this year and because of that and the older adults enjoying themselves we're witnessing an increase of centers launching new table tennis and ping pong tournament

programs. We also were able to host 10 citywide trips for four fifty eight adults to enjoy themselves and visit socialize on outings throughout the Bay

Area. We tabled 14 events this year, an increase of six events from our previous year, during which we were able to distribute information regarding our programs and resources valid for older adults throughout the Bay Area. Thanks to community funding from the Synecon Valley Community Fund, we were able to provide emergency preparedness class for 90 older adults who participate. They learn what to do prior to an emergency, during an emergency, and after an emergency. And by participating, we were able to give them a starter emergency preparedness bag. As

you

can see, our first annual color walk, we had 150 participants and 20. We would like to invite you to our second color walk event on Friday, June 27 at Lake Cunningham Park. I would like to thank Councilman Candelas from Council District eight for a grant that he helped gave to us to offset the cost of the lunch meal for the older adults at that event. Now I'd like to turn it over to Jeremy to speak about the Older Adult Health and Wellness grant program.

Thank you Rhonda. Through the Older Adult Health and Wellness grant program, PRNS awarded $526,004.24 dollars to nine agencies who provide age friendly programming off-site such as exercise and fitness, table tennis, dance classes, yoga, digital literacy, ESL classes, games, behavioral health services, homeless assistance, and social activities. From the nine agencies, four provide direct services out of our community centers. Support services include health screenings and appointments, oral exams and treatments, health education, case management, and legal services. Last year approximately 4,687 older adults benefited from these services.

As you may know, the proposed fiscal year twenty five twenty six operating budget was released. Unfortunately, this program was submitted for elimination to meet the budget reduction target. We value the role our nonprofit partners play in enhancing the lives of older adults and we did not take this recommendation lightly. In response, PRNS prioritized core services for older adults such as the senior nutrition program and city provided classes, activities, and special events, including classes like chair yoga, knitting, Cumbia fitness, walking club, sewing, and social hours before and after senior nutrition program. Special events like the monthly birthday clubs, weekly dance socials, color walk, and annual senior safari along with cultural and holiday celebrations.

With these reduction, our goal is to for our community centers to remain a hub for older adults to stay healthy, active, and socially connected. This does conclude our annual update and we are available for questions.

Awesome. Thank you so much for your presentation. Now we wanna open it up if there's any public comment.

No public comment.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Let me see. My colleagues who have their hand raised, vice chair council member Duan.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff for the report. So there is approximately 30% in older adults participating. How are we prepared for the growing number of our older adults with services, right? We only have a finite certain amount of funding for specifically, you know, lot of our older adult now are homeless and they need housing. And in order to participate in a lot of these program, they need transportation, and many of these, you know, wheels on wheels and so on. How do we prepare for that?

So, with the increase, we've been gauging that, and we understand the value of providing these services to our older adults. So, with the increase in the more meals being served, we're working with the county because we collaborate with them on this effort. And there is a slight increase in the number of meals that we're able to serve, so it did go up per site so we could meet the demand for that. But we're limited, right? Depending on our budget and what we have to contribute.

But in addition to that, for our core services and our city led programs and activities, so long as there's room in our facilities, we'll provide these, we want to increase participation. We want folks to come to the centers and we want people enrolled in our programs, so I think we have leverage to go ahead and provide more services because they're city led, right? They're not connected to our non profit agencies.

I'm just going to add briefly, council member. We also have the sort of adjacent program, the neighborhood center partner program where we'll be releasing a new RFQ and we know that times are challenging for the non profit community, but if we have folks or agencies that are willing to come in and provide more services through our NCPP program, that's the city's contribution, A facility, the utilities, a facility in neighborhoods where other organizations could amplify these efforts. And then I just also want to say Maria talked about our collaboration with the county, and the county's ability to bring in non profits to expand senior nutrition is also something we're in discussion about.

Thank you. A lot of our older adults get SSI which is very little. And what are we doing to anticipate the growing needs for supplemental rents, if if you will. Because most most SSI, they're getting, $900 a month. And and that's not enough to to really rent an apartment or so?

So this is a recreation program council member and unfortunately we, I would love for us to be a part of sort of the economic self sufficiency of this very important population. What we are really good at is resource and referral, really understanding those folks that come into our doors who is really need something right now urgently and we can try to connect them to that, but from a direct service core service model, we are in the food security business, we are in the engagement and connection and we are really, really good at that and we would unfortunately economic circumstances are beyond our scope.

I appreciate your referral because anytime there's a program for, like, fitness, like the cell program, the enhanced fitness program and so on, and all these activity, there'll be older adult that that want to get help, but they don't know where to go. And and and thank you for for the referral. Is there any, metric indicator that that we can use to assess the effectiveness of of the program that I mentioned a little bit earlier? You know, the the cell program or the enhanced fitness. Because I I think older adults tend to have lots of osteoporosis, and I think exercise and even weight lifting build that back, that muscle, and and and preserve bone density?

Absolutely. Typically, we do on an annual basis is we do conduct surveys that engage all of our older adults regarding the programs and services that we're offering that gauge their how does it improve their daily living, how does it decrease their isolation, do they it's kinda it's really around how they feel and how they're engaging in the programs and services. In addition, each of our centers have advisory groups that our staff work with to gain feedback on the classes that are being offered, the services that are being offered, and adjustments that might be able to made be made to further engage them and support them in priorities that they are seeking that we might not be offering.

Thank you. As a part of the older adult, it's almost alarming when we get yeah. Thank you. One out of three residents are now above 50. And I I I I have a lot of concern because our our younger generation have to support that, if you will. And and I don't wanna have to, you know, all the burdens on their shoulders. Well, thank you for the report and stay strong.

Thank you so much, vice chair. Just to piggyback on something that he said, is there a way I know that the council council member had mentioned and I appreciate him mentioning this because our senior population is an important one. Rent relief. I know that the city separately does provide, services, anti displacement support, and in some situations, rent relief. Is there any way to make sure that that's, I guess packaged or offered to our senior population?

Our community centers are hubs for multitude of city services. So I know in the past when the housing department and some of our housing partners or rental assistance partners, they provide those linkages when they come into the community center and so again part of resource and referral. In terms of our existing partners that do that, I'm not sure who that might be.

Some examples include Catholic Charities and Source They do case management and they gauge an older adult's specific needs and they work with providing them the support that they need to address it.

Great. Yeah. Think, obviously, you gotta stick to what our our funds are used for and where our verticals are are focused on. But maybe if there's a way for us at least to be like a reference, you know, referring individuals, they come to us for other things and say, well we can't do that but Catholic charities does that or something like that. And I think that meets the goal regardless of whether it's us providing that or not. But thank you. Council member Condellis.

Thank you, chair. I'm just gonna be brief. Thank you for the presentation. I'm excited about the the color walk and and happy to support in any way that I can. Not just because it's at Lake Cunningham, but still. I do you know, I'm glad you one of the slides talked about the o eight h w, the grant the grant program that is is in the proposed budget to be eliminated. So I guess my question is how does staff anticipate to be able to meet the needs of our residents without this. I know this is a tough question but I'm curious to hear from you all on the ground who are implementing and doing the work.

Right. We value our community partners, so submitting this reduction proposal was not taken lightly, right? But what we did is to make sure that we maintained our core services to our older adults and make sure they still got served, their needs were still addressed, and ensure that we had the type of programs that will help them. For example, the core services that we're talking about, even though the nonprofit agency grants was part of the reduction proposal, so senior nutrition is not touched. So, they're still going to get their daily meal.

We have various programs and activities and services before the S and P noontime program starts and right after. So, we're still activating our pro social activities to keep them busy, to keep them involved, and to reduce isolation. Like Jeremy and Rhonda mentioned, we still have activities like our special events, our weekly dances, our cultural celebrations, and our holiday parties, along with our birthday parties that are celebrated monthly, that sometimes bring over 100 or more plus older adults to participate. So those things will still be in place and they were factored in when submitting the proposal.

Right, right, there's no doubt in my mind that that kind of thinking was, but now my question is with regards to you know health workshops, legal assistance, tax services, one on one counseling. Specific you know that may not be part of our core program delivery as you mentioned, like the nutrition program per se or the social interactions, is now I want to hear from staff is how can we get creative to be able to fulfill those needs without the funding?

Yeah, so like Andrea mentioned, we specialize in information and referral to those industry experts needing whatever they need. Although those services won't available maybe on-site, have contacts, we have agency information that we can get them and connect them to the resources that they're gonna need.

Got it. Okay. Yeah, I mean I appreciate that but you know I do have some concerns about that and that's an area in the as we work through the study sessions that you know I'm hoping we can do something to be able to best cushion that effect on our most vulnerable.

If I may Councilmember. Please. Now that the proposal is public we will be reaching out to our partners both at the county to see where their funding is available as well as source wise which is that really regional partner that brings down and let's hope federal and state funds to really be the experts in this field. So I think those key things like the health workshops, stroke awareness, legal assistance that is very kind of particular. We will be seeing if Sourcewise can help our non profit community at this time.

But as you know we're kind of being hit left and right at this moment. So we will do our part though to make sure we have an update before budget hearings.

Thank you. Well with that I'll move staff recommendation on this item. Second.

Great, thank you. Have a motion. Before we go to vote, do just have one question. In line with Vice Chair's comments in regards to the growth of our population, something else that I know that staff had had mentioned is that there is a great population within the senior community who feel isolated. And one of the many factors is that some of them no longer qualify to obtain a driver's license, right?

And you did mention transportation was something that you guys look look into. I have had individuals reach out from various parts of the district because there isn't a bus route that goes by the Mayfair Community Center where the senior programs are being offered. So, what are we looking how are we addressing the many transportation barriers that face our senior population?

Thank you, Chaired. Great question. Yes, completely familiar with what you're talking about. On an annual basis what we do is we have a couple of different resources within our direct control and that's our taxi services that our staff do schedule taxi rides for older adults that may not have a driver's license or may not be able to drive or no longer feel safe driving. So there is that component.

In addition, the county provides some transportation funds as well. What we do because there is a lag in the processing between the application being submitted and their applications being reviewed and approved is that we provide gap passes where this provides access to bus or other things that allow them to still come to the community center. In addition, our staff are really actively working to look at other transportation opportunities that the county provides that might not be within our direct control such as the mobility management program which provides a more intensive support service for those that might not be able to get into a taxi. It also we look at the ride program and multiple other components that are not in our direct span of control but also our staff facilitate the process of helping those older adults create knowledge of those and then apply for those as well.

Okay. Thank you for that. I guess just one follow-up question just so that we could get a better understanding of, you know, how many members of our senior population access, you know, these gap funds or these bus pass. Any idea of like what percentage of seniors at a community center and what percentage of seniors that do receive these services access these transportation resources?

Well as of right now, we had 103 people that we gave the Gap passes to and over 3,475 taxi rides. So, we work on that with the budget and to see if we can offer when new clients come in, when we can start having them participate especially with the taxi rides.

Is that, and I'm layman here, I'm not here looking at the dollars, is that cheaper than seeing if like there can be a shuttle from like probably the most active community center to the one that uses seniors. Like have we looked into just shuttling people or having like a location to shuttle seniors?

That's another great question. Our program is actually used to provide a van service to our older adults. However, it does require not only the vehicle to be able to transport them, but the staff that are licensed and able to drive the older adults. So that used to be a program. I don't have the exact cost of that program offhand, but it was a reduction many, many years ago. I wanna say in 2010, when we went through the significant cuts in which that program was eliminated and these programs were put in place to continue the transportation support in a new format but at a lower cost.

Alright. Well thank you so much. Let's please vote. Waiting for the vote. There we go. Unanimous. Let's go now to item two, Youth Commission Annual Report. And I see some of our youth commissioners here. Good to see some familiar faces.

Good afternoon, chair and council members. My name is Megan Malloy. I'm the senior librarian of youth services at the San Jose Public Library, and I'm joined here today with Emily Terada, who is Librarian. Together we work to support the Youth Commission and their work plan, and we are also joined by four of our Youth Commissioners who are here today to present their annual report. So I'll let them take it away.

Good evening, or good afternoon, sorry, Chair, Council members, and staff. My name is Nolan Mascarenas, and this is my second year representing District 10 on the San Jose Youth Commission. I had the pleasure of serving as Chair of the Youth Commission this past year. Today, I'm proud to present our annual work plan report for fiscal year 2024 to 2025 alongside some of my fellow commissioners. The San Jose Youth Commission serves as the official advisory group to the mayor and city council empowering and encouraging youth to be civically engaged through local and citywide events and initiatives.

Our commission includes representatives from all 10 districts plus a citywide commissioner as shown on this slide. Together we represent approximately 248,000 youth voice youth in San Jose working to ensure their voices are heard in city government decision making. Making. Commissioners work alongside volunteer youth in their district youth advisory councils, known as YACs, to develop policy proposals, host events, and create initiatives to relay youth priorities to local public officials.

Good afternoon, chair, council members, and staff. My name is Neha Pradeep Kumar, and this is my second year representing District 2 on the San Jose Youth Commission. I had the pleasure of serving as the outreach officer for the Youth Commission this past year. This year, the youth commission implemented a focused outreach plan to increase youth awareness and participation in our initiatives. Our objective centered on increasing the number of youth who know about the youth commission and participate in our youth advisory councils.

