Neighborhood Services and Education Committee (nse) - Regular Meeting

Start on time and end on time. Now calling to order the Neighborhood and Services and Education Committee meeting of March 13. Before we begin, just want to remind the committee members and members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings. This includes only commenting on the specific agenda item and addressing the entire body. Public speakers will not engage in a conversation with the chair, council members, or staff.

All members of the committee, staff, and the public are expected to refrain from abuse of language, failure to comply with the code of conduct which will disturb, disrupt, or impede the orderly conduct, will result in removal from the meeting. Now if I can please ask our city clerk to call roll.

Campos? Present. Candelas?

Here.

Cohen? Vice chair Duan? Here. And chair Ortiz?

Present. Thank you so much. Great. I I see we do not have a consent calendar, so we are gonna go with, item d, reports to the committee. One family camp status report, and that is a fifteen minute presentation from Avi Yodam, deputy director.

Thank you, chair. I'll actually turn it over to division manager, Schannenheimer.

Good afternoon, chair and council members. Thank you for having us here today for the San Jose Family Camp update report. I'm Shannonheimer, division manager for parks with our destination events and sports unit. With me today are Troy Treaty, parks manager for sports and family camp, and Amber Stegner, our parks and recreation facility supervisor for family camp. Family camp is a magical place where our community can connect to nature and each other.

It is special because of the natural environment that it's located in and because of the programs and experience that family camp can uniquely offer in a city operated facility. I'll hand the mic over to Amber now who worked so hard to bring our community up to camp to experience magic it has to offer.

Family camp at Yosemite is a 51.2 acre site located near Yosemite National Park situated on the federal land and leased The US for service to the city of San Jose. It consists of 65 wood framed canvas covered structures along the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne River. It has an operating history of over fifty years, and family camp has an impressive following of lifelong campers that are dedicated in their support to camp. A trip to Family Camp is often the very first wilderness experience for many San Jose families. And for some residents, Family Camp may be their first experience outside of the city of San Jose.

This park creates an opportunity to connect to each other, disconnect from our busy lives and technology, and deepen our most treasured relationships through fun and relaxation in the serene beauty of the Sierra Nevada. Operating from April to October, including our pre and post season events, camp offers a wide variety of recreational opportunities to enjoy, including swimming, one of a kind art, archery, hiking, great meals in the dining hall, night hikes, and campfire programs. Family camp saw a notable increase in programming and results in 2024. We hired 62% more counselors, opened 33% more tents for reservations, and had 15% more operating days than in 2023. This resulted in 28% more guests during the summer season.

In 2024, Family Camp served 3,624 guests. The summer season hosted 2,967 campers of whom 67% were residents of San Jose. 657 guests attended the pre and post season events and 98% of them were residents of San Jose. In May 2022, the state of California awarded the Department of Parks and Recreation and Neighborhood Services two outdoor equity grants totaling $931,000, and this established the outdoor equity programs Washington and Poka Way neighborhoods with local nature education programming and free trips to family camp. In 2023, family camp staff implemented the first year of programming, and in 2024, staff continued to build on the success of this program.

263 residents participated in four trips to family camp that included transportation, a two night stay, camping materials, meals, activities, and a visit to Yosemite National Park with bilingual staff. A 190 residents participated in 12 nature activities in San Jose where they learned about careers in the outdoors, camping basics, access to parks, and their own environmental impact in English and Spanish. 43 residents visited Alum Rock State Park I'm sorry, Alum Rock Park for a nature hike and picnic that included transportation, and 59 residents visited Natural Bridges State Beach where they enjoyed overwintering monarchs, tide pools, and the beach. Family Camp's campership program provides residents who qualify for public assistant programs with 50% off their stay for up to four nights. In 2024, a 191 residents participated in campership programs.

This included a 109 residents who received free camping through a partnership between Family Camp and Project Hope for families not being served by the outdoor equity grant. In total, campership programs represent about 6.5% of our regular summer season guest attendance in 2024. Access and equity programming accounted for 16% of our total guests when combining participants from the outdoor equity grant, youth intervention services, and the campership program. These initiatives showcase a commitment to the equity and access that acknowledges and addresses the unique needs and barriers faced by various communities to experience nature. Family camp is doing more than just providing outdoor experiences.

It is cultivating a community dedicated to stewardship of the natural environment and strengthening residents connection to each other and their community. These maps show the zip codes of San Jose residents who attended family camp during our regular summer season, and they also show those that received campership funding to stay at family camp. They do not include outdoor equity participants or pre or post season guests. Twenty twenty four was not without its challenges. Hiring enough stipend staff for this short summer season at family camp is always a challenge.

Without enough staff, it impacts camp's ability to have full occupancy and provide support to events during the pre and post season. Previous winter storms damaged 17 tents and took them offline during the season. And in 2025, we will be closed for the regular summer season due to damage caused by the river flooding in 2019. After years of careful internal planning and working with external agencies, the city of San Jose has secured funding, permits, contractors needed to update camp's amenities, including renovations to the historic pool and playground area and make it accessible. Due to the scope of this work, especially construction within the River Channel, the project must be completed in the summer and 2025.

This was shared recently in a memo to council. The closure of family camp will allow staff the opportunity for additional improvement projects such as native plant beautification, fire fuel reduction projects, tent improvement projects, revamping the recreation and swimming and water play programs, dining hall, siding replacements, deck repairs, winterization efficiency improvements, and wastewater treatment pond and spray field improvements. Family camp continues to increase its social media presence to help market camp, outdoor equity events, and advertise counselor jobs. In addition, in 2024, we increased marketing for family camp within the San Jose community by tabling at events and collaborating with community based organizations to increase awareness of the opportunities that camp provides. Maintaining camp is much like caring for a small village and is only accomplished through a collaborative work with our partners seen here.

Opening and closing camp and ongoing facilities maintenance projects take a huge amount of time and skill. The PRNS capital improvement team and our teammates within park maintenance department are the reason that camp can open to the public each year. Family camp has been pleased to partner with departments Project Hope and Youth Intervention Services to create opportunities for San Jose's families and underserved vulnerable youth to experience camping and nature based programming. Friends of Family Camp contributed over twelve hundred hours towards park beautification and programming support. Without the help from our partners, Family Camp operations would not be possible.

We look forward to a productive 2025 season developing new programs and updating facilities to be ready to open for guests in 2026 with an improved customer experience. We request that the committee accept our status report and are available to answer any questions. Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for your your informative presentation. I wanted to see if Cindy Clark had any individuals for comment.

Yes. We had five speaker cards. Can the following speakers in no particular order please sit in the front row marked reserved in blue. The first available speaker can walk up to the podium. You will each have two minutes to speak. My Michelle Bo, Ralph, Tom, this card is blank, and then Ken. Did you submit a speaker card for this item? Yes.

Just sit in the

front row, mark reserved. And then whoever's ready can go first to the podium.

Up here, sir.

Yeah.

Whoever gets to the mic first

There's can no particular order.

Please, sir. Please come down here to the microphone. Thank you.

So the name is Ralph Ochapiti. I'm from Morgan Hill.

One moment. When you get to the mic, please, sir.

Okay. Sorry. I'm from Morgan Hill, and you're probably saying, what the hell is he doing here? Here's my plaque for mayor Sam. Okay?

Put in thirty years as a volunteer from mayor McHenry on down. Mayor Reed sat with him and convinced him to open the camp leased to five years when PRNS said, we don't want any part of it. I'm here to hopefully get you folks invested into camp, promote it in your districts. We used to raise money through the Silicon Valley companies to get ride sharing to bring those camperships up to camp so they could enjoy the camping experience. This is something priority list.