We used multiple channels including social media, school distribution lists, local libraries, community centers, and council member newsletters. We also attended community events and hosted town halls and summits to connect directly with youth. Through these efforts, we've seen increased engagement across our platforms and even greater participation in our district's YACs, youth commission events, and applications. The youth commission creates and distributes an annual survey to youth throughout San Jose. This year, the survey collected 463 responses with an eighty two percent completion rate.

Looking at the pie chart, when asked if they believe San Jose government reflects youth priorities, 37.3% agreed, 7.5% strongly and 29.8 somewhat. This is a positive increase from last year when only 30% agreed. The percentage of youth who are neutral or unsure decreased from 51.5% to 46.1% suggesting that more youth are forming opinions about local government. The graph shows how youth ranked various issues with violence and safety, being 4.25 out of five and poverty, housing, and homelessness ranking 4.24 out of five as top concerns, followed by educational resources, job opportunities, and mental health resources. These responses directly informed our work plan priorities and our budget advocacy efforts.

Good afternoon, chair council members and staff. My name is Peter Vu. This is my first and final year representing District 7 on the San Jose Youth Commission. Our first major work plan objective focused on exploring and understanding gender based violence resources and services available to youth in San Jose. This committee comprising commissioners Mishra, Pradeep Kumar, Bansal, Lou, and Mascarenas worked to first collaborate with local organizations like the YWCA, Silicon Valley to research research and support awareness campaigns addressing sexual harassment, assault, and promoting healthy relationships.

Second, host events featuring community partners that provide support services for mental health, safety, and drug awareness education. The committee gathered community input through our survey, researched available resources, and organized a gender based violence awareness event in April featuring workshops on health healthy relationships and providing attendees with advocacy tools and resources. Our second objective focused on fostering environmental literacy and youth stewardship to create a more sustainable San Jose. The environmental advocacy ad hoc committee included commissioners Sanchez Arroyo, Gonzalez Munoz, Singh, and Mascarenas. Our work included the Basking Ridge Park tree planting project this upcoming Saturday, May 10, building off of last year's work where we will plant 10 new trees this year, supported the supporting the district one adopt a drain event in April, organizing multiple neighborhood and park cleanups in Districts 348, And 10, chair masqueranes and the District 10 YAC, formally adopting Alwyn and Lake Park for ongoing care, and District 4 hosting an Eco Swap event in late April to promote clothing sustainability.

These initiatives engaged youth across the city in environmental stewardship while addressing the climate concerns identified in our survey.

Good afternoon, chair, council members, staff. My name is Andrew Lou. This my fourth and final year representing District 5 on the San Jose Youth Commission. I had the pleasure of serving as the Vice Chair of the San Jose Youth Commission this past year. Our fourth major objective was to evaluate and study college and career pathway and literacy opportunities in San Jose.

The Career and Higher Education Ad Hoc Committee led by commissioners Kucharevsky, Pradeep Kumar, Arroyo, Vu, Lu focused on receiving reports on college and career pathway programs including the resiliency core learning pathways, San Jose works youth job initiative, and various teen programming. The committee explored partnerships with San Jose Public Library, investigated support schools through city library resources, and conducted a youth budget priority session to gather youth input on priorities related to education and career development. This work directly addressed the educational resources and job opportunities concerns that ranked highly in our youth survey. The fourth objective was establishing the San Jose Youth Commission Innovation Committee to help young people to give young people a platform to tackle civic challenges. The committee's primary goals include involve youth in city make decision making process, build partnerships with schools, city departments, and industry stakeholders, hosting an innovation pitch conference to showcase youth led solutions.

While still in development, the committee has made progress in engaging stakeholders and structuring its operations to support young people designing innovative solutions to address community issues including homelessness, creek cleanups, and pedestrian safety. Youth Advisory Councils form the foundation of our engagement efforts across San Jose from June 2024 to April 2025, Youth Commission and YAC members volunteer a combined ten eighty five service hours. Our 11 youth commissioners averaged fifty one hours each on activities such as attending meetings, coordinating YAC activities, conducting community outreach, and developing policy recommendations. And while it's only a small sample of our greater population, 41 YAC members across San Jose average thirteen volunteer hours each attending YAC meetings, supporting district events, and conducting policy research. These dedicated volunteers ensure youth perspectives are represented in communities throughout the city.

This year, we established an online application system to streamline YAC recruitment, receiving 235 applications since August 2024. We found that 64.5% of applicants applied to serve in their home districts, showing strong community connections. Connections. About 20.1% applied outside their districts, likely due to school location or specific interest in another area's initiatives. Most encouragingly, 97% of participants rated their YAC experience as a four or five out of five. When asked if they would recommend the program to others, an overwhelming majority gave it the highest rating. This feedback confirms we're providing valuable and meaningful experiences for youth across the city.

In addition to our work plan initiatives, the Youth Commission has participated in a joint special meeting with the Library and Education Commission to review the Children and Youth Services Master Plan, hosted the District seven Creative Futures Fair bringing together 34 youth led businesses, 30 studio musicians, and 60 high school volunteers, and organized community events including the youth budget summit, park cleanups, and eco swap in District 4, clothing and food drives, a youth voter summit for District 1, and educational workshops. These activities demonstrate our commitment to empowering youth and creating opportunities for meaningful engagement across San Jose. Looking forward, the youth commission plans to continue building on this year's success, enhancing civic engagement,

and ensuring youth voices are included in city decision making processes. As eight of our senior commissioners graduate and move on to college and other opportunities, we anticipate new youth leaders who will bring fresh perspectives and energy to our ongoing initiatives. For more information about our work or to connect with us, please visit our website at www.sjpl.org/youthcommission or email us at youthcommission@sanjoseca.gov. On behalf of the entire Youth Commission, thank you for your support of youth engagement in our city. This concludes our presentation. We are available for questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. First of I just want to thank you for your dedication to the city, your decision to serve on the youth commission and I want to wish you all best of luck in your future endeavours. I know I've met several of you. I've attended some of your meetings. I've done events with some of you. And I definitely benefited from those interactions. And I hope all of you have as well. And I hope once you graduate, you think about working for the city because we need a lot more great talent like you. So thank you so much for choosing to serve. We'll open it up to potential public comment.

No public comment.

Okay. We will open it up to my colleagues, vice chair Bien Duong.

Thank you, chair. I've I've worked with you guys out there in the park quite a bit and and and see your leadership. But a lot of you are going to college. Congratulations, to these incredible university that that's very few get the, the opportunity. But what what have you I I wanna know what plan have you looked at how you get more news involvement before you leaving your commissioner position?

I can answer that for me personally. So right now I'm working with the Seven Trees Library with Maya Cedra, the head librarian there I believe, and we're working to somehow streamline more youth to like attend that library because right now there is a lack of like teenage engagement, and we're looking at like schools like Yerba Buena and Andrew Hill to see how we can get more youth out to the libraries. And then from like their participation in the library, they can they can be it'll it'll be like a stepping stone to, like, being more civically engaged.

Thank you. And just don't forget when you graduate, come back and and support our youth right here in the city of San Jose. And thank you so much for your leadership and your hard work.

Thank you so much, vice chair, council member Campos.

Thank you, chair. And thank you to our youth commission representatives for being here today. I'm grateful for the time, the efforts, and the energy that you've invested in serving on the youth commission. I know that your journey is only beginning, I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for you all. I am confident that it will be a bright future.

I think that the work you provide to us as policymakers is incredibly valuable, and looking at page or slide four of the presentation where question posed was the local city of San Jose government reflects youth priorities and 46% of respondents said neutral or I don't know. So I'm curious if you have all had a chance to think about what it would take to engage and involve youth more so that they one, are aware of the work that the city of San Jose is doing, but to understand and help us bring youth power into making sure our city government is operating on behalf of all of our residents.

Yeah, so I can take that. Thank you for your question. One of the ways that we like to include youth and make them aware of local government is through events, and so one of our commissioners who unfortunately is not here today, but District 1 is hosting a youth empowerment and civic engagement summit. And so we tend to do that through events. Also as part of the budget survey, what we do corresponding with is a budget summit where we basically take all of the data that we've collected from our youth priority survey and we post a summit to go into these exact areas that we've identified and say, hey, what are some potential solutions, what are some specific issues within these areas that are impacting youth?

And how would you solve it if you were a decision maker? And so I know that you attended that summit along with Councilmember Cohen, thank you so much. But that's another way that we like to get youth involved not only in government, but also relay our priorities to the city council. And so as part of that what came out from that was a budget letter, an MBA, that was submitted for consideration under the upcoming budget for the next fiscal year. And so through events, through these policies, through engaging with our local city officials, and through things like the MBA is how we tend to relay our priorities and make sure that youth are not only reflected and represented and you guys know about what our priorities are, but also for them to understand what is potentially out there for them as well.

Thank you for that response. I think it's really great feedback for us to hear that our youth of today value both online and in person opportunities to convene, to learn, and connect, and so I think that it's great to know what it's going to take to help get more youth involved, and so knowing that if our offices or if the city is able to create events and provide opportunities and spaces for youth to share and express their concerns, but also let us know what we're doing well. I'm grateful for your partnership and your willingness to help spread the word to other young people in our community to help us really as a city reflect the values and the vision of every person in our city, especially our youth who you know, you are our future, you are our today, and so it's important to make sure that we are not just listening, but also implementing the work that you are sharing with us that needs to be done. So thank you again for your time.

One thing I would like to mention, again thank you for your question Councilmember, is that I have noticed with our youth commission that perspectives are changing and shifting. As we mentioned in the presentation, it's on page 14 of the annual report, that there has been a large increase, an over 7% increase in youth agreeing with seeing themselves represented in in the policies and in San Jose government. They are their priorities are being reflected, and a lot of that goes to the work that the youth commission is doing to really uplift uplift the city resources and opportunities available for youth as well, as well as your participation in those engagement activities and going to where the youth are. So thank you.

Yeah. Thank you for for that additional information.

Thank you. Council member Candelas.

I I just wanted to commend the the commissioners who are here, for not just your wonderful presentation, but for the work serving our community. It's it's thankless. I know it's on top of the homework, the other after school activities, and chores, but but I appreciate it. And and I'm sure the the residents and your colleagues, not just in school, but in your community appreciate as well. So appreciate you. Good luck in, in college. And if you guys need internship opportunities, reach out to your council member. Just kidding. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we go back to vice chair, I just wanted to give the opportunity since this is your guys' last presentation, would each of you like to share just one thing that you're going to remember from your time as a commissioner? Feel free to go whenever you're ready.

The chair pointed out, our Youth Commission chair pointed out that I was here the longest and there's much to go through. But I think having the opportunity to have this platform to engage with people that have traditionally been out of the picture. A lot of the work that I've done in the youth commission has been to support and create systems that are equitable and that streamline youth voice into the city decision making process. I wanted to piggyback off of the information that was given to council member Campos earlier, which was this year in that survey that you just viewed, we had the most respondents from the District 5 community, which traditionally was the lowest in the years that I've served and having that platform to engage with our systems to make sure that you know that information gets spread through ways that maybe you know we can't necessarily engage with right off the bat is something that's really memorable.

Great, anybody else wanna go?

Sure, I'd wanna piggyback off Andrew, I definitely think it's the people. I've been a youth commission chair, I've interned my city council office, and I'm on the board of a neighborhood association. And so I've gotten to see many different aspects of my district, my community. Gotten to participate in the Fourth of July event that's in District 10. Been on the Neighborhood Association, been in part of things like National Night Out.

So to meet those different people that you see throughout the district, and districts are big in town, is that each pocket in each neighborhood is so diverse different, and the people that you meet there have different lived experiences that I otherwise, if I had not been part of the Youth Commission integrated within the city, I would not have been able to meet so many people from different walks of life. So definitely the people, definitely the advice that you get that you didn't even ask for from these people that you meet, hearing their stories and learning more about them is definitely the thing that I'll remember most and take with me.

For me, it would definitely just be the opportunity to learn because I mean going like I came into like I became familiar with youth commission work through the youth advisory council and that was just off like off pure like chance, right? And then it's from that like little step that I took to like become more involved with like the Youth Advisory Council and then eventually apply to be a commissioner that I've been able to meet so many people that I've been able to learn so much from. Like I was able to participate on the city's racial equity impact team this past year, and that's I had no idea or to that depth of like how racial equity was in like the workplace or like in the city and how the city went about it, but it's just being able to have that opportunity to be in a place where I can learn about city processes and be able to impact others is what I'll take out of the youth commission.

For me, I'm still a junior, so I have one more year on the commission, but I think something I can speak to is I guess I gained so much more exposure to local government. Like, I think in school, local government is something that's a little bit overlooked as we tend to focus on, you know, how federal government works and on, you know, the state level. So I think it was the exposure that I got that I really appreciate, and I'm excited to learn more, especially in the next year.

That's awesome. Well, I look forward to when you guys come back and run for office or apply to work for the city. Vice chair.

Thank you. I just got a quick question. How might the absence of consideration for disability in the report impact the effectiveness of the violence prevention strategy for youth with learning disability and mental health challenges?

Give me one second. So you're talking about disability for violence prevention. Can you explain more about how those two potentially connect? I'm thinking of an answer. So when we

talk about violence prevention, right? Yeah. We're talking about just strictly for kids who are pretty active and normal. How do we incorporate that to protect children who have learning disability and mental health challenges? How do we incorporate that into

Yeah, that's a tough question.

Thank you for the question, council member. That is something that we haven't explored yet, but upcoming in this new work plan, we would like to build off of some of the work plan pillars that we've already had and with the understanding of how important violence and safety has ranked as well as mental wellness and understanding the city's capacity with accessibility, we we can continue to explore that when we develop our next work plan with our commission in the next fiscal year, and something we will consider.

Yeah. I appreciate that because there's a lot of kids that are being bullied out there just because of their mental illness or learning disability or you know, many many different type of of what you call developmentally disabled. With that, thank you. I I move to accept the report. Second.

Alright. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. Alright. The ayes have it. Thank you so much and best of luck. Alright. Going to our third item, a very special one, the San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance, bringing everyone's strengths together, Safe Summer Initiative Grant and Youth Intervention Service Program annual report. This is gonna be presented by Olympia Williams, Petra Reguero, and Laura Boussos.

Good afternoon Chair Ortiz and Council members. I am Olympia Williams, PRNS Deputy Director. Today I have Laura Buzzo, the Youth Intervention Services Division Manager and Petra Riguero, the Program Manager for our Grantmaking for Community team with me. I want to start by saying that PRNS is passionate about the work that we do with our youth through our youth empowerment alliance. We have a fundamental belief that the collective impact model we use to guide our work with at risk, high risk, gang impacted, and gang intentional youth and young adults makes a difference.

Today, you will hear how we are continuing to improve upon our model by developing a uniform vision that aligns the goals of the San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance and the Children and Youth Services Master Plan to build healthy, safe, resilient, and prosperous families while eliminating disparities. Just this week, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department released a Latino Health assessment. We have done an initial review of the report and will utilize these findings in program planning and implementation. I would now like to turn it over to Petra and Laura for the remainder of the presentation.

Good afternoon, council members. Laura Buzzo. As you know, the Children Youth Services master plan was approved by city council on April 9, which demonstrates to partner with diverse sectors of the community to provide opportunity pathways that improve the outcomes for children youth from cradle to career. Today, we're sharing how we continue to align strategic plans, initiatives, program, and services across the seven priority areas identified in the master plan along the continuum from prevention to intervention. The San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance, that we will refer to as the Alliance, realizes the vision of the Children's Youth Services Master Plan and advances city's youth violence prevention and gang intervention strategy.

The strategic direction and efforts of the alliance are guided by two bodies, as you see here on the screen. The policy team, which is chaired by Mayor Mahan and co chair chief of police Paul Joseph, which sets direction, provides resources, establishes goals and objectives, and monitors progress along the way. The technical team is comprised of over 150 members representing community based organizations, school districts, city and county departments. On a monthly basis, the technical team members share emerging trends or concerns related to crime, graffiti, school violent incidents impacting youth between the ages of six and 24. This collaborative approach has been effective as a result of interagency collaboration, the engagement of community members and faith based organizations, and the establishment of subcommittees across the four San Jose Police Department divisions.

This is an opportunity to leverage resources and strategies. The City of San Jose Parks, Recreation, Neighborhood Services implements core strategies and services along the prevention and intervention pillars through a place based approach in priority neighborhoods for youth and young adults from six to 24 years of age that experience multiple challenges and barriers that place them at risk and vulnerable to youth violence, gang involvement, and other overall poor outcomes. The programs are accomplished through two approaches, the PRNEST Youth Intervention Services, which offers female intervention team services, Safe School Campus Initiative, Clean Slate, San Jose Works, and the Late Night Gym and Trauma to Triumph programs were adopted into the best grant of fiscal year twenty four-twenty five. We also offer a grant making strategy, which provides nonprofit organizations selected through a competitive qualification process to provide a variety of services in alignment with the alliance and city programs. Qualifying agencies are placed on an eligible service list for a three year period.

Bringing Everyone's Strength Together, most commonly known as BEST, provides grant funding to school based youth development groups, street outreach intervention, individual whole family support services, and our Safe Summer Initiative grants is an annual application process, provides funding to support recreation, enrichment and connection to school activities during those most critical summer months. Months. In January 2023, the alliance adopted the twenty twenty three, twenty twenty five strategic plan. The alliance is currently in the process of reorganizing and extending the current strategic work plan, which is scheduled to end in December. It will be extended to June 2027.

Part of the reorganization is to align the alliance and key results under four pillars that you see here, which also align with the Children's Youth Services Master Plan priority areas. So we have prevention, which strengthens the protective factors and resiliency skills of youth to deal with stressful and traumatic events and circumstances. Our intervention, provide positive alternatives and reduce youth risk factors in priority neighborhoods. Our diversion and reentry, divert young people from incarceration and support those that are transitioning from incarceration into the community. And lastly, healing, advancing trauma informed healing centered approaches.

This positions us to effectively prioritize resources to meet our objectives and key results to improve the overall well-being of our youth. I'd like to now hand it over to Petra Raguero.

Thank you Laura. Good afternoon Chair Council members. Petra Ruggiero, program manager with our department. And so as you see that Laura just outlined, we have our four pillars with the alliance, and we've identified one objective in each of those pillars, along with three key results in each of the pillars. And I'll be highlighting those in the next slides, but I also want to note that the intervention programs and the grant programs that were previously reviewed, are primary, they primarily fall within the prevention and intervention pillars, but the plan overall is really a collective effort among the many committed partners with the alliance, and the technical team, and the policy team and on the other subcommittees that we have within the alliance.

And again I want to mention that part of the reorganization of the strategic work plan was really to focus our efforts and resources on those objectives that were in alignment with the pillars that you see up here, and address those issues that are most impacting youth and families. So with our prevention objective, we really want to focus on the reduction of chronic absenteeism, and I do want to mention that each of the key results that I'll go over and the pillars, we have established baseline data or initial measures of where we're at today. So we can measure our impact when we complete the plan in the timeline, which is June 2027. So in the interest of time, I won't go into each of the details of those the baseline data or the sources, but you can find that information in the memo. And so we've identified a list of up to three high schools, and the three feeder schools to those high schools with the highest absenteeism rates.

We also looked at schools impacted for closures in this next school year, and the number of violent incidents as reported by the Safe School Campus Initiative program to identify those priority schools. In this next pillar, it's really about increasing our presence on school campuses. So engaging or re engaging our school partners so we can intervene before a violent incident occurs. So utilizing our resources such as libraries and community centers in order to be able to do that. And we'll also be partnering with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office to pilot a middle school harm reduction, harm repair program for those youth that are also at risk of engaging in violent behaviors.

For the diversion and reentry pillar, it's really about how can we increase job placement. And some of the work here is how our intervention services and street outreach services through our best grant program can strengthen the collaboration and referral to supportive services and connect the youth to those career readiness programs and ultimately to a job. And so this next pillar, which is healing, we consider the perceptions of safety and assets in the areas of San Jose. And we did that in looking at, in order to identify those areas we looked at some data through a survey that is conducted by our city manager's office, is a community safety survey. We also looked at social vulnerability index, is through the census data.

And there is a third key result that I apologize it was cut off on the second column, and that is really the implement a no wrong door service delivery pilot, which is in Mayfair Pokoe, and Santee 7 Trees neighborhoods. And so we're currently working with those non profit agency partners to determine the goals and the timeline as they implement the services in those demonstration sites. So although much of the work, although there's been much work done to identify the objectives and key results, we still have more work to do around a more detailed action plan that's going to roll up into these key results to achieve the objectives. And we'll continue to work with our partners in the children youth services master plan and the alliance to identify those additional action items and considerations as we begin to tackle this work. And we'll also continue to implement the core services which is our youth intervention and grant programs.

So now I'll shift to some program information for youth intervention and the BEST grant program along with the Safe Summer Initiative grant program. And so participants serve you see on the left, we served overall 8,245 youth for the twenty three-twenty four program year. We did see a slight decrease compared to the previous year, and this was mainly due to changes in staffing. And over on the right we have what we refer to as unit to service, but it's really those hours of service that are implemented into the community. We provided a total of three hundred and sixty thousand six hundred and nineteen hours of service.

And in this area although we did provide a tremendous amount of service throughout the communities of San Jose, we did see a slight decrease mainly in the grant programs. And this was as the first year of twenty three-twenty four was the first year of the BEST RFQ period. We shifted a little bit to more intensive one on one service for BEST, and then for SSIG we looked at really serving more youth in those areas. And for the program outcomes, we did look at how youth are feeling, and if youth are feeling safe as a result of their participation in the alliance programs. Although you see across the board we had eighty nine percent or more of youth feeling safe, we would like to see that percentage still go up.

And so internally we are looking at how can we continue to build capacity within our internal programs, with our nonprofit partners, and share best practices and resources within the technical team and within our grant programs. And so over this past year we were able to implement some important enhancements and tools that improve our ability to achieve our outcomes. I would like to focus on some of the data enhancements. We did secure a data management system recently, a grantee dashboard, and a climate data index. All are described in more detail in the memo, but these tools are created and implemented really to improve efficiency, data accessibility.

We can visualize the data which improves our ability to track program outcomes and respond to emerging issues, youth violence. And so really, these tools have really been impactful, and we're hoping to look at how we can better utilize them. I'll now hand it back over to Laura to share some next steps.

Thank you. In January 2026 January 2026, we are scheduled to release the application for the best RFQ for the twenty twenty six to twenty twenty nine period. This will allow us to refresh the eligible service provider list. We will also align our evaluation plan across the Youth Empowerment Alliance, Youth Intervention Services and our best objectives and timelines. We're also kicking off our No Wrong Door service delivery pilot through our children's services master plan and our demonstration site communities of Santee, 7 Trees, Mayfair, Poco Way.

This will allow us to align funding and internal staffing. We are happy to support that the county is also supporting us in this effort to leverage our resources and supports to our community partners. We will be testing and refining this pilot in hopes to scale to other areas in the community. We also would like to take the opportunity to thank our many partners who are instrumental in us providing our youth and our young adults with the resources and supports to transform their lives. We also wanna thank our many departments, our workforce development, economic opportunities department, work to future, as well as the library for their continued support as we develop our college and career pathways, and integrate that in our work with our young people to ensure that they are self sufficient and successful adults in our community.

This is the end of our presentation. If you have any questions for us, thank you.

Great, thank you so much. If we could open up if anybody has any comments or questions.

No public comment.

Alright. First off I just want to thank you all for your great service to the city, especially to our most vulnerable residents here in the city of San Jose. I know I've said it multiple times but this work is very important to me especially as somebody who's formerly in a gang and was impacted by gang violence and as somebody who receives some of these services as well. I know that these programs work. Know, of course we're not above you know feedback and of course there's always opportunities to improve but me as somebody who went through Clean Slate, somebody who went through Work the Future and career training programs, I'm walking proof you know that this stuff can change somebody's lives and that we can change the trajectory of our youth.

So I just wanna thank you all. And I know I mentioned this, but Petra was in the Clean Slate program when I was going through it. You probably don't remember me, but I remember you. And so thank you for, you know, being a part of my journey in in life. I believe the first council member with their hands up was council member Condellis.

Thank you chair. I know that's important and your leadership on this has been critical. So my question is just, you know there was a letter submitted by the Real Coalition. One of their concerns was with regards to the lack in the report with regards to disability. So can anyone speak to that?

Yes, thank you council member. Yes, and it's very true that many of the young people who are impacted by violence incarceration tend to have higher rates of disabilities many times because it's undiagnosed and or they don't receive the resources and supports early on. So we know that and if you remember in the Children Youth Services Master Plan, we highlighted some of the key data that came out of the juvenile justice reports and school data. So that has been a centerpiece of the Children's Youth Services Master Plan as we develop our, what we're calling our system of care, developing those no wrong door services. So with the Youth Empowerment Alliance, the Youth Intervention Services, we will be overlaying that work.

I'm happy to say that behavioral health has been very involved in our work as well as our school districts, our county office of education who have the expertise to be able to serve that population. We've also partnered with San Andres Regional Centers, so we're really leaning on them with the expertise and the resources and supports to really guide and inform our work. And so what we're sharing here is just kind of the beginning of that design, but as we we drill down into actual implementation and what that'll really look like in the community, that's definitely something that will be incorporated.

No, that's great. When can we expect to see that implementation or that overlay integration?

Yes, so we're starting that in the couple of months. We've already scheduled some meetings with our partners. Many of these community based organization and county partners have already been at the table for this initial design, but once we actually implement it, they will also continue to be involved. So very soon we're having our first initial meetings this month and then the following eighteen months.

No, that's great. I appreciate that and I know there was also mention of the county's creation of the Office of Violence Prevention and so hopefully that office, especially that work with the county, is integrated considering, know, the the master plan I think came before that creation of that office. But the way I understand it, it's it's seem it's a living document that that can be integrated as and hopefully seamlessly integrated into the no wrong door policy that we have.