And I wanna also mention city of Berkeley. Camp has been burnt down. They're up and running. They're waitlisted. If you're promoted properly, the city has the staff and the energy to make camp successful. And if you come up, I'll even drive you up there so you can look around and see what it's all about. And please don't let any outside influences affect the way the city runs this camp. It's a perfect spot for families. If you have any questions of me, please I'll do my best to answer.

Thank you.

That's it. Okay.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon committee members. My name is Ken Brennan. I'm on the Parks and Rec Commission for District 10, but today I'm speaking on behalf of myself. Since 1968, sounds a family camp, which city is leased from the Forest Service has been a great tradition for residents of Sounds they'd experience outdoors in a fun remote camp environment. It's a great place and should continue to exist.

However, as a city we need to ask ourselves what do we think the value proposition is of having the city operate this camp versus turn it over to a more efficient camp operator to continue its legacy. The city struggles to operate this camp. Over the last ten years we've seen very poor financial performance with between 6,000,000 to $10,000,000 of subsidies, low occupancy, poor staff recruiting outcomes, a lack of understanding of the demographics that we serve, facilities in disrepair with huge maintenance backlog. It's experienced routine and costly natural disasters like flooding and fire and never is able to fully recover. The camp has become a financial albatross around our residents collective necks.

We need to stop convincing ourselves that the city will ever be able to run this camp efficiently for the benefit of our residents. Camper demographics, there's a lot of vague and incorrect assumptions about how this camp enables underserved communities to experience the outdoors at low cost. The facts say something different. The proportion of campers are from underserved communities or an extremely small percentage of the campers. Most of this subsidy that we give is to out of city residents and more affluent zip codes.

So I would estimate that 80% of the subsidy goes to people who have no need for a subsidy to go outdoors. What this program does is consume millions of dollars of city resources without even understanding who it benefits, and whether the spending is in line with our values. On behalf of our residents, calling for leadership on this issue from the council and recommend that the council ask PRNS staff to develop options to transfer operations of family camp.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is Tom Bonteck. I'm a former president of the Friends of San Jose Family Camp. I received we the Friends of Family Camp received this plaque for the fifty years of being the longest volunteer group in the city of San Jose. I'm here to today to, basically, to remind the city council members of the twenty year lease agreement, they they instructed the Parks and Recreation Department to partner with the Friends of San Jose Family Camp.

And I'd like to advise the the city council to instruct the Parks and Recreation Department to honor the commitment to the Friends of Family Camp by returning the Friends Shed back to the Friends Friends to use as previously Friends Shed was built in the nineties by the past president of the Friends, Jim Gower, used by volunteer tradesmen, plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, was a heartbeat and lifeblood of the Friends of Family Camp, and it was built for the Friends by the Friends. The Friend Shed was lost in the rimfire, burned completely to the ground. We were devastated, absolutely devastated. Lost all contents and were never reimbursed or lost properly. The Friends were never reimbursed by the city.

The Parks and Recreation Department needs to honor their commitment as partners and return the Friend Shed to the Friends to be used as prior to the Rim Fire. We were promised by acting director Art Capagon that the Friend Shed would be returned and be used as previously. However, I understand the Friends no longer allowed to build up a camp, I don't know why. But we should I I'm from the old school Friends, and I'd like to see it return to the way it was. And that's why I'm promoting the Friend Shed to bring up tradesmen, carpenters, the way we built camp.

We built those tents. We built the camp. We did the projects. We brought in Terralight on on Easter Sunday to put a new a new floor in the kitchen that nobody else could do, And we did it. And I want that back, but I understand Parks and Recreation has their hands tied.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. Steve Lowesbury, resident of, San Jose here. I've been a volunteer member of camp and attendee of camp since 2000, about half the time that some of my esteemed colleagues have been here. I'd like to speak about the value. First, wanna compliment the city on the promotion, especially through Facebook, over this last year.

I've seen a tremendous uptick in postings that have been invaluable. I also worked for several other nonprofits and gone out to community centers where I have personally put out brochures for a number of these nonprofits I work for, and there have not been in the community centers, the four or five that I regularly visit here in the city of San Jose that have represented family camp, which has been a little bit disappointing, which prior to the pandemic and immediately after the pandemic, which when there was such a downturn and camp was closed, we did a lot of promotion. The friends did a lot of promotion by making our own brochures and putting brochures out for the city. I think that would be a tremendous value especially if we're gonna close this this season. In light of the closure, it's important to revisit the costs.

I think the costs that have been added for the daily per person tent cost has been very taxing. I'm not sure the final numbers of who attended. I see numbers, but not percentages that were filled. And I think it's important to reflect on how we have set aside some of those monies or supposedly set aside those monies for capital improvements, mainly the dining hall, not just improvements because of the flood or the fires or the movement of the lumber that's fallen, but especially in light of what the overall, what is the five year, what is the ten year? There was a master program, a master plan developed several years ago.

It has not been revisited the accounting for those monies. I'm looking for the accounting and the transparency of monies of.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. I'm Michelle Bowe, the current president of Friends and Sam's and Family Camp, and I'm here just to support the Sam's and Parks and Recs department to maintain operating this facility for everybody. We at fam friends have been around since '74, like like we built the tents. In '85, we became a nonprofit. We're made up of volunteers from San Jose as well as out of San Jose. Myself, I was born in San Jose, and I've lived in San Jose for a while, but now I moved out. So now I'm nonresident, but I still support San Jose family camp because I went there with my family, with the kids, and it was a reunion. It was fun. It was great. And our plan for friends is to help and still support.

We've been really impressed with the man with Amber's addition of the equity program that came, and we were there helping those families get accustomed and get in met them at 09:00 at night and brought them to their tents. The things we do now at camp, we don't do construction anymore, but we do a lot of painting. We make sure the the women's bathroom decorations are or the I don't know. The signs you can read the signs. We paint those. We paint we put the floor in in the Tuolumne room. We recently painted outside of the kitchen after they had to have a remodel. We did the hand more mural on the doors to the camp store. So we're invested. We love that place, and that's why we have members.

We have over 40 members now. We're gonna do a new March drive to try to recruit more members, but we plan on doing at least three work weekends up there at camp. Even though it's closed, we still wanna support and put in our hours. Like Amber said, we had over twelve hundred hours that we put in a hard sweat. And we come from down here, and we drive up there, and we enjoy it. We go enjoy doing the work. And then at at the end of the day, we relax. We enjoy the water. We enjoy just nature taking walks. So

Thank you. Back to the committee.

First off, I just wanna thank, members of the public, for coming out and having your voice heard. It's apparent that, we have people very passionate about this camp. Whether you disagree or agree with the way it's being managed right now, I just want you to know as chair, I'm committed to meet with you and learn more about your perspective. And I've already reached out to Angel Rios and we're gonna have a specific meeting about this. So I encourage you to reach out to my office or reach out members of the committee to have discussions about the items that you have raised today.

I do there's a lot of things that was mentioned, know, I think about outreach, about if subsidies are actually reaching the proper residence, transparency, and then comments about the master plan. That's a lot to talk about right now. Think before I move it to my colleague, I just wanted to ask the one statement that kind of caught my eye was whether the subsidies are actually reaching the proper residents. I did see in the slides that you are providing opportunities for Project Hope residents, which I in theory should be residents that these dollars are serving as well as I think there was like 86 other residents that are served specifically from this program. Can you speak to any concern about the subsidy not reaching the proper residents?

All of the scholarship money that we have for campership as well as the outdoor equity partnership through Project Hope are residents of San Jose, specifically from underserved communities. The grant specifically spoke to those two communities and residents being within 1.2 miles of Poka Way in Washington neighborhood. And then the other 109 people that we served for free as part of our partnership came from other Project Hope communities, and so we do have a list of all of those in the report. I think what he was speaking about was the actual cost of camp and that there may be a need to evaluate how much money goes into camp for what we charge people versus what it actually costs to maintain.