Absolutely, and we were happy to see that they also referenced a master plan in the youth violence prevention strategic plan, so that was nice. And yes, we've been having ongoing meetings around ensuring that we are really thinking strategically about serving our most vulnerable youth, and many of them are special needs or have disabilities, so absolutely.

Awesome. No. Thank you. No. It's it's great work. I know last year I did a budget document that that tried to do some late night gyms or activations on Friday night specifically in in areas that have historically been disadvantaged in my district. Meadowfair being one of them. And just a couple weeks ago, we opened up the footsalls on Friday night, and I know the earthquakes are involved. We got all these partners who the the CalHOPE program, they chipped in, like, half $1,000,000. So that $25,000 budget document that we did and the council ultimately passed parlayed into something that not only benefits me in District 8, but also benefits our youth in downtown and the Washington neighborhood and all these other different parts of San Jose.

So keep up the good work and and I look forward to hanging out and doing a late night gym and playing basketball with some young folks one of these days. So let me know. Just kidding. And then I'll move to acceptance of the staff report.

Alright. Thank you, council member Condelas. Vice chair, Duan. Thank you, chair. Thank you, member Condelas for bringing that question up.

I was gonna ask this very similar one, specifically towards our mentally ill and also our challenged students. Because that lead to a lot of depression, even more mental illness when you're not you don't want to go to school because you're getting picked on. And then when you're at home and you're trying to get online, now you're getting bullied online too on top of that and that's very concerning. Back to your, presentation, on on slide number eight, and these are the four school that, you know, the Valley Palms and and Plata Arroyo, Seven Trees, and Roundtable, Great Oaks. Two of the two of the schools are right in my district.

Neighborhood. Neighborhood. Sorry. And and and so I'm very concerning that they feel unsafe. But yet, on your slide on page slide number 10, you said eighty nine percent of youth felt safe. And so I was kind of maybe you can explain that little bit further for me.

Yeah, thank you for the question. So the on slide that you indicated on slide 10, the 89% of youth feeling safe is those youth that are participating in our grant programs, and so that doesn't necessarily reflect those participants in the survey from the city manager's office, which is what it's referring to on slide eight. No, on slide sorry. Eight. Let me just make sure I got that right. Yes, slide eight. That is a different survey. That is more for the entire council district, and the other 89% is specific to those participants that are in the grant programs.

Thank you. And and what are your plan to address these the four neighborhoods that's in District 5 too as well. How do we create or implement program that can help reduce those fears?

I could just mention briefly, and I think there's some other responses, but I think currently we wanted to really look at what are some of those sources that we can identify what that perception is, so we can prioritize our work. There's definitely more work needed to be done to outline what are those action items to get there to what you're speaking of. And there is more work like Laura said, we are working on input from our partners, from our grant partners to really help us identify those action items.

Do we reach out to all of the students with with the program that we have? Do we get them out there except for I know when kids are in trouble, we intervene. That's great. But what about the rest of the kids when prior to getting into trouble or they're feeling that they're being picked on, the fear? How do we reach out to the rest of the kids and say, hey, if you're feeling this way or you're being picked on, here's a program that we can help you with.

For our school based staff in that situation, they work closely with a multi service team on their school campus. And so although our priority are youth who are involved in gangs or experience gang related violence, For those other youth that may just be experiencing other challenges not specific to gangs, as part of that multi service team, we're able to connect those young people to those other services. So for example, behavioral health has wellness centers on their campus. They have Gardner Family Care Corporation, Alamrock Counseling Center, and so we'll work through that multi service team to identify who's the best provider to support this young person with those services and supports.

Thank you very much. I've always believed in prevention. And I know that there's a huge amount of kids out there that they get picked on, but they'll never say anything, especially the underserved community. They were taught to just be quiet, ignore it, and then and move forward, but we we we gotta make sure we find ways to reach out to them prior to them, being in a in a, I I guess, in a bad situation where we're we're now reacting versus preventing.

Thank you.

And council member, I I think your question underscores the importance of the children youth master plan, right, which really takes a zero to age 24 comprehensive look, right, for all youth, including those youth that are getting impacted, but all youth in general. Right now we have the two pilot sites in District 5 and District 7, but the real goal, the real North Star is to really take that citywide and to make sure that young people have access to opportunity pathways. And you know that eighty nine percent safe summer initiative grant number is really telling because it goes to show that you could live in a very stressful, high need area but if you have a positive place to go then that provides a safety net for you, right? And so I think we underscore that enough.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you Vice Chair. Before we turn from this slide, just have some follow-up questions on Vice Chairs, Dewanza, and then I'll go to you Councilmember Campos. Looking at these four neighborhoods, right, I'm assuming they're being presented to us because they are the highest impacted neighborhoods with this activity?

So these neighborhoods in combination with the vulnerability score which is primarily census data around household information. We also looked at information that was provided by the county on those small neighborhood profiles, which also utilizes a census data, economic status, racial ethnicity backgrounds, things like that. So these are the neighborhoods that we identified that were most vulnerable when you combine those two indexes.

Interesting, but is there a connection to gang activity and crime being occurred? I mean I'm sure it's happening, but in relation to other neighborhoods. How is that I guess matched?

Currently that is not something that was a source that was included, but I think you're bringing up a very important point and I think we can look at another criteria when we're looking at how these neighborhoods are identified, yes.

Just making just wanted to confirm that for me because when I talk to I know all these neighborhoods personally regardless of them being in my district or not they're you know infamous just for having issues throughout the city of San Jose But they're also of course filled with beautiful people, amazing culture, and amazing individuals on the ground level doing good work. You know whether they're being acknowledged or not. And I I just it surprised me to see Plata Arroyo because that is a neighborhood that has active very active neighborhood association. I'm sure you guys have met somebody from there. No names.

And a lot a lot a lot of resources. I don't really hear too much from the police captain or you know from neighbors about I know that Platte Royale Park has them that show up but I haven't heard too much. I would I would assumed Dobern or Mayfair just due to the increased activity from the SPV gang. I thought we would have saw that. But it's good to know to have that understanding of this isn't necessarily where the most gang activity is, but it's where the most people who are vulnerable I guess to that. And thank you. Alright. Councilmember Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you to our staff for bringing important report before us today. As you know this is a part of the work that I lean heavily into because I know that you know from the last presentation with our youth commission to this work any opportunity that we have to interact with our youth and hopefully put them on a trajectory for success is the most impactful way to be using our dollars, to be using our time and our energy as a local government. So I do have several questions I'd like to ask just to better understand how we got here and how we're moving forward. So the first slide that breaks down the two groups that are working on these efforts, it was the technical team and then the policy team. Now I know that previously there was a commission, San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance Commission, so is that commission now defunct and these two are leading that work or how does that?

So we've never had a youth empowerment alliance commission. Are you thinking about the youth commission?

No when I was

Just thinking about the policy roundtable where everybody sits at the table, kind of like it seems The like

policy team?

Yeah the policy.

The policy team? Yeah.

Okay.

So is the policywhen you go on the city's registrar for the commissions there is a San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance Commission, it doesn't seem to be active or that's what I'm trying to Is it still active?

It meets quarterly, our quarterly policy team meeting.

Actually our next scheduled meeting is May 22. And then the next one after that will be in August and then November.

Okay,

thank prevention, there was a lot of focus on absenteeism. I think that it's incredibly important work to be done. I'd

like to take

a step back and think about why students choose to not go to school or what situations cause them to not go to school. I know that particularly as you move forward in your education, the way I understand it is up until third grade you are learning to read, from third grade beyond you read to to learn. So I'm curious why aren't there goals related to literacy or math skills in this work because I think that we can make that link of students who are not reading at grade level or not performing academically at grade level and that could be a part of the absenteeism, but I don't see that called out in the report anywhere. So is there a reason? Definitely,

so it's a great question. First I want to start off by saying we definitely support literacy education etc. Because when we see those things turn out well, youth tend to end up in the services that we do. For us our focus really is around intervention and it's really around getting intentional and getting impacted youth and young adults. That's kind of our lane where we know we tend to be expert in.

Just some of the history of the it was the mayor's gang prevention task force it really started to address the gang violence that our young people were becoming victims of or perpetrating and we really heavily focus and lean in on that lane. Now as a collective impact model we do have our superintendents at the table with us at the policy team, we have our school cities collaborative and we really work closely with those schools in that but we hone in on that intervention lane where our partners may hone in on behavioral and mental health, social services, early intervention, prevention, etcetera. And we kind of bring all of those resources to the table to coordinate, collaborate and align our

our conversations in recognizing, right, that when you have a 13 or 14 year old who's disconnected from school, it's because of the many factors that you mentioned. And so part of our role is to engage them back into school, and then through that process is figuring out what are the supports that that student needs to again kind of reengage, right, recognizing that it's a complicated process that requires multiple partners at the table.

Yeah, absolutely agree. Robust collaboration is the key to success with programs like this, and as we know, the earlier that we can intervene the better. I know that there's a lot of research done about trying to get youth at having literacy as early as possible to really support their autonomy and independence in the world and being able to communicate how they feel because I think a lot of the work that that is happening here in this ecosystem is if you don't have a sense of emotional self regulation, if you don't have a way to articulate those emotions, that poses a challenge and so I'm glad to hear that there is a lot of collaboration and partnership working to address this. I also noticed intervention that there was a it specifies that there are 20 youth participating in one of the programs and I was just curious if that is meeting the need of our youth or if that is a restriction that we have due to funding capacity, and if there are more youth who would benefit from access to that program.

Thank you councilmember, great question. So yes the 20 participants for the repair harm reduction is just specifically for a pilot, to pilot this program in the fall. And we are working with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office to develop that and implement it into one of our middle schools. And based on the outcomes and results of that pilot, we hope to fully implement. Unfortunately it is because of resources we have identified potentially some resources to implement the pilot, but we will have to work collaboratively to look at successful, which we hope it will be, how we're going to implement after the fall.

Okay, thank you for that. I also noticed that there's a call out to job readiness which is why you know just I want to hone in on the importance of literacy and math because I think back to my experiences as an adolescent in San Jose and I think a lot of a lot of my confidence and success came from you know knowing that I had the basic skill set to succeed and that's really important as we're thinking about our youth right, what future outcomes do they see themselves in and the more that we can support them with the skills, the better the chances of their success are. And so to wrap up my questions, under healing I really appreciate the work on No Wrong Door, especially for our families, especially for our communities who are learning English as a second language, who have immigrated here, who really need support and access opportunities like that to engage them and keep them coming back themselves as a partner in this community. What I didn't see was housing, and I know in the children and youth services master plan there is a section on housing and displacement and so one question, is there a reason why housing hasn't been incorporated as part of the healing element?

That's something we could take back and look at. We do work closely with our housing department on a variety of different programs and services. It's something at this time we haven't looked at incorporating as part of that. What we do do for our families that are in need of housing, housing insecure, homeless, we work directly with our housing department to get them into services.

Okay,

and that's wonderful. I also know that sometimes with youth who become gang involved, are sometimes troubles at home, and so I think that that is really important that we're also looking for opportunities to provide autonomy and independence and the opportunity to create their own safe living environments if it means you know moving on moving forward from a family unit that may not be the healthiest space for them to be living in, growing in, and so it's why I think that it is important to not miss the opportunity to include housing as part of the healing element and you know to just to finish this question what is the relationship that we have with our school districts as a partner given that they do have information on youth who are experiencing homelessness through McKinney Vento, and helping be proactive about connecting families to what they need.

The schools, the school districts are involved in many different ways. One, as we mentioned, around the policy team. So they're actively participating in our meetings, sharing information about emerging trends and challenges that are impacting their students. The other is through the Children's Youth Services Master Plan. Just over the past nine months, we had 120 community partners that joined us in designing the elements of the no wrong door service delivery model, and again we had the school districts involved participating.

One of the elements that we talked about was McKinney Vento and how do we again better support our young people, because as you mentioned, not only by they're being impacted with complicated home lives in situations, but also maybe living out of cars in the neighborhood, and so those are all part of the conversations and part of the service delivery design to be able to better serve our young people.

Thank you. I really appreciate the work that you are all doing on this. It is incredibly important, and I look forward to learning more and just really hope that you take to heart my message about early intervention and housing as a healing opportunity because this is the Silicon Valley and unfortunately we have, know, even just one student experiencing homelessness is one too many, so that is a very real opportunity for us as a city to be innovative and thinking about how we can change the tide on the troubling, you know, what we're seeing that is troubling in the data, and you know offer a solution that provides us a better tomorrow for our city and for especially our youth. So thank you.

Alright, thank you Councilmember Campos. I do have just a few different comments and questions. So really appreciate the focus on opportunity pathways as well as cradle to career. As you know, I've mentioned this on the dais, best way to stop a bullet is a a job. Best way to get somebody out of a gang is a job. I wanted to ask what what is our like success rate? How how how has our efforts been specifically with our gang impacted youth connecting them to job training and roles.

Do you want to talk about Work2Future or San Jose Works? Yeah. Yes. So, we can talk about our collaboration with the Office of Economic Development, Work to Future, through our San Jose Works program, which I know you're very familiar with. So at this time, we have enrolled 180, and so our goal was at least 120, so we're very happy with that.

But of course, as you might recognize that we have to do a lot of support to our young people, and so our staff will continue to meet with them throughout the summer to make sure that they're meeting their work obligation, but the other piece also that we have really been honing in on is what happens to our young people once they leave the gangs, once they have the tattoos removed, right, is to really start working with them around college career, workforce goals, and so through our college and career pathways that was led by the library, we're looking at how we can integrate that through this next fiscal year. So while we don't have concrete numbers on the number of youth that we engage in work, that's definitely still a centerpiece when we're mentoring and coaching our young people, especially because we are serving that population between 14 and 24, and as mentioned, some of them have to be independent, and so our staff coach them and mentor them into everything from developing their resume to applying for jobs to interviewing. But again, it's more on an individual basis, but in this next fiscal year we're going to formalize that process.

Appreciate that. No, thank you. I just know that if these youth are being provided opportunities, if their horizons aren't being brought into ways in which they can make money legally, unfortunately, they will fall off the wagon and they will go back to becoming repeat offenders or hanging out with those individuals and it it's really like an addiction. And so if we're not able to get them out of there, that's an issue. So you mentioned 180. I think looking through the slides we work with more than 2,000 youth in this program. Is there a reason why we're at 180 with the amount of youth that are going into this program? The workforce portion of it. So

currently we are funded with our Work to Future partners to have spots for those 180 youth, but we also refer to different training programs, training organizations, and job placement organizations that we have especially for our individuals that are 18 and older. So we do a variety of different things. Laura and I were just discussing this about okay I'm out of the gang, got my tattoo removed, so now what? And that's the part that we'll be developing over the next year to strengthen that.

Awesome. Okay. Thank you. I noticed that, I know that council member Condellis referenced the violence prevention discussion at the county. The Latino health assessment was released. How are we taking that data? You know, I know there's a lot of that, know, seeing that where our community is dying from alcohol more than anyone else. We have smoke shops on the East Side more than any other district in the city. How are we gonna use that data to, I guess, influence our overall strategy?

Yes, and so we have made an initial kind of read through, and there were a lot of significant data points that really apply to our community and our young people. So as we continue to plan out for this next year is really looking at those key data points much more explicitly and really looking at the kind of gaps in our service delivery to see what areas we can strengthen. Also with the Children Services Master Plan, as you know, we looked at the whole continuum from birth through adulthood. And so this very much is in line with the seven pillars in the Children Youth Services Master Plan. Although with the Youth Empowerment Alliance, Youth Intervention Services, we're very, as we mentioned, targeting intervention services and healing.

With the Children's Youth Services Master Plan, we're really looking at the continuum. And so the Latino health assessment is very much in line with what we have seen in the development of the Master Plan.

Councilmember Nguyen, if I could add, the Latino health assessment, it's a real sobering report, It's a very alarming report. One of the things that there's definitely clear intersections between their findings and then what we heard from the community during the children youth master plan. And I think there's three specific kind of opportunities that we have with the county in partnership. And I think they're in the areas of built environment, how we take a look at our built environment both in terms of the city and in county property as well as economic mobility which kinda speaks to the last series of questions that you and councilmember Campbell's had around access to jobs especially for young people and really addressing the economic aspect of poverty. And the third having to do with public and mental health.

And so we have already reached out to the county around really mapping these out and finding those points of intersect and identifying where we can achieve economies of scale, better coordination, and I know you have some ideas on this front as well. So I think there's a lot of opportunities to address a really wicked problem.

Thank you. Appreciate that for both of your answers. If we could go to slide number six please. I just had a question about a data point that maybe I'm sure I don't have the full information on. Let's see here. Maybe is that the one? Yeah. So I see that if you could just explain a little bit about the program is projected to serve 20 youth. Why that number and how are we selecting those specific individuals for the program?

Yeah, so this program is currently in development and we're working with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office to develop the harm repair harm reduction pilot program. And it's really to, it's after school program in coordination with the school, and we are working with probation to identify those participants that will be a part of that pilot. And right now because of the pilot, we're keeping it on a small scale, limited funding for the pilot, And then based on that, those results and outcomes, we'll look at how we can expand it. Again, having we're having to identify also the resources for that as well. So that's why that number is limited to 20 at this time.

Okay, good to know. So which school is this going be at?

Right now we have identified Leva Middle School, but that's something that we're in conversation with, but we're still, that may change as we roll it out in the fall.

That's great. And so so I'm I'm imagining there's been some issues at that school. Is that what we're seeing in the data?

I don't know it's just necessarily the issues. I think we have a partner that's willing to participate and And we also have our partners that have participants at that school. And so for the pilot it will serve us well, but we do have to look at if we implement it after the fall, how we'll identify those schools for implementation.

Okay. That that that makes sense. So all these other numbers like one thousand seven hundred and fifty eight incidents of youth violence, that's citywide, right? That's not Yes. Specifically they. Okay. Same thing with injuries and and and seven deaths. Okay, well I'm looking forward to that. I definitely, you know, I think that the Meadowfair, Leyva Middle School area is an important one and we definitely need to have services there. And hopefully we can get some good data based off of the success of that overall program.

If may provide a quick point of information. From my conversations with the district attorney's office, that is one of the areas that they're seeing like influx issues that this pilot would I think it's a good opportunity for us to you know nip it in the bud if you will. Good. But again it's going to hopefully create an opportunity to form potential scaling of the program. And so that's why Meadowfair was discussed. Given the issues that the district attorney's office is seeing in conjunction with our police department and our community partners. Okay.

Awesome. Well hopefully we can get some support for those youth and get them on the the right track. Have we and then you did mention school closures. Sorry for so many questions but this is an important topic me. Alum Rock obviously, they're gonna be going through probably out of all the districts the largest amount of closures. I'm sure that may impact students who are already receiving services. How are are we being engaged in that conversation? How are we gonna make sure? Because, you know, similar to like when we came back from COVID, we saw incidents, you know, and then schools are closing closing. That means kids are coming from one neighborhood, walking to another neighborhood. Things like this are territorial. How are we getting ahead of that?

Yeah so in one way at the technical team in each of the divisions, especially for those areas where we will experience school closures, there's already some action items in those different divisions. And so we have partners that are currently, and school partners that sit within those divisions that are working out action items to prepare, and what resources we can offer to those schools that are closing. We're in the prevention objective. We have also considered those schools that are closing or those schools that will be impact sorry that school will be impacted by the closures. And those schools are on the list.

We still have to coordinate with those schools that have been identified and and look at how can we support them with their their chronic absenteeism. And so that was considered when we identified those schools as those impacted by closures.

Okay. Alright. Well thank you so much. I appreciate that. Did we have a motion on this already? I think we did. Okay. Let's go to vote. Alright. Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it. Now we are going to item number four, San Jose Animal Care and Services Audit Implementation Status Report. And that presentation will be provided by Matt Losh, Jay Tirado, Kiska Icard, and Doctor. Cather.

Chair, while we wait for the the staff to set up, I do wanna say that I I have a privilege previously scheduled a commitment at 03:30 that I will be stepping out for. Okay. And I'm hoping to return by four if the item is still continuing. Okay?

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you for letting us know, council member.

Good afternoon, chair, council members. I am Matt Lesh. I am the director of public works. With me is doctor Elizabeth Cather and Kiska Eichard, shelter and medical operations. Jay Trotter is not with us today, but we'll go through this.

And council member will try to be I'll get through my presentation certainly before you go, but we'll get through this relatively quickly. So the purpose of today and, JRTs, I purposely made sure there's at least one more cat than dogs in the pictures, just for you, but that we, to give a status update into the audit that was provided, to the shelter for direction about how things possible improvements last in December. So this is a check-in point to see how things are going. So just as kind of orientation, the city auditor provides a review of all open audit findings at the beginning of the year and then partway through the year as well. And so this is kind of not exactly in between, but sort of in between, so we'll help get through this in terms of description.

Thank

you. It was a pretty robust audit in terms of 39 specific recommendations with subparts below. This is the scorecard I'm using, and don't don't and this isn't meant to be an eye chart, and it's meant to just guide this is for me to see how things are progressing along. Because certainly one of the points of attention was the doubts that we would focus on this and that we would charge through this and that we would take this seriously and move things forward. And so I am getting regular updates on all of the audit recommendations and the timelines and our commitment to meet the goals.

And so what we have things broken down, and I'll I'll I'll make this easier and I'll have a couple slides slicing through this, we have an objective to get a few done by March, some done by June, and some done by December. And to help orient towards this, we broke them down by which operational group, whether it's the shelter, medical field, or administration, or tech that is responsible for it. There's the color codes of the bars. Then we have the target by when we're shooting to get them done, whether it's March, June, or December. And then also how we're progressing through those in terms of so you'll see these kind of gradation lines going through it.

It'll be a little bit easier once we get into the partial slides. The status where you see the PI and FR and IMP and NI, so that is auditor talk for the most part except for the FR. We had to make that one up because he doesn't they don't give us partial grades as partway through. They either tell us that it's implemented 100% we met what they wanted for us to produce. They review everything so then it is reviewed as implemented by them. There's things that are things in progress. We've presented partial information to them, and so but it's not yet been complete, and there's been dialogue back and forth, and it's not yet done. Those are partially implemented. It's fairly intuitive. And not implemented means doesn't mean we haven't started work.

It just means we either haven't presented anything to them at the time they did the review in February, but that means work is progressing on them. None of them are waiting to start work, but there are many of them are not implemented because that was as of the rating as of February. Now I asked the city auditor, look. We're we're coming here today, and I wanted to know, like, there are things that we have submitted since February that they have softly accepted, and those are these FR. They're they're under final review by them.

And so all the documents are done and reviewed by them, and they are on target, but they're not declared as implemented. They won't be declared as implemented until their September report, but those are the ones that are in gray, those FRs. And so that's what that means. So this is kinda like this. So I get the I look at this every other week or so and I get updates from the team that's driving on each one of these items, and we have lots of tracking on each one item going forward.

So let's break it down. So just the March implementation. So the goal first up was a we wanted to move quickly, but we also wanted to be reasonable. We only had a couple months to get things done, and we met all of the objectives of the March recommendations as determined by the auditor in terms of what they wanted us to achieve, we'll and break those down in just a minute. We met them in February, so beforehand. So they even met their February reports. So they were done before the March. And so I have a slide briefly on those. And they were again, we didn't pick the hard ones, obviously. We picked the ones that were achievable in those few months.

And so there were things like we should update the outreach page. We should update, finalize the euthanasia policy, which was really close. We've been working on it all year anyways, and then update the web page for specific things. And these are just snap snapshots of some of these things. These are not the total picture of them.

It is just snapshots of things that were progressed that a sample of things that were presented to the auditor, but all of these things have been through the auditor and reviewed as accepted and implemented per the recommendation. Now come June, we have some an increased amount from the March portion, and many of those are progressing along. You see some of them have already been softly accepted by them, but won't be declared and implemented until September. And so many of those are achieving and marching along. We believe we'll have most of these done by the end of this month, May, even before June.

We have much a lot of progress on them, but, again, we won't see an implementation rating on them until September. Kind of a clue under what things were. Item three, we're supposed to look at the condition assessment. We had a massive report, a massive 36 pages, review of that whole site in terms of produce that, prioritize the work, and get information into the budget office. You'll see things in our budget study sessions talking about some money that's allocated towards some of the improvements at the shelter.

There's a little bit of money associated to specific activities for next year and so on. So each one of these four have been implemented, but yet there's still like 18A was not done, but 18B was accepted already in terms of the June objective. Now in December, we obviously have a lot of work. Many of these are already in flight. We have some that we're shooting for to get done in September. We might even pull some of the December ones before the September report. We have a lot of work, but we also have seven months to achieve most of these. Should we achieve all these things and get all 39 done? There's not been an audit of this volume that's been achieved in a year that I'm aware of that the auditors ever produced. And so this is a massive focus by us in addition to caring for the animals that we have.

And so there are implications to some of these recommendations that modify our operations slightly that then change, so we'll see a lot of flux. So as all these things are getting implemented as we, for example, implement the ASV guidelines, they will change some of our operations. And so the and as we go through, that's why one of the some of these things we need to figure out, we're removing them a little bit here and there, and so we need to constantly adjust till we get it right. That's why the goal of getting these things done throughout the entire calendar year. Some December focus.

So at when we came in December, we were when we came last December at the audit, were directed to say, you and in the March budget message, you need to be getting to more TNR. That was really directed at us and how how are we progressing to this. And so this is just a snapshot of what we've been doing. And so nine and ten were in particular about increasing TNR, trap, neuter, and return. Or, and so this is the use of our facility.

And so, by June, we should have five days a week having neutering services in our front clinic. That does not mean that we have five days of everything's going thirty appointments, but we are progressing towards improving those. And so what we are also able to talk about is a little bit some of the operations of the shelter, how we're able to get more neutering done, and so those are the neutering numbers that are listed there just in the first four months of the calendar year, year over year comparison by by animal type and so forth. Plus we're also told to get contracts, and there's some funding in next year's budget for outside contracts for and we have four of them now. One was finally just achieved last week.