Okay. Thank you for that. I look forward to follow-up conversations. I do have some questions but I'm going go to council member Condellis first. Thank you.

Thank you chair. First of all, thank staff for the presentation. I I I you know, the outdoors and just exposing our residents to whether it's Yosemite or just being outside is is something that is critically important not just for mental health or for the physical health of our communities but for our environment. There's multiple reasons why but I am especially thankful for the comments from folks who are here. There's a lot of obviously attention to this given how long it's been in operation in our city.

And so the first question I guess I wanna piggyback on a question from our chair. About five fifty ish residents participated through the equity program, about 18% of the summer participants. That on par with what our targets are? That's just quick back of the envelope math that I did based on the report.

Thank you Councilmember Condellis for that question. That's pretty good back of the envelope math first let me start there. And actually just say this is one of the areas where we're really proud of the work we've put in the last couple years when we went after that state grant and created this program. Actually the start of the city investing in scholarships at Family Camp was not that long ago. Was actually a council member Ortiz's predecessor, council member Crosco who started a D5 trip up to Family Camp. So really from that initial effort ten years to where we are now, we've had a pretty phenomenal growth in how we are really actively reaching out and serving and the partnership with Project Hope. So I would say yes we're meeting our targets and the trajectory has been phenomenal.

No that's great. And I mean even in the presentation one of my was was in the picture and she told me, oh, love it Domingo. It's so fun. Her son's a plan a youth commissioner for for my district. And so I I I appreciate that Avi. And so I guess this dovetails into my next question is, do we have a differential in cost for somebody who does not live in San Jose or is not a San Jose resident as opposed to, you know, somebody outside of the city boundaries?

Thank you. Great question, council member. Yes. We absolutely have a resident rate versus a non resident rate.

What's difference?

I would have to look it up, but I can get that information over

I'll to jump in. It's about $10 a night on average, know give or take. So if resident rate let's say is, and I'm making up numbers for reference $80 a night, currently the non resident rate is about $90 But that's actually as we look to next year, that's one of the items that we've focused in on is how do we create much more clear preferential registration processes for residents. And clearly our mission is to serve San Jose's residents. We're happy for others to come in and fill in the vacancies when we have vacancies in our tents. But the mission is San Jose residents and we want to create the registration process and the pricing to reflect that.

Fantastic. I'm glad I knew you, Seth, would address this somehow. But I mean if we can make that cost differential enough, you know I I lean in on anybody who's not from San Jose charging more. Sorry for my Morgan Hill But but you know I think it's important to to be able to incentivize and and to make it so folks from San Jose you know it it becomes economic incentive basically. Okay so that's thank you for that question.

Then I guess you know part of the concern you know I get the reason why we are closing this year. We're much needed improvements and there's gonna hopefully be more amenities in 2026 when we open up again. That being said, is there something that we're doing in the interim with partnerships to offer, say families who are used to going and make this an annual thing an opportunity to go somewhere else based on partnerships with you know, county parks or based on with other camp types as an alternative. Is staff exploring something to that?

So we will be continuing the outdoor equity services that we've been providing in the city of San Jose starting in the fall with the nature education programming at the community centers. And with that, we will be providing the field trips either to county or state parks such as like we did with natural bridges and in Rock. So they won't have necessarily an opportunity to stay overnight but they will still get access to the outdoors in that way.

Okay. But I guess I was speaking more so like the overnight experience and the camping and the I mean anybody could take a day trip to Lake Cunningham and we call it. Does that make sense?

Council Member, thank you for that question. And I'll just kind of straight answer. We don't have those partnerships in place but County Parks has overnight camping opportunities at Mount Madonna and other locations. We're happy to connect with the County and see if we can establish something if only just awareness of the opportunities that exist.

And

we can help share those with our community users.

Yeah and I guess the question is just to keep staff thinking oh it's close, sorry we're good. But okay what are we doing in the interim or for this summer to not forego this opportunity to just you know let our residents know that hey although this is not happening here are alternatives and here's what we're doing for you. If that makes sense. And so that being said I have no questions and I'll move acceptance of the staff report. Thank

you councilmember for those questions. Councilmember Collin?

Yeah, quick question. What's the I think I came in late, so I probably missed. Maybe there was some information at the beginning. What what's the annual attendance and capacity of the camp?

Excuse me. Great question. Thank you. Capacity can vary based on, available part time staff as well as available tents that are in commission. This last year let me refer back to the memo.

It was 3,600, and I would say that was about a 67% were residents. And

You're saying that was that number 3,600 is the capacity or the attendance?

That's the attendance. The the

the capacity can About two thirds was filled. Is that what you just said?

Two thirds of those residents or two thirds of those attendants were residents of San Jose. Far as capacity, that can vary week to week depending on how many tents we have up or enough

I'm just curious in general what is full most of the time? Are there is there a wait list or is it the opposite where we have a lot of empty space where we could be doing more?

In the past two years we've increased attendance quite a bit, and on the weekends we have been full, where we still have 17 tents offline once we get those repaired, that would increase our weekend capacity. People's, their tendency towards camping and vacations have changed. So mid week we have had a challenge filling our tents and so we're looking at different ways to market and think about incentivizing mid week stays.

I know there are regular attendees who I hear from who you know love the camp and they speak of it's a family tradition. But I'm just I haven't I've maybe I don't look in the right place but I've rarely seen promotion or you know more information for the public about this opportunity that maybe other people are missing. What do we do to promote the camp publicly?

Councilmember I think you're asking, thank you for that question. That is I think the key. What we've shared and what we talked about a bit today is this is a facility that has a cost, lot of that is a fixed cost. And what we kind of see collectively in our data and kind of the anecdote is an awareness gap. People who get up to camp and get go there once have 10, not only I can't speak for 100% of people but most people have a great experience and want to come back.

And I'll say for my own family, my kids devastated about the summer about not being able to come up there. But what we're missing is 999,000 other people in San Jose, right? So we're working with our internal communications team, actually you're going hear from them a little bit, is our plan for next year and how we use this year of closure to really ramp up our presence and awareness. In the past we actually had a small pilot refer a friend discount where somebody who had come up before, if they brought in completely new visitors up to camp, we gave them a little bit of discount. On a small pilot basis we had some success and we're going to think about how we kind of tinker with that this year.

So ultimately we need to get in in front of a lot more people. We're very eager to work with all of you in your offices and your newsletters and the neighborhood associations that we have contact with through the neighborhood empowerment initiatives we have. But ultimately we have to put our name out there a lot more. And something we don't we haven't I guess per se bragged about here, but I will say although it is a trip that's very expensive for many families in our community. When we look in the market of other overnight camping experiences in the vicinity, we are quite affordable. So I think that that's part of the message that we really need to get out there that this is a pretty unique experience.

Yeah I was going say I mean obviously overnight trips are expensive but this is a value compared to most other things you can do and get out in this part of the state and and see something different. It's clear clear from the people who attend and are regular attendees that it's a it's a great experience. So I just wanna make sure I'm just part of the purpose of this conversation today is to expand that opportunity to as many people as possible. But thank you very much.

Council member Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you staff for this presentation. To council member Cohen's point, the first time I heard about Family Camp was when I was looking at jobs at the City of San Jose and I saw a job at Family Camp Yosemite and I thought wow this is really interesting, would it mean to have city staff out in Yosemite doing work for the city. So now in the context of this Presentation I I understand the value and reflect the the comments from. My council colleagues that it's it's an important asset to our city, our residents, and our community, and I really appreciate the commitment to equity because, you know, my experience with the outdoors as a young child was very limited coming from an immigrant household where my parents didn't understand the difference between county park system, state park system, federal and national lands. And so when we got a chance to go camping it was always big base Basin because once my family learned that system, they weren't gonna learn another new system.