So we four of them, Snip Bus, Nine Lives and Valley Humane and HSSV. We have contract services to be able to use for outside neutering services. So as of right now, we have an so HSSV is using our clinic, our front clinic, because they had, a fire at their location. So they're we have a use agreement with with them a few years, and so they can use our facility. And so they're using it for their animals. These those numbers are not in these numbers, but they are but they also when they don't have all of the animals that could fill up appointments and stuff with them, they do take and and neuter some of our animals after their stuff is done. It's not every day. It's not a huge amount. Sometimes it's three. Sometimes it's seven.

But, again, on Mondays and Fridays, they're using our facility and they are neutering some of our animals from time to time on Mondays and Fridays. Wednesdays and Thursdays are us. We have it open right now, but we have a process of getting a part time vet lined up that they will be supporting us. So they will be there on Tuesday starting hopefully in June. That's our target. So then we'll have five days of neutering in the in the shelter in the front clinic. Yes. They are not all TNR, and so nobody's alluding to that, but it's just we are doing neutering services in that front clinic. We'll be in five days a week. Now the next one in June was also talking about low cost spay neuter services or even low cost medical services for animals.

So what I'm focusing on is initially so we bring in this part time vet. We have TNR services. Save some of those, appointments on Tuesday initially or a few of them for come in for owned pets for people. And just start with five, get those all filled, get it going for a couple weeks, deserve capacity for more, make it 10, and so forth so that we can increase. And so June we have five appointments a week, July 10, August 15.

So hopefully on Tuesdays we can build out that rapport until we have a bit more of again, this is not enough to satisfy all of the animal or all of the needs in the community. This is a start to reinvigorating something that could be sustainable. And that's been my focus of building these things, not the flash and pan to solve all problems one day, but to try to build a sustainable model that we can then persist. Also, we are offering to all owned animals that come people come to get reclaimed. We're offering to alter them at a fee or a scheduled rate to make it so that it's affordable to them so that people who are coming to reclaim their animals were that are intact, we're doing everything we can to make sure that they are altered as we can.

Also, we have many animals coming from homeless encampments, and we have there are a huge population of animals that live with our unhoused. Many of the sick and injured animals that because they aren't getting medical medical services in in their encampment are coming to us too late. So our effort is to try to get many of those neutered so we can control the population there. We have a partner that is working in those encampments. We've reserved five appointments for for them on Thursdays so that they can bring in animals to get neutered on those days.

Again, this is just a tip of the things that are going on. We have much work to do, and our goal is to do the the unheard of, of achieving all of these 39 recommendations in a calendar year. Happy to take some more questions. And just for reference, I do have I know there was a lot of comments, and that came in from the public. I do have a couple bonus slides with some numbers that to answer some of those questions if they come up. So at your leisure. Okay.

Thank you so much. Appreciate that presentation. Now we will open it up to public comment.

We have 10 speaker cards. If you submitted a speaker card for this item, please sit in the front blue reserve seats. The first available speaker can walk up to the podium to speak. You'll each have two minutes. The timer is displayed on the podium. And we have Kaye Blom, Rebecca Davis Matthews, Dinah Hayes, Liz Holtz, Anne DeSheros, Elena Jaffney, Steve Jaffney, Rosario, last name starts with a c, Mary Jane, and Christina Callahan. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council members. I'd like to tell you about two things I experienced at the shelter this week. First of all, this was posted on Nextdoor yesterday. It's about it's in Strawberry Park neighborhood in West San Jose. A lady called Animal Control to come and get this dog who it couldn't walk, and it was frightened, and they couldn't catch it. Animal Control told them to leave it there. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, that's a huge failure of our animal services. I don't know what the shelter has to do with animal control, but I think it's all part of it. I I don't know. But, in my mind, it's just they're not meeting the services for San Jose.

Secondly, Sunday afternoon, I pulled a kitten out. I transported a kitten that was declining, and I took it to a local vet. The kitten was it had been at the shelter for three weeks, and it weighed a 120 at three weeks. That's the size of a of a newborn kitten. This kitten had not been fed properly. When I picked it up, they had just fed it. I thought the kitten had already passed. So I prayed all the way to the vet, and, fortunately, the the kitten was just malnourished. Now to me, that is a huge failure. It's a colossal failure of medical as well as caretaking.

So I don't know. We've talked we've been here. All my friends here have been here for years talking about the failures of the shelter. I don't see it getting these are two incidents from this week, just this week. If they're working on these things, shouldn't this get better? I'm I'm truly not understanding. I I just hope that you guys are ready to make some changes at the shelter. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

District six. I listened to your presentation, and I have no idea what you just said about anything that would have to do with the audit that I listened to in December. There was nothing that I could understand. I have a few questions that I would like the city council to ask the shelter staff. A few weeks ago, there was a kitten put on the rescue list because they needed sub q fluids, there was not gonna be a vet on the premises for three days. Why is there not a vet on the shelter every day? What happens to an animal that comes in sick or becomes sick while in the care of the shelter? Are they supposed to wait and hope that they do not become critical and die because they were not given proper care? Why are friendly cats not being taken in at the shelter? On April 20, there were only four cats available for adoption out of 70 open kennels.

Return to field rate for the first four months of this year is about half of what all of last year was. All of last year was thirteen thirty cats. So far this year, it is already at seven ninety three. Why are friendly cats not being given the chance to live a safe, long, healthy life with a loving family? Why was a member of the public that tried to turn in three seven week old friendly kittens yesterday, told that they were full, could not take the kittens, and that she should go down the street to PetSmart and try to give them away.

This is not acceptable. Why are staff at the shelter still telling the public that they are not accepting dogs and to return them where they are found? A dog cannot survive on their own in the city. I have seen frequently on Nextdoor that when someone finds a dog, they are told not to take it to the shelter, that they will be turned away. How are you gonna change the perception with the public? Found reports are still not being taken, animals are being rehomed from Nextdoor, and families are not given any help in trying to find their lost pets. The animals of San Jose deserve better. I've been coming to these city council meetings to discuss the care of the shelter for quite a while now. I will give kudos the shelter for keeping the kennels cleaner, but there's still so much more work to be done for the animals in their care. These are living beings that need our help.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Thank you. If we could just keep comments directed to the entire committee. Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Sustainer shelters was started with the purpose of supporting the local animal shelters and helping them to do better. We have hoped that things would improve, and there are some things that have improved, but there are still many things that continue to trouble us. TNR appointments have remained a challenge to obtain, and they're only one day a week. There is still no public spay neuter clinic. This presentation shows that there will soon be five spay neuter appointments per week, which is a good start, but frankly laughable, considering the shelter used to have up to 20 of these appointments per day, four days a week.

They've had five years to bring this program back to previous levels, and we're at the point where we're going to have five appointments a week. The most recent issue that I personally am concerned about is the practice of putting friendly stray cats out onto the street after spay neuter surgery, as well as limiting intake of animals to those that are ill, injured, or pregnant. These practices have led to there being very few cats and kittens available for adoption in the thick of kitten season. This is backwards. We also recently learned that unweaned kittens are being euthanized once they are more than a certain number, even though there is now a night shift whose responsibilities include caring for these kittens.

Finally, I would like to remind the chair it would be prudent to bring shelter management back in August to present their progress again, as there are many items that are supposed to be completed in June. And I also would like to know why the citizens action committee that was supposed to be appointed has not happened. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Diana Hayes. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. I am a foster, a trap neuter return volunteer, and an advocate for spay and neuter. I am one of the people that your constituents call when they find cats and kittens in their yard, and they don't know what to do. I have personally helped people in every single district of San Jose. And I wanted to start by recognizing a recent success, and that was a high quality, high volume spay neuter training clinic that happened just last weekend, weekend, where more than 50 cats were altered in one single day, including two unfixed cats trapped in the parking lot. So we can do this. I was there.

It was collaborative effort, and it was amazing to be a part of. And I would like to commend San Jose Animal Care Services for helping out with this project, as well as the veterinarian from the shelter who participated and helped with the training. And it shows what kind of impact this can have when preventative work is done. Well, the audit implementation status report highlights incremental outreach and internal protocols it fails to meaning meaningfully address the most urgent issues facing our city, which is access to spay and neuter. We cannot solve the ongoing cat and kitten crisis by turning away animals and pushing the burden onto residents, especially when you're we are not offering them timely and adequate access to spay and neuter or or meaningful support.

That is not a strategy. It is avoidance and denial, and it has consequences, consequences, some of which you're going to hear about today, I expect, and have already heard about. And while the shelter leadership is setting policy, it is a frontline staff who are left to manage the fallout and expected to handle a crisis with unclear guidance and little options to offer to the public. Last week improved that when there is a will Thank

you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is Mary Jane Hotala. I'm from Sustain Our Shelters, and we try to advocate for animals here in Santa Clara County, and I also help advocate for animals all around the country. But yesterday, there was a shocking experience. 4PM yesterday at the shelter, a lady was trying to turn in three kittens, which were about seven weeks old.

We know the shelter is full, so they turned her down. But the shocking words that came out of the staff member's mouth was, go down the street to PetSmart and stand there and try to get the kittens away. Now we know that's not safe, and so she was so shocked that she asked the person at the desk for a list

of

rescues. Well, the person who observing this actually saw that list of rescues, and the list was full of rescues that were no longer operating. So the person who was observing actually crossed out the rescues and gave the person a list of rescues that were still around. Staff needs to be educated not to tell people to sit in front of a building and give kittens away. This is horrible. We didn't get a name of the staff member at the shelter, but we needed this to be corrected immediately. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker?

Good afternoon everyone. Liz Holtz, cat trapper, lot of TNR, work with rescues, frontline of defense in Evergreen. You know, I'm like Dino. I'm I'm the front line. I'm the one they call. I'm the one they text. I'm the one they reach out to on Nextdoor. And I'd like to share with you a few sayings that you might be familiar with. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. Same stuff, different day.

And a riff, a cat in a trap is better than kittens in a bush. Alright? So we have a problem. It hasn't been addressed. The work the progress that was made by the shelter over fifteen years has been lost.

There's still no tracking of data, no clean data. You don't track the refusals, which we've been told for three years going now that they were tracking who they turned away at the door. Why is HSSV on the slide? HSSV is simply using one operating room at S Jack under contract to do HSSV's TNR, right. And quite frankly if it weren't for HSSV you'd be a lot deeper than you already are because they have saved everybody's assets in this city.

Alright? So I'm more interested in what's the difference between numbers in TNR, trap, neuter, return, cats that come in and out immediately same day service, and return to field which is the

Thank you. Next speaker?

Good afternoon. My name is Rosario Consulio. I live in District 10. I also used to live in District 3. It's obvious today that the it's the the plan here to fix the shelter that's right using these recommendations just doesn't seem to be working very well. I didn't think it would. The shelter is currently on pace for only an input for only like 12,000 animals a year. That's their pace, only 12,000 animals a year. What's more disturbing is is the the budget. The budget calls for a target intake of only 12,500 animals a year.

That's really really low. The productivity is down 30% compared to historical standards. We used to do 17,000 over 17,000 animals a year. That number doesn't include the 160 animals that used to get TNR in a week. Now where did I come up with that number?

That number came from Denise Huarte who worked with John Soarelli to start the TNR program, was a national basically, it became a national standard for for feral animals, animals, for for feral feral cats. Cats. I know we can do better. I just thought I'd let you know that I'm gonna be supporting Anthony Tardios for counsel. His message of accountability resonates with me, and I'm gonna encourage all my friends in the animal community to do the same. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Steve Gaffney. I am a longtime citizen of California and a resident of San Jose Santa Clara County. And, over the past twenty years, I've seen a significant degradation in the animal shelter, particularly over the last seven years since COVID started and perhaps even a little bit before that. I'm here today to speak on behalf of Angel's Furry Friends Rescue, which wrote a very detailed report on recommendations for the San Jose shelter. It talks about staffing plans and how to augment the staff, how to make them better, how to make them more efficient, some of the issues that are being raised.

And perhaps the biggest issue is the one that's been highlighted the most today, and that is spayneuter. Clearly, it's become a problem across the state of California and within San Jose. It's it's a bit Well, I'm I'm glad to hear that that it's been raised as an important issue, and and that the animal shelter is is taking it seriously moving forward on it. But it saddens me that that it's fallen to such a low level, we're only doing a few animals per week. We should be at a much higher level.

And perhaps one of the questions that came to mind during the discussion earlier is, what is the goal? How many animals do does the San Jose shelter expect to be supporting or altering per week per day? What what is the number? What is the goal? Because I did not hear that in that discussion.

And perhaps something that should be considered is, and it's been mentioned before in other discussions, is to set up a commission where stakeholders like the various rescues and those that work with the shelter can, you know, have a better forum to discuss their issues, rather than coming here before the city council and know, airing grievances opposed

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello. I'm Elena Gaffney, and I run a registered in San Jose animal rescue. I've been rescuing animals from San Jose Shelter, for many years. And, just like as my husband is a witness, he just spoke before me, we've always been rescuing cats, kittens, dogs, and they had to stay at our house for some times. Lately, the degradation of services and the degradation even of the simple things within the shelter is really I don't know how to describe it.