So I think it's very important to remember that we have very diverse residents who we are reaching and giving them the opportunity to explore the great outdoors through this program and I'm I'm definitely here to support in any way I can the work that you are all doing to ensure our residents have I had a couple of questions from the report. There was a map on page five of the memo and it was in the PowerPoint slides where we see the city broken up into. Demographics and I'm just curious about what. What these. Yeah what what these jurisdictions are is it zip code based.

Yeah that's that's what we're looking at. Okay. Thank you for for clarifying. I noticed that there are some areas in South San Jose that have zeros and I understand that we have some areas in South San Jose that don't have a lot of people living there, so it's to know that this is zip code based. The other question I had was what are the opportunities to visit the camp during off season? Is this a seasonal opportunity and what what does off season use of the camp look like?

Because we're in the Sierra Nevadas, camp closes in late October. We have to shut down the water and facilities, so we don't open again until late April. And so we normally do an event around stream fishing in April, and then we have weekend rentals for private groups and outdoor equity and youth intervention in May, and then early June when school gets out, that's the start of our regular season for families, and that runs rentals through the September. So, that's the primary time that people can come visit. Thank

you for clarifying that. I look forward to continuing this conversation, and again being supportive in any way I can be. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Thank you colleagues for your questions. As as mentioned, I do have a few questions of my own. First one is, so Yosemite, it's a you know national park. Are we gonna feel like there's gonna be any impact that may due to the federal administration may impact our services that's offered to San Jose residents due to the forestry being cut like so many positions?

Thank you for that question council member. It it's been on my mind, and we've been watching. The the lease that we have is in place with a with a unit that, at this time, hasn't been impacted. It's with the US Forestry Service. Can't predict what's going to be coming next, but at this point, we seem to be moving forward with them as Okay. Before.

So so none of the cuts have impacted Yosemite Park yet?

The the Yosemite proper?

Yeah.

Yes. It has. But we're in just we're outside of the entrance to Yeah. We're outside the entrance.

So it's not like inside the actual park.

Okay. Correct.

Haven't been. That's why I need to take this gentleman up on his offer to to drive up there because like council member Campos had mentioned, I didn't get many time many opportunities as a young person to go up to Yosemite. Unfortunately, it's not really instilled in us about the importance of outdoors. And that's why I think programs like this are so important. I did I was looking at the map that council member Campos had had mentioned. How many how many District 5 residents went to family camp outside of the Project Hope initiative? And is there a general area where a majority of family camp participants come from?

Thank you Chair for those questions. So I don't have a district by district breakdown off the cuff. Kind of looking at the map, I would ballpark it at 50 to 100, but that's just me looking at the map and trying to cluster together the zip codes. So it's Is

there general areas where a lot of the participants come from?

Yeah. On that first map that we show in the report in the presentation definitely a lot of our user base from San Jose comes from what looks like Willow Glen, Cambrian, Almaden.

Some more wealthier areas which I think is what some of the comments came from the public. I guess how much does it cost for I guess a family to afford to go to family camp? Is there a ballpark that you could share?

The weekends are higher rates than the weekdays. So for a resident it's $86 for an adult and $46 for a child and under four it's free. So it just depends on the makeup of your family.

So 86 for the whole weekend for an adult?

No, just for one night. So, but it starts basically they check-in at two and then they have breakfast, so checkout is twelve. So, it's like a twenty four hour period.

Okay. Okay. So, it could cost a couple $100 for the weekend. I guess similar to what it would cost for like a hotel or something like that.

Yes, but it includes three meals plus all of the recreation activities. And so those are the added benefits that you would get from staying at camp.

Okay. Other subsidies, are we trying to identify other subsidies to increase participation? Is there other grants we could look at? Because I'd love it's great that we have so many from you know, Cambrian, Willow Glen, Almaden Valley, but this park should be for everybody. So what what are we what else are we doing on that front?

Thank you, council member, for that question. With the success of the OEG grant and our partnerships with Project Hope, we're concentrated there at the moment, but we'll have this time over the next year to go further, see what opportunities there are with grants, additional additional grants, additional partnerships, and this is definitely something and what we can do to deepen the base of our campership program. So all of these things have been successes. They've been growing, and we wanna focus on continuing to grow the funding opportunities for all of these routes.

Great. No. I I I appreciate that. And then just just so that I know, have you guys looked at other camps and how they cost like outside of the one that we run? How much money, how much more affordable is this program in comparison to if a family was just going to a regular camp around Yosemite?

If you're just saying with campground, you know need to know to make a reservation a year in advance, to get into Yosemite. The majority of other camps like Tuolumne Camp, is run by Berkeley, and also, there's a camp Mather that's run by San Francisco. They are about $20 more a night. Mather has been successful at getting full occupancy and Berkeley is still working hard to do that since the Rim fire. And we have a partnership with them, we're starting a collaboration to kind of figure out what things they've been successful with and what grants they have and where we can leverage partnership together to figure out how different people get access to nature and what they're doing that's successful.

And then before I go to council member Dewan, are these the staff members that work at Family Camp, are they bargaining unit members?

Yes, yes sir. We have three full time positions assigned to family camp, a supervisor, a lead for maintenance and a lead for recreation programs.

Okay. And then is that all this staff or is there some contracted out?

And then for the, actually I've forgotten we've this year also added part time maintenance staff who are also similarly represented by our bargaining units. And we also have a part time cook position that would fall under one of our bargaining units. The rest of the staff are hired as temporary employees for the summer season. So they're temporary.

And how many are those?

The number that we actually hire year to year varies. I think this year was in the low 30s. Our goal would be upwards of 40 per summer.

Okay, great. Well I'm going to make it a goal to go up there before my term ends. I'm looking forward to potentially getting a tour. I'm going pass it back to council member Dewan.

Thank you chair. Maybe I'll hitch a ride with you.

Yeah, there you go.

Well there was a concern that some of the stipend to community that doesn't need the discount if you will. Is there any truth to that?

Thank you, council member. For clarification, are are you referring to the outdoor equity grant?

Yes.

Those were Washington and Poka Way. So those weren't residents from the other locations we had mentioned, Cambria and Willow Glen. They were specific to those neighborhoods.

And there's a specific process that people be embedded through, right, to make sure they they qualify? Correct. Yeah. I I just wanna make make sure we're clear on that. And, yes, it is true that we we live in a concrete world and sometime be able to to go up in the forest and and enjoy. It's, it's a rare occasion, and and I think that we should, make sure that every opportunity that our underserved children whom electronic world here get to understand what it is to be outside, you playing in the rivers and in the forest. Well, thank you very much. That's all I have.

I agree, council member Dewan. Let's get those kids off Minecraft. Alright. Let's let's vote.

Did you wanna take a verbal vote?

Just to all. Everyone in favor? Aye.

Thank you. That passes unanimously.

Alright. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation. Item two, Parks and Recreations and Neighborhood Services Community Impact Annual Report. And that is a fifteen minute presentation from John Ciccarelli, Director.

Good afternoon. Andrea Flores Shelton, Assistant Director of Parks, Recreation, Neighborhood Services and I'm here with Amanda Rodriguez for a presentation on the community impact report.

Thanks Andrea and good afternoon council members. My name is Amanda Rodriguez, and I'm the public information manager for the Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services Department. And I have the pleasure of leading our department's communications team as we support p r n s divisions with marketing, communications, and public relations. Relations. As government workers and council members, you know, we're usually focused on how can we do better to serve our community, but it's also important for us to take time to celebrate accomplishments, which is what today's presentation is all about.

I'm here to share with you our 2024 community impact report whose theme is where you belong. I've been in my role for a little over six months now and let me tell you this department cares about the community we serve. The vision of the department is to create healthy communities that inspire belonging, and our mission is to connect people through our facilities and services. I've learned from my PRNS colleagues that belonging is a very special word. Through years of community engagement for different programs, services, and strategic initiatives, we've learned that all members of our community wanna feel like they belong.

That's why we chose this theme for our 2024 report, and to go along with it, we designed a fun not to scale map of San Jose and our parks recreation neighborhood services system. So if you unfold the report that was just handed out to you, you'll see that fun map. Your offices should have also received I think two copies of the map last week or the report last week. A lot of our staff are having fun with the map they're framing it so I hope you have fun with it too. Here we have an overview of the vast and diverse assets managed by our department.

We have over 3,600 acres of parkland, 65 miles of trails, 205 neighborhood parks, 10 regional parks, over a 100 ball fields, 77 of them being reservable. We even have a lawn bowling green so you can see we have something for everyone and the list grows each year. The stories we shared in this year's report focused on impact and included voices straight from our community. As you read through the report you'll see that we categorized by our Activate SJ guiding principles and recognize that these programs and services that we're talking about do overlap principles which makes sense, they build off of each other. Activate SJ is our strategic plan that guides us in maintaining, improving, and expanding our facilities programs and services.

And as a reminder stewardship means we're taking care of what we have and investing in the future. We want to protect and promote natural areas for everyone. We also promote equity and access for everyone regardless of age, culture, or ability. We find ways to celebrate our city's identity and become a premier parks recreation and neighborhood services system, and finally we're creating safe and fun spaces for to support public life in San Jose which you'll hear be hearing more about from our place making colleagues after this presentation. On this slide we have an example of one of the stories you'll read in the community impact report.

Our rock after school programs through our recreation division helped Anna, a mother of three, obtain higher education because her kids had a safe place to go while she was in school. Stories like these remind us of the positive impact that we have on the community and I really hope you or we really hope you enjoy reading them. We're proud of our scholarship program and although we know it doesn't cover all the need out there, our department distributed over $2,800,000 in scholarships, 13,000 scholarships to nearly 3,000 recipients. These scholarships open doors for educational and recreational activities, and we know a lot of families take advantage of them to make sure their kids have a safe place to go after school and during the summer when school is out. Just last month, scholarships for our summer programs were fully subscribed within ten minutes, demonstrating the high interest and high need for these opportunities.

We work hard to protect the scholarship program and are always looking for opportunities to bring in private money and donations to expand this expand access to this critical funding. The community impact on the community impact report not only highlights our annual achievements but also fulfills our requirements under City Council's pricing and revenue policy to report on our financial sustainability. We're regularly evaluating and adjusting our pricing to remain competitive within the local market, but have to balance equity and accessibility in our programs. In twenty three-twenty four we generated $38,000,000 in revenue from various sources including interfund transfers, fees and grants. Our cost recovery improved to 27.6% which is up from 23.4% last fiscal year.

The next two slides show how big of an operation we're running. Our total operating budget is over a $183,000,000. In addition we're carrying a capital budget of over 207,000,000. That means collectively we're managing an overall department budget of more than $390,000,000 per year to support the facilities programs and services that you read about in the community impact report and in here through other updates from our department. Employees.

As you know the summer is busiest for us, we balloon with part time employees to support our recreation and parks programming during the summer months. Our staff are passionate, determined and committed to serving San Jose. On this slide we wanted to just pull out some highlights to show the diverse impacts we made over the last fiscal year. We organized over a 150 dumpster days helping neighbors get rid of junk and prevent illegal dumping neighborhoods. We celebrated 35 new park openings and renovations including the opening of seven new parks.

We served over 235,000 healthy and nutritious meals to seniors and youth when they were out of school. Our Beautify SJ team removed over 12,000,000 pounds of trash from streets, creeks, and neighborhoods. Volunteers put in nearly 70,000 beautifying parks and neighborhoods, and we saw over 2,000 youth in our after school programs. Each year we present the community impact report to our Parks and Rec Commission and this committee, and also our Activate SJ update, and these updates go separately every year. So this year because the community impact report is aligned with our Activate SJ guiding principles, we see a great opportunity to enhance how we share these updates with you.

So starting this fall we're going to be combining them into a single report and presentation and this change is going to streamline our reporting, strengthen our storytelling, and deliver the community impact to report to you much sooner. So we're really looking forward to that update and with that we'll take any questions.

Thank you so much to our staff for their presentation. Do we have any public comment?

We have no public comment.

Alright. Let's look and see if any of my colleagues oh, Council Member Dewan.

Thank you, chair. I just wanna say thank you. With the incredible work that you do out there, with the the lack of resource, PRNS have done enormous for our community. I only have one question. It would be helpful for me to have a comparison in the past five year fiscal year in the report. So that way we can have a base or at least see it grows or contract. So that would be very helpful, but continue with the good work. Thank you.

Council member, we'd be happy to do that. I just did want to put the caveat that given the years where we had the CRF funds, the American Rescue funds, There seems to be we're leveling off, right. So the last five years will be it'll be hard to tell that story because they're just not equivalent given that we've sort of removed those funds from our coffers. So we will be happy to do that, but it will be challenging to do year to year comparisons.

Please do and you can just mark those particular fund those particular years so that way I'll get a clear understanding. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. I'm gonna go to council member Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you to staff for this report. I think it's a incredibly important report that we're receiving on public life and place making it aligned with one of the pillars that I have for my council office. Community infrastructure is a core piece of the work that our D. Two council office will be engaged in because we understand that community community infrastructure is both the physical built environment and it's also the people. So when I look at this report I get very excited to know that our our city is working on on the important needs of our community.

I had a couple of questions about opportunities that I'm trying to find in this report. Is there someone at the city who is responsible for looking at our city's real estate inventory and identifying opportunities for more place making, looking at opportunities for gallery spaces, looking at opportunities for job incubator spaces.

So we don't want to steal the thunder of the next item, but we do have Carrie Adams Hapner, part of the Office of Cultural Affairs as well as Office of Economic Development with our place making team in the next presentation. But real estate is in the Office of Economic Development. And then we have our own portfolio of places and spaces, community centers, plazas, parks that we obviously manage. We'd be happy to get that all unified and get that over to you.

Wonderful, thank you. I think that that's one of the key areas where the city can work on is our city infrastructure and how we are creating environments and spaces that people want to come to, where people feel safe, and that are low cost or free because that is what I don't see enough of in the city of San Jose is these third places where community can start to form and gather. And coming from a more suburban part of the city. We definitely have a strong craving for that and I'm always looking for opportunities to get South San Jose on the map and on the minds of folks and. You know that this is a this is a beautiful image.

That I just want to call out. South San Jose is not represent it really on here so. Any any opportunity that we can get to. Ensure that as a as an entire city we are incorporating. Our our communities our neighbors our residents and looking for those those spaces that are going to bring value to our public safety goals because I think that that's the other piece of the puzzle that place making provides us that opportunity is to build trust, and right now trust is that missing key to helping us achieve the goals of a lot of our policy that councils before I was on council have led, and so these opportunities are incredibly important opportunities to rebuilding and starting that trust where it doesn't currently exist, so I'm excited to continue following this work.

Thank you.

If I may, I just want to thank you for those words because it really does, we need to knit together all of these different assets we have, elevate them. We are a part of a civic commons group, a national group where we a few of us got to go to Philadelphia early this year. It's with our partners, right, which you can't do it alone and trying to again elevate these key spaces again citywide. There's so many things, right. And so it really does connect back to our principles around stewardship, taking care of what we have and really envisioning things with our leaders, with our residents to elevate our public spaces.