I'm gonna leave this with you. This is documents that I get from the shelter, simple record about the animal, which is which we rescued from euthanasia. This is the old record from the shelter from several years back, also from the dog that I've been rescuing. Very simply put document, very clear. Right now, the dog that we've rescued turns out doesn't even have rabies. We already neutered it at the vet, but those records are unreadable. I'm gonna leave this challenge for you so maybe you can understand how important is the records. I'm also gonna leave the records from other shelters that I work with. Very clear records. Systems that the shelter have, they already set up.

They already had this working. Somehow they go and change this information, which confuses everybody. Even Apple Valley shelter marks Spain neutral status. I work with a lot of shelters, and I'm trying to get back to them, trying to initiate conversation. I never hear back. I really wanna help, and I would like shelter also to receive adequate funding. I believe and I wrote comparison among the shelters in our area. They are underfunded. I believe they really need reinforcement, and I believe that a city's duty is to listen to community and to support them with funding. But they need to be transparent.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Christina and I am a dog volunteer and I live in District 6 and I just want to say it was really inspiring to see how the council committee was really engaged in the youth services in San Jose That was really inspiring, so thank you. I myself struggled with adolescence. On, I just want to say I'm very thankful for Tails and Trails, the program to keep going. Also, thank you for the high volume spay and neuter on Sunday. I looked at the numbers and I recognized that the shelter needs more assistance, and I think that I'm asking the city to step up and assist the shelter.

This is a huge problem. It's beyond the current leadership's ability to manage. I looked at the database and there is an average of 59 puppies every month going into the shelter at the intake, 29 of these are six months or younger, issue, so I'm proposing an ordinance today to have stricter laws on illegal breeding and the ownership of dogs under four months old. Currently San Jose allows ownership of any amount or three dogs, but it only relates to three adult dogs. So I think it's really important and these laws are nothing if we do not have them enforced.

I have examples in all of your folders. We need enforcement of these laws and stricter laws. I just need one council member to support me for this proposed ordinance. So please support The shelter needs help and they're drowning. Thank

you. Back to the committee.

Okay. First off, I just want to start out by thanking and acknowledging the important work done by the animal care and services staff. And of course the deep commitment shown by our community of animal advocates. I think we all share a common goal of wanting to make sure that the outcomes for both animals and residents here are reserved and respected. I don't see my colleagues with their hand raised so I guess I'll start with my comments.

As we review the progress on the audit recommendations, it's important that we maintain an open and transparent dialogue about the challenges and opportunities ahead. Because I don't think anybody is saying that there definitely isn't challenges that our community is facing. The following questions that I'm going to be asking are informed from my conversations with community members, animal activists, as well as staff here at the City of San Jose. They're intended to better understand how current policies and priorities are being shaped and how we can all work together, all of us work together to ensure that we are strengthening our core services, ensuring accountability from our end and move towards more sustainable and prevention based solutions. So I have some questions first about intake policies and capacity.

So I wanted to ask what is the current status of the cat population at the shelter and why are we seeing fewer cats being seen on the adoption floor?

There's a slide I had him take a snapshot from was it yesterday? Guess, or this morning. That's okay. Bear with me. This is just all the auto recommendations listed by name.

Apparently, I put too many transitions into the slides, so I apologize for that. Positions. And here's the population. So at present, there's 386 animals in the building. In the foster program, there's 965.

So there are also San Jose owned animals outside. So we look at this this population as a whole, not just in the building. So cats and kittens, there is approximately two ten cats and kittens in there. That's as of whenever we took the snapshot. I just heard beforehand that one of their transfer partners took 20 kittens just this morning. So these things change all the time. I list housing capacity. Those are the numbers that were in the audit. So just for transparency, 171 for dogs, 315 for cats with no portal, and that's a conversation point of conversation that we're exploring what that opportunity does. And then 24 others.

So we're completely full on others. We're about 20 shy on dogs and that could change this afternoon. We could be completely full this afternoon. Depends on what comes into the field or what comes over the counter. These things fluctuate a lot.

And that's why I mean if you just look at the number of dogs, there's three forty five outside of the building that we still own. And many of them are lined up for adoption and many are are just for standard foster to help us support the animal in an appropriate place to care for them. Now the question is the cats, and then then I'd like to have Kiska and doctor Kather talk about the intake and how we're not trying to control this right I don't know if it's the right word, and I know my the words that I say on these things are parsed a bunch, this is meant for as we go through to implement the guidelines and what's in the recommendations, we are trying to figure out how to exactly meter in the number of animals so that we stay under a healthy population so we can maintain the health and care of the animals and also the staff. The staff that has to care for these animals is also I mean, between the two of them. We got to unsustainable numbers in the last couple years in the building, and it's unhealthy for the animals and it's unhealthy for the people caring for them.

The stress level is very high on both sides. And so we're trying to keep the both stress levels down and have and so the problem is this is a snapshot. Tomorrow, it's gonna be a different one. So we see how many adoptable cats. And I a quick slide on that in terms of where are all the cats? That's a great question. And so we have a slide on that and I'd Doctor. Kiska and Doctor. Kato talk about just the intake policy and the strategy.

Thank you. I've had it struggling with a little tickle in my throat. We are as Matt referenced attempting to really work with the community. We want know that the best thing for these animals are to not be in the shelter. So kind of our first line of defense when the community comes in is like we are pretty full and how engaged in the conversation.

Do they have any capacity to be able to hang on to this animal? And if so, then we'll provide them resources as well as giving them information so that when let's say for neonate kittens and for instance, and that was one of specifically an audit recommendation is that we needed to try to divert as many kittens from coming into the shelter as possible. Give them resources so that when the kittens are of age that they can schedule an appointment and have them be spayed and neutered. Right now, the makeup of these animals include 50 neonate kittens that are in the nursery. So these are super labor intensive and we want to do everything that we can to limit the numbers that are coming through And Matt will talk about where the cats, I will also say that historically this is the lowest sometimes the lowest population that you'll have before the kittens really start returning from foster care and are old enough to be spayed and neutered in adoption.

I've often thought in my many years way too many to mention in animal welfare at this time of the year, if only we had done this, could we have helped more because it is always historically a low time of the year in terms of the population and we're really trying to use the resources that we have for those that need them the most. A dramatic thing happened this year is that our length of stay for cats has gone down significantly. We've gone from a fourteen day length of stay to a six days length of stay. So that's really increased or decreased how long that they're staying in the shelter disease. So the audit recommendations that we have implemented, I'm seeing some positive results on.

I think one thing to add is the physical capacity. So we're still working with IT cats, especially kittens, are a unique parameter that's difficult to track your physical capacity because litter sizes vary. So you can say, we have the capacity for this select number of kittens, but it's really going back to the humane housing that we have for So we, with the audit and listening to industry standards that has actually been a standard for probably more than a decade is it is considered not a not a recommendation or a guideline, but it is unacceptable to house a cat in anything less than eight square feet of floor space. Unacceptable. So we are sticking to that.

That does drastically reduce the physical amount of kittens and cats that we can humanely house at a time, but like Kiska said, we're seeing that shorter length of stay. We're seeing less disease. We're seeing these cats are significantly less stressed. Even the ferals, I've had several comments as we walk through, they're stretched out. They can finally stretch out from tail to nose, more relaxed, healthier, that way that we can move move them faster. And on the flip side, then you're able to help more cats. I know it's a struggle for some people to accept that, but we're always gonna go with what our industry standards with experts in shelter medicine fields. Everybody has opinions, but we're going to follow the industry standards of professionals.

Were you going to say something?

Just one quick snapshot on where are the cats. So the adoptable cats is another question that was both brought up here and many commenters and emails to us. And so I had because we look, just go take a selection of a bunch of different shelters and other operations on the same day compared to ours. How are we doing? Are we less, more?

Because, again, we are trying to, as we implement these audit recommendations and taking it back to that conversation, we're trying to dial in our operations so we're in line and doing as much as we can for as many animals as we can as healthy and safe for both the animals and the people caring for them, knowing that it probably cannot be enough of the demand. But so just a quick snapshot. This is just this is just animal counts, and we can talk about those later. So just on the same day on 05/01, here's the snapshot of number of adoptable cats in inventory. Just, again, not picking all at the same time.

She went through all the different places. This is all that was available. And this changes a bunch. I mean, even like HSSV, they just took 20 cats from us today. And so the kittens, so when they get mature enough or are adoptable, whether they're I mean, so these things will fluctuate for them. They fluctuate for us. This is all the public available data. At that time when we took the snapshot, we had 22. Today, I think we had twelve in the morning. It's probably different now. And so these numbers fluctuate all the time. So this is the number of available adoptable cats on five one at a particular time of day.

So out of the the number from the original slide where I was looking at

Oh, the population.

At the population of cats in the shelter, only 22 of those 210 or so cats are adoptable.

That was so that picture was from last week. But talk about about this makeup of cats and kittens and why not all of those are adoptable adoption candidates or adoption available now.

So as Kiska said, and I'm sure that's changed in the last two hours since we've been here, some of those kittens are neonates. So those are bottle babies. So those are anywhere from a day to under four weeks of age. So, those still need at least one to two months before they're even considered for surgery weight. They do count as they're in our facility. Also have kittens that what we call transitional. So, these are ones that are starting to self feed, but they're not at a pound and a half. And this is where our lovely transfer partner HSSV came today to pull. And they were looking and I was looking through the inventory today and I was like oh no our transitional ward is full. All the double compartments were filled with litters.

So we directed them like this is really where we need you to pull if you have the capacity because they're going to keep coming today. We're going to keep getting kittens that are a pound one point two, just need a little time to grow. So a lot of those kittens are ones that are not at surgery weight. A lot of the cats are RTF cats. So we plug them in every single day, do their surgery, then put them on. The majority of these are actually RP pickups. So the RPs are the colony managers. And so they're welcome to come and pick up the cat and they express interest that they will pick up the cat. So you take the snapshot that could be fixed by tomorrow. A lot of those are going to leave but we'll get new ones in to continue the process.

Okay. Thank you. While we're on the topic of cats, I know that you had mentioned the industry standard, right, is that cats are safer or in a better condition when they are being fostered than if when they are inside the shelter. We hear a lot of advocates here who are saying that they're concerned that if they're out of the shelter that that may impact their ability to be adopted. Is that true? Are cats still after being fostered, can they still be adopted or is that you know especially the two forty two that are standard and not fostered to adopt, is that doing anything to prevent them from finding a family?

That's a great question and we right now or right before this meeting started I looked and I believe we had 19 available cats and four of them were in foster care. So we do make them available for the public to be able to see if the foster is just doing a standard foster, they don't plan on adopting. So we also are working to be just as thinking outside of the box as much as possible with some of our special needs cats and can we like arrange a Zoom for somebody that's fostering an FIV cat for instance and to be able to do an introduction with the new adopter. So we will make them also available. So if you go on to Pet Compass, you'll see if they're in a kennel or if they're currently in foster homes.

On average, how long is the foster process for the standard foster?

We've recently put some parameters around that. I believe it's sixty days, Doctor. Kather.

Okay. And after that sixty days what happens?

We check-in with them and say, hey, what do you need? Do you want to adopt the animal? If not, let's schedule a time to bring them in and put them up for adoption.

Okay. All right. Now, still on topic of cats, in regards to accepting stray cats found in the public, if intake is limited to only sick or injured animals, what support is available to community members who find healthy stray cats or dogs?

We see what their capacity is. Can they give us I can't hold on to this animal. Could you give us a night? Could you give us a couple of days? We really try to see what the sweet spots so to speak is because especially for cats, very, very few cats ever get redeemed at the shelter.

It was brought up before about people can't find their lost pets. In San Jose, we have about a 40% redemption rate for dogs. So for all the dogs that come in stray, forty percent of them will go home. For cats, it's only two percent. And so there is the National Animal Control Association has a very poignant position statement that it is not it's a misuse of resources to indiscriminately pick up cats, stray friendly cats except for the purpose of spay neuter return and that cats are 10 to 50 times more likely to get reunited with their owners by being left in the area not being brought to the shelter.

So we try to give them as many resources as we can. We won't I assure you and I've spoken to staff, nobody at our staff would has said that give it take it down to PetSmart. They're like, we absolutely would not do that. We give resources and if somebody says, I absolutely can't. Well, that's how that's why we buffer a little bit of space, right?

For truly the ones that need it the most. That's what the shelter is for, right? The ones that absolutely need it. And we also have to allow some space for our field officers, right? We have had many cases just this year of hoarding cases, neglect and for the officers this was a big strain on them because they're like last year I have probably should seize these six dogs, where are they going to go at the shelter? And we need to make sure that we can accept those that are the most in need.