So we're with you and we know it is about building elevate our budget right to meet the demands and expectations of community. But first comes the trust to get there. So thank you so much for those comments.

Thank you Councilmember Campos. I really liked how you figuratively asked for South San Jose to be put on the map, so I I I like that. Council member Candelas.

Thank you, chair. No. I just wanted to thank staff for their work on this, and, PRNS is a a great department not just because I am a former staffer in PRNS. Okay. Maybe fifteen years ago but still nonetheless you know whether it's you know our resilience core or whether it's the work around the trails or on the rock program, it's we we offer a robust, programming for our community and and it's and it's important to highlight the wins.

Although I I you know, I was I was trying to I was trying to fight South San Jose, and I I think councilmember McConnell, I think I I think these hills back here might be Coyote Valley maybe. But but no. It it's it's important that we, you know, we highlight every everybody's district. And you know, I do wanna give a shout out to John Ciccarelli with the cute puppy picture on the on the front. That's that's adorbs. But anyways, thank you. I'll move acceptance to the staff report. Second.

Great. Thank you and I just want to thank staff for this very informative report. PRNS does such a vital service to the community. All of these programs initiated by your department are vital for our working families. I just really want to want to thank you. And I guess we will do a our vote. So all in favor? Aye. Alright.

Thank you. That passes unanimously.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you to staff. Alright. Item three, place making and public life status report.

And there will be a presentation by Carrie Adams Hapner, Avi Yodam and Brian Clampett.

Good afternoon, my name is Carrie Adams Hapner, I'm the Assistant Director of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. That is a hard act to follow, so congratulations on your report to the PRNS department. We're here today to talk about public life, and so I'm here with two of my esteemed colleagues Avi and Brian, and I also want to recognize that we are part of a much larger interdepartmental team, and I would say public life is a value of all city departments. And in particular, I want to take this opportunity to thank the special events team, the office of cultural affairs team, and PRNS, and I'm going to take this opportunity to recognize Deputy City Manager Angel Rios, because it was maybe about eight years ago when public life became a city manager priority area, and so we really collaborated across departments to think about what does that mean, what does public life mean to the city of San Jose and its residents. And the importance of public life has never become more important in a post pandemic San Jose.

So I just want to really reiterate that the work of this team is very much value based, and I really appreciated PRNS' spirit of belonging because I think that's a key and core value to public life, and that we want to ensure that San Jose is a place for everybody where they can come together to connect and create, and also to participate. So those are some of our core values. I also just want to emphasize, sorry, next, you get a clicker. Okay, so we have a question for you, and we would love to hear from you. What does public life mean to you?

There's a very great definition in the memo, but I'm going to riff a little bit, and I'm going to share that public life is a love of place, and it's a love of community. And I will also put forward that it is at the nexus of community, cultural, and economic development. And I really liked that notion of belonging. So, I think that's something we can incorporate going forward. I also want to just emphasize it's about bringing people together, particularly important in post pandemic world where we had social isolation.

Okay, so I end, let me move forward to the next one. Okay, great. So we're going to tag team a little bit. So the Office of Cultural Affairs does produce and permit temporary outdoor special events, and I will just emphasize that permitting of outdoor special events in the city of San Jose is decentralized. So we have teams within OCA, within PRNS, and also Public Works that permit and authorize outdoor special events.

So we tend to get involved when they're on sales and plazas in the downtown core, or if they involve three or more permits. And I will also emphasize that we take a very facilitative approach to permitting outdoor special events, in other words, we get to yes. Right, so we want to ensure that we have an activated public realm where people can come together, and again, feel like they can belong. So, the Office of Cultural Affairs permits about 400 outdoor special event days annually, and yes, that's over the number of days in a year, that's because there's a lot of events happening across the city. One of the events that we produce is called City Dance, and it is a free event, it's an outdoor special event that we do in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Art and other partners as well, and it happens on the third Thursday of every month, and essentially there's a different dance genre that we promote that really reflects the diversity of San Jose, and there's a wonderful instruction lesson for the first hour, and then there's live music.

We also work with community partners to come and table the event, and I would say I want to really emphasize that public life is amplified when you work in partnership with the community. This is another example of an activation that we just recently did at Sonic Runway, it was on Valentine's Day, so we called it Sonic Loveway, and we worked in partnership with the Opera San Jose and the master chorale of the symphony, also we had partners in terms of vendors, other performing arts groups. It was really beautiful, and it was one of those mission moments for our team because we really brought people together and really celebrated why we love this great city. Over the past year, we have completed 15 murals in the public realm, and we're really excited, and they are citywide, and they include the great work of our local artist community. Also, we had this past year the completion and installation of the Thank You America Monument at the Vierette Heritage Garden.

So I want to thank you, council member Duan, for your support of this project. It was very meaningful. I was at the opening, and it was an event that was very poignant because it's a very important memorial for this community. This is a recent project that was completed at Highlandville Park in the Japantown area. This is by a local artist named Roger Stoehler.

And sometimes artists can serve on a design team, and there's like this is a good example of Pellier Park, where we had Nori Santo, who's collaborated with SWA Group for the design of this park. There was not a public art budget, but through her collaboration with the design team, you can see the park itself is a work of art. We've also worked with different departments, so we just recently completed a really incredible installation of local artists' work at the Emergency Operations Center. I was just there like two weeks ago, and I got a tour, and it was so amazing how local artists really captured the concepts of emergency preparedness and resilience. This is a work at the airport.

These are, again, local artists, and these are lenticular prints. So when you walk by, you're going to see some changes in what you're viewing, and it's really exciting to see the opportunity to engage our local artist community. And each of these commissions equals a job. We also have our city hall exhibitions and performances, so we had the Pune, India Sister City exhibition. There's also an exhibition with San Jose Jazz, and I'm going to give you a preview in 2026.

There's going to be some work by local artists that are going be sports themed. We also have a program called San Jose Creates and Connects. The city of San Jose's Office of Cultural Affairs was a pilot city on behalf of the state of California, and a national study called Creating Connection. And it was really an effort to see how can we build public will for the arts. And so through quantitative and qualitative research, we realized what do people care about, and they care about connecting with themselves, they care about health, they care about connecting with their family and friends, and also with their sense of place.

So based on that, we and through opportunities for creative self expression. So based on that information, we've developed a series of programs that really emphasize participation and creative self expression. So among those programs is our Creative Ambassador Program, where each year we commission local artists, and it's their job to go and promote creative self expression, and each of them have a different project they are introducing to the community. This is happening next month. This is the We Create four zero eight challenge.

It's a creativity challenge. It happens online, where every day you'll get a new prompt about how to showcase your creativity. And I will say, last year in 2024, we had 820,000 views and media impressions, so people are actively engaged in participating. We also, every year, have something called Make Music Day. In 2024, we had 100 participating artists.

We had 34 venues across the city, and the focus on this is that anywhere can be a venue, and anyone can participate. This is not about the professional artists, although they often participate, and they're welcome to participate, But it's also about the people and how they can integrate music into their everyday lives. And for those two programs, we invite you in your offices to participate. We'd love to get the word out to our extended community. This past year, we also completed an arts and economic prosperity study in partnership with Americans for the Arts, and what it showed is sector, the nonprofit arts sector in San Jose, so this is just a sliver of our arts ecosystem, produces and generates $292,000,000 in annual economic impact, and supports almost 5,000 jobs.

And I will say that we kind of were the outlier in terms of national studies, where we were one of the limited communities that saw an uptick in both economic impact and jobs supported in the post pandemic era. One of the unique things about this study that showed us is some of the social impact of the arts. We had about 4,400,000 attendees, 25% of which were non local, and the report also demonstrated that non local members spent more, about three fold more. And then 86% of the audience members agreed that this activity or venue is inspiring, a sense of pride in this neighborhood or community. And over 84% agree that my attendance is my way of ensuring that this activity or venue is preserved for future generations.

And over 85% agreed that I would feel a great sense of loss if this activity or venue were no longer available. So in a nutshell, people really care about the arts and culture and public life. So thank you very much. I'm gonna turn it over to Avi.

Thank you, Carrie. Chair, members of the committee, my name is Avi Ottom, deputy director of Parks. I'm gonna ask you the second question of the day. What is placemaking? And the good news is we're testing you, but it's an open note test and you have the answer in your memo.

But for us, for our shorthand, we think of place making as the process of creating places where people wanna live, learn, work, and play really towards that ultimate outcome of public life where people live. You can often think of place making as what we do in between the buildings, whether that's in the Paseos, in the parks, on the streets. And very importantly, place making can be what's around us. It could be the built environment. It could be artwork or features.

And the one that always comes to mind for me actually, Chair, is is in your district, Chiquita in Amaproosh Farm Park. That is absolute placemaking. That place is is rocking every installations like Sonic Runway, or it could be temporary activations, which is where PRNS has really found our our calling. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Brian Klamath to talk about what we do.

Thank you, Avi, and thank you Chair and members of the committee for the opportunity to talk about placemaking and some of the things that we do in San Jose that make our city very, very vibrant. As Avi shared, PRNS plays a vital role in creating welcoming and vibrant communities by producing some of San Jose's most memorable free events through the place making program. One of PRNS' signature events is Viva Calle SJ, a free open streets program that transforms miles of city streets into expansive recreational spaces multiple times per year. In fiscal year twenty three, twenty four, PRNS hosted three VivaCay events drawing in an estimated 400,000 attendees who experienced San Jose in a unique way by walking, biking, skating, and playing through some of the city's most diverse and historic neighborhoods. By transforming the roads into car free vibrant public spaces, Vivecaya fosters community we're We're about the excited about see you all out there.

Building off of a relationship that began ten years ago, PRNS partnered with San Jose State's Mineta Transportation Institute to evaluate the impacts of the 09/08/2024 VivaCay. The study highlighted the event successes in strengthening community connections, promoting physical activities, and driving economic benefits. Key findings show that 64% of those surveyed enjoyed live entertainment, sixty six support nearby restaurants, and 68% discovered new areas of San Jose. Additionally, 76% of participants felt a stronger sense of community, and 80% explored new local businesses reinforcing that VivaCay's role in transforming streets into vibrant public spaces. Relaunched in 2023, the Pit Stop program continues to enhance the VivaCay experience by partnering with local businesses along the route, boosting visibility and economic growth at no cost to the businesses.

The program features exclusive day of deals and targeted marketing efforts connecting VivaCay attendees to participating businesses that are in the Pit Stop program. By integrating businesses into the event, the Pit Stop program strengthens community ties while driving economic benefits for San Jose. Here is one of the most impactful results from the San Jose State Survey. If these survey results are extrapolated to the estimated 125,000 participants at Vivekaia with 77% spending an average of more than $54 per person. The potential economic impact of this event could be $5,250,000 in local spending.

Recognized with numerous awards since 2015, including most recently bronze awards in the Metro's Best of Silicon Valley 2024, VivaCay celebrates community, culture, and creativity as one of the region's most anticipated events. VivaCay celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2025 with three incredible events making a decade of open streets programming in San Jose. And just this past fiscal year, PRNS raised over a $100,000 through fundraising and sponsorship efforts while securing a grant with DOT to fund VivaCay in East San Jose for the next two years. Pierron S' Viva Parks program continues to bring neighborhoods to life with free family frenning events as part of the place making and park activation program. This past fiscal season, Viva Parks events drew over 19,000 participants to parks and public spaces across San Jose.

Between June 2025 and October 2025, 55 Viva Parks events will bring interactive activities, live events, local resources, and cultural programming, making San Jose's parks more welcoming, vibrant, and connected. The newest member to the place making portfolio and as part of our ongoing efforts to activate public spaces, Paint the City SJ will offer 20 free painting experiences across all 10 council districts this season. Led by local artists, this program celebrates San Jose's cultural diversity, fostering creative creativity, connection, and storytelling through art. Survey results provided by the Viva Parks attendees show the program's strong impact with 81% feeling a greater sense of community, 71% meeting new people while at Viva Parks activations and 70% planning to return to the park outside of the events. Additionally, Viva Parks promotes health and wellness with 62% of attendees engaging in up to two hours of physical activity during the events.

PRNS prioritizes equity by attracting activating public spaces where recreational opportunities are most needed using the Healthy Places Index to focus on underserved areas. Partnerships with the City Council offices and Project Hope ensure inclusivity by reserving spots for residents without digital access to join the Panta City events without needing to reserve their spot online. In 2025, PRNS will expand our activation efforts working with the San Jose Downtown Association and other local vendors to increase activations in St. James Park as our continued commitment to strengthen community connections at the park.

There we go.

There we go. This next slide shows a sliver of the cultural events our special park use team facilitates through the city's event permitting process. In fiscal year twenty three-twenty four, the special park use team permitted four forty seven events with over six and eighty thousand attendees.

That

excited excited

announce

that vibrancy, PRNS doubled the number of council free use events per district and worked with the San Jose Park Rangers to address unpermitted events through educational strategies. As a key player in supporting public life, the special park use team streamlines the event permitting process, ensuring San Jose's parks maintain vibrant gathering spaces. By applying solutions from the city manager's customer service initiative, the team has removed barriers, simplified permit applications, and maintained the integrity of park operations. Looking ahead, PRNS maintains committed to fostering community connections, celebrating cultural diversities, and ensuring well managed public spaces. The Department of Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services and Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs remain committed to fostering a more connected, inclusive, and vibrant San Jose by activating public spaces that bring people together.

Through these initiatives, collectively, we continue to create meaningful experiences that celebrate our city's diverse communities and enhance public life for all.

Thank you, Brian. And I'm gonna chime in with just a couple closing words. And actually, the slide a minute ago is one of my my favorites. I'm just gonna put it

oh, it's all good.

I was gonna put it back up, but it's just so it's so vibrant and colorful, and I think that really speaks to what we're doing collectively collectively here. Here. You could see it throughout this entire presentation whether it's arts in the parks, our two departments are connected in this effort to support vibrancy across our city. With that, we recommend that the committee accept our report and we're available for questions.

Alright, thank you for your presentation. Do we have any public comment?

No public comment.

Alrighty. First off I just want to thank you guys for your presentation. Place making is probably one of the most exciting things that our city does. You know, just thinking about, you know, our districts, whether it's the Brigadoon cement Slides in District 8, the Thank You America Monument, the Chiquita in in my district. I don't know one for District 4. I'm having a hard time thinking about that, the Great Oaks Skate Park. All of our districts have, you know, something that makes the district, you know, have a sense of culture, a sense of place. I have I have some questions, but I'm gonna pass it off to my colleagues and then we will come back to me. So council member Condelas.

Thank you, chair. Yeah. Ditto. Thank you for your presentation and thank you for your work. I especially wanna thank Brian, your team, Avi, your team for bringing Vivakaya to East San Jose for the first time in seven years, last year. I know this is a committee I've been on since I came on to the council in 2023 and every year I would say, every committee, opportunity we would talk about this. And so it was it was really really exciting to be able to ride my bike with my family from Lake Cunningham all the way to downtown and back. So, I appreciate that and I I did read that grant in the report. I do read the memos And and did see that. I'm excited and hopefully, you know, it gets to come come again to the well, it's coming to San Jose again and hopefully the route comes in my district.