Thank you for that. And I've also heard about, I think I had my staff respond to a next door post there. Somebody said that a dog was chained in front of a donut shop in my district and sent my staff there and they said that somebody called Animal Services and they said that they couldn't pick them up. Don't know I don't know if that's true or not, but I have I I acknowledge that I have seen Nexstar pose. I know that it's frustrating and so

Yeah. In that particular instance, we had an officer multiple times to that location and check-in with the owner of the donut shop and could not ever get the two with the officer and the animal being in there in the same place. And we've tried to we have that that donut shop owner has our guys' numbers to give a call directly so that we can if that incident happens again. So you know it's hard to say like I called and then nobody answered. Yeah. It's really hard to chase those things down, but we certainly sent people up to that location to deal with that directly.

In the same line, are animals that are turned away, are they being tracked or at least documented?

We do have instructions for the staff to log when animals are turned away. I can't say that that happens explicitly every single time. A lot of times people come to the door asking for resources, but I check-in, we check-in with them on a daily basis. I can look and see on the log that they are logging animals that have been redirected. So I would say for the most part from what I can see, yes, we are tracking those that we redirect, but the vast majority of them we are accepting.

Okay. So, all right, that's good to know. And then I know that the website discourages the public from bringing in healthy cats and healthy dogs. Looking at the housing capacity here and it looks like based off of the numbers, at least for the cats, there is capacity. You know, 100 spaces give or take. Is there what is the strategic reason for the discouragement of new animals coming if there is some kennel space?

I'll let them answer the the entrance. Just for clarity, the 315 cat kennel cat cages is when there's no portals open. So when we open the portals, that almost cuts it in half in terms of actual cages that animals can be in. And so that's where it's a little bit deceiving, but I didn't want to change any of the numbers so that there's any confusion that I'm not three fifteen cages with the portals open, it goes almost to half so that the animal could be in both sides in terms of the actual housing of the animal. Just just for clarity.

That makes sense.

And then I certainly have staff answer answer your follow-up question to that of what we're doing. If healthy animals come in, if we have capacity, what we think about it. Would you like answers to that?

Please.

Jessica, would you answer that please?

It's a balancing act, right? We're looking at also what we're anticipating potentially getting. Right now when I looked historically the May is usually the peak of the most number of animals that we're going to take in any given week. So we want to again be able to be responsive, be able to take in those that are the most needing of the shelter. If it's a healthy friendly animal and this is again like Doctor.

Cather said industry standards, the best thing that we can do and what we do is refer them to some spay neuter resources, refer them of how they can get an appointment with San Jose and other organizations that are providing TNR because that's what the cats need. They need to get fixed. They don't need to stay at the shelter.

Okay. Well, thank you for that. I'm gonna let my my the vice chair comment. I do have some other questions, but I don't wanna, I guess, capitalize on the entire meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, chair. Thank you to the speakers and the recommendation. I with some of these recommendation, can you take a look at it and perhaps come back with the pros and cons and unintended consequences? See if we can just look at the viability of some of those recommendations.

Well, I think it's fair to say that, in the process of the audit, the auditor's office was very engaging with us. And so if there was something that was really askew like we shouldn't do that or there's some medical reason that their recommendation was untenable, we would have said so during that audit and they would have taken that into consideration. And in December, we accepted these recommendations and wholeheartedly are trying to implement them. There will be impacts from them. And once we implement it, that's just the starting point.

And then we have to track it over time. We have to so we're trying to put these things in not just so I can get it so that the auditor's office says checkbox, you're done. It's what is sustainable that we can have the capacity, contracts, money, and everything else to implement and and sustain this type of exercise. And so it we've accepted the recommendations. There's nothing that we think is there will we think that is untenable.

It'll certainly be hard, but we would have said at the time we do not accept these recommendations or we had an issue with them. We would have said it then. And so our mission is to get them done and then try to sustain it. There will definitely be impacts that we're trying to figure out how to best that's why some of these things over a year, like we're looking at TNR, it's like we could have implemented something in like January and then what happened? But we wanted to like make sure and meter it out or even at capacity, make sure move things along over the year and really kind of get it nuanced in as opposed to just try to get a checkbox that it's done to kind of make sure we get it right so that it's sustainable going forward. That makes sense?

Yes. Thank you. Our office continue to hear from community members and peripheral agency, stating that they have a difficult time working with ACS. To that end, what role does, what roles does the public, communication play in ACS accountable for implementing an audit recommendation?

Two things. One, we have these open forums here while we're presenting our progress as we go along. There is, as far as I know, none of the other dozens of audits that are open have an open forum that as the progress payment of how we got how we're going along. I'm not aware of any other forum that any of the audits are being briefed. And so we have these open forums here. And so that's one place. There is mention that the community action committee has not been started. That is true. That is 100% my fault. Period.

I had some family emergencies at the beginning of the year. It rocked all of my priorities in terms of getting things done. It will be done, and the work that was intended to be done, I believe we still have capacity to get that done still by December. And so I just beg people's patience a bit, but I know that it is something that is on my plate to achieve and it will be achieved as far as I can tell.

Thank you. I have a question for doctor Kather. In your professional opinion, comparing to private practice, on a private practice, how many cats and dogs they can neuter in a day?

In private practice, most veterinarians are scheduled, if they're scheduled on surgery, do about four to five surgeries per day.

And, how many are you doing per day?

We average 20 to 30. The other difference in private practice is that often that vet is assigned that their entire shift is for surgery. Us at SJAX, our surgeries are in the mornings. Even if you're on surgery, if you're in the back clinic where the officers are, you're also getting interrupted with hit by cars and emergencies, so you have to kind of pause. So, doing that many surgeries, we do that in a period of about five hours, five to six hours, and then the rest of the shift is spent doing exams, emergency triage on intake animals, foster appointments, and anything anything else that comes in the door that needs a vet to look at it.

And how many vets do we have at the ACS?

Including myself, we still are short one full time vet. We've had an open recruitment for a year. We had an excellent applicant, unfortunately she just told us that she took a position elsewhere. We have another applicant that we're fast tracking to interview. So, I'm hoping that we can secure that vacancy with a quality candidate that's going to stay and help grow our team.

The one shortage that we do have however is registered veterinary technicians. So, in order to run any high quality, high volume spay neuter clinic at a minimum, you need one registered vet tech, one DVM and one to two vet assists. We currently have one full time RVT and one voluntary reduced work week RVT on our roster. We have three that are in the works of moving towards taking their test, but until we can get more RVTs, that's really limiting our ability to do more surgeries in the front clinic.

Have three vets, just for clarity. We have three vets with one vacancy including Doctor. Kather.

Including.

You didn't mention number three. Yes, just for clarity.

Do you think the reason sometimes we have recruitment problem is our vet is underpay comparing to private practice?

Comparing us to other shelters, we do have a decent wage. However, doing per diem or relief work, vets can make a lot more. They can make up to $1,215,100 dollars per shift. You have to weigh in balance that then they're an independent contractor with taxes, but it's a little more attractive when they have the schedule flexibility. But, shelter medicine, as I've mentioned in December, is a very, very difficult aspect of veterinary medicine. It's very challenging. It's very draining, and so it's a small niche that there's not as many vets that are interested in this line of work.

With all the audit recommendation, and and I I know that there there's no such thing as a perfect world. There's always be problems within the ACS or even the outside adoption and so on. How do we accomplish those recommendations in order to bring our performance standard to a higher level? Level.

How do we achieve the particular audit With diligence and focus. Just like any improvement, we need to have the practice and mechanism to do it. We have the intention to do it. We have sort of reorganized the groups a little bit around the intention. They have specific meeting and tasks and have divided it amongst the groups. That's how you see the multicolor of the lines of who's doing what. So it's not singly strung on a single person, but it's spread out over the whole organization. And it's doing it with intention so we can schedule things out and we're focused on particular metrics and focusing on those March, June and December timelines. And it's just with a lot of intention that we have to intentionally make time for it.

Thank you. Just recently, my, my staff found a dog. And, she she took her time and went around the neighborhood and and, you know, put out the flyers and and so on. It And was lucky enough within a day, we we found the owner. So that's I just wanna end it on a at least a a good note. But, yes, there there's always room for improvement, I hope we'll we'll continue to to help our animal, both cats and dogs, and and all the other one as well. And I, I move to accept your report.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Thank you. I wanted to know, council member Dewan, if you would be willing to include in your motion and ask for a direct a direction to the to staff to report on their ability to increase TNR and neutering capacity at the shelter.

Yes. I'll agree to include that.

We have an MBA we're producing on TNR specifically, so perhaps I could address it there as opposed to an additional ask. That would be my request. We have an MBA we're working on right now about TNR, and we could could include it there if that's what you'd like.

It'll be included in the MBA, but it's important to have that discussion in a forum like this.

Okay. At what point would you like to have that discussion?

When I think the next presentation is gonna be September.

December.

Oh, December.

We have our annual so the next time that will be before you is in December. The audit will so the auditor will be reporting to the full council about their all of their open audit recommendations. And so these will be included in that report out then. We'll have an MBA in the next couple of weeks that's produced talking about TNR and we could talk about our production towards it and the efforts we're putting to it and what's included in the budget and perhaps what gaps there are still remaining. And then December we'll talk about our actual production. So our actual year end numbers are cut off at the June, then we do a bunch of auditing, make sure it's all cleaned up and then we report out here in December.

I'm reluctant to wait until December because that's a long time. Angel? So

perhaps we could start with the NBA because I think that NBA is gonna have a lot of good information and it's also gonna, we're proposing to increase Funding for spay neuter so I think that's probably the most important pieces you know is really increasing. You know. Funding available for TNR spay neuter. On. Our report is in December perhaps what we could do is.

Highlight that. Place a greater focus on it for that December report, and what we could do is perhaps offline, this is something that I'm monitoring on a regular basis. We see anything maybe slowing down perhaps we always agendize this on one of the NSC meetings. But I think probably the cleanest thing to do is to, you know, go forward with the NBA and then really accentuate, the spayed and neutered TNR report in the the December report out.

Only that's seven months from now. That's only

Council member, maybe I'm sorry. Chair, maybe we'll have the MBA out where you could see if that satisfies the interest and information you need, and perhaps we could work with the auditor's office who is probably watching and we we're engaged. I talk with Joe about our audit plus our other ones about every month and we could see do we need to do something enhanced when he's reporting out at his report out in September to the full council. Is that something that's Okay. Medical. And then you can say that's not early enough, it's not enough, come back to here in October or something like that. Then you still have opportunities through Angel to modify what the work plan is for this committee. Is that because we have multiple opportunities that you can further Yeah.

It moves too slow, you have my word that I'll include it in the September NSC work plan. Okay.

Fantastic. I I I think it's important that we go with the process, get the MBA, and then you can show at least, you know, in September what is the result with the the MBA infusion of funding to TNR. Okay. So we'll keep the the approval as is.

Alright. Thank you so much. Council member Condellis.

Thank you, chair. And and my apologies. I I I did want to ask two two quick questions. One was pertaining to, and apologies if my colleagues have already asked, but one of the inquiries that I received is there's some questions around the community work group that was supposed to be stood up, and I'm sure somebody's asked that.

They didn't, but I answered it anyways.

Okay. So that hopefully, we'll have one coming up soon.

It's 100% my fault.

Oh.

And I had some massive family issues going on at the beginning of the year that took reprioritized all of my stuff. And so it is on my plate to achieve and it will be achieved with the work plan items also to be achieved by December as well.

Okay. I know. I I I know and I I understand especially, you know, life life happens. I I I completely understand that. And but I hope, know, that's a critical piece and an important piece especially for me with regards to bringing folks in the room who are very very passionate rightfully so for for for our our our animals. And and I guess the next question is with I know the the the number we're gonna try to increase our capacity and you're very, very realistic in our in the actual number of appointments for slots for for for spay and neutering. Right? I I think it was it's five appointments that we're starting off. Correct?

Yes. June. Five a day. Five a five every Tuesday for those weeks.

A week. Uh-huh.

Make sure you fill all the appointments, and then can we achieve more in July and then more in August. Continue to evaluate if there's more capacity and that's a commitment. Just keep adding to it and then it is not adequate. That's 100% true. But get to the point of success with those and say where else can we add them and then is their appetite, is it clear enough, can we get appointments that are actually there and then filled. And so it's a build the machine back so that all the systems are working so that you have appointments available and people are there. In the meantime, we'll also be dealing with all of the other appointments that are going throughout and dealing and caring for all the animals in our care as well.

And then, I mean I understand that and I'm going look forward to MBA that's gonna hopefully provide some color to the fact a good portion of this is due to adequate funding or due to lack of vets that we may or may not have because of how competitive the market is or the lack of actual qualified professionals to be able to undertake this. And so I look forward to that Matt. And I guess for the sake of of efficiency, I you know, my staff sent me a a few notes while I was gone. But, you know, this is something that, you know, I I personally have have been in touch with. And, you know, I've been I've been to ACS and I've I've taken I've taken the tours and and, you know, we are paying attention.

And and I know you're you're not taking this slightly from the the chart and and how aggressive you've you are with with regards to the to the audit and and pushing the envelope to make sure that we do get as many of those targets done and accomplished by December year. So, no thank you.

Alright. Thank you so much. Appreciate all the questions. Thank you to the public. Thank you to the staff. Let's go for a vote. Alright, that's unanimous. I believe that is all of our items today. Do we have any comments for open forum?

No public comment.

All right. The meeting is adjourned.