That's a shameless plug. But, you know, I I think community events are are important whether it's the Viva Parks, Viva Calle, Paint the City or the Make Music events of the different things we offer. And you know public life, know Carrie you asked us a question at the beginning of the presentation. You know it's a staple for how I run my office. I did a Music in the Square every Friday at Evergreen Village Square from May through August.

And I'm gonna do that again and Make Music was out there on one of the nights and we partnered on it and and and that that partnership is, is important because that's how we create stronger relationships and stronger neighborhoods. Whether it's with our our businesses, our our neighbors, or you know, our our office, I think bringing people together is critical to what we do as a city. And you know a lot of folks who don't necessarily interact a lot with city services, they see this. And this is one of the most visible aspects of what city government does. And so I think the branding that we have and the information that we have to get people to activate and say, oh, I didn't know that this was a thing.

It is important and I hope that this continues in the future and I know we're in difficult budget challenges and these kind of critical programs are one of the first to go. That's the reality of our of our situation. But know that I will will champion and do everything I can to make sure that you are at the forefront and protect us to the best the best you can. I'll probably be submitting a BD with regards to more Viva Parks in in my district. But in any in any case, thank you for your your good work and and and keep it up. It's it's it's not easy but it's totally valued and totally appreciated on my part. And that I'll move to Steph's recommendation.

Second. Alright, Council Member Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you again to staff for this report. I especially impressed with the ability to quantify the impact, the social impact of arts because we know that the work that you do is good because it feels good, but when we have the data and the numbers to help us make the case, it's that much more helpful into our effective advocacy of the great work that you all do. So just wanted to thank you for including that in your report, and to circle back on the question I asked on the previous item about whose role it is seeking these opportunities for place making spaces. I just had a conversation with Hayes Mansion in District 2 yesterday, the general manager was talking about weekly music nights that that are free to the public and oftentimes go go unannounced, and so those are the kind of public private partnerships that I'm hoping to uplift with the appropriate person at the staff level.

That sounds like a wonderful event series first of all. And if it includes the use of the public realm, it would come mostly through one of our offices. That said, I would also just share, over the past year, we've been piloting, both of our departments have been piloting a new program called S shaped Places. So I want to put a plug in for that, because our goal, as Brian mentioned, is to remove barriers to activate the public realm. So there are certain criteria that you have to hit, like it has to be less than 500 people, can't involve alcohol or other types of state or county permitting agencies, but if you can have an event that fits within that threshold, there will be zero fees associated with it.

So I just wanna put a plug in. So if you have spaces in the public realm in your districts that you'd like to have activated, this is a really great program. We started with a pilot, but we're looking to expand it citywide.

Thank you for that information. I think that as we prepare for 2026 and beyond, opportunities like that are going to be incredibly helpful to create, maintain, and sustain energy in our neighborhoods across the city. And I really appreciate the incorporation of belonging in the work that you do. Again going back to public safety and how important it is to give people a sense of identity, sense of belonging, sense Stewardship to their community is one of the pillars. In my work plan.

And part of. The work that I'm hoping to achieve with. Through partnerships with our city departments is a joy of learning. Because when we can help our young people and our you know folks who who are trying to find their way in this world, giving them the hope that that they can have a hobby that becomes a career, have a passion that they can dedicate their time, their resources, and their energy into, is a way to help our communities feel and become safer, and so if there are opportunities to work with our schools, work with our recreational partners and programming to help you know get get youth out into the city and understanding how they are part of this great system, and how we are you know just as invested in them as we hope they will feel invested in our community is going to have you know impacts just across so many of the areas that we're looking for impact right now whether it's economic development, public safety, place making. So I would encourage you to join me in thinking through how we can incorporate the joy of learning through literacy, through math, through creative expression, so that our young people, know folks like myself who have this just love of the city and so much pride for living in San Jose, how we can you know use that joy to then positively impact our community.

So thank you again for presentation and for hearing my comments.

Thank you for your beautiful comments. We really appreciate it. It means a Yep.

Thank you council member Campos, council member Adwan.

Thank you chair. Thank you for the presentation. You know, the the place making, the public life is pretty amazing, and and especially the Viequayet is coming up, and it's gonna go right down to, Story Road all the way to Emmerpus. It'd be pretty amazing to to see if you guys could shut down Story Road. It'll be a task.

But I did take advantage of the paint the city SJ. I was out there with our citizen at Windmill Park, and and, you know, I I draw some sticks figures. You know? It was good. Know, with the new program that you're talking about regarding 500 or less people out there in a public space, please reach out to my staff.

I would like to have a take advantage of that program, especially at the, you know, Happy Hollow zoo, at least the the park that we have. And I was over there at the DA for the Viva Park, which which was really great because you're able to get the the the exercise to our elderly, population. Maybe that would be the the wrong word. I I forgot what's the new word that you used for elderly now.

Older adults. What is it? Older adults.

Okay. There we go. And but but also we we we need to advertise it so where our youth can come out and support our, you know, older pop older population, I guess. But I like to take care take advantage of both those programs. If you can't reach out to my staff, we'll schedule a meeting and see how we can move it forward. Thank you again for for all you do for San Jose. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member De Juan, there's a Viva Viva Calle coming to White Road, right? It's gonna be going through four, five and eight. Is that correct? Do we have a date for that one?

No. We we that's not announced quite yet.

Oh, okay. Never But mind

but but great Don't look behind the curtain everybody. Great question, behind

the curtain.

Jesus. It's a great idea. It's something that we will absolutely look into.

Okay.

I'd love to have

a future conversation with you about that.

My apologies. That's that's what I get for not fully in briefings. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to your next VivaCay. Hopefully, it's an opportunity to collaborate with other council members.

But, no, I just I really just wanna mention how much I appreciate this program, how much of an opportunity it is especially as it goes through our working class districts. Know, many of our families in the East Side San Jose, you know, don't really have the opportunity to enjoy the open space. And when opportunities like this arise, you know, they could really be life changing and allow for individuals to see the world in different perspectives that aren't always open to them. I think it's key that we make sure we partner whenever there's a Viva Calle in my district on business outreach. I think it's either a hit and miss with some of these businesses, but I do see the value that it provides.

I do especially in Alamok Village, many of our business owners are excited for the Viva Calle especially when they're chosen as like one of those like fun centers or I'm not sure what the exact terminology is. There's a terminology for that but when they're like activity hub, think. There we go. I think a lot of those business owners and community members really really enjoy that. So please see my office as a support and doing outreach because I know, you know, White Road and then, you know, Story Road, that's gonna be a big one as well.

So making sure that we're reaching out to both, you know, our Vietnamese and Latino immigrant business owners expressing to them the value that it adds to the community and maybe even providing opportunities for them to be involved depending on when those centers are. I I really love the videos that VivaCay is doing. I think one of the stars is here from the videos. You know, people are getting famous from from being a staff. There people are sending, you know, it's me like, oh, wow. You guys are doing this. This is so exciting. You know, how can I be involved? How can I be a vendor? How can I, you know, participate at one of the hubs?

And those that's the excitement and involvement that we want to see from our our residents. Right? We want them to feel like the city of San Jose is a fun place to be, is an innovative place to be, is willing to provide new opportunities, innovative opportunities to enjoy this city. And I think this provides equal opportunity for all. Thank you. See none of my colleagues have their hands raised. So let's go to the vote. Everyone in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. The ayes have it.

That passes unanimously with Cohen Abson.

That is right. Okay. And then finally it's going be open forum. I don't think we have

You have no public comment.

All right. Adjournment. Thank you all.